Scaling warframe ability is a mistake for balance, challenge and "endgame"

[(PSN)GingyGreen]

So you want only weapons and buffing abilities to be useful?

 

 

You must be completely new to this game, but pre-scaling the game was miserable. Ember was utter trash and only saw use in low level missions, or as a CC frame thanks to an augment.

 

 

Even NOW we still need to scale several frames abilities as they're literally never used in high levels. Like Shock, Spectral Scream, etc

 

[(PSN)Yggranya]

8 hours ago, Wyrmius_Prime said:

When Steel Path was released, people actually explored new and interesting setups, because raw damage wasn't enough with the scaling armor. Some even played Nyx lol.

In reality, they tried to, and found the easiest way to cheese it and then proceeded to exclusively use only that to avoid playing the game. The same fate awaits anything "difficult" in warframe. Blame yourself with the obsession with trivializing the challenge and difficulty for the sake of getting the rewards as quickly as possible.

[0_The_F00l]

3 hours ago, (XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom said:

Enemies do not, and never have had exponential scaling. Enemy EHP scaling is a power function, and has a degree of <1 for enemies with only health or health + shields when current level - base level > 80 (that's level 82 for a lot of enemies. It goes up to level 96 for some high base level one). For armored enemies, it has a degree of 1.25.

Exponential Functions: The variable is in the exponent
Power Functions: The variable is in the base, not the exponent.

That was an example mate, the actual scaling ,as a mathematical function, is of course different for both our damage (which is function of different multipliers based on modding and faction elemental bonuses ) and enemy EHP as shown here : https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Enemy_Level_Scaling.

It was to showcase that you can have scaling of different kinds exist in the game such that one kind cannot catch up to another after a certain point even if both keep scaling indefinitely. Probably could have used a power function just as well.

[TheArmchairThinker]

19 hours ago, 0_The_F00l said:

The problem is the poorly thought out multiplier mehcnics that exist in the game.

Does that mean we're sharpening the nerf hammer again?

 

17 hours ago, quxier said:

Bullet sponges are not hard to fight. They just have bigger numbers but you have too small number to deal. There is nothing hard or interesting here.

In my opinion in order to get harder to fight enemies we need to make them smarter not have some huge HP pool. Orb Mother is easy but you cannot beat her easily because she is bullet sponge.

Isn't that the same thing other games do? Making enemies bullet sponges to survive player attacks so they can show their smarter move?

15 hours ago, ghoti0315 said:

What is scaling damage? How do you scale damage?

I don't believe that you could just scale up your damage without doing stuff, for example you need to proc status for CO or stack melee combo for blood rush and weeping wounds. Yes of course, I won't like it if you could one shot level 9999 enemies with an unmodded regulator.

However, think of how weak Chroma's 1 is. It is supposed to deal damage, but it is a joke right now. And take a look at Vauban's flachette orb, it is easy to tell that he got some scaling there, but do someone really bring him into a 4-hr endurance mission? Maybe yes, but not a lot. 

Loki is NOT a warframe for damage dealing or endurance. And for now, you can always infuse seeking shuriken into any warframes you like to shred armor or use melee to destroy enemies, so why is it an issue?

There's the issue, Chroma's 1 is a joke because it's made to hit enemies until certain level with flat amount of damage while Vauban's flechette orb scales to the point of being maybe able to go to 4-hr endurance run. I would say the scaling makes it possible and I'm sure that's why we can't have the so called balance, challenge and endgame that are thrown around this community and that's why I see ability scaling is a mistake

15 hours ago, ghoti0315 said:

I really wanted to say that warframe has no actual endgame content, but scrap that idea here.

"Endgame content" in warframe could be eidolons, orbs or endurance missions etc. Do you really need to rely on warframe ability dmg scaling to destroy these people? NO! It is because none of these bosses take ability damage! And then what is about warframe power, when big and somewhat challenging content like this doesn't take ability damage and status as well?

Warframe isn't just level 9999 enemies, in fact, not many have seen a single level 9999 enemies. And scaling doesn't necessarily mean "expanding the end of warframe power", sometimes you do level 30 bounties and your damage could be scaled down.

See how you really wanted to say that warframe has no actual endgame content? Would you kindly describe what is "actual endgame content" to me?

And what's the reason those bosses don't take any ability damage? Because our power is so high that they would get killed instantly like eidolon one shot 6x3 runs so yes, on top of scaling removal, we're putting a hard limit on how strong you can be, then we can make the so called actual endgame content where even bosses able to take ability damage without getting wiped in one second. Isn't that what you people in this forum want?

15 hours ago, ghoti0315 said:

Flat damage? what

It sort of go against YOUR own opinion because it is VERY hard to find the point of balance. I could see that people complaining mesa's unmodded gun one shot level 30 enemies if they are balanced around level 60 or something.

The game does not need a nerf, since if you are nerfing, you would have to add cci to ALL enemies. And if not, CC viral-slash is still a way to destroy SP enemies in 3 seconds.

And if we want to say, mesa unmodded gun has 50 base damage before mods and ability strength, that alone is quite strong against level 60 but not to the point of one shot. I'd say it can be left as it is for monitoring

CC viral-slash? Don't worry, I already put a plan to nerf slash beforehand to make it in line with other damage types

[Corvid]

1 hour ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

Isn't that the same thing other games do? Making enemies bullet sponges to survive player attacks so they can show their smarter move?

Reminds me of a story from the development of the original Halo.

When they were tuning the enemies' difficulty, they got some feedback from testers that the AI was too simple, it wasn't reacting dynamically to their actions, and so on. So they made a single alteration to the enemies, sent the testers the new build, and waited. When the new feedback came in, it was a glowing assessment of the AI's capabilities, applauding Bungie for creating such an intricate AI to fight against that could respond intelligently to their actions.

The twist is that the aforementioned "single alteration" was just raising the enemy health to roughly double its previous value (either that or giving the Elite enemies shields, I can't quite remember). The AI wasn't any smarter, but the additional survivability meant it had more time to actually use all of the various tactics it had access to, rather than just being slaughtered before the enemies could react.

Most of the time, Enemy AI that gets a reputation for being smart really isn't all that complicated, there are just surrounding factors that give it the leeway needed to use what it has. In Halo, it's the relatively high health. In F.E.A.R. it's high NPC movement speed, coupled with looping map design that gives it routes with which to flank the player.

[0_The_F00l]

2 hours ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

Does that mean we're sharpening the nerf hammer again?

I wish. Unfortunately DE does not have the track record of getting the nerf-buff balance right.

[Aldain]

2 hours ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

Isn't that the same thing other games do? Making enemies bullet sponges to survive player attacks so they can show their smarter move?

An uncommonly discussed detail is the difference between a "bullet sponge" and a durable enemy.

Corvid's example regarding Halo falls in to the latter category, because the expected damage output from players is more predictable so it is easier to make durability adjustments without going overboard.

Now picture if say, Halo's weakest enemy Grunts took 3-4 HEADSHOTS to die from most weapons and body shots took more than twice that, that would be overkill right?

Warframe's issue is that they can't find that happy medium of "durable enemy" because we as players either instantly kill everything or DE misses the mark entirely and pumps out something like The Wolf of Saturn Six. The player side balancing is the reason why we only have paper or sponge type enemies in Warframe, there's no reasonable expected parameters that DE can balance around.

You more often find "bullet sponge" being used as a discrediting factor when the balance of the game is off, because if the game is balanced enemies will be durable but not excessively time consuming and the result will usually be the enemies not being complained about (aside from the crowd that complains about everything).

[(PSN)lydon123]

Most people don't go hours on survival to play against lvl 9999 and if it's a challenge we are talking about, inflated numbers won't provide that...unless it's steel path stalker because he can be a welcome challenge.

It's hard to balance challenge and fun. They could make more enemies that are immune or resistant to warframe abilities but then that would not be too fun. What's the point of having kick ass abilities that don't work. I think de has tried to make it more challenging in places over the years with things such as nullifiers and arbitration drones and as much as I hate nullies, there presence on higher lvl content can be a threat and so we equip ourselves to better face that threat. I actually kinda like arbitration drones as it does give mobs time to shoot back at our overpowered frames.

I believe having more interesting and more dangerous enemy types in the game are more important to challenge us than just putting everything to lvl 9999. Steel path stalker as i mentioned can be a pretty hectic duel and while i feel he is a little bit overdone in how spongy he is along with his massive damage output it makes for an interesting fight. 

I think the ai needs a rework too if the game is to challenge us. Would be nice to see mobs actually try and evade our attacks, spread out in formations instead of running in a straight line or be more aggressive when our hp is low in an attempt to finish us off.

 

[Corvid]

1 hour ago, Aldain said:

Warframe's issue is that they can't find that happy medium of "durable enemy" because we as players either instantly kill everything or DE misses the mark entirely and pumps out something like The Wolf of Saturn Six. The player side balancing is the reason why we only have paper or sponge type enemies in Warframe, there's no reasonable expected parameters that DE can balance around.

A problem which is exacerbated by the sheer range of expected damage outputs that we can have. What is satisfyingly beefy for one combination of frames, weapons and mods might be insurmountable to another setup, and will melt instantly to yet another. And even then, there's only a narrow band of enemy levels in which a given loadout hits that sweet spot (which is why arguments like "just remove your mods" fall flat to me. Even if I do that, it's going to stop working the moment I go to a different level range/faction. There's no way to set a loadout to get a consistent experience throughout the game).

It's part of why I'm in favour of an across-the-board stat squish (the other part being that it'll make things like Summoner/minion builds actually viable). Undo the years of damage/health inflation and make things more manageable.

Sure, there's always going to be a mathematically "best" option, but the gap between the two extremes does not need to be as... well, extreme as it is. Bring the upper outliers down, the lower outliers up, and have a tighter range of potential outputs to work with when designing content for us to play. Doing this will mean that players who eschew the "Meta or bust" mindset will at least be able to pull their weight when matched up with minmaxers, rather than essentially being forced to leech while the meta player kills everything from the next room over.

[Aldain]

6 minutes ago, Corvid said:

A problem which is exacerbated by the sheer range of expected damage outputs that we can have. What is satisfyingly beefy for one combination of frames, weapons and mods might be insurmountable to another setup, and will melt instantly to yet another.

It's part of why I'm in favour of an across-the-board stat squish (the other part being that it'll make things like Summoner/minion builds actually viable). Undo the years of damage/health inflation and make things more manageable.

Sure, there's always going to be a mathematically "best" option, but the gap between the two extremes does not need to be as... well, extreme as it is. Bring the upper outliers down, the lower outliers up, and have a tighter range of potential outputs to work with when designing content for us to play. Doing this will mean that players who eschew the "Meta or bust" mindset will at least be able to pull their weight when matched up with minmaxers, rather than essentially being forced to leech while the meta player kills everything from the next room over.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[killerJoke66]

oh boi here we go 

[Rantear]

I would go deeper, and say:
Scaling enemies are a mistake.

[quxier]

6 hours ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

Isn't that the same thing other games do? Making enemies bullet sponges to survive player attacks so they can show their smarter move?

First there is difference between healthier enemies and bullet sponge. Bullet sponges have a lot more health than "healthier" enemies. If you are just doing the same things over and over to kill enemies then it's a sign of "bullet sponge" than "smart" AI.

Secondly, enemies doesn't have to relies on HP to survive/kill. From this game:

- Commander teleports & stuns you

- Maniacs teleports to you

- Sentients' adaptations

From other games:

- enemies being invisible but you can hear (somehow) - Prince of persia 3

- enemies blocks you if you do the same attack pattern  - Bloodrayne 2

 

[ghoti0315]

2021/4/9 PM1点00分 , TheArmchairThinker 说:

And what's the reason those bosses don't take any ability damage? Because our power is so high that they would get killed instantly like eidolon one shot 6x3 runs so yes,

Of course yes, and these bosses are "endgame content" defined by everyone here. And,

2021/4/9 PM1点00分 , TheArmchairThinker 说:

See how you really wanted to say that warframe has no actual endgame content? Would you kindly describe what is "actual endgame content" to me?

My definition of "actual endgame content" is something that has replayability (something that worth doing for multiple times using different builds, including elements like blast and  gas etc etc)

Profit Taker kind of qualifies such criteria so that I said "scrap that idea", but the problem of PT is that you still need a lot of damage increasing abilities for fighting it. EDIT: Also the boss fight requires you to deal kinds of damage only, instead of really using them to your advantage (like status procs and stuff)

2021/4/9 PM1点00分 , TheArmchairThinker 说:

CC viral-slash? Don't worry, I already put a plan to nerf slash beforehand to make it in line with other damage types

The problem isn't "CC viral slash"
The problem is that if you nerf something to the point that it isn't efficient at all (looking at gas), another thing became meta

I don't see why DE decided to kill gas builds and buffed viral, while before the status change viral-slash was somehow viable and gas builds was fun

You can't just avoid something became popular because it is more efficient compared to other methods, and that is another reason why I said "you can't really achieve balance in this game"

[TheArmchairThinker]

On 2021-04-10 at 10:21 AM, ghoti0315 said:

Profit Taker kind of qualifies such criteria so that I said "scrap that idea", but the problem of PT is that you still need a lot of damage increasing abilities for fighting it. EDIT: Also the boss fight requires you to deal kinds of damage only, instead of really using them to your advantage (like status procs and stuff)

See why if not caused by our insane damage increasing abilities and pretty sure we have a youtuber named Nash Prime if I'm not mistaken killing Profit-Taker with many warframes like this Banshee vs Profit-Taker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--BMC2hXsAo

For dealing kinds of damage only, I can say if we can regulate our damage, we can make enemies take reduced damage instead of damage immunity

On 2021-04-10 at 10:21 AM, ghoti0315 said:

The problem isn't "CC viral slash"
The problem is that if you nerf something to the point that it isn't efficient at all (looking at gas), another thing became meta

I don't see why DE decided to kill gas builds and buffed viral, while before the status change viral-slash was somehow viable and gas builds was fun

You can't just avoid something became popular because it is more efficient compared to other methods, and that is another reason why I said "you can't really achieve balance in this game"

Gas itself is pretty good right now in my eye where you can make enemies deal damage to each other from having gas pouring out of affected enemies compared to area toxin proc burst unless you chase that stacking toxin proc. Pair it with electricity and you have yourself a nerve gas build that locks enemies in their tracks while dealing two instance of DoT

Sure, you can't avoid making something popular entirely, but you can make them not too far in efficiency gap

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

1 hour ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

Gas itself is pretty good right now in my eye where you can make enemies deal damage to each other from having gas pouring out of affected enemies compared to area toxin proc burst unless you chase that stacking toxin proc. Pair it with electricity and you have yourself a nerve gas build that locks enemies in their tracks while dealing two instance of DoT

Sure, you can't avoid making something popular entirely, but you can make them not too far in efficiency gap

The best part about this is with  abilities or AOE weapons that can put Gas on multiple enemies at once causing a S#&amp;&#036; storm of damage to all the enemy units in range. Though it sucks for single targets.

[vegetosayajin]

On 2021-04-09 at 2:19 PM, Rantear said:

I would go deeper, and say:
Scaling enemies are a mistake.

Go even deeper, scales are a mistake

No phat shaming 2021

[Fallen77]

Ok then, big question, feels like I'm missing something :

I see people speaking of abilities scaling with ennemy lvl... is that a thing ? 

Like an ability that deals more and more damage the higher the ennemy lvl is in the mission, is there anything like that ?

It sure isn't mentionned in the game, and if it is on the wiki I missed it.

Are those people just theorising or did it happen during one of my breaks ?

And no I'm not talking about saryn's spore or gara's whatever its name, someone mentionned Lavos's 1 scaling poorly... is it a thing or do they just don't know what scaling means ?

As much as I can tell from the info I have, in this example, Lavos 1 has a fixed amount of damage it can deal, which will never change (outside of modding/buffing). But what I'm reading makes me think that it deals increasingly high damage the higher the ennemy level gets...

I'm gonna stop repeating myself... is that a thing I missed ? Has this always been a thing ?

[xxswatelitexx]

The answer is simple,

The game isn't meant to be a slog.

You can add difficulty without having to just make it so it takes longer to kill an enemy. You can actually create more difficult enemies that require new tactics to beat.

 

Horizon Zero Dawn, Dark Souls, Even games like Division 2 did this beautifully. 

By creating new more challenging enemies that require you to constantly think on your feet to beat. 

 

Unfortunately Warframe doesn't embrace this idea and uses gimmicks like Orb Mother that has rotating Elements to annoy players. 

[Loza03]

34 minutes ago, Fallen77 said:

Ok then, big question, feels like I'm missing something :

I see people speaking of abilities scaling with ennemy lvl... is that a thing ? 

Like an ability that deals more and more damage the higher the ennemy lvl is in the mission, is there anything like that ?

It sure isn't mentionned in the game, and if it is on the wiki I missed it.

Are those people just theorising or did it happen during one of my breaks ?

And no I'm not talking about saryn's spore or gara's whatever its name, someone mentionned Lavos's 1 scaling poorly... is it a thing or do they just don't know what scaling means ?

As much as I can tell from the info I have, in this example, Lavos 1 has a fixed amount of damage it can deal, which will never change (outside of modding/buffing). But what I'm reading makes me think that it deals increasingly high damage the higher the ennemy level gets...

I'm gonna stop repeating myself... is that a thing I missed ? Has this always been a thing ?

Most abilities don't, butthere have been a few that do, either directly or otherwise - usually otherwise. For the former, Grasp of Lohk's lasers deal 50 Void Damage × (1 + Ability Strength) × Enemy Level. So, with Intensify, a level 100 enemy will create a spectral gun that deals 6500 damage per shot, For the latter, Khora's Whipclaw is probably the most notable example, scaling like a melee weapon.

And, of course, Melee itself. Again, I remind everyone that Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds are stronger than every other available mod of their respective category that isn't an augment or riven combined.

[Fallen77]

il y a 4 minutes, Loza03 a dit :

Most abilities don't, butthere have been a few that do, either directly or otherwise - usually otherwise. For the former, Grasp of Lohk's lasers deal 50 Void Damage × (1 + Ability Strength) × Enemy Level. So, with Intensify, a level 100 enemy will create a spectral gun that deals 6500 damage per shot, For the latter, Khora's Whipclaw is probably the most notable example, scaling like a melee weapon.

And, of course, Melee itself. Again, I remind everyone that Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds are stronger than every other available mod of their respective category that isn't an augment or riven combined.

Ok thanks that's what I thought I'm not crazy then !

[Loza03]

Just now, Fallen77 said:

Ok thanks that's what I thought I'm not crazy then !

Indeed. Like I said earlier, I would argue it's less that scaling itself exists as much as it is that only SOME things scale, and those that do don't at the same rate.

[Teljaxx]

I have been saying this for years: You can't balance an infinite scale. And you can't have an endgame if there is no end.

Adding infinity into any game system is going to make things extremely hard to balance. Like trying to figure out where to put the fulcrum of an infinitely long lever. But DE made it even worse by only making some things infinite. This is what has created this bizarre situation where everything is overpowered, yet somehow only a few things are considered viable, or META. This is because at low levels, everything can be super effective. But as the enemy levels get higher, fewer and fewer items retain their effectiveness. Until eventually, you're only left with a fairly small pool of items and builds that scale enough to keep up.

This is why the game desperately needs a "stat squish" as @Corvid said so perfectly. Enemy levels shouldn't scale from 1-9999. They should only go up to something reasonable, like 30, or 50, or 100. And, of course, player stats would have to be reigned in to match, which would be the real challenging part thanks to just how many different ways we have to modify our stats.

This is why, with most games with a leveling system, the endgame is extremely important. Its usually the  anchor point that the Devs can use to balance everything around. They can figure out how effective everything should be at that particular level for the game to be fun, then work backwards to scale down to the starting level. But DE clearly never bothered to do that. They never planned for an endgame of any kind. They just kept adding powercreep to the players, and then increasing the maximum level enemies can scale up to make it seem like things weren't as broken as they really were. And, as I said above, they didn't even apply most of it evenly across all systems.

So, at this point, the whole thing is a mess, and nothing is balanced at all. And, I am afraid that its too late to actually fix it, because it is going to take a ton of work on a ton of overlapping systems to get it all working together properly. But I doubt they can spend the needed time to do that, while also releasing new updates to keep the gamer alive in the mean time.

Which is why I have also been saying that their best bet might be to just hit the big reset button and make a sequel, so they can start from scratch. Because sometimes its better to simply admit defeat and start over, than try to fix everything that's broken.

[Corvid]

5 minutes ago, Teljaxx said:

But DE clearly never bothered to do that.

On account of Warframe basically being a last ditch project to keep the studio from going bankrupt, I feel it should be pointed out. They weren't exactly in a position to make a complete experience at the time.

[Wolfdoggie]

The solution is scaling for everyone. :)