Balance wont matter until hard content is added into game

[(NSW)Greybones]

Just now, (PSN)DoctorWho_90250 said:

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.

Was it like a musing or contemplation? "Pick your difficulty" wouldn't be an uncommon request/thought from the Warframe community

[PublikDomain]

3 hours 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

Getting annoyed by other people discussing the game aside, maybe if these threads are getting more and more frequent it's because the minority isn't actually so minor?

Spoiler

https://www.warframe.com/news/devstream-136-overview

10 hours ago, Mother_Pfill said:

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

Seeing how DE keeps taking swipes at making "difficult" content like Sorites, then Arbitrations, then Railjack, then Steel Path... I mean it's no wonder they keep failing with the lack of game balance but it's pretty clear that DE is adding "difficult" content to the game — or is at least is trying to  — and has been for years.

[Duality52]

10 hours ago, Mother_Pfill said:

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

Because we're gods. Difficulty doesn't matter if we wipe out the everything and everyone within seconds no matter who they are.

[DrivaMain]

I believe the correct term is "Balance won't matter as long as the player base at large do not accept it". The average warframe casual do not want to do challenging content or gameplay that requires them to use their brain. If it were, contents like the now retired trials would see a very large engagement.

[_R_o_g_u_e_]

False, balance is the only way to achieve hard content.

[JohnMorte]

12 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

Content that mandates and requires the absolute top of the line equipment just to be able to barely complete the mission (No personal challenges, no endurance. Just completion) while still struggling despite not making mistakes.

I want to take a small aside to say that content like this would probably be terrifying because with top of the line equipment it would probably take enemy level 300 for content to start being as hard to me as you suggest the game should be.

I don't agree with that sort of direction for Warframe to take.

[BahamutKaiser]

This isn't a tactical game, "hard" content is just a facade because the game isn't going to force ideal frame Metas on content, so the ideal frames and over developed builds will always trivialize content. Even the old raids weren't "hard", they were just buggy and poorly explained, anyone with developed frames will crush it. 

You want a challenge? Unload your build and play Steel Path, the developers don't need to power creep the game further to artificially challenge you. Maybe play some conclave to 😏

[(NSW)Greybones]

12 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

Content that mandates and requires the absolute top of the line equipment just to be able to barely complete the mission (No personal challenges, no endurance. Just completion) while still struggling despite not making mistakes.

Personally I would have reached for all that power for the purpose of making things easier by combining things in different ways. At some point I would have reached a time where the game simply folded over to my build, which would have been the reason I made that particular build in the first place; I tested it and it passed with flying colours, unlike many of my builds that came before it.

If in a later update the game treated my best build as if it was simply the starting point, I feel like 1). I ultimately wouldn’t mind if that build was my only option since I expect I’d get bored of overpowering everything, but also 2). It kind of defeats what I was looking for in the first place 

[Hayrack]

We hear you, Tenno, all enemies now have double the shields and armor.

[Dunkelheit]

I play the game for a couple of years now and anything that even resembles something of a challenge has been greated with hate and threats in the form of numerous postings on the forums. Have you been in the forums when they were planning the melee nerf and the rifle buff? Every day you had 5-6 new threads with players panicking that there superiority might be damage a bit.

If there is something challenging, people will watch videos, copy builds and playstyles till they finally can overcome the challenge, leaving the hard work to youtubers and overframe.gg and then ask for more challenging content.

The definition of hard content for a majority of the players is: Hard content that I want = something that is doable by me and gives everyone else a headache so that I can feel good about myself.

Oh and before I forget, hard content should of course not be about health or damage for the enemies, it should be some magical thing that makes the game harder somehow, but enable the players to kill in instances of a second still. And please, do not even think about damage resistance or nullifieres, they are "cheese". Hmm... what do we still have? Ah yes, let us talk about AI in a horde shooter. Let the enemy duck behind cover, lure the players into traps that.... BAMM haha, Kuva Bramma with Firestorm, got you! Whole screen cleared with one shot.

I have played when the game was hard, when noone was able to do damage properly, because players have not figure it out yet. And I have seen Snipers that one shot you. In the end, snipers were nerfed, shield gating was implemented

There are a lot of hard things in this game: Steel Path, Eidolons, Arbitrations, just to name a few. But if you have the right tools and know how to mod and build and synergize, yeah, they are beatable. But this is just the nature of the game.

[Yamazuki]

5 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Was it like a musing or contemplation? "Pick your difficulty" wouldn't be an uncommon request/thought from the Warframe community

They're mistaking not liking simulacrum to choosing levels. DE did state they didn't like simulacrum being used for videos lazily, and represented the game poorly. However, they had also stated they opposed what is essentially custom missions. It's possible I missed them promising this [mentioning=/=promising], but I did hear/see them say they weren't going to just let us start at what ever level we wanted. Even SP enemy durability was reduced from test to release.

Regardless, enemy level and difficulty aren't even related. Anyone who's done any lengthy endless mission should be willing to acknowledge it isn't difficult. The only reason people struggle even at SP isn't because it's "difficult", enemies just have higher defensive values which necessitates higher damage, and the combination of higher offensive values and increased enemies means you can't just mindlessly walk around without dying unless you're using specific loadouts.

Most people have loadouts that are functional for most of the game, but are non-functional in SP. This is also why so many people hate Disruption mission type, because of how durable the enemies you're required to kill are for said loadouts, even though I personally like the mission due to how quickly rotations go and the less standing around a general area.

[(NSW)Greybones]

53 minutes ago, Yamazuki said:

They're mistaking not liking simulacrum to choosing levels. DE did state they didn't like simulacrum being used for videos lazily, and represented the game poorly. However, they had also stated they opposed what is essentially custom missions. It's possible I missed them promising this [mentioning=/=promising], but I did hear/see them say they weren't going to just let us start at what ever level we wanted. Even SP enemy durability was reduced from test to release.

Regardless, enemy level and difficulty aren't even related. Anyone who's done any lengthy endless mission should be willing to acknowledge it isn't difficult. The only reason people struggle even at SP isn't because it's "difficult", enemies just have higher defensive values which necessitates higher damage, and the combination of higher offensive values and increased enemies means you can't just mindlessly walk around without dying unless you're using specific loadouts.

Most people have loadouts that are functional for most of the game, but are non-functional in SP. This is also why so many people hate Disruption mission type, because of how durable the enemies you're required to kill are for said loadouts, even though I personally like the mission due to how quickly rotations go and the less standing around a general area.

Hmm, cool cool. I may have to find and re-watch the devstream in question (I agree with the idea that mentioned=/=promising, so I’m curious to see what’s simply mentioned versus what’s expected).

Yeah, enemy levels are kind of just guides, really. I wouldn’t take a build that’s tuned for a level 20 fight to a level 100, and vice-versa (unless I was planning on overpowering the mission). I remember it did take a while to figure that out when I first started, haha.

I remember relatively recently trying to take a build that would normally see me through a similar-level Corpus mission into Ganymede Disruption. I had to equip a Vigor because I just took too much damage from all the spawns to be able to focus on the Demolyst, and while my weapons would normally kill at a good rate in other similar-level missions, I just plain needed to kill a little faster if I was going to have enough damage to deal with the Demolyst (after a lot of shifting of elements around, I found Viral on my Boar really handy for Ganymede).

It definitely felt like it was a multi-player oriented mission type, and I remember first going through it as a single player and simply getting destroyed and scared by the Demolysts, convinced that they were impossible to beat.

[Silligoose]

11 hours 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. 

Current SP modifiers aren't great. Despite players being able to nuke enemies, armor scaling is still bad, or too high, not because it makes the enemies too hard to kill, but because it throws out the viability of armor reduction methods, as opposed to complete armor stripping or armor bypassing mechanics. It essentially takes one of the tools, specifically designed to deal with armor, out of the picture.

Damage scales too high to quickly, not because players can't survive on any frame (they can), but because certain mechanics such as healing (and some other counterplay) mechanics don't matter when frames can essentially get their healthbars one-shot. It essentially takes out one of the tools specifically designed to keep frames alive.

In games, it is true that some tools lose viability as one gets to more and more difficult content and the variety in viable playstyles decreases, with the meta coming out on top, but with proper balance that meta doesn't completely outshine the non-meta. In Warframe's case, the variety in viable playstyles decreased very quickly to a large extent with the introduction of SP. This was due to lack of proper balance between META and non-META:  META completely outshined non-META.

I don't believe the recent ranged weapon buffs were implemented to cater to those who need everything ASAP, but rather to address an aspect of imbalance regarding meta and non-meta: melee's maximum potential effectiveness vs ranged maximum potential effectiveness.

A consequence of the route they chose is SP being easier, but now that meta and non-meta, in terms of melee vs ranged, is more balanced, they have the opportunity to add more content in the form of either an additional or revised version of "hard mode", in which other aspects of meta vs non-meta imbalances can be addressed by means of proper modifiers and even additional content.

If DE actually takes the time and expends resources to implement a hard mode with proper modifiers, I believe they will stick to their guns and let those who need the new content ASAP go the plat route - that is already part of their business model.

 

[CrimsonXX]

To OP:

I see another thread from a Soulsborne particular fetish haver wanting "difficult content" and likely running any one of numerous "god builds" that are impossible for a dev team to try to balance towards. I can easily find "difficult content" when I go solo and with my not remotely maxed nor "god build" mod setup. Any thing that were to be put out in that vein would maybe last a week before being torn apart and having cheese methods crafted for it. I can assure you'd probably be a main one whining if DE were to do what would need to be done in part to gain "difficulty" via reducing certain mods and by extension builds; nvm that there's only a handful of methods to approach that. Off the top of my head:

1) nerf "god build" and the associated mods down

2) put in elements to fights to mitigate the players. Like having a boss nullify damage after a point and instead require the player to go in and engage with a parazon strike i.e. revamped Jackal. Putting in reflective damage like the fight in the Deimos questline. Hell even the Nullifiers fit into this by their removing the powers of the frames.

I'm truly so tired of this vein of garbage being regurgitated, if you want to get your "punish me" rocks off go load up a Dark Souls, Nioh, Bloodborne, etc. I never want to see that b.s. come into WF, especially given my own intro to WF years ago which included burning through all revives in the tutorial mission. DE has repeatedly tried to to chase the illusion that is "difficulty" or what others label it as "endgame", the only thing that's come as a result were mixed bag received at best updates. I'd rather have them put time into expanding to new areas/remastering tilesets over chasing that idiocy to appease the one crowd.

 

[Numerikuu]

18 hours ago, -Krism- said:

Sorties were added for that reason, people complained

Then Arbitrations were made, people complained again

Steel path was created, & now people are still complaining & don't consider a build good until it oneshots enemies there

 

We can't entirely blame DE on that one, players have also a part in this

Stop focusing on making things hard, and start focusing on making things fun and engaging.

[Silligoose]

41 minutes ago, CrimsonXX said:

To OP:

I see another thread from a Soulsborne particular fetish haver wanting "difficult content" and likely running any one of numerous "god builds" that are impossible for a dev team to try to balance towards. I can easily find "difficult content" when I go solo and with my not remotely maxed nor "god build" mod setup. Any thing that were to be put out in that vein would maybe last a week before being torn apart and having cheese methods crafted for it. I can assure you'd probably be a main one whining if DE were to do what would need to be done in part to gain "difficulty" via reducing certain mods and by extension builds; nvm that there's only a handful of methods to approach that. Off the top of my head:

1) nerf "god build" and the associated mods down

2) put in elements to fights to mitigate the players. Like having a boss nullify damage after a point and instead require the player to go in and engage with a parazon strike i.e. revamped Jackal. Putting in reflective damage like the fight in the Deimos questline. Hell even the Nullifiers fit into this by their removing the powers of the frames.

I'm truly so tired of this vein of garbage being regurgitated, if you want to get your "punish me" rocks off go load up a Dark Souls, Nioh, Bloodborne, etc. I never want to see that b.s. come into WF, especially given my own intro to WF years ago which included burning through all revives in the tutorial mission. DE has repeatedly tried to to chase the illusion that is "difficulty" or what others label it as "endgame", the only thing that's come as a result were mixed bag received at best updates. I'd rather have them put time into expanding to new areas/remastering tilesets over chasing that idiocy to appease the one crowd.

 

Warframe has great mechanics and the foundation to provide challenging content with varied, viable tactics to overcome it.

That content can be provided in an optional difficulty setting.  You wouldn't have to play the optional difficulty setting and can "get your rocks off" in what is already in the game. Why are players like you so against an optional difficulty setting that offers challenge at end-game that others would enjoy? I really don't get players like you.

[Silligoose]

3 minutes ago, Numerikuu said:

Stop focusing on making things hard, and start focusing on making things fun and engaging.

The two concepts aren't mutually exclusive.

[Corvid]

5 minutes ago, Numerikuu said:

Stop focusing on making things hard, and start focusing on making things fun and engaging.

And this is why balance is needed. You can't be engaged with a game if you've switched it off, which is what excessive power lets you do.

[Numerikuu]

11 minutes ago, Corvid said:

And this is why balance is needed. You can't be engaged with a game if you've switched it off, which is what excessive power lets you do.

Yet you're still playing. I'm still playing. Many are still playing. The game is doing well.

Don't get me wrong, balance is definitely important, but I feel DE passed the point of no return long ago in regards to the type of 'balance' people seem to be referring to. It began with Arcanes, accelerated with Rivens, then went insane with Helminth Infusions.

If they were to go down the balance route it would hurt more than help at this point, hence my comment. They need to find a way to introduce modes/mechanics that utilise the insane power creep they've created, because it's too late to go back now. Imo they're on the right path in regards to damage reduction on Lichs/Sisters etc, and with bosses like Exploiter and the Jackal.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

47 minutes ago, Corvid said:

And this is why balance is needed. You can't be engaged with a game if you've switched it off, which is what excessive power lets you do.

We're engaged with the excessive power. 

It's engaging for me to take what casuals call a "trash" frame and do an hour in SP Mot. I may die once or twice, but I find it fun learning to not die.

[Hypernaut1]

34 minutes ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

We're engaged with the excessive power. 

It's engaging for me to take what casuals call a "trash" frame and do an hour in SP Mot. I may die once or twice, but I find it fun learning to not die.

This is what keeps me engaged with the game. I don't stick to the meta. 

I don't see a frame like Hydroid or Yareli as "trash" frames because they can't cruise through content unchallenged. I see them as frame with a higher skill ceiling. I welcome the fact that they aren't the easiest to use.

In the true spirit of the game, I try to master my gear. There are a bunch of players calling everything easy because they only use Wukong with a rivened Brahma. I'll still use those builds and have fun, but I will also use something like a Braton prime (which isn't that bad actually) and try to maximize it's potential in steel path.

I don't see this as a "self nerf" because I use every forma and mod at my disposal. Game is as engaging as you want it to be. 

[Corvid]

1 hour ago, Numerikuu said:

Yet you're still playing. I'm still playing. Many are still playing. The game is doing well.

Except it's clear from even a cursory glance that the game is buckling under the weight of its own power creep.

Players complaining about having nothing to do, only caring about what rewards an activity gives, angry at the developers for not making enough content to satisfy them, while simultaneously burning through months of development work in mere days. All of this is symptomatic of the fact that the current gameplay isn't satisfying enough on its own merits (and before you argue that this isn't the case, the developers have explicitly acknowledged that this is an issue they need to overcome).

1 hour ago, Numerikuu said:

Don't get me wrong, balance is definitely important,

Evidently not to you, given how much you seem determined to rail against it.

1 hour ago, Numerikuu said:

but I feel DE passed the point of no return long ago

There's no such thing as a "point of no return" in development.

1 hour ago, Numerikuu said:

in regards to the type of 'balance' people seem to be referring to.

And what type of balance is that? Because all I've seen from the anti-balance crowd are strawman arguments saying that the pro-balance crowd wants to be a soulslike when pretty much nobody is actually asking for that.

1 hour ago, Numerikuu said:

It began with Arcanes, accelerated with Rivens, then went insane with Helminth Infusions.

This just tells me you have no idea what is actually causing the imbalances we want to resolve.

1 hour ago, Numerikuu said:

If they were to go down the balance route it would hurt more than help at this point, hence my comment.

Given that the result of a game-wide balancing pass would be a game that is actually enjoyable for more than just rewards, I disagree strongly.

1 hour ago, Numerikuu said:

They need to find a way to introduce modes/mechanics that utilise the insane power creep they've created,

As previously explained, that's impossible. Again, how do you make a challenge for a player who can disable (or outright kill) every enemy with a single button press from the next room over?

1 hour ago, Numerikuu said:

because it's too late to go back now.

Defeatist rhetoric like this exposes that you don't actually care about balance. The problem is not unsolvable (hell, one player has even come up with a set of modding restrictions that would fix most of the issues in one go if paired with a tweak to enemy stat scaling. The solution isn't just possible, you can test it for yourself in the current game).

2 hours ago, Numerikuu said:

Imo they're on the right path in regards to damage reduction on Lichs/Sisters etc, and with bosses like Exploiter and the Jackal.

And to me that's the exact wrong way to solve the issue. Reducing the concept of "challenge" to a gear check, while throttling the number of viable options to a fraction of what could be used.

[TeaHands]

19 hours ago, Soy77 said:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/570940/DARK_SOULS_REMASTERED/

 

do yourself a favor go get that game and stop nagging this homey and peaceful horde shooter

Psh, that game hold's your hand, it's so easy! The game constantly gives you 5 free heals any time you die!

I need a real challenge! And not the fake difficulty that game has, like having you hit an enemy like 15-20 when they can kill you in like 3-4 hits, how is that balanced??

[bronzebonobo]

Simple Answer: 

Small majority wants hard content

Game is already a grind as it is, we grind all of the stuff or pay it with plat, the difficulty has always been rng up until this point.

DE would not give a good stringed carrot on a stick experience, meaning the rewards they put in hard content will not justify the reason to play hard content. Most games with a difficulty spike have good rewards and payout for spiking the difficulty. I don't think DE is capable of doing it.

To people who would say you would play it anyways, good for you, but I and probably many others in the game would want to be rewarded for playing hard content, so basically it would be a huge waste of dev time to implement.

[bronzebonobo]

40 minutes ago, TomCruisesSon said:

Psh, that game hold's your hand, it's so easy! The game constantly gives you 5 free heals any time you die!

I need a real challenge! And not the fake difficulty that game has, like having you hit an enemy like 15-20 when they can kill you in like 3-4 hits, how is that balanced??

if you want a true torture experience, play ninja gaiden on master ninja, hell even sekiro was rough