Dev Workshop: The Arsenal Divide

[EnwoQ]

Yep strong weapons get rewarded by being strong weapons (or at least aoe)
Single target weapons without a high enough kill/time still have to forma for new mods because mandatory but will be even less useful because already good performing weapons will even more outperform

META WEAPONS 3X performance increase over non meta weapons because "on kill"

[zuraja]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Da1m1en 06660 said:

Why do we need two arcanes that do the same thing look at the kit guns both primary and secondary guns use the same aracanes !!!

I'm guessing that there's a spaghetti code issue stemming from when they got rid of double arcanes that makes it impossible to have two of the same arcane equipped at the same time.

[Teljaxx]

DE's ability to completely miss the problem, and therefore only make things worse, is truly astounding.

Of course, this is assuming they actually do care about balancing their game at all, which I'm fairly certain they don't. All they really seem care about is giving us new stuff to grind/pay for all the time. They could have simply buffed the existing mods that needed it. But instead, they put those buffs on new mods, so we all have to go grind/pay for them if we actually want to gain any of the benefits of this supposed "balancing". How generous...

And, of course, this is assuming that things even will be balanced after this, and that this won't just invert the current gun/melee imbalance, while also making the overall powercreep problems much worse.

 

Plus, the issue with melee has never been simply a damage output problem. I tested this myself by simply removing damage boosting mods from my builds and seeing if it made my melee attacks any less useful. It didn't, unless I went way further than these tiny reductions DE is planning.

You know what actually did have a meaningful impact on my melee effectiveness though? Nerfing my Warframe. Specifically, reducing my EHP, reducing my sprint speed, and never bullet jumping. Lowering my EHP, by removing shield/health/armor increasing mods, and not using defensive abilities like Ironskin, made it much more dangerous to stay close enough to actually hit things with melee attacks for very long. And being far less maneuverable made it much trickier to effectively get into, and more importantly, out of melee range when I needed to.

This made melee into a much more interesting risk vs. reward choice. The reward of high damage output was balanced against the risk of me dying if I wasn't careful when I used it.

But, of course, DE will never actually do anything like this. Because Nerfs don't allow for the creation of new items for us to grind/pay for. And, there would inevitably be the horde of players crying about nerfs ruining all their fun, like there always is when real meaningful balance changes actually happen.

[thesyndrome]

why have you made everything an "on kill" effect? THE PROBLEM WAS THAT GUNS WERE STRUGGLING TO KILL, ADDING AN ON KILL BUFF DOES NOT FIX THIS ISSUE

[-KyloRen-]

Rip condition overload, as for primary/secondary buffs ill wait to see it in game then ill judge, but im not too optimistic 

[XzWasPzX]

hace 2 horas, Marabar dijo:

Let me try and get this straight...

       The problem that you stated here is that melee weapons have been overshadowing all primary and secondary gunplay for a long time.  You state that this workshop release addresses these issues by basically reducing some classic "Overpowered" melee mods and introducing new mods and arcanes to both primary and secondary weapons to shift the overall paradigm away from melee.  By all means, this sounds good at first, but you start seeing the cracks in the foundation after you look past the surface level of this "Fix."

 

       To begin, the melee nerf was expected.  It's been done in the past and it's expected in the future (I mean, we've had 4 iterations of melee throughout the games lifespan).  So in that regard, I don't have any major issues.  On the other hand, these mods and arcanes that are being touted around as a solution or a part of the solution to the problem are nothing more than a farce.  Let me explain my thoughts on this...

       Overall the concept of these mods aren't bad.  We've had conditional mods in the past that have gone on to help bolster the overall performance of primaries and secondaries (Argon Scope, Charged Chamber, Hata-Stya, and Split Flights to name a few).  Each one having their own quirks in regards to what bonuses they gave and how they rewarded them to the player; with those that gave good rewards for easily repeatable gameplay styles being coveted over the rest.  With that said, the mod is only as good as the player being able to repeat the condition consistently; which brings me to my first issue.

       Both the mods and arcanes being shipped out with the next update focus on one of the worst conditions that could be applied to these mods; enemy kills.  Now for all intents and purposes, this is typically a non issue for the star-chart and in some cases the steel path star-chart; however, this becomes more of an issue for those who play endless missions.  You have specifically stated that these mods and arcanes are to address the falloff that primaries and secondaries have in the late game (meaning that you are using these to address weapons not being able to kill enemies as fast).  So instead of opting for a condition that would allow the person to gain a buff to kill the enemy before killing an enemy, you are asking the player to kill an enemy to gain a single stack of a buff to kill another enemy.  Furthermore, you would need to kill two enemies to see greater bonuses than the original "Conventional Mod" counterparts (three for both Galvanized Diffusion and Galvanized Hell as their counterparts start at 120%).  So if you are indeed using these mods to supplement for late game falloff, then why is their condition to kill an enemy that you were having trouble to kill in the first place?  Enemies only get stronger as you progress further in their levels, meaning that getting those kills let alone retaining a stack will become harder and harder as you progress into the late game. 

       In Conclusion, If primaries and secondaries were being outclassed hard by melee, then why aren't we seeing conditionals that are easier to achieve?  Why are we getting conditional mods with a condition that will become harder to achieve as levels increase?  Why are we getting nerfed condition overload-like mods for primaries and secondaries that require a kill to gain the bonus while condition overload on melee has no condition other than a status being applied to an enemy?  Why are primaries and secondaries not being re-balanced to be comparable to melee?  These are just some of the questions that come to mind when looking at this joke of a "Buff" to primaries and secondaries.

 

       Maybe it's time for primaries and secondaries to have their own incentive for use, similar to how you're incentivizing the parazon mechanic?  Maybe primaries and secondary mods need to be more comparable to their melee counterparts to make up for the power gap?  Maybe primaries and secondaries just need a complete rework altogether?  Regardless of what needs to be done to fix this problem, what has been proposed here is far from the solution.

A very polite statement. Let me answer you one of your questions. "Why "on kill?" Well, the easiest answer for this terrible design decission is to say that devs didnt think long enough on what they were doing, so its a mistake, in other words.

 

But not only. As you say, the longer you stay in a mission, the higher their levels are, meaning higher health points, armor, shields, etc. In that situation the "on kill" condition becomes in fact an obstacle for the primaries and secondaries. Is that somehow intentional? Imho yes, because disencourages long plays for most player in endless missions, since you cant deal the necessary damage, before with ranged weapons, now with ranged and melee weapons. Another nerf to endurance players by setting a limit to damage output, not only in ranged weapons, now also for melee weapons. Days ago I saw a guy streaming, using Revenant + Nami Skyla and fighting enemies lvl 999999... Will this be possible again? With much more effort and investment, and of course with much more stuborness, since the whole game seems to be screaming "I dont like endurance, go play another game".

 

Is it fair to punish the whole playerbase by setting that condition? I think we all agree that it is not. And not only unfair, also a bad design, specially if DE wants to encourage a different gunplay in SP. 

[XzWasPzX]

hace 1 hora, (XBOX)CFG SatanDevil dijo:

In a few words. The most guns are to weak to kill enemies in steel path after 10-15min. 
Now we get arcanes and mods for guns to kill enemies easier in SP….. but the most  trigger at kill…..?!? 

The weak guns have to kill to trigger the arcanes and mods? 
 
it’s very strange for  me 
 

Not only weak, they also cant kill in aoe by themselves, you need to use a mechanic to make them work, mandatory. For example, infuse Ensnare, so enemies stay calm and easy to kill. The aoe problem has not been issued here, so the meta will remain in this aoe weapons, or with those infused abilities, at best. 

[quxier]

8 hours ago, (PSN)WolfieKidd060 said:

They were? I thought I was the only person who didn't use them (kuva weapons) for mr fodder

Not sure about meta but I've seen Chackhur to be good against Eidolons (I think I might try my first eidolon with Heat chackhur).

And Kuva Tonkor, not sure if meta, but it is nice. It's not hard to avoid self-stagger so this weapon can be used for short & mid distance.

[Fl_3]

I'm finding it really ironic that by doing the math melee will still be king in Steel Path, and yet all the new firearm mods are locked behind steel path, so the melee to win meta is still going to be the main one.

Also "on kill" Really? Has no one at DE played their game recently? At high levels? 

We see you running regular starchart missions in live streams, the occasional Steel Path, but high level missions?

I don't think you have, because if you had you would know that "on kill" is a very bad idea, I wouldn't like to try to kill a level 500+ mob with a head shot just to get a buff that's going to last a hand full of seconds.

At lower levels this is going to be awesome, but, is the power of firearms an issue at low level?

"On status", "On crit" you can rely on those to proc something at high levels, but on kill? This isn't the best idea.

Also, this is dropping with Sisters of Parvos. You do realise that if this doesn't work as intended that console Tenno will be stuck with these changes until the next cert window available after the fixing patch has left developed?

I hope your going to test this (If the test cluster still actually exists)

[fo3nixz]

3 minutes ago, Fl_3 said:

I'm finding it really ironic that by doing the math melee will still be king in Steel Path, and yet all the new firearm mods are locked behind steel path, so the melee to win meta is still going to be the main one.

Also "on kill" Really? Has no one at DE played their game recently? At high levels? 

We see you running regular starchart missions in live streams, the occasional Steel Path, but high level missions?

I don't think you have, because if you had you would know that "on kill" is a very bad idea, I wouldn't like to try to kill a level 500+ mob with a head shot just to get a buff that's going to last a hand full of seconds.

At lower levels this is going to be awesome, but, is the power of firearms an issue at low level?

"On status", "On crit" you can rely on those to proc something at high levels, but on kill? This isn't the best idea.

Also, this is dropping with Sisters of Parvos. You do realise that if this doesn't work as intended that console Tenno will be stuck with these changes until the next cert window available after the fixing patch has left developed?

I hope your going to test this (If the test cluster still actually exists)

off course its going to be king still. if u expecting de to entirely make melee useless aka melee1.0.. ouch 

[TheLexiConArtist]

2 minutes ago, Fl_3 said:

I'm finding it really ironic that by doing the math melee will still be king in Steel Path, and yet all the new firearm mods are locked behind steel path, so the melee to win meta is still going to be the main one.

Strictly speaking, the 'lock' of the mods is only a soft barrier.

If a player is really struggling too much to actually kill enemies, they can still hit up Incursions of mission types that don't actually require a single kill - like Spies, Rescues, and Sabotages - for the Essence to buy the mods. (I'd include capture, but that's one 'kill' and also a pain in the rear end with their ability immunity and being a moving target)

 

The Arcanes are more locked by only being dropped by the acolytes - and the acolytes generally being totally unfair cheese if you can't just kill them in a second after they spawn.

[Surbusken]

7 hours ago, Kegnor97 said:

 ... a ton of work in designing and set up before ---

Absolutely true.

We call it pre-production keyword before.

For warframe that was somewhere around 2011-2013 or earlier. So when you think about it, they had at least 10 years to copy-paste solutions from other video games, of which there are 50 years of data to mine.

"Creative" means giving birth to something new, while video games and movies are highly formulaic and generic. Especially here in the corporate era.

 

In a video game, could you place the camera on the character's hip? What about a crosshair that fills 90% of the screen? What about a player that moves at 1 mph?

Video games are entirely, collectively stereotypical.  It's a powerpoint presentation of diagrams of player behavior. I'd argue it's the opposite of creative, it isn't free and it's isn't new.

It's a can of pickles on an assembly line, lol.

Maybe if they were teraforming Mars, you could argue it would take time to discover the solutions if at all possible, then'd you have a point.

 

7 hours ago, GREF_TM said:

People do use weaker stuff ---

Yes, it's normal in debates and comedy, and you can of course argue I am not funny lol, but the attempt is there in format, to sensationalize, dramatize and oversimplify in order to over-exemplify the topic.

Overstated to illustrate the point is the concept of that format.

It's not an aspergers excel spreadsheet documentary, lol. It's illustrating a point, colorfully.

 

My thinking is, the larger the variety, the larger the appeal. The more weapons in play, the higher the chance some player sticks around. More fun for the players, more money for the developers.

I don't know what the argument is to leave 400 weapons as MR fodder but I am open to hearing more.

 

So for example, if you played the original metal gear solid from 1998.

The tiny handgun is used for stealth, the rifle is used for action combat, rockets for blowing up bosses and cameras. They even added a cardboard box and made it essential to gameplay, just to mock "superficial value vs depth" meta commentary on video games.

Simply to say, when you add an item, you do so in connection to the gameplay, then every item is a unique tool, doing something the other tools can't do.

It has to fill a unique role, without invading other's turf largely in fulfilling a gameplay challenge.

If not, a pistol becomes a rifle with no ammo. A rifle becomes an AOE weapon with no explosions and so on, and so forth.

 

The problem being, where the is no concept and only shallow gameplay, it all falls on notepad edits of empty numbers, which I tried to point out jokingly. In trying to illustrate how silly the numbers game is.

If we are no longer working on meaningful gameplay, but just blank numbers, send me the notepad file and I can edit the numbers, in 2.7 hours, job done.

 

Which is of course to say, the game should have meaningful gameplay, obviously, where weapons, features and gameplay is connected.

There has to be somewhere, some thing, where shotgun shines, here is their point. This over here is the mission where'd definitely use a pistol.

We are obviously not just talking about how neglected the empty stats numbers in notepad are, we are talking the game conceptually not supporting its own weapons.

[Andrewshka]

Yep, REALLY great idea, if primary/secondary suck, don't buff them, nerf melee

[Uhkretor]

... wow... 48 pages of zealots coming out of the closet to bash on DE...

 

... Just accept the changes already, they are coming and its no one else's fault other than the same ones that are bashing DE.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

On 2021-06-18 at 3:00 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

Galvanized Mods

 

Our observation that Arsenal imbalance becomes obvious at higher level content means that we want your progression to this content to matter for your power level. We want to give you the tools to progress to optimal play with a new series of Mods: Galvanized Mods!

 

The general approach to these Galvanized Mods is that the unconditional upgrade is not quite as good as the non-Galvanized original, but the On Kill conditional increases them well above and beyond what is available with ‘conventional’ Mods in your Arsenal. These will be available from Teshin’s Steel Path Honors. 

 

 

These look great, but I think there are 2 issues:

1) melee is just good in Steel Path, these require you to get good in the Steel Path before you can use them in your guns.

2) guns don't get stances and these are 14! point mods. I already have 5-9 forma on most regularly used guns, I don't mind forma-ing again to fit these mods, but I doubt these will fit even with 8 or 9 forma.

Also worth noting is that past about 5 forma guns tend to be locked to a build - any flexibility has gone and this makes the gun a lot less fun to build for. With these mods we're going to have to lock down every gun we want to put them on.

[-Kittens-]

9 minutes ago, Uhkretor said:

... wow... 48 pages of zealots coming out of the closet to bash on DE...

 

... Just accept the changes already, they are coming and its no one else's fault other than the same ones that are bashing DE.

No one has complained about except quite shallow and brozime, and the changes do not enhance "diversity" (whatever the #*!% that's actually supposed to mean other than marketing checkmark) at all. Gun meta is the same as it was and melee, the main reason to play this game at all outside of wf powers is on its fourth arbitrary nerf. Completely out of touch.

[NoSpax]

Melee is so slow, I NEED Fury + Berserker. "Animation Breaking" is no argument, because when I am surrounded by 50+ Level 140 enemies, the last thing I care is how gracefully the melee is swung. I just want them out of my sight quickly. It's the melee blindspot, which gets me. If you stand at an enemy at a certain angle, you will not be able to hit it, becaues you walk BACKWARDS for some reason and cannot clear that small distance. This is since the "Coptering 2.0" patch and I can't use my beloved dagger anymore to it's full potential.

[Slayer-.]

 

4 hours ago, NoSpax said:

Melee is so slow, I NEED Fury + Berserker. "Animation Breaking" is no argument, because when I am surrounded by 50+ Level 140 enemies, the last thing I care is how gracefully the melee is swung. I just want them out of my sight quickly. ^{_{It's the melee blindspot, which gets me. If you stand at an enemy at a certain angle, you will not be able to hit it, becaues you walk BACKWARDS for some reason and cannot clear that small distance. This is since the "Coptering 2.0" patch and I can't use my beloved dagger anymore to it's full potential.}}

Your kidding aren't you? why do you need all that speed, seems a waste of mod slots.

I I don't run any speed mod apart from Berserker which I've now dropped to do some testing with my Scindo Prime build and added Gladiator Vice, I get the same swing speed as before instead of waiting for Berserker to ramp up, I haven't noticed any damage drop off either, I'm using a Scindo Prime as a Greatsword that clears rooms of the highest Steel Path enemies.

My Balla dagger (STABBA-STABBA-DOOO) only runS Berserker and they kill groups no problem with a 1.17 speed.

[(XBOX)CFG SatanDevil]

This is serious a question.

Does anyone think DE read this all und will rethink a few points? Like triggered by kill for example? 

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

27 minutes ago, Uhkretor said:

... wow... 48 pages of zealots coming out of the closet to bash on DE...

 

... Just accept the changes already, they are coming and its no one else's fault other than the same ones that are bashing DE.

Dude, these are literally just melee nerfs that are FAR bigger than what we were told and gun “buffs” that can’t even do what they’re intended for due to the ‘on kill’ condition.

These are bad changes. People have every right to be angry about them and should not just “accept them”. 
What would’ve happened if damage 2.5 didn’t get backlash? Slash procs would only be scaling off the slash damage on the weapon. That would’ve made Hunter Munitions useless on most primaries and made slash heavy weapons even more meta. And impact procs would scale into a Ragdoll. We stopped that from happening.

The improvement of Warfrsme is a joint effort between DE and players. So if DE is making a bad decision that’s going to hurt their game far more than it’s going to help. It is our responsibility to tell that them that.

[GREF_TM]

48 minutes ago, Uhkretor said:

Just accept the changes already

Yep, discussion and criticism are not allowed, just shut up and say "Thank you".

[IndianForceX]

It will be quite a challenge and intresting fact over nerfing and have new items!

I am really excited!🙏

[Fl_3]

33 minutes ago, (XBOX)CFG SatanDevil said:

This is serious a question.

Does anyone think DE read this all und will rethink a few points? Like triggered by kill for example? 

No, no I don't.

They've refused to take notice of feedback on a lot of other updates which after a time where patched to be closer to what the players said they wanted (Kuva Liches and Railjack to mention the latest 2), this is going to be no different.

DE do not respond well to criticism, constructive or not, and they seem to ignore feedback unless it comes from a very small very select portion of the player base.

[GREF_TM]

1 hour ago, Surbusken said:

I don't know what the argument is to leave 400 weapons as MR fodder but I am open to hearing more.

Oversimplified, it's borderline unrealistic to properly balance all this crap with every factor like MR, method of acquisition, resource cost, etc., and doing so simply is a waste of developement time that could've otherwise be used on stuff of higher importance (like new content, actually balancing warframes, you name it. As long as you can clear the entire starchart with a weapon as crappy as mk1 braton, weapon balance is pretty low on the list of priorities.

As for variety, it's already there, you just chose to disregard it. As i already said, you can grab 90% of weapons in this game and clear anything below steel path - isn't that variety? Or you want all those mr2-mr8 weapons to clear high level stuff, too?

[Syln]

I don't really mind the melee nerf, but what i do mind is the grind behind the primary buff.

It feels like some kind of weird/twisted balancing 2.0 , what should be a few lines describing tweaks in a patchnote now become "content" on one side that's a really clever move on the other it feel like a cheap way to add hours of grind.