Unpopular opinion: Buffing guns instead of just nerfing melee is a mistake; it will turn "hard" mode (TSP) into the de facto normal mode

[DrivaMain]

Since when Steel Path is Difficult? All DE did to add “challenge” is to limit choice by adding arbitrary enemy stat buffs.

[Tiltskillet]

6 hours ago, motorfirebox said:

My impression is that melee is superior at pretty much every level. Whether you're just starting out, or you've got your basic mods all leveled and you're starting to forma your gear, or you're an endgame crusher who eats SP for breakfast—melee is the better option at every point. Am I mistaken?

I think you might be mistaken.  Or in any case, it's hard for me to perceive a general advantage to melee until some of the difficult modifier sorties, higher level arbitrations,  and Steel Path.  Even as fast as we can move, even in a lot of tight environments, being able to point-click-kill is a great perk.

There are  segments of ranged weapons that are at a disadvantage regardless of level, I think.  Slow firing weapons without an AoE component are hard to justify--except for fun!--pretty much anywhere.  But that's been true as long as I've been playing the game.

[Sammonoske]

If only 90% of the Primary weapons weren't terrible or required heavy investment...

[MouadSaqui]

9 hours ago, LillyRaccune said:

Only if the player has the appropriate mods and enough endo to level them up.

And knowledge, I've seen many players using wrong mod combos even among high MR players 

[(PSN)robotwars7]

steel path is already easy though. the hardest part used to be staying awake during the umpteenth Khora Steel Essence farm before the changes. now it's just "wait for Teshin to Bring Umbra Forma" sure, sometimes it can still be fun doing the missions, but unless you deliberately handicap yourself by taking off mods etc., there isn't really a challenge. making enemies bullet sponges doesn't solve the problem either.

if they can make melee satisfying to use, then for me at least, it will still be Viable: guns for doing the actual "work"< and melee for a fun alternative in close quarters or emergencies. 

[Jarriaga]

11 hours ago, Miser_able said:

Here's the thing about bringing guns up to par with melee. It won't make things easier unless guns come out stronger than melee weapons. 

Let's create an example here to explain what I mean. Let's say you completed an exterminate mission in 5 minutes by going melee only then you did the same mission again but didn't use melee at all and this time completed it in 10 minutes. 

If DE buffed guns to the point that that same exterminate with guns only took anywhere between 5 to 10 minutes, then the game isn't easier than it was before since it's still the same amount of time and effort as going melee only. 

However if after the gun buff, that mission took 4 minutes then yes the game would technically be easier. 

I do not agree with this sentiment. There is in-game content in which you can not even use melee such as some sortie missions and some boss battles. There's also content in which going full melee is currently slower than ranged such as regular star chart defense and exterminate because it's faster to kill enemies from afar. You can make a similar argument for survival.

In addition, the game's difficulty goes beyond just mission completion time. Enemies that die faster means that they have less time to retaliate, if at all. At least with melee they have to at least get close within 6 meters when a Riven is not involved. A ranged weapon can deal with enemies 30 meters away, enemies that will be dying even faster.

11 hours ago, Miser_able said:

Basically, it's not about making the game easier it's about giving the player more options to achieve the level of easy that is already possible 

But there are plenty of options. Hundreds of options across primaries and secondaries in normal star chart. Just because they don't work in TSP (Which is supposed to be hard mode) doesn't mean that you have limited options. On the contrary, melee is too good in what is supposed to be hard mode as it trivializes it. That's an argument for nerfing melee as opposed to buffing guns and decreasing the overall difficulty of the game as a whole outside TSP.

[Uan91]

Is not like you can't do any mode after TSP, they will come up with something more difficult, I'm sure

 

[Jarriaga]

11 hours ago, LillyRaccune said:

Only if the player has the appropriate mods and enough endo to level them up.

Which is something they get naturally by playing the game as did you and as did I. I don't understand the point you're trying to make. That maxing out a mod takes time? How does that translate to a need to decrease the overall difficulty of the game even further?

11 hours ago, LillyRaccune said:

I can see the pitchforks and torches already...

But it's the truth. The perception of how strong melee is relates to our ability to have our status cake and eat it too. We get all at once. We don't have to choose. Any weapon with a miserable 19% status chance becomes 102% with Weeping Wounds, which is then synergized with Condition Overload, which doesn't even need for the weapon to apply a status as it uses any source and has relegated weapons to being nothing more than primers for it (Which in turn means less need to use actual status chance mods in melee). And since you can put Blood Rush in there, you can add Berserker and forget about Primed Fury. 

These 3 mods and how CO works are the problem.

All builds are the same because you don't really have to choose. You don't have to specialize. You don't have to optimize. That's a very strong high payout system without the risk factor in. Buffing guns doesn't increase melee risk. It just makes Pablo's argument come full circle.

11 hours ago, LillyRaccune said:

This. I totally agree with this. If I play Steel Path in public, the player with the meta-melee is in front and I deal maybe 5% damage. That experience kinda kills it for me. Call me stupid, but I have actually avoided making the meta-build on my melee because I don't want to be like everyone else. The downside of course is that I kill much, much slower

The irony here is that by you willingly avoiding the known melee trifecta build you are actually experiencing what a hard mode should be at all times for mostly everyone.

[Jarriaga]

9 minutes ago, Uan91 said:

Is not like you can't do any mode after TSP, they will come up with something more difficult, I'm sure

And then people will complain about weapons not cutting it for that mode, requesting buffs like they did just now and got their wish granted.

Rinse and repeat while the powercreep just grows exponentially.

Where is the line drawn? Where does it stop? Where and when do DE hold their ground to make a more-difficult-than-normal mode and hold their ground so it stays more difficult than normal? They should only be nerfing melee. It solves the problem of the disparity while allowing for noticeably harder content to exist.

Right now, the approach will most likely result in the entire game being trivialized even more. In order for the gun buffs to be noticeable and impactful, they'll have to be substantial. Even getting to 30% of what melee is right now is a brutal overkill for the game's difficulty.

[Jarriaga]

11 hours ago, ReddyDisco said:

there's no pleasing this community

If anything, I've been consistently saying for months that DE should not balance the game around what works in TSP:

September 2020

Quote

If DE start balancing the game around Steel Path, then Steel Path becomes normal mode while current normal mode becomes easy mode by Proxy of Steel Path becoming the new normal. 

August 2020

Quote

If the game is balanced around "hard" mode, then hard mode becomes normal mode while normal mode becomes easy mode by proxy of hard mode being the new normal.

Hard no from me.

November 2020

On 2020-11-05 at 3:48 PM, Jarriaga said:

The game is not balanced around The Steel Path (Nor should it be, as it would make it the de facto normal mode). If something you use can't keep up, move on to something else.

Ever since I saw threads like this and this in which people started asking to balance the game around TSP I knew it was going to eventually lead to this. This past devstream was my worst expectations becoming a reality.

[Jarriaga]

11 hours ago, motorfirebox said:

I'm not sure SP is really relevant, though. My impression is that melee is superior at pretty much every level. Whether you're just starting out, or you've got your basic mods all leveled and you're starting to forma your gear, or you're an endgame crusher who eats SP for breakfast—melee is the better option at every point. Am I mistaken?

I got the impression that they are taking TSP into consideration for this. Here's the part of the Devstream when Scott addressed content creator remarks about the state of guns:

I don't think there are many identifiers for "high-end players" other than steel path endurance.

[Jarriaga]

11 hours ago, IceColdHawk said:

Also to the people that say "there's no pleasing this community", it was DE that decided to nerf melee after seeing how it is being used and disapproving it. Not because people have been asking for it. And anyone that plays Warframe for longer than 2 days must have realized that (especially in the early game) spamming E is the way to go. It reached a point where the melee class doesn't matter and only like Glaives or Gunblades play differently. The rest is spam E and things explode. And almost every melee has a long reach now too which basically reduces melee diversity and makes Whips nothing special. So that decision shouldn't be surprising.

And i don't remember people asking for gun buffs either...maybe there has been 1 thread somewhere but that's about it. Because most of the community know what's up.

They had actually been requesting this for months now, although sparingly. Here are some samples:

 

 

 I guess they got their wish granted.

[Jarriaga]

10 hours ago, Surbusken said:

By your logic we have to nerf half the game.

You can go on steelpath and cheese it in many different ways by clicking a single ability.

Yes. I have consistently vouched for DE to patch out cheese tactics and loopholes. 

Here's the thread when Pablo remarked that AI alone won't give us a better difficulty and more balanced game until we are nerfed as whole first:

Here's why DE's decision to give a cooldown to Arcane Energize made no sense when energy pads exist (This is prior to TSP). Also a pointing out our broken ability economy (Which contributes to map nuking):

And here I'm requesting for DE to add Steel Path Arbitrations, because you can't Khora your way around Arbitration drones:

 

11 hours ago, Surbusken said:

... and I am not even saying I am not ready to have that conversation.

But you can't single out melee and pretend that one single nerf fits into an overall plan, if you aren't ready to stick to the plan.

It's a convenient narrative that unfortunately also represents grind, time and money.

If we are going to have this "balance is important to us" talk, we are going to talk about every weapon, item, warframe and mod and npc in the whole game that isn't working.

Including buffing all the broken frames.

I simply do not trust developers coming out saying "slow them down", and then tries to work in some half-baked story, have the players interests at heart.

The less damage you can do the more you have to grind. And I know the developers are always looking to increase the grind.

The deal right now is you play a map 80 times because of low drop chances but in turn you get to rush it.

Everyone here knows you ignore everything that doesn't work so people are just going to ignore melee and jump to the next thing.

In the process angering people who spend time and money and maybe have attachment to their gear while you fixed nothing.

The whole game is made to cheese content using the right tools or am I wrong?

If they are fine with ignoring broken frames and weapons for years on end, they just can't come out later and say they care.

They have an agenda and a story and I don't trust either of them.

That's fine, but DE have to start somewhere. I don't think the dichotomy of "fix everything or fix nothing" you're presenting here is fair in any way, shape or form because it pretty much means it will never be done because of how long that would take and DE's dependency on constant updates. I'd rather get 100 baby steps from 1 to 100 rather than getting nothing because they can't deliver 100 on the spot.

[Jarriaga]

10 hours ago, Graavarg said:

No.

Instead make the stance procs dependent on actually mastering the stance = timing your E/mouse clicks to the moves in the stance. 

Currently melee is (unfortunately) a lot of E/button bashing, and stances become just a source of procs since you will get your proc (and other stance effects , including damage increase etc.) simply by mashing your buttons. No skill required, get all the stance buffs regardless. 

However, if proccing the stance effects were actually skill-/timing based, it would help moving melee a bit further away from super-duper-hyper attack speed and mega-X clicks/second.

I agree with you on principle, but I don't think such a system is possible as long as attack speed mods and abilities exist. Even if attack speed mods are nerfed, what would be the cap when stacking with Gauss Redline/Valkyr Warcry? For that (Timing) to be functional, either the mods are nerfed so hard that they are barely noticeable, or the abilities need to scale so poorly that the mods do stand out on their own at their max values. Else you just got the visual noise Geoff dislikes so much, which is incompatible with timing.  

[Jarriaga]

5 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

Since when Steel Path is Difficult? All DE did to add “challenge” is to limit choice by adding arbitrary enemy stat buffs.

It was presented to the community as "hard mode" by DE before naming it The Steel Path. Even if it is not sufficiently difficult, it is the game's official hard mode. DE should be making it even harder, not easier.

[Jarriaga]

3 hours ago, Sammonoske said:

If only 90% of the Primary weapons weren't terrible or required heavy investment...

In what context? When I started playing the game back in 2017, I did most of the star chart and even some sorties with guns that didn't even have a catalyst.

[GEN-Son_17]

14 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

Being honest, I'm concerned about DE buffing guns. The vast majority of guns destroy the star chart, which is the normal way to play and the current balancing standard. If DE start balancing and buffing stuff so they work in The Steel Path, then TSP becomes the de facto ¨normal¨ mode while normal becomes "easy", effectively removing hard mode from the game.

And thus we'll be back to the state of the game prior to the TSP's introduction.

Instead of buffing guns and nerfing melee a little, just preventing us from using Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds, and Condition Overload at once would be a good step, then reworking CO so it only boosts damage based on status effects applied by the melee weapon, removing forced stance procs, lowering attack speed and buffing enemy melee damage and aggressiveness while allowing them to bypass shields and ability protection (When dealing melee damage) would be a more appropriate compromise to lower melee's viability and convenience without further reducing the game's difficulty as a whole. They should still respect WF armor values though, as armor in WF's currently irrelevant because of shield gating and abilities that negate damage.

DE already nerfed enemy difficulty a lot last year. They de-coupled aiming accuracy from enemy levels and drastically reduced enemy armor. This was an indirect buff to most guns already, so pushing further buffs would only serve to exemplify what Pablo had warned: That this is what happens when you buff everything instead of nerfing the outlier.

 

You're correct but the problem DE faces is with youtubers and whiners. Those two groups are LOUD. VERY LOUD! So loud, in fact, that they have attracted a blind following that, whenever nerf is even whispered, they start barking and whining at max volume. The youtubers know better but it's a hard hit to risk losing a like or subscription for contradicting original statements. If it's between righting a wrong or losing cash, DE takes a back seat to the cash. 

People worry about DE's owners. I worry about youtubers who push narratives.

[Graavarg]

12 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

I'm curious. Why purposely run a weaker build to be different? I'm not trying to be rude, I've just never understand avoiding meta builds.

Well, I'll give you three explanations, from a personal viewpoint:

1. I like to use a lot of different warframes, and weapons, and builds. That diversity makes Warframe fun for me. Leaving 98% of my stuff unused and always using the meta gear makes it quite un-fun. Call it "totally boring". So it is not really about trying to avoid meta, more about not giving meta any space at all in the Warframe think-tank process. I use about a third of the warframes regularly, coupled with "phases" when I find an old favorite again. Sometimes the current favorite just happens to be a meta build, but I recently dusted off old Oberon and has been running him as a "healing druid" lately. That has been a lot of fun, but there is no "meta" about it 🙂.

2. Exploring Warframe and trying to find new combinations and stuff that works together is lots of fun. But while that also focus on damage, effectivity, survival etc. it is sort of the opposite to meta (since meta is already "locked in").

3. Meta breaks teamplay, especially in random PUGs. When normal players spawns into missions with one or more meta players present, that mission is basically destroyed. As a mission. Success is guaranteed, it will go in record time, but all the normal guys become irrelevant. Or even irritants, because they move too slow or don't know how the meta player(s) operate. The mission gets reduced to "run after that player" or "find something else to do for five minutes" and "don't get in the way". Of course it is not all bad, it is a faster farm, it shows players what exceptional gear and combos can do, and in an ongoing pandemic even a fix that sustains a meta-powertrip could be considered positive. But the whole co-op idea is straight out the window. And this leads to the following question: why would anyone (in their right mind) bring a meta-build to any "normal" mission? 

[Graavarg]

6 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

I agree with you on principle, but I don't think such a system is possible as long as attack speed mods and abilities exist. Even if attack speed mods are nerfed, what would be the cap when stacking with Gauss Redline/Valkyr Warcry? For that (Timing) to be functional, either the mods are nerfed so hard that they are barely noticeable, or the abilities need to scale so poorly that the mods do stand out on their own at their max values. Else you just got the visual noise Geoff dislikes so much, which is incompatible with timing.  

In theory it should be possible, since melee could (quite logically) be either about attacking with all that you got (full attack speed, raining blows/hits on enemies, getting normal status/crit procs) or about attacking with finesse (moving fluidly through the different moves in your weapons stance, timing your clicks and getting the extra bonuses from the stance).

Currently these two fighting modes are forced into one mixed bag, which is partly why melee only works as a raw damage/proc dps output. But there are some stances that already are quite good, and moving through them fluidly and with control gives immense satisfaction (to me anyway). It might be a bit screwed up mentally, the idea of making your killing into an artform (instead of an industrial process), but then that thought isn't new even in real life.

Currently this kind of Warframe kenjutsu is still feasible, due to the stance procs. You lose out in overall dps but gain in satisfaction (if this is your thing). But if the stance procs are removed, there will be no advantage left to melee based on movement, skill, fluidity and timing, so the end result will be that all melee defaults to industrial dps. Which is sort of the opposite of what is intended.

So if you want to keep kenjutsu-style meleeing in Warframe, the only way to do so is keep part of the stance procs (at least on "the final hit") and if you want to remove all the procs from super-duper attack-speed dps melee at the same time the only logical solution is to separate how and when the procs happen. And the main difference between "speed melee" and "kenjutsu melee" is the number of clicks and their timing.

It took a long time before I actually understood the finesse of the stance combos, how to chain them together and to reach a state where you feel in total control of all you melee moves. If someone would have asked me if this kind of melee fighting was possible in Warframe I would have laughed and said "no, Warframe isn't that kind of game". Not all stances are equal, but some of them are just glorious. It has gotten so far that I occasionally go into a funny mindset where I would rather die than break my rhythm, I know I can down more enemies faster by mashing my button, but I just won't default to that. 

So while I think re-balancing firearms vs melee is a good thing, I would be really, really sad to see my beloved stances semi-destroyed in the process. One possible solution would be to have two melee attack "modes":

1. a "press/hold E"-melee for "attack speed"-melee that would run at full attack speed but stop the stance mod from activating. No stance procs, no stance buffs, absolutely nothing happening from the stance mod, but of course normal crit & status procs kicking in as usual. This mode could also activate on a "clicks/E per second"-basis (even using a player-set limit from "options").
2. stance-based procs & buffs kicking in when timing your hits/attacks right.

This would not only allow both ways of playing, it would be easy to switch between them, it would highlight using stances and it would even help your "melee"-finger by reducing the number of clicks/presses needed 🙂. 

[z3us32610]

18 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

Being honest, I'm concerned about DE buffing guns. The vast majority of guns destroy the star chart, which is the normal way to play and the current balancing standard. If DE start balancing and buffing stuff so they work in The Steel Path, then TSP becomes the de facto ¨normal¨ mode while normal becomes "easy", effectively removing hard mode from the game.

And thus we'll be back to the state of the game prior to the TSP's introduction.

Instead of buffing guns and nerfing melee a little, just preventing us from using Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds, and Condition Overload at once would be a good step, then reworking CO so it only boosts damage based on status effects applied by the melee weapon, removing forced stance procs, lowering attack speed and buffing enemy melee damage and aggressiveness while allowing them to bypass shields and ability protection (When dealing melee damage) would be a more appropriate compromise to lower melee's viability and convenience without further reducing the game's difficulty as a whole. They should still respect WF armor values though, as armor in WF's currently irrelevant because of shield gating and abilities that negate damage.

DE already nerfed enemy difficulty a lot last year. They de-coupled aiming accuracy from enemy levels and drastically reduced enemy armor. This was an indirect buff to most guns already, so pushing further buffs would only serve to exemplify what Pablo had warned: That this is what happens when you buff everything instead of nerfing the outlier.

 

I agree that melee needs to be much more dangerous to use than currently in Warframe. Right now, it's not only the strongest weapon class in the game but the safest as well. Melee should be the strongest but it should also be the riskiest way to fight - melee enemies should do high damage (the infested can hit pretty hard) and removing the perma cc from a melee hit would help. Also, "follow through" is a stat that I believe needs to be looked at. With ~6m range on a melee weapon it's not uncommon to hit a dozen enemies with one swing. That seems absurd. But to remove that completely would fundamentally kill melee as we know it and the devs said they don't want that. Perhaps limiting how many enemies can be hit in one swing or nerfing the follow through multiplier into the ground would help (and follow through would have to be nerfed into the ground for it to matter because even 10% damage on follow through hits would still one shot enemies in the SP).

But I agree with your basic argument. Just buffing guns would create the problem Pablo pointed and that you reiterated at the end of your post. Melee needs to be brought down a bit. That doesn't mean some changes to ranged weapons would be bad. But adding combo mods such as Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds and Condition Overload to ranged weapons would likely result in a new meta for ranged and then the Steel Path would be trivialized.

Currently, I play the Steel Path mostly solo, because I like to take longer and go through it with ranged weapons. There are plenty of ranged weapons that perform just fine in SP. They're not as fast as melee, of course, but I'm not looking for speed when I play the SP. I'm playing SP for fun and melee becomes so damn boring after a while.

I sure hope they don't trivialize the gun play in SP because that's precisely why the normal star chart is so damn boring. Every enemy dies from a sneeze - even my utility-modded panzer vulpaphyla lays waste to star chart enemies. At the least the SP enemies can take a handful of hits before they go down.

[(XBOX)Hyperion Rexx]

If the concern about buffing guns is that in doing so they become way to strong in normal star chart, how about having SP exclusive mods?

Mods you can slot into your primary/secondary to give them the buff required to be able to cope with the increased enemy level in a reasonable time.   But they can't be used in normal star chart missions.

Or, a Steel Path widget you can install or your gun to (for example) double the damage, crit and status, but is only activated in SP missions.   So your build remains the same, but its effectiveness scales up to make it competitive. 

[Yamazuki]

While I also don't think DE should be balancing around Steel path, I also disagree buffing guns does anything for the difficulty out of Steel Path. Strong ranged weapons already 1 shot enemies, even in aoe. Their damage going up does absolutely nothing to change difficulty. A handful of burst weapons also already completely invalidate bosses, especially once you take into account Warframe abilities increasing their damage further. It's impossible for DE to ever balance any sort of "boss" with the extremely wide gap between all the guns and loadout combinations. DE already makes some enemies either immune, or resistant, to abilities, some enemies are immune/resistant/perma ccs melee unless it fires a projectile, but it makes no difference when they get blown up by a single shot. Keep in mind, it's one person doing this damage, they could multiply health pools by a few times, and nothing changes other than now everyone just fires one shot, or the group optimizes to still enable the one person to do the damage as is the case in some content.

The jackal rework even consisted of it just being an interactive cutscene, and the glassmaker was designed around using no weapons/abilities. DE even talked about making more content that didn't rely on gear, and I sure hope that doesn't mean making it the "norm". Essentially running around in circles doing nothing can hardly be considered playing Warframe, in my opinion. The glassmaker fight for example, was extremely dull for me, it was still too easy and just relied on rng.

The real issue for me in regards to what DE has said, is they haven't shown any interest in actually doing anything meaningful. Then there's if SP is now a balancing factor for weapon performance, then where's the reward balance? The rewards for SP were intentionally trash because "it's not end-game". Then again, DE chose specific words, like "intent". They don't intend to, but that doesn't mean they won't.

[Krankbert]

vor 26 Minuten schrieb (XBOX)Hyperion Rexx:

Or, a Steel Path widget you can install or your gun to (for example) double the damage, crit and status, but is only activated in SP missions.   So your build remains the same, but its effectiveness scales up to make it competitive. 

I'm sorry, what exactly do you think is the point of Steel Path?

[(XBOX)Hyperion Rexx]

6 minutes ago, Krankbert said:

I'm sorry, what exactly do you think is the point of Steel Path?

To have fun.

However, guns aren't fun in SP, imo.  For the record, I love using guns, I want to use them more.  In SP though, they simply can't keep up with enemy spawn rates and/or turn wf into an extreme cover shooter, which is kinda counter intuitive to the entire rest of the game.   I dont want to one shot things, thats silly.  However, just make guns more viable.   Even though I actually prefer guns to melee, I end up using melee to carve through the mobs simply cos my guns are so ineffective. 

SP specific mods, or a SP widget, would allow guns to be made more powerful in that mode without breaking them in normal star chart.  Just an idea dude, thats all.

 

[Lost_Cartographer]

1 hour ago, Krankbert said:

I'm sorry, what exactly do you think is the point of Steel Path?

Another timesink?

I mean, from a business standpoint, does it matter if any given element of the game is easy or hard so long as it keeps lots of players logging in and engaged?

13 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

Since when Steel Path is Difficult? All DE did to add “challenge” is to limit choice by adding arbitrary enemy stat buffs.

And this is why I'm all for ranged weapon buffs.  I just want to dakka.  I don't want to have to build a kuva nukor, use nuke/CC/invulnerability-warframe, or what have you.  I just want to doom it up and slaughter things with a shotgun and chainsaw, and not feel gated out of a portion of the game to do it.  Plus more innate ranged weapon power means I can throw more meme mods onto my guns and have fun with them, rather than just dealing with their base stats while stuffing them as full with as many raw/elemental damage mods as I can to keep my enemies from feeling overly spongy.