When players discuss balance…

[-CdG-Zilchy]

20 minutes ago, vegetosayajin said:

Yes, because as you said low level content can be done with literally anything. Search youtube for "Warframe - The Spears of Destruction" 1,2 and 3 from Triburos if you want to see how they defeat all bosses(at the time) with fishing spears just to prove a point.
With that information in mind low level content is so extremely easy at some point that there is no reason to discuss it.
Even for a new tenno I still remember the only boss that posed any kind of challenge the first time I did it was Kela De Thaym and that was with subpar gear almost no knowledge of the fight and I still did it, multiple times to farm saryn.
So yes, from the perspective of a player there is 0 point to discuss balance for low level content, they can whine: "someone does more damage then me, whaaaa" or something but a discussion? nope
 

One of the guys in my clan is a known Youtuber called Zanagoth. He has a video of completing the old Law of Retribution Raid with only fishing spears vs lvl 100 enemies and Vay Hek. The game is obscenely easy at this point sadly. He also did one 1 shotting the same boss with the mining laser.

[0_The_F00l]

Firstly we will have to define what (reasonable) balance is in the scope of warframe, it also very much depends upon your progression in the game.

There are very few "power level" identifiers in the game that actually help identify if things are supposed to be "harder" or "easier" MR level ? Weapon level ? Mod rank ? Forma count ? All subjective...

In most other games a lvl 5 sword would  be better than a level 1 sword and that lvl 5 sword is ideal for lvl 5 enemies would be implied, in warframe an MR 5 weapon can be better than one of much much higher MR and depending on how you mod it can still be poor for enemies at level 5 or be good enough to take out level 150 enemies.

Being able to take down level 10 enemies with level 5 gear should be challenging , being able to take down level 5 enemies with level 10 gear should be easy. That should be the premise of balance. How much harder or easier it is to complete an objective with level appropriate gear. But since there is no indicator if your are "level appropriate " you might as well get the best and biggest stick you can.

In my opinion there can not be balance in a power progression game like warframe , as the power and feature creep has caused players to have access to effectively level 500 gear while the missions are level 50 or lower in general.

So the game is basically balanced for a mission level that does not even exist (unless you spend hours in it). Steel path does add something and is in the right direction could have been done similarly by limiting mod choices.

I could absolutely limit myself to be gear appropriate (best effort) to feel the challenge or power . But it is honestly not the players job to make their own challenge , I would play a different game if I wanted that. And this limit only holds true as long as I play solo or with like minded players.

Public missions will be more like " follow the guy that's leaving corpses" , a mission is truly challenging in my opinion if other players are also on the same power level.

I am absolutely certain DE knows this , unfortunately I think DE also realises that if they do balance the game based on a players power, it will be significantly less fun for the community that has gotten used to seeing big numbers and simply getting S#&$ done , DE is partially to blame for this as they create such obtuse RNG , resource and time gates and then give players the means to optimise the fun out of it at a one time investment cost.

So I do not see true balance ever being implemented ,

I do foresee tweaks to minimize the difference between most popular , adequate and inadequate gear over time to justify resource investments. But I wouldn't call it balance.

That's all just my opinion of course.

[Brinstar7777]

6 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Are they coming at it from an extremely high-level content point of view or…?

Sometimes I feel left out of the loop a little, because I’ll see players complain about some balance change or new weapon, but I’m looking at the content I tend to do (utilizing said balance change or new weapon) and am like “I don’t… really feel the issue, sorry 😐“

You're not alone. The community can be pretty friggin toxic at times.

[Jarriaga]

6 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

They all want balance in the game, but whenever the issue of player power is all over the place and needs to be rebalanced is brought up they all went silent or tries to avoid the subject. You can’t have game balance if player power isn’t balanced. This meme post sums it up pretty perfectly. Credits to @PublikDomain

Agreed.

[Loza03]

Well, one of the issues is how non-existent the 'high content' is when you really get down to brass tacks.  Warframe is closer to, of all things, Dungeons and Dragons in its RPG loot design, being more tools and options over better tools and options - obviously both games have both, but they're less prevalent than, say, Diablo where sure you get more options, but the big chase is to get the sticks with the highest multipliers and base numbers. Warframe and DnD have this but in a more limited form (DnD usually limits this to class features and usually with respects to 'more uses of') and most of the time, it instead focuses on offering new stuff. When you get X way through the story in Waframe, you pick up a Railjack, or the Operator or the Necramechs, in DnD you get new tools with your wild shape if you're a druid, new spells if you're a caster and new ways to use Ki if you're a monk, amongst a bunch of other stuff. And of course, this eventually means you run out of stuff to get, meaning there's an upper limit on the loot cycle, which in theory, is offset by the fact that the sheer amount of depth the player can have access to by this point offers them a ton of customisability and the opportunity for some truly awesome encounters. The specifics differ wildly due to the fact that DnD is a 'pure' RPG experience whilst Warframe gets a lot of its blood from other sandbox and movement shooters, but the philosophy is the same for the RPG loot progression side of things.

Of course, with DnD, when you hit level 20, you're doing stuff like assailing the lairs of ancient dragons, crushing full Orc War-Bands or disassembling entire empires of Illithids. You're not just fighting the same goblins you were at 1st level but with more hit dice and a higher AC, you're fighting creatures with more tools, more options, and the ability to meaningfully and dynamically counter your options. In Warframe, on the other hand, you're fighting basically the same enemies except sometimes they're arbitrarily immune to 75% of your tools. And it's not like they're Tucker's Kobolds either, evening the power imbalance with intelligent plays and environmental advantages, Warframe's enemy design is usually pretty brute-force.

Not to mention that Warframe's enemy design kind of leaves a lot to be desired from the 'movement shooter' perspective as well, since as far as I can tell, enemies can pretty much track you perfectly no matter how fast you're moving and all congregate in small groups at or just above ground level. You don't need to use mobility to get good angles on hard-to-reach opponents, and you're not rewarded for using speed to rapidly flank or outmaneuver enemies since all of them will be shooting at you no matter where you come from.

[Danielw8]

Add weekend event with scaling reward like: x boss with 5 different stages or lvl the hardest one is lvlcap steel path and you get 50k kuva

[(NSW)Greybones]

1 hour ago, 0_The_F00l said:

But since there is no indicator of your are "level appropriate " you might as well get the best and biggest stick you can.

Quite an opinion :P I have to pick specific things out of it to respond to, otherwise I’m writing a novel of a response.

You’re right about the lack of levels matching anything. Took me ages to figure out that levels didn’t make me more powerful (except for Warframes, and even then those were comparatively mild improvements to my health and shields), it just opened more options. It was the mods I applied that determined how hard I hit and how easily I survived.

May be an indicator of how to approach Warframe 🤔 It’s certainly not clear-cut about its level rules.

 

 

Regarding this quoted bit; why would I go for the biggest stick I can?

I have an anecdote lined up, but I’d like to know what you make of the question first.

[0_The_F00l]

1 minute ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Quite an opinion :P I have to pick specific things out of it to respond to, otherwise I’m writing a novel of a response.

You’re right about the lack of levels matching anything. Took me ages to figure out that levels didn’t make me more powerful, it just opened more options. It was the mods I applied that determined how hard I hit and how easily I survived.

May be an indicator of how to approach Warframe 🤔 It’s certainly not clear-cut about its level rules.

 

 

Regarding this quoted bit; why would I go for the biggest stick I can?

I have an anecdote lined up, but I’d like to know what you make of the question first.

why would one go for the biggest stick they can? to wave it around of course.

[(NSW)Greybones]

2 minutes ago, 0_The_F00l said:

why would one go for the biggest stick they can? to wave it around of course.

Sounds pretty boring

edit: To each their own, though. Wanna hear my anecdote?

[0_The_F00l]

1 minute ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Sounds pretty boring

edit: To each their own, though. Wanna hear my anecdote?

Exactly it is boring cause its just waving a stick,

sure , love anecdotes, does it have fish?

[stormy505]

8 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

They all want balance in the game, but whenever the issue of player power is all over the place and needs to be rebalanced is brought up they all went silent or tries to avoid the subject. You can’t have game balance if player power isn’t balanced. This meme post sums it up pretty perfectly. Credits to @PublikDomain

'we can't have good boss fights without good balance'

Is just straight up wrong. Take wolf as an example, when he first came out, he actually had a gear check to kill him and made players change their loadout to deal with him, still wasn't a good boss fight because he was effectively a bullet sponge.

Good boss fights in Warframe: tridolons/orb mothers are the two best examples. They have gear checks like wolf but the thing that makes them good boss fights is the new mechanics they introduce to make them not just a bullet sponge.

Tldr: challenge does not equal a good boss, and a good boss fight doesn't necessarily need challenge.

[(NSW)Greybones]

1 hour ago, 0_The_F00l said:

Exactly it is boring cause its just waving a stick,

sure , love anecdotes, does it have fish?

Wait, so a player might as well be bored in Warframe because the game doesn’t have a strict leveling system? 😐 Yet here I am choosing to… not be bored? And it’s because Warframe doesn’t have a strict leveling system.

Otherwise I wouldn’t have this small anecdote that occurred while I was doing a level 5-15 bounty in search of Gara’s systems, and geared to have a fight. Was approaching the site of the first stage (a crashed drone) when I started being hounded by a couple of Dargyns who sent me scurrying for cover as they stripped Excalibur of his shields and brought him down to low (15ish?) health. Managed to gun one down on the second attack run, destroying the Dargyn and killing the pilot while my MOA machinegunned the second one clean out of his vehicle, dropping it out of the sky relatively unharmed.

Good thing this happened just outside the mission zone instead of getting the jump on me while I was fighting proper; I had to die once and commandeer a rampart to help clear enemies before I found the drone. They’re always in the center but I was really struggling to find it!

Got the drone up and nearly died from the first wave while escorting it. The Dargyn that’d been dropped just outside the mission area turned out to be exactly what I needed to defend the drone, and only got blown up afterwards 👍 

No fish in this story, sorry. Had I brought my biggest stick, there wouldn’t have even been much of a story beyond “Bullet jumped to area, killed things, waited for drone, didn’t get Systems, grind is too much”. And this was just the first stage (though admittedly not much happened in the later stages aside from some near-death experiences. And a second actual death).

[(PSN)robotwars7]

Tenno making an argument about balance in warframe, colorized, circa 2021:

[0_The_F00l]

28 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Wait, so a player might as well be bored in Warframe because the game doesn’t have a strict leveling system? 😐 Yet here I am choosing to… not be bored? And it’s because Warframe doesn’t have a strict leveling system.

Congratulations ? i am not sure if choosing to not be bored is a skill everyone possesses. As i said , it does depend on how far you have gone in the games power progression.

30 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Otherwise I wouldn’t have this small anecdote that occurred while I was doing a level 5-15 bounty in search of Gara’s systems, and geared to have a fight. Was approaching the site of the first stage (a crashed drone) when I started being hounded by a couple of Dargyns who sent me scurrying for cover as they stripped Excalibur of his shields and brought him down to low (15ish?) health. Managed to gun one down on the second attack run, destroying the Dargyn and killing the pilot while my MOA machinegunned the second one clean out of his vehicle, dropping it out of the sky relatively unharmed.

Good thing this happened just outside the mission zone instead of getting the jump on me while I was fighting proper; I had to die once and commandeer a rampart to help clear enemies before I found the drone. They’re always in the center but I was really struggling to find it!

Got the drone up and nearly died from the first wave while escorting it. The Dargyn that’d been dropped just outside the mission area turned out to be exactly what I needed to defend the drone, and only got blown up afterwards 👍 

No fish in this story, sorry. Had I brought my biggest stick, there wouldn’t have even been much of a story beyond “Bullet jumped to area, killed things, waited for drone, didn’t get Systems, grind is too much”. And this was just the first stage (though admittedly not much happened in the later stages aside from some near-death experiences. And a second actual death).

So you actively chose to use a lvl 1 sword to finish a level 5 quest? Good job i am proud of you.

[(NSW)Greybones]

8 minutes ago, 0_The_F00l said:

So you actively chose to use a lvl 1 sword to finish a level 5 quest? Good job i am proud of you.

It was fun! 🤗.

edit: Though I guess it was more a level 5 sword to finish a level 5 quest 🤔 I’m not a huge fan of really bullet-spongey enemies

[(PSN)Unstar]

9 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Are they coming at it from an extremely high-level content point of view or…?

They are coming from every possible angle you could imagine.  There is no commonly accepted definition of "balance" or "high-level" in Warframe.

[0_The_F00l]

Just now, (NSW)Greybones said:

It was fun! 🤗.

I am sure it was , but that's something you actively did , probably solo too,

already knowing the expected power level (estimated) and then adjusting your gear to it ,to not make it a "bullet jump race" as you said earlier.

But hey as long as you are having fun who cares whether its self imposed.

Results would have been different in a squad (probably).

[(NSW)Greybones]

41 minutes ago, 0_The_F00l said:

I am sure it was , but that's something you actively did , probably solo too,

already knowing the expected power level (estimated) and then adjusting your gear to it ,to not make it a "bullet jump race" as you said earlier.

But hey as long as you are having fun who cares whether its self imposed.

Results would have been different in a squad (probably).

Yup. I got bored with being overpowered in a lot of the content I’m still doing.

Squads would be different, for sure. It’s a little fiddley to do it solo (I’ve got a good feel for it now and can quickly set myself up as needed for whatever the fight is), but expecting others to do the same? A player’d have to make an effort to find like-minded players in the sea of speed-running demigods getting their whatevers speed-leveled or trying to find the right drop.

Honestly, I sometimes forget randoms are a thing since I got so little interest in rushing to the end before I can have fun, and it’s egg on my face when I’ve argued for a thing and completely forgot that random squads is an option 😅. I’d love to group up, but there’s not a lot for me to do

I think I acknowledged in an earlier post that Scrappers (I’m calling myself a Scrapper, ‘cos I’m looking for a scrap, see?) and Demigods might make poor battle-fellows. My partner and I at least know each other :P

I’d be surprised if there was an expectation that a random group would be onboard, but I’m not sure it matters so much because what do people tend to go into PUGs for in the first place?

[Loza03]

1 hour ago, stormy505 said:

'we can't have good boss fights without good balance'

Is just straight up wrong. Take wolf as an example, when he first came out, he actually had a gear check to kill him and made players change their loadout to deal with him, still wasn't a good boss fight because he was effectively a bullet sponge.

Good boss fights in Warframe: tridolons/orb mothers are the two best examples. They have gear checks like wolf but the thing that makes them good boss fights is the new mechanics they introduce to make them not just a bullet sponge.

Tldr: challenge does not equal a good boss, and a good boss fight doesn't necessarily need challenge.

Balance =/= challenge or difficulty. This is an extremely important distinction. 

Balance is just how well the game can manage to provide the intended experience and maintain the intended degree of depth. If Warframe were to suddenly lose all its nukes and mass crowd control options and keep its hitscan enemies with ballooned healthbars, perfect tracking, and limited counterplay it'd still be an unbalanced game - just no longer in the player's favour.

Warframe has more than enough mechanics to make bosses and other encounters more than just a bullet sponge, but those mechanics are out of balance with each other or have design issues on some levels. Alad V and Zanuka are also pretty interesting (if a bit opaque to some new players), and even Vey Hek's big turkey form (not his floating head form) has some interesting stuff, like a self-heal that the player can interfere with meaningfully. Interactions make an encounter IMO, and whilst Tridolons and Orbs do have some good stuff, they don't really have much interactivity with the player beyond just shooting them and/or fufilling X criteria to shoot them.

[Aldain]

10 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Regarding the last part of your post though, wouldn’t those examples be cases of “Bring the right tool for the right job”?

The right tool in 90% of circumstances doesn't matter because it is almost always a big fat sledgehammer.

Outside of Eidolons and boss fights precision weapons and non-status bullet hoses fall off a cliff faster and faster as the levels climb.

Why do you think people just use Melee so much? Even my clumsily modded heavy-attack Pennant can delete Veil Proxima Grineer in 1-2 heavy attacks, but if I tried using my Quellor I'd be more likely to die to stray hitscan gunfire even WHILE dodging in the time it takes to kill even one enemy.

The game isn't balanced for anything but 1-3 hit kills after a certain point, there aren't any "right tools" for each job because you either bring an omni-tool or you have nothing.

[(PSN)sister-hawk]

On 2021-05-14 at 8:34 AM, stormy505 said:

'we can't have good boss fights without good balance'

Is just straight up wrong. Take wolf as an example, when he first came out, he actually had a gear check to kill him and made players change their loadout to deal with him, still wasn't a good boss fight because he was effectively a bullet sponge.

Good boss fights in Warframe: tridolons/orb mothers are the two best examples. They have gear checks like wolf but the thing that makes them good boss fights is the new mechanics they introduce to make them not just a bullet sponge.

Tldr: challenge does not equal a good boss, and a good boss fight doesn't necessarily need challenge.

I realize this is going to sound like me nitpicking and arguing semantics, but I think it‘s important to keep in mind that challenge and difficulty are two different things.

Even though there’s a lot of people who don’t want to admit it, challenge is what makes a game fun, because we inherently enjoy the feeling of overcoming a challenge. But challenge doesn’t mean the game is just damned hard, it means the player is required to do something other than say “I won the game because I said so.” For the player to be challenged, there must be some obstacle that they must overcome. In a well designed game, this obstacle will require an appropriate amount of effort to surmount, not trivially easy, and not tediously and stressfully difficult.

There are also just as many people who don’t want to admit that there is actually a lot of challenge in Warframe. In fact it’s an insanely challenging game. Take a brand new player with a Mag and a Braton, put them in a Steel Path defense mission, and watch how much they struggle. It would be essentially impossible without some kind of game-breaking exploit.

So how do they overcome this challenge? With skill, effort, or practice? Nope. They get gear, which can take months and even years depending on how much time they have to play. But once they have the right gear? It’s trivial. They could do it in their sleep.

That’s because instead of challenging the player with interesting gameplay mechanics, DE challenges us with gear checks. Warframe is one massive gear check, which we overcome by tediously grinding away (or paying) to get the overpowered gear we need to make the game stupid easy.

In my opinion, this model creates an incredible amount of friction. If you have the right gear, the game is too easy. If you don’t, the game is too hard. And players in both categories argue with each other about how the game needs to be changed, while essentially playing different games. And the whole experience is unsatisfying to either group.

To create a more satisfying experience, the game’s challenge needs to be moved out of the arsenal, and more into the actual gameplay. This would give the player a much more active role in overcoming the obstacles presented to them. It’s far more satisfying to time a dodge and avoid an enemy attack, than to simply have so much effective hp that you don’t really care whether you get hit or not. At the same time, failure to meet the challenge in either case should result in an appropriate and measurable detriment to the player. “Oops, you got hit. A few more of those and you’ll be dead. Better take cover and heal up.” Not “Oops you got hit. ur ded lol now spend one of your five revives.”

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

I tend to hold things to a standard of level 100-150.

there’s people who hold things to levels 5-20. And there’s people who hold things to levels 10000000000-2000000000000000.

Both extremes are incredibly unhelpful in arguments as one side just has a far too low bar of standards, and the other only values things that can go 50 hours in a survival.

[Sovyul]

14 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Are they coming at it from an extremely high-level content point of view or…?

Most players, or rather forumers, are obsessed with boring balance, while devs are obsessed with fun-killing nerfing, that's all there is to it.

[Dunkelheit]

vor 14 Stunden schrieb -CdG-Zilchy:

For the record, Steel Path is also too easy and incredibly boring. Many vets outside of ones grinding it for Steel Essence would probably agree with me.

Steel Path is my favorite thing to do in my playtime. I gimp myself by not abusing shield gating and I die here and there if I don't pay attention. That is good enough for me. Sadly, after 5 missions my fun time ends and the grind starts.

The one thing I would like to see in Warframe are mini bosses like in Diablo. Those mini bosses should be like Acolytes, Stalker or Sentients and have a couple of strong enemies with them where you need at least to be awake or use teamwork to beat them.

[DrivaMain]

9 hours ago, stormy505 said:

Is just straight up wrong. Take wolf as an example, when he first came out, he actually had a gear check to kill him and made players change their loadout to deal with him, still wasn't a good boss fight because he was effectively a bullet sponge.

 

This is another symptom of unbalanced player power. How can you make a boss not one shot-able with the ridiculous powers player have? If you want to cater to the off meta setups players can one shot the boss with meta setups with relative ease. If you cater to the meta setups you either have to make the boss an extreme bullet sponge or include some ridiculous anti cheese mechanics like status immunity, ability immunity, and unmodifiable DR. You can’t have both, unfortunately DE chose the latter for the wolf.

As the user above said, I believe we need to move away from gear checks to actual ingame mechanics to overcome challenges to have engaging gameplay in the game. Player gear should only exist for flavor.