Warframe's foundational mechanics are broken.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

DE had time to kill their game by making it another bland game. It's been 7 years and they understand what's actually fun and what attracts players. 

I play this game and support it because warframe isn't like every other game. 

This game is not complicated nor convoluted. It's like any other situation where you learn something over time and it's no longer mysterious.

You made observations about the game, but added your own personal opinion to them to make them seem worse than they are:

If you don't like something in game.....something others may like or have no problem with.....you have the tools available to you to avoid that or build around it. 

You don't need to ruin everyone else's fun because we all need to play the specific game you want.

Instead of trying to bring everyone into your vision of what a game should be, use what's available to make your own bubble. 

DE probably isn't gonna build the game around raids either.

 

[PublikDomain]

14 hours ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

DE had time to kill their game by making it another bland game. It's been 7 years and they understand what's actually fun and what attracts players. 

I play this game and support it because warframe isn't like every other game. 

This game is not complicated nor convoluted. It's like any other situation where you learn something over time and it's no longer mysterious.

You made observations about the game, but added your own personal opinion to them to make them seem worse than they are:

If you don't like something in game.....something others may like or have no problem with.....you have the tools available to you to avoid that or build around it. 

You don't need to ruin everyone else's fun because we all need to play the specific game you want.

Instead of trying to bring everyone into your vision of what a game should be, use what's available to make your own bubble. 

DE probably isn't gonna build the game around raids either.

It's almost like you didn't read the OP... Not surprising.

On 2021-06-19 at 7:29 PM, Loza03 said:

Because, at the end of the day, none of this means that Warframe needs to get 'harder' or 'more designed for the veteran elites'. Although these issues may be more prominently felt at higher levels of understanding, they effect all levels, but more importantly, don't have an impact on the game's difficulty. It's possible to fix all of these issues, and for DE to make the conscious choice to keep the game at an easy, casual-friendly level of difficulty. It is arguably in their best interests to do so. But what it would do is expand what Warframe can be. It wouldn't have to stop being a fun, easy experience, but it could also provide other experiences. 

Like, what "fun" are you so afraid of losing? The "fun" of having only a handful of frames viable throughout the game? The "fun" of 90% of weapons being useless, and a dozen or so pushing the envelope so far that it's unrecognizable? The "fun" of using the same build on every weapon you own? The "fun" of never using even a fraction of the mods in the game? What "fun" are you so afraid of having ruined? And what tools do you think are available to make Hydroid a competent offensive caster? What tools let me bring my Paracyst or Talons or Vipers into high level play and still be effective? Oh, no, if the game were balanced more frames and weapons and mods and builds might be viable, can't have that. That wouldn't be fun.

[Andele3025]

On 2021-06-20 at 4:29 AM, Loza03 said:

1: The damage system.

This has resulted in the damage system being startlingly inelegant, and lacking in depth. f the job of a damage type system is to be an elegant way of producing roles for different weapons, it has failed entirely.

Wrong. All it means is that scaling wasnt numerically balanced (and that player damage had to follow the high end of it to not be obsolete/game not to die, thus damage type resists unlike their procs lost a bit of their value before stat scaling inflates over player values again).

On 2021-06-20 at 4:29 AM, Loza03 said:

 

2: The Modding System.

This one's simple - the multiplicative system that Warframe uses is the core reason why, no matter how hard DE tries, there is always so much imbalance between damage-dealing sources.

Warframe's mod system effectively works by stacking multipliers. All weapons go through at least two layers of damage multiplication, by a large degree - first the initial damage mods which regularly doubles or triples damage, and then multishot which doubles or triples this already multiplied number. In other words, a weapon that starts by doing 100 damage will probably wind up dealing 500-1800 damage, depending on the exact arrangement of multishot and damage modifiers. After that, things get more complicated based on crit chance, status chance and so forth, but each individually could wind up doubling, tripling or even quadrupling this already multiplied damage - hybrid weapons good at both can look to be double-dipping and getting even higher multipliers, leading to weapons having vastly more power after modding. This itself is not the issue - the numbers are not the issue.

This is an unsustainable situation. It means that power creep, which is a somewhat unfortunate but inevitable aspect of a game like this becomes faster the more it progresses, rather than increasing in a controllable manner. In turn, this also further exacerbates problems like Melee vs Gunplay and Status vs Crit. The older the game is, the harder it becomes for these problems to be resolved or managed, because the less precise the developers can be. Buffing things ad infinitum is already a recipe for more work, but when you consider that every buff you make make causes every future buff to be bigger and every future nerf to be more seriously negative. That maybe puts DE's recent behaviour into perspective, doesn't it?

No, once again it is only percieved as a issue if you both ignore that the baseline for measuring is a fully modded weapon and if a weapon (like primaries without VA) rely on RNG without other forms of scaling causing damage plateaus. Very easily managed if you crunch the numbers (once as average 40k now closer to 29k dps as average after adding ramp, variance for damage levels in practical kill time instead of theoretical/vs infinite hp sponge and scaling).
For example the blood rush nerf from 60 to 40% isnt a large negative/nerf in and of itself due to other mechanics in play (and current melee meta being defined by op stances and DEs repoed choice to have regular crit mods have double crit on heavy while having 2 weapon types with overstatted heavy attack values for their utility/secondary features, not the rest of the build options), however when compounded by the gap of average leaning top end (like galatine or kronen or dakra) vs power crept melee weapons (like gram prime) it does create a issue of what are thresholds for reliability (in this case any weapon sub 31% crit (scaling down as a build allows for more gladiator mods) will be nerfed harder than those with 31% and above.

Since no new modifiers (at least no that aint already avaliable) have been added for quite a long while, power creep has little to do with the way mods are calced out together.

On 2021-06-20 at 4:29 AM, Loza03 said:

 

3: The energy/ability system.

The issue is that, due to how the energy system works, they don't add any further interaction themselves. Since energy is typically generated either by RNG loot drops the player has no ability to effect, or by external supplements or passive regeneration, abilities which bypass gameplay become reductive. You don't need to engage with the game's systems anymore once you unlock these abilities. There is, functionally speaking, less game once you activate one of these powers. You have fewer meaningful choices to make in moment-to-moment gameplay. The role of abilities is to increase the player's available options and tactical decisions available, but these abilities do not do that. Yes, you can choose not to use these abilities, but bear in mind - that goes against the purpose of a game like this.

No, not even close, abilities ARE the gameplay (1/3rd of it), no amount of portals will change tile layouts, no amount of nezha/rhino skin will change enemies existing, even if enemies cease existing across the tileset (equi, mesa, saryn, ember, gara, hell even frost or oberon, etc) it doesnt change the mission.
What does remove gameplay is design that lacks gameplay like mobile defense missions which are afk timers. Its why noone gives a flying osprey exhaust about eidolons past optimizing rewards (a """boss""" that removes not just 1/3rd, but 2/3rds of your arsenal and doesnt engage with the last third to instead rely on a gimmick not core to the game loop/the potato kid in this case but you can stretch it to kdrives, necromechs, archwing, etc) the result isnt long term any better than just regular invul phase lazyness (worse even if you lock the way to be able to do the fight behind the fight itself, or at least the way that isnt selective on timer mobbing or slow timer locked enemy search).

On 2021-06-20 at 4:29 AM, Loza03 said:

If you like new content being varied and interesting or want game modes like raids being re-implemented, you have a vested interest in abilities and energy being fixed.

If DE wants to implement raids, they just have to design with core gameloop in mind (or simpler, spy, exterminate, capture and bosses with actual flat stats that fit end game loadouts, representative of level and no sp/modifier versions that arent their own custom version or at least no unit based scripts as cases like the plethora of bugs raptor and ambulas fights have due to hidden hp bars being scaled or the sky laser and dropship turrets bugging out and getting the level scaling twice).

On 2021-06-20 at 4:29 AM, Loza03 said:

Because these aspects reduce the number of gameplay possibilities, not expanding them, this in turn reduces the scope of content on the moment-to-moment scale.

No. Being able to phase skip is expanding gameplay. Its why its a shame nova got nerfed to not work on exploiter, removing that gameplay is exactly why profit taker has a average of 0 people in matchmaking and eidolon PUGs are a divide between people with the base story amp wondering whats going on and people soloing the trio and then leaving.

On 2021-06-20 at 4:29 AM, Loza03 said:

It's possible to fix all of these issues, and for DE to make the conscious choice to keep the game at an easy, casual-friendly level of difficulty. It is arguably in their best interests to do so. But what it would do is expand what Warframe can be. It wouldn't have to stop being a fun, easy experience, but it could also provide other experiences. 

And isn't that what we all want? For us and other people to enjoy this game?

You mean by simply fixing the numerical disparity of our weapons to enemy ehp and making their weapons flat but just gain mods up to our ehp (as sensible design dictates)? And maybe adding a option to as part of the frames baseline or the core game loop gain energy regen (while putting a cd on pizzas, and maybe fixing shield gating to not punish a shield based build)? Then yes.

 

On 2021-06-21 at 3:01 AM, PublikDomain said:

That adage is generally true

No its not, you cant be a good game designer without playing the system and testing out all of its quirks. Just because devs that have the experience in general to solve problem but dont engage with a product and then disagree with one out of thousands of ways to change a thing are bad at identifying problems doesnt mean the reverse/that quote is true.

For example the execute added to nekros 1 actively made his 1 worse to the point of me not using it at all anymore, it did seem however in a vacuum/on paper (and in any game with different numerical balance with appropriately altered 4 ability functionality) as a good idea, only it ignored the reality of his gameloop. You cc the heavy in approach, not as a finisher, to optimally heal you would waste knockback (as if up close with trash you just melee cleave them) on mooks which risk clogging your minion cycling AND at worst it in no way fixes the hole in his gameloop of initial damage assistance to get him rolling while also ignoring that for all of the base game enemies are binary of dead or alive, not at 1/4th hp. A player would realize the 4 is recast a lot when not trying to cycle either way due to repositioning, if you want non-recast healing a synergy by just tweaking his passive from 5 a kill to 0.5 or even 0.05% lifesteal that he can then share/give to with allies in desecrate (thus also not hampering cycling if minions are left behind) would give the minions that; but scott yoinked that and the lingering terrify augment suggestion for wraith to replace the original dash or tombstone that was supposed to be there and that Soul Punch once had the solution because it dealt true damage (physics impact) thus it would at least only start falling off at level 50 instead of 15 if they dont want it to deal % damage.

Sorry for wall o text as the rest of the comment was good, just that little point nags me since even other lesser primates at least realize if they can solve a problem with their tools or not if they keep sufficiently working on something (and why some of them learnt how to use primitive tools) or at least trial and error it sufficient times for the rest of the current generation to learn.

 

[Loza03]

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

Wrong. All it means is that scaling wasnt numerically balanced (and that player damage had to follow the high end of it to not be obsolete/game not to die, thus damage type resists unlike their procs lost a bit of their value before stat scaling inflates over player values again).

If the player has to follow the high end of it, that means they only use one option. That means that, irrespective of the number of options there are, the actual depth that's meaningfully available to the player is much lower.

In other words, 'not numerically balanced and the player had to follow the high end of it', is another way of saying 'lacking in depth'.

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

No, once again it is only percieved as a issue if you both ignore that the baseline for measuring is a fully modded weapon and if a weapon (like primaries without VA) rely on RNG without other forms of scaling causing damage plateaus. Very easily managed if you crunch the numbers (once as average 40k now closer to 29k dps as average after adding ramp, variance for damage levels in practical kill time instead of theoretical/vs infinite hp sponge and scaling).
For example the blood rush nerf from 60 to 40% isnt a large negative/nerf in and of itself due to other mechanics in play (and current melee meta being defined by op stances and DEs repoed choice to have regular crit mods have double crit on heavy while having 2 weapon types with overstatted heavy attack values for their utility/secondary features, not the rest of the build options), however when compounded by the gap of average leaning top end (like galatine or kronen or dakra) vs power crept melee weapons (like gram prime) it does create a issue of what are thresholds for reliability (in this case any weapon sub 31% crit (scaling down as a build allows for more gladiator mods) will be nerfed harder than those with 31% and above.

Since no new modifiers (at least no that aint already avaliable) have been added for quite a long while, power creep has little to do with the way mods are calced out together.

I'm aware, and I never suggested that power creep was why mods are calculated the way they do. Rather, my point was that the way mods are calculated exacerbates the negative effects of power creep. Good weapons get disproportionately more effect out of the same mods, which means that it's harder to moderate the negative effects of power creep, things such as rivens cause chaos amongst the community, and buffs/nerfs become more extreme then they have to be.

 

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

No, not even close, abilities ARE the gameplay (1/3rd of it), no amount of portals will change tile layouts, no amount of nezha/rhino skin will change enemies existing, even if enemies cease existing across the tileset (equi, mesa, saryn, ember, gara, hell even frost or oberon, etc) it doesnt change the mission.
What does remove gameplay is design that lacks gameplay like mobile defense missions which are afk timers. Its why noone gives a flying osprey exhaust about eidolons past optimizing rewards (a """boss""" that removes not just 1/3rd, but 2/3rds of your arsenal and doesnt engage with the last third to instead rely on a gimmick not core to the game loop/the potato kid in this case but you can stretch it to kdrives, necromechs, archwing, etc) the result isnt long term any better than just regular invul phase lazyness (worse even if you lock the way to be able to do the fight behind the fight itself, or at least the way that isnt selective on timer mobbing or slow timer locked enemy search).

After all, as you say, abilities are 1/3rd of the gameplay, but acquiring and managing energy and resources associated with them is something that the player either has no control over, or is done via non-interactive processes, not through gameplay. Add on top of this that many abilities simply take effect without any further input from the player, and this means that 1/3rd of the game has little to no meaningful skills or input associated with it. This is exacerbated by the fact that these abilities often negate or trivialise the other two thirds - which is to say, weaponplay+movement alongside enemy design.

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

If DE wants to implement raids, they just have to design with core gameloop in mind (or simpler, spy, exterminate, capture and bosses with actual flat stats that fit end game loadouts, representative of level and no sp/modifier versions that arent their own custom version or at least no unit based scripts as cases like the plethora of bugs raptor and ambulas fights have due to hidden hp bars being scaled or the sky laser and dropship turrets bugging out and getting the level scaling twice).

As I said, the core gameloop is foundationally broken. As for your suggestion, as @PublikDomain has pointed out in this thread and others, there's massive variance in endgame stats, and as I have put, many frames have the ability to circumvent the mechanics and systems you present as means to produce this content altogether.

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

No. Being able to phase skip is expanding gameplay. Its why its a shame nova got nerfed to not work on exploiter, removing that gameplay is exactly why profit taker has a average of 0 people in matchmaking and eidolon PUGs are a divide between people with the base story amp wondering whats going on and people soloing the trio and then leaving.

Phase skipping expanding gameplay only applies when the phase skip is demonstrating skill. I fear I've missed whatever Nova reference you're referring to, but if it was some sort of exploit with Molecular Prime or some description, then chances are it wasn't something that was truly expanding the game.

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

You mean by simply fixing the numerical disparity of our weapons to enemy ehp and making their weapons flat but just gain mods up to our ehp (as sensible design dictates)? And maybe adding a option to as part of the frames baseline or the core game loop gain energy regen (while putting a cd on pizzas, and maybe fixing shield gating to not punish a shield based build)? Then yes.

Actually, yes, that (or similar changes) is more or less exactly what I'm talking about.

I'm not entirely sure how we could so substantially disagree elsewhere yet ultimately draw the same conclusion, but hey.

[Teridax68]

I agree with the OP on pretty much every single point made. I think one of the underlying questions Warframe's systems keep begging is: why? What is the point of that system if it can only produce its current results? Why do we need a damage system with over a dozen types and status effects if players only end up caring about a small handful, and don't use it to meaningfully change their gameplay? What is the point of the modding system if the only thing it makes us do on weapons is multiply their damage? Why are our abilities designed to make us bypass the game if we're also meant to use them at will?

This is also why I think casual players have a vested interest in caring about these systems, because they all add layers of complication to a game that really does not need them: experienced players say the game isn't actually complex in practice, which is true, but only because they've had the time to sift through all the masses of systems and content islands the game has to offer, and learn to ignore everything that isn't relevant to their experience, which sadly tends to be the majority of the game's content. A player just getting to grips with Warframe, by contrast, has dozens of different things to learn at any given time, and has no real way of knowing what is and isn't important. Not only would the game benefit significantly from overhauling many of its core systems, it could also stand to streamline them and much of its content to deliver a better version of our current, ultimately fairly simple gameplay experience.

My thoughts on how one could go about addressing these systemic problems:

• Damage I think could easily stand to lose its damage types, and rework status and crit to something much simpler, where status would provide genuine utility (rather than just various flavors of damage increases and DoTs) and crits were skill-based rather than RNG-dependent. I've written a rework concept thread to this effect a while ago.
• Modding I think also needs to change so that it stops focusing on damage multipliers, and instead focuses on modifying our gameplay in interesting ways (which many of our current mods could achieve if we had reason to use them). The thread I linked goes on about this too, but mods should exist to add diversity to our gameplay, something our current most popular weapon mods fail to achieve.
• Ability design I think needs to change in such a way that we can generally cast abilities on-demand, to the point where we may no longer even need Energy as a system, but as pointed out in the OP, abilities themselves ought to change so that they enhance interaction with the game, rather than remove it. I also wrote a much older concept thread on this. The alternative is to strip away our means of Energy generation and efficiency mods to make Energy costs meaningful, and thereby make our "I win" buttons less frequently castable, but personally I don't think that would be a good fit for a game like Warframe, since we're not really made to focus too much on resource management in combat, and players seem to enjoy being able to cast what they want, when they want it.

TL;DR: Warframe's core systems are a textbook example of how adding complexity to a game does not necessarily add depth. Our damage, modding, and ability systems are mostly full of stuff we don't use or really care about, and the end result is really reductive and often dull gameplay. All of these could stand to be simplified in a manner that emphasizes interacting with the game, rather than bypassing all possible interaction through systems that are essentially impossible to balance in their current state. There are many other foundational aspects to the game that I think also have some similar issues (enemy and mission design are both heavily dated, and our health systems are pointlessly convoluted), but I also think the OP makes a sufficient point with the three major systems they bring up.

[Andele3025]

43 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

If the player has to follow the high end of it, that means they only use one option. That means that, irrespective of the number of options there are, the actual depth that's meaningfully available to the player is much lower.

No it doesnt. You can calculate a result of x with nⁿ  versions and in the same way approaches from gameloop. Just currently within melee you have cleave, static chain proc, slam, chain finisher, heavy attack, hybrid heavy, glaive and gunblades all in high end gameloop forms. First 3 and last 2 are close/in practice the differences are subtle but can make or break if a person is actually having fun.

43 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

In other words, 'not numerically balanced and the player had to follow the high end of it', is another way of saying 'lacking in depth'.

No.

It means you have S#&$ like gram prime (26-28% over melee stat average), soveregin outcast, blind justice, the new gunsen stance (at 8x~ multis instead of 4x average of stances), thrown/chakrams in general (around 18% base heavy stats and big part the double crit on crit mods), etc.

That has no effect on depth of gameplay e.g. using slide taps in animation locked short dashes like broken bull to get more coverage or optimizing headshot multis or even the frankly currently overkill and outside of longer duration steel path inefficient CO priming ways.

43 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

Rather, my point was that the way mods are calculated exacerbates the negative effects of power creep. Good weapons get disproportionately more effect out of the same mods, which means that it's harder to moderate the negative effects of power creep, things such as rivens cause chaos amongst the community, and buffs/nerfs become more extreme then they have to be.

Thats not how that works. Gacha slot machine p2w- i mean Rivens will exacerbate power creep, as will numerically imbalanced/0 devtime dedicated "yeah that will work" bs when making last minute stat choices, but the same multipliers to different items are still the same multipliers (unless you're comparing apples to oranges in taking a 3% crit 30% status and assuming the average hybrid build will perform as good on it as on a 30% crit 3% status weapon, in which case its 80% you making a bad build for that weapon, 15% us not having a way to convert procs to crit and 5% on DE in terms of the new status ordering/no improvements having happened to magnetic, blast, puncture, etc).

43 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

but acquiring and managing energy and resources associated with them is something that the player either has no control over, or is done via non-interactive processes, not through gameplay. Add on top of this that many abilities simply take effect without any further input from the player, and this means that 1/3rd of the game has little to no meaningful skills or input associated with it. This is exacerbated by the fact that these abilities often negate or trivialise the other two thirds - which is to say, weaponplay+movement alongside enemy design.

But you do have interactive options (ill not count pizzas since i personally dont think gear should be accounted for but it was/is technically the ur form of "completely ignore energy economy" as a choice for the players to do) in form of equilibrium+synth pet, lockers, red veil and suda weapons/entropy and blight mods and a few augments or outright kit parts which generate energy.

Also buff upkeep no matter how trivial is actually relevant for skill floor of the gameloop because being lazy and the buff running out (or making a build that asks you to keep up refreshes) loses potency thus alters your next immediate priority which can completely alter the at the moment gameplay for some 4-10 seconds depending on what options you have.
And as said no they dont, teleporting doesnt change map tiles being organized in a certain way, killing a x/y number of enemies doesnt remove the mission objective (except for maybe octavia, but almost noone plays her so thats mostly a non-issue and even so her Mallet even at max range and 4 up doesnt have the aoe nor aggro priority without the 2 to completely nuke rooms and it decays when enemies arent shooting at it, faster with less sound levels, so its still you having to do stuff, even if its just be relatively close to the mallet and teabag as people that play her seem to like that gameplay as +90% range and +50% strength is all she really needs for butter smooth general mapping).

43 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

As I said, the core gameloop is foundationally broken.

In terms of DE choosing to reward speeding through max amount of missions possible per timeframe and really needing to get a guy that would implement modifiers and substats on enemies (along with general boss design), yes, otherwise no, not really, its not even bent as its the peak of hybriding third person mobility boost shooter+dungeon crawl+horde fighter/musou.

43 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

As for your suggestion, as @PublikDomain has pointed out in this thread and others, there's massive variance in endgame stats, and as I have put, many frames have the ability to circumvent the mechanics and systems you present as means to produce this content altogether.

There isnt tho. Player abilities tend to not have a vector for scaling (or have a inefficient one like ember fireball and oberon smite which both ask for other prep which you could plain combine with something else to kill faster), but other than outliers noted (essentially a few stances, some 6 melee weapons base stats and mostly just the 2x crit on heavy in case of gunblades and glaives) and old not-covered or skimmed in the yee old gun rework guns (along with the shotgun status by pellet nerf which still needs to be fixed to be proper calculation instead), the variance isnt really that notable. Soma Prime, Kuva Karak, Zymos, Ogris or a random stick all end up in the same ballpark of what level of armored enemies they chew through, difference is the later 3 do it by cleaving/up close positionin among the enemy instead of Punchthrough.

43 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

Phase skipping expanding gameplay only applies when the phase skip is demonstrating skill. I fear I've missed whatever Nova reference you're referring to, but if it was some sort of exploit with Molecular Prime or some description, then chances are it wasn't something that was truly expanding the game.

Antimatter drop, if timed relatively generously and exploded in the right place would blow up all vents at once (much like how a high fire rate PT weapon can sometimes get 2 vents at once still and a few other things). And even if it were something like speeding up exploiter with MP, still would be expanding the gameplay (mostly by the bosses painfully animation derping as they mash 2 attacks right after the other)

43 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

I'm not entirely sure how we could so substantially disagree elsewhere yet ultimately draw the same conclusion, but hey.

Assumption that it isnt 99% a "DE didnt do the numbers" issue.
The 1% being... i guess the stug which would need to have its contact dot changed, given proper status, likely some form of on enemy merger without actual aoe hitbox shrinking ontop of numbers tweaked to be usable outside of memes and bugs and... idk maybe prisma tetra and twin wipers wraith which id note simply because they are upgraded forms yet not so some gimmick might be in order.

[Loza03]

26 minutes ago, Andele3025 said:

No it doesnt. You can calculate a result of x with nⁿ  versions and in the same way approaches from gameloop. Just currently within melee you have cleave, static chain proc, slam, chain finisher, heavy attack, hybrid heavy, glaive and gunblades all in high end gameloop forms. First 3 and last 2 are close/in practice the differences are subtle but can make or break if a person is actually having fun.

This whole thing deviates away from the point of damage types being counter-intuitive and mechanically shallow due to a lack of balance completely. Please stay on-topic so as not to derail the thread entirely.

33 minutes ago, Andele3025 said:

No.

It means you have S#&$ like gram prime (26-28% over melee stat average), soveregin outcast, blind justice, the new gunsen stance (at 8x~ multis instead of 4x average of stances), thrown/chakrams in general (around 18% base heavy stats and big part the double crit on crit mods), etc.

That has no effect on depth of gameplay e.g. using slide taps in animation locked short dashes like broken bull to get more coverage or optimizing headshot multis or even the frankly currently overkill and outside of longer duration steel path inefficient CO priming ways.

You're conflating two topics here, or rather, two disparate aspects of a much larger one.

Depth is a broad, overall concept discussing the number of choices that a player has available that are practically and reasonably available. There can be depth in the mechanical execution (such as what is described here) and depth in the RPG, numerical aspects of a game. What I'm interested in when discussing damage types is the latter, more or less exclusively.  Again, please stay on-topic  in the future.

37 minutes ago, Andele3025 said:

Thats not how that works. Gacha slot machine p2w- i mean Rivens will exacerbate power creep, as will numerically imbalanced/0 devtime dedicated "yeah that will work" bs when making last minute stat choices, but the same multipliers to different items are still the same multipliers (unless you're comparing apples to oranges in taking a 3% crit 30% status and assuming the average hybrid build will perform as good on it as on a 30% crit 3% status weapon, in which case its 80% you making a bad build for that weapon, 15% us not having a way to convert procs to crit and 5% on DE in terms of the new status ordering/no improvements having happened to magnetic, blast, puncture, etc).

I'll admit, @PublikDomain has a much better understanding of this than I do, but I've been hanging around the community and learning the ins-and-outs of modding long enough to know that it does work in the way I've described - or at least something similarly. I'd not have added this due to my lesser understanding of this topic, but the impact of the effect is great enough that it's worth saying, and well, nobody else was saying it.

Having said that, a hybrid weapon is a perfect example. Many weapons capable of hybrid performance will perform better than the majority of more specialised weapons in comparable MR's, due to the fact that it has access to more multiplying effects - for example, stacking critical hit damage with Viral's status effects will stack with each other. Consider that a 150% crit chance weapon might have a 50% chance to hit for seven or eight times the damage, whereas a 90% crit chance weapon that can also stack viral can reach that same point after a couple of seconds with far more consistency, since it'll likely have a 4X crit multiplier (give or take) and then be getting multiplied by the effects of viral.

49 minutes ago, Andele3025 said:

But you do have interactive options (ill not count pizzas since i personally dont think gear should be accounted for but it was/is technically the ur form of "completely ignore energy economy" as a choice for the players to do) in form of equilibrium+synth pet, lockers, red veil and suda weapons/entropy and blight mods and a few augments or outright kit parts which generate energy.

There are some kit parts that generate energy, and abilities similar to that is what I'm looking for throughout the game. However, examining the other options and then comparing them to the likes of pizzas (which 100% should be accounted for, it's an option available to the player), Zenurik, Arcane Energise and to a somewhat lesser extent, Dispensary and there's really little contest in their effect. Entropy restores 25% of a frames unmodded energy - which averages around 25-30 energy every 30 seconds assuming an instant re-proc after the buff. Zenurik restores 25 energy per second and has no cooldown.

56 minutes ago, Andele3025 said:

Also buff upkeep no matter how trivial is actually relevant for skill floor of the gameloop because being lazy and the buff running out (or making a build that asks you to keep up refreshes) loses potency thus alters your next immediate priority which can completely alter the at the moment gameplay for some 4-10 seconds depending on what options you have.
And as said no they dont, teleporting doesnt change map tiles being organized in a certain way, killing a x/y number of enemies doesnt remove the mission objective (except for maybe octavia, but almost noone plays her so thats mostly a non-issue and even so her Mallet even at max range and 4 up doesnt have the aoe nor aggro priority without the 2 to completely nuke rooms and it decays when enemies arent shooting at it, faster with less sound levels, so its still you having to do stuff, even if its just be relatively close to the mallet and teabag as people that play her seem to like that gameplay as +90% range and +50% strength is all she really needs for butter smooth general mapping).

Buff upkeep, sure, that's a skill floor, but some buffs (such as invisiblity) take more than they give. Remembering to refresh your invisibilty just shy of every minute does not make up for the amount of gameplay lost in terms of mechanical input or enegagement needed elsewhere. After all, it makes all the potential skill you yourself pointed out that Warframe has bubbling under the surface earlier in this conversation completely moot, since you're left uncontested in scenarios with no objective (or even certain objectives). Which is a lot of them, frankly speaking.

Splitting the second part into two aspects - first of all, Nova's tiles make map tile layout functionally moot. The exact order that all the tiles are laid out is irrelevant, what matters is the player's level of interaction in the maps themselves. Nova, Wukong and to some degree Titania remove the need to interact with the environment, thereby removing environmental gameplay from the equation. This can be contrasted with a frame such as Wisp - whilst she still can teleport, it's more limited. She requires sight lines and good movement to make the most of that teleportation - for example, sending a wisp in one direction to reduce travel time whilst her real self attends to something else. Even Ash needs an enemy as a 'reciever' and the player needs good aim to make the 'shot' as it were.

In terms of more combat-focused challenges, bear in mind that A: not all missions have objectives and B: the point of all missions in Warframe is to either challenge the player in terms of getting from point A to point B or to get the player in a fight. Defence is merely a fight with a caveat. The combat is the point of the game, as it were (well, that and the loot. But even then, as stated in the OP, the point of loot is for more options in combat). Therefore, if the player has a means to trivialise, automate or otherwise skip combat, then that, ultimately, is to trivialise, automate or otherwise skip the whole game. 

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

In terms of DE choosing to reward speeding through max amount of missions possible per timeframe and really needing to get a guy that would implement modifiers and substats on enemies (along with general boss design), yes, otherwise no, not really, its not even bent as its the peak of hybriding third person mobility boost shooter+dungeon crawl+horde fighter/musou.

There's not an awful lot of games with that mix of genres to compare to, so it's not exactly hard to be the peak.

Slightly-sarcastic comments aside, the foundational issues are what the whole thread is about. Even beyond the fact that we demonstrably disagree about certain aspects of the game having flaws - armour is still kicking around, and it's still a major component of a highly foundational aspect of the game.

Even as a horde-based game or a dungeon crawler or musou-style game, armour as it currently exists is alone indicative that Warframe has serious foundational issues. It does not make sense for a high-speed game about killing a lot of dudes to be bogged down with a system like Armour's current implementation, which serves only to slow down the pace of the game. It's a relic of a time when Warframe was a stealth/tactical hybrid shooter, with minimal enhanced mobility mechanics, and to be honest, whilst I wasn't there for that timeframe I would guess that it wasn't all that great even then.

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

There isnt tho. Player abilities tend to not have a vector for scaling (or have a inefficient one like ember fireball and oberon smite which both ask for other prep which you could plain combine with something else to kill faster), but other than outliers noted (essentially a few stances, some 6 melee weapons base stats and mostly just the 2x crit on heavy in case of gunblades and glaives) and old not-covered or skimmed in the yee old gun rework guns (along with the shotgun status by pellet nerf which still needs to be fixed to be proper calculation instead), the variance isnt really that notable. Soma Prime, Kuva Karak, Zymos, Ogris or a random stick all end up in the same ballpark of what level of armored enemies they chew through, difference is the later 3 do it by cleaving/up close positionin among the enemy instead of Punchthrough.

Actually, the deviation between how much stuff scales and how much stuff doesn't is something I've discussed in other topics. I didn't add it here to avoid too much clutter, but yes, many abilities do suffer.

However, what is indisputable is that there is a great degree of variance in terms of the outputs of 'endgame' weapons and items. Just consider Melee vs Guns as of this moment, or the likes of the Bramma vs the Rubico. As well as many of the aforementioned non-scaling warframe powers, since they'll be in the same kit as weapons.

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

Antimatter drop, if timed relatively generously and exploded in the right place would blow up all vents at once (much like how a high fire rate PT weapon can sometimes get 2 vents at once still and a few other things). And even if it were something like speeding up exploiter with MP, still would be expanding the gameplay (mostly by the bosses painfully animation derping as they mash 2 attacks right after the other)

Vents? Do you mean Exploiter?

On that note, you kind of do DE's job for them. If skipping is causing the game to bug out, then ultimately it should probably go.

[PublikDomain]

1 hour ago, Loza03 said:

I'll admit, @PublikDomain has a much better understanding of this than I do, but I've been hanging around the community and learning the ins-and-outs of modding long enough to know that it does work in the way I've described - or at least something similarly. I'd not have added this due to my lesser understanding of this topic, but the impact of the effect is great enough that it's worth saying, and well, nobody else was saying it.

Most stats do work the same in a build regardless of weapon. +100% Damage is the same 2x multiplier no matter the weapon, same with Fire Rate, Multishot, and Elemental/IPS damage. The one big exception are crit stats, where both the base crit stats of the weapon and the other crit mods in the build give larger multipliers than if they were alone. I was monkeying around on overframe.gg for an example and found a good one in the Velox and Kuva Brakk. Unmodded the Kuva Brakk deals ~4x the burst/sustained DPS of the Velox, but once modded with the same standard pistol build it deals ~6x the burst/sustained DPS. Given how prevalent crit is within the game's modding meta, where there's basically nothing good that doesn't build for crit outside of niche builds, this can really add up. And this is just exacerbated when bad weapons that already fall behind can't afford the mod slots to fix their QoL and handling issues either. The Velox for example has a terrible ammo economy and reload and you don't have room to fix that unless you want to slip to 1/8th or 1/10th or 1/12th what a Kuva Brakk can do. Rivens can help combat this a little, at least in theory, but they're a slot machine with very little player control over them so good luck finding one to fit a specific purpose on your own. At best they can help close the gap a little and your bad weapon might deal 1/3rd or 1/2 of what a good weapon can do, but it's still gonna handle poorly.

[Kontrollo]

2 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

Most stats do work the same in a build regardless of weapon. +100% Damage is the same 2x multiplier no matter the weapon, same with Fire Rate, Multishot, and Elemental/IPS damage. ...

Minor addition: Both Multishot and Fire Rate/Attack Speed also affect Status procs per second. Also, there are abilities (e.g. Covenant) and conditioned effects (e.g. CO) that turn the whole thing from multiplicative to exponential.

[PublikDomain]

17 minutes ago, Kontrollo said:

Minor addition: Both Multishot and Fire Rate/Attack Speed also affect Status procs per second. Also, there are abilities (e.g. Roar) and conditioned effects (e.g. CO) that turn the whole thing from multiplicative to exponential.

True about Status Effects, though their effect on DPS is hard to accurately quantify without spending a lot of time crunching numbers. (ETA: the increase in procs/sec from Fire Rate, Multishot, and Status Chance should be the same regardless of weapon, assuming of course they behave the same way and don't have forced procs or something. IE double Fire Rate and double Multishot and double Status Chance should give you 8x more Status Procs per period regardless of weapon. But procs are weird and I don't know if a linear increase of procs/sec has a linear end effect.) But Roar is an external multiplier so it should multiply the same for everything, and conditional effects feed in to the same stat pools as other stats and will behave the same. Condition Overload will provide the same final multiplier regardless of weapon given the same build, number of status effects, and other external factors. For example, a weapon with just CO and a 100% Strength Roar (1.5x damage) will have its DPS increased by 5.1x when hitting an enemy with 2 Status Effects, regardless of weapon. If weapon A deal 100 base damage it'll deal 510 damage, and if weapon B deals 200 base damage it'll deal 1020. In that particular configuration your multiplier would be 1.8x + 1.5, where x is the number of status effects. 1.5x → 3.3x → 5.1x → 6.9x → etc. It's still a linearly-increasing multiplier, though I guess if there are enough conditional effects active at once the overall effect can behave exponentially. 🤔

[Andele3025]

3 hours ago, Loza03 said:

This whole thing deviates away from the point of damage types being counter-intuitive and mechanically shallow due to a lack of balance completely. Please stay on-topic so as not to derail the thread entirely.

Its not. They are a layer of enemy based damage increase or decreases explained both in game and with a mid gameplay option to learn, and displayed in the codex.

3 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Depth is a broad, overall concept discussing the number of choices that a player has available that are practically and reasonably available. There can be depth in the mechanical execution (such as what is described here) and depth in the RPG, numerical aspects of a game. What I'm interested in when discussing damage types is the latter, more or less exclusively.

Buildcrafting is its own layer of meta depth that completely depends on ones ability to do math and tools available (and then playtesting it). So no its still relevant because what resists apply can be altered with the rest of the loadout choices.

3 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Having said that, a hybrid weapon is a perfect example. Many weapons capable of hybrid performance will perform better than the majority of more specialised weapons in comparable MR's, due to the fact that it has access to more multiplying effects - for example, stacking critical hit damage with Viral's status effects will stack with each other. Consider that a 150% crit chance weapon might have a 50% chance to hit for seven or eight times the damage, whereas a 90% crit chance weapon that can also stack viral can reach that same point after a couple of seconds with far more consistency, since it'll likely have a 4X crit multiplier (give or take) and then be getting multiplied by the effects of viral.

On their own, but then you realize that as a loadout you could do more damage by actually focusing on the strengths only. This doesnt work only if a weapon got unjustly nerfed at what it was supposed to be (e.g. tigris series going from status shotguns to nothing shotguns after nerf by pellet count) or is the mentioned stug or twin vipers.
I mean even in steel path with something like the Paracesis you dont actually need status on itl because that 31% 2.6 crit is sufficient despite animation jank of heavy blades with stance gutting in melee 2.9998 and will kill in the time a weapon with less raw damage but far better procs gets to its effective damage output (and likely kills the enemy then as well). Its part of why the whole CO primer thing despite being forum touted around isnt really much of a meta (and far more just the likes of the Kuva Nukor and Phantasma already being good weapons) when merely Primed Pressure Point competes for the same total time to kill.

3 hours ago, Loza03 said:

There are some kit parts that generate energy, and abilities similar to that is what I'm looking for throughout the game. However, examining the other options and then comparing them to the likes of pizzas (which 100% should be accounted for, it's an option available to the player), Zenurik, Arcane Energise and to a somewhat lesser extent, Dispensary and there's really little contest in their effect. Entropy restores 25% of a frames unmodded energy - which averages around 25-30 energy every 30 seconds assuming an instant re-proc after the buff. Zenurik restores 25 energy per second and has no cooldown.

And this has to do with your claim about there not being mid gameloop energy regen when it is.
Hell Zenurik itself actually counts too since you can tie effects to energizing dash like lockdown. Also no, both regens from Zenurik are 5 energy per second when maxxed out (since 5 per 5 and 50% of 50 aka 25 over 5s are both 5 per second). As is dispensary because its a ability you have to use and make sure modding/frame build works with it.

3 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Buff upkeep, sure, that's a skill floor, but some buffs (such as invisiblity) take more than they give.

Invisibility is a massive BOOST in gameplay. Its one out of only 2 options that make stealth even viable.

3 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Nova's tiles make map tile layout functionally moot.

No it doesnt. Wormhole doesnt curve nor go through walls.

3 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Wukong and to some degree Titania remove the need to interact with the environment, thereby removing environmental gameplay from the equation.

Wukong is the only one you can argue here for and only because cloudwalker makes his afk turret invul enabling it to be a afk turret. Still doesnt change that he has to do the same movement to get through the map and cloudwalker doesnt give noclip powers. Its the same S#&$ if you use a step mod bullet jump chain or wukong without something like molt or volt speed buff. This is only a problem if the person didnt get the basics of bullet jumping and aim gliding.

3 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Therefore, if the player has a means to trivialise, automate or otherwise skip combat, then that, ultimately, is to trivialise, automate or otherwise skip the whole game. 

One of these things is not like the other. To make a challenge trivial by making smart choices is still engaging with all of that content, only you're showing that you're actually skilled instead of head bashing spaghetti till it sticks.
Now if warframe had actual afk past 1 min of octavia who is barely played, the rest of the line might be relevant. Good thing that it doesnt.

3 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Slightly-sarcastic comments aside, the foundational issues are what the whole thread is about. Even beyond the fact that we demonstrably disagree about certain aspects of the game having flaws - armour is still kicking around, and it's still a major component of a highly foundational aspect of the game.

Even as a horde-based game or a dungeon crawler or musou-style game, armour as it currently exists is alone indicative that Warframe has serious foundational issues. It does not make sense for a high-speed game about killing a lot of dudes to be bogged down with a system like Armour's current implementation, which serves only to slow down the pace of the game.

No, its scaling had severe issues, in steel path due to pointless multipliers which mean levels lie it has issues, but otherwise its the lack of extra defenses that arent just "you lose part of your gameplay" or "modding for 7/10 categories of things you have is pointless now due to x/y/z/per hit caps, etc" on the other factions is a problem tho because current weapon damage values, status effect and supplementary powers (augments, operator school, etc) supports the numbers of armored enemies.

Not to mention that IF your statement were true (armor doesnt slow down game pace at all, even in steel path you need a eximus heavy enemy for them to not be effectively binary), a proper TTK would be good because it actually means more interactions from enemies. So its not even a relic of a older time, its whats keeping warframe itself from being a relic.

3 hours ago, Loza03 said:

However, what is indisputable is that there is a great degree of variance in terms of the outputs of 'endgame' weapons and items. Just consider Melee vs Guns as of this moment, or the likes of the Bramma vs the Rubico. As well as many of the aforementioned non-scaling warframe powers, since they'll be in the same kit as weapons.

Melee vs Gun discrepancy is cleave vs punchthrough and ramping damage vs damage plateaus, not the final numbers (exceptions like glaives/gunblades or borked stances like SO and BJ aside... as they are exceptions after all). And there isnt much of a gap Bramma vs Rubico. You are picking cleave or ramp with same start and a skill ceiling on keeping up headshots and not missing for the sniper (which fits the idea of sniper precision gameplay). If anything you should have used the Lenz there because it got a unjust nerf in getting damage falloff despite delay (and self stagger potential); which could be excused by its MR/that there will be a MR 13+ version of that gameloop to upgrade to, but till DE doest that it isnt justified.

3 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Vents? Do you mean Exploiter?

On that note, you kind of do DE's job for them. If skipping is causing the game to bug out, then ultimately it should probably go.

It didnt bug out tho. Multi vent break was perfect in the fact that it didnt cause any bugs or problems, took some basic skill, gave a generally underused ability a niche application, still required you to go through the """gameplay""" of that "boss" phase (quote marks due to opinion on bosses in WF even if exploiter is among the closest of the more cinematic focused fights to actually being a boss with agnostic mechanics and a place to actually use your frame abilities) and in the end was time saving.

[Kontrollo]

1 hour ago, PublikDomain said:

True about Status Effects, though their effect on DPS is hard to accurately quantify without spending a lot of time crunching numbers. (ETA: the increase in procs/sec from Fire Rate, Multishot, and Status Chance should be the same regardless of weapon, assuming of course they behave the same way and don't have forced procs or something. IE double Fire Rate and double Multishot and double Status Chance should give you 8x more Status Procs per period regardless of weapon. But procs are weird and I don't know if a linear increase of procs/sec has a linear end effect.) But Roar is an external multiplier so it should multiply the same for everything, and conditional effects feed in to the same stat pools as other stats and will behave the same. Condition Overload will provide the same final multiplier regardless of weapon given the same build, number of status effects, and other external factors. For example, a weapon with just CO and a 100% Strength Roar (1.5x damage) will have its DPS increased by 5.1x when hitting an enemy with 2 Status Effects, regardless of weapon. If weapon A deal 100 base damage it'll deal 510 damage, and if weapon B deals 200 base damage it'll deal 1020. In that particular configuration your multiplier would be 1.8x + 1.5, where x is the number of status effects. 1.5x → 3.3x → 5.1x → 6.9x → etc. It's still a linearly-increasing multiplier, though I guess if there are enough conditional effects active at once the overall effect can behave exponentially. 🤔

Yeah the point I was trying to make was that it doesn't end with just these multipliers, so I switched out Roar for Covenant even before I saw your reply, which dips into the exponential crit calcs to make it easier to get the point across.

Status effects: depends on which one. Corrosive gets better the more you have, for example (looking at it after the first one). At least as long as you're under the cap. Then it gets messy with expiration and how everything interacts so you'd need a simulation.

But the point was, even if we're talking in terms of multipliers and how effective a weapon is in comparison to another, it doesn't just end with these mod calcs.

 

Edit: I should add that yes, I hadn't thought it through as well as I should have when I made the previous post, but there are some effects that make the multiplier scale better than linearly. However, doing the calcs gets messy rather quickly and it's late. 😂

(Also depends on what you take as base in terms of status. Does the better weapon have the equal or better base status/s, or is it just better damage? But let's not go there.)

[(NSW)Greybones]

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

 

• Modding I think also needs to change so that it stops focusing on damage multipliers, and instead focuses on modifying our gameplay in interesting ways (which many of our current mods could achieve if we had reason to use them). The thread I linked goes on about this too, but mods should exist to add diversity to our gameplay, something our current most popular weapon mods fail to achieve.

There’s quite a bit in your post I’m curious about, but I think I’ll try to learn about individual chunks instead of the whole thing at once.

For this quoted bit; it sounds like you’re using maximum damage multipliers all the time?

[Teridax68]

41 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

There’s quite a bit in your post I’m curious about, but I think I’ll try to learn about individual chunks instead of the whole thing at once.

For this quoted bit; it sounds like you’re using maximum damage multipliers all the time?

If by this you mean I've modded my weapons optimally, which involves equipping damage multiplier mods at max rank, then yes.

[(NSW)Greybones]

3 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

If by this you mean I've modded my weapons optimally, which involves equipping damage multiplier mods at max rank, then yes.

Yup, that’s what I meant.

Do you need to?

I think in lower-level areas you can get away with equipping the weirder mods

[(NSW)Greybones]

13 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

If by this you mean I've modded my weapons optimally, which involves equipping damage multiplier mods at max rank, then yes.

Sorry for the double-quote; this is basically a late edit that I felt should have been added to the initial post

I find that ~ level 80 enemies I can get away with a rank ~8 serration and double elements to counter resistances, freeing up the rest of the slots for whatever

[Loza03]

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

Its not. They are a layer of enemy based damage increase or decreases explained both in game and with a mid gameplay option to learn, and displayed in the codex.

It's at this point that I'd like to redirect you back towards the OP, as I've more fully described my thoughts there and it'd be pointless to repeat them here.

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

Buildcrafting is its own layer of meta depth that completely depends on ones ability to do math and tools available (and then playtesting it). So no its still relevant because what resists apply can be altered with the rest of the loadout choices.

The mechanical skill aspect of depth was what was irrelevant. I apologise if that was somehow unclear, although 

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

On their own, but then you realize that as a loadout you could do more damage by actually focusing on the strengths only. This doesnt work only if a weapon got unjustly nerfed at what it was supposed to be (e.g. tigris series going from status shotguns to nothing shotguns after nerf by pellet count) or is the mentioned stug or twin vipers.
I mean even in steel path with something like the Paracesis you dont actually need status on itl because that 31% 2.6 crit is sufficient despite animation jank of heavy blades with stance gutting in melee 2.9998 and will kill in the time a weapon with less raw damage but far better procs gets to its effective damage output (and likely kills the enemy then as well). Its part of why the whole CO primer thing despite being forum touted around isnt really much of a meta (and far more just the likes of the Kuva Nukor and Phantasma already being good weapons) when merely Primed Pressure Point competes for the same total time to kill.

There have been a multude of occasions when Hybrid has been superior, to my knowledge, but if it comes down to more precise details I'd defer to somebody who knows more about it.

I included it because it needed to be said.

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

And this has to do with your claim about there not being mid gameloop energy regen when it is.

Popping Zenurik to passively regenerate energy is, at the most generous, a gameloop with the bare minimum of interaction, and it does not compensate for the degree of removed interaction elsewhere.

2 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

Hell Zenurik itself actually counts too since you can tie effects to energizing dash like lockdown. Also no, both regens from Zenurik are 5 energy per second when maxxed out (since 5 per 5 and 50% of 50 aka 25 over 5s are both 5 per second).

This is why I prefer to defer to other people on the more mathematical aspects of buildcraft. I have some degree of discalculia - you'll have to forgive me if I screw up my numbers on occasion.

2 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

Invisibility is a massive BOOST in gameplay. Its one out of only 2 options that make stealth even viable.

No, it isn't. In terms of interaction with enemies... well, there is none. Invisibility in Warframe works by preventing the AI from registering that you're present. It literally disables the enemy's AI as it concerns the player.

Gameplay in terms of combat is defined entirely by the interaction between player and enemy.

2 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

No it doesnt. Wormhole doesnt curve nor go through walls.

True. However, to facilitate the enhanced mobility, and due in no small part to the artistic style, a lot of maps in Warframe have very long sight lines. Combined with a generous supply of energy, and a Nova can cover tiles in  very short order.

Additionally, Wukong and Titana can curve around walls, so their aspects of traversal-skipping remain relevant.

2 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

Wukong is the only one you can argue here for and only because cloudwalker makes his afk turret invul enabling it to be a afk turret. Still doesnt change that he has to do the same movement to get through the map and cloudwalker doesnt give noclip powers. Its the same S#&$ if you use a step mod bullet jump chain or wukong without something like molt or volt speed buff. This is only a problem if the person didnt get the basics of bullet jumping and aim gliding.

Step mod bullet jump chain deviates because it requires interaction with the environment, as you need to bounce on walls. Wukong and Titana possess free flight which requires minimal interaction with the environment. Whilst you can't literally press forward, you would be very hard pressed to suggest that free flight is parkour.

2 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

One of these things is not like the other. To make a challenge trivial by making smart choices is still engaging with all of that content, only you're showing that you're actually skilled instead of head bashing spaghetti till it sticks.
Now if warframe had actual afk past 1 min of octavia who is barely played, the rest of the line might be relevant. Good thing that it doesnt.

Your bounds for what is an acceptable level of interaction are remarkably low. I would not consider something like Limbo's stasis spam to be engaging with content, largely because it bypasses most or all aspects of combat. An enemy that cannot react is not an enemy that is not producing engaging content. It is not skillful in mind or execution - it is the intended and advertised function of the ability, it requires no mastery to use, and it has no practical weaknesses or drawbacks in its design apart from Nullifiers. If the only weakness of an ability that completely disables enemy AI is when abilities as a whole are disabled, then that ability is poorly designed.

It's worth noting that I have in the past defended Saryn for this reason - whilst she is, IMO, overtuned in many respects, unlike several other frames which can and do prosper entirely on a handful of inputs, her gameplay does at least require continued engagement with enemies in order to spread and manage spores. There's an actual engaging combat loop there, with elements to consider and natural weaknesses, which replaces the standard loop of 'aim for the head, dodge attacks, etc.'

2 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

No, its scaling had severe issues, in steel path due to pointless multipliers which mean levels lie it has issues, but otherwise its the lack of extra defenses that arent just "you lose part of your gameplay" or "modding for 7/10 categories of things you have is pointless now due to x/y/z/per hit caps, etc" on the other factions is a problem tho because current weapon damage values, status effect and supplementary powers (augments, operator school, etc) supports the numbers of armored enemies.

Not to mention that IF your statement were true (armor doesnt slow down game pace at all, even in steel path you need a eximus heavy enemy for them to not be effectively binary), a proper TTK would be good because it actually means more interactions from enemies. So its not even a relic of a older time, its whats keeping warframe itself from being a relic.

 Again, I go into further depth on my thoughts on armour. And believe me, they are not controversial thoughts. Armour causing a vast divide between armoured and unarmoured enemies is undoubtedly an underlying cause to many of Warframe's issues. This has been known and discussed for years.

2 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

Melee vs Gun discrepancy is cleave vs punchthrough and ramping damage vs damage plateaus, not the final numbers (exceptions like glaives/gunblades or borked stances like SO and BJ aside... as they are exceptions after all). And there isnt much of a gap Bramma vs Rubico. You are picking cleave or ramp with same start and a skill ceiling on keeping up headshots and not missing for the sniper (which fits the idea of sniper precision gameplay). If anything you should have used the Lenz there because it got a unjust nerf in getting damage falloff despite delay (and self stagger potential); which could be excused by its MR/that there will be a MR 13+ version of that gameloop to upgrade to, but till DE doest that it isnt justified.

Blood Rush, as it is, enables a higher critical hit chance than if you stacked every other non-augment, non-riven (and very frequently even with rivens) mod for crit chance for any given weapon, even if you count the doubled crit on heavy attacks that DE have gone on record as saying was purely to allow heavies to compete with light attacks.

Yes, Melee has bigger damage numbers than Guns. Like I said, I have discalculia, and I had to check this several times because surely this is just my maths-intolerant brain throwing up a wrong number. But the calculator doesn't lie for basic addition. Do the maths yourself.

2 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

It didnt bug out tho. Multi vent break was perfect in the fact that it didnt cause any bugs or problems, took some basic skill, gave a generally underused ability a niche application, still required you to go through the """gameplay""" of that "boss" phase (quote marks due to opinion on bosses in WF even if exploiter is among the closest of the more cinematic focused fights to actually being a boss with agnostic mechanics and a place to actually use your frame abilities) and in the end was time saving.

Maybe. I don't want to get into the speedrunning vs standard gameplay debates since that's drastically off-topic, and I'm not a speedrunner myself and I don't pretend to know how to marry the needs or wants of a game dev studio and speedrunning.

This thread is dedicated to foundational design issues.

[Tyreaus]

19 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Do you need to?

The problem is that it's more effort to hop into the arsenal screen to change things up than to just run it as is. There's seldom a noteworthy performance difference in changing up a weapon's modding for lower-level content, especially versus just grabbing a ready-made-and-set AoE weapon. Not to mention that polarities can get in the way if you've really min-maxed for late game.

[(NSW)Greybones]

12 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

The problem is that it's more effort to hop into the arsenal screen to change things up than to just run it as is. There's seldom a noteworthy performance difference in changing up a weapon's modding for lower-level content, especially versus just grabbing a ready-made-and-set AoE weapon. Not to mention that polarities can get in the way if you've really min-maxed for late game.

Yeah, it can get a little inconvenient. (My Argonak’s been forma’d about 5 times, and that does get in the way sometimes :P)

I’ve set up my default three slots for Low, Mid, and High-level content, but those are more just placeholders so that I remember what I was doing. I do still need to sit there and mull over a little what I’m going to bring to a fight

A noteworthy difference is why I spend that little bit of time to do it though (well, that, and because I want to use mods like the reduced zoom on aimglide or rapid holstering). Are you coming from the perspective of “Everything still dies super easy”?

[Duality52]

36 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

Your bounds for what is an acceptable level of interaction are remarkably low. I would not consider something like Limbo's stasis spam to be engaging with content, largely because it bypasses most or all aspects of combat. An enemy that cannot react is not an enemy that is not producing engaging content. It is not skillful in mind or execution - it is the intended and advertised function of the ability, it requires no mastery to use, and it has no practical weaknesses or drawbacks in its design apart from Nullifiers. If the only weakness of an ability that completely disables enemy AI is when abilities as a whole are disabled, then that ability is poorly designed.

This is the primary reason why there will be never any sort of "challenge" in Warframe. Admittedly, I'm tired of see people continuing to demand for challenge or even the raids to return. Due to the immense power creep, we're not ninjas, we're gods. You bring Warframes into any other shooters, and they will smear away any resemblance of challenge due to:

• Abilities and equipment that essentially grants immortality. Kill me once? You need to kill me 3 (5 with two fully ranked Arcanes) again when I revive in just a second!
• Abilities and equipment that effortlessly wipe out crowds of enemies or even a large tile in a span of a few seconds.
• Abilities and equipment that shut down the enemy AI entirely.
• Insane mobility.

The latter part defined one of Warframe's key gameplay, the mobility and parkour. That can and should stay. The other three parts are immensely difficult for DE to even try and balance as they themselves and even the community cornered them. The grind of the game forced players to go for meta builds just to get the grind over with, but using their meta builds makes the game much more stale. This leads to the players to complain how the grind is a "chore". DE also caused the community to harmonize with the power creep for this long. The rewards and some part of the grind that should be readjusted/reworked to be more fair and rewarding, but that's a different topic for now.

I'm doing my best to help new players/clanmates who are also new to the game, but it's difficult when they ask for certain builds or go after "meta" weapons. That will kill their exploration of the game, and thus their interest of the game in the long run. It's ultimately their choice, but still going for the "best" is not what would be ideal in the long run.

[Tyreaus]

3 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Yeah, it can get a little inconvenient. (My Argonak’s been forma’d about 5 times, and that does get in the way sometimes :P)

I’ve set up my default three slots for Low, Mid, and High-level content, but those are more just placeholders so that I remember what I was doing. I do still need to sit there and mull over a little what I’m going to bring to a fight

A noteworthy difference is why I spend that little bit of time to do it though. Are you coming from the perspective of “Everything still dies super easy”?

My personal perspective is more "everything dies super easy and it's not built for it".

It's entirely possible to have a game where the enemies get one-shot but have a myriad of mechanics to avoid that damage. Nullifier bubbles and Arbitration drones are such sorts of things. In that sort of game, damage doesn't matter - obviously - and differences in mechanics do instead. Trying to stun enemies so you can hit that tiny insta-gib weakpoint, for example.

But we have this weird thing where most things die very easily, yet we're running an arms race against scaling enemies in order to keep things dying very easily. It's...weird. In large part because the difference in feel between a 1 shot and a 2 shot is huge compared to a 255 shot and a 256 shot.

[(NSW)Greybones]

4 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

But we have this weird thing where most things die very easily, yet we're running an arms race against scaling enemies in order to keep things dying very easily. It's...weird. In large part because the difference in feel between a 1 shot and a 2 shot is huge compared to a 255 shot and a 256 shot.

Yeah, it’s always a weird thing in games with levels. “Get more powerful to overcome the enemies to fight tougher enemies requiring that the player gets more powerful”.

By this point I’m going with the approach of “I’ll be as powerful as I want to be, thank you”

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Yup, that’s what I meant.

Do you need to?

I think in lower-level areas you can get away with equipping the weirder mods

At what cost, though? All else held equal, creating a new config just for lower levels means having to juggle configs every time I want to try some funky build solo in the Star Chart versus doing something more serious like an Arbitration, which is a hassle. This is assuming my Forma'd weapon can accommodate the weird build I want to try, which chances are it won't due to mismatched polarities, so unless I were to re-Forma my weapon each time or just not equip mods, that wouldn't really work either. While I don't need to have an optimal build for every level of content I run, I similarly do not need to create and manage separate builds for lower levels, and the complications in doing so outstrip the potential gains in fun that could be had from equipping interesting, yet underpowered mods.

[(NSW)Greybones]

24 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

At what cost, though? All else held equal, creating a new config just for lower levels means having to juggle configs every time I want to try some funky build solo in the Star Chart versus doing something more serious like an Arbitration, which is a hassle. This is assuming my Forma'd weapon can accommodate the weird build I want to try, which chances are it won't due to mismatched polarities, so unless I were to re-Forma my weapon each time or just not equip mods, that wouldn't really work either. While I don't need to have an optimal build for every level of content I run, I similarly do not need to create and manage separate builds for lower levels, and the complications in doing so outstrip the potential gains in fun that could be had from equipping interesting, yet underpowered mods.

You have tried taking off some of the high-damage mods and equipping not-that, haven’t you?

[Teridax68]

14 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

You have tried taking off some of the high-damage mods and equipping not-that, haven’t you?

Yes, I have, which is why I have still ended up going for the builds I run now. What exactly is it that you expect would come out of equipping a different build?