"Fake" Difficulty vs "Real" Difficulty

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

30 minutes ago, Teljaxx said:

Look, I know you realize what the problem is here, because you admit that we CAN be overpowered. And you also did a great job of helping me show just how far we have to go to avoid being overpowered. We actually agree about this, but you're so hellbent on proving everyone else wrong to make yourself feel smart that you can't see it.

Ah yes, apparently you believe that because you can make yourself overpowered, you must do so. I have shown repeatedly that it's not the case. 

32 minutes ago, Teljaxx said:

When you took those painkillers for your broken foot, did any of them actually FIX the broken bone? No. If you limit yourself, and avoid every overpowered thing you can, does it stop the game from being imbalanced? No! All you're doing in both cases is ignoring the problem. And ignorance doesn't fix anything.

Nope but taking anything more than that would also not have fixed the problem, rather it had the potential to become a greater problem. I took only what was needed, despite having an easy avenue with access to more. That's called self restraint. 

You keep saying that the game is imbalanced, but I keep pointing out that it is a matter of the choices that you have made that make it so. Again, not everyone has access to the things that you have, for them there is no choice. DE has to take that into consideration when determining balance for the game. You have the option to build in any manner that you choose, but it's clear that you consistently chose to build so that you are more powerful than needed. You could always disprove this by taking unmodded gear through the game, and doing so would be an example of the game not having any challenge at all, but I figure you won't. Of course since you have the option to do it, you can't claim that the game wasn't designed with that option. And you absolutely have the option to play solo so the next two parts of your post is plain nonsense. All it boils down to is another false claim of lack of personal agency. 

45 minutes ago, Teljaxx said:

I really can't understand why you are fighting so hard against this. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain if I get my way. We would ALL end up with a better, more enjoyable game. DE wouldn't have to create bosses that force everyone to ignore huge chunks of the game's core mechanics just to be functional. And we wouldn't have to avoid the core gameplay loop of grinding for new gear just to avoid ruining the game for ourselves

Oh it's simple really. I can think of others who aren't as potentially powerful as myself. I tend to try to help them, instead of only myself. I don't do that by just giving them OP gear and saying "follow this build" I talk to them about how to do what they want to do, with what they have. I do this because that's what I did. So while a lot of people say that the flawed mods are trash compared to the undamaged ones, I can point out that for lower MR players levelling gear they provide a stat boost at an affordable cost.

Instead, time and time again I've seen people with what they think is all the right gear, and no clue as to how to use it. WOSS made lots of vets cry long and loud about how their OP gear was barely scratching him. When they showed it... High status, low crit, and the wrong damage types for that enemy, and a very common whine about not wanting to use the "one or two builds that would be the meta". They were operating under the belief that what they had would do the job, and that there was no possibile way that a wide range of options would be better. They were wrong on both counts because they don't know what they are doing. 

If they weren't slaves to the google meta they were copying, that would be far less likely to be the case. 

[Teljaxx]

45 minutes ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

Ah yes, apparently you believe that because you can make yourself overpowered, you must do so. I have shown repeatedly that it's not the case. 

Nope but taking anything more than that would also not have fixed the problem, rather it had the potential to become a greater problem. I took only what was needed, despite having an easy avenue with access to more. That's called self restraint. 

You keep saying that the game is imbalanced, but I keep pointing out that it is a matter of the choices that you have made that make it so. Again, not everyone has access to the things that you have, for them there is no choice. DE has to take that into consideration when determining balance for the game. You have the option to build in any manner that you choose, but it's clear that you consistently chose to build so that you are more powerful than needed. You could always disprove this by taking unmodded gear through the game, and doing so would be an example of the game not having any challenge at all, but I figure you won't. Of course since you have the option to do it, you can't claim that the game wasn't designed with that option. And you absolutely have the option to play solo so the next two parts of your post is plain nonsense. All it boils down to is another false claim of lack of personal agency. 

Oh it's simple really. I can think of others who aren't as potentially powerful as myself. I tend to try to help them, instead of only myself. I don't do that by just giving them OP gear and saying "follow this build" I talk to them about how to do what they want to do, with what they have. I do this because that's what I did. So while a lot of people say that the flawed mods are trash compared to the undamaged ones, I can point out that for lower MR players levelling gear they provide a stat boost at an affordable cost.

Instead, time and time again I've seen people with what they think is all the right gear, and no clue as to how to use it. WOSS made lots of vets cry long and loud about how their OP gear was barely scratching him. When they showed it... High status, low crit, and the wrong damage types for that enemy, and a very common whine about not wanting to use the "one or two builds that would be the meta". They were operating under the belief that what they had would do the job, and that there was no possibile way that a wide range of options would be better. They were wrong on both counts because they don't know what they are doing. 

If they weren't slaves to the google meta they were copying, that would be far less likely to be the case. 

See, my mistake here is that I'm basing my argument off of logic, and you are simply hiding behind your impenetrable, logic-proof wall of ignorance. Notice how you only picked the least important parts of my posts to argue against, and ignored the rest? Again?

I told you, I already do EXACTLY what you keep claiming is the perfect solution, and its the MAIN REASON I am so bored of playing this game now. Your so called solution has only made things WORSE. Instead, you just keep telling me I'm not doing it enough. Like ignoring even more of the game will somehow make it less boring. Or, like how you said taking even more painkillers would have made an even bigger problem for you.

You also keep ignoring that THIS IS A MULTIPLAYER GAME. It doesn't matter how far I go to balance myself, because its impossible to get EVERYONE ELSE to do it too.  And if even a single overpowered player joins my squad, it ruins everything I have done to make the game fair for myself. I'll be sitting back struggling to chew through a single tanky enemy with my unmodded braton, while they just spray and pray with their Riven'd Ignis Wraith and kill everything for me. My attempts at making the game more fun have only done the opposite, because now I have even less impact on the mission. This is why DE needs to step in and make sure everyone is equal. That's the only way a multiplayer game works. Its why no even remotely competitive multiplayer game allows mods or cheat codes. And why sports have such strict rules and regulations, and referees to enforce them.

Besides, what challenge do you actually get from using weaker guns with less mods? All it does is make enemies take more bullets to kill. It does nothing to change their mechanics. They are still just as basic and non-threatening as ever. More EHP does not mean more challenge.  It just creates more "fake" difficulty, which this game already has far too much of. Like when the Wolf showed up, and you didn't have the right gear to deal with him. He wasn't any more difficult to kill, and you didn't have to be a better player to beat him, it just took way longer. And it was far more annoying. This is just another reason your suggested solution makes things worse. But you keep right on ignoring that, too.

I do agree that the people that just copy some meta build from a Youtube video or whatever are a problem. That's not just a problem with Warframe. Every game has people that play that way. But in most other games, it isn't a very big problem. They mostly just ruin their own fun by never bothering to develop their own playstyle. But because your gear is 90% of your power here, and skill barely even matters, being able to simply let someone else tell you the best gear to use completely ruins the game. And again, because its a multiplayer game, these low-skill high-power players can potentially ruin the game for everyone, not just themselves.

Having a strong meta of any kind in a multiplayer game ruins it. In general, most players will use the dominant strategy no matter what, and the only way to keep them from it is for the Devs to take it away from them. Even if you or I are honorable enough to not use it by choice, that doesn't mean anyone else will be. Nor should they be expected too. Especially in a game where the entire gameplay loop revolves around spending all your time becoming more and more powerful.

47 minutes ago, FlyingDice said:

"We talked DE into powercreeping for seven years until it became impossible to have anything except invulnerable ability-disabling gimmick enemies to threaten players and are now complaining about those same enemies" thread #426526.

 

It's almost like WF was a better, more coherent game when there were more limits on player power, but what do I know.

EXACTLY!

Good game design comes from giving the players limitations, then making them deal with those limits. Managing limited resources like health and mana, or ability cooldowns, or even movement, is what makes games fun. It allows for much more creative problem solving than simply letting players take the most straightforward path to their goal every time. The entire reason the wall climbing parkour system in Darksiders II works is because Death can barely jump. So if the player needs to get anywhere up high, the Devs can give them a much more interesting path than just jumping there.

And the reason the wall climbing part of the parkour system in Warframe tends to be completely ignored is because we can bullet jump everywhere instead. Its much faster, easier and more efficient, so its what most people choose.

Every limitation we have had in Warframe, DE has given us a way to ignore it. Fighting a tough enemy? You don't need to get better at the game, you just need more forma on your guns! Fighting lots of enemies? You don't need any strategy, or target prioritization, you just need to hit the 4 key! Out of energy? Just drop an energy pizza, or us your operator!

Skill is such a tiny element of this game, because simply getting better gear can make up for almost every shortcoming you may have as a player. And the reason pretty much everyone chooses to be super OP all the time is for efficiency's sake. If this game wasn't so grindy, it wouldn't be nearly as bad. But, grind and challenge don't mix. Challenge means there is a decent chance of failure. Failing means missing out on loot chances. And getting less chances at super rare loot drops is frustrating. So no one wants to risk it, and just makes themselves as efficient as possible, even if it makes the game less fun to actually play.

DE is stuck in a vicious cycle of their own creation. And the Always Buff, Never Nerf crowd here on the forums are only making it worse by throwing a temper tantrum whenever DE even attempts to balance anything.

[SenorClipClop]

4 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

That's the problem. They can't make challenges that are geared to "longtime players" only because many people aren't at that stage of development. Anything that requires endgame builds will exclude many people, they'll be locked out by gear check and nothing else.

I say"longtime players" generally, but really it's anyone with a handful of the strongest stuff. Some of that requires many hours of play, some of it requires just searching through clickbait Youtube videos and a bit of plat-trading.

Either way, designing challenges that are guaranteed to be braindead easy to every player eventually isn't the way to go about it either. I think it's fine to occasionally have encounters that turn off or discount certain abilities we get used to sidestepping all challenge with.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

17 hours ago, Teljaxx said:

See, my mistake here is that I'm basing my argument off of logic, and you are simply hiding behind your impenetrable, logic-proof wall of ignorance. Notice how you only picked the least important parts of my posts to argue against, and ignored the rest? Again?

I told you, I already do EXACTLY what you keep claiming is the perfect solution, and its the MAIN REASON I am so bored of playing this game now. Your so called solution has only made things WORSE. Instead, you just keep telling me I'm not doing it enough. Like ignoring even more of the game will somehow make it less boring. Or, like how you said taking even more painkillers would have made an even bigger problem for you.

You also keep ignoring that THIS IS A MULTIPLAYER GAME. It doesn't matter how far I go to balance myself, because its impossible to get EVERYONE ELSE to do it too.  And if even a single overpowered player joins my squad, it ruins everything I have done to make the game fair for myself. I'll be sitting back struggling to chew through a single tanky enemy with my unmodded braton, while they just spray and pray with their Riven'd Ignis Wraith and kill everything for me. My attempts at making the game more fun have only done the opposite, because now I have even less impact on the mission. This is why DE needs to step in and make sure everyone is equal. That's the only way a multiplayer game works. Its why no even remotely competitive multiplayer game allows mods or cheat codes. And why sports have such strict rules and regulations, and referees to enforce them.

Besides, what challenge do you actually get from using weaker guns with less mods? All it does is make enemies take more bullets to kill. It does nothing to change their mechanics. They are still just as basic and non-threatening as ever. More EHP does not mean more challenge.  It just creates more "fake" difficulty, which this game already has far too much of. Like when the Wolf showed up, and you didn't have the right gear to deal with him. He wasn't any more difficult to kill, and you didn't have to be a better player to beat him, it just took way longer. And it was far more annoying. This is just another reason your suggested solution makes things worse. But you keep right on ignoring that, too.

I do agree that the people that just copy some meta build from a Youtube video or whatever are a problem. That's not just a problem with Warframe. Every game has people that play that way. But in most other games, it isn't a very big problem. They mostly just ruin their own fun by never bothering to develop their own playstyle. But because your gear is 90% of your power here, and skill barely even matters, being able to simply let someone else tell you the best gear to use completely ruins the game. And again, because its a multiplayer game, these low-skill high-power players can potentially ruin the game for everyone, not just themselves.

Having a strong meta of any kind in a multiplayer game ruins it. In general, most players will use the dominant strategy no matter what, and the only way to keep them from it is for the Devs to take it away from them. Even if you or I are honorable enough to not use it by choice, that doesn't mean anyone else will be. Nor should they be expected too. Especially in a game where the entire gameplay loop revolves around spending all your time becoming more and more powerful.

No mate, your mistake is thinking that people will buy the nonsense you're trying to peddle. 

You like everyone else in the game have choices that result in vastly different effects. Some of us have far more choices than others because of the mods and gear we have collected. But you are sitting here pretending that this means that you can't achieve the desired results with a wide range of options because you have to choose to do so, and that's silly. 

And here's a little secret, there is always a meta. This applies to everything, from video games, to card games, to walking about your home. Even ants and fungi develop metas. When you realize that is true to the point where a non-sentient organism can, and does, develop a meta, because it's literally just the most efficient tactic available, that has to be the point where you stop trying to blame the devs for "creating the metas". They don't create metas, we do that all by ourselves. The difference between us and the fungi? Most of us can choose to not follow that meta. Many of us do it for aesthetic purposes, all the time. But here you are, claiming that it is possible, and simultaneously impossible.

You can't have it both ways. You want to be able to choose, but you don't want to be asked to choose. From what you wrote, you want to be forced to use the most powerful tools available, but you want to claim that you aren't a slave to the meta. You want a challenge to benefit all of us, but you want something that will lock many of us out of victory. You want to have balance, but you are demanding unbalanced content. You want your thoughts to be taken seriously, but you seriously refuse to think. You claim you want a challenge, but you don't want to challenge yourself. 

If you are bored, fine. But don't blame others for having a good time. You already said that you are busy with your other games, and that's fine. Enjoy yourself. Ain't nobody trying to stop you, but you. 

 

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

17 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

I say"longtime players" generally, but really it's anyone with a handful of the strongest stuff. Some of that requires many hours of play, some of it requires just searching through clickbait Youtube videos and a bit of plat-trading.

Either way, designing challenges that are guaranteed to be braindead easy to every player eventually isn't the way to go about it either. I think it's fine to occasionally have encounters that turn off or discount certain abilities we get used to sidestepping all challenge with.

Yeah that's the rub. Every time they make something status immune, people whine. Every time they apply temporary invincibility, people whine, every time something comes close to being a bullet sponge, people whine, every time they disable our abilities people whine. 

 

Hell, people whined because they couldn't cheese a watergun fight, instead they joined, went and hid, and went afk. 

And WOSS... Hoo boy there was sooooo much whining 🙄

[Neightrix]

I wish the community would move away from the term "difficulty". It's not wrong, but I feel the real problem is lack of engagement. Everyone keeps looking at warframes, weapons, and game modes. Changing these things isn't going to reduce boredom, and just ends up shifting the game towards task management instead of space ninja.

I'm not saying to get rid of all fodder - not at all! But relying on sheer numbers to generate "difficulty" isn't very good. I don't think the AI really matters either. Enemies don't need to be smart, they need to present legitimate threats and look/sound cool while doing it. In many cases you want their behavior to be telegraphed and predictable. Look at some of the enemies in Mass Effect: the Banshee forces players to keep their distance during attack phase because of their execution attack, but their screaming gives them away so they can't sneak up on you (and it adds to the flavor of being cool/scary). Then you have the Destroyer whose cannon will down any player build in 2 shots, but it's telegraphed for several seconds so there's plenty of time to account for it, and they are limited to 2 spawns at a time. A few regularly spawning enemy types need to demand your attention with threats and have a gimmick for surviving longer than 1 second.

[VanFanel1980mx]

Fake difficulty comes usually with trial and error and some other horrible mechanics, I can say this boss has his share of it, instant-kill attack you don't know is instant until you get hit the first time? yep, wonky hitbox for said attack? sure thing considering WF has wonky hitboxes all over the place, let's not forget it also requires grinding if you fail several times for some reason (glass resonance), Nihil also doesn't have a pattern, sometimes you will spend minutes waiting for him to spit glass after phase 1 when instead he may decide to keep teleporting and swinging the sword, for a moment I thought distance would play a role in baiting him to spit glass but it wasn't, you can get too far or at medium distance and he will just teleport to swing away.

There was no need to take away the guns and abilities considering you had to break his shields with that glass, the thing is, having no melee weapon or guns just makes the parkour incomplete in a sense, part of mastering movement involves being able to correct your momentum with ground slams, part of a puzzle boss could involve hitting a weak spot even if it wasn't damage on itself, nuJackal did it better than Nihil.

[Teljaxx]

1 hour ago, Neightrix said:

I wish the community would move away from the term "difficulty". It's not wrong, but I feel the real problem is lack of engagement. Everyone keeps looking at warframes, weapons, and game modes. Changing these things isn't going to reduce boredom, and just ends up shifting the game towards task management instead of space ninja.

I'm not saying to get rid of all fodder - not at all! But relying on sheer numbers to generate "difficulty" isn't very good. I don't think the AI really matters either. Enemies don't need to be smart, they need to present legitimate threats and look/sound cool while doing it. In many cases you want their behavior to be telegraphed and predictable. Look at some of the enemies in Mass Effect: the Banshee forces players to keep their distance during attack phase because of their execution attack, but their screaming gives them away so they can't sneak up on you (and it adds to the flavor of being cool/scary). Then you have the Destroyer whose cannon will down any player build in 2 shots, but it's telegraphed for several seconds so there's plenty of time to account for it, and they are limited to 2 spawns at a time. A few regularly spawning enemy types need to demand your attention with threats and have a gimmick for surviving longer than 1 second.

You're right. Everyone asks for challenge. But they don't really want the game to be more difficult, they just want to actually DO something while playing it.

I honestly don't care if Warframe is the easiest game on the planet, as long as playing it is decently complicated. But, as it stands, basically any time you get stopped by something, the solution is simple: use a bigger gun. Skill means almost nothing in this game, because simply using better gear is always the best option. All that matters is who has the bigger numbers, you or the enemy?

In theory, bosses like Nihil, or the Necramech at the end of The Heart of Deimos quest, are a good idea. Changing things up here and there to keep the game fresh can be good. The problem is that, because of how unbalanced the rest of the game is, this is the ONLY way to make a functional boss fight right now. Otherwise, everyone would just do the usual, and one shot it with some Riven'd death cannon, then complain about how boring and pointless it was.

DE needs to swing the ratio of skill vs gear in the other direction. Skill, and knowledge of game mechanics should trump bigger numbers, not the other way around. They could learn a lot from Dark Souls here, because even though Dark Souls lets players increase their stats, skill is always the most important factor in success. Using better gear, or leveling up is just a small boost to assist when needed, not the entire battle.

Or, at the very least, there needs to be a reason to use any of the cool, but less efficient stuff in the game. Way too much of this game is a choice between grinding efficiently, or having fun. You can either make yourself as powerful as possible so that the tedious farming goes quickly. Or, you can use all the cool gear with fun, but less effective mechanics.

I would love to see more guns like the Acceltra. I love it specifically because its far from meta tier. The limitations, like the minimum range, splash damage, and limited ammo mean that you actually have to THINK while using it. Its NOT just good at everything, and you have to actually use it tactically to make up for its shortcomings.

3 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

No mate, your mistake is thinking that people will buy the nonsense you're trying to peddle. 

You like everyone else in the game have choices that result in vastly different effects. Some of us have far more choices than others because of the mods and gear we have collected. But you are sitting here pretending that this means that you can't achieve the desired results with a wide range of options because you have to choose to do so, and that's silly. 

And here's a little secret, there is always a meta. This applies to everything, from video games, to card games, to walking about your home. Even ants and fungi develop metas. When you realize that is true to the point where a non-sentient organism can, and does, develop a meta, because it's literally just the most efficient tactic available, that has to be the point where you stop trying to blame the devs for "creating the metas". They don't create metas, we do that all by ourselves. The difference between us and the fungi? Most of us can choose to not follow that meta. Many of us do it for aesthetic purposes, all the time. But here you are, claiming that it is possible, and simultaneously impossible.

You can't have it both ways. You want to be able to choose, but you don't want to be asked to choose. From what you wrote, you want to be forced to use the most powerful tools available, but you want to claim that you aren't a slave to the meta. You want a challenge to benefit all of us, but you want something that will lock many of us out of victory. You want to have balance, but you are demanding unbalanced content. You want your thoughts to be taken seriously, but you seriously refuse to think. You claim you want a challenge, but you don't want to challenge yourself. 

If you are bored, fine. But don't blame others for having a good time. You already said that you are busy with your other games, and that's fine. Enjoy yourself. Ain't nobody trying to stop you, but you. 

 

You can call my posts nonsense all you want. But it doesn't change the fact that I have given plenty of examples showing how unbalance hurts the game. While you have yet to provide a single example of how the game benefits from it. Its really sad that you have spent so much energy on this, yet you can't even manage something as simple as that.

Overall, you've done a better job reinforcing my points than you have of supporting your own.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

15 hours ago, Teljaxx said:

You're right. Everyone asks for challenge. But they don't really want the game to be more difficult, they just want to actually DO something while playing it.

I honestly don't care if Warframe is the easiest game on the planet, as long as playing it is decently complicated. But, as it stands, basically any time you get stopped by something, the solution is simple: use a bigger gun. Skill means almost nothing in this game, because simply using better gear is always the best option. All that matters is who has the bigger numbers, you or the enemy?

And that's why we're tossing glass shards and playing with waterguns. DE gives us stuff to do that solves that issue, in spades, but here we are with people STILL whining and whinging. So again what you write rings hollow, especially lin light of all that you've already written. Again you can't have it both ways.

 

15 hours ago, Teljaxx said:

You can call my posts nonsense all you want. But it doesn't change the fact that I have given plenty of examples showing how unbalance hurts the game. While you have yet to provide a single example of how the game benefits from it. Its really sad that you have spent so much energy on this, yet you can't even manage something as simple as that.

Oh I know I can, because they are. I'm not asking for a lack of balance, just pointing out that the means to realise it were already there when you started playing, and you ignored them, just like you're tying yourself in knots trying to ignore what I've pointed out, repeatedly.

Seriously, look inside of yourself and figure out why you're so afraid to strip your mods. You don't want the challenge you're asking for, all you want is to make yourself feel powerful, by asking for a challenge.

[ReaverKane]

On 2020-10-27 at 6:41 PM, dayvekeem said:

This latest boss fight against Nihil is another in a long list of examples of how NOT to do difficulty.

Players spend all this time building their mods, frames... carefully tweaking formulas to create an optimal build... hundreds if not thousands of hours spent refining our frames...

And ALL of that is thrown out the window every... single... time... a new boss fight comes out.

This might as well be called "Puzzle Frame" because as it is, we are grinding our amazing gear so that we can... NOT use our gear during some of the most iconic and important fights?

I get it, balance issues and all that... but that's not a ME problem... that's a DE problem...

I absolutely loathe this trend in games where the difficulty is ARTIFICIALLY inflated by basically taking away EVERYTHING the player has WORKED FOR!!!

 

It's a cop-out... a cop-out from wanting to create a fun fight (Nihil is NOT fun, it's repetitive and boring and feels like a MOBILE GAME like Subway Surfers or Temple Run) by using FAKE difficulty (taking all player earned gear away) instead of REAL difficulty.

 

There. My 2c. 

 

This is just an opinion btw. I love this game dearly, if I didn't, I wouldn't care to share my opinion on it.

Actually the boss fight is REAL difficulty, because it depends on your (human) skills, not your stats.

And to be honest, the last 2 Nightwave bosses have been some of the best fights in the game, especially the Zealot fight, since that one uses not only your build and warframe skills, but also depends on your human and strategic skills, and that's how they should make boss fights.

Not swarmfests like the Profit-taker, nor one-hit, 40 second MISSION fights like the wolf.

[(NSW)DracoHouston]

Zealoid was a far superior fight because it had a mix of gimmick and good old fashioned murdering. Scaled pretty well too on Steel Path, his EHP combined with the regen mechanic made me think more about how to get some serious single target damage on him. The solution I came up with at the time was to spam dread mirror on Garuda, gathering up about a quarter of a million points each cast, then throwing a few million damage at him. There'd be more convenient ways but between that and the lamp mechanic it was a fun encounter.

Ropalolyst, Kela, Exploiter all got a decent mix of killing things and interacting with some novel gimmick. Ropa has a jumping phase, requires amp use, shooting a weak point, and dealing with adds, fits in a press use to CINEMATIC TAKEDOWN mechanic for a bit of flash. I'll never feel as good killing them as when you kill a raid boss in an EQ clone but as novel encounters they're fine. My actual favourite boss in WF is Corrupted Vor, for his long, rambling monologue. But the bosses that slow you down are not really that fun to farm, there is a limit and Ambulus would be somewhere beyond it. IMO a fight that is all gimmick and no murder is also going too far. That we don't have to farm Nihil is a blessing.

BTW, the platforming you do in the octavia mission has enemies in it, you have to shoot them to get them to move off notes you need to activate.

Also, IMO Teljaxx has a point about the self created difficulty: a lot of what you can do is actually just a great way to make the game boring. The game rarely ever throws really interesting trash packs at you so increasing TTK doesn't really add much to the experience. You can see this by running the Grendel parts missions. A long slog, but hardly 'difficult'. The only hard part of getting Grendel is resisting the temptation of the Kuva to get the keys, then finding another human being on this planet that wants to run a no mods mission. You can solo it but nothing could possibly be more tedious. If I had to choose between soloing 15 waves without mods and waiting in a long queue in a government office I'd give the latter some serious thought.

[Teljaxx]

10 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

Oh I know I can, because they are. I'm not asking for a lack of balance, just pointing out that the means to realise it were already there when you started playing, and you ignored them, just like you're tying yourself in knots trying to ignore what I've pointed out, repeatedly.

Seriously, look inside of yourself and figure out why you're so afraid to strip your mods. You don't want the challenge you're asking for, all you want is to make yourself feel powerful, by asking for a challenge.

The thing is, this game WAS actually decently balanced when I started playing seven years ago. That's what makes this so frustrating. DE has slowly removed any sense of balance, challenge, or engagement this game once had. They gave us a great game, then systematically stripped away almost everything good about it.

Also, you are supporting the lack of balance. Whether you are telling DE they should keep making us even more overpowered, or simply condone what has already been done, you are still part of the problem. Because you are still paying for and playing DE's product, even though you know its sub par. So why would they change? Why should they aspire to improve if being sub par still makes them money?

And will you give up on that idiotic strawman already? I have told you a thousand times that I have done far more than just removing my mods to try and balance myself and make this game fun again. And I also told you IT DOESN'T WORK. You've beaten your poor flimsy strawman into flour already, and accomplished nothing. So just give it a rest, and stop pretending I'm too stupid to know how to play the game.

10 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

And that's why we're tossing glass shards and playing with waterguns. DE gives us stuff to do that solves that issue, in spades, but here we are with people STILL whining and whinging. So again what you write rings hollow, especially lin light of all that you've already written. Again you can't have it both ways.

You know why that is? Because as you have said over and over, you can't tell other people how they should play this game! Just because YOU think they're playing it wrong doesn't mean they'll change. You have no authority over other players here, and neither do I. DE is the only one that does. They are the gods of this realm. The problem is that they don't act like it. Instead, they have let all the always buff, never nerf people bully them into the current state of things.

You should stop telling people they're stupid for wanting to play with the toys DE gives them, because they will never listen. Instead we need to get DE to give us better toys. Like Rivens: Right now, they are nothing more than pointless power for the sake of power, so I don't use them. But I also don't expect everyone else to ignore them too. I get that other people enjoy them. But, I'll bet they would enjoy them even more if they were properly designed, and had a reason to exist beyond driving platinum sales.

The only way for this to stop being a problem is for DE to fix it. But for that to happen, we have to get them to admit that it even is a problem. And you, trying to force your complacent ignorance on everyone, are not helping with that.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

10 hours ago, Teljaxx said:

The thing is, this game WAS actually decently balanced when I started playing seven years ago. That's what makes this so frustrating. DE has slowly removed any sense of balance, challenge, or engagement this game once had. They gave us a great game, then systematically stripped away almost everything good about it.

Also, you are supporting the lack of balance. Whether you are telling DE they should keep making us even more overpowered, or simply condone what has already been done, you are still part of the problem. Because you are still paying for and playing DE's product, even though you know its sub par. So why would they change? Why should they aspire to improve if being sub par still makes them money?

And will you give up on that idiotic strawman already? I have told you a thousand times that I have done far more than just removing my mods to try and balance myself and make this game fun again. And I also told you IT DOESN'T WORK. You've beaten your poor flimsy strawman into flour already, and accomplished nothing. So just give it a rest, and stop pretending I'm too stupid to know how to play the game.

You know why that is? Because as you have said over and over, you can't tell other people how they should play this game! Just because YOU think they're playing it wrong doesn't mean they'll change. You have no authority over other players here, and neither do I. DE is the only one that does. They are the gods of this realm. The problem is that they don't act like it. Instead, they have let all the always buff, never nerf people bully them into the current state of things.

You should stop telling people they're stupid for wanting to play with the toys DE gives them, because they will never listen. Instead we need to get DE to give us better toys. Like Rivens: Right now, they are nothing more than pointless power for the sake of power, so I don't use them. But I also don't expect everyone else to ignore them too. I get that other people enjoy them. But, I'll bet they would enjoy them even more if they were properly designed, and had a reason to exist beyond driving platinum sales.

The only way for this to stop being a problem is for DE to fix it. But for that to happen, we have to get them to admit that it even is a problem. And you, trying to force your complacent ignorance on everyone, are not helping with that.

LOL, you literally can't even keep your story straight in a single post.  Observe:

DE has slowly removed any sense of balance, challenge, or engagement this game once had. They gave us a great game, then systematically stripped away almost everything good about it.

Also, you are supporting the lack of balance. Whether you are telling DE they should keep making us even more overpowered, or simply condone what has already been done, you are still part of the problem

 

Is followed by:

You should stop telling people they're stupid for wanting to play with the toys DE gives them, because they will never listen. Instead we need to get DE to give us better toys. 

 

So there it is, you whine about the lack of balance, but refuse to exercise self restraint in order to regain the "balance" you claim to want. 

That's a "you problem". Go fix it. 

[(XBOX)ShonOfDawn]

3 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

So there it is, you whine about the lack of balance, but refuse to exercise self restraint in order to regain the "balance" you claim to want. 

 

Dude, seriously, you need to stop throwing around this concept as it had actually any substance whatsoever, because it is completely incompatible with the fundamental goals of a looter shooter. 

The whole point of games such as Warframe and the MMORPG genre in general is to get stronger and acquire better gear to face stronger challenges, to acquire even better gear and more diverse gameplay options. Game design and balance make sure that you follow this path using strategies and mechanics that are, first and foremost, engaging and fun. No matter how much you minmax your build you shouldn't be able to break the physical damage cap of the game, break any encounter or enemy you fight, and optimize the fun out of the game. Sure, you should be powerful and easily complete top tier content, but within reason. Once again, people will, no matter what, pursue the best options the game has to offer. Power progression and engaging gameplay need to coexist for a game such as warframe to be functional, and that is achieved exclusively through smart game design. See games such as Doom, Titanfall, Devil may Cry and Monster Hunter. More often than not, the optimal way to play the game is also the most fun. That is what every game should strive to achieve. While instead, in warframe the most effective gameplay consists in nuking entire rooms at the press of a button, or AFKing with invincible frames and permanently locked down enemies.

This is a design issue. Telling the players "yeah go and throw away all the tools you were given, that make up most of the content of the game, in order not to fall asleep on your keyboard" is not only massively ignorant, but also promotes the unhealthy status quo we currently experience in the game, a status quo that favors exclusively new content and extrinsic rewards as the only factors in player retention, which is evidently not sustainable for DE and will end up being the death of the game.

[wtrmlnjuc]

On 2020-10-29 at 10:04 PM, IainG10 said:

Yup; all that skill-based difficulty of the boss doing nothing but teleport-melee combos for minutes at a time rather than throwing a single crystal at you, or the crystal immediately detonating on the platfrom rather than creating a collectable item, or deciding to use that overhead smash melee rather than the sweep, so even if you dodge it you lose platforms... If he had a more predictable move pattern (like sweep-sweep-smash-throw-throw or something) you could call it skill-based; but when he can remove almost 1/6th of the platforms on his first attack (yes I had this happen to me), and his teleport destination is completely random, it's still highly luck-based.

If he had a predictable move pattern and less destruction then the fight might as well be braindead easy. Harder than 95% of the bosses in this game once your equipment is modded, but easy. I had no problem responding to it and learning his attack patterns. Sure there’s some randomness but nothing that was debilitating to the boss fight. If you’re far away, he shoots. If you’re close he does highly telegraphed sweeps/slashes.  

 

On 2020-10-30 at 1:47 AM, (PS4)Mofojokers said:

Nihil is not difficult, please do not say that. Any gamer worth half their stone can stand there while he telegraphs a veeeery slow sideways slash and a veeeeery slow downwards thrust. While picking up shards and throwing them.

DE can do better than this and shouldn't forget about their own game (Warframes, weapons, heck amps).

I don't wish to disregard anyone here but we can't let this be the wave of bosses to come. 

Nihil isn’t a hard boss, but he does represent skill-based difficulty instead of being a pure gear check. The game needs more skill-based enemies not because gear shouldn’t matter, but because gear is the only thing that matters right now. I’m not advocating for the removal of the importance of builds, but to make modding not the only thing that matters.  Eidolons are a gear check. Railjack difficulty is a gear check. Sorties are gear checks. Arbitrations are gear checks. Steel Path is a gear check. Profit Taker is a gear check. Most Starchart bosses are gearchecks. Their barriers do not rely on skill much (if at all) and it’s why so many veterans cry about endgame. It’s boring for us if there’s nothing to master, keep practiced, and possibly lose our skill and fail in. Skill needs to be added — not replace — to contents so as to give gameplay depth. 

[killerJoke66]

also btw about the topic ima go ahead and say hit-scan enemy weapons are also cheap/fake difficulty  , feel free to hate me for saying it thanks 🤞

[Gemini_Jenvas]

nightwave is available to everyone from noob to vet. The fight does not use scaling on your dps or anything like that, instead you get one-shot if you don't dodge and don't use your weapons at all. learning ques and figuring ou the simple mechanics is very classic boss design.

 

tdlr.: it's not a starchart boss, it's a Nightwave boss that works the same for everyone.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

4 hours ago, (XB1)ShonFr0st said:

Dude, seriously, you need to stop throwing around this concept as it had actually any substance whatsoever, because it is completely incompatible with the fundamental goals of a looter shooter. 

The whole point of games such as Warframe and the MMORPG genre in general is to get stronger and acquire better gear to face stronger challenges, to acquire even better gear and more diverse gameplay options. Game design and balance make sure that you follow this path using strategies and mechanics that are, first and foremost, engaging and fun. No matter how much you minmax your build you shouldn't be able to break the physical damage cap of the game, break any encounter or enemy you fight, and optimize the fun out of the game. Sure, you should be powerful and easily complete top tier content, but within reason. Once again, people will, no matter what, pursue the best options the game has to offer. Power progression and engaging gameplay need to coexist for a game such as warframe to be functional, and that is achieved exclusively through smart game design. See games such as Doom, Titanfall, Devil may Cry and Monster Hunter. More often than not, the optimal way to play the game is also the most fun. That is what every game should strive to achieve. While instead, in warframe the most effective gameplay consists in nuking entire rooms at the press of a button, or AFKing with invincible frames and permanently locked down enemies.

This is a design issue. Telling the players "yeah go and throw away all the tools you were given, that make up most of the content of the game, in order not to fall asleep on your keyboard" is not only massively ignorant, but also promotes the unhealthy status quo we currently experience in the game, a status quo that favors exclusively new content and extrinsic rewards as the only factors in player retention, which is evidently not sustainable for DE and will end up being the death of the game.

Again, no. Because we're playing a game which has to be designed for EVERYONE, not just minmaxers. It can take years to get all of the gear, and fill your mod library. Demanding that they should be designing only around a fraction of a percentage of players is a flat out idiotic request, and goes counter to any given business model you care to dream up. Again understanding this would require you to actually stop thinking about only yourself for a change, and start thinking about the entire community. 

You either want a legitimate challenge, or you don't. Everything that you need to create as much challenge as you can handle already exists, you're just too scared of how badly you'll get your butt handed to you, to even think about implementing it. So instead you hide behind a facade of "I'm just too powerful and it's all their fault".

Again, that's a you problem. Go fix it.

[killerJoke66]

3 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

Again, no. Because we're playing a game which has to be designed for EVERYONE, not just minmaxers. It can take years to get all of the gear, and fill your mod library. Demanding that they should be designing only around a fraction of a percentage of players is a flat out idiotic request, and goes counter to any given business model you care to dream up. Again understanding this would require you to actually stop thinking about only yourself for a change, and start thinking about the entire community. 

You either want a legitimate challenge, or you don't. Everything that you need to create as much challenge as you can handle already exists, you're just too scared of how badly you'll get your butt handed to you, to even think about implementing it. So instead you hide behind a facade of "I'm just too powerful and it's all their fault".

Again, that's a you problem. Go fix it.

yea lets just break my knees real quick and go fight against aimbot grineer and aimbot infested and nullifier corpus with a wet noodle , that'll sure bring me an exiting an engaging gameplay that would require me to use my brain to avoid un-avoidable attacks and test my both respond-speed and tactics for overcoming the obstacles on my path ! Oh wait whats that i forgot to unmod my rolling guard oopsies they cant damage me again and i have my shield gate ... oh whats that i forgot to remove toxin 60/60 mod from my weapon so it deletes all the star chart whoopsies ! 🤐

[Gemini_Jenvas]

13 minutes ago, killerJoke66 said:

yea lets just break my knees real quick and go fight against aimbot grineer and aimbot infested and nullifer corpus with a wet noodle , that'll sure bring me an exiting an engaging gameplay that would require me to use my brain to avoid un-avoidable attacks and test my both respond-speed and tactics for overcoming the obstacles on my path ! Oh wait whats that i forgot to unmod my rolling guard oopsies they cant damage me again and i have my shield gate ... oh whats that i forgot to remove toxin 60/60 mod from my weapon so it deletes all the star chart whoopsies ! 🤐

Challenge is just not something Warframes gameplay supports. The gameplay is similar to a hoard shooter, but the only damage that the enemies can do that would affect you is one shotting you (now two shotting ofc). Other games would put the challenge into the limitaion of resources that you are at risk of running out of, like ammo, health and mana, but in warframe those are a non-issue. So warframe does not have much increasing difficulty, it is more of a binary experience where you kill everything with ease until you hit a wall.

I harbor some hope that some day warframes gameplay will evolve, but till then it is more about the preparation before hand, your builds and your mods and aquiring those. 

Until then, if you want challenging gameplay, play a different game.

[Teljaxx]

11 hours ago, (XB1)ShonFr0st said:

Dude, seriously, you need to stop throwing around this concept as it had actually any substance whatsoever, because it is completely incompatible with the fundamental goals of a looter shooter. 

The whole point of games such as Warframe and the MMORPG genre in general is to get stronger and acquire better gear to face stronger challenges, to acquire even better gear and more diverse gameplay options. Game design and balance make sure that you follow this path using strategies and mechanics that are, first and foremost, engaging and fun. No matter how much you minmax your build you shouldn't be able to break the physical damage cap of the game, break any encounter or enemy you fight, and optimize the fun out of the game. Sure, you should be powerful and easily complete top tier content, but within reason. Once again, people will, no matter what, pursue the best options the game has to offer. Power progression and engaging gameplay need to coexist for a game such as warframe to be functional, and that is achieved exclusively through smart game design. See games such as Doom, Titanfall, Devil may Cry and Monster Hunter. More often than not, the optimal way to play the game is also the most fun. That is what every game should strive to achieve. While instead, in warframe the most effective gameplay consists in nuking entire rooms at the press of a button, or AFKing with invincible frames and permanently locked down enemies.

This is a design issue. Telling the players "yeah go and throw away all the tools you were given, that make up most of the content of the game, in order not to fall asleep on your keyboard" is not only massively ignorant, but also promotes the unhealthy status quo we currently experience in the game, a status quo that favors exclusively new content and extrinsic rewards as the only factors in player retention, which is evidently not sustainable for DE and will end up being the death of the game.

I was going to say exactly this.

Everything in this game encourages you to be as powerful as possible. So ignoring that is ignoring everything the game is about. You would basically be intentionally playing the game wrong. And if playing the game wrong, and going against the intentions of the devs is the best way to play, that is a problem.

As I said before, the main thing that has almost completely stopped me from playing Warframe anymore is that all the new stuff DE keeps adding is just more tedious grinding for more pointless power. And because I am not going to use that new power, since I don't need it, its not worth spending the time (or money) to get the stuff anyway. So I just plain don't play anymore. And that sucks.

7 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

Again, no. Because we're playing a game which has to be designed for EVERYONE, not just minmaxers. It can take years to get all of the gear, and fill your mod library. Demanding that they should be designing only around a fraction of a percentage of players is a flat out idiotic request, and goes counter to any given business model you care to dream up. Again understanding this would require you to actually stop thinking about only yourself for a change, and start thinking about the entire community. 

You either want a legitimate challenge, or you don't. Everything that you need to create as much challenge as you can handle already exists, you're just too scared of how badly you'll get your butt handed to you, to even think about implementing it. So instead you hide behind a facade of "I'm just too powerful and it's all their fault".

Again, that's a you problem. Go fix it.

Again, this reasoning would only work if Warframe was single player. Games like DUSK can be so free and limitless that speedrunners can beat the entire thing in 18 minutes, because doing so doesn't force anyone else to play that way. But as soon as you join another maximized player in Warframe, you either have to keep up, or get left behind. And watching someone else zoom away to nuke the universe, while you spend a minute killing a single Lancer isn't what I would call fun, either.

And the reason for this is because limiting yourself like this only makes things SLOWER, not HARDER. Doing less DPS only means that you spend more time killing an enemy than you would with maximized DPS. Coop is like a race most of the time, and intentionally nerfing yourself is like choosing to drive a go-kart instead of a Ferrari, despite knowing that most likely, everyone else in the race with will pick the Ferrari.

Besides, the real problem here isn't just the maximum power we can achieve. Its that the maximum power is SO MUCH MORE than the minimum. A player with nothing but unmodded Mk-1 starting gear is thousands of times weaker than someone who has collected all the highest tier stuff. Yet, everyone tends to face the same challenges at the same time.  Even if you are a complete newbie playing Earth missions for the very first time, there is nothing to stop a long time veteran who's just farming for resources from joining your squad. And as a veteran, you constantly have to go back to low level missions, like if you want to open Lith relics.

Enemy levels are so all over the place, there is no way to properly determine just how much DPS you should do for any given mission. Some missions even have multiple different levels of enemies at the same time. Like endless missions that slowly increase in level over time. Or the open world areas, where the enemy levels change based on location, or what bounty is active. And you always have to worry about someone like the Stalker showing up at a much higher level than the mission you are doing.

The only reason you are fine with this anarchy is because you seem to think that you can dictate how everyone else will play the game, despite constantly telling us that you can't do that. But, nah, I'm the one contradicting myself.

[(XBOX)ShonOfDawn]

7 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

Because we're playing a game which has to be designed for EVERYONE, not just minmaxers. It can take years to get all of the gear, and fill your mod library. Demanding that they should be designing only around a fraction of a percentage of players is a flat out idiotic request

When did I even suggest something like this? I'm arguing the exact opposite. I'm arguing that even with a minmaxed build you should be able to experience engaging gameplay, with some mechanical challenge and enemies that can be a threat if you play carelessly. You are acting as if there were no enemy scaling, and you are purposefully misrepresenting my point to fit your own narrative. No one is asking for only minmaxed builds to be viable. The issue with Warframe is simply that the power gap between a good build and a minmaxed one can STILL be orders of magnitude wide, and that makes game design simply impossible without willingly throwing out the window the main drive of a looter shooter, getting and using cool loot (see the travesty that was Nihil), which you seem to champion with adamant ignorance.

Enemy design should be looked at, so that skilled avenues to face enemies are introduced, opposed to the usual face tanking and massive damage numbers. Things like decreasing the number of hitscan enemies in favor of projectiles, adding powerful yet telegraphed AoE attacks that can threat all frames, but that can be dodged. And of course for this to work some outliers in the player arsenal need to be toned down, so that maybe there isn't a 10x factor difference in damage between a good rubico build used by a non-dps frame, and a god-roll rivened Rubico used by a minmaxed Chroma, or an almost 50x difference in survivability between the lower and higher ends of tank frames... Changes such as these wouldn't necessarily make the game harder, or more elitist, just more engaging at all levels of play. It's a win for everyone, but evidently you are way too attached to those same toys you tell everyone to abandon...

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

6 hours ago, (XB1)ShonFr0st said:

When did I even suggest something like this? I'm arguing the exact opposite. I'm arguing that even with a minmaxed build you should be able to experience engaging gameplay, with some mechanical challenge and enemies that can be a threat if you play carelessly.

You need to think about what you are saying. If you are minmaxed then you wield an enormous amount of power, power that someone who is not minmaxed doesn't have at their disposal. Not everyone can minmax as that depends on the availability of gear and mods, items that could (and in some cases do) take years to collect. So it's not even between a "good build and a minmaxed one" it's between "the least and the best", with the average player being somewhere between the two. As a result of these facts, the developers CANNOT and MUST NOT design content that needs that level of power to complete. Since their hands are tied, we need to consider how to get the challenge we desire, and the cure is the same as the poison, build for giving yourself the challenge you claim to want: Strip your mods. ... Unless the demand for challenge is just so much useless lip service, like it always is. 

That's why demanding what you have is literally telling them to cater to the minority of the minority. Take a look at the percentages of us who have done some of the more advanced achievements in the game. It's a fraction of a percent. 

 

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

14 hours ago, killerJoke66 said:

yea lets just break my knees real quick and go fight against aimbot grineer and aimbot infested and nullifier corpus with a wet noodle , that'll sure bring me an exiting an engaging gameplay that would require me to use my brain to avoid un-avoidable attacks and test my both respond-speed and tactics for overcoming the obstacles on my path ! Oh wait whats that i forgot to unmod my rolling guard oopsies they cant damage me again and i have my shield gate ... oh whats that i forgot to remove toxin 60/60 mod from my weapon so it deletes all the star chart whoopsies ! 🤐

After saying that, do you really wonder why you face no significant challenge? Think about it. 

[Teljaxx]

3 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

You need to think about what you are saying. If you are minmaxed then you wield an enormous amount of power, power that someone who is not minmaxed doesn't have at their disposal. Not everyone can minmax as that depends on the availability of gear and mods, items that could (and in some cases do) take years to collect. So it's not even between a "good build and a minmaxed one" it's between "the least and the best", with the average player being somewhere between the two. As a result of these facts, the developers CANNOT and MUST NOT design content that needs that level of power to complete. Since their hands are tied, we need to consider how to get the challenge we desire, and the cure is the same as the poison, build for giving yourself the challenge you claim to want: Strip your mods. ... Unless the demand for challenge is just so much useless lip service, like it always is. 

That's why demanding what you have is literally telling them to cater to the minority of the minority. Take a look at the percentages of us who have done some of the more advanced achievements in the game. It's a fraction of a percent. 

 

You are actually right about the problem with letting players be overpowered here. Which is why that's EXACTLY what I have been saying this entire time.

The issue is that you think your "clever" little "solution" completely fixes it. Or that because its supposedly so easy for us to fix, DE doesn't have to change a thing, and the game is perfectly fine as is. Even if it did actually fix anything, instead of just swapping one set of problems for another, it would still only be a temporary solution. DE would still need to actually do something about it on their end for anything to actually get better.

The most pertinent example of this is the Nihil fight, since that's what inspired this thread in the first place. But, the fight isn't itself the real problem, its just one of many symptoms of the real problem. And your proposed solution doesn't do anything to fix the real problem, which is that DE has been trying to make it possible for almost everything in Warframe to be accessible to everyone equally. But, because of the sheer magnitude of potential difference between any two given player's stats, that is impossible. What is properly balanced for one player will either be nearly impossible or laughably easy for others, simply because they have different gear.

Its like trying to design a task that a pickup truck, a goose, a sandwich, and the Moon would all be equally proficient at. Its never going to happen. So DE needs to stop players from being able to be so different. They need to choose one of those objects, and limit everyone to that. Make us all be just cars, or just birds, instead of anything in the universe. Then, they will finally be able to build decent challenges and mechanics that include all the games mechanics, instead of having to exclude all the broken, unbalanced ones. And we won't have to voluntarily exclude most of the game's content in a desperate attempt to keep things working, either.

Yes, this does mean that a lot of people will lose their preferred builds and/or playstyles. But that's necessary. No game can perfectly cater to every single player out there. That's why there are so many different games to choose from. And multiplayer ones of any sort require the most specific limitations. They can't allow cheats or mods, and they need to be even more perfectly balanced than any others. Otherwise, you just end up with a chaotic mess like this, and it ends up being even more disappointing overall.

Honestly, its probably way too late for them to do anything at this point. Its going to take forever for them to undo more than seven years of powercreep. The sheer number of weapons, frames, mods, and everything else will require an insane amount of changes to equalize. And they are going to piss off a lot of people in the process. Like the entire always buff, never nerf crowd that got us into this mess in the first place. It would probably be easier for them to make a sequel, and then make sure they don't make any of the same mistakes there.