Balance wont matter until hard content is added into game

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

2 hours ago, ----Legacy---- said:

For challenging content to be added, the whole game would need more than a balance pass, at this point it needs a full balance overhaul  aimed not only to reduce player power, but also DE's tools to artificially fight against powercreep such as armor scaling and even a deep look at the modding system itself.

As much as i'd like something like that to happen, i can't imagine DE ever doing it since at this point it's a huge work that will obviously be met the hardest opposition from loud casual players in the community. This wonderful community gave them death threats for much less than that at some point, so no wonder why they fear the playerbase so much.

Huge work?

Honestly, the amount of effort DE is expending on "damage attenuation" from the Condrix to Corpus Sisters alone is probably more than what they would need for a transparent across the board stat squish for all weapons.

The only opposition to a stat squish would be the die-hard minmaxers who actually know about multiplicative mod interactions.

Casual players don't know or don't care about how Banes double dip in dots and apply multiplicatively after Serration. Most of them probably don't own maxed out Acolyte Arcanes that make Serration obsolete.

Most casual players don't even bother with Sorties, let alone Steel Path or endurance runs.

If DE decided to make Critical Damage and Viral procs additive with Serration, where 4.4x Crit multipliers are reduced to mere +340% Damage, and 10 stacks of Viral only nets +325% Damage, only a minority will yell.

It's not like we can see the effects of Crit multipliers, Bane mods, damage types on the mod screen. Casual players just take the final damage number on the bottom as face value and don't know the value of Bleed procs.

People complain about the Melee nerf, the Condition Overload nerf, but all of that is small potatoes compared to the Corrosive nerf.

Pre-status change Corrosive could strip armor 100%. 6000 Armor at Sortie levels granting 95% DR was reduced to 0%, letting players deal 20x damage which makes Red Crits look cute. There is a reason why enemies are status immune, but not Crit immune.

Pure Crit weapons were once seen as "garbage" because they scaled poorly against armor until DE dropped Hunter Munitions. Most of an enemy's TTK at high levels was spent stripping armor unless you ran 4xCorrosive Projection or Bleed. 

Nowadays, max stack of capped Corrosive is just an 80% strip, 6000 armor is reduced to 1200, which is still 80% DR. 4x damage which is roughly Viral level.

Nowadays, with the new S-curve armor scaling, pure Crit weapons scale decently even without Hunter Munitions.

[----Legacy----]

1 hour ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

Huge work?

Honestly, the amount of effort DE is expending on "damage attenuation" from the Condrix to Corpus Sisters alone is probably more than what they would need for a transparent across the board stat squish for all weapons.

The only opposition to a stat squish would be the die-hard minmaxers who actually know about multiplicative mod interactions.

Casual players don't know or don't care about how Banes double dip in dots and apply multiplicatively after Serration. Most of them probably don't own maxed out Acolyte Arcanes that make Serration obsolete.

Most casual players don't even bother with Sorties, let alone Steel Path or endurance runs.

If DE decided to make Critical Damage and Viral procs additive with Serration, where 4.4x Crit multipliers are reduced to mere +340% Damage, and 10 stacks of Viral only nets +325% Damage, only a minority will yell.

It's not like we can see the effects of Crit multipliers, Bane mods, damage types on the mod screen. Casual players just take the final damage number on the bottom as face value and don't know the value of Bleed procs.

People complain about the Melee nerf, the Condition Overload nerf, but all of that is small potatoes compared to the Corrosive nerf.

Pre-status change Corrosive could strip armor 100%. 6000 Armor at Sortie levels granting 95% DR was reduced to 0%, letting players deal 20x damage which makes Red Crits look cute. There is a reason why enemies are status immune, but not Crit immune.

Pure Crit weapons were once seen as "garbage" because they scaled poorly against armor until DE dropped Hunter Munitions. Most of an enemy's TTK at high levels was spent stripping armor unless you ran 4xCorrosive Projection or Bleed. 

Nowadays, max stack of capped Corrosive is just an 80% strip, 6000 armor is reduced to 1200, which is still 80% DR. 4x damage which is roughly Viral level.

Nowadays, with the new S-curve armor scaling, pure Crit weapons scale decently even without Hunter Munitions.

I''ll stick to a balance overhaul being a huge work if we keep in mind that it should target several things:

Damage system as a whole (rebalance damage types, making proper choice actually meaningful, make not only enemy scaling reasonable, but also player scaling by setting up power ceilings for different stages of progression and rebalance weapons according to their expected power ceiling. This includes tweaks to the overal modding system since it's our main source of power)

More of a harsh line of sight system where effects (damage, pulls, etc) going through walls/floor/ceiling gets reduced (like melee follow through stat) or straight up nullified where it makes sense (why can larva's tentacle or vauban's vortex grab enemies through walls only to get them stuck until their effects end; why can explosions deal damage through walls that can't be destroyed, etc)

Give aoe weapons harsher falloff mechanics, make self buffs and mods not work to prevent self stagger unless this is their explicit function (primed sure footed, atlas' passive, spellbind, etc shouldn't simply remove a balance mechanic from the equation)

With that done, enemy density could be looked at and even drop rates be tweaked to make up for either increases or decreases in enemy density in order to keep difficulty within expected levels.

Keep rivens, but make them ensure that even early game weapons can reach the late game power ceiling. Perhaps even set a slightly higher power ceiling that can only be reached with rivens, even though that would require stats being looked at in a weapon to weapon basis.

Stuff like that are the reasons why i say it would be a huge work, however, won't deny that a more simple approach fixing the issues you listed would be a step in the right direction, perhaps even remove or at least reduce the need to go much further to rebalance the game.

Also casuals may have no idea about most of the things you pointed, but you can be sure they would complain as if they knew about them as soon as any youtuber who sees damage numbers being reduced makes a video ranting for it.

 

[TheArmchairThinker]

Just now, (PSN)xBlake360 said:

That would change the entire dynamic, its not what we need. People enjoy being strong in sorties and Steel Path, changing that would often mean nerfing base stats of weapons or make some mods obsolete.
So no. If there is no endgame, no regular content you do everyday, there is no reference you can go to. You can't define what is overpowered and what's not, if every (well, most) weapon does the same insane dmg. So no, balancing our gear at star chart level would cause more troubles than not.

And why there's no endgame if not because how powerful we are to the point sorties and Steel Path becomes easy? Isn't "endgame" basically the hard part once you're on top of your power progression? If there's no end of it, where do you set the endgame?

No regular content you do everyday? What is star chart to you then?

Why would it cause more troubles than not if what you want is "endgame"? Set the balance and power cap at star chart level and there you go, sorties and Steel Path become the endgame. Isn't that what you people want?

[(PSN)xBlake360]

6 hours ago, TheArmchairThinker said:

And why there's no endgame if not because how powerful we are to the point sorties and Steel Path becomes easy? Isn't "endgame" basically the hard part once you're on top of your power progression? If there's no end of it, where do you set the endgame?

No regular content you do everyday? What is star chart to you then?

Why would it cause more troubles than not if what you want is "endgame"? Set the balance and power cap at star chart level and there you go, sorties and Steel Path become the endgame. Isn't that what you people want?

Star chart? Wait, you want to tell me you actually use star chart, once you cleared all the planets? Okay, let me know once you drop something interesting from lvl 30 exterminate. My point is, star chart doesn't count as regular content, not anymore. Veterans have nothing to get from those missions.

In case of endgame, that's not how you do it. While we can agree that endgame should be more difficult than the regular content, nerfing our current gear to do minimal damage to steel path enemies is pointless. Creating stronger enemies should be the solution, not adjusting our gear to current enemies. Besides, Steel Path isn't even rewarding enough to ever be considered endgame (Tesshin shop is one of the worst offerings I have ever seen).

That being said, veterans don't have enough methods to scale beyond a mid player. Once you unlock condition overload, bloodrush and some corrupted mods, you are at the same power level as veterans. We could leave the game for few years, return and probably still be at the top of power progression. There should be more rewards/builds/vertical progression systems to differ endgame players from early players.

[_R_o_g_u_e_]

Just coming back again to repeat, content cannot be hard without balance.

 

[miruku-]

On 2021-09-26 at 12:11 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

Wow, the pure condescension and lack of actual comprehension of the reply.

Okay, for the reading challenged:

I didn't say DE are perfect. I didn't say I even like this method.

What I did do is point out that your comment of 'ruling out the possibility' was completely ridiculous because it's literally the stated intent by DE over the course of multiple DevStreams, Dev Workshops and actual updates.

The reason for this method is because people complained harder about releasing things strong and then nerfing them than they have about releasing things weak and buffing them.

And your comment about content being 'dead on arrival' is the most ridiculous one in this entire thread. Buggy, yes, some of it under-powered, also yes. But dead means it's non-functional and from eight years of play I can count the number of times that content got released functionally dead and impossible to improve on my hands.

I will admit, those times exist, but you're doing more than making a mountain out of a molehill, you're making a continent out of one.

Talk about bad grace...

you use this forum for years, not even a single time you've disagreed with DE, and you keep trying so hard to maintain your point that no one have patience to deal and after all that people just block and ignore you, can't you notice?

[Hypernaut1]

On 2021-09-27 at 4:43 AM, (PSN)xBlake360 said:

Star chart? Wait, you want to tell me you actually use star chart, once you cleared all the planets? Okay, let me know once you drop something interesting from lvl 30 exterminate. My point is, star chart doesn't count as regular content, not anymore. Veterans have nothing to get from those missions.

In case of endgame, that's not how you do it. While we can agree that endgame should be more difficult than the regular content, nerfing our current gear to do minimal damage to steel path enemies is pointless. Creating stronger enemies should be the solution, not adjusting our gear to current enemies. Besides, Steel Path isn't even rewarding enough to ever be considered endgame (Tesshin shop is one of the worst offerings I have ever seen).

That being said, veterans don't have enough methods to scale beyond a mid player. Once you unlock condition overload, bloodrush and some corrupted mods, you are at the same power level as veterans. We could leave the game for few years, return and probably still be at the top of power progression. There should be more rewards/builds/vertical progression systems to differ endgame players from early players.

You can't have a big power gaps between vets and mid level players when vets don't want to grind for anything. 

Kuva weapons were supposed to be a huge grind. People complained until it was easy enough to complete in a week. Going way back to the introduction of syndicates, DEs first attempt at long grind content, people complained until it was easy enough to max a syndicate in a few weeks and switch between them at will. 

If there isn't any long term grind, then there can't be a power gap. Anything a vet can get will always be easily accessible within a week or two. 

The biggest obstacle to endgame in Warframe is the players. Not the game.

[Birdframe_Prime]

2 hours ago, miruku- said:

you use this forum for years, not even a single time you've disagreed with DE, and you keep trying so hard to maintain your point that no one have patience to deal and after all that people just block and ignore you, can't you notice?

I have disagreed with DE thousands of times.

I literally pointed out that I don't actually agree with the method they're using in the comment you quoted.

The point I'm contesting is that the statement that DE are producing 'dead on arrival' content is a massive over-statement and a ridiculous claim to make. And even then I admit that some of their content has been dead-on-arrival. The thing to definitely point out is that it's nowhere near all of it, and none of that dead-on-arrival content has been recently.

Making a brand new account to reply to this specific comment is transparent and petty. Don't be so obvious about it.

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

On 2021-09-24 at 8:52 PM, x570Belmont said:

 

May I ask what your utter fascination is with wanting player-power nerfed across the board in everything, since I've seen you mention nerfing things across various threads at this point?

 

Warframe, again, is a horde based looter shooter. It has low drop rates. It's DESIGNED around killing quickly and efficiently to gather resources. No matter what ideas you have, it doesn't change *the core of the game*. Nuking power to the point where everything in the star chart is now "challenging" and Sorties/Arbys/SP become *insane* is literally counter productive to the entire game design.

 

DE's entire design philosophy, as they have stated themselves MULTIPLE times, is that their game is designed around the base star chart and can be completed by a casual player solo *for the most part*. What you are suggesting with all these "nerf this" and "nerf that" ideas and this odd desire to see player-power pounded into the ground, will fundamentally change the core game of what Warframe *is*.

 

Enemy AI is a FAR better target to increase challenge. This can be easily done so the base star chart stays the same. Simply queue enemies to use a new AI post-level 100, and have special units post level 100 start showing up. Enemies that restore their allies armor if its stripped, better buffing enemies, better healing enemies.

 

The challenge that you're craving should be added *in addition to*, not *at the cost* of the base star chart. What I mentioned above is what Steel Path should've included. Acolytes were a first step, but DE should go further than that.  TLDR: The solution isn't to take toys away from kids. The solution is to add on top of. Addition, not subtraction. Constant nerfs solve NOTHING but sour the majority of the playerbase.

Bingo.

Some players, not all, want the game to be harder but, from what I've gleamed, haven't talked about the grind and drop rates. They are what they are because DE wants us to grind missions and replay them.