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

[TheArmchairThinker]

15 hours ago, xxswatelitexx said:

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. 

And how do you make it? Only saying "create more difficult enemies that require new tactics to beat", "Create new more challenging enemies that require you to constantly think on your feet to beat" doesn't help anyone to magically know what enemy you're talking about and how the design works around warframe with super powers

And in comparison to those games, do they have 10x damage boosting ability or outright wiping enemies in 50 meter radius nuking?

[xxswatelitexx]

On 2021-04-13 at 12:51 AM, TheArmchairThinker said:

And how do you make it? Only saying "create more difficult enemies that require new tactics to beat", "Create new more challenging enemies that require you to constantly think on your feet to beat" doesn't help anyone to magically know what enemy you're talking about and how the design works around warframe with super powers

And in comparison to those games, do they have 10x damage boosting ability or outright wiping enemies in 50 meter radius nuking?

Well if you actually played those games you probably would have your answer.

SInce you didn't, I guess I can help you out.

Horizon Zero Dawn;

Uses a Critical Weakpoint system, where hitting them in the generic body does very little damage. Only Targetted skills at specific points do high damage.

More importantly if you do enough damage to a weakpoint they lose an ability. The enemies do extremely high damage and can harass you, so disabling various body parts is critical to winning a fight. In many cases crowd control and timing is also important. 

Even if you used a Tripple Damage High Armor Penetration Arrow - it will do very little damage compared to a single shot at a critical weakpoint.

Horizon Zero Dawn is currently King ( Or Queen ) - of Monster Design.

Dark Souls:

Dark Souls is a Mix game, where there are not many weak points but there are timed moves. That means constantly moving and avoiding high damage attacks in order to get victory. 

Division 2:

Division 2 is another mixed bag where it uses both High Health but also Unique Enemy Design to add challange.

For example with the Right Build you could 2 shot an enemy Hero unit even on the Hardest Difficulty but that would require extreme accuracy by getting headshot multipliers.

But at the same time having such a build puts you at grave risk as you can't take much damage.

Division 2 is a Cover shooter, where if you don't stay in cover you are dead ( unless your a tank build )

So Division 2 varies its unit designs to force players to prioritize specific units. 

Shield Units with near full shields run around charging you in cover. Forcing you to exploit the tiny weakness their feet in order for them to trip so you can put max damage to their body or head.

 Drone Users - which hide in cover and deploy drones with AoE and CC abilities against you. Forcing you to constantly relocate in order to get Direct line of sight to attack them.

Heavy Tank units which do insanely high damage and requires you to keep your distance. BUT they have critical weakpoints which you can use to temporarily disable them. 

Sniper Dogs which can 1 - 2 shot you, they got 2 major weakness they are susceptible to EMP attacks and a Extremely tiny Red loader on their sniper rifle which can disable them.

 

Synopsis;

By creating mechanics where high damage are not completely successful but multiple tactics are needed to take down an enemy. You create a new unique experience.

 

[TheArmchairThinker]

3 hours ago, xxswatelitexx said:

Horizon Zero Dawn;

Uses a Critical Weakpoint system, where hitting them in the generic body does very little damage. Only Targetted skills at specific points do high damage.

More importantly if you do enough damage to a weakpoint they lose an ability. The enemies do extremely high damage and can harass you, so disabling various body parts is critical to winning a fight. In many cases crowd control and timing is also important. 

Even if you used a Tripple Damage High Armor Penetration Arrow - it will do very little damage compared to a single shot at a critical weakpoint.

Horizon Zero Dawn is currently King ( Or Queen ) - of Monster Design.

And if we want to implement it to warframe, how well do you think it will work considering we're fighting a horde in corridor as the main gameplay? In open maps like earth, mars, venus outpost tileset, europa and open world nodes they would work well but in other tileset? I don't think that will work well in cramped tileset but still worth designing around

And I think doing extremely high damage is not acceptable for some, as I've seen some Tenno complaining about Deimos Jugulus with with damage gas attack (disabling body parts would be a nice addition)

3 hours ago, xxswatelitexx said:

Dark Souls:

Dark Souls is a Mix game, where there are not many weak points but there are timed moves. That means constantly moving and avoiding high damage attacks in order to get victory. 

Again, how do you implement it into warframe where enemies are plenty and come from every direction?

3 hours ago, xxswatelitexx said:

Shield Units with near full shields run around charging you in cover. Forcing you to exploit the tiny weakness their feet in order for them to trip so you can put max damage to their body or head.

We have that, but explosive weapons render them useless and last time I read about a thread for their buff gets negative response

3 hours ago, xxswatelitexx said:

By creating mechanics where high damage are not completely successful but multiple tactics are needed to take down an enemy. You create a new unique experience.

Yes, but still, you need to consider how can you put them in warframe with fast moving warframes, insane damage multipliers everywhere and how it will join into the game without disrupting the pace which as far as I know not something acceptable

[Teljaxx]

9 hours ago, xxswatelitexx said:

Synopsis;

By creating mechanics where high damage are not completely successful but multiple tactics are needed to take down an enemy. You create a new unique experience.

Before this can actually work, DE would first have to balance the damage in the game. Like with @Corvid's Halo example, if players can simply kill enemies too fast, it doesn't matter how fancy their mechanics are.

Its extremely important to figure out the TTK (Time To Kill) you want for each enemy. How many bullets does it take to kill a basic grunt enemy? What about the big tough elites? Getting this wrong can very easily make an otherwise well designed combat system boring. Too fast, and every enemy is as threatening as a target dummy. Too slow, and it becomes incredibly tedious. Having TTK be too fast is usually the worse situation, because it can invalidate entire chunks of the combat mechanics. Like, why bother using any fun support powers, or carefully aiming for weak points, when you can easily deal enough damage to kill everything in a single body shot?

This is why most games have some kind of parallel leveling system. If you're fighting level 30 enemies, and your character is also level 30, your TTK will be what the Devs intended it to be, and everything will work correctly. And there is usually some kind of system to discourage or outright block players from going to areas that don't match their current level. But there is nothing like that in Warframe. Anyone with any gear can play almost any mission at any time with any other players that can also have any gear.

And it gets even worse than that. Thanks to enemy level scaling, its possible to be too weak and too strong at the same time. Especially in endless missions, where you can spend hours completely overpowering everything, only to suddenly get overpowered and have to leave. And in between, there is a tiny window where the enemies were actually properly matched to your stats that probably only lasted a few minutes.

So, how is DE supposed to build any kind of interesting mechanics around that? When one player that can only deal 300 DPS, and another that can deal 300 million DPS are playing the same missions, and the enemies can go from 1,000 HP to hundreds of millions of HP in a single mission, how can you design any kind of fun mechanics that work for everyone? So far, the only way that DE has managed this is with things like the Nihil fight, where they take away almost all of our gear and abilities. But, while that may work okay for a single boss here and there, its not a viable solution for the entire game.

So yeah, having enemies that need advanced tactics to defeat them would be great. But it would be pointless to do so right now, because I doubt anyone would even notice.

[Loza03]

8 hours ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

And if we want to implement it to warframe, how well do you think it will work considering we're fighting a horde in corridor as the main gameplay? In open maps like earth, mars, venus outpost tileset, europa and open world nodes they would work well but in other tileset? I don't think that will work well in cramped tileset but still worth designing around

And I think doing extremely high damage is not acceptable for some, as I've seen some Tenno complaining about Deimos Jugulus with with damage gas attack (disabling body parts would be a nice addition)

Rethink the concept of 'the horde'. A group of enemies isn't necessarily several individual challenges - it can also be one challenge, with each enemy serving as a 'body part' or a 'critical weakness'.

Consider a setup like this - imagine a reworked Corpus that makes consistent use of environmental items, similar to blunts and ramparts. Shield Ospreys make shields tougher, not necessarily regenerate them (that mechanic is usually more annoying since it fully regenerates enemy shields), but there's stationary towers that do, quite quickly even, and they've set up another that dulls the effects of abilities - not quite a full nullifier (I like them, but I feel they should be more of an 'oh S***' moment rather than a semi-constant force) but enough to severely blunt the brute-force approach. But these things aren't enemies. The number of Corpus that are actually a physical threat is reduced to compensate, but those Corpus are more focused on being one, and will semi-tactically use these items. Perhaps others can set up smaller versions of these towers, allowing them to slowly bring their defensive line forward or further fortify when left to their own devices. Enough variety of towers could make for a comfortably wide variety of power-ups for Corpus units.

Leastways, until those towers get destroyed. You need to use skill and good target prioritisation to break up the Corpus's structure, at which point they fall apart, far weaker than other factions without their fancy gadgets. Or perhaps with reworked stealth that's more than just 'spam invisibility, lol', these towers are just not activated all the time. I mean, if you're not under attack, why would you have your defensive structures sucking power from reactors? That's EXPENSIVE!

 

Perhaps Infested could use a reworked spawning mechanic, where you need to actively cleanse their presence by taking time to destroy creeping infested meat-moss that they can spread similar to Zerg Creep, otherwise they can spawn enemies in open space with little warning - which could potentially improve that creep further, letting stronger foes spawn. And cleansing these patches in endlesss or longer-lasting missions takes time, effort and ammunition. Not necessarily much, and it isn't necessary all the time, but enough that on endless missions especially, just wiping out the surface layer with our current tactics isn't going to solve the problem. Grineer, perhaps, could rely more on intrinsic perks, where some enemies are more resistant to certain powers or weapons (emphasis on 'certain' - no one standard Grineer is resistant to all CC, but specifically CC that binds them, another that sends them to sleep and so forth). From there, that makes certain Grineer more or less of an individual threat to certain loadouts and frames.

 

This'd still need further changes as @Teljaxx and @Corvid have pointed out, but there's certainly ways to make 'weak points' in non-conventional ways that work for a horde fight.

[TheArmchairThinker]

On 2021-04-08 at 9:09 AM, KittySkin said:

Personally I think that all damage avilities should scale. Lvl 9999 enemies are meme content, no real player targeted one, and for all warframes to been able to be used, scalling its needed since frames scales only with ability strenght mods.

I personally don't see this as something good because the meme content becomes a benchmark for those who push hours of endurance run, not to mention if they start saying "no challenge" that end up with enemies you need to whack for quite some time and avoid taking damage because it's either an instant kill or leave you on critical health because the stats are beyond your max power

[(NSW)Greybones]

I’m inclined to agree, and think that, if implemented, scaling needs to be handled carefully. At the moment (example) Volt’s 1 and it’s subsequent electric proc can be used to kill groups of level 100 enemies, particularly Corpus and their robots that are weak to electricity, as long as it’s built for strength (around 250%). Which is possible because level 100 enemies need all of like 3 survival mods when combined with player agency.

Which seems acceptable; it’s not a Bursa killer, it’s not a Grineer killer, it’s a group of MOAs and Shield Ospreys killer, it needs to be built into to do the killing in high-level content (and the other skills will be buffed as well), level 100 is about the limit of the actual game before jumping into the mess that is Steel Path, and if it’s not competing with the weapons that someone brought, it’s because the weapon was built to be the answer to everything in the first place, so sit back and let the weapon do what it was built to do.

If scaling were introduced, I’d like to see what the impact is before agreeing that it was the correct choice

[Berzerkules]

Are scaling abilities really a problem? There are only a hand full of damage abilities that scale with enemy level, Xaku' guns, Vauban's flechette, Trin's energy vampire, Octavia's mallet, Frost globe thing am I missing any? 

[(NSW)Greybones]

13 minutes ago, Berzerkules said:

Are scaling abilities really a problem? There are only a hand full of damage abilities that scale with enemy level, Xaku' guns, Vauban's flechette, Trin's energy vampire, Octavia's mallet, Frost globe thing am I missing any? 

The impression I’m under is that people think it would solve the problem of abilities not keeping up in Steel Path. Which is kind of “….Yes?” when taking into consideration what Steel Path is.

My understanding is that there are players who treat Steel Path as the game’s hard mode/endgame and thus believe the game should have balance changes made across the board to accomodate the player who lives in it; scaling abilities would be one of the ways to bring some lesser-used abilities into Steel Path, although what that means for the rest of the game is ill-defined as far as I can tell

[Berzerkules]

1 minute ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

The impression I’m under is that people think it would solve the problem of abilities not keeping up in Steel Path. Which is kind of “….Yes?” when taking into consideration what Steel Path is.

My understanding is that there are players who treat Steel Path as the game’s hard mode and thus believe the game should have balance changes made across the board to accomodate the player who lives in it; scaling abilities would be one of the ways to bring some lesser-used abilities into Steel Path, although what that means for the rest of the game is ill-defined as far as I can tell

I don't know how anyone who has spent a significant amount of time playing this game can enjoy normal star chart anymore. Like cracking lith relics can't be enjoyable. Come on, when was fighting lvl 10-20 enemies a challenge or enjoyable. Even axi at like lvl 50 is a joke. 

We have two difficulties and they should be used like every other game that has multiple difficulty settings. You progress to a point where you abandon the first difficulty because the is no challenge and the rewards are better in the harder setting. The problem is that's not how it works in WF, you can't do all the normal farms in SP so, we're stuck in normal star chart with entirely too much power. It's a bad situation when maxed out players as stuck playing with inexperienced ones that don't have access to or have not invested into their gear. New guy doesn't get to even see the enemies and the maxed out players wipes the map as they casually move to extraction. It's a no win situation for everyone. 

Leave normal star chart for beginners and add everything to SP with better drops. We already have more than enough power for SP, no need rebalance damage abilities to scale for SP. 

[(NSW)Greybones]

8 minutes ago, Berzerkules said:

I don't know how anyone who has spent a significant amount of time playing this game can enjoy normal star chart anymore. Like cracking lith relics can't be enjoyable. Come on, when was fighting lvl 10-20 enemies a challenge or enjoyable. Even axi at like lvl 50 is a joke. 

We have two difficulties and they should be used like every other game that has multiple difficulty settings. You progress to a point where you abandon the first difficulty because the is no challenge and the rewards are better in the harder setting. The problem is that's not how it works in WF, you can't do all the normal farms in SP so, we're stuck in normal star chart with entirely too much power. It's a bad situation when maxed out players as stuck playing with inexperienced ones that don't have access to or have not invested into their gear. New guy doesn't get to even see the enemies and the maxed out players wipes the map as they casually move to extraction. It's a no win situation for everyone. 

Leave normal star chart for beginners and add everything to SP with better drops. We already have more than enough power for SP, no need rebalance damage abilities to scale for SP. 

Steel Path is where you go when you’ve got a build that’s too powerful for the Star Chart. That’s not the only build that can be made, and it’s not even that valuable unless you enjoy taking a SP build into non-SP content

It’s not the game’s hard mode; it’s the game’s testing ground for certain builds

edit: Even then it falls apart with certain builds

[(NSW)Greybones]

14 minutes ago, Berzerkules said:

I don't know how anyone who has spent a significant amount of time playing this game can enjoy normal star chart anymore. Like cracking lith relics can't be enjoyable. Come on, when was fighting lvl 10-20 enemies a challenge or enjoyable. Even axi at like lvl 50 is a joke. 

We have two difficulties and they should be used like every other game that has multiple difficulty settings. You progress to a point where you abandon the first difficulty because the is no challenge and the rewards are better in the harder setting. The problem is that's not how it works in WF, you can't do all the normal farms in SP so, we're stuck in normal star chart with entirely too much power. It's a bad situation when maxed out players as stuck playing with inexperienced ones that don't have access to or have not invested into their gear. New guy doesn't get to even see the enemies and the maxed out players wipes the map as they casually move to extraction. It's a no win situation for everyone. 

Leave normal star chart for beginners and add everything to SP with better drops. We already have more than enough power for SP, no need rebalance damage abilities to scale for SP. 

I don’t know what this is, but I’m seriously beginning to wonder if there’s some sort of community expectation for the game to be entirely balanced around a certain set of builds. And that’s not even including how we can take high-level builds into low-level content just in general; that lith relic crack will be a snoozefest if we take a loadout that only just cuts it in level 100 sorties

edit: or what, the same build to behave differently for different people taking it into the same mission and playing the same way? What is going on here?

[(NSW)Greybones]

19 minutes ago, Berzerkules said:

I don't know how anyone who has spent a significant amount of time playing this game can enjoy normal star chart anymore. Like cracking lith relics can't be enjoyable. Come on, when was fighting lvl 10-20 enemies a challenge or enjoyable. Even axi at like lvl 50 is a joke. 

We have two difficulties and they should be used like every other game that has multiple difficulty settings. You progress to a point where you abandon the first difficulty because the is no challenge and the rewards are better in the harder setting. The problem is that's not how it works in WF, you can't do all the normal farms in SP so, we're stuck in normal star chart with entirely too much power. It's a bad situation when maxed out players as stuck playing with inexperienced ones that don't have access to or have not invested into their gear. New guy doesn't get to even see the enemies and the maxed out players wipes the map as they casually move to extraction. It's a no win situation for everyone. 

Leave normal star chart for beginners and add everything to SP with better drops. We already have more than enough power for SP, no need rebalance damage abilities to scale for SP. 

And then there’s this idea that certain builds or mods or companions or whatever are garbage. Is there maybe a connection between lack of customisation, lack of challenge, and lack of fun when all that matters is the build with maximum damage and survival? When a player casts aside anything but mandatory mods, mandatory weapons, mandatory Frames and companions or whatever, what is the expectation here?

[vanaukas]

On 2021-04-08 at 12:02 AM, vanaukas said:

I agree with OP

I still agree with OP

[Berzerkules]

22 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Steel Path is where you go when you’ve got a build that’s too powerful for the Star Chart. That’s not the only build that can be made, and it’s not even that valuable unless you enjoy taking a SP build into non-SP content

It’s not the game’s hard mode; it’s the game’s testing ground for certain builds

edit: Even then it falls apart with certain builds

Most builds are too powerful for normal star chart with the power DE gave us. Are we supposed to purposely gimp ourselves to play at the level of the enemies? That's ridiculous. We have a "hard mode" where that power can be utilized but no incentive to go there. Like they just fixed the CO like galvanized mods to work on projectile weapons, those mods are entirely unnecessary for normal star chart where we have to play to farm stuff. We're being force fed power and no place to use it. 

17 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

I don’t know what this is, but I’m seriously beginning to wonder if there’s some sort of community expectation for the game to be entirely balanced around a certain set of builds. And that’s not even including how we can take high-level builds into low-level content just in general; that lith relic crack will be a snoozefest if we take a loadout that only just cuts it in level 100 sorties

edit: or what, the same build to behave differently for different people taking it into the same mission and playing the same way? What is going on here?

The game should be balance around our potential power. Otherwise, what's the point of having kuva/tenet weapons with 80 mod capacity, galvanized mods, weapon arcanes, rivens etc? Why make stuff like that and then send us to fight lvl 10-20 enemies to farm a newly released prime, it makes no sense. Especially when we have a "hard mode" where all those things can be put to use.

What am I supposed to bring to a lith fissure? Just unequip the majority of my mods? run all dragon keys? Choose the crappiest loadout so there is a slight possibility of threat and challenge? I don't think the player should be tasked with the responsibility of balancing their power to the content. That's the devs job. 

[(NSW)Greybones]

1 minute ago, Berzerkules said:

Most builds are too powerful for normal star chart with the power DE gave us. Are we supposed to purposely gimp ourselves to play at the level of the enemies? That's ridiculous. We have a "hard mode" where that power can be utilized but no incentive to go there. Like they just fixed the CO like galvanized mods to work on projectile weapons, those mods are entirely unnecessary for normal star chart where we have to play to farm stuff. We're being force fed power and no place to use it. 

The game should be balance around our potential power. Otherwise, what's the point of having kuva/tenet weapons with 80 mod capacity, galvanized mods, weapon arcanes, rivens etc? Why make stuff like that and then send us to fight lvl 10-20 enemies to farm a newly released prime, it makes no sense. Especially when we have a "hard mode" where all those things can be put to use.

What am I supposed to bring to a lith fissure? Just unequip the majority of my mods? run all dragon keys? Choose the crappiest loadout so there is a slight possibility of threat and challenge? I don't think the player should be tasked with the responsibility of balancing their power to the content. That's the devs job. 

That extra capacity isn’t innate power, it’s extra space for different mods. This isn’t a new thing; none of our weapons innately power up and our Warframes stop increasing stats at rank 30

Take that extra space and make a weird build! Use that build in the Lith fissure, then a Meso fissure, then Arbitrations. It’s going to peter at at some point; swap one of the mods out for damage, keep going.

Hell, don’t even bother with the ranking unless you really want to; that’s extra grind on top of grind, and do you need it except for maybe the top tier Steel Path? These are powerful weapons; they need less help than the Lato for sure

[(NSW)Greybones]

8 minutes ago, Berzerkules said:

Most builds are too powerful for normal star chart with the power DE gave us. Are we supposed to purposely gimp ourselves to play at the level of the enemies? That's ridiculous. We have a "hard mode" where that power can be utilized but no incentive to go there. Like they just fixed the CO like galvanized mods to work on projectile weapons, those mods are entirely unnecessary for normal star chart where we have to play to farm stuff. We're being force fed power and no place to use it. 

The game should be balance around our potential power. Otherwise, what's the point of having kuva/tenet weapons with 80 mod capacity, galvanized mods, weapon arcanes, rivens etc? Why make stuff like that and then send us to fight lvl 10-20 enemies to farm a newly released prime, it makes no sense. Especially when we have a "hard mode" where all those things can be put to use.

What am I supposed to bring to a lith fissure? Just unequip the majority of my mods? run all dragon keys? Choose the crappiest loadout so there is a slight possibility of threat and challenge? I don't think the player should be tasked with the responsibility of balancing their power to the content. That's the devs job. 

I do not think it needs to be balanced around the top tier of our power. It does not need to be balanced around the META and god-roll rivens.

It currently is balanced around the maximum amount of options we can use, and if anyone is reaching for the stars, then they have the right to crush anything below them. Throw in an extra hard Steel Path mode to tamp down those few builds that break the mode, but that’s about it; this game does poorly when we stick to one thing and one thing only

[(NSW)Greybones]

16 minutes ago, Berzerkules said:

Most builds are too powerful for normal star chart with the power DE gave us. Are we supposed to purposely gimp ourselves to play at the level of the enemies? That's ridiculous. We have a "hard mode" where that power can be utilized but no incentive to go there. Like they just fixed the CO like galvanized mods to work on projectile weapons, those mods are entirely unnecessary for normal star chart where we have to play to farm stuff. We're being force fed power and no place to use it. 

All of this is nothing personal, Bezerkules; I’m standing against the idea that there’s only such a thing as power.

But this bolded bit is, pardon my french, a load of bull. We grind for mods and Arcanes and weapons, then we use them as we see fit; we can take only Adaptation as a survival mod between 50-60ish (depending on factors). Or maybe Redirection. or Vitality. And they’re different mods; there’s a reason we can’t stack multiples of the same mod. We use them in different ways, and then combine them in different ways, and then test them in different ways, and use them in different loadouts that also have different mods combined in different ways.

Finished Warframe because the goal was to reach the top? There’s other things to do! The only way to go after the mad dash is across the rest of the game, doing different things

[Berzerkules]

1 hour ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

That extra capacity isn’t innate power, it’s extra space for different mods. This isn’t a new thing; none of our weapons innately power up and our Warframes stop increasing stats at rank 30

Take that extra space and make a weird build! Use that build in the Lith fissure, then a Meso fissure, then Arbitrations. It’s going to peter at at some point; swap one of the mods out for damage, keep going.

Hell, don’t even bother with the ranking unless you really want to; that’s extra grind on top of grind, and do you need it except for maybe the top tier Steel Path? These are powerful weapons; they need less help than the Lato for sure

So the task of balance falls on the player? If that's the case the Devs have failed.

What would a weird build be? I build most weapons as utility primers for CO with no damage, crit chance or crit damage mods, build for extra punch through, status duration and holster speed, it doesn't matter on normal star chart it still kills stuff before I can even melee. Even weird builds are too much. 

Weird builds is kind of my thing. I make abomination builds like mesa without peacemakers, Rhino without iron skin, loki/ash with no invis, titania with no razorwing. Remove the ability that makes the frame and build around what's left then run stupid long endurance with them. 

What am I supposed to bring to regular star chart missions when all my loadouts are dumb builds.

1 hour ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

All of this is nothing personal, Bezerkules; I’m standing against the idea that there’s only such a thing as power.

But this bolded bit is, pardon my french, a load of bull. We grind for mods and Arcanes and weapons, then we use them as we see fit; we can take only Adaptation as a survival mod between 50-60ish (depending on factors). Or maybe Redirection. or Vitality. And they’re different mods; there’s a reason we can’t stack multiples of the same mod. We use them in different ways, and then combine them in different ways, and then test them in different ways, and use them in different loadouts that also have different mods combined in different ways.

Finished Warframe because the goal was to reach the top? There’s other things to do! The only way to go after the mad dash is across the rest of the game, doing different things

Not force fed power? It doesn't even matter what you bring. I just ran a lith fissure on an unmodded banshee and despair modded with nothing but concealed explosives. That's the level of power required. We are expected to all play together when a one mod loadout works. 

edit: lol one mod Banshee loadout solo cleared meso fissure. 

edit2: looks like my one mod loadout maxes out on neo corpus mobile defense fissures. Cracked the relic and finished the mission but I needed energy pads to spam sonic boom so I could protect defense objective

[(NSW)Greybones]

32 minutes ago, Berzerkules said:

So the task of balance falls on the player? If that's the case the Devs have failed.

What would a weird build be? I build most weapons as utility primers for CO with no damage, crit chance or crit damage mods, build for extra punch through, status duration and holster speed, it doesn't matter on normal star chart it still kills stuff before I can even melee. Even weird builds are too much. 

Weird builds is kind of my thing. I make abomination builds like mesa without peacemakers, Rhino without iron skin, loki/ash with no invis, titania with no razorwing. Remove the ability that makes the frame and build around what's left then run stupid long endurance with them. 

What am I supposed to bring to regular star chart missions when all my loadouts are dumb builds.

The balance is in the mission, and we bring what we will to it. Even the status elements will push you into higher-level content, especially if you’re matching the enemy’s weaknesses. Depends on the weapon and mods. If you take that into lower-level content, it’s going to wreck it

The weapon has its own core stats; what mods can be put on it that work with just those? It’s like getting a weapon in any other FPS and deciding on extra firerate or punchthrough or a scope

 

The… definition of weird builds you’re using is a little different to mine. I was thinking something like my Ack and Brunt that was heavy on  blocking and taunting and combo building through slash ticks all leading to a heavy attack that would do lots of damage. Alongside my Wukong with (I think) Rapid Resilience as its only survival mod and a bunch of other stuff like parrying and block combo increase and whatever, I took it to level 60 Railjack Grineer, knowing full well I would be relying on slash tick damage to kill because I didn’t have any extra damage mods. It’s been a bit since I used it so I can’t quite remember what else I had; I think a Kohm kitted out with a few elements and mostly firerate for my clone to use while I blocked damage in the narrow corridors of the missile platform and ships

 

32 minutes ago, Berzerkules said:

Not force fed power? It doesn't even matter what you bring. I just ran a lith fissure on an unmodded banshee and despair modded with nothing but concealed explosives. That's the level of power required. We are expected to all play together when a one mod loadout works. 

That’s right! A weapon with reload speed and fire rate and Concealed Explosives and, I dunno, whatever else that doesn’t immediately contribute very much to damage (though Concealed Explosives can be pretty dangerous) beyond core damage of the weapon can take a Lith fissure. Using a Warframe without mods alongside can handle a Lith Fissure; fill it up with Exilus and Ability mods if you want

This is not the case when you then start climbing towards Axi; something’s going to need to be changed, because it’s a higher-level mission and that weapon build is good for the range of level 20-30-or-so (the Warframe will still handle it, but don’t expect to be too careless). Even anything below level 25 would be better suited to a ranking/re-ranking Warframe, because the enemies just don’t hit that hard for a rank 30. 

30-and-below content is only a fraction of the game; you’re not going to live in there, and if you think of some sort of utility mod-based build that you want to try that can only handle that content, use that as incentive to then do that content and use that build

 

Unfortunately, it’s definitely true that multiplayer suffers for our ability to bring custom builds; hiding out in single player is an option, but some sort of matchmaking for like-minded players outside of recruiting would definitely be preferred. Forcing the game to change so we’re all on the same level all the time won’t do so well, and even those asking for it may find it’s a monkey’s paw wish.

edit: 🤔 Below 25 is actually a bit of a grey area; depending on enemy composition and burst damage from multiple enemies and location, level 20-25 can still get us good depending on our DPS

[Monolake]

DE nerfed enemeis scaling thats the only reason you can kill lvl9999s with your weapons easily now, in the past raw hp would scale into billions.

Scaling abilities dont even matter anymore, and I wouldn't say they ever did  - they are rather niche use.

[Lutesque]

In case you haven't Noticed...Warframe is a Scaling Game... So Naturally something Should Scale Along Side The Scaling Enemies....

Other wise you have Issues Like These:

On 2021-04-08 at 3:48 AM, TheArmchairThinker said:

 

I think having abilities with a flat amount of damage is where the balance can be put, means if you go too far, it becomes harder to fight

Sounds good in Theory... But where would this Flat Damage Be Balanced Around.... If it's Steel Path then everything that isn't Steel Path will become Trivial.... If it's Sortie Level then your Abilities become Rubbish on Steel Path....In which case you can Just Rename The Steel Path to "Call Of Duty Simulator" since you won't be doing anything Warframe Related....

 

This is the Problem with Warframe... If you don't Allow Things to Scale then you have to Make sure that the majority of Content that People are doing is All Roughly Equal in terms of Balance.... 

Have you ever done an Endurance Run ? 

For Level 10 to Level 150 You can Basically Ignore Any and All Enemies' Attempts Damage you for a decent number Of Warframe's.... Then at around 151 to 180 Things Start to hurt alil Bit but that just means you need to be Alil More Carefull.... From Level 200 to Level 10 0000 (No... I'm not going to bother with this 9 999 Crap... It's 10 000 and you know it) enemies touch you and you die....

That's what Happens when you use Flat Values in a Scaling Game.... You only get about 20 - 50 Levels where things Feel Just Right and Everything else is Either Instant Death or Not Worth Paying Attention To...

Also who Revived This Thread anyway ? 🤔

5 hours ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

I personally don't see this as something good because the meme content becomes a benchmark for those who push hours of endurance run, not to mention if they start saying "no challenge" that end up with enemies you need to whack for quite some time and avoid taking damage because it's either an instant kill or leave you on critical health because the stats are beyond your max power

Wait.... LoL... You revived your Own Thread ? 😱

It never Occured to you to Respond to that person Earlier ? 🤨

 

4 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

I’m inclined to agree, and think that, if implemented, scaling needs to be handled carefully.

I mean that's the Tricky Part Isn't It ?

You have Scaling Abilities Like Gara's 2 + 1 + 4 Combo That Scale Entire Independtly from Enemies Thus She can Out Scale the Level of The Content She's doing... Atleast for alil bit.... Turns out There is a Finite amount Of Damage that Splinter Storm can Store in total....

Banshee Falls into this Category aswell.... She Might Not have Infinity Scaling on The surface but she can Technically Scale Infinitely by Stacking Weak Spots on Top Of Weak Spots (why are all the Old Abilities like this ?) And that does what Basically Gara does... It allows her to Out Scale The Level Of Content in which she's in....

 

And then on The Other hand you have Sneaky Abilities like Trinity's Energy Vampire and Octavia's Mallet.... These abilities Scale Allong Side Enemy Levels thus they really can't be Over Powered.... They will Deal as much Damage as they were Scaled For and No More....  No Less....

If you want a Nice Example of Scaling Handle Properly then Look No Further than Good Old Booben:

• Photon Strike's explosion damage benefits from Ability Strength, Vauban's passive, and enemy level using the following expression:

  Total Explosion Damage = Blast Damage × (1 + Ability Strength) × (1 + Passive Damage Bonus) × Enemy Level Multiplier

  • Enemy Level Multiplier = ceil(Enemy Level ÷ 10). The multiplier only increases after 1 level past the per-10-levels mark (e.g. levels 11, 21, 31, 41, etc)

The Thing to note here is Unlike Octavia And Trinity That Deal True Damage which Completely Bypasses Enemy Armor....

Booben's Gimmicks Deal Electricity, Puncture or Blast Damage and thus Their Effectiveness Gets Worse and Worse as enemy Armor Scaling is Still Broken (Ignore what you heard about Armor Scaling Nerfs... It's Still Impossible to Brute Force) 

The Good News is Booben Actually Can Strip The Armor Off Enemies that his Abilities can Work Against... Not only That... It's a Percentage Based Strip so it Scales Consistently unlike Maggy's Polarize.... But The Caveat is It takes Time.... At Base Ability Strength I think it's 10% Per Second so it will Take 10 Seconds to Fully Strip The Armor Off Any Enemy at Any Level....

See.... Booben is Good.... Infinite Scaling Damage Without Being Broken....  

All Warframe Damage Abilities Should Work off That Formula....

And All Of You Should Be Praising Booben Right Now.... 👀

4 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

Are scaling abilities really a problem? There are only a hand full of damage abilities that scale with enemy level, Xaku' guns, Vauban's flechette, Trin's energy vampire, Octavia's mallet, Frost globe thing am I missing any? 

Actually Every Single One Of Booben's Abilities that Are intended To Deal Damage Actually Scales With Enemy Levels.... Flechette Orb just happens to Be The Very Best One... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In Any case if you ask me... The problem isn't Scaling Abilities.... The problem is with The Concept of Scaling Itself.... But I don't think The Community is Ready to have That Discussion just yet.... 👀

4 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

 

My understanding is that there are players who treat Steel Path as the game’s hard mode/endgame and thus believe the game should have balance changes made across the board to accomodate the player who lives in it; scaling abilities would be one of the ways to bring some lesser-used abilities into Steel Path, although what that means for the rest of the game is ill-defined as far as I can tell

I believe I already Covered that in the Different Ways Abilities can Scale.... 

In Booben's Case his Damage Output in Regular Content VS the Steel Side Walk is going to be exactly the Same Versus Infested Enemies and much Slower Versus The Grineer and Corpus.... Same Goes for Octavia & Trinity.... Their DPS is going to be 100% Identical since They Deal True Damage.... This Effectively means they are going to feel more or Less the Same on both Modes in terms of Offense....

Case in Point... If these Warframe's are not Broken for Regular Content then they are not Broken for Level Cap Either.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

3 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

I don't know how anyone who has spent a significant amount of time playing this game can enjoy normal star chart anymore.

What do you mean ?

The Normal Star Chart has all the same Mechanics as The Steel Path... Literally the only Thing that Changes is The Bloated EHP that Enemies are given and in case you haven't Noticed.... It's Been Power Crept already last year with the new Goodies...

Chances are if you're Enjoying one but not the other.... there's Something Wrong With Your Build....

3 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

Like cracking lith relics can't be enjoyable. Come on, when was fighting lvl 10-20 enemies a challenge or enjoyable. Even axi at like lvl 50 is a joke. 

I can assure you... The lack of Joy does not Come from The Enemy's level....

Poor Enemy Design will continue to be Poor Enemy Design at level Cap.... adding a Couple Zeroes does nothing for alot of People's Enjoyment.

3 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

 

We have two difficulties and they should be used like every other game that has multiple difficulty settings. You progress to a point where you abandon the first difficulty because the is no challenge and the rewards are better in the harder setting.

This isn't How Other Games Work....

In Other Games you Play on Whatever Difficulty you feel is Just Right For You.... And you stay there regardless of what Changes....

Very Few People Actually consider the Game's Most Hardest Game Mode to be the Right Difficulty for them even if they can play on it just Fine....

Hollow Knights Steel Mode is an Excellent Example of This (what is it with Developers and Steel 🤔?)....

In Steel Mode... You die... The game Deletes your Save File.... It's nice for a One Time Only Challenge that you beat just to see if you can but Nobody Wants Steel Mode to be their Bread & Butter For Hollow Knight... The Same Goes For Devil May Cry's Hell & Hell Difficulty and Ori's 1 Life Mode.... 

Only an Obsessed Individual would want to play on the Absolute hardest Difficulty 100% Of The time... 👀 This is why I don't play in The Steel Path even if I can One Shot Acolytes.... The Regular Content is just Better.... You meet nice people There... Not A bunch of Sweaty Try Hards who've got Something to Prove.... 😱

4 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

The problem is that's not how it works in WF, you can't do all the normal farms in SP so, we're stuck in normal star chart with entirely too much power. It's a bad situation when maxed out players as stuck playing with inexperienced ones that don't have access to or have not invested into their gear. New guy doesn't get to even see the enemies and the maxed out players wipes the map as they casually move to extraction. It's a no win situation for everyone. 

This can be fixed by Disincentivising Nuking....¯\_(ツ)_/¯

4 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

Leave normal star chart for beginners and add everything to SP with better drops. We already have more than enough power for SP, no need rebalance damage abilities to scale for SP. 

Why do you need Better Drops if you're Already Geared To The Teeth ? 🤔

I don't think you've thought this Suggestion Through...

4 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

edit: or what, the same build to behave differently for different people taking it into the same mission and playing the same way? What is going on here?

That's One Option....

Essentially DE can apply a per Player Difficulty Modifier that allows different members in one Squad to experience Different Levels of Difficulty within The same Mission against the Exact Same Enemies....

They should have done this instead of Wasting Time on this Damage Attenuation Rubbish....

3 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

Most builds are too powerful for normal star chart with the power DE gave us. Are we supposed to purposely gimp ourselves to play at the level of the enemies?

Yes.... Obviously 

3 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

That's ridiculous. We have a "hard mode" where that power can be utilized but no incentive to go there.

That just proves you're not really interested in a Challenge.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Think about what it is You're saying here:

You: "I want Ice Cream..."

Developers give you Ice Cream....

You: "I have no incentive to Eat This Ice Cream."

Developers: "🤨 I thought you wanted Ice Cream🤨".

This is Legitimately what you "I want Challenge" People Sound Like.

Now if You came out and said exactly what you meant: "I wanted Exclusive Rewards for me and my builds only and everyone else can go screw themselves." 

Then that what end The Confusion...  up your Mind.... If you want a Challenge then use The Tools that Provide you with a Challenge...

 

3 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

if anyone is reaching for the stars, then they have the right to crush anything below them.

I like this.... Can I steal this... Please ? 👀

Screw It... I'm Stealing It.... 😈

"if anyone is reaching for the stars, then they have the right to crush anything below them." - @Lutesque 

2 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

So the task of balance falls on the player? If that's the case the Devs have failed.

What you're Proposing is no Different.... It would still fall on the Weaker Players to get Stronger so that they can Do the Harder Content.... That's the players doing exactly what you're Complaining about....

"The Sword Cuts Both Ways." - @Lutesque

That's another Original Quote by Me... Definitely not Stolen... 👀

2 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

 

What would a weird build be? I

There's a bunch of Set Mods in The Game.... Try Using Those.... I bet they are More Fun than you think.... 🤔

2 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

Even weird builds are too much. 

There's nothing Weird about your Builds... primers are a long time Meta and you are using them.... Try Something actually Different for a Change.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There's So Many Options....

2 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

Not force fed power? It doesn't even matter what you bring. I just ran a lith fissure on an unmodded banshee and despair modded with nothing but concealed explosives. That's the level of power required. We are expected to all play together when a one mod loadout works. 

If I were you I would worry more about your Lack of Imagination than how powerful you are... No wonder you're Bored.... 👀

2 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

 

The… definition of weird builds you’re using is a little different to mine. I was thinking something like my Ack and Brunt that was heavy on  blocking and taunting and combo building through slash ticks all leading to a heavy attack that would do lots of damage.

See..... Now there's a Creative Tenno... ♥️ !!!

2 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

 

Unfortunately, it’s definitely true that multiplayer suffers for our ability to bring custom builds; hiding out in single player is an option, but some sort of matchmaking for like-minded players outside of recruiting would definitely be preferred.

Why does DE ignore this Request ? 🤔

38 minutes ago, Monolake said:

DE nerfed enemeis scaling thats the only reason you can kill lvl9999s with your weapons easily now, in the past raw hp would scale into billions.

I'm pretty sure only the Armor Scaling got Nerfed.... Meaning the Raw HP is still the Same...

Only the Effective HP got lowered and that Doesn't matter anyway because it's still to High to use anything that Doesn't Bypass Armor.....

 

[(NSW)Greybones]

51 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

That's One Option....

Essentially DE can apply a per Player Difficulty Modifier that allows different members in one Squad to experience Different Levels of Difficulty within The same Mission against the Exact Same Enemies....

🤔 What, akin to one player equipping Dragon Keys while another player doesn’t, and they use the same build in the same mission?

A while ago (years now?) before I started experimenting, I’d thought and made a post (or was it topic?) suggesting incentivising using Dragon Keys by granting increased EXP and money gained and stuff while they were equipped, to sort of put the fight back into Warframe for myself and anyone else looking for the idea of a personal difficulty modifier.

Since then I figure that it’s not necessary, not strong enough of an effect anyways, and just means that someone not using the dragon keys will mop the floor while Master Dragon Keys would just be better off equipping a different mod(s) instead if they’re just going to reduce the effects of their original stat-boost mods they had equipped in the first place

edit: I don’t know if this is what you meant, I was just strongly reminded of what I consider a similar idea I’ve had in the past

51 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

I like this.... Can I steal this... Please ? 👀

Screw It... I'm Stealing It.... 😈

"if anyone is reaching for the stars, then they have the right to crush anything below them." - @Lutesque 

Haha, feel free. It wasn’t meant for me anyways, since I reach so high rarely as the novelty strikes me and wears off, so someone else who it applies to more might find more use in the phrase.

[Berzerkules]

44 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

What do you mean ?

The Normal Star Chart has all the same Mechanics as The Steel Path... Literally the only Thing that Changes is The Bloated EHP that Enemies are given and in case you haven't Noticed.... It's Been Power Crept already last year with the new Goodies...

Chances are if you're Enjoying one but not the other.... there's Something Wrong With Your Build....

That just proves you're not really interested in a Challenge.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'll just respond to this. 

It's not that I am or am not looking for challenge. What I'm looking for is a use for interesting mechanics. 

Star chart is just boring, enemies die too easily and there aren't enough of them. Our kits function differently in SP because enemies don't die so easily. Like low efficiency builds can fail in normal starchart because there aren't enough enemies to gather orbs but SP makes them viable with higher spawn rates. It opens up possibilities that don't exist for normal stuff. You can't gimp yourself enough to make use of some fun mechanics(that thermal sunder thing or max spore damage saryn I was talking about in the other thread). 

Take Mirage for example. Explosive Legerdemain just nukes normal stuff but in SP it is a cc ability, it does hardly any damage but it locks the place down. Now mirage in no longer a dps queen nuke she is one of the best cc frames in the game. You don't even need to build for strength since eclipse is unreliable. Now pair Explosive Legerdemain with Shooting Gallery/muzzle flash. You lock down the whole damn map with constant explosions, blind and jamming enemy guns. It's still a cheese build but it's different and not possible in star chart unless you play for quite a while. 

We still have the power to dispatch enemies of any lvl with weapons but our abilities provide utility instead of just kills. Instead of a nuke fest we actually have a use for crowd control. 

[Darkduprey]

Le 08/04/2021 à 15:03, ghoti0315 a dit :

Wait, do you see an actual challenging content in warframe?

"Mobile defense" and "fighting endurance level enemies" isn't challenging as it is just the numbers being higher

To be fair it does contribute to the challenge to some degree.

Now of course bullet sponges are not a real and well designed challenge but on the other hand, you still need numbers to reach a certain threshold to create a challenging experience. You can't have challenge if your super complexe boss dies before activating any mechanic or if his damages are so low that you survive even while ignoring his mechanics.