In retrospect, what was the point of the melee mod nerf?

[Dunkelheit]

Is this a troll posting? Or do you only play non-steel path missions and are baffled that guns kill lvl 20 mobs more efficient than melee?

I bring news: that was always the case. There was just one point where mobs got so strong that the AOE ability from the weapons was not that important, because mobs just stopped dieing.

I bring other news: this is still the case. Melee is still stronger than range

DE totally achieved their goal though. Guns are way closer to melee than they ever were before. You can now use guns in Steel Path (finally) and they are fun to use. But melee is still super viable, even better the higher the difficulty.
I am sorry, but I cannot understand this posting at all. Sounds like you played a mission, someone cleaned the level with a Bramma and now you are jeaulous or something.

What I could understand would be asking for a nerf of AOE weapons in regards to single target weapons. Now that guns have a purpose beyond lvl 30, it would be nice if there would be a reason to use single target weapons as well. Give up the secondary and primary concept, let me pick the 2 weapons that I want to take with me and nerf AOE ranged weapons by 50%. I think then we would be in a good spot, the best spot in years actually.

[sitfesz]

2 hours ago, Dunkelheit said:

What I could understand would be asking for a nerf of AOE weapons in regards to single target weapons. Now that guns have a purpose beyond lvl 30, it would be nice if there would be a reason to use single target weapons as well.

Ah yes, and then nerf assault rifles to be a reason to use bows as well. I see your logic.

[Lemon]

"We don't want steel path to become the benchmark for players and/or what we balance things around"

Man if rifles were already doing just fine in non steel path content before, like 😂 what was this balance for ??😂? It wouldn't be Steel path because clearly 😂😂 players aren't really interested in doing challenging content 😂 and endgame is just a fever dream of delusion that isn't real 😂😂

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

9 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

Which it was/still is.

If you weren't playing a game with a horde sci fi ninja theme, sure. This isn't call of duty though.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

32 minutes ago, Lemon said:

"We don't want steel path to become the benchmark for players and/or what we balance things around"

Man if rifles were already doing just fine in non steel path content before, like 😂 what was this balance for ??😂? It wouldn't be Steel path because clearly 😂😂 players aren't really interested in doing challenging content 😂 and endgame is just a fever dream of delusion that isn't real 😂😂

Because most players don't know what to do so they blame the game instead of themselves. 

We all know humans aren't known for apologizing when they're wrong and asking for assistance. 

It's "I brought my 4 forma Fulmin modded for viral heat and shot this unbuffed weapon at an undebuffed corrupted heavy gunner and it didn't one shot it. Fix your game, DE."

[KnossosTNC]

My melee setups, which I stress is not quite the meta everyone tend to use (I rarely use Blood Rush, and tend to build my melee for Heavy Attacks and Condition Overload finishers), are still deleting enemies left and right.

So... ...yeah. This is what the melee nerfs feels like to me:

[SneakyErvin]

Looking at it prior to release I went "hmm this might actually do a little" and saying "na galvanized mods/arcanes wont bring power creep since melee will still be stronger than ranged". Looking at it now I go "the changes to melee did absolutely nothing" and "those galvanized mods/arcanes sure did bring power creep since suddenly AoE guns are stronger than melee was".

DE really needs to look at the numbers in the game and balance the output versus the actual health of the mobs in whatever content their (im)balance goal is based on. When will they realize that we dont need millions of damage if the mobs can only survive a couple of hundred thousand?

[PublikDomain]

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

If you weren't playing a game with a horde sci fi ninja theme, sure. This isn't call of duty though.

Not sure what the theme has to do with keeping weapons balanced, but I find it funny that you blame "casuals" for the melee nerfs despite also being opposed to anything that makes the game less casual. 🙄

[TARINunit9]

18 hours ago, LSG501 said:

Got to have a reason to farm the same repetitive process over and over again....  power creep still sells sadly

Honest opinion, it feels more about 'encouraging' people to play the new content and trying to get players to go for the new slot mods (not worth it imo) than actually making primary/secondary weapons better.... none of the changes have changed the fact that I still prefer to use melee (and was part of the reason I picked warframe over other games which focused on guns) in most cases.

 

 

18 hours ago, Mints said:

You and I have something in common then, but here's the issue I have: Melee players are expected to build up power and momentum. We have to get within range and actually deal damage to compete. Meanwhile, Mr. Kuva Zarr doesn't have to do any such thing. On the contrary: Mr. Kuva Zarr's burst damage is consistent and requires absolutely no mechanical skill whatsoever. This is why I look back and ask "Why?".

As someone who deliberately drags my feet when it comes to new content (case in point: I don't have any Rank 5 Steel Path Arcanes yet) at my power level Melee is STILL far more broken and braindead easy than any possible gun in my inventory. Any build I could put on my Kuva Zarr is far, far weaker than basically any of my melee weapons

Sure I could easily bring my guns up in line with about ten forma and a couple hours on ESO. I didn't get to MR30 for nothing. But I'm not going to do that. That's boring.

So when you claim that guns require no skill, I say it's all about perspective

[BahamutKaiser]

Pretty sure the nerf has nothing to do with the new META.

[Prexades]

I think the nerf was overall warranted. Melees could reach some absolutely crazy numbers and they still can. But primary and secondary weapons are also quite strong contenders again.

[Soy77]

We can look for answers as long and as much as we want.

But at the end of the day, DE is the most "human" company i know, and my guesses are as good as mine.

[Dunkelheit]

vor 20 Stunden schrieb sitfesz:

Ah yes, and then nerf assault rifles to be a reason to use bows as well. I see your logic.

I am sorry that I was not able to explain my opinion properly, English is not my first language. Let me try again.

If a weapon that kills 7 enemies with one shot has absolutely no disadvantage over a weapon which kills only one enemy with one shot, why would you ever use the weapon which kills only one enemy. Hence need to differentiate between AOE and single target weapons. If you nerf AOE weapons by 50%, they would still be unbelievably good. Let us say we meet 7 enemies (which is not a crazy high number). With one shot of your single target weapon, you do 100% damage to one enemy. With the AOE weapon you hit one enemy with only 50% damage, but you are going to hit more than one enemy. So with 7 enemies, you will do 350% of damage.

If you are up against trash mobs, there will be no reason to ever pick your single target weapon (like the Quartakk), but at least against Acolytes, bosses you might want to whip out something that does more damage against a single target.

Since bows are mostly AOE weapons, there would be no reason to nerf assault rifles in comparison of those 2 weapon types.

Can you see my logic now?

[sitfesz]

1 hour ago, Dunkelheit said:

Can you see my logic now?

I already saw your logic.
You don't understand that nerfs won't make single-target weapons desirable. If aoe gets nerfed, people will go back to melee, if melee gets nerfed, people will go back to nuke frames.

The game either needs mechanics like nox, that promotes single-target weapons or bend the single-target weapons towards aoe, by giving them cone punch-through damage or ricochet like some beam weapons have.

[(PSN)max141064]

31 minutes ago, sitfesz said:

The game either needs mechanics like nox, that promotes single-target weapons or bend the single-target weapons towards aoe, by giving them cone punch-through damage or ricochet like some beam weapons have.

or...DE can leave it as it is,

since 95% of guns, AOE or not, are viable and very powerful people can actualy decide what weapons to use based simply on their necessity or liking. 

Why should DE nerf AOE weapons? at the end of the day it all comes down to what you enjoy playing with.

if you don't enjoy AOE weapons...don't use them. it's not like Warframe is a competitive game where more kills means more rewards. 

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

19 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

Not sure what the theme has to do with keeping weapons balanced, but I find it funny that you blame "casuals" for the melee nerfs despite also being opposed to anything that makes the game less casual. 🙄

Casual has more than one meaning.

A casual can be a person with 6 kids that doesn't have much time to play, but can still know the mechanics and how to play and mod properly, use all the tools available etc. 

Then you have a person that just doesn't know these things, are incapable of policing their own playstyle or think they know what's best for everyone or think youtubers have the answers. 

[Softballbryan]

I can see the op thoughts here. I have absolutely seen the increase in aoe weapons, I’m using them more as well.  This is a change from the prior updates. Meta and high level gameplay aside (higher than sp), I have asked myself the same question. The melee simply got replaced with guns in a lot of missions compared to before. I like guns more than melee so I enjoy the improvements to gunplay but there has been a shift in many missions to guns. And guns destroy everything easier than ramping up melee on fast mission types, which there are many in the game. 
 

so I can see why they are questioning the changes, even if I like the changes. 

[Yamazuki]

8 minutes ago, Softballbryan said:

I can see the op thoughts here. I have absolutely seen the increase in aoe weapons, I’m using them more as well.

You think you see more people using aoe weapons as a form of projection. For the general player base, people were already using aoe weapons instead of melee. 

DE even stated melee was only a dominant choice for a small group of people. Which makes sense, when any meta ranged weapon setup already deleted enemies a million times over, without the need to constantly run up to an enemy, and the popular weapon choices amounts to just shooting the ground, which I personally don't think is bad. If people find that fun, then that's fine with me.

This is also why previously it was primarily ranged weapons that would get nerfed. Such as how DE targeted K-Bramma's usability, they stated the damage was justified due to acquisition, but it completely overshadowed everything else in pick rate.

Then from a personal experience, I almost never see randoms with melee kills that aren't attributed to their companion even in SP. Even I myself, as a mostly melee user still have a lot of kills via aoe abilities.

In the end, the melee nerf and "gun buff" was as stated, just an excuse to get people to play SP more and Arbitrations. This was an extremely low effort "fix" that got them praise that isn't even deserved.

If they really wanted to "fix" anything, they would finally do something about how armor functions, as that's really one of the biggest contributors to a wide gap between weapons and loadout configurations. It's also not as if DE hasn't acknowledged this fact with the armor changes for lower levels a while ago. As well as the fact they feel the need to go and make specific enemies immune to armor strip purely to limit the gap. Killing unarmored enemies in SP is still easy, most Infested and Corpus die without having to optimize your loadout at all, but then you play a Grineer mission and anyone using sub-optimal setups are now dealing with taking too long to kill one enemy.

[SneakyErvin]

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

Then you have a person that just doesn't know these things, are incapable of policing their own playstyle or think they know what's best for everyone or think youtubers have the answers. 

That isnt a casual, that is a bad player or a pleb. You describe casuals, hardcores, newbies and vets with what you said there, along with self imposed 13375 since they can all fall into that fold.

A casual is just someone that doesnt spend the time a hardcore player does, either due to extrernal restrictions or of their own decision. Those that cant due to external restrictions may also be casual hardcore players, since they want to push as much as possible but they simply cant since their real life time wont allow it. Several players likely fall into that category off and on throughout their life.

[PublikDomain]

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

Casual has more than one meaning.

A casual can be a person with 6 kids that doesn't have much time to play, but can still know the mechanics and how to play and mod properly, use all the tools available etc. 

Then you have a person that just doesn't know these things, are incapable of policing their own playstyle or think they know what's best for everyone or think youtubers have the answers. 

And then you have the casuals that can't handle anything but easy gameplay and get angy whenever their "power fantasy" gets touched.

But if you only meant "casual" as in "people who don't want to waste their time waiting for the game to warm up", then I guess I can see why you'd blame them for these changes.

[(PSN)Unstar]

I think it's misguided to treat the top-end AoE weapons as if they are representative of "guns" in general.  If you compare single-target guns to melee weapons now, they're pretty equitable.  It also made builds that weren't centered around combo counter more viable, and that additional diversity is a good thing to have for melee weapons.  It was a good change. 

Is the elephant in the room that the top-end AoE weapons may need some balancing of their own?  Almost certainly.

[Hypernaut1]

personally, i dont care what the meta is. If it kills in a reasonable time frame, i'll use it if its fun to use. 

 

[0_The_F00l]

The melee nerf itself was rather miniscule , for me personally, only a few melee weapons needed any mod changes to feel the same.

The buff to, specifically, already powerful AOE ranged weapons on the other hand was rather significant. They now have access to damage via arcanes and their own variant of condition overload (a little buggy at the moment). Plus even more Multishot and mods that can induce specific procs.

They are very close to damage potential of melee now (considering melee also gets extra damage bonus and forced procs from stances on par with the arcanes and specific mods) which already has AOE and more scaling options.

I have been using all kinds of ranged weapons a lot more often. But I do feel DE has added even more power creep to the game and just made already strong weapons even stronger. I have mixed feeling about these changes for that reason.

[(XBOX)Tribal Souljah1]

On 2021-08-31 at 7:17 PM, Tyreaus said:

(My personal opinion is, and pretty much always will be: DE fiddles with too many knobs at the same time and they need to take things more step-by-step to see how individual changes affect things.)

I'd be fired (and would fire any dev) for consistently approving or performing drastic changes then pushing them to production without testing at the consistency that DE does.

[Zimzala]

28 minutes ago, (XBOX)Tribal Souljah1 said:

I'd be fired (and would fire any dev) for consistently approving or performing drastic changes then pushing them to production without testing at the consistency that DE does.

So would I, but making code for financial institutions with the same rules as used for game code is silly.

It's all about the intended usage, use the right tool for the job.

Game code has no need to be anything better than good enough, I think it's a complete strawman to claim game code needs the same rigor as the stuff that runs banks or utility companies.

Art and entertainment is messy.