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[bnuy]

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[Wyrmius_Prime]

We have so many different ways of stripping nowadays that armor doesn't virtually even exist anymore. It's fine. Besides, the game would then just need some other system to make enemies beefier, because even the weakest of weapons would be capable oneshtting every enemy in the game.

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, Wyrmius_Prime said:

We have so many different ways of stripping nowadays that armor doesn't virtually even exist anymore. It's fine. Besides, the game would then just need some other system to make enemies beefier, because even the weakest of weapons would be capable oneshtting every enemy in the game.

Armor is "fine" precisely because we opt so heavily into mechanics that counter armored enemies. If we didn't have those mechanics, armored enemies would be bullet sponges. At the end of the day, armor isn't this magic mechanic that fixes our damage, it's just a health multiplier, so if armor were to made static with levels, everyone's health (and shields) could be made to scale harder if need be, though the problem of our weapon damage is something that ought to be addressed by targeting weapon mods.

[Leqesai]

1 hour ago, Maggy said:

Here is my absolutely tiny suggested change, despite how simple this would be to implement it would have a massive positive effect on the total balance of the game. Below the suggestions I will have a breakdown/explanation of why this balance change is absolutely necessary for the health of the game's balance.

• Remove armour scaling.
• Armoured units now have a static armour value that applies at all levels.
  • This means the Heavy Gunner unit would have 62.5% incoming damage reduction at all levels, no longer increasing with levels.
  • Base armour values would require a nearly across the board overhaul.

Just this one change would change the armoured unit power curve to be linear similar to that of non-armoured units, allowing units and factions to be cross-balanced regardless of what methods they use for their effective health values. (health, armour, shields)

Effective Health is the measure of raw damage required to kill the enemy in question.

1 Health = 1 Effective Health
1 Shield = 1 Effective Health
300 Armour = 1.00x EHP bonus for Health

So we take a unit with 1,000 health, 300 armour, and 1,000 shields.
For calculating effective health we have 1,000 health +100% from the 300 armour, and then 1,000 shields...
Effective Health Points (EHP) = 3,000

So piggy-backing off of the above explanation, health and shields are a linear bonus to effective health, whereas armour is a multiplier.

Basic math(and geometry) dictate that you can't make a line and a curve even. When armour scales, as it currently does, then the effective health bonus it grants changes over time. This means the amount of health you need to multiply a non-armoured unit by to balance the effective health values it has against an armoured unit is constantly getting larger. If you were ever to attempt to balance an armoured unit against one without this function, then you would need to apply a health multiplier on-top of regular health scaling, to give only to non-armoured units. Attempting to use any method like this to get around the armour scaling effective health discrepancy presents many of it's own glaring issues. We will compare a standard tanky Grineer and Corpus unit, Corpus Tech vs Heavy Gunner. For this example I will use level 100, standard Sortie level enemies. A Heavy Gunner has 95% incoming damage reduction from armour, that means at this level a Corpus Tech needs 20x more health to be equally tanky.

Heavy Gunner:

• level 100;
  • ~32,000 health
  • ~6,400 armour
    • ~95% damage reduction
  • ~640,000 effective health

Now if we adjust the Corpus Tech values to get a roughly even effective health.

Corpus Tech:

• level 100;
  • ~320,000 health
  • ~320,000 shield
    • ~640,000 effective health

Now you might be thinking, well that makes sense now! They're balanced! This isn't quite the case though, when considering factors like an optimal build for dealing with armour, well ideally you either strip 100% of the armour or bypass it with slash. So now even with these two units having their effective health values balanced, the armoured unit has significantly lower health values. Now with this divide in actual health value, you are only required 32,000 true damage to kill an armoured unit, whereas the non-armoured unit relies entirely on raw values for it's effective health, so even with an optimal build it now takes 20x more damage to kill than an armoured unit with an optimal build. If we were to compare based on level 200 units instead of level 100, or Steel Path units, then the non-armoured unit suddenly needs 50x+ more health than the armoured units to compete in tankiness. This goes to show how much drastically worse this issue gets as levels/content difficulty scales.

I agree with most of what you've said here.

Armor scaling is a very poorly implemented mechanic, in Warframe.

There are plenty of alternative methods of making units tough without going down the road of scaling damage reduction. There is a reason everyone focuses so heavily on Grineer enemies. It isn't because they are actually tough, it is because they are arbitrarily tough. They are the weakest faction offensively but the most annoying to kill. 

By normalizing damage reduction, to some degree, we can begin to actually balance the faction. Armor can still be important without being stupidly implemented. 

 

There needs to be a serious balance pass to armor and status effects. It is absurd that we are in like... what is this... round 4 of status procs and things are more screwed up now than they ever were before? 

[keikogi]

1 hour ago, Wyrmius_Prime said:

We have so many different ways of stripping nowadays that armor doesn't virtually even exist anymore. It's fine. Besides, the game would then just need some other system to make enemies beefier, because even the weakest of weapons would be capable oneshtting every enemy in the game.

Why even have armor if every weapon can bypass it? 

 

[Leqesai]

12 minutes ago, keikogi said:

Why even have armor if every weapon can bypass it? 

 

Every weapon can bypass armor? 

[keikogi]

3 minutes ago, Leqesai said:

Every weapon can bypass armor? 

Effectively,  yes. If it a primary it can bypass it if critical hits , impact procs and status proc ( thought modding nonsense ). If it as melee forced slash proc are fairly common. If it is secondary the only way is status but just about every good secondary uses a hybrid build that uses fire ro bypass half off the armor. Saying that every weapon bypass armor is a accurate statement.

[Leqesai]

2 minutes ago, keikogi said:

If it a primary it can bypass it if critical hits

You mean with Hunter Munitions?

Stug can bypass armor?

[keikogi]

38 minutes ago, Leqesai said:

You mean with Hunter Munitions?

Stug can bypass armor?

Have you seen anyone using the stug ?

[RazerXPrime]

4 minutes ago, keikogi said:

Have you seen anyone using the stug ?

 

[keikogi]

16 minutes ago, RazerXPrime said:

 

Oh yes a video mocking the steel path disproves a 0,26 % usage rate.

Edit: Stat from de 2020 statistics 

[RazerXPrime]

7 minutes ago, keikogi said:

Oh yes a video mocking the steel path disproves a 0,26 % usage rate.

Edit: Stat from de 2020 statistics 

No one said it's the best weapon. This vid proves you can use it. You're asking who was using it. Here's a vid of someone using it.

[(XBOX)HollowCube987]

DE started making enemy units with a special type of damage reduction that scales with your DPS.

I don't even know how it works because I don't play warframe with a TI-84 Graphing calculator, I just know that I hate it because I can feel it with every shot I take. That's what makes high level heavy units on the Cambion Drift so difficult to take down.

[keikogi]

1 hour ago, RazerXPrime said:

No one said it's the best weapon. This vid proves you can use it. You're asking who was using it. Here's a vid of someone using it.

Just saying , faking unability to understand a mildy hiperbole ( using none instead off almost none ) does not make a good argument nor a good point. 

Let me put into perpective how irrelevant stug is to the discussion acording to playertracker net there are 2.006.426 active playes 

The average recent play time is 1,5 hours 

The total amount amout off hours played is 3.009.639

Wich royghtly translates to 125401 days

And aroud 343,5 years 

Assuming the stug did not got a magical bump into popularity, meaning it is just as popular as it was last year , meaning it has the same popularity or less. It´s usage. 

So the stug was used for 7825 hours , with roughtly translates to 326 days.

What this all means, well I´m saying that it does not rain in the Namib desert and you are here saying ACTUALLY it rains once 5 mm per year, with is precesely 0 mm for all pratical intents and purposes. 

[RazerXPrime]

Excellent

[bnuy]

7 hours ago, Wyrmius_Prime said:

We have so many different ways of stripping nowadays that armor doesn't virtually even exist anymore. It's fine. Besides, the game would then just need some other system to make enemies beefier, because even the weakest of weapons would be capable oneshtting every enemy in the game.

The reasons DE is essentially forced to make any frame able to achieve 100% armour strip is directly because of the issue in question. If armour was properly balanced and had healthy methods to deal with it then they wouldn't be slapping 100% armour strip onto every frame to give them any chance at viability against armoured units. If we take Steel Path units, a Heavy Gunner will always have over 98% damage reduction. This means even if it's health were equal to a non-armoured unit, it would take 50x more damage to kill. Armour, much like shields, should be something you have to consider when building for, but your damage should not be made entirely obsolete just by the fact the enemy has armour. If armour scales it goes from providing a 2.00x modifier to effective health, to upwards of a 100.00x modifier. Now when considering that the health scales the same as non-armoured units, this means the armoured unit is reaching well over 100x more effective health meaning without having a perfectly tuned build you will not be able to deal with this enemy without having one of the two following criteria met.

• 100x+ more damage than the enemy has health
  • balancing around having to achieve over 100x what the enemy
    has in health, as damage, to have any noticeable effect on the
    unit in question is an absolutely asinine way to balance a game
• you strip 100% of the armour

If you're not doing either of these things you will never kill the enemy with armour.
The game would not need another system to make enemies beefier, you simple increase the enemy scaling values. Not every weapon in the game would be able to one-shot everything, this would actually widen the weapon power gap, putting low tier weapons further in power from high tier weapons. This would be a result of now instead of relying on something that can be entirely negated or heavily reduced for effective health on armoured units, to instead shifting to higher health values meaning their balance is more in-line with enemy factions. The issue of using armour reduction that you can ignore, to make an armoured tank, is now that if you ignore it the enemy is suddenly significantly weaker than the unit without the reduction. This means when appropriately built for, to kill an armoured unit, you require less than 10% of the total damage required to kill a non-armoured unit.

 

6 hours ago, keikogi said:

Why even have armor if every weapon can bypass it? 

See, here's the thing. Why have shields if every weapon can bypass it? All you need to do is mod for Toxin.
If every weapon can bypass armour? What do you mean if? They already can and do, that's why the anti-armour meta exists. This changes nothing about every weapon being able to bypass armour, this just changes the balance from slash being absolutely essential to deal with armoured units to being the most effective but optional, just like with how for shields toxin is the most effective but not absolutely mandatory as they can be dealt with through just having enough raw damage.

You get a very clear glimpse of how poor this balance is when you look at mods like Hunter Munitions or the new Internal Bleeding mods. These mods are used to force slash procs under different circumstances. Now you might ask, why would you need to add arbitrary mods to force slash when we have corrosive to strip armour? Well first of all they nerfed armour so it no longer fully strips, meaning that the damage effectiveness from slash against armour would be massively increased when compared to corrosive, and also increases with level while corrosive's effectiveness is lessened with enemy levels. Due to how amour scaling is and that you can't do anything against armoured units without drastically inflated damage values or ignoring it entirely, they had to give ways for subclasses of weapons to deal with armoured units. Hunter Munitions addresses the issue for crit weapons, their crits now force slash so they can bypass armour even if they aren't able to proc slash naturally. In Warframe's current iteration, any weapon that can not force slash procs via some means will be virtually useless against high leveled armour units. This would change that, as slash would only provide a flat damage effectiveness increase that no scales up as armour increases, meaning slash is no longer mandatory but now optional for dealing with armour, and much like with shields you can brute force armour with enough damage (but no longer requiring upwards of 100x total damage to brute force).

 

4 hours ago, keikogi said:

Oh yes a video mocking the steel path disproves a 0,26 % usage rate.

Edit: Stat from de 2020 statistics 

Stug is considered bad (damage wise) for a few reasons, one being that it has absolutely no way to abuse slash to deal with armour, so it can't be used on high level armoured units without having an external armour strip method. The other reason is that it has no up-front damage. When you shoot an enemy and have to wait a minimum of 1.5seconds for them to take any form of damage(especially in the fast paced hoard slayer game wf is) then the weapon is useless.
Stug's base damage is actually quite fine though, outside of the having to wait a year for it to apply, for non-armoured units it's quite viable and can be used in almost any circumstances.

[Wyrmius_Prime]

8 minutes ago, Maggy said:

The reasons DE is essentially forced to make any frame able to achieve 100% armour strip is directly because of the issue in question.

It's there to add some kind of a mechanic into the gameplay that isnt just hold the firing button or spam the same S#&$ over and over again. The bigger problem the current is facing is that spam E melee builds still go completely through that irrelevant armor the enemies have. I would much rather see enemies gain much, MUCH more defences in addition to stronger armor to make the gameplay more interesting in return.

[Leqesai]

5 hours ago, keikogi said:

Have you seen anyone using the stug ?

Not the point. You said every weapon fits your criteria. The word you were looking for is "most"

Btw i do use stug sometimes. It works  fine up to around level 60

[bnuy]

18 minutes ago, Wyrmius_Prime said:

It's there to add some kind of a mechanic into the gameplay that isnt just hold the firing button or spam the same S#&$ over and over again. The bigger problem the current is facing is that spam E melee builds still go completely through that irrelevant armor the enemies have. I would much rather see enemies gain much, MUCH more defences in addition to stronger armor to make the gameplay more interesting in return.

Not even sure why I'm dignifying this with a reply. Rub your brain cells together and re-read the post if you plan to comment again.

[Wyrmius_Prime]

1 minute ago, Maggy said:

Not even sure why I'm dignifying this with a reply. Rub your brain cells together and re-read the post if you plan to comment again.

Rubbing my 2 brain cells together told me that it ain't worth my time.

[bnuy]

1 minute ago, Wyrmius_Prime said:

Rubbing my 2 brain cells together told me that it ain't worth my time.

Well my post clearly and concisely disproves everything you just said. Also adding damage reduction does not increase engagement, fun, or the health of the game's balance. So I urge you again, if you wish to put forth your opinion on the topic you should actually become well read on it. You very clearly lack any understanding of why armour is imbalanced right now, and seem to lack an understanding of what makes a game enjoyable and engaging.

[CephalonCarnage]

20 hours ago, Maggy said:

See, here's the thing. Why have shields if every weapon can bypass it? All you need to do is mod for Toxin

How to confuse the argument with a strawman.

What you say is irrelevant as shields do not scale the same way. Now if DE introduced Shield scaling, then we'd see Toxin builds on everything and YT vids on tackling high level Corpus enemies with this new meta. Maybe that would be a good thing as all youre armour stripping, slash builds would be useless for Corpus and the salty tears would be immense. Which would obviously highlight the underlying issue, that the OP is, well, highlighting!

The idea that infinite armour scaling is OK because you can sidestep it in a couple of means doesn;t actually address the issue. We now have Haemmorage mods that give slash proces on impact - in other words DE has decided to address an issue by ignoring it and slapping a plaster over it, something all the other armour-stripping, slash-inducing mods did in the past too.

I'd rather this slash-as-damage mechanism was not needed.

[bnuy]

2 hours ago, gbjbaanb said:

How to confuse the argument with a strawman.

What you say is irrelevant as shields do not scale the same way. Now if DE introduced Shield scaling, then we'd see Toxin builds on everything and YT vids on tackling high level Corpus enemies with this new meta. Maybe that would be a good thing as all youre armour stripping, slash builds would be useless for Corpus and the salty tears would be immense. Which would obviously highlight the underlying issue, that the OP is, well, highlighting!

The idea that infinite armour scaling is OK because you can sidestep it in a couple of means doesn;t actually address the issue. We now have Haemmorage mods that give slash proces on impact - in other words DE has decided to address an issue by ignoring it and slapping a plaster over it, something all the other armour-stripping, slash-inducing mods did in the past too.

I'd rather this slash-as-damage mechanism was not needed.

This brings up another design flaw to me. We have damage modifiers for everything, we're supposed to be encouraged to build for the enemies weaknesses... why are we then just entirely bypassing everything about these enemies that distinguishes them from the rest because unless we do that then we can't be effective at all? Radiation is meant to be strong against alloy, but the armour scaling gets so ridiculously high that even slash is dozens if not hundreds of times more effective. Since slash universally bypasses armour now armour types are irrelevant, all that matters is armour or not. The same goes for shields, since we can bypass it with toxin there's no need to consider "oh well proto shields are mainly on the enemies here not regular shields so i should build for X damage type and Y procs to buff my shield damage". If armour scaling was removed this would equalize the enemy power scaling, and from there we could have balance done in a much more interesting way, relying on the elemental/damage type weakness system instead of arbitrary damage reductions.

[CephalonCarnage]

17 hours ago, Maggy said:

Radiation is meant to be strong against alloy, but the armour scaling gets so ridiculously high that even slash is dozens if not hundreds of times more effective.

Ah, tell me. Impact is supposed to be effective against shields, but it seems the biggest impact-dealing weapons have the most difficulty killing heavily-shielded corpus. Especially those bubbles many of them have that should be treated as shields if they're not already.

[Loza03]

On 2021-04-30 at 10:41 AM, Wyrmius_Prime said:

We have so many different ways of stripping nowadays that armor doesn't virtually even exist anymore. It's fine. Besides, the game would then just need some other system to make enemies beefier, because even the weakest of weapons would be capable oneshtting every enemy in the game.

This doesn't really encompass why Armour is a problem, just reducing it down to armour being a problem because it makes players weaker. There's more to it than that. Armour scaling is an issue for a number of reasons.

 

1: Unecessary complexity.

How armour works right now is simply unintuitive, and it can make it seem like the damage a player deals is almost arbitrary. Compare with the Corpus, where a Corpus tech is still noticeably tankier than a non-elite Corpus, but you're doing the same amount of damage. Likewise when the tech gets a higher level. It's clear that this enemy just has more health. This is as opposed to two different Grineer where the player's damage numbers will change wildly depending on a bunch of factors, several of which are completely unavailable for the player to view with in-game tools (and it can pretty esoteric with out-of-game ones too). 

A puzzle isn't fun if the information is intentionally obscured and obfuscated.

 

2: Uneven scaling.

This problem isn't exclusive to armour, but it's a major part of it. Nothing in this game scales at the same rate as each other. Let me try paint an example.

A player has an item that deals 100 damage. Two of the three enemy factions have an average health of 200 with a standard deviation of plus or minus 50, so the player needs to land an average of two hits per enemy. Some of them need three or four, a couple only need one.  The third faction has an average health of 2,000 with a standard deviation of plus or minus 500. The player needs to hit the enemy twenty times on average, but sometimes they might be able to get away with just landing ten hits, other times thirty. And this is from the same weapon which was designed to be fun around dealing an average of two hits.

If you buff the weapon up to the standard of the third faction, now the other faction is exclusively being one-shot, all the time. If you don't, you have a whole faction of ridiculous bullet sponges that aren't fun to play against because the tools the player has wasn't designed to be fun hitting the same enemy twenty times. If you try and make it the average, you can't, because the average is 800 health, so making the weapon deal 400 damage is still going to leave one faction as annoyingly tanky because you still need to hit one faction five times on average (three more than what it was designed for) and the other two factions are getting steamrolled.

This problem, in one form or another, utterly saturates Warframe. Across factions, within factions, across players, across damage types, across Warframes, across weapon types - the amount of damage the player has isn't just huge, the variation in it is so absurdly massive so as to make a happy medium impossible to achieve.

 

3: Overly specific metas.

As you say, there's a ton of ways to strip, ignore or outpace armour these days. But if an item can't? Well, it sucks. Nine times out of ten, it's just flat inferior to the other item which can. That item is taking up memory space  being useless because, sure, you can use it, but doing so puts you at a disadvantage compared to another option. The item loses value as a reward, the activities which provide it aren't rewarding to play, and the game is more shallow.

Unless you're intentionally going for something that makes you weaker, this is to the detriment of everybody. The game is only improved by there being more meaningful options. A choice with a correct answer is not a choice, it's a question. And, thanks to point 2, it's not like some weapons are 'better for Corpus and Infested' - if it can outstrip armour scaling, Corpus and Infested are a joke.