Dev Workshop: The Arsenal Divide

[(XBOX)Nightseid]

The "fixes" are good but I still see melee being more powerful. I feel guns need auras or stances like melee to bring them up to par because melee has more mod capacity. 

A possible idea for gun stance would be is to covert all the scavenger and amp warframe auras into gun stances, and they are only in effect when the weapon is being actively used.

 

[CaptianJackSpanner]

5 hours ago, Dunkelheit said:

Are you reading the forums?

Because your fellow Tennos are complaining day in, day out that the game

- is too easy

- has no endgame

- has no challenge

Most of the time you will find at least one thread on page 1 in general discussion

I've never complained myself.. But will see where the nerfs lead

[Aldain]

26 minutes ago, Bathynomus said:

Here's an radical idea. Instead of nerfing anything at all, why not bring the other weapons on their level?

I'll concede to this the moment somebody figures out how to make semi-automatic rifles compete with something like a Kuva Bramma in any meaningful way without just making it into another AoE weapon in some fashion.

[CortexKiller]

Having to unlock arcane slots on weapons... as if exilus slot wasn't bad enough aleady.  Why not buff the base stats of weapons rather than apply a bad band aid via intruduction of galvanised mods which rely upon "on kill" effects when said fire arms are already struggling.  This was not the changes to firearms that was eluded to previously.  To further hide such behind Steele Path is really dissapointing to say the least.  None of the presented changes will change what firearms are even viable nor will it address their actual scaling problem as many have already pointed out in this thread.

I suspect that instead of driving players to strive to make changes to their arsenal to accommodate these changes you will simply drive many of us aways from playing at all.  I don't often judge your content this harshly prior to release but having had several read throughs and discussed this with the people that I play with I do not think this way of changing firearms will do anything positive to the gameplay loop of Warframe.  It's a real shame, it feels as though there is a real disconnect between dev design choices and the actual active player base.  I urge you to reconsider the suggested changes and look deeper of how to improve weapon gameplay.

[Surbusken]

47 minutes ago, Aldain said:

I'll concede to this the moment somebody figures out how to make semi-automatic rifles compete with something like a Kuva Bramma in any meaningful way without just making it into another AoE weapon in some way.

Are you trying to say it's too difficult to come up with a solution? So the developers are excused from their responsbility?

I guess the first mainstream video games, came out in the late 1970s? So that's about 50 years worth of emperical data you can learn or copy-paste from, if you don't know how to create video games.

That aside, since they mostly copy-paste real life weapon formats, sniper, shotgun, pistol, maybe you could find some inspiration in paying attention to the attributes of the weapons you are copying?

All that aside, let's pretend you don't have internet access, you simply just can't study half a century of video games, ok, then there is a limited number of attributes through gameplay, right? So logically, you count those and spread them out.

Call it something like range, recoil, ammo count and so on. Then you make it an even pie split by counting 1, 2, 3. lol... It should be, rather simple.

If we have 3 friends, and we have 3 pieces of candy, each friend gets 1 piece of candy, right?

Fire-rate vs recoil, reload vs spread or whatever, point is rock, paper, scissor - you conceptually decide on the balance and trade-off's, first.

Why would you add a weapon or concept you don't know where you are going with it?

Would you start telling a joke if you had no punchline, I am sure it will figure itself out... eventually. Where are we going with this?

Why are bio-infested, futuristic space ninja's using old tech in the first place? Do you see special forces using muskets and flintlocks?

 

Could also call in outside professional help if you are creatively impotent, could also attempt a "hail mary", trial and error where you just try something, anything and collect new data on new designs, experimental and innovative, wasn't that what we were going for anyway, y'all mustve forgot?

The last thing waframe set out to do was copy-pasting, correct? Well this whole update is 100% copy-pasting. Objectively, factually and certified.

Arbitration copy-pasted into helminth, arcane bonus copied into weapon mods - where it's doubly sad and tragic, all the mods are the exact same.

I call that low effort, budget coding and lazy. Unambitious.
 

But forget all that too.

If you want to create a video game, you have a vision, an idea or sense of "what is this", "what are we doing, "what makes it fun"... first.

So BEFORE, someone added pistols, AOE or really anything to the game, you had to ask yourself those questions. What is going to make pistols fun, how do they tie into the lore, how can they compete with a shotgun? What is the pistol gameplay, what is the point, why is it fun, how does it feel rewarding?

Why am I having to type this out, it's elementary. It should not have to be said.

Here is another example, railjack taxi. Or railjack forge.

"What is the point", "what is fun about it", "what are we trying to do", were they questions you ask, before you design it.

We want to create "seamless railjack" back in 2017 or whenever. Okay great... but what is the point?

 

20% up and down in attack speed, or +2 to dexterity is completely and totally, utterly pointless to be concerned about, when this no design vision for the gameplay, globally. It is conceptually flawed, not in one weapon, one mod, one stat, one map. Conceptually.

Then you now ask, "well do you have any better ideas!?!?11" and as a matter of fact yes, players have spammed the forum up and down for years with suggestions and debating deep mechanical problems of the game, so yes, actually, people do have very much, very real far better ideas.

8 years down to the road, with no conceptual vision, you try to push the blame on to the players, as if they haven't been here the whole time, fighting, debating and supporting the game, come on now really.

 

[(PSN)AragonGX1]

Hey, a question regarding Steel Essence drops:
At the youtube video, Rebecca says: "the last change is the steel essence drop itself that drops from acolytes will be despawning after a 5 minutes timer"
at this page there are no referance regard that claim. could you reapprove / decline this change ?
*could have been deleted by the eddits, maybe? idk. but i would love a clear statement to what to expect, please.

This is my opinion regarding the approval of the statement - doing so will hurt the vets / pros / late game runners, by taking from them the only exist reason to go long endurance runs.
I hope the statement was canceled from joining the patch notes.

please add the answer to the main post so people wont miss it - either it approval/decline of it!

Edit: the statement is from 9:47 at the video timestamp

[Leqesai]

45 minutes ago, Bathynomus said:

Here's an radical idea. Instead of nerfing anything at all, why not bring the other weapons on their level?

Because the game is already piss easy. They need to nerf way harder than they are proposing to bring the difficulty back to a reasonable spot. Sorties used to be hard, you know? Now they are a snorefest.

[Ianto]

I appreciate the idea of these changes but the execution of your ideas and the proposed way of  implementing them seems to be flawed, as has been pointed out by many others here.

If you are basing the disparity of the weapon types provided in the game based on steel path gameplay, surely the onus of this repair should be on effectively making ranged weapons both fun and fit for purpose. 

The proposition of addressing this, is to add arcanes and mods for ranged weapons while bringing down the damage produced by melee weapons. While the idea makes sense the execution is going to lead to a nest of other issues if implemented as proposed.

Ranged Weapon Arcanes:

While the idea of introducing these items in order to make said weapons viable on the Steel Path has some merit, the glaring issue is gating player from getting them from the exact same mode. Your premise presupposes that primaries and secondaries aren't fit for purpose in the mode, but you are asking players to earn the solution from the very mode that they are currently struggling to complete with these tools.

If a gun isn't good enough to compete in this environment, it makes no sense to ask people to grind for the solution in the same environment. You are basically saying , if you don't like melee only meta builds for steel path, go and get our ranged bandaids... by using meta melee builds in the steel path. That doesn't seem a very elegant solution. There are countless content islands and currencies in warframe. Could these not be acquired from other sources?

The next nested issue here is that to be able to equip said arcanes, players need an item that, once again, has to be farmed from the steel path. Could these not simply be implemented like stance mods, or simply be an open slot in the same way all other arcanes are?

After this, the next nested issue is that many of the arcanes you have proposed gate the powers behind kills. If your premise presupposes that the weapons are poor at killing high level enemies without the buffs these modifcations provide, how are the new buffs supposed to apply to the weapons in the first place? For example, if your Sobek in it's current form takes too long to kill things efficiently, how does asking people to kill efficiently with them for a buff make sense?

Couple this with the fact that these items are going to come from time gated enemies, with large loot tables, that have to be farmed repeatedly. This is a huge investment of player time and this game lacks any sort of bad luck protection. On top of this, identical arcanes are split between primary and secondary weapons. Is that really necessary?

Galvanised mods:

You have stated that these mods will be available for Steel Essence. Looking at way the current steel path honours are made available, these mods seem to be a good idea on the surface, but come with a number of issues on closer inspection.

Firstly. they are simply updated versions of existing mods, that come with an on kill effect. In essence, if used on a weapon that you have already stated, struggles with steel path enemies, why lock the bonuses they provide behind kills? If a player has these equipped, they actually start out with a build that is weaker than the same loadout with the non galvanised variants. These builds are obviously not up to par on the live version, so why does asking people to start out with an even worse version to try and rack up kills make sense?

My next question on these mods is based on the acquisition of them. Items like umbra forma are available from this store for a fairly large resource cost on a multiple week cycle. Are these going to be added on a permanently available basis, or are you going to cycle them in and out? How much are they going to cost?

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm worried that these will be something that appear once every 9 weeks each at extremely high steel essence prices. At the very least, please keep them in the shop for purchase at any time, so that people can acquire them around their schedule.

Steel Path & Steel Essence Farming

All of the items above are contingent on players investing a huge amount of time in the steel path. 

Given that this was hailed as an optional mode, it seems an odd choice to gate weapon balance behind it.

On top of this, your patch also includes steps to lessen the rate at which we acquire the steel essence resource. You have been quoted in the past as stating that you want to reduce the grind in Warframe, but the timer on steel essence despawning is a fairly naked  attempt to slow player progression. Given that you are now tying something as important as weapon balance behind a layer of grind, that is already gated by a layer of RNG, this change in particular seems to be in poor taste. I hope you reconsider it before the patch goes live.

Melee Weapon Balance:

If the aim of these changes is truly add player agency in the loadouts they use, there are some issues in the implementation you have chosen.

The first and most obvious is that most players who want the new items are likely going to want to use the most efficient methods possible to be able to use the weapons they like in the mode they struggle with. That's going to mean using the exact same meta weapons they are already, until they unlock the items they need to use the weapons they actually like. By the time they have succeeded in this, is there really any drive to go back to the content they have already had to grind to get the items in the first place?

In short if you like guns, you have to melee your way through hours of steel path to be able to use them. Does that sound more like a recipe for player retention or player burnout?

Couple this with the fact that you are asking them to do this after you have made said weapons less effective. 90 % of the meaningful content in this game is about getting quick kills. You obviously recognise this as you have health gated most of the boss encounters. Making melee feel worse is not the same as making guns feel better. This is really going to be compounded for the people that didn't like the playstyle anyway, but are more or less going to have to adopt it in order to make ranged weapons work.

Conclusion:

Overall I appreciate the spirit in which these changes are intended, but I really hope that you consider some of the points I and many others have outlined in our feedback before pushing this out to the live servers.

Given the gravity of the changes and the level of engagement people seem to have on the topic on this thread, I truly hope you push the changes to a test server first for fine tuning before they go live.

[Ardhanarishvara]

I have to say, those Primary & Secondary Arcanes are a bit hit-or-miss. If they were a combination of both passive and conditional effects, they'd be more reliable, but the way they've been written out, they seem like exclusively a bunch of effects that are all conditional. Which is less useful in some cases than others. Example:

Merciless Arcanes: +100% Ammo Maximum. This is the amount of ammo the weapon can hold. Unless it's planning on restoring all of its ammo every single kill, this isn't going to amount to much since if someone's already got an ammo mutation mod, odds are pretty good they're not going to run out of ammo particularly quickly, or any time soon. Unless this is a passive effect not linked to the On Kill conditional, or is otherwise replenishing maximum ammo, this isn't doing much.

Now, if it was Magazine Capacity, that would be a whole other story. Using it with something like Javlok or Ocucor, for example, would be fantastic, since one's alt fire damage goes up the more ammo is in its magazine, and the other loses its bonus once it reloads. It would also pair well with any weapon that has a recharging magazine.

For that particular stat to be worth it, it has to be either a passive, come with an ammo recharge, or be changed to Magazine Capacity. Otherwise the number of weapons that would be able to benefit from it would be exclusively bows that have intrinsic ammo mutation properties, which is, like, two.

Dextrous Arcanes: In the video, they have combo duration. This seems great, even if it takes melee kills to activate. However... in the actual workshop write-out they do not. Which is more current? This is confusing. Makes it difficult to discuss them properly.

[Ardhanarishvara]

54 minutes ago, Bathynomus said:

Here's an radical idea. Instead of nerfing anything at all, why not bring the other weapons on their level?

Because it takes way more time, effort, and money to go through everything that would need buffing to get to the same level, and then you also have to contend with reassessing ALL existing content for the reduced level of difficulty they now represent.

Buff when reasonably possible, nerf when not. It's not a particularly difficult concept to understand. Nerfs may yank the cushion of comfort out from under us, but it's a small price to pay to have to spend a few minutes finding a new cushion compared to having to waste time on 'fixing' absolutely everything that would need to be fixed just to avoid like five nerfs, and taking resources away from staving off content drought and once again having the entire playerbase either talking about how there's nothing new to do or moving on to different games.

[Aldain]

8 minutes ago, Surbusken said:

Are you trying to say it's too difficult to come up with a solution? So the developers are excused from their responsbility?

No I'm saying it's easier said than done and that nobody even thinks about the fact that bloating numbers bigger and bigger isn't going to solve anything.

Of course I'm not sure why you're accusing me of excusing the developers when on page one of this thread I'm criticizing how bad of an idea the insane power creep they're proposing is.

[Mentat49]

Don't know how => don't break. Anything you want is killing the fan from the game. More and more. Understand in the game where you need to kill a lot of enemies, you need a weapon that kills a lot of enemies.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

1 hour ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

Because it takes way more time, effort, and money to go through everything that would need buffing to get to the same level, and then you also have to contend with reassessing ALL existing content for the reduced level of difficulty they now represent.

Buff when reasonably possible, nerf when not. It's not a particularly difficult concept to understand. Nerfs may yank the cushion of comfort out from under us, but it's a small price to pay to have to spend a few minutes finding a new cushion compared to having to waste time on 'fixing' absolutely everything that would need to be fixed just to avoid like five nerfs, and taking resources away from staving off content drought and once again having the entire playerbase either talking about how there's nothing new to do or moving on to different games.

Well if they’re gonna buff things anyways then nerfing things is just extra, unecessary and unrequested work.

[nokturnihs]

Hey congrats to all you Kuva Nukor owners out there - at least you get some extra forma! Remember when DE took arcane Guardian, energize and grace and then added two more levels to them without upgrading our maxed ones (which was a huge Nerf) - and then nerfed them anyway? Good for you guys. 

 

DE - I played almost 4k hours on warframe and dropped off to logging in once every 60-100 days or so when you introduced your weeb anime melee reworks and the chores list that is nightwave. You still haven't introduced anything to bring me back - and that's sad for you and your wallet, happy for me. That ever gonna happen or just more backhanded "rebalances", grind islands and content reworks?

[Leaky]

I agree with the people that say blood rush should be 50% and their reasoning.  I am concerned about "Berserker Fury" switching to on kill from on critical hit due to times when fighting a hard enemy without trash mobs around, maybe make that a new mod while making the other changes to berserker.  Additionally, I am curious if glaives will survive this nerf, though I have rarely used them.

since some people are adding hours played to their comments: 2836 hrs played

I have played for awhile and had this as my only consistent long term game.

[Surbusken]

30 minutes ago, Aldain said:

No I'm saying it's easier said than done and that nobody even thinks about the fact that bloating numbers bigger and bigger isn't going to solve anything.

Of course I'm not sure why you're accusing me of excusing the developers when on page one of this thread I'm criticizing how bad of an idea the insane power creep they're proposing is.

It sounded like you were apologizing for the developers, trying to give them a pass but I wasn't sure if that was your point.

 

If you aren't able to do your job, you might be happier in another job. "Coding is hard" or "they tried" or "go play something else" doesn't fly.

Either they did their job or they didn't bottomline.

 

Doubly so in this community, which is allegedly a game "created based on player feedback", with plenty of players getting involved and taking the time to deeply understand the mechanics, there aren't any excuses.

How much feedback from this thread is going into the game you think? Zero? Oh yeah okay, because taking feedback is easier said than done? I ram your car off the road in my truck, oh well, driving a truck is easier said than done, so responsibility right out the window?

Go drive on another road if you don't like it!!!1 He did his best !!!1

[xcrimsonlegendx]

1 hour ago, Bathynomus said:

Here's an radical idea. Instead of nerfing anything at all, why not bring the other weapons on their level?

Because its easier to nerf a handful of good weapons than try to individually buff 400 under-performing ones.

[EdDiesel]

On 2021-06-18 at 10:00 AM, [DE]Rebecca said:

Condition Overload’s maximum value is being lowered. It’s been some time since we originally changed this Mod, and in this time we’ve decided we’re still not happy with the way this goes up against other Damage Mods (namely Primed Pressure Point). We’ve reduced this to 80% to make it almost as good as Primed Pressure Point, and 3 Status Types back to where it was originally.

Need clarification on this.  Is there a cap of 3 for condition overload? I keep hearing conflicting answers from the community.

[(XBOX)AAR24814]

1 minute ago, EdDiesel said:

Need clarification on this.  Is there a cap of 3 for condition overload? I keep hearing conflicting answers from the community.

yes. max 3 procs. so at max you will get 240% damage from CO

[(PSN)Alphonso-Alonso]

1 hour ago, CaptianJackSpanner said:

I've never complained myself.. But will see where the nerfs lead

Neither have I, but I guess we are all penalized equally so that shouOf make the whiners happy right?

 

oh, no now we are all unhappy.

 

well, that’s balance. 

[(XBOX)HollowCube987]

1 hour ago, alseltas said:

Also, On Kill condition is not balancing but just a source of frustrating.

Yup. Compared to our melee weapons, our primaries and secondaries were very bad at killing Steel Path enemies in a decent amount of time.

To rectify this, DE though that the best possible course of action was to nerf three of the mods that made melee kill SP units fast in the first place, and gut every fidget spinner we currently have.

They then intend to release arcanes and mods that not only provide their bonuses after killing fast under the constraint of a time limit (the very problem that non-melee weapons had in the first place).

[zaturalma2]

I think you guys seriously missed everything with this workshop. When you announced that there will be changes you said that the ranged weapons will be buffed to be able to compete with melee. Now look at what you did:

• agressively nerfed melee, basically killed it.
• made every bonus to be 'on kill' which is idiotic, cause how are we supposed to kill anything in steel path without the melee crit buffs? We wont be able to activate the bonus damage of the galvanized mods. (and even if we manage to do it in sp we still have a problem against higher lvl enemies)
• the new mods should not be new mods and definetely should not have 14 capacity requirement.
• you locked these mods that are supposed to help with steelpath behind steel path
• you nerfed yet again steel essence farm, because god forbit we wait for our smeetha buff 

So you were supposed to buff ranged weapons and yet you killed melee and nerfed a secondary gun (which is understandable, it was very powerful, but you were supposed to BUFF the ranged weapons. In summary: no usable buff, melee breaking nerfs. I hope you are not going to implement this because this is just insane

[Nothin__]

what i really like is that these new mods and arcanes will bring up gun power a lot.

What i do not like is that it will push already really gdo weapons further ahead.

why user any gun that hits just one target if you can use an AOE weapon and deal as much damage or more to  anything in a 10m radius.

although we'll see how it works out

"on hadshot kill" for example is not so easy to do in a bramma.

 

[TheLordOmega2]

Il y a 3 heures, Shinyah a dit :

Instead of Primary/Secondary arcanes, "gun-stances" (only for the slot, no change for animations) would make more sense for uniformity and fairness compared to melee weapons.

Melee weapons with Orokin Catalyst : 60 + 10 (stance) = 70 points for 8 mods
Primary/Secondary weapons with Orokin Catalyst : 60 points for 8 regular mods and 1 exilus mod

 

"gun stance" sounds janky and weird, but "custom loads" sound like what we'd want and an appropriate equivalent for the melee stances.

the issue is DE would have to make innovative and interesting effects for that.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

I love the idea of the changes and it was a lot less melee and Nukor nerfs than I anticipated. I also love how the new arcanes must be earned through SP...especially since this whole issue is SP related, and the option system with the arcanes. It's an overall nice balance between the "OMG, everything is nerfed to the ground" crowd, the "my personal spread sheet calcs say..." crowd, and the "OMG, powercreep city!" crowd. There was never an end-all-be-all answer but I think DE did a remarkable job finding a middle ground.