Balance wont matter until hard content is added into game

[Silligoose]

5 hours ago, Mother_Pfill said:

Why won't DE add difficult content to the game?

They probably don't (or didn't) think the portion of the community who wants it, is worth it. We don't have access to their metrics, so we can't do more than guess why those who complete the Star Chart stop playing. My guess? They get bored and the lack of challenge plays an unappreciated part in it.

The above-mentioned view may have changed a bit, as DE started focusing on more difficult content recently and it has been announced more is coming in the form of plans for Steel Path RJ missions, so maybe their metrics are showing there may be some validity in catering to the portion of the community who would like a challenge, or at least to give a reason for people to farm better gear.

That being said, balance is required in order to provide difficult content and vital in order for that content to not be stale: A lot more people would be interested in playing difficult content with a greater variety of viable setups as opposed to merely a handful of cookie cutter setups.

[JohnMorte]

27 minutes ago, Soy77 said:

veterans can't cheese. their superior mods and gears won't help them. but their knowledge about frames and mods can still turn the odds at their favor.

newbs need to catch up. although they don't have knowledge, experience, nor gears, they can still keep up with sheer motoric skills.

As "balanced" as this might be, I don't want to have to have massive skill expressions for base content. Warframe is not set up to be a highly precise reaction game. Not hosting shows blatant, basic flaws in how abilities chaining struggle under ping issues. Cast times prevent precision and reflex maneuvers. Vertical movement, while varied and dynamic, is slow to prevent overwhelming players visually. The game can't go too fast in more than one direction because Warframe utilizes a third person camera perspective and not a fixed camera perspective.

Until Warframe literally changes basic, fundamental ways it presents itself, there are limits to what you can do with the medium.

[-AncientWarrior-]

6 hours ago, Mother_Pfill said:

Why won't DE add difficult content to the game?

DE already have done so.. but you keep taking all ya best gear into the mission.. if you want hard .. take what you would get at day 1 and go do SP .. hard content provided, its how you approach it thats the problem

[(PSN)robotwars7]

6 hours ago, Mother_Pfill said:

Why won't DE add difficult content to the game?

people really need to look up what subjectivism is. what's hard for one person is easy for another and vice versa, meaning that universally challenging content is literally impossible.

[Soy77]

44 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

You have no abilities, you have no weapons, your frame choice is irrelevant. Your knowledge about frames and mods doesn't turn the mods in your favour. And several other bosses make similar approaches - the Ropalolyst and the Exploiter Orb are great examples. If anything, it shows the scope of Warframe's balance issues that this is the case. In order to create a situation where the player has to make choices beyond 'push win button', DE feels the need to strip every single option in the game from the player.

not entirely true.

titania can still fly, wukong still cheat death three times, mirage bullet jumps -therefore dodges faster, zephyr can still do zephyr things. frame choice can be relevant for veterans and intermediate players with knowledge and gears.
most mods doesn't work, true. but some mods still works for players that are smart enough to think of them. like patagium, mobilize, etc. it doesn't give you instant win, but as i've said: those stuff turns the odds -even if only ever so slightly, at your favor.

from game design perspectives, ropalolyst is an approach from entirely different angle. if nihil is an oldschool megaman-like boss battle that demands dodging, accuracy, with turns and opening windows, ropie is modern-games boss that features cutscenes and minigames. it even have that forced long     monologue by lotus in the intro as the proof. modern games is all about storytelling and setups.
anyone who farmed wisp will remember that they never cautiously looked for their turn to attack, they're just waiting for every godam fight scenes to end. destroy this generator, use void, hop on, destroy that generator, use void, and so on. "scene" is another keyword there, modern storytelling videogames is all about creating scenes. unlike against nihil, there's not one moment in ropie fight when you're required to react to his attacks. just waiting for the scenes in that fight.

exploiter is definitely similar to ropie. it's all about forced scenes and waiting for little spiders to come. if you played games like uncharted or modern tomb raider you must be familiar with such modern set plays.
if you just say profit taker, i'll be in more difficult spot. because Taker sits awkwardly in the middle, it doesn't have much forced scenes or invulnerable moments (DE cleverly replace it with the weakness changing mechanics), but it also have plenty of drawn out phases, unlike nihil where every phases are actual battle phases.

 

anyone with decent videogame design knowledge can recognize the beauty of nihil phases and mechanics.
he's not the boss that warframe community deserves.
he's a boss that warframe desperately needed, yet community rejected. and i have accepted that.

31 minutes ago, JohnMorte said:

As "balanced" as this might be, I don't want to have to have massive skill expressions for base content. Warframe is not set up to be a highly precise reaction game. Not hosting shows blatant, basic flaws in how abilities chaining struggle under ping issues. Cast times prevent precision and reflex maneuvers. Vertical movement, while varied and dynamic, is slow to prevent overwhelming players visually. The game can't go too fast in more than one direction because Warframe utilizes a third person camera perspective and not a fixed camera perspective.

Until Warframe literally changes basic, fundamental ways it presents itself, there are limits to what you can do with the medium.

and i agree.

as i've said above, i have accepted that warframe is not a game where people want nor should be demanded. it's a horde shooter, i have accepted it as my happy place as well. hence my reply earlier with dark souls picture.

studying it from game design perspective, nihil is a really decent boss, nothing can change that in my eyes. unfortunately he's just not for warframe.

[(XBOX)BURRITO DEVIL]

hace 1 hora, Mother_Pfill dijo:

Let's be honest, the balance of this game is effectively non existent. 

Does not change the fact that threads like these are starting to get more and more frequent and annoying each time

 

Last thing i want to see is Mr randomngamertag's take on the game's balance and "how" DE should aproach it

 

[Loza03]

8 minutes ago, Soy77 said:

not entirely true.

titania can still fly, wukong still cheat death three times, mirage bullet jumps -therefore dodges faster, zephyr can still do zephyr things. frame choice can be relevant for veterans and intermediate players with knowledge and gears.
most mods doesn't work, true. but some mods still works for players that are smart enough to think of them. like patagium, mobilize, etc. it doesn't give you instant win, but as i've said: those stuff turns the odds -even if only ever so slightly, at your favor.

Maybe not entirely true, granted, but nevertheless 99% of your arsenal and game knowledge being rendered moot is not exactly much better than all of it.

9 minutes ago, Soy77 said:

from game design perspectives, ropalolyst is an approach from entirely different angle. if nihil is an oldschool megaman-like boss battle that demands dodging, accuracy, with turns and opening windows, ropie is modern-games boss that features cutscenes and minigames. it even have that forced long     monologue by lotus in the intro as the proof. modern games is all about storytelling and setups.
anyone who farmed wisp will remember that they never cautiously looked for their turn to attack, they're just waiting for every godam fight scenes to end. destroy this generator, use void, hop on, destroy that generator, use void, and so on. "scene" is another keyword there, modern storytelling videogames is all about creating scenes. unlike against nihil, there's not one moment in ropie fight when you're required to react to his attacks. just waiting for the scenes in that fight.

Megaman is probably the least apt comparison you could draw in that scenario. In Megaman, you can always attack the boss (outside of a couple of less well-designed ones), and the boss can always attack you. Also, the entire point of Megaman is using the collected arsenal of the whole game to achieve your goals, not having it stripped away from you. In Nihil's case, you're just waiting for him to throw one of those little glass shard thingies to have the opportunity to attack him. You don't even have your weapons and energy. The Ropalolyst is the exact same thing, except done worse. You jump through the hoop, wait for Ropy to fire their laser so you hide behind the macguffin, and then you get to attack them for a bit. With Nihil, you wait for him to shoot the glass macguffin, and then you throw it back at him whilst Nora yammers in the Background. 

Again, I liked the Nihil fight, but not only does he have the aforementioned 'strips 99% of the game from the player' problem, he's at most a high C-tier boss fight overall. The fact that puts him at a high ranking in Warframe's overall boss fight situation is neither a credit, and largely a problem of the aforementioned balance issues, as several of Warframe's existing bosses are much better examples of 'Old-school' boss design than Nihil is, they've just been sorely beaten by Warframe's balance problems, whereas Nihil doesn't.

[Silligoose]

18 minutes ago, (XBOX)BURRITO DEVIL said:

Does not change the fact that threads like these are starting to get more and more frequent and annoying each time

 

Last thing i want to see is Mr randomngamertag's take on the game's balance and "how" DE should aproach it

Well your line I put in bold isn't true - you wouldn't be in this thread if it was.

As for these threads apparently popping up more and more: Warframe has the foundation and mechanics to provide challenging content throughout to late-game. More and more people are wondering why it isn't used for an optional difficulty setting with adequate modifiers. More and more players are wondering why the game is set up to not be as tactically or mechanically demanding at late-game when compared to mid-game, or even early-game.

 

[(NSW)Greybones]

Hmm.

[Zippidydoda]

"Hard Content" does exist.  It's called steel path.  Except DE won't build any systems around it.  No SP Arbitrations, no SP Sortie,.. 

There's literally no endurance type of Steel Path mission that's rewarding. Steel path consists of the 5 ez-mode incursions a day or clicking on one of the random 100's of star chart nodes and hoping other players happened to join it to. 

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

See, I knew DE should have kept with their plan of introducing a difficulty slider that let players set the difficulty.

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

26 minutes ago, Silligoose said:

Well your line I put in bold isn't true - you wouldn't be in this thread if it was.

As for these threads apparently popping up more and more: Warframe has the foundation and mechanics to provide challenging content throughout to late-game. More and more people are wondering why it isn't used for an optional difficulty setting with adequate modifiers. More and more players are wondering why the game is set up to not be as tactically or mechanically demanding at late-game when compared to mid-game, or even early-game.

 

Steel Path and Arbitrations?

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

7 hours ago, Mother_Pfill said:

Why won't DE add difficult content to the game?

How would DE monetize this difficult content? DE won't expend resources on something if they can't make money off of it.

[Silligoose]

4 minutes ago, (PSN)DoctorWho_90250 said:

Steel Path and Arbitrations?

Could be Steel Path, could be something else. The current Steel Path doesn't offer a challenge at late-game and more appropriate modifiers would be required. In terms of how the community tends to react to balances, another iteration of Steel Path may be better.

[Soy77]

59 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

Megaman is probably the least apt comparison you could draw in that scenario. In Megaman, you can always attack the boss (outside of a couple of less well-designed ones), and the boss can always attack you. Also, the entire point of Megaman is using the collected arsenal of the whole game to achieve your goals, not having it stripped away from you. 

I'm sorry, mate. This is where we entirely disconnects.

In 2d sidescrollers like megaman, sonic, mario, castlevania, bossfights is all about "invisible turns". you can't always attack the boss, you'll just die if you do so. You have to keep dodging and wait until certain vulnerable windows opens. You spend the entire fight memorizing boss's attack patterns. only when the window opens, then it's your "turn" to attack. Not literal turns like in tactics games, but invisible turns.

Sure, megaman is famous because of its weakness system, how certain guns cheese certain bosses. But don't forget that in most megaman games, you can choose any of the boss you want to fight first. It means you haven't got any of the fancy blasters yet. So actually all of the bosses are beatable with the standard blaster. But it won't be cheese, you're gonna have to do all the pattern memorizing and attacking safely on your "turns". Many speedrunners and retro gamers do the standard blaster runs.

"Memorizing patterns" will be my next keyword here. You must memorize pattern with nihil, then react accordingly. He throw? You jump. He swing? You dodge. None other boss in warframe require you to do that. Because no other boss telegraphed their attacks as well as nihil, nor requires us to dodge them attacks.

 

In the end I'll walk away with your willingness to go from "he's 100% took our abilities" to 99%. I'll take it. Having both parties peacefully agree to disagree is a major win around these parts 😂

Cheers, mate. Have a wonderful day

[(NSW)Greybones]

I’d have to wonder if players asking for more difficult content would cheese said content.

A lot of the thinking regarding this game, often conveyed by players who are proud of their capabilities for defeating it, is “It’s only logical to take the best tool for the job”; what if the best tool is one that cheeses a fight?

[(PSN)Kakurine2]

Hard part is defining hard.  Making things bullet sponges isn't likely what you mean. And not everyone views difficulty the same way.

Even in the case of steel path what do we get for enemies being more tanky? Not all that much. If the rewards suck no reason to bother.

[Hypernaut1]

48 minutes ago, Silligoose said:

Could be Steel Path, could be something else. The current Steel Path doesn't offer a challenge at late-game and more appropriate modifiers would be required. In terms of how the community tends to react to balances, another iteration of Steel Path may be better.

first they complained about damage and armor being too high- now its too easy. its lose/lose. Forums was in an uproar for a few weeks because they thought "guns are weak". DE responded with buffs and enemy nerfs. Now we have people flying through SP killing enemies so fast i have to check that im in a SP mission at times. 

If DE released a higher difficulty SP, it will see the same fate. The ONLY way to have a true difficult SP is if they make it completely optional by removing any extra rewards- that or DE needs to stick to their guns and NOT cater to players that need to collect everything ASAP. 

 

[Mother_Pfill]

Steel path is very easy. I think the last 250 hours of my gameplay in warframe has actually been making builds that are worse than my BIS ones because i'm just bored. 

 

Theres some really easy ways to make steel path actually challenging but they dont have the manpower to make changes to the game. 

[Loza03]

50 minutes ago, Soy77 said:

Having both parties peacefully agree to disagree is a major win around these parts 😂

I had more to say, but much as that all bugs me, you're right.

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

50 minutes ago, Hypernaut1 said:

first they complained about damage and armor being too high- now its too easy. its lose/lose. Forums was in an uproar for a few weeks because they thought "guns are weak". DE responded with buffs and enemy nerfs. Now we have people flying through SP killing enemies so fast i have to check that im in a SP mission at times. 

If DE released a higher difficulty SP, it will see the same fate. The ONLY way to have a true difficult SP is if they make it completely optional by removing any extra rewards- that or DE needs to stick to their guns and NOT cater to players that need to collect everything ASAP. 

 

DE turned what was initially going to be a pick-your-own-difficulty option and turned it into a grind with rewards attached to it. Had they done what they intended and left it as is then people wouldn't have expressed distaste.

[(NSW)Greybones]

18 minutes ago, (PSN)DoctorWho_90250 said:

DE turned what was initially going to be a pick-your-own-difficulty option and turned it into a grind with rewards attached to it. Had they done what they intended and left it as is then people wouldn't have expressed distaste.

Personally I wouldn't be too sad if unique rewards were stripped from Steel Path and it was only used to test certain build combinations that don't work so well in Star Chart, but I'm not sure it was meant to be a "pick-your-own-difficulty" option, considering there's a lot of stuff it doesn't apply to. I'm not sure DE meant for players to live in SP; we have to go outside of it sometimes.

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

Just now, (NSW)Greybones said:

Personally I wouldn't be too sad if unique rewards were stripped from Steel Path and it was only used to test certain build combinations that don't work so well in Star Chart, but I'm not sure it was meant to be a "pick-your-own-difficulty" option, considering there's a lot of stuff it doesn't apply to. I'm not sure DE meant for players to live in SP; we have to go outside of it sometimes.

DE didn't want streamers and Youtubers to post videos of themselves testing in the Simulacrum. So, to combat this, DE said they were working on a system that would allow players to pick the difficulty they want so stuff could be tested outside the Simulacrum. DE then proceeded to create Steel Path which a) doesn't allow players to pick their difficulty level b) turns it into another grind so players treat it as another grind rather than just a mode with higher difficulty.

[(NSW)Greybones]

3 minutes ago, (PSN)DoctorWho_90250 said:

DE didn't want streamers and Youtubers to post videos of themselves testing in the Simulacrum. So, to combat this, DE said they were working on a system that would allow players to pick the difficulty they want so stuff could be tested outside the Simulacrum. DE then proceeded to create Steel Path which a) doesn't allow players to pick their difficulty level b) turns it into another grind so players treat it as another grind rather than just a mode with higher difficulty.

I remember the discussions around streamers and Youtubers showing easy builds in the Simulacrum, but I don't recall the phrasing "Pick the difficulty".

My impression of Steel Path has been mainly established by this topic;

 

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

2 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

I remember the discussions around streamers and Youtubers showing easy builds in the Simulacrum, but I don't recall the phrasing "Pick the difficulty".

My impression of Steel Path has been mainly established by this topic;

 

It was mentioned in the subsequent devstream, or ones shortly after from when one of the devs mentioned not liking the use of the Simulacrum. Don't remember which devstream though.