The Dev Workshop that Broke the Camels Back

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

15 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

Ah... Here we have an example of Pablo's warning coming into fruition:

1) Refuse to nerf outliers.

2) Buff the rest to outlier levels.

3) The game is even more brain-dead easy and no longer engaging.

4) Enemies have to be buffed to deal with everything that has been buffed.

5) Entire game has been effectively nerfed because the original outlier was not nerfed.

 

The problem with outliers in Warframe is that they are a order of magnitude better than the next best thing due to all the multiplicative math DE uses haphazardly. 

Multi-shot, elemental damage, +damage mods all scale weapon damage by a fixed % from base. Equally effective on a good weapon and a bad weapon, with the gap between them staying constant.

Then there are the Critical mods whose effectiveness vary from weapon to weapon based on arbitrary Critical stats. Weapons with viable Critical stats automatically have an extra multiplier to exploit with zero drawbacks. 

Also, Hunter Munitions exists, giving these weapons a way to ignore enemy health multipliers.

Meta weapons sit on top of these extra multipliers and the cri-t-pples can't even reach their feet. Scrambling for less desirable damage multipliers like fire rate and faction damage.

I'm surprised DE hasn't reined in Critical Damage or Viral procs yet by making them additive with Base Damage, but DE are also the ones who insist on making armor scale along with health enforcing the Bleed meta they claim to despise.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

3 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

I think that's a testament to how much rampant powercreep has been introduced to the game over the years. Those 30% mods were the best of the best when introduced in update 11. Today they're a joke. Why are they a joke? Because 120% damage versions of those mods were introduced in update 16.

We will then think of the 120% mods as a joke when the 240% versions are added. Rinse and repeat.

When DE reworked melee, they at least updated the old mods we already owned like True Steel and Quickening. 

When DE "reworked" guns..........

 

[Aldain]

3 minutes ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

When DE reworked melee, they at least updated the old mods we already owned like True Steel and Quickening. 

Don't forget also having STAT ADJUSTMENTS TO THE WEAPONS which turned things like the Fang Prime from a literal joke weapon into something usable.

The same thing DE refused to do for Ranged Weapons because it would be too much work...despite doing it for every single melee weapon to some extent.

[Jarriaga]

1 minute ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

When DE reworked melee, they at least updated the old mods we already owned like True Steel and Quickening. 

When DE "reworked" guns..........

 

True Steel I give you that, but Quickening had to be reworked because the mechanics tied to said buff (Channeling) were removed from the game. No mod was updated to do more damage than it did before if you review the list of changes other than in situations in which charge attacks were changed to heavy attacks.

 

[(XBOX)CaligulaTwily]

Just tie Beserker to combo. Like 6% attack speed per combo multiplier (maxes at 72%) and the bonus decays when combo does. So attack speed vs heavy attacks, and making Combo Efficiency something for me to consider 

[Jarriaga]

17 minutes ago, Aldain said:

Don't forget also having STAT ADJUSTMENTS TO THE WEAPONS which turned things like the Fang Prime from a literal joke weapon into something usable.

The same thing DE refused to do for Ranged Weapons because it would be too much work...despite doing it for every single melee weapon to some extent.

I don't think this is a fair comparison. DE did buff and re-do all primary and secondary weapon stats back in 2018 (Sans beam weapons):

Reworking all guns stats back then is why DE often say they are satisfied with gun stats. A second balance pass in 3 years because a hard mode was added to the game would just be another raw powercreep push.

Not to mention that enemies were nerfed a year later, which is an indirect buff to all weapons.

[Aldain]

16 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

I don't think this is a fair comparison. DE did buff and re-do all primary and secondary weapon stats back in 2018:

Reworking all guns stats this is why DE often say they are satisfied with gun stats. 

Looking through that list, most of the changes done were virtually nothing, look at what they did to the Tenora for example, a weapon in the supposedly good MR 10-12 bucket:

Tenora

• Damage increased from 23 to 24 (Primary Fire and Alt Fire)
• Status chance increased from 15% to 16% (Primary Fire)
• Critical chance increased from 25% to 28% (Primary Fire)
• Critical chance increased from 33% to 34% (Alt Fire)
• Increased the speed to reach max fire rate and accuracy from 25 rounds to 16 rounds

One whole point of damage...woo.

Or the Burston Prime:

Burston Prime    

• Mastery Rank increased from 0 to 12
• Status chance increased from 15% to 30%
• Critical chance increased from 5% to 18%
• Critical damage increased from 1.5x to 1.8x
• Damage decreased from 39 to 36

The Burston Prime LOST DAMAGE in exchange for an increase to its crit chance that it can barely use.

Or how about the Latron Prime?

Latron Prime

• Mastery Rank increased from 0 to 10
• Damage increased from 85 to 90
• Status Chance increased from 25% to 26%
• Critical chance increased from 15% to 22%
• Critical damage increased from 2.5x to 2.8x

5 Damage and 1% to status chance, with a decent but not exactly impressive Crit Chance boost...and the MR8 Veldt came out shortly after this with nearly the same stats.

You can look through the entire list of changes and see that almost nothing changed, some weapons even lost base damage which made mods scale on them even worse.

Even High MR weapons got almost nothing, and low MR weapons were lucky to get minor percentage increases to stats that don't matter to the weapons.

[(PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk]

49 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

Ah... Here we have an example of Pablo's warning coming into fruition:

1) Refuse to nerf outliers.

2) Buff the rest to outlier levels.

3) The game is even more brain-dead easy and no longer engaging.

4) Enemies have to be buffed to deal with everything that has been buffed.

5) Entire game has been effectively nerfed because the original outlier was not nerfed.

 

Man i actually agree with Pablos warnings. It's just the way they're being implemented and reasons behind them that feel kind of weird. If CO is not capped at 3 then yea it'll be a small change. But why even do it in the first place since it is so small? Melee has been in its current form for 2 years now. The reason for the attack speed nerf was because of animation, it doesn't do anything to help that if we're being honest. The reason for Blood Rush was because it was too easy to get red crits with one mod. Which is true, but for a small number compared to the number of total melees, the vast majority need another mod to help cc to see red crits. People like to see red crits, it's fun for them. Idk dude it just really does feel like each new workshop DE is doing something that's analgous to shooting themselves in the foot. 

[(PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk]

12 minutes ago, (XBOX)CaligulaTwily said:

Just tie Beserker to combo. Like 6% attack speed per combo multiplier (maxes at 72%) and the bonus decays when combo does. So attack speed vs heavy attacks, and making Combo Efficiency something for me to consider 

That's actually a pretty good idea, thank you for your post :)

[(NSW)Greybones]

7 minutes ago, (PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk said:

Idk dude it just really does feel like each new workshop DE is doing something that's analgous to shooting themselves in the foot. 

Perhaps they're designing for an idea that you (and others) as a player vs a developer can't quite see?

[Tesseract7777]

Just now, (NSW)Greybones said:

Perhaps they're designing for an idea that you (and others) as a player vs a developer can't quite see?

Giving feedback is important, don't get me wrong, but I think people often forget that (again, not saying this is dogmatically true in all cases), but players tend to be better at finding the problems with a game. 

And developers are often better at finding the solutions.

The players will see everything wrong with anything in the game and any proposed solution at a glance, and their ideas can help send the developers in the right direction, but if you put solutions in the hands of our average player, they would just think the solution to everything is to increase player power and reduce rng, which isn't exactly productive. 

So the players usually aren't the best at coming up with the solutions. But the devs need the players, because it is hard to look in a mirror and see the flaws in your own work objectively. 

[Jarriaga]

17 minutes ago, Aldain said:

Looking through that list, most of the changes done were virtually nothing,

I do agree some of the changes were symbolical at best, but overall most weapons got a DPS buff of 25%-40% when taking into account reload, crit chance and crit multipliers even if base damage was lowered. It's the Opticor Vandal situation.

The melee buff just seems so significant and massive in comparison because DE were (In their own words) compensating for the changes made to Blood Rush (Lower value, base crit instead of total crit multiplier) and Condition Overload. Guns on the other hand lost nothing during their stats pass, so there was nothing to compensate for that required a large jump.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

22 hours ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

Melee was strictly worse than guns and was a weapon of last resort until the Acolyte mods were released.

Melee weapons were chosen solely at how well they allowed you to copter.

The elephant in the room is the ever growing drain on newer mods and how so many new weapons have 0 starting polarities.

DE really wants players to buy Forma.

Guns either need a way to get extra capacity, something similar to a stance or aura mod, or have their mods reduced in cost across the board by 2-3 drain.

I think the capacities are fine. This limit creates the variety just as much as mod selection within capacity. 

[(NSW)Greybones]

11 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

Giving feedback is important, don't get me wrong, but I think people often forget that (again, not saying this is dogmatically true in all cases), but players tend to be better at finding the problems with a game. 

And developers are often better at finding the solutions.

I can mostly agree with this (though there is additional nuance to consider)

I've always approached the feedback of players as "Players provide their perspective, and the developers will do what they either can or will with said perspective", and that's about the best we as players can do.

So not a fan of perspectives that are just "My playstyle has been broken, CHANGE IT BACK", though

[Jarriaga]

28 minutes ago, (PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk said:

Man i actually agree with Pablos warnings. It's just the way they're being implemented and reasons behind them that feel kind of weird. If CO is not capped at 3 then yea it'll be a small change. But why even do it in the first place since it is so small? Melee has been in its current form for 2 years now. The reason for the attack speed nerf was because of animation, it doesn't do anything to help that if we're being honest. The reason for Blood Rush was because it was too easy to get red crits with one mod. Which is true, but for a small number compared to the number of total melees, the vast majority need another mod to help cc to see red crits. People like to see red crits, it's fun for them. Idk dude it just really does feel like each new workshop DE is doing something that's analgous to shooting themselves in the foot. 

Individual changes to each mod seem small, but we're actually losing about 50% melee DPS all things being considered even with no cap to CO. I think DE are well aware that these changes are likely going to kill Berserker the same way the previous update killed Maiming Strike and Covert Lethality. No other speed buff mod is multiplicative, thus you have to use more mods to get closer to what Berserker is today.

Lower attack speed means fewer hits, thus less total damage.

Condition Overload is giving a lower buff value. At no cap, 6 status will only buff damage by 480% while current implementation would have it by 720%.

Blood Rush will push down many orange crit weapons to standard yellow crit level and thus losing the damage multiplier from crit tiers.

Put all of that together and your damage is cut in half.

This is a significantly bigger nerf than what paper suggests. It's just that even with such a big nerf melee is still overkill until hours in.

I'm fine with these changes though. I've advocated melee needed a nerf for a long time now in order to make The Steel Path harder.

[Aldain]

4 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

The melee buff just seems so significant and massive in comparison because DE were in their own words compensating for the changes made to Blood Rush (Lower value, base crit instead of total crit multiplier) and Condition Overload. Guns on the other hand lost nothing during their stats pass, so there was nothing to compensate for that required a large jump.

Fair enough, but that also does raise a small problem that is facing Guns right now.

Some of the mods for Primaries and Secondaries have aged like milk. Aside from the Aforementioned 30% IPS mods we also have insanely costly things like Metal Augur, the state of things like Blunderbuss still being at 90% crit and Critical Deceleration being even worse and a noteworthy smattering of questionable-for-cost dual stat mods on weapons with 10 less capacity to work with compared to Melee.

Of course, DE's solution was Galvanized mods...which I fully don't agree with due to being HILARIOUS power creep, but that's just my opinion on em.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

20 hours ago, George_PPS said:

Why DE has to nerf melee HARD AGAIN? Who comes up all these nerfing ideas again and again???? To balance? Balance WHAT? Why not just make enemies stronger while making guns even stronger? The game is not a problem. It’s about keeping and enhancing fun factors players love about this game. 

They actually didn't nerf melee. In fact, it looks to be even more engaging and fun to use. CO is negligible and most players won't even feel the berserker fury change because quickening and gladiator vice exist. 

[Jarriaga]

3 minutes ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

They actually didn't nerf melee. In fact, it looks to be even more engaging and fun to use. CO is negligible and most players won't even feel the berserker fury change because quickening and gladiator vice exist. 

A nerf is a decrease in performance. A buff is an increase in performance. Making it engaging/fun is not part of the measurement.

This is a nerf. Melee DPS is being cut in half when putting all these changes together.

There's no need to sugarcoat it by highlighting engagement and fun. And no, GV and QN don't compensate as they are additive while berserker is multiplicative.

[Jarriaga]

6 minutes ago, Aldain said:

Fair enough, but that also does raise a small problem that is facing Guns right now.

Some of the mods for Primaries and Secondaries have aged like milk. Aside from the Aforementioned 30% IPS mods we also have insanely costly things like Metal Augur, the state of things like Blunderbuss still being at 90% crit and Critical Deceleration being even worse and a noteworthy smattering of questionable-for-cost dual stat mods on weapons with 10 less capacity to work with compared to Melee.

Of course, DE's solution was Galvanized mods...which I fully don't agree with due to being HILARIOUS power creep, but that's just my opinion on em.

On that I agree with you. To this day I'm puzzled as to why they didn't adjust primary mods back in 2018.

Then again, most melee mods that were adjusted with The Old Blood were mods DE were kinda forced to change because channeling and charge attacks were removed. They didn't buff a single melee mod back then.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

11 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

I can mostly agree with this (though there is additional nuance to consider)

I've always approached the feedback of players as "Players provide their perspective, and the developers will do what they either can or will with said perspective", and that's about the best we as players can do.

So not a fan of perspectives that are just "My playstyle has been broken, CHANGE IT BACK", though

I think the playstyle perspectives make up the majority of the complaints though. I also think this is why DE won't touch certain "issues". Steel Path is the largest example of this, where entire playstyles were compromised and a solution had to be created but DE made sure to ignore the very unreasonable "SE pick-up delay" complaint some endurance players are on about.

[Aldain]

3 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

They didn't buff a single melee mod back then.

Well except for the aforementioned True Steel a bit later, which went from "lol" to "Actually on Par with the Pistol Crit Chance mod but still hilariously worse than Blood Rush".

There's a few Primary and Secondary mods I could think that could use that touch, and maybe a few others that could use a cost reduction.

[Tesseract7777]

Just now, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

I think the playstyle perspectives make up the majority of the complaints though. I also think this is why DE won't touch certain "issues". Steel Path is the largest example of this, where entire playstyles were compromised and a solution had to be created but DE made sure to ignore the very unreasonable "SE pick-up delay" complaint some endurance players are on about.

To me it comes down to the difference between feedback and complaints. 

Feedback is either saying: 

1) I see "x" or "x + y..." problem(s) with the proposed changes/additions to the game, and this is why I think they are problems. 

OR

2) The above, but with an idea on what they should do instead, with specific examples.

And then frivolous complaints generally just fall in one major category:

1) Someone super angry that something is being nerfed, and gives a pithy short, angry comment, or a long wall of text, detailing how valuable a customer they are, and how DE is driving players away by making them weaker and taking away their power. There is no suggestion on how to improve the game or an explanation on why the changes are really bad, just an angry rant/threat that DE needs to change things back or they will quit and take their money elsewhere. At best, there will be a long, illogical screed, trying to justify why no video game should ever nerf anything that is in outlier in power ever and to do so will ruin the game. More often than not, the grammar and spelling are hard to follow. 

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

9 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

A nerf is a decrease in performance. A buff is an increase in performance. Making it engaging/fun is not part of the measurement.

This is a nerf. Melee DPS is being cut in half when putting all these changes together.

There's no need to sugarcoat it by highlighting engagement and fun. And no, GV and QN don't compensate as they are additive while berserker is multiplicative.

True, won't disagree there. 

[Jarriaga]

2 minutes ago, Aldain said:

Well except for the aforementioned True Steel a bit later, which went from "lol" to "Actually on Par with the Pistol Crit Chance mod but still hilariously worse than Blood Rush".

There's a few Primary and Secondary mods I could think that could use that touch, and maybe a few others that could use a cost reduction.

Some mods are so weak that you forget they exist even though you mentioned said mod just a few posts above. Point taken.

[Jarriaga]

Just now, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

True, won't disagree there. 

Thank you for being reasonable.