When players discuss balance…

[TheArmchairThinker]

45 minutes ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

Ok I'll answer this in stages. So the answer to your first question is simple, you have missions that AREN'T doable by everyone. Radical thinking I know but this exists in many other games, why does every single mission have to be able to be beaten by a player who's say played for no more than a month? Just like the login rewards why can't there be missions in game that a player really has to work towards upgrading their gear to be able to complete? 

Looks like you misunderstand what I'm saying. What I'm saying is there's massive gap between you, who mash numbers to reach ridiculous amount of damage and those at your level. An MR 30 player can one shot eidolon solo while another MR 30 can take 5 minutes to kill one. See what I mean? The power difference is very big that missions that aren't doable by everyone may end up abandoned and make DE choose not to make more of it. If we make the power gap smaller where advanced players can do it faster but not the point of one shot killing everything, we can make it but at your power level where everything is one shot, what is the thing that can challenge your power?

50 minutes ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

And this sweeps right into your 2nd question, YES it is. It's absolutely FOMO from the players and money for DE. What other possible logical reason is there for not creating content that can challenge high level experienced players and be a brick wall for lower level ones? I think you're misunderstanding me, I'm saying that DE are well aware that the most money comes from new players and they've seen in the past(we all have) the constant uproars on the forums whenever something new is teased as being for higher level(Helminth MR lock for an example) and then we've also seen countless times how quickly something is nerfed when casual players cry foul over it, again the sudden decision to lower the MR lock on Helminth is a good recent example. All you have to do is Google "warframe nerf bursas" to find a prime example of the crying. Other things like Fortuna enemies being nerfed within 2 weeks of release, I actually enjoyed those first 2 weeks because for the first time in ages in this game there was an enemy that was an actual threat and COULD KILL ME. 

And what makes money from the FOMO you listed? Helminth doesn't make any money as far as I know since there's no way to pay money on that

52 minutes ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

To the last statement you made, I myself could design content to challenge experienced players purely by challenging their movement skills in an example I gave earlier in this thread. I could also design a much more engaging scenario style mission to challenge players and make it fun. And I am NOT a game designer. So I refuse to believe that DE are not capable of it and there is no other reason for not catering to all types other than what I already said. You can call it condescending if you like but sometimes people just don't like to hear the truth and I shoot straight, I don't sugar coat it.

So it's just movement skill and nothing else? What makes it different than a custom obstacle course in dojo that you already able to make one? Also, what kind of "more engaging scenario style mission" that can challenge players or at least make it more than spamming whatever nuke you're bringing other than making it longer with additional objective to take care? I found a nice thread about making missions harder

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1194566-instead-of-nerfing-our-powers-how-about-making-missions-in-hard-mode-harder-instead/

The question is, will that be enough to make things fun?

[Aldain]

3 minutes ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

Helminth doesn't make any money as far as I know since there's no way to pay money on that

Technically you can spend plat for the Warframes to subsume...for ones like Protea and Harrow it is almost preferable with how RNG hell can be.

For the record, Helminth's MR lock is something I don't agree with being a big deal though, high or low MR the end resulting output would have been the same either way, there's no actual skill involved in just AFK farming mats and honestly locking such a basic system behind how much junk you've grinded isn't a good metric for preparedness.

I agree though that there should be something that can be failed in method of skill and execution however. But locking Helminth just to appeal to the high MR crowd (and I say this as a guy who literally BUNGLED his way to MR21 on Switch) wasn't a way to help anyone.

Arbitrarily locking things behind zero-skill MR grinding is just as bad as making things like Railjack painfully too easy imo.

But what do I know, I'm one of those midcore oddballs.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

2 hours ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

Looks like you misunderstand what I'm saying. What I'm saying is there's massive gap between you, who mash numbers to reach ridiculous amount of damage and those at your level. An MR 30 player can one shot eidolon solo while another MR 30 can take 5 minutes to kill one. See what I mean? The power difference is very big that missions that aren't doable by everyone may end up abandoned and make DE choose not to make more of it. If we make the power gap smaller where advanced players can do it faster but not the point of one shot killing everything, we can make it but at your power level where everything is one shot, what is the thing that can challenge your power?

And what makes money from the FOMO you listed? Helminth doesn't make any money as far as I know since there's no way to pay money on that

So it's just movement skill and nothing else? What makes it different than a custom obstacle course in dojo that you already able to make one? Also, what kind of "more engaging scenario style mission" that can challenge players or at least make it more than spamming whatever nuke you're bringing other than making it longer with additional objective to take care? I found a nice thread about making missions harder

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1194566-instead-of-nerfing-our-powers-how-about-making-missions-in-hard-mode-harder-instead/

The question is, will that be enough to make things fun?

I hate multi quoting cos it'll lead to us both increasing quotes so I'll keep answering in one go broken into parts.

No I understood what you meant, I'm saying they should introduce mechanics that simply require teamwork from high level players in order to succeed. Cooperation and timing on puzzles is the easiest way to do this but you can also introduce strong versions of Arbitration drones for example to keep players on their toes, enemies who are only vulnerable on weakpoints(The Nox is one of the best designed enemies in game) that sort of thing. Raids had a bomb to carry and by adding limiters to this such as not allowing bomb travel through portals as an example, you can increase the odds of success. 

I guess you didn't read all the hate backlash crying from low level MRs who were demanding access to Helminth? Because they were angry that they wouldn't be able to use it? That's FOMO. They demanded it, DE as usual bent over and took it up the you know what from them, as they always do. THAT is the money issue I'm talking about. And it's not just Helminth, it's everything, hell the other day a player complained that he doesn't think it's fair that Deimos sells a mod for a currently vaulted weapon... BOO HOO!! Build a bridge and get over it, use one of the other 400 weapons we have at our disposal and be patient. When I took a break from the game there was stuff I couldn't get, I got it over time when it came back, I didn't make a thread complaining about it. That's FOMO in effect and it's a slippery slope that often snowballs on this forum and ends up with DE nerfing something, making it more accessible etc. DE are too afraid of losing new players because they bring in the money, this isn't rocket science.

The difference to a simple obstacle course is that I would challenge each aspect ie movement, operator skill, twitch aim reflexes, decision making on the fly. Randomize the maze so that you cannot simply watch a video and learn the route to cheese it, randomize combinations so that players have to think fast and react accordingly, again this isn't hard to think of and DE should be capable of doing so. 

For the last one ok let's just get a stick and draw in the sand a Raid style mission. Remember I am not a game designer, I'm not in a cubicle designing levels. Let's start by actually making Railjack useful, let's have 2 teams of 4, both of which start on the Railjack. We enter space near a planet with asteroid base defenses orbiting it and a large Defensive shield that's impossible to bypass and the power's coming from that nearby space station surrounded by capital ships. So 4 stay on the Railjack or near it in Archwing and both defend the RJ and attack the Capital ships boarding them and taking them out of the fight. Meanwhile the other 4 have gone off to the station to sabotage the defensive shield but this is guarded by such things as the slowly rising elevator we had in Jordas Raid, defense lasers that you can't simply press 4 to win against(requiring say 2 - 3 players to coordinate a hack on 2 consoles in different areas of the ship at the same time) while any others defend from a hoard of attackers who also have means of bypassing hard CC abilities). Then once the defenses are down and the final blast door is breached you take out the reactor and hightail it back onto the ship so you can all fly down to the planet's surface and negotiate enemies and puzzles on your way to a final boss confrontation to finally win your loot.  But like I said, I'm not a game designer.

Did a bit of research for you, here's a couple of good ones. 
 

 

I suggest reading them to understand what I'm talking about, I particularly love this quote in the last one,

The mrs and I went into a tier 5 bounty pre-nerf for a look at how they were.. she, a barely modded mag, me, a general build loki.. you know, casual stroll. We got smashed, over and over. It was great. We hated it, but it was fresh and unexpected. Cut 2 days later after nerf, we're yawning. lol

[XAN3MK]

7 hours ago, Aldain said:

Uh, I agree that Railjack went too far in the opposite direction, but nothing really changed with Necramechs other than no longer getting screwed over if the Fome/Vass swap happened and part 2 of the vault raid having less wasted time shooting random infested as far as I know.

Oh, I don't disagree with that, although I still think the I->II->III Isovault raid should have been remained an option, granting you an increased drop chance at the rear drops if you were willing to commit to the longer route around. That said, I was referring more to the fact that the mechs are available for plat, and while that's in line with the majority of the content, it directly diminishes the value of the Isovault content, a major addition of the Deimos update. The cluttering of the tables with the awful Deimos arcanes doesn't help in that regard either. Can we just ditch those and have common arcanes available there? Being able to get Arcane Nullifier or Arcane Consequence would be infinitely more valuable to a newcomer or intermediate player. 

 

6 hours ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

Many things used as challenge in other games and it's praised to death but in warframe? It's suddenly bad like these

- Massive health : Monster Hunter have this where a monster fight can last for 30 - 40 minutes like a fellow Tenno said, and it's good in that game but in this game? Zealoid Prelate steel path, 2 billion EHP from region and the fight can last for 15 minutes, people don't want to do it again

The caveat is that Monster Hunter has incredibly designed combat system and monster behavior/moveset. I wish Warframe had even a modicum of the greatness that is MonHon's gameplay. 15min of Prelate and 15min of Alatreon or Fatalis are a very different experience. I did Steel Path Prelate three times without cheesing him with Revenant and I can tell you, it is not pretty. It is not a hard/challenging fight once you have the gear/tools to tackle it, but a bloated one  that drags and drags.

 

4 hours ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

Yeh look that's fair and your other comment about myself and Zanagoth but I just don't see why they can't create missions to challenge players like myself and then continue to also make missions that appeal to the players who just want to run around and be godly. And the answer is of course, money. FOMO is what keeps it from happening, the potential for players to cry that they're locked out of content by not being as advanced as others and THAT is what I have a problem with. That exists in other games but not Warframe because DE are too greedy and afraid to take a proper stance against the whining.

And the worst thing is that outside of somewhat prohibitive prices on some long time vaulted primes, there is nothing in Warframe that's impossible to get eventually, but no, we can't have something being a long term task, gotta have access to everything right now! Who cares if any sense of challenge or accomplishment is devalued in the process. I wonder if somebody told these people that long term goals are fine. Took me couple of days of practicing and attempting Fatalis in MHW before I could reliably and comfortable do and solo the fight. It is a very engaging and rewarding process. Some got there quicker, some are still trying to get there and that's fine.

The Helminth system you mentioned a few posts later is the most egregious example - the people who complained about it are the people who also don't have the tools, experience or the resources to adequately engage with the system. The MR requirement reduction was cosmetic at best, which is arguably the worst and quite dishonest way to go about it. 

[-CdG-Zilchy]

Just now, XAN3MK said:

And the worst thing is that outside of somewhat prohibitive prices on some long time vaulted primes, there is nothing in Warframe that's impossible to get eventually, but no, we can't have something being a long term task, gotta have access to everything right now! Who cares if any sense of challenge or accomplishment is devalued in the process. I wonder if somebody told these people that long term goals are fine. Took me couple of days of practicing and attempting Fatalis in MHW before I could reliably and comfortable do and solo the fight. It is a very engaging and rewarding process. Some got there quicker, some are still trying to get there and that's fine.

The Helminth system you mentioned a few posts later is the most egregious example - the people who complained about it are the people who also don't have the tools, experience or the resources to adequately engage with the system. The MR requirement reduction was cosmetic at best, which is arguably the worst and quite dishonest way to go about it. 

Amen to that.

[XAN3MK]

6 hours ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

In regard to the differences in content, do you think your 2015 assessment is more based on your "new" experience with the game, growing and learning to be a vet, at that time? I ask because I remember the intimidating and overwhelming feeling I use to have during that time, lost in the huge menu of mods, frames and weapons I didn't have as well as how poorly I performed with attack evasion, etc. The noob experience, aka nostalgia love, is a heavy thing in Warframe.

Apparently I forgot to answer this in the last reply. If the Warframe Wayback is to be believed, I joined the game on 7th of January, 2013 (I do have the Closed Beta accolade), so from that perspective, I was never intimidated or overwhelmed by the amount of new content simply because I followed the game as it grow in scope and size. When I started playing there were like 6(?) Warframes and around 20 weapons in total. On a single tileset. (Ye olden Corpus ship). That being said, I don't get intimidated by systems in video games, I like being thrown into the deep end, to learn and figure things out as I engage with them. I never had that "What is this?!" moment with the modding station in Warframe that is apparently very common, despite living through at least 3(?) re-tools of the modding system that I can think of.

Different mentality, I guess?

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

6 hours ago, XAN3MK said:

Apparently I forgot to answer this in the last reply. If the Warframe Wayback is to be believed, I joined the game on 7th of January, 2013 (I do have the Closed Beta accolade), so from that perspective, I was never intimidated or overwhelmed by the amount of new content simply because I followed the game as it grow in scope and size. When I started playing there were like 6(?) Warframes and around 20 weapons in total. On a single tileset. (Ye olden Corpus ship). That being said, I don't get intimidated by systems in video games, I like being thrown into the deep end, to learn and figure things out as I engage with them. I never had that "What is this?!" moment with the modding station in Warframe that is apparently very common, despite living through at least 3(?) re-tools of the modding system that I can think of.

Different mentality, I guess?

Gotcha. I don't think it's a different mentality. Looking at Warframe from your perspective, I can see why your view is different: your growth with the game means your initial familiarity and early discussions means that your understanding of the game is maximized. For me, beginning at the end of 2015, the approach was much different. What was 20 weapons for you at start was 200 for me, and so on. Therefore, it would make better sense for later starters to be overwhelmed by the options, choices and freedoms Warframe offers...while also making sense that early adopters would feel less. 

[(NSW)Greybones]

Thinking back over all the things I said about “Blah blah catering to one or the other blah blah”, I feel like it should be clarified that I believe DE are still the ones making the game. Their vision is what they’re following, and it gets molded and formed to fit juuuust enough that they don’t go under. The players are valued, obviously; if game designers wanted to design for only themselves, they would not choose to design for others.

I’m actually a little disappointed that this wasn’t pointed out earlier (though I may have missed it if it was). We players didn’t build the game or write its lore. Is it just such a given that we aren’t the designers of the game that no-one thought to spell it out? 🤔 Perhaps there was no need to clarify

[TheArmchairThinker]

18 hours ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

I hate multi quoting cos it'll lead to us both increasing quotes so I'll keep answering in one go broken into parts.

No I understood what you meant, I'm saying they should introduce mechanics that simply require teamwork from high level players in order to succeed. Cooperation and timing on puzzles is the easiest way to do this but you can also introduce strong versions of Arbitration drones for example to keep players on their toes, enemies who are only vulnerable on weakpoints(The Nox is one of the best designed enemies in game) that sort of thing. Raids had a bomb to carry and by adding limiters to this such as not allowing bomb travel through portals as an example, you can increase the odds of success. 

I guess you didn't read all the hate backlash crying from low level MRs who were demanding access to Helminth? Because they were angry that they wouldn't be able to use it? That's FOMO. They demanded it, DE as usual bent over and took it up the you know what from them, as they always do. THAT is the money issue I'm talking about. And it's not just Helminth, it's everything, hell the other day a player complained that he doesn't think it's fair that Deimos sells a mod for a currently vaulted weapon... BOO HOO!! Build a bridge and get over it, use one of the other 400 weapons we have at our disposal and be patient. When I took a break from the game there was stuff I couldn't get, I got it over time when it came back, I didn't make a thread complaining about it. That's FOMO in effect and it's a slippery slope that often snowballs on this forum and ends up with DE nerfing something, making it more accessible etc. DE are too afraid of losing new players because they bring in the money, this isn't rocket science.

The difference to a simple obstacle course is that I would challenge each aspect ie movement, operator skill, twitch aim reflexes, decision making on the fly. Randomize the maze so that you cannot simply watch a video and learn the route to cheese it, randomize combinations so that players have to think fast and react accordingly, again this isn't hard to think of and DE should be capable of doing so. 

For the last one ok let's just get a stick and draw in the sand a Raid style mission. Remember I am not a game designer, I'm not in a cubicle designing levels. Let's start by actually making Railjack useful, let's have 2 teams of 4, both of which start on the Railjack. We enter space near a planet with asteroid base defenses orbiting it and a large Defensive shield that's impossible to bypass and the power's coming from that nearby space station surrounded by capital ships. So 4 stay on the Railjack or near it in Archwing and both defend the RJ and attack the Capital ships boarding them and taking them out of the fight. Meanwhile the other 4 have gone off to the station to sabotage the defensive shield but this is guarded by such things as the slowly rising elevator we had in Jordas Raid, defense lasers that you can't simply press 4 to win against(requiring say 2 - 3 players to coordinate a hack on 2 consoles in different areas of the ship at the same time) while any others defend from a hoard of attackers who also have means of bypassing hard CC abilities). Then once the defenses are down and the final blast door is breached you take out the reactor and hightail it back onto the ship so you can all fly down to the planet's surface and negotiate enemies and puzzles on your way to a final boss confrontation to finally win your loot.  But like I said, I'm not a game designer.

Did a bit of research for you, here's a couple of good ones. 
 

 

So more timing and co-op oriented missions and less focusing on enemies being tough, aggresive and whatnot? Sure, I think that can work and it will be a nice place to eat popcorn while seeing the whining thread about having to work together considering how many people were so lost on pre-rework railjack and public spy sortie. Assault can be a nice template for that

That depends on DE and as you said, advanced players don't really spend money compared to new players right? And I think they cater more to bite sized activities than any "hardcore" so like you said, be patient. One day you might get the challenging content you want

That "isn't hard to think" is pretty subjective since someone can say make enemies tougher and it's not hard to think, yes and even when they're made to be tougher, you have advanced players that will wipe them out like nothing and say it's boring or impossible to finish in a timely fashion for others so unless we're going a sweeping nerf/buff on every part of the game, I don't think we can say "isn't hard to think" just like that

What you put in raid style mission is doable, but I believe there's some limit on the AI that makes it not possible to have the situation where you can enter 4 different places and have bunch of enemies to fight and that's a reason why corpus raijack makes you enter the main objective as a group instead of optional individual entry. Their tech is not adequate at the moment

For MR though, it's not a reliable measure since there are players that leech exp farm and reach MR 30 without knowledge or low MR with lots of knowledge so unless there's a more reliable casual/advanced/hardcore/whatever measurement, I doubt DE will ever lock something for advanced players or whatever you fancy with

[lowgrav]

im not reading half this stuff as we are on page 9 already so ill just go back to this threads title

do people even want balance?  in the orphix vennom event we lost our frames and got shoved into nechromechs eveyone has 1 of 2 mechs parcore is removed but all players are around the same lvl as mechs are not that old right so it dont seem that hard for that to be balanced as you dont have to mess with too much 

the community: rage we have so many frames and all we can use is the mechs 

DE made it so you cannot heal the mechs easly so its chalanging to keep em alive but people still raged about the event by my understanding its that this mission nurfed players by removing our power and made us fight with the mechs witch apparently people dont like not using our frames some people are even sugestion an operator only mission but from what ive seen from the previous event the community will rage at that too

what people want and what they say they want can be different as some may sugest an idea that is better in their head but when put into the game is a terrible idea (pvp anybody?) 

also for those people that are kinda bored with the game and complain about how the game has changed so much since it started i think its because to keep the game fresh they have to introduce something new but old players are bored with the old stuff and want that new game feeling so adding something too simmilar will not work (new frame, tile set update) so DE has to introduce something that is completly different just so you can have that new game feel they got rid of staminer they added pvp improved the parcore gave us railjacks ,open worlds, mechs, archwings , hoverboards all to the point where some people are seriously questioning if we are still ninjas anymore

so if you want challange and balance i guess the thing that needs ajusting is the difference in power from the end game power lvl to the early game power lvl as they seem to be way off early to mid dont seem to be the issue as early players eat dirt alot mid players still eat dirt but end game players do multi hour runs (you see the difference?) its probs not the enimys or the missions that need the balance tweak