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It doesn't make sense that guns can clear entire screens and warframe abilities can't kill a single mid tier enemy.


Hardwood

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The gun power creep keeps chugging along and you keep rebalancing the game to compensate for it but many warframe abilities still do 1000 damage in a tiny area.

Why can't I have a Frost Ice Wave build or a Volt Shock build that actually kills enemies? Like, an ability that costs energy can't kill a level 30 enemy but every gun in the game does 50k DPS standard.

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Not just Warframe abilities, but Amps, damage-dealing Archwing abilities, damage-dealing Focus abilities, offensive K-Drive mods, offensive companion abilities, non-ability damage sources like bullet jump mods, Retribution, Gale Kick, Energy Channel, etc. The list goes on and on. It's everything other than guns, melee, and the handful of scaling Warframe abilities that's been left behind.

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This is why I think wf abilities that deal only damage is a waste of ability slot. Weapons have many systems dedicated to them. Rivens, headshots, combo counters, multishots, stealth modifiers, etc... Of course they deserve to clear rooms. Besides, dealing damage is what weapons specialize in. They don't do anything else so they SHOULD be good at the they only thing they do.

Warframe abilities that only deal damage are never future proof. Ever.

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As long as there's a weapon capable of doing the same thing or better, a warframe ability deserves a buff. 

Fireball deserves to be at least competitive with the Ogris.

But overall, the Warframe design team really needs some fresh blood. We've gotten some very interesting weapon designs, but Warframes have struggled to be defining. I think part of the problem are Mesa and Saryn, who, at one point or another, have been incredibly dominant in general gameplay and have induced some sort of phobia of good damaging abilities for Warframes.

I really love casters and mages. I used to play mages the most in SMITE. I play Warlock in Destiny 2. Cryomancer was a no-brainer first pick in Skyforge. 

But in Warframe? There is no proper caster frame. No one that has any kind of hands-on weave of destruction. Ember has to rely on a 'press button, wipe cell' ability. Yareli didn't get a single damage number. Nidus can't be played in co-op and struggles with janky hit detection. Volt has no damage. Frost has no damage. Lavos had all the space it needed to be an alchemist frame and it ended up being a whip-wielding artificer instead. With terrible abilities.

The best we can do are probably Vauban's Flechettes and Protea's Artillery cannon. 

Seriously, DE... My challenge to you is to make an Archmage themed Warframe, and have it -not- suck. Ability play on the same level as gunplay.

If Warframes are a weapon, make at least one feel that way. One frame where gameplay is intact when all your weapons get removed.

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1 hour ago, Colyeses said:

I play Warlock in Destiny

If you have played destiny, then you know that this game focuses more on weapons. In destiny, you either have weak grenades and melee effects that can't compete with weapons, but are available all the time, or an ultimate that is significantly superior to weapons, but is unavailable all the time. Special abilities have a very long cd.

For example, a fireball will have about the same strength relative to a weapon as a fire grenade in destiny. The only difference is that fireball requires an ultimate resource, while in destiny it has a small cd. Some abilities that have low damage are really good, but they are bad only because it is not worth the energy in the players ' heads, although the builds of infinite energy are already here. This only means that the abilities compete with each other. But I do not deny that most of the abilities are garbage.

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4 minutes ago, selig_fay said:

If you have played destiny, then you know that this game focuses more on weapons. In destiny, you either have weak grenades and melee effects that can't compete with weapons, but are available all the time, or an ultimate that is significantly superior to weapons, but is unavailable all the time. Special abilities have a very long cd.

For example, a fireball will have about the same strength relative to a weapon as a fire grenade in destiny. The only difference is that fireball requires an ultimate resource, while in destiny it has a small cd. Some abilities that have low damage are really good, but they are bad only because it is not worth the energy in the players ' heads, although the builds of infinite energy are already here. This only means that the abilities compete with each other. But I do not deny that most of the abilities are garbage.

That's not entirely true. Fireball and a D2 fire grenade aren't even close to comparable, the D2 fire grenade will outshine it massively in terms of output. Yes, it's on a bigger cooldown, but it actually has impact when it fires. Fireball does not.

No matter what level you're playing on in D2, a solar grenade will clean up ads quite nicely and some will add a good spike of damage to single targets. Fireball stops functioning past level 20 or so, where it doesn't do any relevant damage to anything anymore. I also don't think that the issue is that they 'aren't worth the energy', because as you say, we have infinite energy, just about. I think the issue is that they're not even worth the button press in most cases. They won't do enough damage to be impactful enough to compete with hitting LMB once. 

Sure, you -could- send out a fireball. But you could also fire a single Rubico shot which does several thousand times the damage. Or a Proboscis Cernos, which also does several thousand times the damage over a much, much larger AoE.

It's just saying a lot that, despite its far more intensive focus on gunplay over abilities, D2's Warlock feels like a more competent ability design set than the majority of Warframes. 

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1 minute ago, Colyeses said:

That's not entirely true. Fireball and a D2 fire grenade aren't even close to comparable, the D2 fire grenade will outshine it massively in terms of output. Yes, it's on a bigger cooldown, but it actually has impact when it fires. Fireball does not.

Maybe you're right about that. But in destiny, the numbers are also quite fixed and there are not so many ways to increase weapon damage. Well, another reason is that weapons compete with abilities. Maybe that's the problem. There are not so many frames that really synergize with weapons, like mag for example.

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3 minutes ago, selig_fay said:

Maybe you're right about that. But in destiny, the numbers are also quite fixed and there are not so many ways to increase weapon damage. Well, another reason is that weapons compete with abilities. Maybe that's the problem. There are not so many frames that really synergize with weapons, like mag for example.

Yeah, sadly, some of the problem frames are ones that do synergise with the weapon system, precisely because the weapon system is busted in Warframe. Peacemakers wouldn't be half the problem they are if they didn't scale off weapon mods.

D2 just has a good grip on power creep (or at least significantly better than Warframe) and that's allowed them to keep values somewhat consistent between options for the most part. 

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5 minutes ago, Colyeses said:

Yeah, sadly, some of the problem frames are ones that do synergise with the weapon system, precisely because the weapon system is busted in Warframe. Peacemakers wouldn't be half the problem they are if they didn't scale off weapon mods.

D2 just has a good grip on power creep (or at least significantly better than Warframe) and that's allowed them to keep values somewhat consistent between options for the most part. 

But on the other hand, if we do not have a developed build of weapons, complex statuses will really need to be built directly on the enemy, using different weapons, and I do not know how good this is.

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4 minutes ago, selig_fay said:

But on the other hand, if we do not have a developed build of weapons, complex statuses will really need to be built directly on the enemy, using different weapons, and I do not know how good this is.

We can still have elemental damage mods.

We'd just need them to not be multiplicative with base damage mods or crits. Part of the problem currently is that that 60% bonus cold damage then also gets +165% from Serration and then gets multiplied by somewhere around 4 due to crits, and then it gets headshots added. All of these factors just keep compounding, which is why weapon damage is as bizarre as it is.

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7 hours ago, Hardwood said:

The gun power creep keeps chugging along and you keep rebalancing the game to compensate for it but many warframe abilities still do 1000 damage in a tiny area.

Why can't I have a Frost Ice Wave build or a Volt Shock build that actually kills enemies? Like, an ability that costs energy can't kill a level 30 enemy but every gun in the game does 50k DPS standard.

"can't kill a level 30 enemy"  ????  Just press 4?

Unless you just mean buff volt 1 and frost 2 in general, in which case sure. But what you've listed are mainly cc abilities.

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30 minutes ago, Reaper76OTP said:

"can't kill a level 30 enemy"  ????  Just press 4?

Unless you just mean buff volt 1 and frost 2 in general, in which case sure. But what you've listed are mainly cc abilities.

I think he say about easy kill. If you deal 1kk damage by weapon you dont expect 500 damage by water blades. I mean, why i touch this ability if i can just shoot and it more effective? 

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9 minutes ago, selig_fay said:

I think he say about easy kill. If you deal 1kk damage by weapon you dont expect 500 damage by water blades. I mean, why i touch this ability if i can just shoot and it more effective? 

Ah yeah...yareli is   *laughs

Maybe prime with viral first?

There's... no real part of Yareli worth playing until they shrink her like titania cos skateboard gets stuck every 3 seconds...and your normal skateboard is a statstick, so if I want to put my high jump mods on normal skateboard to make it more playable in open world and don't switch mod config every time I jump on Yareli I high five the ceiling.

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2 minutes ago, (PSN)max141064 said:

Y'all lived for years with the melee powercreep and everything was fine. 

now that guns are strong it suddenly became a problem. 

Confused Jeremy Renner GIF

Its always be problem. Simple most people dont care until range weapons get buffed. 

8 minutes ago, Reaper76OTP said:

Ah yeah...yareli is   *laughs

Maybe prime with viral first?

There's... no real part of Yareli worth playing until they shrink her like titania cos skateboard gets stuck every 3 seconds...and your normal skateboard is a statstick, so if I want to put my high jump mods on normal skateboard to make it more playable in open world and don't switch mod config every time I jump on Yareli I high five the ceiling.

Viral also boost weapon damage)

Titania lost her inertia becouse most people dont handle this. And as soon as this happened, its flight became easier, but at the same time we lost the ability to make maneuvers and control our speed. I mean, be careful to simplify movement, because you can lose some things and even kill the concept. By the way, I never liked k-drive, so I looked at her other abilities. And yareli has 3 CC abilities, which are really bad. Blades are her best ability, but it's not worth spending time on it, because you can shoot. Banal, yareli's passive ability is literally her best ability. And k-drive can be, but as I said, I don't like k-drive and can't appreciate it.

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8 hours ago, Hardwood said:

The gun power creep keeps chugging along and you keep rebalancing the game to compensate for it but many warframe abilities still do 1000 damage in a tiny area.

Why can't I have a Frost Ice Wave build or a Volt Shock build that actually kills enemies? Like, an ability that costs energy can't kill a level 30 enemy but every gun in the game does 50k DPS standard.

Ifkr? But im sure it has something to do with aoe of these abilities. Being able to spam some if these abilities would be a lot more map clearing than any other weapon. So i think thats why DE trys to keep their damage low

 

I think a nice way to bypass this would be either through special pickups or Devil Triggers

Special pickups would be some shinny gold orb that uncommonly drops from enemies. Picking it up would randomly strengthen the damage, range, and duration for a random ability. The damage would be enough to 1 shot normal enemies while its trippled against others, range and duration are both doubled. 

Or

Devil Trigger, after dealing a certain amount of damage and/or getting a certain amount of kills, a bar displaying your "devil trigger" would be filled up. Activate to gain a wide range of boosted stats nearly everything.

This way players can use high damage abilities without being able to spam them

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29 minutes ago, selig_fay said:

I think he say about easy kill. If you deal 1kk damage by weapon you dont expect 500 damage by water blades. I mean, why i touch this ability if i can just shoot and it more effective? 

Pressing 4 as Frost at that level is an easy kill, how much easier does it get than pressing it once or twice and it aoe deletes most enemies regardless of whether you can see it or not. Even Yareli 4 can spam 4 and aoe delete enemies at that level as long as they aren't the more durable units.

Regardless, that doesn't refute the fact Frost and Volt aren't Warframes with kits that suggest they deal significant amounts of damage with abilities. All four of Frost's abilities apply cc, with one even removing armor. Volt has multiple forms of cc, and two abilities that buff guns. Most Warframes have clearly been designed around abilities being used alongside weapons and some can even be used while shooting/reloading.

Abilities also spawn kill enemies from a wide range compared to "guns" when ever they deal enough damage relative to the given level range. "Guns" are at least limited to a specific room or enemies having to be right next to the wall.

Unless of course, the op also wants DE to make every ability require line of sight, which would be worse for any of the Warframes that don't really even care about dealing damage through abilities.

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49 minutes ago, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

This way players can use high damage abilities without being able to spam them

We are not talking about the problem of spamming high-damage abilities. This is the reason why abilities compete with aoe weapons. We are just saying that the current state of the game has been reduced to a spam of heavy damage and the rest simply does not make sense. The developers are trying to solve this by introducing strong mobs, but this only exacerbates the problem. I think that the only good way out is to hire a game designer who knows how to work with mathematical models. You can say that this is stupid, but I think that 8kk of damage in a game where you have 900 hp is what's stupid. For example, radiation would not be such a problem if we had adequate figures. (of course, if you don't play glass canon, because in this case all the damage is a problem for you xD) 

39 minutes ago, Yamazuki said:

Unless of course, the op also wants DE to make every ability require line of sight, which would be worse for any of the Warframes that don't really even care about dealing damage through abilities

 

It actually makes a lot of sense. Punching walls should only work for radar-like things or things that can bend around walls, like the ivara aviator. On the other hand, when I say walls, I mean walls. I believe that killing enemies that you can't see is a bad design. If the enemies are in line of sight, small shelters should not block this. Of course, if this is not intended by the developers, forcing players to knock mobs out of hiding, which also makes some sense. Let's put it this way. This is one of the many reasons why a warframe can't have content other than farming, even if you introduce a cool AI. Mobs just don't have a chance because these things.

Another point is that weak abilities still exist and we need weak abilities for game variety. But how will you achieve this if you can kill everything without abilities (well, okay, some use damage boost, which is also strong) or you can destroy everything around just by spamming with one button. And again, the developers are trying to solve this problem by changing the mobs, but guess who suffers in the end?

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1 hour ago, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

Ifkr? But im sure it has something to do with aoe of these abilities. Being able to spam some if these abilities would be a lot more map clearing than any other weapon. So i think thats why DE trys to keep their damage low

 

I think a nice way to bypass this would be either through special pickups or Devil Triggers

Special pickups would be some shinny gold orb that uncommonly drops from enemies. Picking it up would randomly strengthen the damage, range, and duration for a random ability. The damage would be enough to 1 shot normal enemies while its trippled against others, range and duration are both doubled. 

Or

Devil Trigger, after dealing a certain amount of damage and/or getting a certain amount of kills, a bar displaying your "devil trigger" would be filled up. Activate to gain a wide range of boosted stats nearly everything.

This way players can use high damage abilities without being able to spam them

In reality, we already kind of have the designs needed to give abilities the opportunity to shine. The simple fact that Covenant has a cooldown allows it to do the absolutely broken thing of just rendering the entire party invulnerable. And Redline having a build-up before hitting full force is a simple enough counterweight as well. Not to mention Nidus, whose abilities get their damage output literally multiplied by a hundred if he can build his stacks. Hell, Baruuk got it right with Restraint.

The devs just need to put more thought and effort into this. Add more hooks to gameplay design for Warframe abilities. 

Take Ember, for example, with the heat mechanism. If her overheat didn't just burn her energy, but also gradually built her ability power so that players would be left with a choice between conserving energy and devastating the battlefield, she'd have way more leeway to have a powerful fireball. 

I also put forth a concept whose abilities take a percentage of current energy, rather than a set value, and then empower themselves based on the energy spent. This makes spamming less impactful, but select casts more impactful, and allows current energy and maximum energy to factor in, on top of an ultimate that becomes stronger if you use other abilities before you use the ultimate itself. 

In a way, the upcoming Augment for Xaku's 'The Lost' seems to fit this concept, so I'm looking forward to that, although I am wary of the possibility (Quite likely, too) that DE is going to neuter it before it even releases and it gives something like 40% power strength at max, or for only 10 seconds. But the idea of having to do something to earn the power spike is very appealing and should be worked into more concepts, both new and old. 

I mean, look at what the new mods have done for guns. Not a direct slam-dunk stat booster, but conditional power-ups, even though those conditions are very lightweight. Why can't more Frames have these kinds of things?

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3 hours ago, Colyeses said:

Why can't more Frames have these kinds of things?

You are trying to separately implement what should be in the core of the default abilities system. We already have the energy that should perform the task of a force limiter. At the same time, the system has degraded so much that I can say, make the peacekeepers absorb pistol ammo and this will be a big limitation, because you will need to worry a lot about the mutator. Of course, you will not bring a dispenser to the plas.

Try to implement your plan with Ember, only use energy and do not use an additional resource scale. I am more than sure that you will be able to do it better. I'll even give you a hint. Let some abilities generate energy, while others consume it. Here you will get that weak abilities are used to charge a strong blow.

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5 hours ago, Reaper76OTP said:

"can't kill a level 30 enemy"  ????  Just press 4?

Unless you just mean buff volt 1 and frost 2 in general, in which case sure. But what you've listed are mainly cc abilities.

 

All of those guns that deal 50k DPS to the entire screen can also CC and strip armor. Status procs are better CC than most Warframe abilities and any Warframe abilities that CC on the same scale as gun procs don't deal any damage. Any gun in the game can be modded to be Frost's Ice Wave, Nyx's Chaos, Ash's Shuriken and 50k DPS with the press of a button.

Not to mention on 97% of the game's enemies one shotting the screen removes CC as a function.

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The underlying problem is that weapons have multiple layers of multiplicative scaling, whereas abilities only generally have one.

In order to majorly increase the damage of a weapon, you can:

  • Increase its base damage.
  • Increase its number of shots through multishot mods (if it's a gun, otherwise you increase its attack speed if it's melee).
  • Have it output elemental damage.
  • Increase its critical strike chance.
  • Increase its critical strike damage.
  • Increase its chance to apply damage-multiplying status such as Viral, Heat, and so on.

All of which multiply each other's effectiveness. Meanwhile, in order to majorly increase the damage of an ability, you can:

  • Equip Power Strength mods.

And that's it. Going to extreme lengths to multiply your ability's damage by a factor of about 4 isn't going to hold a candle to multiplying a weapon's damage by one or two orders of magnitude. In order for the two to equalize, abilities would have to have ridiculously high base damage, whereas right now many abilities have lower base damage at max rank than the base damage of some guns. Alternatively, abilities need to automatically scale in their damage by multiplying off of the enemy's level, dealing max health+shields damage, ramping up on their own, or scaling with weapon mods, which only applies to some, not all damaging abilities.

Personally, I think the most durable solution would be to limit the amount of damage multiplication going on for guns by removing certain mandatory mods, like +base damage and +multishot mods, as well as doing a more general cleanse across mods to favor those that add gameplay rather than just raw power. Another related problem is that modding weapons is incredibly boring and repetitive, as any given weapon tends to work optimally using the same cookie-cutter build as others of the same class: toning down the extremes of our weapon modding could kill two birds in one stone, and perhaps even pave the way for a proper benchmark to be set for appropriate levels of damage output from weapons and abilities alike (which is currently impossible given how variable all of that is). It would be a massive task, but could certainly be worth the effort if it pays off.

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I'll be honest, Warframe is a absolute hot mess when it comes to balancing. DE would have to restructure the entire game with what they consider to be "Endgame" and "Early Game" in mind. As is its impossible to see if something is underpowered or overpowered since there's no guidelines for what should be high and low damage.

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

Probably because it opens the flood gates to an already spammable playstyle? 

Are you expecting to 2 shot high level enemies? Because those abilities still kill starchart enemies, and they CC.

It depends on what you consider a high level. People have already learned how to blow up 9999 levels. And this is the maximum level in the game. On the other hand, frames and weapons are not equal. For example, if you don't give bonus damage or suck up half of the map, then your CC potential is weak. CC is still used in this game, but if it's just CC, then it's bad and will only be used as nyx on the intercept.

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