So why not make everything that's bad...good? (Or at least not so bad)

[Loza03]

1 minute ago, Jarriaga said:

Yes. I agree there are still some outliers there that need to be nerfed, buffed, or moved to a different MR bracket with their current stats in order to better reflect their expected performance.

We can't forget that some weapons are nominally in one bracket, but practically in another. For example, the Kuva weapons are practically MR5 weapons because killing a lich is accessed there, and the foundry MR check is done from crafting, not from claiming.

[Rakosta_Kai]

2 minutes ago, Surbusken said:

But yes it does come at the cost of learning to check your ego at the door

Consider taking your own advice...

 

[Aldain]

Answer me one question.

How?

How would one make Decoy a good choice over 90% of the Helminth options?

How would one make the Veldt compete with the Kuva Bramma?

Tell me how you can make things better without just making everything a copy/paste version of the same thing? How do you do this while maintaining any form of balance?

It is easy to say "Just make everything better 4head" actually doing it is another thing entirely.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

10 hours ago, Guiver909 said:

Because they don't know how to do that.

DE takes the same approach Blizzard does and just nerfs based on usage.Its the lazy devs way of balancing (it never works)and its always a clear sign the devs don't know or play there own game which is why the ways in which they nerf things don't even make sense most times.

Much easier just to make flavour of the month metas in a cycle than actually balance things.

 

 

Every game "nerfs" or adjusts outliers. If you look at the entire game overall, it already looks like the whole game was buffed....some people are just too entitled/uninformed/amateur to realize how much power they have, or don't know how to access it.

After you're not new and actually know what you're doing, the entire game is easy.....

Many nerfs have made complete sense. It doesn't help when it's literally advertised by the players, but just like any game, developers look at data and see what everyone is doing. 

 

[Surbusken]

1 hour ago, Padre_Akais said:

Consider taking your own advice...

 

Because you assuming the developers read your every post, is about my ego?

Was that the closest thing to saying something meaningful you could get, lol...

 

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

12 minutes ago, Surbusken said:

Because you assuming the developers read your every post, is about my ego?

Was that the closest thing to saying something meaningful you could get, lol...

 

Aren't you the "after I played the game for years I randomly just decided I dont like timegates after having to build a railjack" guy? 

 

[Skaleek]

1 hour ago, Aldain said:

How would one make Decoy a good choice over 90% of the Helminth options?

 I dunno. Of the top of my head:

Decoy drops an energy or health orb on death. Decoy explodes on death in an aoe for damage taken while decoy was alive. Enemies shooting decoy have a chance to drop extra loot. Enemies attacking decoy have their damage reduced by 95%(maybe a blind effect? feels more loki) for X seconds. Casting Decoy makes the next skill you cast have +100% power duration/range/efficiency/blah/whatever fills a niche. Casting Decoy on an ally will have the decoy follow them like a spectre and draw fire.

Of course powers will eventually have functionality overlap, but that's not really a reason to leave them in a shabby state. Not to say i agree with OP, but there are definitely things DE could do to even the playing field of powers available.

[Tesseract7777]

The old canard, why don't we just "buff all the bad stuff and make it good". 

That is not nearly as easy as it sounds... not even close lol. 

Don't get me wrong, anything that is statistically on the really low end of useage should get a look when possible, but "just update everything and get it on a similar level all at once" is a monumental and essentially impossible task. 

They could stop making new content for years and try to just focus on that and probably still never get it quite right because of the nature of what you are asking them to do. 

[Aldain]

2 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

Of course powers will eventually have functionality overlap, but that's not really a reason to leave them in a shabby state.

I don't disagree with this, I just want people to actually think about how one would go about doing so and how it can have an impact on the game as a whole.

Those Decoy suggestions also aren't bad though, however I'd say Loki himself needs some review more than just Decoy (I swear to god if I see one more person tell me Switch Teleport is a good ability...).

[Skaleek]

Just now, Tesseract7777 said:

The old canard, why don't we just "buff all the bad stuff and make it good". 

That is not nearly as easy as it sounds... not even close lol. 

Way more work, less people upset. Balancing act. How many people do you win over vs how much development time is spent on it. My question is how big is their development team for skills/weapons/etc. Is it just Scott as the grand master of all things skills and weapons? 1 guy can't possibly handle the balance of the entire arsenal WF has. Part of me knows that because everything goes through Scott, it's why we are where we are. So much stuff is left by the wayside because 1 man can't balance it all.

[Skaleek]

1 minute ago, Aldain said:

Switch Teleport is a good ability

But POE escort bounties!!!!!! And going through walls.

Yeah Loki needs a look at. He's gone a long time without any functionality changes; potentially the Warframe to go the longest without ability tweaks?

[killerJoke66]

300 official member/staff , tho idk how much it is for in-game balance but its not just scott @Skaleek

[killerJoke66]

also imagine reworking loki before hydroid :d 

[Skaleek]

Just now, killerJoke66 said:

300 official member/staff , tho idk how much it is for in-game balance but its not just scott @Skaleek

Right but we have no idea the allocation of the development team. We know the sound team has like 5-6 guys. There's a bunch of departments. I know Joe Buck (forum name?) handles the creation of new weapons. And we know that pablo has definitely had his hand in some powers, but I'm sure it all goes through the nexus that is Scott. You can tell because whenever someone talks about a change to some warframe or weapon mechanic on stream, all heads turn to Scott. Then you get the "ohh I dunno about that, we have to look at the usage metrics blah blah".

[Tesseract7777]

Just now, Skaleek said:

Way more work, less people upset. Balancing act. How many people do you win over vs how much development time is spent on it. My question is how big is their development team for skills/weapons/etc. Is it just Scott as the grand master of all things skills and weapons? 1 guy can't possibly handle the balance of the entire arsenal WF has. Part of me knows that because everything goes through Scott, it's why we are where we are. So much stuff is left by the wayside because 1 man can't balance it all.

I think that's part of the problem, that the balance team is small overall, but I think we have to consider the issue that this is a live service game with hundreds of weapons, dozens of "classes" as it were, and so many different powerups, gear items, pets and mods. At this point they could make a balance team of dozens focused solely on that, and maybe they could get closer to the type of balance many are asking for, but I think it would still take them a very long time, and they have to keep readjusting because more content gets added. 

I think they would have to make core changes to weapon tiers as well. The problem is the tiering is all based on mastery rank, and is all over the place and often doesn't make a lot of logical sense. On top of that, Mastery Rank is great for monetization but not so great for measuring players overall power based on progression. IMO until they can find a better core way to separate pure mastery rank from player "power" rank more logically, they have an almost impossible task, throw in the randomness of rivens and I can see how it would be overwhelming even for a larger team. 

[Aldain]

6 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

Yeah Loki needs a look at. He's gone a long time without any functionality changes; potentially the Warframe to go the longest without ability tweaks?

I keep saying that they could lump Decoy and Switch Teleport onto one ability slot as a tap/hold type ability, buff them a bit and give him an actual 3rd ability, but every time it is brought up people just say "He's perfect don't mess with him".

Like I was thinking that Switch Teleport could have Loki steal stats (Armor/Shields) from his target or copy/share them from an ally, and have Decoy attach itself to the enemy that killed it turning them into the Decoy and have it hop from enemy to enemy each time an enemy dies until its duration is up or no enemy is in range.

But apparently wanting a frame's abilities to come out of the stone age is a bad thing these days.

[killerJoke66]

2 minutes ago, Aldain said:

But apparently wanting a frame's abilities to come out of the stone age is a bad thing these days.

That got me good 

[Skaleek]

6 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

I think that's part of the problem, that the balance team is small overall, but I think we have to consider the issue that this is a live service game with hundreds of weapons, dozens of "classes" as it were, and so many different powerups, gear items, pets and mods. At this point they could make a balance team of dozens focused solely on that, and maybe they could get closer to the type of balance many are asking for, but I think it would still take them a very long time, and they have to keep readjusting because more content gets added. 

I think they would have to make core changes to weapon tiers as well. The problem is the tiering is all based on mastery rank, and is all over the place and often doesn't make a lot of logical sense. On top of that, Mastery Rank is great for monetization but not so great for measuring players overall power based on progression. IMO until they can find a better core way to separate pure mastery rank from player "power" rank more logically, they have an almost impossible task, throw in the randomness of rivens and I can see how it would be overwhelming even for a larger team. 

Yeah you're definitely not wrong. It's probably why they've taken the "balance by usage" approach. It's just easier for them to do. Unfortunately when you "balance by usage" you also get nerfs that sometimes make zero sense. Ie the tombfinger primary nerf. That one still baffles me. Mathematically and logically it made no sense. They buffed a grip to surpass the dps of another grip, and then nerfed that other grip by like 60%, all because everyone chose that other grip in the first week (of course they did it was the highest dps at the time).

[killerJoke66]

also about the riven topic , imo the reason why people dont generally watch out for mr fodder weapon rivens is that because regardless of riven dispo being high , if a weapon has just bad stats overall no matter the add-ons it still performs mid-tier at best , unless rivens increase actual base stats of the weapon its not gonna be a system of 'make good weapons out of bad ones'  but then again we have the problem of already good weapons abusing that but .. Thats the price you pay for not doing a big weapons revisit  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[Tesseract7777]

8 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

Yeah you're definitely not wrong. It's probably why they've taken the "balance by usage" approach. It's just easier for them to do. Unfortunately when you "balance by usage" you also get nerfs that sometimes make zero sense. Ie the tombfinger primary nerf. That one still baffles me. Mathematically and logically it made no sense. They buffed a grip to surpass the dps of another grip, and then nerfed that other grip by like 60%, all because everyone chose that other grip in the first week (of course they did it was the highest dps at the time).

Yeah, sometimes the nerfs are so kneejerk the thing being used goes from "too popular" to "trash pile", like the initial M4D nerf, and because the balance team doesn't make a lot of regular changes buff or nerf aside from dispo changes, which is more recent, people just aren't used to a regular balance cycle and react accordingly. 

Balancing by useage sort of makes sense from a triage approach if they don't have the staff, but taking something out of most popular useage should not mean it needs to be taken out of popular useage entirely. I'm not sure what the best solution is, I do think their balancing team could use some fresh perspective at the very least, although I don't mean any offense to the team in that regard. 

 

[Corvid]

47 minutes ago, killerJoke66 said:

300 official member/staff , tho idk how much it is for in-game balance but its not just scott @Skaleek

Remember, not all of those 300 are devs.

[killerJoke66]

38 minutes ago, Corvid said:

Remember, not all of those 300 are devs.

_{rolls eyes}  yes .. thats reasonably predictable without even having to look into any info. 

[Corvid]

7 minutes ago, killerJoke66 said:

_{rolls eyes}  yes .. thats reasonably predictable without even having to look into any info. 

Considering how often I see that number regurgitated without the caveat (often used to dismiss the point that DE is relatively small for the type of game Warframe is), I'm not going to let it slip by unchallenged.

[Loza03]

40 minutes ago, Corvid said:

Remember, not all of those 300 are devs.

And any that are actual devs aren't the final say in this either. Actual balancing involves both design and testing, which will mean that balancing is quite the big deal, unfortunately.

[Rakosta_Kai]

1 hour ago, Surbusken said:

Because you assuming the developers read your every post, is about my ego?

Was that the closest thing to saying something meaningful you could get, lol...

 

The wiser course would be to avoid assuming at all...

Assuming they read everything you post is just as conceited as assuming that they don't read any of it at all.

 

Some of the people in this thread have already learned over the years that DE reads their own forums (whether they choose to reply or not) and have acted on any number of suggestions made in them over the years.

Sometimes it works out great... like Excalibur's Exalted Blade, changes to Vauban, changes to Bows, Frost, and any number of other things.

Sometimes it doesn't... Like the (temporary) removal of Manual Blocking, Shark Wing, Xaku, Limitations on launcher ammo, Traps, and a host of other stuff.

All were ideas born from entirely random commentary made from players.

 

You don't know what crazy idea will land with the Devs on a random Tuesday born from player's random comments.