Warframe, Difficulty, and Balance; how do you create proper scaling and progression with a non-linear system?

[Tesseract7777]

A lot is said about Warframe game balance. While there will be many debates about power fantasy versus desired difficulty, nearly all players would agree that there are serious balance problems with the game. 

First, let's identify the biggest problem, then the question is, how we solve it, or what would you suggest to solve it? 

Let's look at the big issue in WF that isn't talked about enough when we talk about balance: 

Warframe's progression system is incredibly well designed in terms of being a free to play monetization system that still respects the investment of whales. It is one of the best systems that way. But that's the problem. Warframes progression is incredibly well designed... for monetization, not for game balance. 

The way Warframe is designed, we are encouraged to branch off through a million different pathways when it comes to progressing with our gear. Apart from mods and arcanes, which are still specific to certain gear (and I wager the number of truly universal "staple" mods as it were, is relatively low in comparison to the actual number of mods in the game), we really don't have that much in the way of "universal progression" in the game (I guess also focus to a certain extent, but there is yet another system that needs a total restart and has a vaguely defined place in the game). 

I see many people trying to compare Warframe to MMO's when talking about balance, but I think Warframe has a far more Herculean task in order to create any kind of balance within their system. 

The thing is that in MMO's, you have one toon per account, progression is mostly tied to that toon, and the gear that is designed for its class, that you grind on that account. Level scaling can easily be implemented for lower zones, and there is a clear feeling of progression, a clear "what is endgame exactly", and a much easier path to regular game balance. 

On the other hand, in Warframe on one account, A tenno can switch between 45 different toons and counting, all with varying levels of forma. No weapon is class restricted and you can also use forma and have hundreds of weapons to choose from, etc. etc. 

 

So, the question is , what would you try to do to solve game balance despite this? Or do you think I am entirely off base and this isn't a problem, or isn't a big part of the problem?  

[PublikDomain]

It's important to clarify that balance does not necessarily mean difficulty. A balanced game doesn't have to be Dank Souls. Balance just means that everything is balanced and in its proper place. It means that there aren't any outliers that throw the system into chaos. It means that all of the mechanics line up and fit together.

Right now, Warframe is anything but balanced:

• Some Warframes have damage immunity abilities that can make them immortal.
• Some Warframes have damage resistance abilities that can make them very tanky.
• Some Warframes have invisibility and can be functionally immortal.
• Some Warframes have nothing for survivability.
• Some defensive mods can make any frame immortal.
• Some defensive mods are useless.
• My Amp deals I think 7k DPS.
• My Archgun deals somewhere in the ballpark of 20-50k DPS (haven't checked in a while).
• My primary deals 20k - 200k DPS depending on fire mode.
• My secondary deals 180k DPS.
• My melee deals 🤷‍♀️ DPS but is definitely more powerful than my guns.
• My Whipclaw deals 2.2M DPS.
• My Arquebex deals 15M DPS.
• My Railjack deals somewhere in the range of 10k DPS.
• My Railjack's Tether is an instakill in a wide area for all but the highest level missions. Then it's a 2-shot.
• Viral and Slash are very powerful.
• Corrosive and Heat are very powerful and can be stacked.
• Impact, Puncture, and Radiation are niche but at least do something.
• Void, Blast, Magnetic, and Gas are basically useless.
• Railjack has *entirely different status effects*.
• Archguns also have to deal with these new status effects, and builds for atmosphere or regular Archwing missions don't work in Railjack missions.
• Some enemies have 100k EHP.
• Some enemies at the same level have 1M EHP.
• Some enemies at the same level have 10M EHP.
• Some enemies have additional damage resistance mechanics.

And on and on and on. Nothing in this game lines up with the other parts. This isn't good!

For example, when Railjack launched Archgun and Railjack damage didn't line up at all, so the meta was to abandon your Railjack inside an asteroid and do the mission using your Archguns. And yet Archguns have had to be buffed several times in atmospheric mode to even begin to catch up with regular guns. And regular guns are aeons behind melee in higher difficulty content. When Archwing was added to open worlds, the damage of Archwing abilities didn't line up. Elyton pretty much doesn't work. So Archwings were relegated to a mobility tool and Itzal was the only game in town. Itzal's blink was given to everyone and then the new game in town was Amesha, since it could be fast enough with Blink and could also be invincible, slow enemies, generate energy, and defend objectives passively for minutes at a time. K-Drives were added solely as a mobility tool and *no one used them for that purpose* because Archwings already filled that role better. Necramechs are pretty overpowered once you build them up, and if they're added into regular missions with no changes Arquebex is going to be the new standard for any sort of defensive play. Get to your Mobile Defense objective, call down your Voidrig, press 4 and hold LMB, spin and win. It's going to be boring.

All of this nonsense, IMO, comes directly from Warframe's ancient modding system. You're allowed to stack oodles of damage mods, so you do. These mods are different between categories and scale differently, so nothing ends up at the same place. And even within the same category, you don't have to take every damage mod and every one you don't take is another chunk of DPS you're not getting compared to your teammates. Plus there are differences in base stats which only become more noticeable the more mods you add, causing a massive rift between good and bad weapons. We also get bad things like "required mods" out of this, because some mods are hands down the best for every application and choke the diversity out of every build.

Limiting the number of DPS mods in a build would solve a large amount of this. Without so many factors multiplying together the end numbers won't be as widely varied. Different categories and weapons within those categories won't have as much room to jump ahead. With fewer factors it's also easier to identify and address individual mods and weapons that need tweaks. And with DPS limited to a small part of the build you also resolve the negative effect of required mods. They're still there, and the meta still exists, but it's kept to it's own little corner where it can't muck things up as badly. Limiting us to 3 DPS/power mods per item brings the average DPS range for guns to 5-15k DPS across the board, which matches things like Amps, Warframe abilities, Archwing abilities, and Railjack weapons. But there would still be some non-DPS mods which become the new "required", like ammo conversion, reload speed, punchthrough, and so on, so limit those to 3 as well.

With player power kept to a tighter range it's easy to scale enemies to they feel good to fight. Revert the dumb S-Curve thing since it's complicated and doesn't do anything, cut the armor scaling exponent from 1.75 to 1.00 which makes armor scale linearly, and cut shield and health coefficients by half. This puts lvl50 heavy units (Bombards, etc) in the 5-15k EHP range - matching weapons, with lvl100 enemies in the 30-75k EHP range. Grunt units stay in the 1-5k EHP range and remain quickly killable like they should be.

It's a year old, but here are some specifics on how to get there. TL;DR is you treat Mod Polarity like a second Mod Capacity pool, where you can only have up to 3 Vs (power), —s (powerful QoL or indirect power), and Ds (defense or survival) in a build. Forma is divorced from polarity and becomes universal by default. Rivens get multiple polarites to match their stats, and some mods like recoil get no polarity and aren't limited. Nothing you own except for Aura Forma and Stance Forma need to be touched (turned into a new type of Forma) and all of your earned items, mods, Rivens, etc are left completely untouched. And you can test the idea today without any changes to the game.

[(PSN)ggh667124]

8 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

It's important to clarify that balance does not necessarily mean difficulty. A balanced game doesn't have to be Dank Souls. Balance just means that everything is balanced and in its proper place. It means that there aren't any outliers that throw the system into chaos. It means that all of the mechanics line up and fit together.

Right now, Warframe is anything but balanced:

• Some Warframes have damage immunity abilities that can make them immortal.
• Some Warframes have damage resistance abilities that can make them very tanky.
• Some Warframes have invisibility and can be functionally immortal.
• Some Warframes have nothing for survivability.
• Some defensive mods can make any frame immortal.
• Some defensive mods are useless.
• My Amp deals I think 7k DPS.
• My Archgun deals somewhere in the ballpark of 20-50k DPS (haven't checked in a while).
• My primary deals 20k - 200k DPS depending on fire mode.
• My secondary deals 180k DPS.
• My melee deals 🤷‍♀️ DPS but is definitely more powerful than my guns.
• My Whipclaw deals 2.2M DPS.
• My Arquebex deals 15M DPS.
• My Railjack deals somewhere in the range of 10k DPS.
• My Railjack's Tether is an instakill in a wide area for all but the highest level missions. Then it's a 2-shot.
• Viral and Slash are very powerful.
• Corrosive and Heat are very powerful and can be stacked.
• Impact, Puncture, and Radiation are niche but at least do something.
• Void, Blast, Magnetic, and Gas are basically useless.
• Railjack has *entirely different status effects*.
• Archguns also have to deal with these new status effects, and builds for atmosphere or regular Archwing missions don't work in Railjack missions.
• Some enemies have 100k EHP.
• Some enemies at the same level have 1M EHP.
• Some enemies at the same level have 10M EHP.
• Some enemies have additional damage resistance mechanics.

And on and on and on. Nothing in this game lines up with the other parts. This isn't good!

For example, when Railjack launched Archgun and Railjack damage didn't line up at all, so the meta was to abandon your Railjack inside an asteroid and do the mission using your Archguns. And yet Archguns have had to be buffed several times in atmospheric mode to even begin to catch up with regular guns. And regular guns are aeons behind melee in higher difficulty content. When Archwing was added to open worlds, the damage of Archwing abilities didn't line up. Elyton pretty much doesn't work. So Archwings were relegated to a mobility tool and Itzal was the only game in town. Itzal's blink was given to everyone and then the new game in town was Amesha, since it could be fast enough with Blink and could also be invincible, slow enemies, generate energy, and defend objectives passively for minutes at a time. K-Drives were added solely as a mobility tool and *no one used them for that purpose* because Archwings already filled that role better. Necramechs are pretty overpowered once you build them up, and if they're added into regular missions with no changes Arquebex is going to be the new standard for any sort of defensive play. Get to your Mobile Defense objective, call down your Voidrig, press 4 and hold LMB, spin and win. It's going to be boring.

All of this nonsense, IMO, comes directly from Warframe's ancient modding system. You're allowed to stack oodles of damage mods, so you do. These mods are different between categories and scale differently, so nothing ends up at the same place. And even within the same category, you don't have to take every damage mod and every one you don't take is another chunk of DPS you're not getting compared to your teammates. Plus there are differences in base stats which only become more noticeable the more mods you add, causing a massive rift between good and bad weapons. We also get bad things like "required mods" out of this, because some mods are hands down the best for every application and choke the diversity out of every build.

Limiting the number of DPS mods in a build would solve a large amount of this. Without so many factors multiplying together the end numbers won't be as widely varied. Different categories and weapons within those categories won't have as much room to jump ahead. With fewer factors it's also easier to identify and address individual mods and weapons that need tweaks. And with DPS limited to a small part of the build you also resolve the negative effect of required mods. They're still there, and the meta still exists, but it's kept to it's own little corner where it can't muck things up as badly. Limiting us to 3 DPS/power mods per item brings the average DPS range for guns to 5-15k DPS across the board, which matches things like Amps, Warframe abilities, Archwing abilities, and Railjack weapons. But there would still be some non-DPS mods which become the new "required", like ammo conversion, reload speed, punchthrough, and so on, so limit those to 3 as well.

With player power kept to a tighter range it's easy to scale enemies to they feel good to fight. Revert the dumb S-Curve thing since it's complicated and doesn't do anything, cut the armor scaling exponent from 1.75 to 1.00 which makes armor scale linearly, and cut shield and health coefficients by half. This puts lvl50 heavy units (Bombards, etc) in the 5-15k EHP range - matching weapons, with lvl100 enemies in the 30-75k EHP range. Grunt units stay in the 1-5k EHP range and remain quickly killable like they should be.

It's a year old, but here are some specifics on how to get there. TL;DR is you treat Mod Polarity like a second Mod Capacity pool, where you can only have up to 3 Vs (power), —s (powerful QoL or indirect power), and Ds (defense or survival) in a build. Forma is divorced from polarity and becomes universal by default. Rivens get multiple polarites to match their stats, and some mods like recoil get no polarity and aren't limited. Nothing you own except for Aura Forma and Stance Forma need to be touched (turned into a new type of Forma) and all of your earned items, mods, Rivens, etc are left completely untouched. And you can test the idea today without any changes to the game.

As much as this could work , the community would go crazy crying . I think the fact that DE freelanced the entire game in a way really is detrimental long term. They can’t fix one thing without upsetting an entire other group of players .  
 

As weird as this may sound DE needs to erase some of those branches , even conclave and I play conclave . You’ll cut off a lot of players initially but you can allocate resources to the major portions of the game especially RJ content . So the rate of growth would eventually make up for the losses .
 

Warframe needs a clear direction of playing so they can also make a coherent story , and even tutorial. I’m basing this off this one psychology study of where people usually aren’t content with having too many options , but we don’t consciously realize that .

 

 

[PublikDomain]

1 minute ago, (PSN)ggh667124 said:

As much as this could work , the community would go crazy crying . I think the fact that DE freelanced the entire game in a way really is detrimental long term. They can’t fix one thing without upsetting an entire other group of players .  

I dunno, I usually get positive feedback about the idea. There'd be the usual screeching, of course, but of all of the options available I think something like modding limits is the least screechy. Because what really changes? All of your mods, Rivens, forma, potatoes, items, stats, etc are still there. All of your Forma invested is still valuable - more-so because now Forma is universal by default. Yeah you can't use your 8-DPS build anymore, but you don't need to. And now you can now actually fix that nagging downside about your favorite gun, like the reload or the recoil or the ammo economy or whatever, and still be powerful!

The main thing that would need attention are Warframe abilities, but those have needed attention for a long time anyways. Some abilities would need nerfs, some would need buffs, but what you'd find is that when the dust settled more Warframes would become viable because they don't need as much power or scaling anymore to compete. Inaros, for example, deals a few hundred DPS from his abilities so right now it's basically nothing. You don't use him for his abilities. But a lot of that damage is Slash or True damage, so he'd fit right in with a lower damage range. Imagine that, using Inaros' abilities and actually dealing damage with them! Imagine using Airburst or Tornadoes or Pull or Sonic Boom to actually kill enemies.

Compare this idea with, say, just nerfing melee attack speed or adding some new gun mods. How's that going to fix much of anything? Or baking in required mods, which just raises the level of player power. Or making an even harder Steel Path mode where even fewer items are viable. Or adding more annoying enemy mechanics like resistance or immunity or stripping out all of the gear checks. These just address the symptoms and not the actual cause, so obviously they never work.

About the rest of what you said, I don't think DE needs to cut the branches off entirely. They just need to prune the one that's grown too big and dwarfed the others. For example, how much EHP does a Warframe usually have? A few thousand? Guess what that lines up with? With modding limits we could probably (maybe) have a PvP or PvEvP that didn't need Conclave mods or loadouts anymore, where all of your gear carries over. You could go from shooting a Lancer to shooting a Warframe in the same mission and not notice a big difference. It'd probably lower the PvP TTK a little, but IMO that's what needs to happen anyways to speed up Conclave and make it more fun. Hello Stalker Mode, hello Wambit.

Anyways I'm gonna go do some yardwork.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

the answer is you can't, certainly with regards to how difficulty is subjective and the community throws a fit whenever nerfs are announced, but then DE has also done nerfs without compensating for them in the past, so technically some of the REEEing is understandable... it just gets to be too much, and that's why DE has put off saying anything about rebalancing guns vs melee, trying again at "endgame" content etc.  

I say just sit back and let the chips fall where they may, let's see what happens with their plans for buffing guns and maybe next month or the month after we'll hear a bit more about the third orb (glad they remembered it existed!)

[lowgrav]

you forgot to mention that some enimys have scaling resistant to true damage (which is suppost to bypass all damage resistances)      tested in simulacrum

[DrivaMain]

I believe this game's balance is damaged beyond repair at this point. The only way DE to change things is they have to bite the bullet and willing to let go their large casual challenge phobia community, but I doubt DE will let go of their biggest money cow flock.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

You don't. 

The game had 7 years to turn into the boring game you wanted it to be. 

Clearly people like warframe because it has things some of the "balanced" games don't have, or we wouldn't be playing it and supporting it and having fun doing so. 

[Marvelous_A]

This game doesn't have balance at all. Let's ignore the warframes part, primary, secondary and melee are on whole different levels of damage potential and melee vastly outperforms the other two. Railjack weaponry can deal less DPS than a properly modded anti personal rifle.

[cute_moth.npc]

10 hours ago, Tesseract7777 said:

I see many people trying to compare Warframe to MMO's when talking about balance, but I think Warframe has a far more Herculean task in order to create any kind of balance within their system. 

Yes and no..

The only thing Warframe needs to achieve in order to become acceptably balanced is to basically stop having train wreck balance where some weapon types are doing several times the damage of others.. If things are "roughly close" and all weapons can comfortably clear X content when properly modded, then players have increased options and the developers might be able to attempt making a boss that doesn't turn off all of your Warframe skills in order to fight it.. The mod system is relatively complex, but even a rough balance would be really successful at improving gameplay prospects.

Shiva Savage in FFXIV is exactly 14 minutes and 1 second long. At 14 minutes and 2 seconds, your entire group dies and you start over. The designers need to balance a team of 8 players with 2 healers, 2 tanks and 4 DPS players which have skills that can interact with each other and the mechanics in different ways not only to ensure that the fight is as difficult as they want it to be, but that any team composition can reasonably clear the fight in under 14 minutes and 1 second if playing well and that no class is more than a few hundred DPS behind another because even a 2-3 second advantage is huge in a fight that can take weeks or months of practice to clear when you're faced with an arbitrary time limit. Every time a new expansion is released, they also redesign *every* class with new skills and mechanics and have to re balance every class in the game.

That's not actually even comparable, but other games do it. Warframe's goal should just be to stop being such a train wreck..

Regarding difficulty though, it won't change much if they do actually balance weapons against each other - Warframe is still a game with only superficial variability from our enemies, originating primarily from the level system giving extra stats. They never become smarter, spawns become capped, they don't learn new skills or adapt to the many cheese strats that players can easily adopt in order to circumvent challenge. A level 10 Lancer will watch an invisible player slaughter their friend and stand still, shaking, waiting for their turn. So will a level 1000 Lancer. Arguably, the only effective difficulty modifiers in the game are currently the Sortie bonuses and Arbitration's instant death mechanics, and these are tucked away inside of limited access modes.. Other games take away the crutches when you pick a "hard mode" but Warframe will always leave them within reach ^^;

Warframe's only real variability in difficulty originates from basically, numbers, and the player's own choice to not pick the cheese strat.

[PublikDomain]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

You don't. 

The game had 7 years to turn into the boring game you wanted it to be. 

Clearly people like warframe because it has things some of the "balanced" games don't have, or we wouldn't be playing it and supporting it and having fun doing so. 

Warframe is already a boring game, and all of the good things the game has going for it are ruined by the lack of balance.

• Tons of weapons and Warframes, but only a few actually matter.
• Tons of mods, but every good build uses the same small few.
• Tons of enemies to fight, but they all die too fast to do anything interesting.
• Tons of bosses to kill, but they either die instantly or have to rely on invulnerability phases and other annoying mechanics just to stay alive long enough to deliver their lines.
• Tons of damage types, but only a few even are worth considering.
• Tons of mission types, but all DE can create are variants of Mobile Defense and Exterminate because we blow right past anything else.
• Tons of different ways to play, from on foot to vehicles to space ships to mechs, and they're all stuck on their own boring little islands because none of them can coexist without missing the mark entirely or relying on janky hookup mechanics.

I can go on and on about all of the wonderful things this game has that are buried under all this garbage. If I wanted to turn Warframe into a boring game I wouldn't need to be posting because I'd have already won.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

4 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

Warframe is already a boring game, and all of the good things the game has going for it are ruined by the lack of balance.

• Tons of weapons and Warframes, but only a few actually matter.
• Tons of mods, but every good build uses the same small few.
• Tons of enemies to fight, but they all die too fast to do anything interesting.
• Tons of bosses to kill, but they either die instantly or have to rely on invulnerability phases and other annoying mechanics just to stay alive long enough to deliver their lines.
• Tons of damage types, but only a few even are worth considering.
• Tons of mission types, but all DE can create are variants of Mobile Defense and Exterminate because we blow right past anything else.
• Tons of different ways to play, from on foot to vehicles to space ships to mechs, and they're all stuck on their own boring little islands because none of them can coexist without missing the mark entirely or relying on janky hookup mechanics.

I can go on and on about all of the wonderful things this game has that are buried under all this garbage. If I wanted to turn Warframe into a boring game I wouldn't need to be posting because I'd have already won.

Try some self control then and try a pistol instead of a kuva nukor. Also have some patience and realize people that make and work on games have lives and aren't here to implement your every desire at a moment's notice.

[PublikDomain]

11 minutes ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

Try some self control then and try a pistol instead of a kuva nukor. Also have some patience and realize people that make and work on games have lives and aren't here to implement your every desire at a moment's notice.

Alright.

Now what? Game's still boring.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

7 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

Alright.

Now what? Game's still boring.

Then take a break. I can decide in my own mind the game's boring, too, but it doesn't mean anyone's obligated to cater to my own shifting mood.

[PublikDomain]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

Then take a break.

And I have been, I play maybe an hour or two a week nowadays to keep up with the FOMO and that's about it. And lo and behold the game's just as boring every time I return. As much as I want to play there's just nothing there when you get to the top of the mountain. And there will never be anything there as long as DE has to walk on eggshells around the players afraid of change.

1 hour ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

but it doesn't mean anyone's obligated to cater to my own shifting mood.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but it turns out that DE does in fact try to balance the game! They talked at length just this past Friday about how they're going to try balancing guns and melee next. They're going to fail, of course, but as bad at balance as they are they do try. They're constantly trying to balance the game, it's just that they kind of suck at it. They're reactive instead of proactive, address symptoms instead of the cause, and keep repeating the same mistakes only to have to come back later and fix them again.

ETA: And, like, look at what we're talking about:

• Making more weapons and frames viable throughout the game
• Making a larger variety of viable builds possible
• Making enemies more interesting to fight
• Not having as much content that has to rely on mechanics like hidden DR, status immunity, nullification, or invincibility all the time
• Making more damage types worth using
• Making more varied and interesting mission types possible
• Making more content that's able to link up and fit in with everything else

And this would make Warframe boring?

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

12 hours ago, Tesseract7777 said:

So, the question is , what would you try to do to solve game balance despite this? Or do you think I am entirely off base and this isn't a problem, or isn't a big part of the problem?  

Id make way more enemies like the grineer unit "nox" where shooting a weakspot deals tremendous damage and everything else is damage reduction.

Then id add more weak spots to the enemies except these spots could completely wipe out the damage reduction on the enemy. They may drop a weapon, lose an ability, disable shields, lose armor in a specific area, etc

Id put a cap on all of this scaling in damage and health on some enemies, everything having it isnt fun imo. Mini boss(es) is fine, every enemy bleh

Id mix up enemies, sometimes youd get waves that are nukable, other times youd have waves come with groups of enemies that need a little more skill.

Id make more enemies that are complex, enemies that can be killed quickly but you have to know all the steps to take it out and not mess up! You mess up, you may either have to start over or prepare for some really scary damage. The mercy for mistakes would depend on enemy level

Id change the way taking damage works in this game. Id obliterate unfair 1 shot attacks, and create fair ones like you seeing a toxic acient and choosing not to roll to evade its pull. The fair part is you seen it and knew you were within range, should have rolled.

And finally, add some pressure. Players like to kill fast, id make the combo counter decide how fast you can get kills. Make it work off of skill like how many headshots youre getting, hitting enemy weak points, and how quickly you are doing it, to give you powerful weapon buff consumables

All of this Maintaining that fast paced feeling, but not so much to where players who like to chill cant enjoy themselves. The changes i mentioned above would only start to get real for those seeking endurance runs. Abilities would have times to shine and times where they dont

[ShortCat]

13 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

-snip-

That'S an on-point list. 👍

 

5 hours ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

Try some self control then and try a pistol instead of a kuva nukor. Also have some patience and realize people that make and work on games have lives and aren't here to implement your every desire at a moment's notice.

I think you misunderstand what forums is for - it exists to collect feedback, identify problems and act on provided information. Those "desires" you are speaking of are properly construkted and analyzed critique points, which are directed to fix real issues.

In every threat I visit, I see your name and with every comment you protect status quo and go agaignst any suggestions or criticism, while you yourself do absolutely nothing to improve or contribute. In your world Warframe is its best version and only developoers are allowed to have an opinion. You are the worst type of fanboy.

[Aldain]

4 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

• Making more weapons and frames viable throughout the game
• Making a larger variety of viable builds possible
• Making enemies more interesting to fight
• Not having as much content that has to rely on mechanics like hidden DR, status immunity, nullification, or invincibility all the time
• Making more damage types worth using
• Making more varied and interesting mission types possible
• Making more content that's able to link up and fit in with everything else

And this would make Warframe boring?

According to some people, yes.

[Angwah]

As I've said in another thread, depending on where you're at in your progression WF is either challenging, even really difficult, or you're power-creeped beyond any form of engaging gameplay. So I don't agree that the players, by playing this game, somehow condone anything. Their play-experience is simply not the same.

Anyway, yes, IMHO the first thing which needs to be reexamined is the underlying math. They need to what they consider a desirable range of output in damage that matches a desirable range in ehp for both enemies and players. After that make sure that the combat system, weapons, modding system and WF abilities stay within that range instead of multiplying itself out of bounds. This is not about destroying the power-fantasy, this is about the dev's ability to provide a properly scaling encounter which is not a tedious bullet-sponge to some weapons which should be appropriate to use, while another one overkills it by a factor of 10K.

This is necessary if we ever want to see content with bosses and enemies which are not immune to what we can do, or can not even bring our frames and weapons. The math first, then we can look at individual powers, the energy economy and stuff like invisibility.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

4 hours ago, ShortCat said:

That'S an on-point list. 👍

 

I think you misunderstand what forums is for - it exists to collect feedback, identify problems and act on provided information. Those "desires" you are speaking of are properly construkted and analyzed critique points, which are directed to fix real issues.

In every threat I visit, I see your name and with every comment you protect status quo and go agaignst any suggestions or criticism, while you yourself do absolutely nothing to improve or contribute. In your world Warframe is its best version and only developoers are allowed to have an opinion. You are the worst type of fanboy.

Some people are advocating for massive sweeping changes that others simply don't agree with. 

I agree with making small targeted changes then collecting more data. This is why I agree with the melee speed adjustment and making guns stronger. 

People have been asking for stronger guns, right? 

DE acknowledged the complaints and said they're gonna do something about it, correct? So what's the issue? They're not doing exactly what you "think" should be done for what you personally think "is best for everyone"?

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

You don't even try

because it doesn't matter, so long as the money from cosmetics and prime access packs and Plat purchases keeps rolling in.

"balance" is an endgame player problem, a minority. Plenty of casuals with wallets to keep business going.

[ShortCat]

49 minutes ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

So what's the issue? They're not doing exactly what you "think" should be done for what you personally think "is best for everyone"?

Still denying discussion & feedback? PublikDomain dissected current situaton, named core standing issues and suggest longstanding solutions.

49 minutes ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

I agree with making small targeted changes then collecting more data. This is why I agree with the melee speed adjustment and making guns stronger. 

People have been asking for stronger guns, right? DE acknowledged the complaints and said they're gonna do something about it, correct?

You know, everyone has access to your post history and can see for themselves how you denied and derailed numerous "guns vs melee" threads before DevStream. Now, when DE announced changes (supposedly scaling mods for guns, the one thing you vehemently objected), you quickly switch sides and guard new established norms. Like a true DEfender.

On 2021-02-23 at 8:18 PM, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

I'm excited to see how they buff guns, so bad players can realize they're still bad regardless what is done. A wave of nerfs and readjustments will ensue and the forums will cry yet again. 

If you don't like ninjas and swords, then don't play a game based around ninjas and swords. 

Nobody likes hypocrites, especially as cheap as you. This second respose is one too many. I am done derailing this thread.

[Hypernaut1]

Some of you really take the balance and systems of WF for granted. WF is a very unique game in the way that its modded and the way progression takes place. 

we don't mod for 2% damage like in most games. Almost EVERYTHING we do in WF sees huge changes in numbers and effectivenes that a player can feel immediately. The modding system is one of the deepest in all arpgs. 

The progression system is one of the best out there too. When a new player ranks an item to 30, they are at first led into a false and shallow sense of progression. The same progression most of us have always been used to in other games, that max rank means the item is almost as powerful as it's going to be. But that's not the end of it. You can double it's capacity. Then after that, there's a whole new track of progression based on the mods you've earned, then those mods have progression based on the endo you've acquired.  With mods you can double it's damage. WF doen't skimp on numbers. You don't get a false sense of satisfaction from 5% damage that you don't really notice. No, all of a sudden, that weapon hits like a truck. And by the time it does, you've started to encounter enemies that begin to scale. ALL of this happened non linearly. It's not just a simple system of ranking up. You discover how to get powerful. You define in which ways to increase power. That's part of the journey of Warframe. 

why do we still play? WF isn't about difficulty. It's about efficiency. It's like racing hobby RC cars. You are constantly tweaking your arsenal and testing it out in the field. When you race hobby RC cars, you don't always chase the most difficult track. You race a track and as you improve in skill you find a more challenging tracks. A tracks with a couple more turns and twist. After a certain point, it's not difficultly you're after. You don't look for tracks that are more difficult to run just for difficulty sake. You find tracks where you can adequately test your skill and the effectiveness of your car at the same time. The fun is in how good you can make your car run a track, not how many times the track can make you wipe out. You change the cars tires, tweak it's gear ratios, adjust tension in springs and put it back on the SAME track. Compare runs in your mind. Do it again. 

This is Warframe. We tweak our WFs and test them out. We tinker. We need difficulty not so much as to make us fail, but to challenge the edge of our effectiveness. We are constantly using new gear to test it's effectiveness alongside our Warframe. It's not always about doing max damage EVERY TIME. We adjust HP, energy, efficiency, armor..and put the Warframe back on the "same" track. The rewards provide context to what we're doing since it's virtual. 

a system as complex and intertwined like this is almost impossible to balance perfectly. Just like how some tires in hobby cars just won't be the most effective, no matter what you do. DE has done all excellent job though. Not many arpgs can give you 200% increase in power, while still maintaining some type of engagement. 

 

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

8 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Still denying discussion & feedback? PublikDomain dissected current situaton, named core standing issues and suggest longstanding solutions.

You know, everyone has access to your post history and can see for themselves how you denied and derailed numerous "guns vs melee" threads before DevStream. Now, when DE announced changes (supposedly scaling mods for guns, the one thing you vehemently objected), you quickly switch sides and guard new established norms. Like a true DEfender.

Nobody likes hypocrites, especially as cheap as you. This second respose is one too many. I am done derailing this thread.

When people come to warframe now, a lot of them don't say "Gee wilikers! This is an emergency...I should let DE know their game allows too much freedom and power. These poor players must be suffering with so many options!"

Some might see it as a problem, and some don't. That's just how it is. 

It's ok to agree to disagree. I like warframe being fun instead of whatever you're trying to make it. It's not the end of the world.

[Yamazuki]

10 hours ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

Try some self control then and try a pistol instead of a kuva nukor. Also have some patience and realize people that make and work on games have lives and aren't here to implement your every desire at a moment's notice.

Game being easy has nothing to do with Kuva Nukor, on this account I use secondaries so in-frequent that:

 

Spoiler

Then my most used primaries on my accounts are non-aoe. I even cleared some of SP using K-Karak and Supra-V. I don't even use the commonly played Warframes much, given on this account it's mainly Oberon, which does literally nothing in SP since armor is worthless, the hp/s is too low, armor removal on him costs a lot and is insanely long to the point shooting is faster anyways, leaving just radiation and the "oops" every 90 seconds for the randoms. I pug every run, with pretty much no ping limit, and had to play some of SP with 500+ping making even operator entirely unusable. So, useless Warframe, single target primary, no operator, still easy.

Although, me saying the game is easy doesn't mean I agree DE needs to do a 180 and create a difficult game. I already play other games for difficulty, and modern games have largely relied on what I consider artificial difficulty as a form of difficulty; so even if I wanted DE to change anything, I wouldn't expect them to do so in a way that is genuinely enjoyable. Difficulty to DE is insanely high health/armor/shield values, 1 shots with 0 warning, or completely making all your equipment worthless while you wait around doing nothing until you eventually succeed anyways.

I just think that if DE wants to go with the "power fantasy" route, then all options should be strong. It's a little silly Warframes like Khora get to do virtually everything, especially with Helminth being a thing, but others are only allowed to do 1-2 things, and be no where near as useful as her for the vast majority of content where abilities can be used.