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

[Surbusken]

8 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

...

I am all for positive changes to the game.

Just saying, let's buff and repair all the weapons, items, frames, mods, npcs and maps and games modes that are in the negative,,, first.

If the supposed story is we are working towards balance, then let's balance into the positve, from aaaall the items they ignored, for years, lol.

The other thing is we going to have a little talk.

Some changes benefit the players, other changes benefit the developers.

Since money, time, grind and effort are involved... we have to talk about reality. Who does the update benefit?

Anything that adds more grind, takes your time away, equals their buttomline.

... so this obviously the developers looking out for themselves, by wasting our in-game time by quitting literally slowing you down.

They are doing us a favor everyone!!!1

 

In extension here of, in short people have to care about the game.

For some people that is lore or whatever, for other people it can be an actual weapon, build or playstyle, as their entire reason to play.

It's simply irrational, pointless and unconstructive to ruin gameplay people are using, paid for, worked on, put effort into and are attached to - triple doubly so, when you could be out there adding to the game by fixing instead.

You wonder why people complain and the developers have zero goodwill with the players, this is it right here.

Pointless, negative changes that straight up kills content, that no one asked for - instead of adding or fixing.

Did anyone go around town asking to no longer use their own personal railack?

So don't even try and say they care, listen or do it for the players lol.

 

People are screaming for more lore and story content, fix broken frames, weapons, status effects balance, pvp, awful grind and crafting and proper endgame.

... so let's nerf melee speed.

What are you sherlock holmes over here

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

I don't think guns need a global buff up to melee's level.  I think the outliers in the guns that are outlying on the bottom need to be brought up inline with the top performing guns statwise, guns need a QOL pass on reload/general handling and more of those types of mods need to be made exilus.  

I don't think melee needs a nerf right now because melee is the only way outside of a few niche frames/setups that can reliably deal with hard targets in the Steel Path, like Demolysts.  If they nerf melee too hard those are not going to be manageable anymore outside of some very specific setups.

The balance arguments are all stupid because it's not an issue of just weapon balance.  Guns mostly don't work well in SP.  But you can't balance for that because the regular star chart exists.  Melee is the only way to deal with some SP enemies which means that even base melee weapons are OP for early game, and that's the perfect example of how enemy scaling combined with weapon scaling due to modding possibilities means that you can't balance everything for everything.  Some things are going to have to be OP in the Star Chart and some things are going to have to not work in SP.  That doesn't mean that crappy outliers on the bad end of the spectrum should be underperforming everywhere. 

Buff the bottom tiers to make guns more consistent and give them a QOL pass and then learn to accept that if the SP is going to be left as is, and should be completeable, then some things will have to absolutely demolish the Star Chart.  The solution to those things is to make better use of progression gating for what weapons a person has access to, which DE doesn't want to do because it prevents quick and easy cash cows new players from getting to the shiny things and staying around long enough to help out their engagement numbers.  Enemy scaling either has to shift massively across the board, or they need to accept that we can one-shot pressure units in a Neo fissure.  And I'm not saying "more MR locks."  Some kind of progression locks to prevent newer players from hitting top tier level power in the early game is needed.  The only exceptions to that I can see is the fact that the polarity system, if invested into with game knowledge, can turn nearly anything into a starchart killer.  That's the game they made though, and they need to accept that or start working on Warframe 2.

You cannot balance an entire game with all these systems in place.  With top end enemies being where they are, our top end weapons need to be about where they are, and the bottom and middle tiers could use buffs even for the content they were intended for.  You can't balance that top end around sortie 3 level anymore.  You can't balance entirely around SP either.  They've designed themselves into a corner and they are not going about fixing it holistically.

That being said, I'm going to wait and see what they do before screaming "melee is dead!" because I have no idea what they're going to end up doing.  Experience and history tell me that they're either going to massively power creep guns into being broken across the board, or they're going to put out some absolutely laughable gun buffs and murder melee and higher level content will be almost entirely about warframe powers and build diversity will die.  I hope I'm wrong though.

[Graavarg]

3 hours ago, (XBOX)TehChubbyDugan said:

I don't think guns need a global buff up to melee's level.  I think the outliers in the guns that are outlying on the bottom need to be brought up inline with the top performing guns statwise, guns need a QOL pass on reload/general handling and more of those types of mods need to be made exilus.  

I don't think melee needs a nerf right now because melee is the only way outside of a few niche frames/setups that can reliably deal with hard targets in the Steel Path, like Demolysts.  If they nerf melee too hard those are not going to be manageable anymore outside of some very specific setups.

...

Some things are going to have to be OP in the Star Chart and some things are going to have to not work in SP.

...

You cannot balance an entire game with all these systems in place.  With top end enemies being where they are, our top end weapons need to be about where they are, and the bottom and middle tiers could use buffs even for the content they were intended for.  You can't balance that top end around sortie 3 level anymore.  You can't balance entirely around SP either.

I agree. Guns (as a whole) don't necessarily need more base power. But they do need more options. Without any real ramp-up mechanic like melee combo (sniper combo don't count) and no mods that work off that ramp-up (Blood Lust etc. etc.) guns have to pushed towards crit or a few specific status procs, nothing else makes any sense (from a "max damage"/TTK aspect). Guns also lack the stance slot, which adds more slot space. Instead guns have an exilus slot, which (if used) eats up more mod space. And the mods you can actually use in the exilus are so limited (from a weapon effectiveness viewpoint) that there is about one or none that is usable at all.

I really do NOT want "press a button and wipe the room"-guns, but tinkering with guns is fun and there should be a lot more tinkering options available. Think "gun-smithing". There are already quite a few mods in this category, but they are never used because they eat up that precious, oh so needed mod space.

I do think melee needs to be nerfed. Current melee is too much "use this build and press a button". While guns have a weaker build system, with most guns you actually have to aim and think about when to shoot. With melee you just build your meta-melee and mash your button. Which puts too much focus on attack speed (and the slightly ridiculous "range" concept, even after changing it to a fixed distance). So while some melee outliers might really need a real nerf, what melee really needs is a "system nerf". Something that moves melee away from "win by button-mashing".

I also agree with you that as any Tenno progress on his/her own power curve, parts of the content becomes "easy", then "really easy" and finally "ridiculously easy". But that is the way is in almost every game where you progress along a level-based power curve. So it is 100% ok, it's like natural law.

As to "the guns at the bottom", there already is a system for bringing them up to par: rivens. But the rivens have been sort of hijacked by the meta, and DE has lost the ball. A rhetorical question: if a player can have only a limited amount of rivens, will the player prefer rivens for "bad weapons" or "good weapons". Ridiculously easy answer, isn't it. All those "bad weapon" rivens will get transmuted into new rivens, in the hope for a riven for a "good weapon", or they will be destroyed to make room for more (good weapon") rivens. There are two big drivers affecting this: the idea of godly über-meta weapons and the difference in platinum price between "good weapon" and "bad weapon" rivens. The only driver pushing players the other way is pretty weak: that is the "fun aspect of tinkering even with non-meta weapons". As long as players can fill up their limited amount of riven slots with higher-priced rivens for "good weapons", rivens simply will not be used for what they were intended: making "bad weapons" relevant. In order to achieve the amount of rivens a player can have in storage needs to be dependent on the multitude of weapons, not just on the number of slots. An extreme solution would be that players can own only a limited amount of rivens for the same weapon (like two, to allow some variety) and have a small amount of storage slots for "any riven" (like ten). Coupled with an even more aggressive (and more transparent) disposition policy this could increase the number of non-meta weapons used. And yes, a lot of players (especially those focused on trading) would hate this. But DE needs to ask itself what the game is actually for ("what is Warframe, in itself" 🙂) and how to achieve the greater (or greatest) good.

- - -

A final thought: while "we, the community" is real resource and truly important both for Warframe and DE, we can't be trusted. You just have to scan through this forum to realize that, the amount of "me, me, me"- or "DE never listens to me"-posts are humongous. Even if they often masquerade themselves as "DE never listens to us". It is this funny aspect of the human condition where we all know that approx. 50 million people have registered an account in Warframe, lets say 10 million actually play it (MR15+) and a couple of million play it actively, but even so we post in this forum claiming to represent all these players in order to push DE to do what we personally want 🙂. And screaming and ranting about how everybody will stop playing Warframe and "Warframe being dead" when we don't get what we want (like any 2-year old). I am pretty sure DE really scans the forum, a also pretty sure they occasionally pick up ideas. But if DE really wanted us to decide where Warframe should go, they would do so by utilizing established methods of customer research. A good example of this would be statistically correct polls, designed to indirectly (double-)cover whatever topic they need more data on (to link with their existing customer data = how and when we play). That doesn't seem to be happening a lot, now does it. Because trusting the playerbase to know how to make sure Warframe stays strong and lives for ever would be sheer insanity. We mostly want what is best for us, and that is mostly something completely different.

[Berzerkules]

5 hours ago, Graavarg said:

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").

I'm the same way. I play every frame (except Inaros and Grendel) and have fully forma (including aura forma) all of them. I've also gone through all those frames and added subsume abilities to most if not all of them. I've had to buy the extra cofig slots for more builds or I have to craft a second version of the frame to fit different builds that don't fit. Having options in this game helps keep it from getting stale. I love playing Saryn and Wisp but I can't just play those two frames, I'm constantly switching up my "new favorite" frame.

I do all that so I have the proper tool for the job though. I'm not going to bring an invis frame like Ash to an interception mission. I'm going to bring a frame that excels in the scenario like Vauban, Nyx, Khora or irradiating disarm Loki. 

5 hours ago, Graavarg said:

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? 

I don't normally run pubs, one of the only exception is fissures. If I'm running fissures, I'm there for one reason only, I want prime parts. I'm going to be running the the fissures that can be completed the quickest with the fastest loadout I have. I'm running Thermal Sunder Titania or Nova. Most likely I'll be front of the pack killing everything. I'm also waiting for enemies to turn corrupted to ensure we get all 10/10 though. I've tried slowing down but a lot of people just want to kill it before the other guy and don't wait for them to turn. We're stuck at 9/10 at extract and have to double back looking for stragglers. 

If I take my Nova or Titania to run fissures I know I'll get 10/10 and it will be completed fast. It sucks being back of the pack with nothing to kill, it also sucks waiting at extract for a minute because that Rubico wielding Chroma is picking off stragglers while everyone else watches the extract timer. 

It's not a great situation for anyone. It's a low level mission that poses no threat or challenge to a well geared player so it turns into a speed running farm. Everyone else is just along for the ride. 

[SteveCutler]

I completely agree with the OP. Nerf melee, don't buff guns. Weeping Wounds and Blood Rush are the main problem.

[maycne.sonahoz]

This may all come down to define a scale in the overall balancing:
- Enemy level 1 : the beginning
- Enemy level ? : getting difficult without mods
- Enemy level ? : getting difficult without mid-tier weapons
- Enemy level ? : getting difficult without high-tier weapons
- Enemy level ? : getting difficult without potato
- Enemy level ? : getting difficult without enemy specialization
- Enemy level ? : getting difficult without meta-building

And then, balance the weapons so they behave accordingly to that scale, for range weapons as for melee. This, i reckon, will tend to be even more difficult as more mods significantly improves their stats, practically "upgrading" their tier.

The difficulty in this process is where to place each limit so that you can enjoy most missions.
Put the limit too low, and players will only use meta-builds at the end of the chart.
Put the limit too high, and difficulty is simply removed from the game.

Obviously, i have some ideas about where to put said limits. And obviously, this is very subjective, as much as i don't have a real clue as to where DE would put them... if they will.

_____

Another point i forgot to mention is, since the game resolves a lot about grinding, there is also the fact some missions may have to be played repeatedly, and this also affects the build choice as to lighten the burden of doing so.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

So you’d rather they nerf melee and make steel path missions a complete slog, to the point where we can’t even kill enemies fast enough in survival before the 5 minute mark?

 

[Jarriaga]

5 hours ago, (XBOX)GearsMatrix301 said:

So you’d rather they nerf melee and make steel path missions a complete slog, to the point where we can’t even kill enemies fast enough in survival before the 5 minute mark?

 

Hard mode is supposed to be hard.  You can not have a hard mode that is a breeze to play and call it hard mode. This is also very same reason why I want for DE to add Steel Path Arbitrations to the game.

[Animalon29]

I hate/love steel path;

why do i hate it? couse, i dont like the x2.5 bonus for armor, health and shield are good, but armor is just to stupid and restrinctive, that it obligate me to just use viral/slash, when a love corrosive/heat, but then the only way to make corrosive/heat good in sp is to have panzer vulpaphyla or hellstrum do proc viral.

why I love it? just becouse the plus 100 level enemies, i hate been for too long in a survival or defense or any endurance mission just to say hey the enemies are starting to feel strong.

When most of your mods are maxed out the game feels like 90% of the time you can walk in a room and the enemies will die just couse they see you.

 

I dont understand why void fissure/kuva/arbitrier/sortie are so low level. level 60? you can walk and do nothing and the enemies will die.

void fissures has lith/meso/neo/axi, why dont they go like level 30/50/80/100? insted we play those missions with enemies level 20-15...

 

Edit: sp should no be the new standard. 

[-JT-_-R3W1ND]

—

On 2021-02-27 at 7:37 PM, Serafim_94 said:

Let's put it this way. What's generally better, given that both options are equal in damage output? Running up to an enemy to kill him, or kill him from 30+ meters?

In every game ever, the balance between melee and range boils down to question of distance from which the damage is applied. And that range is always an advantage in favour of guns.

Now think about this - you can't physically deal more damage than the health of your target. 1 weapon can deal 1000 damage, and the other 1 million - but as long as target has 100 health, their damage output will be equal. 100.

As long as you stay in one or two-shot territory, guns are superior to melee by definition. Which, in Warframe, means that guns are superior in about 90% of the content already. Then there are world bosses, where melee is borderline unusable.

I feel like you are playing some different game...

1) Last world boss i saw was Wolf of Saturn Six... Dunno why i need to keep range, even if he is almost melee only. To make melee "borderline unusable" DE need to implement weak points. Or what you are even talking about?

2) Now about "one-shot territory". To be in this brave world, we need to have something with no charge rate, no reloading, meaningless firerate e.tc. Something at least like Soma Prime, but not only for Mercury. Otherwise this is just oversimplified picture.

3) Range is good by default just becouse melee enemies exist. Close combat is bad becouse enemies shoot you. Both is not the case in WF. I'm not afraid of melee enemies with this TTK. And, for a rare case he is alive — i have ton of staggers, CC and another ways to completely ignore risk. And, vs shooters — i'm happy to be constanly in motion.

4) There is at least Sortie, but also Arbitration, SP and whatever else. Dunno what is this 1000 vs 1000000 comparision about. Starchart is not 90%, not even 50%.

What else you forget then talking about range andvantage? Many things.

1. Aiming. To hit enemy i need to aim. And this takes time. Just imagine Mesa, but without autoaim. This is you.
2. Almost every melee have a build-in AOE. Nowadays it even listed in stats as "follow through damage".
3. Moving. WF has a beatifull parkour system. I know, your point is just physics/common sence, but tbh this game make me doubt about that. I'm almost be like "dunno, can i be faster than bullet, but i will try".
4. I don't want to stand still anyway. It's not like there is some sniper vs. ninja. No. To stay alive i want to move. To do objectives i wanna move.
5. Did you know about blocking? This is actually a huuuuuge deal. We are like jedi, but better. Couse i don't even need to think about it.
6. It's not like we are talking about some shooting range. No. We are talking about crowds. Aim, pew, aim, pew, aim, pew, aim, pew, aim, pew vs WHOOSH.
7. And, to make things even worst — whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. I mean, i don't even spend time to find next target. There always few nearby. 
8. Melee have a greater DPS.
9. Melee have "auras". Just becouse.
10. This auras not only gave capacity, but forced procs or even damage multipiers.

And Warframe is not the only game, there melee is absolutely forced option. There is many ways how you can broke logic "but shooting from range is absolute good".

 

 

 

[SneakyErvin]

7 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

Hard mode is supposed to be hard.  You can not have a hard mode that is a breeze to play and call it hard mode. This is also very same reason why I want for DE to add Steel Path Arbitrations to the game.

But what is the joy of bullet sponges though? If we had actual challenge in the game it would be a different story, but we have sponges and nothing else. Bringing ranged up closer to melee and bringing melee down a bit in the process is the right way to go at the moment. Then if they wanna rebalance other things down the road it will be easier to accomplish when both combat systems are closer together.

Nerfing melee now would risk with the game ending up with scewed results since a large amount of players may skip things like Steel Path, which then may result in no changes being made since the mode isnt used etc. Or everyone would squat SP with a handful of meta frames yet again which would render recent changes pointless aswell as rendering any nerf to melee pointless aswell.

There is absolutely also no reason for DE to stick to the "balance around star chart" mindset, since it was a long long time since anything was balanced around the star chart. Buffing guns will not trivialize the star chart, since it is already trivialized with the power we have in the guns. You can afterall not ½-shot things, and frames completely render weapons pointless in 99% of the star chart content as it is. In the places where ranged lags behind, the coming changes will just increase our options, not add further power.

edit: Also read a nice idea in this thread about melee requiring better timing for combo bonuses like forced procs. Very interesting idea on paper, but would absolutely not work in the game since it would just be heavy-attack-by-holding-E all over again but involved in everything. Game has too many kinks for such a thing to work and in multiplayer we have to abide to the rules of the P2P tyrant.

[Corvid]

5 hours ago, -JT-_-R3W1ND said:

-snip-

To add a few more advantages, Melee is also inherently AOE in all but a few stances, doesn't need to pause or reload outside of a few very short animations in certain combos, and is, paradoxically, the safer option due to both parrying allowing you to approach with nearly no danger, innate CC (either Lifting or on-hit stagger), and the simple fact that being in the middle of a group of enemies means you're only realistically going to be threatened by those enemies due to them blocking their allies' line of sight (as opposed to ranged, where enemies blocking each other is far less likely due to the increased space).

[minininja77]

Ranged weapons are really only in a "bad place" for a few groups of people

1. Those who like to do really long endurance runs where even the best aoe builds can not handle it anymore

2. Those who fail to mod their weapons for their target audience 

3. Those who can not or opt not to aim and hence turn their targets into "bullet sponges"

The entire steel path can be cleared with just ranged weapons, so buffing them to help out people who want to do long endurance runs is not going to hurt anything as it stand sure it may make life a little simpler, but hell with Xaku I forget I am in SP missions half the damn time anyways, so a little more pew pew I can not see doing much harm.

[SneakyErvin]

1 hour ago, minininja77 said:

Ranged weapons are really only in a "bad place" for a few groups of people

They are bad for anyone who seeks farming efficiency, which would be pretty much anyone playing these kinds of games and try to get the highest reward per time spent. While ranged can clear SP and let you survive well in endurance, they just wont compare to melee, since melee will also allow you to shorten the intervals between acolyte spawns since you kill more. There is quite a big difference in having one of the emo clowns show up each around each 3 minutes or each 5+ minutes. After 15 minutes you suddenly sit with a difference of 2 spawns, which only grows the further you get. And shorter intervals also mean more chances for an acolyte to pop during the correct smeeta buff, and it means that you get alot more out of your booster if you use one etc.

 

[MonsterOfMyOwn]

Tbh these days I mostly play steel path, and mostly use the cedo : its primary attack can break a nullifier bubble, its secondary attack is a no brainer for melee weapon with condition overload.

Why would I care using anything else appart from a few niches ? (mag with exergis, chroma because of his damage buff)

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

On 2021-02-28 at 12:17 PM, Graavarg said:

I really do NOT want "press a button and wipe the room"-guns

The issue with not wanting the AOE meta is that DE encourages the AOE meta.  There's a dozen mechanics in the game that encourage it, from resource grinds only being efficient with high kill speed, to certain modes like ESO (and others, this is just an example.) requiring massive kill speed just to hit the next zone.  You cannot send 4 non-AOE DPS frames with even well modded auto-rifles into SO and expect them to hit the kill requirements unless it's 4 extremely sweaty vets.  AOE abilities, the innate AOE that is melee, and AOE guns splashing enemies all over the room are the only way to compete in something like that.  They encourage it just through what they release.  Try and think about the frames and pick one that can't hit multiple enemies all at the same time.  Is it old?  It probably is.  Even many of the old ones have been reworked over the years for more enemy engagement at once.  I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy a slower, more meaningful Warframe experience.  They've designed a game that favors things that hit huge areas.

 

On 2021-02-28 at 12:17 PM, Graavarg said:

I do think melee needs to be nerfed. Current melee is too much "use this build and press a button".

Melee could take a massive nerf and no one would notice it in kill speed for 90% of the game.  The problem is that it would be insanely noticeable in that last 10%.  Endurance runners would riot.  Certain SP nodes would be nearly impossible.  Taking down Shadow Stalker would be 10x more of a chore than it currently is.  Content that's in the game should be completeable and should have some effect on the balancing of the gear we have.  You can't nerf melee too hard without looking at the damage sponges that exist in certain places in the game.  I've said it a hundred times and I'm going to keep repeating it:  If the enemy has 2 million EHP and there 20 of them on screen and all of them can kill me the second I stop moving, then my damage is fine where it is.  They dial back those enemies with thousands of HP and 98% DR and I won't say a word about weapon nerfs.  Bullet sponges are not fun.

And the vast majority of guns are "use this build and press a button" because most of the actually effective guns are AOE.  The skill and engagement required to aim an auto rifle has no payoff because they don't have the damage to deal with SP enemies by themselves and they're far too slow at engaging targets to be efficient in even mid level content.  I run solo missions quite often with things like a forma'd up Burston Prime.  Most of these weapons slow down heavily even at mid level where other AOE weapons are still room wiping, so if I want to use them I have to play solo.  The missions take twice as long doing it like this and there is zero benefit other than a little bit of enjoyment.  I enjoy explosions too though.  Grind being what it is, nerfs to kill speed mean longer grind times, and that's my primary reason for being against nerfs.  The drop tables suck universally in this game.  Press button, wipe room might not be your cup of tea, but it's how you get through tedious grind.  I helped a clanmate grind for reg Octavia Neuroptics the other day.  20 minutes for a single shot at a roll of the dice.  You're goddamn right I had an AOE weapon on my Nekros to easily keep up LS so that we could just chill while waiting 20 minutes for that roll of the dice.

 

On 2021-02-28 at 12:17 PM, Graavarg said:

As to "the guns at the bottom", there already is a system for bringing them up to par: rivens.

And that system flat out doesn't work.  You can't take something with 5% CC and 10% Status and trash damage and make it compete with even mid tier stuff even with the best possible riven you could get for it and a dozen forma.  I have a Veldt with a solid riven and 7 forma.  It took a LOT of work just to get this weapon up to middle tier in terms of effectiveness.  That's not up to par.  That's a crap load of work just to get it to be reasonably effective in mid-level content.  I agree with most of the rest of your points about rivens though.

 

On 2021-02-28 at 12:17 PM, Graavarg said:

we can't be trusted.

They have the data on the weapons themselves, the mods, and functioning brains.  Anyone that knows the game fairly well can look at weapon stats and make a reasonably accurate assumption about where a weapon will stop working well after you slam a bunch of forma into it.  Accounting for inaccuracy is easy, considering they have dev mode and can literally test anything they want however they want.  "That's a lot of work."  It's their job though.  (It's also a job I and others will 100% do for them for free, since I like testing weapons, if that wasn't evident from my 7 forma Veldt.)  Barring them doing that work, they literally have the statistics from player use and made most of that available to us and most of it is 100% in-line with the complaints levied.  They can look and see that Mesa's Ballistic Battery is the most removed ability in the game.  Scott still couldn't accept that it is a trash ability.  We're not going to agree on this, but I don't think it's us that can't be trusted.  Some of the devs are blinded by what they want for the game to the point that they cannot see what they made.  This is not a tactical cover shooter.  Not anymore.  If they want to do massive overhauls to a dozen systems and make it one, I'm on board for those changes.  But that's not the game we have, and some of them keep trying to balance like it is.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

11 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

Hard mode is supposed to be hard.  You can not have a hard mode that is a breeze to play and call it hard mode. This is also very same reason why I want for DE to add Steel Path Arbitrations to the game.

There’s a difference between hard and wasting our time.

[_R_o_g_u_e_]

On 2021-02-27 at 10:35 PM, 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.

 

My hot take, if normal guns already destroy the star chart, buffing them won’t make any difference there. You can’t “one shot something more.”

Additionally, it won’t trivialises steel path either, as melee already does that. We’ll just have more options.

[Serafim_94]

10 часов назад, -JT-_-R3W1ND сказал:

—

I feel like you are playing some different game...

1) Last world boss i saw was Wolf of Saturn Six... Dunno why i need to keep range, even if he is almost melee only. To make melee "borderline unusable" DE need to implement weak points. Or what you are even talking about?

2) Now about "one-shot territory". To be in this brave world, we need to have something with no charge rate, no reloading, meaningless firerate e.tc. Something at least like Soma Prime, but not only for Mercury. Otherwise this is just oversimplified picture.

3) Range is good by default just becouse melee enemies exist. Close combat is bad becouse enemies shoot you. Both is not the case in WF. I'm not afraid of melee enemies with this TTK. And, for a rare case he is alive — i have ton of staggers, CC and another ways to completely ignore risk. And, vs shooters — i'm happy to be constanly in motion.

4) There is at least Sortie, but also Arbitration, SP and whatever else. Dunno what is this 1000 vs 1000000 comparision about. Starchart is not 90%, not even 50%.

What else you forget then talking about range andvantage? Many things.

1. Aiming. To hit enemy i need to aim. And this takes time. Just imagine Mesa, but without autoaim. This is you.
2. Almost every melee have a build-in AOE. Nowadays it even listed in stats as "follow through damage".
3. Moving. WF has a beatifull parkour system. I know, your point is just physics/common sence, but tbh this game make me doubt about that. I'm almost be like "dunno, can i be faster than bullet, but i will try".
4. I don't want to stand still anyway. It's not like there is some sniper vs. ninja. No. To stay alive i want to move. To do objectives i wanna move.
5. Did you know about blocking? This is actually a huuuuuge deal. We are like jedi, but better. Couse i don't even need to think about it.
6. It's not like we are talking about some shooting range. No. We are talking about crowds. Aim, pew, aim, pew, aim, pew, aim, pew, aim, pew vs WHOOSH.
7. And, to make things even worst — whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. I mean, i don't even spend time to find next target. There always few nearby. 
8. Melee have a greater DPS.
9. Melee have "auras". Just becouse.
10. This auras not only gave capacity, but forced procs or even damage multipiers.

And Warframe is not the only game, there melee is absolutely forced option. There is many ways how you can broke logic "but shooting from range is absolute good".

 

 

 

1) I though the definition of a "world boss" is recognizable enough. Tridolons. Orbs. Mechs (though that's starting to stretch it). While you can theoretically use melee against them, it's pure grief.

2) What are YOU even talking about? There's quite enough guns with automatic recharge, and... the #*!% does rest of this mean?

3) Range is good by default because it's range. It's more convenient to use. It cuts down on movement, it's much easier to apply and switch between targets. Ultimately, it leads to faster kills. Do I really have to spell that out for you?

4) And in Sorties and Arbitrations guns vary from "competetive" to "superior choice". SP is the ONLY place where supposed "disbalance" exists, and even that is debatable. More than enough guns can take on SP, and endurance runs aren't and shouldn't ever be a balance metric.

For rest of your points.

1) Do we really bring the need to aim as disadvantage now? Like, really? In a shooter game?

2)Many guns have AOE. Many good guns have AOE.

3) and

4) It barely matters what you or i want. People WILL stand still given the chance, and then they'll come and whine about "the need" to stand still, just like they come and whine about "the need' to mash E now. Which will trigger yet another idiotic balance shift.

5) I actually keep forgetting about blocking, and it was already brought up in one of earlier responces. I personally don't consider it essential for survival, but I'll agree that it's useful.

6) We're talking about Warframe. It devolves into shooting range as it is so easily it's not even funny.

7) Depending on the tileset, I often don't find enemies within immediate range. It gets especially cancerous in open worlds.

8) Not always. Melee also has windup, which, since I don't run around spamming E all the time, is a huge dealbreaker for me personally.

9) I'd be all up for "stance" slot on guns, maybe with some utility stuff in them. Frankly, we should have gotten stance slot instead of exilus.

10) I'll take your word for it. My understanding was, melee 3.0 gutted many of those things from stances, but I'm not using melee nearly enough to know for sure.

 

Bottomline, and my initial point. Guns don't need a universal buff. And the idea of melee-style scaling mods for guns shouldn't even be considered.

[AuroraSonicBoom]

DE has balanced weapon classes against one another multiple times over the years, and in the end, there's always one class winning out over everything else. You might just handwave that issue away as perfect balance never being able to be achieved, or that it's a cycle that needs to continue until every weapon in the game does 2.1 billion damage unmodded.

In the end, this effort cannot ever solve the underlying design problems that warframe has with its combat, and why its just damn near impossible to make every weapon class viable. Here's the issue in a nutshell: Faster killing > more rewards

The more mobs you kill at once, the faster you kill them, the faster you progress in almost anything you can set your mind to. There are tiny exceptions, such as gearing to farm for a specific mod(ivara/nekros+ore gaze) or resource, but for the bulk of the combat, its faster killing of as many enemies in as short of a time as possible.
AoE weapons, melee and guns, facilitate this design to the point where most single target weapon aren't even considered by players due to their inefficiency at slaughtering hordes. The increased mobility of warframes that has been power crept over years helped melee weapons tremendously in outdamaging guns as well.

Warframe wasn't meant to be a horde shooter. Yes, we always killed quite a few enemies even in 2013, but compared to the genocide today, it was nothing. This is what power creep has resulted in, and this is why the game feels more monotone to seasoned players than before.
Before you interject with "just buff enemies to take more damage": This is about solving core combat issues on any level, increasing a number will just delay the problem until power creep has caught up.

There are so many different ways in which to kill an enemy, but there is absolutely no incentive to do any of it if you can just press a button and obliterate an entire tile, or run through a hallway in with a fully modded larkspur, even in arbitrations and steel path. What I think DE absolutely needs to do to permanently solve this problem is to revamp how they reward core combat.

How would they do that without invalidating other ways of playing the game some players have gotten used to?

Introduce a style kill mechanic that rewards players with better rewards from killing mobs in extravagant ways. Basically, apply what they did with kdrive to the core combat.
Designate certain 'tricks' or 'styles', which when combined, add to a combo counter that acts as a multiplier for a player's chances of getting the mob's rarer drops. For instance, let's say the act of headshotting an enemy is a trick worth 10 points, killing an enemy while sliding 5 points and killing an enemy in midair is worth 15 points. If a player headshots a mob, then kills one in midair, and one while sliding, he's built up 30 style kill points. You could even go further and give the player bonus style points for pulling off more than one trick on the same kill, a sliding headshot kill, or a headshot midair one. The specifics can be worked out at a later date. As long as the player varies up their style kills, their meter increases and they gain rarer rewards. If they keep killing enemies in the same way, for instance with a nuke, its barely rewarded(for instance with up to 5 points for an AoE kill from a nuke), and kills performed in the same fashion over multiple instances gain no progress on the style meter at all.

XP, resources, mods, special drops(i.e. oxygen tanks) - everything can be affected, even the amounts dropped. Tuned correctly, this mechanic wouldn't prevent players from mass killing mobs, but incentivize them to be more conservative with their nuking capabilities without nerfing either their gear or buffing the enemies. As long as the highest style combo level is distinctly more rewarding than indiscriminate killing, you could see a concerted effort by players to actually play like a ninja instead of a combine harvester. And the best thing of it all - it's still optional for those who prefer not to involve themselves in that kind of play.

[Jarriaga]

7 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

But what is the joy of bullet sponges though?

None per se. But until DE fully migrate from gear checks to mechanical difficulty, it is what it is: More difficult than normal.

7 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

If we had actual challenge in the game it would be a different story, but we have sponges and nothing else.

Sponges are better than nothing. At this point I do not even think actual challenge for mobs is even possible unless they are given the ability to consistently nullify shield gating, abilities that negate damage, and nukes. DE are only doing mechanical difficulty for bosses. Mobs are gear checks. Less destructive power translates to a higher difficulty for gear check content.

7 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

 Bringing ranged up closer to melee and bringing melee down a bit in the process is the right way to go at the moment.

I don't think so. At least not on it's being done. The gap is so wide that even bringing guns to just 30% of current melee is an overkill in power creep. 

7 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Then if they wanna rebalance other things down the road it will be easier to accomplish when both combat systems are closer together.

They can perfectly make them closer by just nerfing melee. There is no need to buff guns. There is no need for such a level of powercreep.

7 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Nerfing melee now would risk with the game ending up with scewed results since a large amount of players may skip things like Steel Path, which then may result in no changes being made since the mode isnt used etc. Or everyone would squat SP with a handful of meta frames yet again which would render recent changes pointless aswell as rendering any nerf to melee pointless aswell.

Then so be it, because if anything, DE should be making TSP harder rather than easier. The argument of meta frames is precisely why I want for DE to add Steel Path Arbitrations with Arbitration Drones giving ability and damage protection to Acolytes so you just can't comfortably cheese the game through abilities and automated tactics and builds.

7 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

There is absolutely also no reason for DE to stick to the "balance around star chart" mindset, since it was a long long time since anything was balanced around the star chart.

There is an extremely good reason for DE to stick to balancing for normal mode as explained by one of their very own devs:

Now you're killing enemies so fast that the game is not fun anymore. So now I have the bring the enemies up to par. And then once I'm done with that, essentially what happened is I changed everything except the thing I needed to change to begin with. 

If it was true that "it was a long long time since anything was balanced around the star chart" then what have been DE balancing the game around when they did Panthera Prime or Velox, which arrived after TSP? Sure Cedo exists. But as an individual gun, doesn't it mean that's an outlier vs all other guns released after TSP?

7 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Buffing guns will not trivialize the star chart, since it is already trivialized with the power we have in the guns. You can afterall not ½-shot things, and frames completely render weapons pointless in 99% of the star chart content as it is.

That's a fault of us already being so broken powerful. It's the same reason why people had asked for a hard mode to be added for years. It's why people tested gear and deemed it good or MR fodder in the Simulacrum vs. your max level Grineer and then your max level RJ Grineer. None of that would have been necessary if the game offered any semblance of ever needing for such power levels to exist.

It's a ripple effect, making Pablo's argument come full circle. If you want to debate him and argue why his notion is wrong, be my guest. 

[Aldain]

So any thoughts on that "across the board stat-squish" concept I've tossed around some of these threads?

Bring down all the numbers so we have a more manageable set of numbers to compare and balance between?

[Jarriaga]

4 hours ago, (XBOX)GearsMatrix301 said:

There’s a difference between hard and wasting our time.

Harder content should take longer to be completed, and until DE migrate to full mechanical difficulty with enemies that can counter any 4x player combination of Limbo, Mesa, Saryn, Equinox, Baruuk, Nova, Wisp, Vauban, Gara, Khora, Revenant, Ivara, Octavia, and Trinity then gear checks are the only thing they can do to offer a higher-than-normal difficulty.

It should also be more demanding of you, not less demanding. 

But how do you make content that is more demanding in a stats-based game that lacks mechanical difficulty for mobs? You increase the gear check requirements so fewer of them or ideally none of them can comfortably cut it.

If that's a waste of your time then stick to normal mode. 

[Jarriaga]

4 hours ago, _R_o_g_u_e_ said:

My hot take, if normal guns already destroy the star chart, buffing them won’t make any difference there. You can’t “one shot something more.”

Additionally, it won’t trivialises steel path either, as melee already does that. We’ll just have more options.

Having more ways to trivialize content is exacerbating the problem in the name of options. You should have less options and less ways to invalidate and trivialize the game's designated hard mode rather than more ways to do so.

Otherwise rename it normal mode and rename the star chart to easy mode and effectively reset the game to the same status quo that existed prior to TSP, with people asking for a hard mode and a higher challenge more appropriate for our gear levels.

[Graavarg]

5 hours ago, (XBOX)TehChubbyDugan said:

The issue with not wanting the AOE meta is that DE encourages the AOE meta.  There's a dozen mechanics in the game that encourage it, from resource grinds only being efficient with high kill speed, to certain modes like ESO (and others, this is just an example.) requiring massive kill speed just to hit the next zone.  You cannot send 4 non-AOE DPS frames with even well modded auto-rifles into SO and expect them to hit the kill requirements unless it's 4 extremely sweaty vets.  AOE abilities, the innate AOE that is melee, and AOE guns splashing enemies all over the room are the only way to compete in something like that.  They encourage it just through what they release.  Try and think about the frames and pick one that can't hit multiple enemies all at the same time.  Is it old?  It probably is.  Even many of the old ones have been reworked over the years for more enemy engagement at once.  I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy a slower, more meaningful Warframe experience.  They've designed a game that favors things that hit huge areas.

This went completely wrong, and that is on me. I didn't mean AoE guns, I was actually thinking along the lines of "spray-and-pray" guns. Some of the AoE guns in the game might be even more effective in some circumstances, but overall I think they are more balanced (with a few notable exceptions). It might be mag size, ammo, dire rate or reload speed, but overall the AoE segment is pretty ok. And fun to use, from the "gaming should be fun"-perspective. Kuva Nukor really should be nerfed, which is a shame since it is so fun to use.

I also think there is nothing wrong with a few really effective "niche builds" being possible, especially builds that are linked to other equipment/abilities etc. The problem with too effective weapons pop up when just about anyone with the right type of riven can achieve that op level of dps. And that is a much bigger problem in melee than with guns. 

I also really think that guns should be split up in several distinct groups, because in general terms a "sniper" differs much more from a "shotgun" or a "bow" or a "launcher" or a "beam weapon" than just about any melee differs from the rest (throwable melee actually being different). Although these is a huge variation in melee types, they basically function the same: you mash your button and depending on weapon and build your crit, status and or attack speed does the rest. For all of them. From that aspect a comparison between "guns" and "melee" is inherently ridiculous, since melee is quite "the same" and there are huge differences in how you use different "guns".

 

5 hours ago, (XBOX)TehChubbyDugan said:

Endurance runners would riot.  Certain SP nodes would be nearly impossible.  Taking down Shadow Stalker would be 10x more of a chore than it currently is.  Content that's in the game should be completeable and should have some effect on the balancing of the gear we have. The missions take twice as long doing it like this and there is zero benefit other than a little bit of enjoyment.  I enjoy explosions too though.  Grind being what it is, nerfs to kill speed mean longer grind times, and that's my primary reason for being against nerfs. 

...

I have a Veldt with a solid riven and 7 forma.  It took a LOT of work just to get this weapon up to middle tier in terms of effectiveness.  That's not up to par.  That's a crap load of work just to get it to be reasonably effective in mid-level content. 

The most important thing first: I have an excellent Veldt riven and 6 forma in my Veldt, I can even now feel the tears in my eyes because that didn't help enough. It is such a nice basic gun, and that "elephant gun" sound.... <sniffle> ... But maybe we'll get a Veldt Prime at some point.

I am really opposed the theory that we need op guns & melee for "effective farming", because logically we all know that those op weapons actually destroy the game (in turn making all farming irrelevant, since who would even think about farming in a game they won't play anymore).

I also think using endurance runs as any sort of measure is both totally wrong and totally bonkers. Endurance runs exist only because of the excellent sandbox concept behind most of the game, and while they are completely acceptable as a form of enjoyment (the "fun" aspect again) or to see how far you can push things, they aren't a metric of anything relevant.

I also agree with the fact that most of the current "farm-by-chance-only"-approach just doesn't work anymore. There is just too much content, and leaving everything down to chance WILL f*ck as many players over as the number of players "being lucky" (assuming a normalized chance distribution), and that is simply a horrible concept. I'll repeat: that really is a HORRIBLE concept. It has very little to do with the core concept of actually having to put in some effort to achieve something, because such a statistical premise ALSO makes sure that part of the players will NEVER get what they want. The effort needed to overcome the statistical odds is just too humongous. But there is also some improvement going on, like the combination of drop tables and store content in the last event, and stuff finding it's way into other stores (or events) as well.

But altogether: if one assume a new player X that is looking to get "everything" in the game (disregarding the effect of vaulted and event-locked content for a moment) and you calculate how much that player would have to play in order to reach that goal, having "neutral luck" overall (= as much good as bad luck) and using the existing drop tables in the game, it would be a lot of hours. Hundreds and hundreds of hours, probably over a thousand hours. But THAT is not the problem. The problem occurs when you look at player Y, again starting from scratch and trying to get everything in the game, but belonging to the 25% section of players having a bit "worse luck". Because this translates into hundreds and hundreds (or thousands) of hours doing more of the same missions for the same rewards, or if you flip it around: being (a lot) less rewarded for the same effort compared to other players. While the statistical truths behind this are completely logical and impartial, that just isn't fair to players playing a game for fun. It shouldn't be a total all-out lottery. There has to be mechanics for getting around "really bad luck", but that mechanic simply cannot be "op weapons to make the struggle go a bit faster", because that doesn't change or solve anything. It doesn't make anything "more fair", effort-wise. Since ALL players will use the same op weapons the only thing that changes is the TTKs, not the statistical unfairness of some players getting f*cked over by basic statistical mathematical rules, without any say-so whatsoever.