Dev Workshop: The Arsenal Divide

[(NSW)But_A_Helgi]

Liking the look of this so far!

Not sure how I feel about the mods/arcanes needing kills to activate. The problem was that guns struggled to kill things compared to melee (which has access to similar mods, CO, BR, etc that don't require kills to reap their benefits). The idea of having scaling mods/arcanes is a good step in the right direction, just concerned the conditions will put more focus on already powerful guns that didn't need the extra help.

Looking forward to seeing this. We'll see how it shakes down when the update drops, eh? Thanks for the heads-up. ^-^

[pantophage]

7 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Generally speaking, we feel that gun stats are in a good place, but it's the Mods that are lacking

if the stats were in a good place, then why is the main benefit of every new gun arcane +360% damage at max stacks? 

I understand the primary goal of these changes was to bring guns to the same level as melee, but this doesn't address that a large majority of guns are simply mastery fodder. there are a lot of fun and interesting guns that I love but simply aren't worth using because their status and crit chance are so low. giving a boost to base damage across the board still doesn't change that many guns are simply not worth using, hope the next round of changes addresses this!

[(XBOX)Foighne]

My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined. The gun buffs don’t outweigh the melee nerfs at all.

[(PSN)RWalls91]

1 minute ago, pantophage said:

if the stats were in a good place, then why is the main benefit of every new gun arcane +360% damage at max stacks?

They're OK for normal, aka not steel path missions. They require buffs for steel path, or specifically steel path grineer who just turn into sponges unless you condition overload them, slash proc them etc. The point here is they're making balancing changes based on the games hard mode, changes that will affect all modes. They could have easily added a gun damage to all steel path missions. Or, and I know this is far out, fix the armor scaling causing such insane damage reduction! Shocker, I know.

[anfuerudo]

4 минуты назад, pantophage сказал:

I understand the primary goal of these changes was to bring guns to the same level as melee

By bringing melee damage to the same level as ranged.

[UnderRevision]

I'm a pretty causal player and not a numbers person but, on a purely conceptual level, these new mods' reliance on kill conditions seems like a chicken/egg problem.  If I could kill steel path enemies with my guns, I wouldn't need new mods to make my guns capable of killing steel path enemies.  Is the intention that we hunt for the weakest units like ratels and shield lancers, kill one, and then have a few seconds of being able to kill other enemies more easily?  Because I don't see how that will compare to charging in with a melee weapon and attacking indiscriminately.  It's a much higher investment of focus and thought for, well, I hesitate to say less reward since I can't do the numbers, but the reward would have to be pretty significantly higher to make it feel like I'm not making things harder for myself for the mere sake of it.

Plus the weirdness that melee's power isn't locked behind the steel path, but all the upgrades for guns will be.  So, players will be taught to rely heavily on their melee and that they can have more power for their guns once they've learned they are better off without them.  Shouldn't we maybe to able to head into this higher level content able to use all of our arsenal, rather than only getting the ability once we've finished the harder content?  What are we going to use the upgraded guns on?

Add in the fact that guns already have less mod capacity due to lack of stance mods and that I don't have to unlock an arcane slot on my melee to make it do the best it can, and it really starts to look like melee is still a fundamentally better option in any content where my guns are struggling.  Maybe the math will make it all work in the end, but it looks like this is adding another hurdle to clear for every bit of power added.  Hurdles that melee just doesn't have to deal with to achieve its greatest potential.  And, naturally, it's the guns that can already hold their own that will reap the most benefit since only the ones that can achieve these higher-level kills with the greatest ease can put the buffs to best use.  I suppose that'd be true of any buff though, wouldn't it?

I'm going to go ahead and echo what others have said and say that this is truly a job for the test server.  Smarter people than I could probably provide much better feedback if given the chance.  On the bright side, it won't impact me in the slightest if this doesn't work out to be a viable buff.  I don't have Condition Overload, and my guns won't get any less effective for any of the changes so I'm looking at a non-update at worst.  We'll see about the glaive tweaks though.  I really like them so I hope the adjustments don't throw the feel off too much.

[Keybones]

If you want me to switch between Primary, Secondary, and Melee weapons, then get rid of the weapon swap delay. For futuristic ninja super soldiers the amount of time it takes to swap between weapons is an eternity, and it isn't even slightly fun. Thousands of other games don't have this sort of delay, and I've never understood why Warframe clings to it.

[Kaiga]

Tell me how that makes any kind of sense. If the problems are that 80% of the guns in this game are too weak to get kills in harder content, how are they meant to effectively utilize these arcanes?

All this does is make already meta weapons stronger, and keeps the ones that already can't kill in the dumpster 🤔

[Casardis]

All the Galvanized mods seem to follow the same structure, which is:
- Headshot hit -> Bonus Crit
- Multishot kill -> Bonus Multishot
- Status Chance kill -> Bonus Damage

Except for one: Galvanized Acceleration.

Why is it that we don't have a Galvanized Sight, which will be the Shotgun equivalent of the "Headshot hit -> Bonus Crit"? Instead we have a completely unrelated one (projectile speed) compared to the rest. If it's a balance issue, I'm not sure what it's balancing, considering we have weapons like Kuva Bramma in the "Rifle" category.

[RenzorTheRed]

If you want to make primaries/secondaries a better option for high level instead of melee, don't nerf melee. Buff primary.

Melee is fine.

Incentivize people to move to guns by making guns more attractive; not by making melee LESS attractive. You're effectively taking melee AWAY from people instead of offering something better. That's like making people drive less by making gasoline more expensive.

This is a mistake.

I actually like the idea of arcanes on guns, but nerfing the melee mods to force people to try new things is a mistake.

This is forcing. Heavy handed focusing on guns by hurting peoples' appreciation for melee. 

Also, regarding speed being a problem:

It's amazing that this needs to be said, but you must realize that people choosing to stack a bunch of speed mods in their melee weapons have to trade other options to be able to do that, right?

People don't just "beat the steel path by spamming E". If you load up a weapon with nothing but speed, you take away from being able to have other attributes; elemental damage and such. It's already balanced. In fact, for 'meta' melee builds, if you use Pressure/Condition, reach, Blood rush, weeping wounds, organ shatter, two elementals for viral or corrosive, and a speed mod, what can you take away to mix blood rush with something else? Crit damage? Take out reach, eliminating area of DPS? remove an elemental and be stuck only doing fire or toxin damage? It's balanced. Melee speed is fine. I feel like devs who play the game enough to understand players and builds would know this.

 

Honestly, I see a lot of good things. I like the Helminth stuff, and the Impact proc, and the gun arcanes, etc.

But leave Melee alone. Seriously. That's a heavy handed way to 'guide what we like'.

[ricuse7]

I very much enjoy the majority of these changes.
I have a single request...
I noticed that in in the workshop video that they had 5 pips below the arcane.

Every single Weapon/Amp arcane in the whole of Warframe has 3 pips below the arcane requiring 11 of each arcane to max it's rank.
Every single Warframe/Operator arcane in the whole of Warframe has 5 pips, requiring 21 of each arcane to max it's rank.

Please make sure this stays consistent.

[(PSN)Shane_G_G_85]

They in no way shape or form made primaries better all the did was make melee's worse this was trash. The first update for months and it's absolute garbage. They put a Band-Aid over a bullet wound just waiting for this game to bleed out

[(PSN)robotwars7]

7 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

• Which weapons are strong enough for me to fight at this level?

• Which weapons are best against this faction?

• Which weapons are the most efficient and easy to use?

• Which weapons do I have the most fun with?

• Which Mods make these weapons perform best?

I can't say as I ever ask myself  all these questions. certainly not 1 and 2 (and we have faction-specific damage mods with Primed versions now so any gun can be made viable against any faction in terms of damage type), 3 is the one most people go for, 4 is the one I sometimes think about. 5 is just the obvious answer being "whatever scales best".

regarding Berserker (now Berserker Fury): I think people who mostly use Hammers/heavy Blades will be a little disappointed as while high-speed builds are kind of silly looking on such big weapons, they might be turned off using them entirely if they have to swing them at a much slower speed. 

Blood Rush sounds ok, Condition Overload was bound to get looked at, but doesn't seem like it's been made totally irrelevant.

Glaives getting less damage I can understand, but why can't we have improved tracking to compensate? especially now that it's going to take considerable time to do a full power throw. Cedo's Alt-fire "Glaive" was already easier to use than a true Glaive, but didn't deal the same damage: now I see no reason not to use the Cedo if I want to kill people at high levels with a spinning disc. also, lol at the poor Kestrel: 92 direct damage is laughable. it was already a neglected glaive as it is, but now it sounds like it'll be the Stug of melees.

Kuva Nukor Getting nerfed.. even the blind could see it coming, but I question if it's necessary since the primary reason for taking the Kuva Nukor was simply for putting Condition Overload to work, yet Condition Overload has already been nerfed? the update that's supposed to be about making guns better, but instead this one will be worse: even with reduced chaining between enemies, there's still no real incentive to actually sue it as a gun, rather than a means of priming Condition Overload. all that's accomplished here is making the Nukor itself a little worse at cleaning rooms by itself.

8 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

The “Arcane Unlockers” themselves are an item you’ll need to install on the weapons you want to take further, and you can find the Unlockers in the Steel Path Honors. 

 

considering we already have to grind for the Arcanes themselves anyway, you could have just been nice and let us have the slots, like with Zaws and Kitguns... DE has a very funny definition of grind reduction.. hopefully the slots won't be too expensive.

the arcanes themselves sound decent on paper though. I'll be interested to see how the "deadhead" one interacts with Sniper Combos. 

the Galvanized mods definitely sound interesting, and while some might claim these mods to be a little extreme and reinforce power creep, I would argue that many guns genuinely need this level of power in order to even begin competing with melee on Steel Path.. for regular content, these mods should be overkill, but that's not gonna stop people them off to run low level missions of course... 

overall this seems like a mixed bag to me. I'd have been a lot happier if Glaives had some proper tracking and we didn't have to pay for the privilege of the arcanes as well as the arcanes themselves.. glad that at least we'll be compensated with some Forma, but between all the mods, the arcanes and the slots, the Acolytes are gonna be getting their butts kicked for months on end to gather up all that Steel Essence..

[Hypernaut1]

holy exaggeration. 

[nooneyouknow13]

5 hours ago, Her_Lovely_Tentacles said:

Is there any reason why Galvanized Diffusion and Galvanized Hell are considerably worse comparatively to Galvanized Chamber when considering their base mods?

120% baseline Multishot -> 80% baseline Multishot for shotguns and secondaries, while Primaries just goes down from 90% to 80%?

  Reveal hidden contents

 

This is what I came here to say. It looks like DE went a little C&P heavy on these mods.

[keikogi]

Going to leave a fairly hot take here. On kill is not really a condition because it does not really chance the way the player uses the gun. The changes it does bring to overall play style are fairly unhealthy for the game since it promotes rushing to level ( to not drop the buff )  and use only 1 weapon ( to not waste the buff ). Stuff like on heashot is good because it favors precision or even stuff like on reload is also good ( because on reloads backwoods the player dps or requires planing and timing)

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

29 minutes ago, Voltage said:

It could still be additive or multiplicative to quickening or Riven Mods

I refuse to get rivens to rectify any of DEs bad balancing decisions.

[TeaHands]

You can use abilities and melee to set enemies up to finish them off with your gun and then use the buff to kill more enemies which will get you more buffs. Just one way I can think of to get your buffs going.

[jhfdlkjd]

It's really questionable when ALL the new buff things are triggered ON KILL. With even lower base stats, how are they going to take the first step on high level enemies?

 

Other melee mod nerfs may need further test, but I'm afraid the Berserker nerf would be a disaster:

On kill - Same doubt as with the gun buffs.

Only 10 second - It's like a joke. To keep a flat 70% I have to kill an enemy (or 2) every 10 second?

Not stacking with Fury - What about other attack speed mods, like Quickening and rivens? This change is ruining the gameplay experience with low base speed weapons, but would players be able to neutralize the change with a riven mod (with attack speed)? If so, it feels really sarcastic since you've been trying to nerf the influence of rivens all along.

 

Another concern is about the grinding. Count every Acolyte kill time as 5min:

If the new arcanes are maxed at lv3, it takes 5 hours to farm them all. If they're maxed at lv5, 10.5 hours.

Maybe this is not the worst one on a player's to-do list, but it's definitely boring and repetitive as hell, especially for players who have already beaten steel path.

Consider adding more acquire methods for the arcanes, e.g. steel path dailies would be a nice place.

[Mrezu]

Hey!

"Attack Speed increases for Melee are part of what makes it so dominant. This is especially true when the conditions to reach animation-breaking Attack Speed are as simple as current Berserker: ‘on Critical Hit’. Infinite Attack-Speed Uptime is possible with a single Mod, and the result is animation noise with no distinction between hits, coupled with massive Damage output. "

You know? ...

Another reason why we go for high attack speed to cut down on the animations and combos is that they are just bad and look silly. Some attacks in melee "combos" have weird unnecessary long animations which dont do much, other than just lock you in place and annoy you. Most melee attacks, if not all also have forward movement, for some weird reason. :/

I think reworking the stances might be a good idea. Maybe also touching some of weapons which are not used so much or adding some matching gimicks or mechanics or both, for the weapons.

 

Not melee only, Acrid for example, once a King, now collecting rust and dust in the inventory. I have a idea to make it similar to Pip's gun from Paladins.

It would shoot some toxin bubbles, which would explodes on impact and cause a effect similar to how Penta with Napalm Grenades works, so it would leave a toxic goo on the floor and damage enemies over time. Seems like a good idea in my opinion. Would also of course need a stat increase, more damage status, maybe crit, or give it some multishot at base cause why not? The options are endless.

You can even work with its look.

I doubt there is anyone on this planet who loves how it looks, the textures are old as for most of the older stuff. And generally there are already newer weapons which also shoot toxic darts/quills (Hystrix and Zakti). :)

Overall these changes look interesting, specially the arcanes for weapons. I quite like the idea, however there are only 3 presented, and will be probably added later, 6 in total for secondary and primary weapons but all with the same mechanic and buffs. Hope you are planning on adding more variety to it, and that this is more like a test, to see how the players react.

Anyway, have a nice day, peace!

Thanks for reading all of this lol. :P

 

[(PSN)robotwars7]

getting the first kill requires a setup, but then once your buffs are active you're good to go for a while. plus the Arcanes are only one part of the buffs: most of the power will come form these new scaling "Galvanized" mods.

the main problem I have - which might turn out to be nothing - is needing to farm essence for the slot just to put on an arcane, even though Zaws and kitguns already came with slots added. I get that it gives us incentive to choose what guns get the treatment but IMO it'd be better if every gun had the slot, and then it's up to the player what they want to use. this wouldn't irk me if DE didn't claim to be "reducing the grind" before literally adding a grind that wasn't even there to begin with!

here's hoping they won't cost more than 100 essence a go, because ain't nobody gonna be putting these slots on guns like the Stug to begin with, and people like me who like to use a wide variety of weapons are gonna be farming Steel Essence till the end of time it seems.. I almost feel sorry for the Acolytes, they're gonna be farmed worse than back when they were tied to Shadow Debt! 

 

 

[Kaiga]

19 minutes ago, Hypernaut1 said:

holy exaggeration. 

You ah... you must not play. Have you ever tried steel path survival, or anything beyond the star chart? Most guns have the DPS of wet toilet paper against level 300+ enemies, and these mods certainly aren't going to help bad ones find any more diversity in loadouts, only marginally buff the already metagame ones.

[CrusaderTheFirst]

Wait, what about arch-guns? Shouldn't those get galvanized mods and arcanes as well? With the existence of primary and secondary mods like these as well as arcanes, it'd make the arch-guns feel obsolete in comparison.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

Just now, Kaiga said:

You ah... you must not play. Have you ever tried steel path survival, or anything beyond the star chart? Most guns have the DPS of wet toilet paper against level 300+ enemies, and these mods certainly aren't going to help bad ones find any more diversity in loadouts, only marginally buff the already metagame ones.

Use the many tools provided in the game and through teammates and even specters to debuff an enemy and/or buff yourself....

If you can't manage to get one kill with a weapon in this game that's a reflection on you.

[RAZORLIGHT]

Not that impressed with the changes.

 

You could have given primary and secondary guns some kind of aura slot in addition to the arcane