Upcoming Gun Buffs

[(NSW)Greybones]

2 hours ago, Orokin said:

So let me get this straight, and feel free to correct me if I am misinterpreting what you say. You dont understand why someone would complain about diversity while still engaging in content that is generally restrictive? Just because someone plays something, doesnt mean they think it is ideal.

I think I see what you mean, and I do understand why someone would complain about diversity while still engaging in content that is generally restrictive (I believe that restricting options means a player has to start getting clever with what's left; I expect not everyone is happy to paint with a limited pallette)

2 hours ago, Orokin said:

As to your second point, that just diverts the responsibility into the player. Game balance sucks? That's the player's fault of course! Just remove all your mods if you are not having fun!

I'm sorry but it is not worth talking about in that case because literally all the game's problems are actually the players problem, and if you believe that then there is no reason to give feedback because the game is already perfect.

This is an extremely simplistic view of it, as to be almost insulting, but it's not like I don't understand where you're coming from.

There is absolutely room for feedback and discussion about balance, because while many players are taking a sledgehammer to the content when a standard one will do, the fights are still following a set of rules. Many players won't see enemy variety as more than just some slightly different-looking dead bodies, but there's reason for them, and reason for the resistances. Not everyone has all the power; there are still new players coming through. And if anyone wants to have a proper scrap, then understanding these (enemy variety and resistances) makes the experience so much more interesting.

All of the enemies within a singular mission must be within a certain time to kill (with equipment on the mission's level). If an enemy is outstanding as an absolute bulletsponge even if a player has brought the right equipment (still not a sledgehammer, mind), then that's grounds for examining regarding balance.

As an example, I've fought Tyl Regor, and while my weapons modded to deal with the resistances of the enemies leading up to him did their job (no One Weapon To Rule Them All), I simply could not deal with his shield recharge rate. That's one that I'd wonder what happened; I engaged with the content on its level, yet Tyl is practically invincible. Did I bring the right tools? Do I need to replace caustic or radiation with electricity? Did I bring the wrong Warframe? Do I just need to land my shots more consistently? Is he balanced? (the last question is definitely one I'd only ask after I felt certain I'd exhausted my same-level options).

The game has balance, but if a player wants to discuss the balance of most of the content, then there is responsibility for them to not be coming from a perspective of only ever having broken the game with their numbers. And if a player simply does not have fun being overpowered, then maybe it's worth thinking about not playing on super easy mode. If a player builds for resistances first and foremost as priority 1 before they start adding strict damage mods, there is definitely less of a chance of "One weapon suits all", because a gun will usually work well against one type of enemy, and usually fall flat against another, all within the same mission. And suddenly there's reason for approaching different situations in different ways with different weapons, and maybe some interesting situations will arise (it happens constantly for me, at least).

edit: Honestly I'm not sure I should have posted this, since I'm super tired at the moment. But that's the general gist of where I'm coming from, and would be glad to clarify any of my stances that may need it (just later)

 

 

As an aside, if a player doesn’t need all the stat increasing mods, there are plenty of alternatives to replace them, like augment, exilus, QoL, etc (I feel like I’ve said this already, but that may have been a different thread). It’s easy to slot in a string of stat increasing mods, and if they’re not needed it’s just as easy to slot other things.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

4 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

I think I see what you mean, and I do understand why someone would complain about diversity while still engaging in content that is generally restrictive (I believe that restricting options means a player has to start getting clever with what's left; I expect not everyone is happy to paint with a limited pallette)

This is an extremely simplistic view of it, as to be almost insulting, but it's not like I don't understand where you're coming from.

There is absolutely room for feedback and discussion about balance, because while many players are taking a sledgehammer to the content when a standard one will do, the fights are still following a set of rules. Many players won't see enemy variety as more than just some slightly different-looking dead bodies, but there's reason for them, and reason for the resistances. Not everyone has all the power; there are still new players coming through. And if anyone wants to have a proper scrap, then understanding these (enemy variety and resistances) makes the experience so much more interesting.

All of the enemies within a singular mission must be within a certain time to kill (with equipment on the mission's level). If an enemy is outstanding as an absolute bulletsponge even if a player has brought the right equipment (still not a sledgehammer, mind), then that's grounds for examining regarding balance.

As an example, I've fought Tyl Regor, and while my weapons modded to deal with the resistances of the enemies leading up to him did their job (no One Weapon To Rule Them All), I simply could not deal with his shield recharge rate. That's one that I'd wonder what happened; I engaged with the content on its level, yet Tyl is practically invincible. Did I bring the right tools? Do I need to replace caustic or radiation with electricity? Did I bring the wrong Warframe? Do I just need to land my shots more consistently? Is he balanced? (the last question is definitely one I'd only ask after I felt certain I'd exhausted my same-level options).

The game has balance, but if a player wants to discuss the balance of most of the content, then there is responsibility for them to not be coming from a perspective of only ever having broken the game with their numbers. And if a player simply does not have fun being overpowered, then maybe it's worth thinking about not playing on super easy mode. If a player builds for resistances first and foremost as priority 1 before they start adding strict damage mods, there is definitely less of a chance of "One weapon suits all", because a gun will usually work well against one type of enemy, and usually fall flat against another, all within the same mission. And suddenly there's reason for approaching different situations in different ways with different weapons, and maybe some interesting situations will arise (it happens constantly for me, at least).

edit: Honestly I'm not sure I should have posted this, since I'm super tired at the moment. But that's the general gist of where I'm coming from, and would be glad to clarify any of my stances that may need it (just later)

 

 

As an aside, if a player doesn’t need all the stat increasing mods, there are plenty of alternatives to replace them, like augment, exilus, QoL, etc (I feel like I’ve said this already, but that may have been a different thread). It’s easy to slot in a string of stat increasing mods, and if they’re not needed it’s just as easy to slot other things.

The issue of resistances is that all they really amount to is another layer of multipliers. 

Choosing the correct element is nothing more than a conditional multiplier to damage. 

Part of the issue with Warframe's damage system is the abundance of unconditional damage multipliers that devalue the importance of resistances. 

We also have armor scaling so high that Bleed is more valuable than building against armor resistances.

WARFRAME needs to squish down the multipliers on both sides.

Building against resistances right now is relegated for early progression because it doesn't take long before players get multishot, crit damage and Bleed.

WARFRAME is balanced for early game, but DE sort of gives up after a certain level of progression.

[Kaotyke]

Oh, you mean the Nerfs of enemy survivability?

With the way things are going, they will need to nerf our TTK soon enough. Its just getting too fast.

[Aldain]

21 minutes ago, Kaotyke said:

Oh, you mean the Nerfs of enemy survivability?

With the way things are going, they will need to nerf our TTK soon enough. Its just getting too fast.

Well...if they get all weapons on a similar scale then they might be able to see where to nerf everything down to a manageable level.

Spoiler

I know, I'm grasping at straws here, but straws are all I have left dammit T_T.

 

[(NSW)Greybones]

Resistances require elements that have effects that work like micro modifiers to a skirmish, on top of being (yes) another layer of multiplier. If one enemy is resistant and another enemy isn’t, then the fight can flow differently based on what enemy you’re fighting.

I’m not going to argue that armour scaling in highest-level content might be a little bonkers (I’m assuming you mean Steel Path, because I’ve built for resistances against level 100 armoured enemies and it worked very well indeed. Had interesting encounters throughout!)

( 🤔 Wasn’t Steel Path mainly meant to let players test stuff outside of the Simulacrum? I remember before it was introduced there was all this talk about content creators only showing Simulacrum, and players complaining that they didn't have a place to try a build in an actual fight)

7 hours ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

Part of the issue with Warframe's damage system is the abundance of unconditional damage multipliers that devalue the importance of resistances. 

Regarding this quoted bit, are you coming from a perspective of “It’s only logical to slot the highest damage” or…?

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

2 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Resistances require elements that have effects that work like micro modifiers to a skirmish, on top of being (yes) another layer of multiplier. If one enemy is resistant and another enemy isn’t, then the fight can flow differently based on what enemy you’re fighting.

I’m not going to argue that armour scaling in highest-level content might be a little bonkers (I’m assuming you mean Steel Path, because I’ve built for resistances against level 100 armoured enemies and it worked very well indeed. Had interesting encounters throughout!)

( 🤔 Wasn’t Steel Path mainly meant to let players test stuff outside of the Simulacrum? I remember before it was introduced there was all this talk about content creators only showing Simulacrum, and players complaining that they didn't have a place to try a build in an actual fight)

Regarding this quoted bit, are you coming from a perspective of “It’s only logical to slot the highest damage” or…?

Modding in Warframe amounts to stacking as many different multipliers that 8 slots will allow you to have. 

Generally, +Zoom, magazine capacity and etc are not as valuable as an entire multiplier. Weapons with bad Crit stats can't compete with weapons with good Crit stats with exceptions like the Tysis that can combine the multiplicative multipliers of both Viral and Corrosive procs together. Early game players who don't have potatoes yet only have room for Base Damage and Elemental mods. Missing a multiplier can mean the difference between using up a partial clip or mag dumping against a single enemy. 

For early progression, Damage Types matter. Boltor shreds Grineer while being a peashooter against Corpus Shields, so switching up weapons + elements between missions is important. 

Yet, as levels scale up, armor scales up and players get access to potatoes, multi-shot and crit mods, everything is thrown out with the bath water with the abundance of unconditional multipliers. 

Only Grineer keep up with all these new layers of unconditional multipliers because of armor while Corpus and Infested were designed to only handle a single layer of damage multipliers just melt. This lead to the Corrosive meta of old and the current Viral/Slash meta. There is a reason why 99% of Youtube Videos seem to be of players shooting up rooms of Heavy Gunners. If your weapon can take out Heavy Gunners, it can take out anything philosophy. DE tried to selectively counter this with new questionable enemies with DPS based DR and shields with innate 99% DR which the player base outright despises.

Player damage multipliers and the enemy health multiplier called armor makes it so that player damage and enemy eHP is all over the place.

A single min-maxed member of a 4 player squad can easily pull +90% of the team's damage output. 

Armored enemies easily have +90% damage reduction at Sortie level.

It's no surprise DE has trouble making balanced content and has resorted to Damage Caps, DPS based Damage Reduction, etc. 

Armor scaling late game is so absurd that Slash while having negative modifiers against armor is best against armor as Bleed ignores armor 100% while Puncture doesn't even come close in effectiveness despite having positive modifiers. Despite the fact that armor modifiers double dip, boosting damage and mitigating armor by the same percentage.

Grineer have two armor types that on paper force players to switch between Corrosive and Radiation, but as long as they aren't status immune, Viral+Slash works better than either.

The more multipliers you can tack on, the less valuable each individual multiplier is and the conditional multipliers from building against resistances are the least attractive.

 

WARFRAME needs a stat squish on both sides for resistances to matter again. The game needs less multipliers.

Armor shouldn't scale, Viral procs and Critical Damage should be additive with Base Damage. Once all the multipliers are done away with, you bet there will be room for +Zoom and Reload speed when players fiddle about with Fire Rate.

At the very least, Condition Overload being additive with Blood Rush + Organ Shatter will pull melee back down to gun level.

 

[(NSW)Greybones]

Sounds a lot like you’re saying “It’s only logical to stack as much damage as possible”, @DealerOfAbsolutes.

What if it makes a player bored?

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

2 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Sounds a lot like you’re saying “It’s only logical to stack as much damage as possible”, @DealerOfAbsolutes.

What if it makes a player bored?

Early game without potatoes, did you even look at the non-damage mods?

Utility mods are a luxury you ignore early game and continue to ignore late game.

[(NSW)Greybones]

5 minutes ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

Early game without potatoes, did you even look at the non-damage mods?

Can’t deny that when I first started playing, I was convinced I wanted to go through the game as fast as possible to get those sweet sweet rewards.

Then I got bored. It took a weirdly long time to make the connection between “I’m destroying everything, and I’m bored doing it”

edit: I absolutely sniffed at mods like Patagium. Now I slot it into every build I can

[Animalon29]

On 2021-06-07 at 8:38 PM, General_Durandal said:

~

So, I hear that how DE is doing it,
is boosting the damage of the gun mods...

But, also making it so the boosts only take effect when you don't have a melee equipped?

What?

This is going to make people just solo melee if their gun mods don't work while with a melee.

I use my main Melee weapon for it's utility, not because it's good.
(which is not good, not even in the top 10 list)
I'm not going to unequip it just so I can shoot things harder.

~

The mods has a descripction that says PH + 300% damage when melee is not equiped 

that’s means that you’lo still have whatever “PH” is going to be even if you have a melee equiped.

Btw: PH is place holder, they going to write there what the mod does.

[Loza03]

12 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Sounds a lot like you’re saying “It’s only logical to stack as much damage as possible”, @DealerOfAbsolutes.

What if it makes a player bored?

That is exactly the problem. It very frequently does make a player bored. It's also what the game's design continues to lean more and more into doing with the Steel Path, the Wolf of Saturn, Treasurers, at-launch Railjack, Eidolons, Profit-Taker. Even Sorties are a result of the issue.

Warframe's problem is that the effective ways of playing the game and the fun ways of playing the game are becoming more and more divorced from each other. The most fun way to play Monster Hunter is to learn Monster tells and exploit openings in their movements. It's also the most effective way. The most fun way to play Deep Rock Galactic is to kite enemies or set traps with your equipment to lay waste to the bugs. It's also how you play the game well. The most fun way to play Devil May Cry is to learn how to combo, enemy step and style on your enemies. Mastering these skills also means you've mastered the game.

The most fun way to play Warframe is to figure out your own playstyle, to leap around the environment, and use all these myriads of combinations of weapons and powers in interesting ways. The most effective way is to load up on damage multipliers and EHP boosts and try not to fall asleep. Alternatively, it's to pick Wukong, Titania or Nova and completely disregard every combat encounter and movement challenge between you and your objective.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

1 hour ago, Loza03 said:

That is exactly the problem. It very frequently does make a player bored. It's also what the game's design continues to lean more and more into doing with the Steel Path, the Wolf of Saturn, Treasurers, at-launch Railjack, Eidolons, Profit-Taker. Even Sorties are a result of the issue.

Warframe's problem is that the effective ways of playing the game and the fun ways of playing the game are becoming more and more divorced from each other. The most fun way to play Monster Hunter is to learn Monster tells and exploit openings in their movements. It's also the most effective way. The most fun way to play Deep Rock Galactic is to kite enemies or set traps with your equipment to lay waste to the bugs. It's also how you play the game well. The most fun way to play Devil May Cry is to learn how to combo, enemy step and style on your enemies. Mastering these skills also means you've mastered the game.

The most fun way to play Warframe is to figure out your own playstyle, to leap around the environment, and use all these myriads of combinations of weapons and powers in interesting ways. The most effective way is to load up on damage multipliers and EHP boosts and try not to fall asleep. Alternatively, it's to pick Wukong, Titania or Nova and completely disregard every combat encounter and movement challenge between you and your objective.

In summary, other games force players to engage with the game's systems to succeed. Everything builds on top of each other.

There is internal consistency that players can engage with. Players are rewarded through engagement.

Warframe by contrast allows players to circumvent its systems and that is the most efficient way to play. To add difficulty, new enemies are added that don't follow pre-established systems the player spent hours learning.

Some enemies have dozens of times of ehp than others.

Some are status immune.

For example, Corrosive is best against armor early game, but then suddenly, Viral Slash is, except for status immune enemies like Sentients. Wait, new Deimos enemies are Viral immune too. They also have DPS based damage reduction so your Fire Rate Arcane lowered your DPS?

Here's this new Corpus enemy. He has 99% DR shields. He's also immune to toxin unlike every other Corpus enemy.

Can't even use weapons against the Glassmaker?

Warframe keeps pulling the rug under players or rather the foundation keeps breaking because DE prioritized rule of cool and had to apply duct tape like invincibility phases.

Warframe makes you feel cheated for trying to engage with its systems.

[Aldain]

1 hour ago, Loza03 said:

The most fun way to play Warframe is to figure out your own playstyle, to leap around the environment, and use all these myriads of combinations of weapons and powers in interesting ways. The most effective way is to load up on damage multipliers and EHP boosts and try not to fall asleep.

There's nothing worse in gaming than when the most effective tactic available makes the game not even look like the same game anymore.

It's like Super Smash Bros Melee tournament play, it looks nothing like Smash Bros and looks more like two different seizures fighting each other. A game shouldn't fundamentally change when going from standard to ideal tactics.

[Mover-NeRo]

What I like to do sometimes is get few beers , turn on some good music and just do random Relics runs with anything I find fun to play. 
I usually end up with some rares and sometimes even some vaulted stuff.
And when new primes comes out all you have to do is wait 3-4 days until the market saturates from farmers and the pieces are totally cheap.
 

[(NSW)Greybones]

*deleted* Wait wait, scratch that. I re-read your post @DealerOfAbsolutes ‘cause I had a sense of “Hmm. Something’s tickling me in the back of the head”, and sure enough I misinterpreted what was said, so this post’s question didn’t need to be asked.

Can’t deny that there can be a feeling of inconsistency and maybe frustration in mechanics (though I tend to be like “Oh, different mechanic, interesting”)

[(NSW)Greybones]

12 hours ago, Loza03 said:

The most fun way to play Warframe is to figure out your own playstyle, to leap around the environment, and use all these myriads of combinations of weapons and powers in interesting ways. The most effective way is to load up on damage multipliers and EHP boosts and try not to fall asleep. Alternatively, it's to pick Wukong, Titania or Nova and completely disregard every combat encounter and movement challenge between you and your objective.

The stretch between efficiency and fun can be immense, I’ve never denied that.

What makes effeciency-until-bored-and-then-still-more-efficiency-even-when-bored a defendable stance?

Not everyone gets bored with laying waste to hordes of enemies, mind you. So they’re now having fun while being maximum efficient

For me, the most fun way to play is the way you mentioned. Efficiency can get stuffed (because I’m not rushing towards those rewards). (…because for my way of having fun, efficiency must out of necessity take a backseat). (…and because the reward systems are different between those aforementioned games and Warframe, and if I wanted rewards fast, I’d go maximum efficient regardless of the game)

 🤔 But the “fun way to play” also describes a lot of other players, some who are experiencing maximum efficiency as they play? Hmm

(you made some good points across the rest of your post, btw)

[_R_o_g_u_e_]

On 2021-06-08 at 3:51 PM, (NSW)Greybones said:

Agreed.

Slightly off-to-the-side; when I hear players complain about changes, current and future, I tend to (not always, mind) hear "Warframe content is that slog we have to go through for the sake of the grind, let me get mission times down to 1 minute until I'm pulled up short by Steel Path, then claim I'm an expert in balance."

Sure, there's always things to improve. I don't trust most of the player base to be good at deciding how it should go if the aforementioned perspective is where they're coming from (though there are some clever ideas floating around).

While I do overall agree with the point you’re expressing, what I don’t believe is that DE has any better idea about the overall balance of the game than the community does.

A lot of things that get released seem closer to guesses, and therefor we keep getting things below and above the power curve. It seems when DE balances something right, it’s almost a complete accident.

For me, nothing crystallised this fact more than the fact that when, faced with the prospect of buffing guns overall, they decided not to target base stats, but instead opt for bandaid mods.

At least one person at DE should really be in touch with what those base numbers mean, and should be able to quite readily make changes to them to improve their performance. 
 

The fact that doing nothing more than “buffing the guns,” is considered too difficult, really solidified my perspective that DE simply aren’t in tune with the overall balance of the game.

I mean, instead of buffing guns, they are just going to do to guns what they did to melee. Create ubiquitous mods that are in every build, that we’ll have to come back and nerf in another year.

I love warframe, and I love DE, but I’m really disappointed that they opted out of putting in the leg work and balancing their game by hand.

I mean, hell, it would likely take me two weeks but I would gladly do the rebalancing for them. For free. There are a lot of weapons, sure, but making them better really isn’t that difficult to achieve, and the bar set by melee would be very difficult to surpass with base stats alone.

A lot of guns could have their base damage doubled and still not come close.