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

[Loza03]

19 minutes ago, Aldain said:

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?

@PublikDomainHas a great write-up detailing a suggestion of something similar-ish? It's a modding rework, but the upshot's pretty similar.

It's not a perfect system by any means, although IMO it'd be a great place to build from.

[Galuf]

My 5cts is that Melee is fine and got good quality and on par with game philosophy mod designs for it. However guns did not received the same amount of love, imho you need mods that auto aim, chain or fork shots, some ridiculously op things like that. CO should be available for every weapon type, yes it is a lot of damage but status are not particulary op so better make a good use of it. There is not so many ultra good weapons atm, as a standalone zaws are way weaker than top prime weapons in sp for example.

DE need to do better. There is a big community and lots of theorycrafters so yes the stakes are high but at the same time content quality returns would be huge, there would be tons more active players. They should start to stop building lame excuse and get ahead of the meta. GGG does that with Path of Exile every 3 to 4 monthes(with different degrees of success, a very tiny fraction of the playerbase, altho never the same guys, breaks the game almost each time).

There is no excuse there, DE own all of their game design mistakes. There is no fatality.

[(PSN)Wil_Shatner_face]

On 2021-02-27 at 11:07 AM, (XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA said:

No. 

Real constructive feedback there.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

2 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

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. 

Making Steel Path enemies nigh unkillable because DE nerfed our weapons (that includes exalted weapons) would just make doing Steel Path feel like a massive waste of time. Having to spend 5 minutes wailing on a standard grunt isn’t fun.

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

4 hours ago, (PSN)Wil_Shatner_face said:

Real constructive feedback there.

Real constructive post here, calling for DE to S#&$ all over player investment and then wipe their ass with it. 

[(PSN)Wil_Shatner_face]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA said:

Real constructive post here, calling for DE to S#&$ all over player investment and then wipe their ass with it. 

Contrary to whatever you might think, it was a constructive post. You don’t have to agree with it, but the OP provided his opinion with logic and reasoning to back it up. Simply responding with “no” is not constructive, and wastes everyone’s time including your own.

Just because you don’t agree with something doesn’t make it invalid.

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

I'm just glad DE understand melee isn't strong on it's own. It's the mods making them too strong in certain cases. It's not like players run into Steel Path survival with Exalted Melee for hours on end. Get ready to unequip Blood Rush soon.

[TheGuyver]

23 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.

You also can't have a hard mode that's just lazy blanket buffs and a restriction on consumables.

[Galuf]

Il y a 2 heures, TheGuyver a dit :

You also can't have a hard mode that's just lazy blanket buffs and a restriction on consumables.

SP was an out of the hat update that was engaging enough. I agree with you 100% but considering the context it is particulary good.

[Jarriaga]

3 hours ago, TheGuyver said:

You also can't have a hard mode that's just lazy blanket buffs and a restriction on consumables.

I agree. That's an argument to make it harder, not easier.

As for lazy blanket buffs and item restrictions? 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 as the game currently stands.

Lazy blanket buffs and item restrictions for hard mode are better than nothing in the meanwhile until DE do Steel Path Arbitrations with drones protecting Acolytes and mobs from damage and abilities so you can't Khora your way around them while having harder mission objectives.

[(PSN)Kakurine2]

As if hard mode is some amazing thing everyone runs? The mobs are just bullet sponges.  Once you get the vendor cosmetics you want there's little reason to bother with it.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

19 hours ago, Graavarg said:

Kuva Nukor really should be nerfed

Disagree.  In the majority of content it's overkill, sure.  The thing about overkill is that if I can kill every enemy on the map with 100 damage each, and I have a weapon with 200 damage, then for that content it's not any better than a weapon that deals 100 damage.  In the majority of content my Atomos and Gaze secondary kill things just as fast because they're covered in forma just like my Nukor is.  The Nukor scales higher than the Atomos, and it should considering the Atomos is an MR 5 weapon.  It barely scales higher than my Gaze.  Both it and the Gaze are good for CO priming with the correct build on, with the addition of Pax Charge giving my Gaze infinite ammo and an innate holster reload.  They do nearly the same thing.  No one is screaming for Gaze nerfs.  The Nukor is just popular, not broken.  And to qualify that, it's "OP" in regular missions like fissures.  So's my Basmu.  People think that gun is weak though.  A Vermisplicer primary will chew through everything in front of you without any difficulty at all, and it also has access to infinite ammo with holster reload.  The Nukor slows down just like other guns do on the SP.  It's no more broken than many strong weapons in relation to regular content and slows down like many other guns in SP.  Where is it actually an outlier?  No one will directly answer this question.  Tell me what content I can run where the Nukor does something that I can't make other things in my arsenal do just as well.  Genuine request, because I'm not seeing it.

 

19 hours ago, Graavarg said:

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.

All of that takes work.  Even if it doesn't take thinking because of cookie cutter builds, it requires that you put in the work to get there.  Getting the weapon, getting the mods, the endo the credits, the forma, the time applying the forma.  You can't get around cookie cutter builds.  And if you put in the work you should be rewarded with strength.

 

19 hours ago, Graavarg said:

I also really think that guns should be split up in several distinct groups

Hard agree.  There's potential there to actually make many things more viable than they are just by separating weapon classes more and having more individualized class mods.

 

19 hours ago, Graavarg said:

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.

We can disagree all we want.  We share this pain together.  I stuck a Hush mod on it and it rules with Ivara though.  Headshot stealth multipliers, fast fire rate with high accuracy and it can actually take down SP enemies with a little extra time.

 

19 hours ago, Graavarg said:

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).

Kill speed is paramount to effective farming.  For a dozen reasons.  We can have an entirely separate argument about this.

 

19 hours ago, Graavarg said:

I also think using endurance runs as any sort of measure is both totally wrong and totally bonkers.

The section you quoted is actually taken out of context without the first sentence.  I'm talking about that niche % of the game that does require the extreme power that melee has now.  It's a part of the game and the community.  Not just the Endurance running either, but also SP.  

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

19 hours ago, (PSN)Wil_Shatner_face said:

Contrary to whatever you might think, it was a constructive post. You don’t have to agree with it, but the OP provided his opinion with logic and reasoning to back it up. Simply responding with “no” is not constructive, and wastes everyone’s time including your own.

Just because you don’t agree with something doesn’t make it invalid.

No.

[Corvid]

On 2021-03-02 at 4:00 PM, Aldain said:

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?

Highly in favour. It would also have a lot of indirect benefits (such as making summons like Nekros' Shadows useful for more than just the augment).

This is a rare opinion, I know, but the whole "getting numbers to be more numbery" aspect of Warframe has always been the part I find to be the least engaging. I'd much rather have an arsenal that gets broader and more tweak-able as I unlock more of it than a vertical power progression.

[SneakyErvin]

On 2021-03-02 at 4:57 PM, Jarriaga said:

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

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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?

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. 

Bringing ranged closer doesnt give more power creep, it just adds options, the creep will still be the same (or slightly less if they succeed in nerfing melee). If ranged would result in it performing 1% better than melee, then yeah, creep would be added. But now it will just open up for far more options and enjoyment. Which in itself is a win even if it doesnt result in balance and harder content.

I agree that the game should be harder and more challenging, I just dont see nerfing weapons as the proper start of it. It all needs to be reworked in one go, so balance is achieved across it all, no matter if it comes to loot or the ttk of enemies and the ttl of players. Buffing ranged works, since the ttl and ttk along with loot is already there and "balanced" in a way. I'd still like to see a full game rebalance in the future.

And regarding Panthera and Velox, I dont think any actual balance went into them at all. Then Cedo just happened to turn out as a good gun all around.

I just think DE should release changes that impact the player enjoyment as little as possible. Buff guns to bring them inline with melee, then later on nerf it all while also rebalancing loot. So people can accept the nerfs since the systems changes as a whole, so while getting more "challenging" it also gets more rewarding, so the outcome of the grind efficiency ends up somewhat the same, but the risk increases. Right now with the very lackluster drops we have, the pace of clearing is really the only acceptable way. Reduce our kill speed and keep the drops as the lackluster crap it is and people will be unhappy, and rightfully so. The gameplay itself isnt rewarding enough to justify it being dragged out before obtaining the same bad loot. There are just alot of issues DE needs to solve in the game before or at the same time as they nerf our power.

There are also plenty of things they could do without ever touching our power directly, or changing how loot works. Simple mechanics added to a multitudes of mobs would solve most issues, and make the game go from a blender simulator to a game where you actually have to aim etc.

[BloodKitten]

all guns really need is condition overload (cedo have it already as built in mod) and multiplier like melee, and buff snipers combo counters to still make them viable.