Balance and Nerfing are for pvp...

[Teridax68]

32 minutes ago, (PSN)Scarletboy76292 said:

Thanks for everyone talking about this and sharing your views. Honestly I think after hearing everyone out the game does need balancing but in a different way than just nerfing the strong weapons a little. When Warframe was in its beta that was when I saw some truly Overpowered frames. They are a far cry from that now and for the most part are better. There are frames that need their abilities to be reworked and some just trashed altogether.

 

Let me know what you think good or bad.

I can agree much more with this. While some of our tools are definitely far too strong, a huge part of that excess power also comes from secondary systems such as our modding, such that nerfing weapons and frames directly wouldn't always be the most effective solution (though it does still need to happen in some cases). Furthermore, while some options are for sure overpowered, there's also a vast number of frames and weapons who underperform or just aren't as fun as they could be, and so who could certainly use buffs or power-neutral reworks. Ideally, all of this should be done through comprehensive, system-wide reworks, so that DE doesn't feel as much pressure to implement knee-jerk nerfs or power creep to enemies when that does happen.

I also do agree that one of the problems behind this is that there is a distinct lack of a benchmark for what constitutes adequate power among weapons of the same type: not only is it difficult to even calculate a weapon's average damage output due to how many multiplicative mods there are to factor in, there is no reference for what counts as an "okay" amount of damage output, ammo economy, other useful features, etc., which is why DE accidentally releases weapons that are grossly over the mark without properly realizing just how excessively strong they are. It's all seemingly up to whoever's in charge of the numbers, and that's not a system that's worked out well thus far. It would help to define explicitly what would count as an "average" weapon for each given class, and bring every weapon to roughly around the same power level, mods included.

[(PSN)Scarletboy76292]

28 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

It would help to define explicitly what would count as an "average" weapon for each given class, and bring every weapon to roughly around the same power level, mods included.

Well this is a complicated matter because with mods lots of weapons can appear really good when being seen along side the top tiers. When comparing weapons with equally good mod set ups. The difference comes with how much buffing does it take to get a low tier weapon class to the level of a high tier weapon that is barely worked on. The truth is if the same effort is put into modding the top tier competitor the low tier competitor falls behind in a drastic way. So much so that it's almost embarrassing. Like Krillin trying so hard trying to catch up with Goku. That being said, if you are playing steel path on any level you can mod the weapons to get you through it just takes having every mod at your disposal so that you can utilize that weapons strengths and maybe even a Riven. If you are playing survival long hrs then that is another discussion. The standard for Melee dps should be balanced but how to do that is a complicated issue. 🤔

Warframes and weapon synergies are also another thing.When using Zephyr using their tornado abilities with any weapon can be devastating. Saryn for example... everyone probably knows how much she can buff her Melee dps. Chroma can make anything deadly. There are lost of those examples.Where do we begin to fix the issues, the content or on the tools given to complete it?

[x570Belmont]

Another problem to the issue is that things tend to get balanced around the content in the regular star chart. Which, as we all know, nearly every warframe and weapon can perform there. The issue arises when a frame or weapon isn't designed with scaling in mind, and then suffers in the harder content such as Arbitrations, Sorties and most obviously, Steel Path. More so the warframes themselves, as weapons have had this issue bandaided by riven mods, galvanized mods, weapon arcanes, etc...

 

Without things such as scaling abilities or armor strip, some frames fall behind and the cracks in their designs start to show. Take Yareli for instance. Her kit lacks synergy with itself and the only scaling she has to speak of is the "number of enemies" hit by her 4. This hampers her greatly in terms of being able to effectively do the higher level content. Can she? Sure. Is it optimal, or does it feel natural? No, not really. She struggles.

 

Content in warframe today is not the same as it was 4 years ago, but we still see things released and/or designed with the base star chart in mind. Because of the feature creep and power creep that has occurred, frames should *at the bare minimum* be designed around level 100-120 enemies in mind. The solution to not make them overpowered at lower levels but effective at higher levels is synergy and scaling.

 

We all have to remember that this is a horde based looter shooter. The objective of any mission, regardless of type, is to eliminate enemies as fast as possible to grind the resources one wishes to obtain. Of course, people can enjoy taking their time and doing a slower pace, but that doesn't change that *at its core* Warframe is designed as a grinding horde shooter. Collect all the things. With the low drop rates offered, it encourages a min/max style of play to make the time you put into it as efficient as possible.

 

In an ideal game, balance would be obtained and all options would be viable. Certain things can get out of control and need to be toned down, but the knee-jerk nerf it into oblivion should never be used. On the same token, things that aren't as effective should be buffed upwards. Lots of these would require reworks and total rebalancing, which DE has done before, but with the majority of their development focus being on New War and then most likely Duviri, we're likely to be waiting awhile on some massive rebalances of things.

[Birdframe_Prime]

2 hours ago, (PSN)Scarletboy76292 said:

Let me know what you think good or bad.

Hmmm... 'Apples and Oranges' is my thought here.

You're comparing the Reaper Prime to the Ankyros Prime, a Mastery 10 weapon and a Mastery 8 weapon.

The Reaper has 200 base damage per hit, weighted 70% towards Slash, a 35% Crit Chance and 2.5x Crit Multiplier, and the Heavy Attack from Scythes has a 6x Damage multiplier with a Guaranteed Bleed and Guaranteed Knockdown.

The Ankyros has 128 base damage per hit, weighted 70% towards Impact, a 28% Crit Chance and a 2.4x Crit Multiplier, and the Heavy Attack from Fists has a 5x Damage multiplier with a Guaranteed Knockdown only.

(That's not even touching the Destreza, which is also Mastery 10, and also has Guaranteed Bleeds on Heavy Attack...)

It may not seem like much, but the simple fact is that the Mastery rank of weapons is based on their relative power.

2 ranks may not seem like much, but it's the difference between the base Boar and the base Hek. It's the difference between the Panthera Prime and the Tenet Flux Rifle.

Those ranks actually matter.

I mean, for example? Your Reaper with only those two mods on was hitting for far less base damage than the Ankyros, but was doing between 1500 and 4000 for the Bleeds. Because the Ankyros couldn't inflict those, of course it couldn't do as well.

Even dis-regarding the base stat difference due to Mastery Rank, that's where the test is not comparing like to like.

You compare those numbers on anything, where one generates a guaranteed damage tick over time and the other doesn't? Of course they aren't going to apply as well. Especially not when the tick of damage ignores armour, and is calculated as if the base damage ignored it too, meaning Bleeds can be higher than the actual damage number that appears on your screen when you proc them.

A weapon to better try comparing the Ankyros Prime to might be the Scindo Prime, also a Mastery 8 weapon,

I'll admit, though, even that's not the same due to the difference in weapon type and base stats.

The Scindo has 250 base damage per hit, 80% weighted towards Slash, a 26% Crit Chance and a 2.4x Crit Multiplier, and the Heavy Attack from Heavy Blades has a 6x Damage multiplier with a guaranteed Lift (and Knockdown on second hit).

I went into the Simulacrum, spawned the same level 120 Heavy Gunners and did the same tests as you with the Heavy Attack, modded identically.

It did almost as badly as the Ankyros, because it does not have guaranteed Bleeds on the Heavy Attack. When it actually proc'ed a Bleed due to basic Status, it did better, but because there's not a Guarantee, the average numbers were similar enough that you can see clearly why they're in the same Mastery region.

However that damage Weighting does come into play if you use light attacks for Combo, where the damage of the Bleed procs, which are able to actually come up more often on the Scindo due to base weighting, coupled with an element like Viral to ensure that the Bleeds do even more damage... That's where the imbalance comes into play more.

The point I'll make, however, is simply that the balance is already there for weapons. They're ranked based on Mastery and there's a good reason for it.

What you want to actually balance is something that hasn't been balanced for a long time:

The Status system.

Impact and Puncture are joke statuses compared to Slash having Bleed. I mean, what? Reducing enemy damage? Doesn't matter since the enemies scale up to ignore it. Impact making them stagger a little and maybe triggering the Mercy Kill sooner? Neat, but not even close to armour-bypassing damage over time that even ticks so high on Corpus that it can handle their shields better than Impact can.

Cold has CC, Toxin has some DoT and bypasses Shield, Electric has pretty amazing DoT when you group enemies, and Heat has this weird function of potentially infinite DoT due to how it calculates and applies its damage on top of how it also reduces Armour... Spot the unbalanced one.

Radiation has CC, Corrosive reduces Armour, Viral boosts damage against Health (which also affects Armour because Armour isn't an over-shield kind of function, it's just a damage reduction function, meaning Viral works just fine there up to the silly levels of play) while Magnetic boosts damage against shields (way more relevant now with Sisters and Hounds in the game), Gas has niche scaling Dot and... Blast... is a kind of sad, soggy child compared to those.

So unbalanced that the weapons that have anything but weighting for Bleed DoT at base are just not up to par.

That's why your testing showed that the Reaper did so much better, even beyond that base stat difference due to the base Mastery Rank of the weapon.

tl;dr

I don't think your comparison was fair.

The two comparison weapons there were the Reaper and the Destreza, and the Ankyros is genuinely not supposed to be the same as them, as witnessed by where it's placed on the Mastery ladder. The Kronen is Mastery 13, the Nikana is Mastery 12, and the Redeemer is Mastery 10. All of these weapons out-do the Ankyros at base because they're literally supposed to.

And that's not even counting the Bo, which doesn't even have Slash damage on it to allow anything like the damage of the rest, hence why it's waaaayyy down at Mastery 5.

[p_silveira]

On 2021-09-18 at 4:37 PM, (PSN)Scarletboy76292 said:

Everyone just wants to weild immense power and dominate the field of battle.

Don't make personal assumptions and apply them to everyone. I, for once, would like the player level in this game to be nerfed to the ground. Both warframe abilities and weapons, hard nerfs. I don't enjoy this Dinasty Warriors feeling that the game has right now. It is not how the game is advertised.

[TheArmchairThinker]

On 2021-09-20 at 9:28 AM, Loza03 said:

Games that aren't a string of choices are idle games.

By your definition single player games like CoD are idle games since they're not a string of choices, just do this and that listed on your screen

On 2021-09-20 at 9:28 AM, Loza03 said:

When you're the strongest you can be, you should have the most options. The game should be the most open and freeing

That's a load of crap, seeing how games with "high level activity" or "challenge" being the most restrictive, requiring you to bring your best guns and play Simon says instead of doing what you want. At least in Warframe you have all options if you want to go efficient or stupid fun. Those 15 best mods used is player's choice, not forced by the game. You can bring an MK-1 braton with all fire rate and reload mods slotted and still win because how strong we are or this would be impossible to do when you're made to overcome hurdles that end up shoehorning mods like Steel Path.

In other words, star chart is the most open and freeing because you're the strongest there as power fantasy game, not when you overcome difficulty like you said

[Aldain]

37 minutes ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

By your definition single player games like CoD are idle games since they're not a string of choices, just do this and that listed on your screen

In order to accomplish a goal (say defeat all enemies or defend x point) you need to move from point to point in CoD, making sure to have cover, line of sight on the enemies, avoid any incoming grenades or other cover-busters and make sure you don't die to enemy fire.

Each of those sub goals are a string of choices, do I go forward for better line of sight or let them come to me? Do I make use of my grenades to flush enemies from cover or deal with immobile enemies on turrets? Do I take cover aggressively or hang back to prevent myself from getting flanked?

Whereas in Warframe you have "Do I use Limbo to turn off the A.I. or do I use Saryn/Equinox to kill everything through the walls?".

Having to think is completely optional at this point, were it not for anti-botting software and AFK detection software a bot could play Warframe nigh flawlessly outside of level 1000+ insanity.

[T-Shark69]

On 2021-09-18 at 9:37 PM, (PSN)Scarletboy76292 said:

This game is a power fantasy RPG.

Wasnt always that. Doesnt mean it will always be. It's understandable that the predominant gut bacteria will "cry out in anger" when the food source changes tho, so I get your plea OP.

[Loza03]

7 hours ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

By your definition single player games like CoD are idle games since they're not a string of choices, just do this and that listed on your screen

Perhaps at their worst? But most FPS games, as well as other highly linear games, are nevertheless filled with choices. Usually along the lines of "How do I do X?" How do you avoid damage? Do you attack now or later? Should you go scavenge for Ammo, or press onwards?

7 hours ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

That's a load of crap, seeing how games with "high level activity" or "challenge" being the most restrictive, requiring you to bring your best guns and play Simon says instead of doing what you want. At least in Warframe you have all options if you want to go efficient or stupid fun. Those 15 best mods used is player's choice, not forced by the game. You can bring an MK-1 braton with all fire rate and reload mods slotted and still win because how strong we are or this would be impossible to do when you're made to overcome hurdles that end up shoehorning mods like Steel Path.

In other words, star chart is the most open and freeing because you're the strongest there as power fantasy game, not when you overcome difficulty like you said

That's how Warframe does it. Simon Says style gameplay, however, is usually an indicator that the game's not well balanced. A ton of non-perpetual games don't have a 'the best guns', for example, but they're removed from the balancing issue Warframe faces. Even then, though, plenty of games in the 'long term RPG' genre go out of their way to ensure as many, if not all of their actual options are viable and comparatively efficient, not a situation where a single target weapon can beat a mission in 5-7 minutes where a meta weapon can do so in 90 seconds, as can be the case in Warframe at times. The weapons that you get shoehorned into in the Steel Path are usually the same ones that let you farm missions. Whilst you can go out of your way to intentionally not use these options (trust me, I do), you shouldn't take this into consideration for game design purposes. For one, it's not the players job to make the game, and for the other, the devs can't do that either, so anything they make they have to assume that the player's going to cheese the hell out of it. If they're trying to make it different, unique and fun, they need to account for that.

[(NSW)Greybones]

On 2021-09-19 at 5:37 AM, (PSN)Scarletboy76292 said:

Everyone just wants to weild immense power and dominate the field of battle.

Not everyone wants to obliterate everything; I get my enjoyment from having power, but also having to pay attention and use it. Part of the balancing process is to help me find that fight, otherwise I wouldn't be able to take different builds into a mission and rely on my aiming and movement capabilities to make it through, because the enemy would just fall over when I sneezed.

I'll support nerfs and buffs to make the fights interesting, which I think kind of runs half-against what you're looking for, sorry.

[Lutesque]

15 hours ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

By your definition single player games like CoD are idle games since they're not a string of choices, just do this and that listed on your screen

There's plenty of Choices in every CoD game 🤔 

8 hours ago, T-Shark69 said:

Wasnt always that. Doesnt mean it will always be. It's understandable that the predominant gut bacteria will "cry out in anger" when the food source changes tho, so I get your plea OP.

Really ? 😐 

 

[T-Shark69]

4 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Really ? 😐 

I cant find a better analogy.

[Lutesque]

1 hour ago, T-Shark69 said:

I cant find a better analogy.

Then don't use one... 😐

[xcrimsonlegendx]

Maybe if this was a single player game I'd be inclined to agree, its not though.

[T-Shark69]

10 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Then don't use one... 😐

I'm sorry.

[Yamazuki]

11 hours ago, xcrimsonlegendx said:

Maybe if this was a single player game I'd be inclined to agree, its not though.

A game having multiplayer doesn't mean it's balanced for multiplayer.

Warframe has generally been no different to single player games that have multiplayer as an option. Warframe has no rewarding content that requires other players in the same way an MMORPG does where some content flat out can't even be started without a minimum set of players, or impossible to complete solo due to strict timers balanced around a full group.

All content is "balanced" around a single player, and DE doesn't even test the game from a client perspective [at least not well]. Many of the game breaking bugs have been exclusively for Clients and not the Host or in Solo mode.

The game is even designed around a single player having 0 reliance on another player for anything. A single person can sustain their health, shield, ammo, energy on their own, all while being able to mass apply cc and boost their own dps. The game has also had many instances of being able to pretty much afk through endless missions solo.

DE has also nerfed enemies on multiple occasions, while recently increasing the DPS of the average player base, further showing DE isn't interested in putting in any effort in ensuring there's multiplayer balance.

Anytime there's "multiplayer content", it devolves to x amount of people soloing an objective far apart from each other.

On the other side, a game being "single player" doesn't mean it doesn't require balance. Typically, single player games are where most "challenging" games are going to be. It makes absolutely zero sense to download a game like Warframe, especially given it hasn't even been marketed as difficult, only to complain that it's "too easy".

[Teridax68]

On 2021-09-20 at 5:44 PM, (PSN)Scarletboy76292 said:

Well this is a complicated matter because with mods lots of weapons can appear really good when being seen along side the top tiers. When comparing weapons with equally good mod set ups. The difference comes with how much buffing does it take to get a low tier weapon class to the level of a high tier weapon that is barely worked on. The truth is if the same effort is put into modding the top tier competitor the low tier competitor falls behind in a drastic way. So much so that it's almost embarrassing. Like Krillin trying so hard trying to catch up with Goku. That being said, if you are playing steel path on any level you can mod the weapons to get you through it just takes having every mod at your disposal so that you can utilize that weapons strengths and maybe even a Riven. If you are playing survival long hrs then that is another discussion. The standard for Melee dps should be balanced but how to do that is a complicated issue. 🤔

Warframes and weapon synergies are also another thing.When using Zephyr using their tornado abilities with any weapon can be devastating. Saryn for example... everyone probably knows how much she can buff her Melee dps. Chroma can make anything deadly. There are lost of those examples.Where do we begin to fix the issues, the content or on the tools given to complete it?

I don't think all synergies are necessarily bad: Saryn's ability to buff her weapon damage is probably one of the least overpowered things in her kit, and Zephyr dealing additional crit damage through her tornadoes I think is similarly okay. In an ideal world where every weapon, frame, etc. had a budget for the kind of power they can have, the ability to deal additional weapon damage would be part of those frames' power budget, and other frames would compensate by doing other cool things.

I also agree that mods tend to multiply existing gaps in power, which is why Riven mods I think fail as a balancing tool: some weapons would need their base damage increased by a factor of ten or even a hundred to even start competing with strong alternatives, which is why I think that, for the game to even start balancing itself, we would need to set a benchmark for the kind of damage a weapon should be expected to deal. Right now, there is none of that, which means that even though one can generally tell if a weapon is excessively weak or strong, one can't really tell how exactly it'd need to change in order to be considered acceptable. In this respect, one would just have to arbitrarily pick a weapon, decide "this is the DPS that should come out of it", and then balance all other weapons so that they're in the same general ballpark, while accounting for their own unique strengths and weaknesses.

As for warframes, the problem is more complicated, because most of the issues with our frames' power stem from us being able to spam abilities without any Energy restrictions. Our abilities are designed to offer massive power at a price (so that we can't use them literally all the time in theory), and because that price can be handwaved with the right mods, arcanes, Focus tree, and so on, we end up being able to access that massive power all the time, and win fights almost automatically as a result. A lot of players have suggested making Energy costs meaningful once more, but this is actually where I'm personally kind of against that: I think it's a really good thing that we get to use abilities whenever we want to, because that gives us a lot of agency and it contributes positively to the game's flow (plus Warframe's not a resource management game), the problem is more that our abilities have a lot of power without having much gameplay. In this respect, and while it would likely require a huge amount of work, I'd be in favor of removing Energy as a limitation entirely, letting us cast abilities whenever we feel like it, and instead redesigning and rebalancing those abilities so that they make gameplay genuinely more interesting, instead of simply winning fights for us without us having to do much.