scaling and power creep is becoming a real problem

[(XBOX)SilverGalaxy549]

I'm not good with formally when I'm angry so I'm just going to say how i feel just to get this off. DE NEEDS to fix the absolute curve caused by enemy scaling in comparison to weapons and more importantly exalted weapons. Obviously yes there's going to be x person who prefers X weapon/s that just how they are aren't the greatest but they enjoy it. and for those who don't know the scaling for leveling is fairly linear compared to the way armor and health does next to it (last I knew). I feel exalted weapons should be allowed to have BR/WW because without some of those said exalted frames start losing any need for them during endgame content even then other weapons don't even compare to others late game which is the definition of power creep. what we as a community need to do is not stop saying something about the problems, it seems like a group will say something for weeks or months and never get noticed because they stop, we need DE to notice us and we need to keep saying something until they hear what we are saying and understand this is something we want and need, we only critique the game and how it is because we love it. 

sorry this is so unclear just angry after reading so many ignored post, I feel like fixes and changes are more important than a new dlc.

[ZarTham]

DE knows this, there are multiple posts/comments both on the forums and even reddit about this issue, personally I agree with you, exalted weapons should be top tier, and frankly (speaking from Wukong's perspective) they're not....

Like you said, I enjoy monkey'ing around with the Iron Staff, but it reaches a point where it becomes useless and I go back to my regular melee since I'm able to get millions of damage with it.... And don't have to deal with the energy drain annoyance...

[Lutesque]

On 2021-01-12 at 4:42 PM, (XBOX)SilverGalaxy549 said:

I feel exalted weapons should be allowed to have BR/WW

What's BR ?

In WW is Weeping Wounds but I forgot what BR was....

Edit:

Ah Yes.... Blood Rush... I completely forgot 😁... I normally use Sacrificial Steel... That's why I forgot 😝.

 

[Teridax68]

Becoming? Power creep has been a problem for pretty much the majority of the game's lifespan, and I also agree with the OP: prior to Melee 3.0, Acolyte mods were banned from Exalted weapons because those mods were band-aids to generally deficient melee weapons, with Exalted melee being balanced differently. After the rework, though, those mods are no longer band-aids, and there is no longer a need to prevent Exalted weapons from equipping them.

I also agree that there is a far larger problem of there being no real benchmark for weapon balance, hence why we keep getting runaway power creep. Some weapons are tens of times more effective than alternatives, and unfortunately Exalted weapons often struggle to justify their Energy cost when they're frequently worse than some melee weapons. I think the only durable solution would be to rebalance weapons and create a stable benchmark for their power, and I also question the need for Exalted weapons as well (I think they're mostly filler that excludes the use of other weapons when they're good), but in the meantime, I think the following could help them out:

• Auto-scaling damage based on enemy level, similar to Vauban's. That way, Exalted weapons should always be able to deal relevant damage against enemies.
• More unique mechanics on Exalted weapons, including ability synergy. Right now, most of them are just regular weapons attached to an ability slot, and that I think contributes to them often feeling more like filler than true abilities in their own right. With unique effects to differentiate them from the rest of the arsenal, they should stand out better, and at least have some balancing point that isn't identical to every other weapon.

[(XBOX)SilverGalaxy549]

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

ability synergy 

i really like the idea of having more synergism with the exalted weapon and the other abilities, though i would elaborate with having it be a different form of synergy than like nidus' abilities

[Nira]

They nailed something with Baruuk's exalted weapon, though it needs an augment mod to really shine. No BR or WW needed.

Dude can breeze through Steel Path with his hesitant fists of fury. Doesn't even cost any energy, unless you count spamming Lull to keep Restraint meter down.

Never really got why he hasn't caught on. He's basically unkillable and possesses a top-tier exalted weapon that scales excellently. But, that's off-topic.

[Lutesque]

10 hours ago, Dualice said:

Never really got why he hasn't caught on.

Too Finicky.... 

 

[CephalonCarnage]

The issue will always be there until they realise an arms-race of weapons buffs resulting in enemy armour or hp buffs is counter productive.

Ultimately I think the real balance requires diminishing return in dealing damage, a million dps gun will only be slightly better than a 500k dps gun. Then they can get rid of armour scaling, shield gating etc, possibly even invulnerability stages as the power of some weapons will not outstrip everything while others are ineffective. Balancing things would actually be possible - still not easy, but at least possible.

[Loza03]

18 hours ago, gbjbaanb said:

The issue will always be there until they realise an arms-race of weapons buffs resulting in enemy armour or hp buffs is counter productive.

Ultimately I think the real balance requires diminishing return in dealing damage, a million dps gun will only be slightly better than a 500k dps gun. Then they can get rid of armour scaling, shield gating etc, possibly even invulnerability stages as the power of some weapons will not outstrip everything while others are ineffective. Balancing things would actually be possible - still not easy, but at least possible.

I entirely agree, although it's a bit of a no-win scenario

If you rein in weapons now, then enemies that have already been designed for the wild power creep become out of balance.

If you rein those in first, then you've power creeped every gun in the game, and run the risk of getting players used to the new, even higher status quo.

Do both at the same time, and it's a lot of dev time and work that could be going towards new content.

Do nothing? The power creep is skirting on unsustainable already.

[CephalonCarnage]

8 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Do both at the same time, and it's a lot of dev time and work that could be going towards new content.

Maybe they need to do that to keep new players interested for longer, and I don;t think it shtat much dev work - its probably one person sitting down with a spreadsheet. But, you know what will happen, all those old players with their kuva nukors will find its no longer the super-mega-meta-blaster and will whine and whine.

[Loza03]

2 hours ago, gbjbaanb said:

Maybe they need to do that to keep new players interested for longer, and I don;t think it shtat much dev work - its probably one person sitting down with a spreadsheet. But, you know what will happen, all those old players with their kuva nukors will find its no longer the super-mega-meta-blaster and will whine and whine.

On the one hand, yes, they do need to do something. On the other, 'one person sitting down with a spreadsheet' would not be enough. Even ignoring the fact that a simple numerical change is still going to be hours of testing and the menial task of actually implementing all those changes for said testing, times several hundred, the fact of the matter is the scope of the changes is far beyond what a simple numerical balance pass is capable of. How do I know?

Because they tried. Most of the modern-day weapon stats were a direct result of the update 'Shrine of the Eidolon' which featured just such a numerical rebalancing of most of the games weapons. And even at the time, it did little to nothing to really change things. In fact, it's responsible for the beam changes that make the Kuva Nukor what it is today. And that was just a relatively simple balancing pass - a massive change to fundamental damage calculation would require testing most every weapon on every enemy in every circumstance, addressing practically every single damage-dealing ability in the game... it'd be a lot of work, at least if you wanted it to be fine.

 

Frankly speaking, it'd probably take more than just changes to damage calculations as well. Changes to energy, changes to CC, we're probably talking an Operator rework and another Melee rework too, at least on a smaller level... there's a lot of problems, is what I'm saying.

[----Vay_Hek----]

Need advices for building without BR / WW ? ^^

[UUDDLRLRBA_START]

You guys telling me you can't wait for L50-60 weapons down the road?

Awesome.

[CephalonCarnage]

as long as they're the Tenno weapons - I don't want a level 40 (or 50, or 60) Corpus Latron. I want an Rubico Prime Plus.

( still beats me how the gormless Grineer can make better weapons than the old Orokin at the height of their power)

[(XBOX)SilverGalaxy549]

all i was trying to say with this post is making sure we dont stop saying something to DE (peacefully) until they listen!

[----Vay_Hek----]

Wich exalted weapons are you talking about exactly ? Also can you show what build you're running on them ?

[Dunkelheit]

I actually like Power Creep: Changes the meta, it keeps players playing the game (because they become more powerful). Just keep a few shortcuts in the game so that new players can catch up.

Can someone (honest requrest) explain to me why Power Creep is widely accepted as super bad?

[ES-Flinter]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb Dunkelheit:

I actually like Power Creep: Changes the meta, it keeps players playing the game (because they become more powerful). Just keep a few shortcuts in the game so that new players can catch up.

Can someone (honest requrest) explain to me why Power Creep is widely accepted as super bad?

People won't be able to keep their old loved equipment to survive new higher lv. missions. Partly I agree with them. I'm still missing my Kestrel and Lex. But I learned that if my weapon gets to weak oneday I will get a stronger one/ version some day. (Lex< Lex Prime< Vasto Prime| Kestrel< ???)

[fo3nixz]

errr wasn't scaling towned down a while back... please no more enemy nerfs

[CephalonCarnage]

1 hour ago, Dunkelheit said:

Can someone (honest requrest) explain to me why Power Creep is widely accepted as super bad?

Because it unbalances the game. See, lets say you start with Earth level 1 grineer - easy to kill, except with your Mk1-braton. Then you get to the later planets and they get more difficult. Then someone demands your frame gets a 100% damage buff (silly example) and suddenly those lvl 1 grineer are easy even with your mk1-braton. But so are the higher level enemies that are supposed to be more difficult. So people complain there's not enough challenge. So they buff some enemies (eg heavy gunner) so they are much more harder to kill with your special 100% buff. And that makes then impossible to kill if you do not have that buff.

And that leads to complaints that these enemies are impossible. And so DE then makes enemies that have invulnerability stages instead because that is at least equally fair to OP weapons and frames and those that are not OP. And then you get complaints that there are time gating invulnerability stages and/or tiny hitboxes... you see where this all heads.

 

Power creep is an inflation that is very difficult to keep in check. You want a game that is balanced, difficult in the right places, and generally fun to play. If you want a game of cheesing everything, its possible you need to find something new instead. If you do get cheesing as part of the game then that in turn leads to additional grind - if you can cheese your way through the hard missions for loads of good loot, then DE will only have to make the grind harder - which hurts those players that don't run meta in order to cheese everything (and this also annoys players used to cheesing for loot who now have to work to get it).

Its a nightmare that can only be solved one way - balancing things as best you can (which is hard, so make allowances for when its not perfect)

 

[Teridax68]

2 hours ago, Dunkelheit said:

I actually like Power Creep: Changes the meta, it keeps players playing the game (because they become more powerful). Just keep a few shortcuts in the game so that new players can catch up.

While I personally hate power creep, I do think the points you are raising are in fact why some developers power creep new releases in their games, and I suspect a reason why DE doesn't really seem concerned with curbing the power creep in Warframe. It can be difficult to change the meta in a sustainable way, or make everyone interested in new content if it's not going to present some clear statistical advantage to them (especially if your game trains them to accept that as the only form of reward), so power creep can be a cheap and easy way (in the short term, anyway), of shaking things up and giving players some new carrot to chase.

2 hours ago, Dunkelheit said:

Can someone (honest requrest) explain to me why Power Creep is widely accepted as super bad?

A few reasons:

• It makes our older gear obsolete, and limits our diversity of real choice as a result. There's no point to picking 99% of your arsenal if the remaining 1% is far more effective in every situation.
• It only shakes the meta in the short term, and imposes a new meta that becomes impossible to address without either reverting the power creep, or power creeping the game even further. As a result, the game ends up requiring even more maintenance in the long term.
• It makes the game harder to balance overall, because the power creep itself trivializes older content balanced around weaker gear (and thus makes gameplay less interesting), but simply increasing the numbers on that older content means it becomes too difficult to reasonably do with anything other than the most powerful gear, which may include the gear new players start with. This is why a lot of bosses in Warframe are designed with damage gates, invincibility with weak points, or other gimmicks that sometimes make our gear flat-out irrelevant.
• It poisons the playerbase's mentality by training them to believe that the only gear of value is the one with the largest amount of raw power, rather than that which provides the most enjoyable gameplay. This is why discussion here around many frames and weapons is more about making them powerful, rather than about making them fun.

[XaoGarrent]

10 hours ago, Dunkelheit said:

Can someone (honest requrest) explain to me why Power Creep is widely accepted as super bad?

Everyone here is talking about game balance. That's wrongheaded. Game balance isn't even the primary thing that matters here, it's game design which is even harder and more messy if you can believe that. Believe it or not, power creep actually serves a purpose, and there's a reason why it happens.

Here's the short of it: It's not power creep itself that's bad. It's the conditions its happening under that are the problem. Power creep happens in pretty much all long running games that operate on a service model, and it's pretty much impossible to avoid past a certain point in a game's life span. It becomes an intentional, necessary part of a game as it becomes more difficult for the developers to make new additions unique without making them do more things, with greater complexity.

Here is, on the other hand, the long of it:

Power creep is by nature inevitable because as you introduce new items, classes, skills, etc, to a game you get a much bigger problem sometimes known as crowded design space. 

There's only so many "throw x damage fireball with y element that has z secondary effect" before you've expended every single permutation possible, and there's only so many basic "shotgun shoots x pellets in y width cone for a total of z damage" before, again, you've gone through every single permutation possible. At this point you've run out of design space, the new stuff you're adding is starting to show signs of shotoclone syndrome, and you have a daunting problem ahead of you:

Either you make the same thing you've made before and just call it something different, which players are going to notice and dislike, or you add something extra to your next design that will probably make it not only more powerful, but more interesting than anything you've made prior. This is guaranteed to be incredibly popular, but also start a massive rift down the middle of your games balance, all because you tried to do something that actually had nothing to do with balance.

The moment you hit this ceiling, you have a couple of painful choices ahead of you: Rework every class/weapon/item/whatever in the game by a new, more powerful, more complex standard (take a look at most Warframe reworks), which is a ton of hard work, but will vastly increase the design space for future additions and stave off design crunch... (Well, at least for a few years... If done right...)

...Or just accept your game is an imbalanced mess and your old designs are going to be worse than the new ones.

Nobody wants option two, so obviously we're doing option one.

Warframe's original and many older frame designs were extremely simplistic and narrow. DE ran into this problem a very, very long time ago, I would say the point when it became really malignant was around the point Nezha was released. Even if it goes back further than that, Nezha's status prior to his rework was understood as "a worse Rhino" making him an abject example of what I'm describing here.

His rework, on the other hand, is an abject example of them solving that problem and starting to make the frames more complex and varied by expanding their kits, often in vastly different directions. That expansion is why frames like Gauss can exist. Back when Volt was just SPEEEEEEEEED and memes, Gauss would have completely replaced him. Volt's semi-rework prevented this from happening long before Gauss was even introduced. This, however, necessitated an absolutely unavoidable increase in power.

DE's problem is that they can't seem to stick to the path they've chosen, and stick to a specific standard. A baseline if you will. Not only do they decide to leave certain selections imbalanced for reasons I can't fathom, when they do decide to rework and buff, or even nerf, they can't seem to pick a new power and design standard and stick with it.

Basically, if DE wants to add more unique stuff, that's fine. If they want it to be strong, that's fine too, because if it's not strong, nobody will use it. But they need to make sure they enforce whatever new standard they set consistently. They aren't doing this, on the player or enemy side of the game.

[Dunkelheit]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb XaoGarrent:

Everyone here is talking about game balance. That's wrongheaded. Game balance isn't even the primary thing that matters here, it's game design which is even harder and more messy if you can believe that. Believe it or not, power creep actually serves a purpose, and there's a reason why it happens.

Here's the short of it: It's not power creep itself that's bad. It's the conditions its happening under that are the problem. Power creep happens in pretty much all long running games that operate on a service model, and it's pretty much impossible to avoid past a certain point in a game's life span. It becomes an intentional, necessary part of a game as it becomes more difficult for the developers to make new additions unique without making them do more things, with greater complexity.

Here is, on the other hand, the long of it:

Power creep is by nature inevitable because as you introduce new items, classes, skills, etc, to a game you get a much bigger problem sometimes known as crowded design space. 

There's only so many "throw x damage fireball with y element that has z secondary effect" before you've expended every single permutation possible, and there's only so many basic "shotgun shoots x pellets in y width cone for a total of z damage" before, again, you've gone through every single permutation possible. At this point you've run out of design space, the new stuff you're adding is starting to show signs of shotoclone syndrome, and you have a daunting problem ahead of you:

Either you make the same thing you've made before and just call it something different, which players are going to notice and dislike, or you add something extra to your next design that will probably make it not only more powerful, but more interesting than anything you've made prior. This is guaranteed to be incredibly popular, but also start a massive rift down the middle of your games balance, all because you tried to do something that actually had nothing to do with balance.

The moment you hit this ceiling, you have a couple of painful choices ahead of you: Rework every class/weapon/item/whatever in the game by a new, more powerful, more complex standard (take a look at most Warframe reworks), which is a ton of hard work, but will vastly increase the design space for future additions and stave off design crunch... (Well, at least for a few years... If done right...)

...Or just accept your game is an imbalanced mess and your old designs are going to be worse than the new ones.

Nobody wants option two, so obviously we're doing option one.

Warframe's original and many older frame designs were extremely simplistic and narrow. DE ran into this problem a very, very long time ago, I would say the point when it became really malignant was around the point Nezha was released. Even if it goes back further than that, Nezha's status prior to his rework was understood as "a worse Rhino" making him an abject example of what I'm describing here.

His rework, on the other hand, is an abject example of them solving that problem and starting to make the frames more complex and varied by expanding their kits, often in vastly different directions. That expansion is why frames like Gauss can exist. Back when Volt was just SPEEEEEEEEED and memes, Gauss would have completely replaced him. Volt's semi-rework prevented this from happening long before Gauss was even introduced. This, however, necessitated an absolutely unavoidable increase in power.

DE's problem is that they can't seem to stick to the path they've chosen, and stick to a specific standard. A baseline if you will. Not only do they decide to leave certain selections imbalanced for reasons I can't fathom, when they do decide to rework and buff, or even nerf, they can't seem to pick a new power and design standard and stick with it.

Basically, if DE wants to add more unique stuff, that's fine. If they want it to be strong, that's fine too, because if it's not strong, nobody will use it. But they need to make sure they enforce whatever new standard they set consistently. They aren't doing this, on the player or enemy side of the game.

Thanks a lot, this covers my thoughts exactly.

[Dunkelheit]

vor 11 Stunden schrieb gbjbaanb:

Because it unbalances the game. See, lets say you start with Earth level 1 grineer - easy to kill, except with your Mk1-braton. Then you get to the later planets and they get more difficult. Then someone demands your frame gets a 100% damage buff (silly example) and suddenly those lvl 1 grineer are easy even with your mk1-braton. But so are the higher level enemies that are supposed to be more difficult. So people complain there's not enough challenge. So they buff some enemies (eg heavy gunner) so they are much more harder to kill with your special 100% buff. And that makes then impossible to kill if you do not have that buff.

And that leads to complaints that these enemies are impossible. And so DE then makes enemies that have invulnerability stages instead because that is at least equally fair to OP weapons and frames and those that are not OP. And then you get complaints that there are time gating invulnerability stages and/or tiny hitboxes... you see where this all heads.

 

Power creep is an inflation that is very difficult to keep in check. You want a game that is balanced, difficult in the right places, and generally fun to play. If you want a game of cheesing everything, its possible you need to find something new instead. If you do get cheesing as part of the game then that in turn leads to additional grind - if you can cheese your way through the hard missions for loads of good loot, then DE will only have to make the grind harder - which hurts those players that don't run meta in order to cheese everything (and this also annoys players used to cheesing for loot who now have to work to get it).

Its a nightmare that can only be solved one way - balancing things as best you can (which is hard, so make allowances for when its not perfect)

 

Isn't this the case with every single game? RPG: You need a certain level to beat the mobs. World of Warcraft: Every season, all gear is made obsolete. Shooters, big enemies that provide a big challenge till you find the Rocket Launcher and so on.

[Angwah]

On 2021-01-24 at 11:52 AM, Dunkelheit said:

Isn't this the case with every single game? RPG: You need a certain level to beat the mobs. World of Warcraft: Every season, all gear is made obsolete. Shooters, big enemies that provide a big challenge till you find the Rocket Launcher and so on.

Up to a point, yes. However, at the we find ourselves DE could introduce Ultra-Super-Omega Steel Path, where the mobs have +1000 levels and +500% armor and shields and we could easily beat that with what we have now. The meta wouldn't even narrow that much, I suspect.

The developers kind of painted themselves into a corner. From the way the mods and abilities being multipliers which stack until the numbers reach the stratosphere instead of just being additive bonuses, to energy no longer acting as a limiter to our abilities, to those very abilities being total auto-win-buttons enemies can not counter in a reasonable way. All this leads to this situation where making content that does not get deleted with the press of a button, yes, even those lvl 10K enemies with SP modifiers, boils down to taking away our powers and/or weapons. And it leans more towards 'and' than 'or' at this point.