The impact AoE nerf could have

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

I have to disagree on there being no content to keep up with the powercreep. Even though there must be players who can eliminate EVERYTHING with ease (enough with the humble bragging to *those* people)... but they've released the Steel Path, they've got endless missions with infinitely scaling enemies that will eventually overpower players who don't exploit also-infinitely scaling mechanics... and the new Zariman missions with the Thraxx enemies...

My roommate has been doing the highest tier Zariman bounties, and the randoms he gets thrown in with are STILL dying left and right, leaving missions, and he's left alone to complete them on his own. They drop like flies. They need ALL THE HELP they can get... be it by power creep or whatever. The extreme levels of "super easy" "no challenge" left to the game rhetoric I keep hearing falls flat to reality I've experienced.

[Marvelous_A]

DE have never meant to "fix" powercreep. They only want to bring the outliers in line.

[Loza03]

Power creep can be good if handled well. However, if handled poorly, it can become unustainable. Warframe, due to several decisions that were, frankly, rather short-sighted, has not been able to handle its power creep sustainable.

Amour was known to scale differently than others, but used as is. Now armoured units are immensely more tanky than unarmoured units, drastically limiting the available meta.

All items were put into one of four categories, Rifles, Shotguns, Pistols, Melee and Warframes, despite different weapon categories behaving extremely differently. Whilst some specific mods do exist, any weapon type that is somehow innately stronger becomes more so as they get the same multipliers as everything else in that class, and any class that had higher multipliers was just better. So, assault rifles which are just 'OK' at everything fall off a bit compared to high-damage single target weapons, which then later fell off in comparison to AoE weapons that were just as high damage. Meanwhile, Warframe abilities with a handful of exceptions (even today, when you think about it) fell off as a damage-dealing option because power strength has very few ways to multiply it

Energy and to some extent health as systems have been largely mishandled, with the base systems to get either being based entirely on fairly low drops of RNG, whilst better options are usually though either no or extremely limited gameplay (A single melee attack for a full heal, for example). Combined with exceedingly variable health between builds (anywhere from under a thousand to 20,000 or more) and this makes sensible enemy damage non-existant.

 

[Cerikus]

43 minutes ago, Yrkul said:

Power creep makes it harder to tune content to be challenging without getting frustrating.

36 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

If the game's actual content doesn't keep up with that? You get power creep.

I see. Well but then we are in quite a pickle, because I feel like any time DE try to release something challenging (where you need to either think or be skilled a little bit) we have angry crowds of people. (Example New War) @Birdframe_PrimeRemember the drama about archons being too difficult? I like what you say about the New War, but apperently we are getting more Khal soon and Drifter gameplay in Duviri, so that's nice. And as you say I agree spoiler mode should have been more incorporated since the begining. I love Void cascade, Angel fights, etc.

I feel like DE are trying to make us struggle without using ridiculus scaling. The eximus rework does work for me in the sense that when I see them I am like. Oh! I gotta get rid of that dude asap. Even though they don't do much, BUT I was ignoring them before. So that's a big upgrade.

I totally agree, DE must offset the power creep, but once we get used to mentality "NO POWER CREEP, EVER", the game design space will be reduced to nothing.

15 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

-snip-

I see. That's quite a nice explanation. Thanks.
I wonder what's the solution. I don't think that Waframes core systems can be reworked/rebalanced to fix these issues (easily, at least). And since these are the cornerstones on which lays layers of power creep over the years, shouldn't we just accept the reality and power creep the game until it implodes? We can then move on to Soul.. *cough* Warframe 2.

[Kaggelos]

38 minutes ago, (PSN)AyinDygra said:

Over 1550 logins, thousands of hours... hasn't happened yet. Waiting for it.

Give it time. Happened to me recently, hence why i kinda stopped and started more challenging games.

[mycroft_]

10 hours ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

That's the problem: they don't need nor deserve your rocks or slaps. You've received  more than a significant level of gaming entertainment output from this free game. You're wrongfully going over the top. It's disrespectful to DE and I wish you guys learned a better way to ask for things. 

Honesty is not 'wrongfully going over the top'. Honesty is a good thing. Lying to the devs and telling them "Yeah, everything is great" when it's really, REALLY not great would be disrespectful.

[Silligoose]

1 hour ago, Cerikus said:

Lately, there has been a huge increase of talks about power creep and generally it's understandable that power creep has purely negative connotation.

What I don't understand and I am honestly asking someone to explain that to me, why is power creep bad for Warframe, specifically.

Even though I wasn't here for the open beta, I have played Warframe for a long time and a lot, and it always seemed to me that power creep was and is the back bone on which this game and all it's updates stand. 

I am going to simplify it a lot, but:
- At the begining we started to receive prime warframes and weapons. More power.
- Then Damage 2.0 was released. More power.
- There used to be stamina. At some point the stamina was removed completelly and we got Parkour 2.0. More power.
- Then more powerful mods and weapons started to appear, Primed mods even. More power.
- At some point Second dream happened and we got focus.  More power.
- Then we got the spoiler mode. More power.
- Let's not forget that we get a new warframe evere few months that adds to our roster of powerful tools that can solve our problems. More power.
- Many reworks happened, that increased our power. Melee rework few years ago for example. More power.
- With PoE we got Amps, more power to spoiler mode. More power.
- With Deimos we got Helminth.  More power.
- We also got Voidrig. More power.
- Recently we got weapons arcanes and galvanized mods. More power.
- Throught the years we are still receiving new and powerful weapons and on top of that Kuva and Tenet weapons exist.
- The most recent focus rework made us even more powerful and some of the new arcanes are great. More power.

So in conclusion. I don't understand why power creep (a design backbone of this game) is such an issue now in 2022 and wasn't such an issue in the past. The main progression always was to give us more. More items, more weapons, more frames, more power. If we stop receiving power, what then?

I honestly don't understand it and would be grateful, if someone explained it to me.

Progression style games, by their very nature, embrace power creep within their design: New spells are going to be more powerful than older, beginner spells. The weapons one unlocks later on are more powerful than "Basic Sword" received at the start of the game and so on and so forth. I do not view power creep as an inherently bad thing, because I enjoy the progression in power in RPG's especially, but even racing games in which one unlocks better cars, better engines, etc.

The problem I have with power creep is when the unlocked power either serves no practical purpose, or when it makes the game too simplistic: If I needed to use various spells, buffs and debuffs to beat some boss in an RPG at midgame, unlock more power and then I can suddenly beat the lategame boss with just using basic attacks, the power creep has resulted in an imbalanced state at lategame, causing lategame to be less engaging and less rewarding.

That is what has happened in Warframe in my experience: As I was progressing through the Star Chart years ago, I HAD to make use of not only my best gear, but the strategical, tactical and mechanical skill I acquired throughout my journey: I had to use the right damage types and switch it depending on the enemy I was facing. I had to be more accurate to kill enemies faster. I had to kill enemy support, such as Shield Ospreys, before killing the Crewman it was shielding. My choice in frame also changed the way I approached the mission, because doing a mission, such as Exterminate or Sabotage, with one type of frame in suited for that frame, then trying to do the mission the same way with a different frame, meant me failing, because frames had different inherent strengths and weaknesses. Making the decision to employ different gear and the right strategy and tactics, as well as the execution of said strategy and tactics, had a very real impact on my overall performance.

Jump forward to current Warframe: Due to power creep not being kept in checked, not remaining balanced relative to the content provided, many of the strategies and tactics, the choices I made as a player, doesn't have nearly as much of an impact anymore: Changing damage types, focussing priority targets, hitting enemy weakspots - not only do these things not really matter at lategame progression, they can actually hurt performance. That is as a result of power creep leading to unchecked imbalances. On top of that, I can go play a mission, such as Exterminate or Sabotage, with one frame in a specific way suited for that frame, I can go play that same mission with a very different frame in exactly the same way and be just as successful. so my choice in frame doesn't really matter anymore. To liken it with the RPG, I went from using various attacks, buffs and debuffs, to only really having to use basic attack.

If Warframe was racing game, early-to-midgame would see players racing in a damn good game, unlocking better cars, unlocking tougher tracks, unlocking different tyres suited for different conditions, unlocking faster and varied opponents, developing their skills and improving so they can win races and progress to tougher leagues... then as players get to endgame, unlock the fastest cars to take on the toughest opponents, the game places safety bumpers all over the track and programs opponents not to race, but to just stay behind the player, so players can win by pressing drive and not really paying attention to silly mechanics such as "steering" or "braking" - those mechanics aren't for endgame, apparently.

Warframe is far more simplistic at higher levels of progression at lategame/endgame, than it is at earlier stages of progression on the road to lategame. It is less engaging, less dynamic, has less depth and is an overall disappointment when considering what it not only could be, but should be and it is all because DE seemingly doesn't care about balance at deeper stages of lategame or endgame, or the players who have progressed to that point, looking for the climactic lategame/endgame it should have, only to find it doesn't exist.

 

tl;dr: The main issue I have is not with power creep, but the lack of balance when it comes to the power creep and the impact it has on the game.

[xXDragonGodXx]

Here is the thing about game design and power creep. Its not something that should be bad in small doses or in intended ways.

But when it comes to warframe, what probably was the case to start with was that there was most probably going to be better scaling, and weapons being stronger be available to you as you went through the game, but somewhere along the way that was "scrapt" but never removed, so If a new player wants, that player can currently rush through the game, with a bramma and a psychotic mindset. And with new content and new weapons that seemingly still is designed after the principal that I listed above,  then you get bad balance and power creep in the wrong way. There is always going to be what the player base and dev's calls for Meta and powercreep, but the way that it has evolved in warframe, makes meta and power creep the most toxic part of the community as people don't want to use their time to understand the game, and would rather copy paste everything.

If you are uncertain about what I'm saying about the scaling being "scrapt", then I would ask you to watch the tile sets you encounter and ask yourself, why its designed that way when the current movement system makes a lot of the tiles design unnecessary. You can look at Zariman's tilesets and see that the movement system was taken more into consideration when making it. As it is more or less more open and easier to jump around inn.

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

38 minutes ago, Kaggelos said:

Give it time. Happened to me recently, hence why i kinda stopped and started more challenging games.

See, I take breaks when I get bored on Warframe... I play Godfall, I play Genshin Impact, I play single player offline RPGs (primarily), I play Slay the Spire (the once a day challenge), I play Hollow Knight, I play browser based text games.

So, Warframe doesn't have to keep my attention 100% of my gameplay time. It serves its purpose. It scratches the itch of power fantasy. If I want challenge, I can (AND DO) go elsewhere... because that's not why I play Warframe. I also have a roommate who plays Warframe, so I'll play when he plays and wants to play stuff like Railjack. Otherwise, we both mostly play solo.

Anyway... I don't sink all my time and expectations into ONE game. Warframe is perfect at what it does, allowing the power fantasy that I cannot find anywhere else. It is firmly in its place in my roster of games to play, and if it ever became anywhere closer to Destiny, I could easily drop it from my list, because it wouldn't be doing what I play it for.

EDIT: Not related to the quote/reply.

When I play offline singleplayer RPGs, I over-level content... I grind out levels when I get to places with free and convenient healing near monsters that aren't totally annoying to fight. I get tons of currency... I steal stat increasing items. I super-charge my team, so when I get to the story segments, and bosses, I fly right through them. THAT is my style of fun.

(in Final Fantasy 1 on the NES, I leveled my team to 10, BEFORE crossing the bridge leaving Coneria to reach Pravoka. Yeah... and when I reached Elfland, I grinded on Giants on the plains to the east until I bought all the upgraded armor and weapons in the most expensive shops I had access too, AND 99 potions, so I could heal myself in that stupid dungeon with all those poisonous monsters.)

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

I think all the games from the past, and games like WoW and Final Fantasy have been dominant for so long that people just weren't used to seeing a game give so much freedom. 

Every game from 1990 to 2022 has characters with slow movement, slow action and did a lot of hand holding. 

Even the games that are supposed to be in warframes category like Borderlands, have slow movement.

Warframe did amazing because they're almost in their own category at this point.

More games should try to follow warframe in the future. Warframe is for people that don't want to spend 3 hours in a raid constantly reviving bad dps that get too close to the boss or can't follow instructions.

Even in warframe there are surprisingly people that can't even reach the actual amount of powercreep given, which is why you see people saying it takes 20 min to kill one enemy. Or that armor is hard to deal with. 

[Voltage]

1 hour ago, Merrcenary said:

because dumb wf player base want wf to be like tarkov with realism etc without understanding that wf is a different kind of a game

Generalizing players as "dumb" and using an extreme example (Tarkov) is why this conversation is so hard to have. Saying this just makes you look disconnected from many players' feedback and instead looks like you've spent too much time in the YouTube comments section. You can still have a game vastly in favor of the player over the enemy without being a complete fiesta. OP made a nice list of the power increases over the years, but I could make an equal list of the changes and nerfs to keep the game relatively in-check (and I say in-check in the sense of still being a power fantasy).

Here's the problem many players have. 2013-2019 DE were very adamant about working towards removing/reworking/nerfing things that were outliers in performance and created stale gameplay. For example, and in no particular order:

• Magus Lockdown
• Tonkor
• Telos Boltace
• Catchmoon/Arca Plasmor
• Synoid Simulor
• Trinity Nuke
• Saryn Rework
• Wukong Rework due to Defy being overpowered (this backfired as we know)
• Mesa Rework
• Ash Rework
• Excalibur Rework/nerf to Radial Javelin
• Mag Rework
• Maiming Strike
• Blood Rush
• Condition Overload
• Melee Range
• Melee geometry penetration
• Limbo Rework/removing scaling damage from Cataclysm
• several Mirage nerfs
• Chroma nerf
• ... The list goes on

Now you look at 2019-2022 DE and they have since changed their attitude (or atleast put less importance on dealing with this issues as soon as they arise). DE in 2016 would definitely not remove Self-Damage, allow players to negate AoE downsides (something they specifically changed for Tonkor due to usage rates), allow the Specters meta to manifest into Warframe choices, allow Arbitrations to not have a balanced reward system that heavily skews towards small Defense maps that the player nukes without setup, continuously add more Power Strength/Duration/Efficiency/Range mods/Arcanes, make the Operator even harder to kill, add Shield Gating, and more.

DE has never been quick to fix overpowered interactions, but I feel like they have been ignoring them for longer periods of time than they used to, except for when said interaction undermines how quickly you finish new content (i.e Nekros/Ivara/Hydroid in Zariman or Stealth Farming Intrinsics). 

We've gotten to the point where you can make multiple bad modding decisions or just cutting half a build on certain weapons and still do so much damage that you might not even care. The amount of risk missions present the players has gotten to the point of being almost 0, and combat has been reduced in general to watching the enemies on screen die without a whole lot of input on your end. I've been playing for 7 years. I know we as players used to camp in the Tower Void sewers nuking enemies, trying to instagib whatever spawns in The Index, Crowd Controlling entire tilesets for 0 enemy resistance, and more, but those often used to require entire teams, loadouts, and weren't applicable to every mission. Likewise, many of these situations were input heavy from the player (managing CC times, trying to combo certain buffs, spawn awareness, etc.). Now though, the general playerbase can deploy AI, quite literally walk through any mission with enemies to kill, and just have to pickup loot.

The tone of the game has most definitely shifted. Whether you enjoy that shift or not is entirely up to you, but what you wrote is ignorance at best.

[Cerikus]

  

32 minutes ago, Silligoose said:

-snip-

I agree 100%, however I have a different optics on the issue. I am going to say basically the same thing as you did, but differently:

Warframe has imo always been a toolbox game. There are gates put before you, that you need to open by aquiring proper tools. You can jump over one, you can dig under one, you can unlock one with special key, you can dismantle one with monkey wrench, etc. Eventually you get better tools and upgrade them so much that they become so versatile they can open any kind of door. At that point I personally feel like you have won the game and you cannot attribute that to poor balance, but simply to the fact, that you have aquired all, leveled up all mods and unless DE do some normalization (which would just make people angry) you have aquired the power to be literal god.

I don't see it as a bad endgame balance, I see it as the fact that you have basically finished the game. The game is not more simplistic at endgame, it's still the same, it's you who have become the ultimate solution to everything. I am asking the question, because I am unable to atribute me being allpowerful to bad game balance, but to thousands of hours I've put in playing and studying the game. If the endgame had different balance, it would have to be a different game, but I don't think that's possible in a game like that. At least at this point, after so many years.

30 minutes ago, xXDragonGodXx said:

-snip-

I get what you mean. Yeah. All the new tilesets since parkour 2.0 are done with that in mind. It is obvious. 
Also yeah. The weapons still have MR locks, but those hardly make sense. You can get Kuva weapons immediately after finishing War within, which is ridiculus. Weapons should be spread out over all the 30 Master ranks, (or 20 at least), but it's too late to do any of that.

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

Even in warframe there are surprisingly people that can't even reach the actual amount of powercreep given, which is why you see people saying it takes 20 min to kill one enemy. Or that armor is hard to deal with. 

Yes! Exactly. And I am pretty certain it's not a small number of people. I think that we (players who played way to much Warframe already) are usually failing to grasp that fact, that we are not the majority of the player base and that the game simply cannot be balanced around "players with maxed out primed mods, 8 forma Warframes weilding 60% elemental lich/sister weapons". 

3 minutes ago, Voltage said:

The tone of the game has most definitely shifted. Whether you enjoy that shift or not is entirely up to you, but what you wrote is ignorance at best.

You are right about that. I vividly remember the fun of putting together a team for certain content, because it was not possible to do solo (or it was not efficient at least). It used to be more coop focused game, now it's more solo. But I still wonder, if that could simply be, because I can solo everything.

Do lower level players need to pust team together? I hope they do.

[Numerikuu]

1 hour ago, Loza03 said:

Power creep can be good if handled well. However, if handled poorly, it can become unustainable. Warframe, due to several decisions that were, frankly, rather short-sighted, has not been able to handle its power creep sustainable.

Amour was known to scale differently than others, but used as is. Now armoured units are immensely more tanky than unarmoured units, drastically limiting the available meta.

All items were put into one of four categories, Rifles, Shotguns, Pistols, Melee and Warframes, despite different weapon categories behaving extremely differently. Whilst some specific mods do exist, any weapon type that is somehow innately stronger becomes more so as they get the same multipliers as everything else in that class, and any class that had higher multipliers was just better. So, assault rifles which are just 'OK' at everything fall off a bit compared to high-damage single target weapons, which then later fell off in comparison to AoE weapons that were just as high damage. Meanwhile, Warframe abilities with a handful of exceptions (even today, when you think about it) fell off as a damage-dealing option because power strength has very few ways to multiply it

Energy and to some extent health as systems have been largely mishandled, with the base systems to get either being based entirely on fairly low drops of RNG, whilst better options are usually though either no or extremely limited gameplay (A single melee attack for a full heal, for example). Combined with exceedingly variable health between builds (anywhere from under a thousand to 20,000 or more) and this makes sensible enemy damage non-existant.

 

This pretty much.

I don't have anything against power creep--if handled with care. Sadly with Warframe that's not the case, and will never be the case without a total restructuring of the game from the ground up (basically at that point it's better to just do a WF2).

Best they can do for now is to curtail the few outliers and try to keep said power on a somewhat similar scale, whatever that may be.

(Remember when Arcane helmets of all things were deemed power creep in ye olde Warframe days? Pepperidge Farm remembers).

 

[ReddyDisco]

Powercreep makes it so devs need to focus on keeping bosses from evaporating at the sight of a player instead of adding cool mechanics to it, we get things like adaptive damage reduction on liches which is annoying and makes it so bypassing that with banshee is the bearable solution. I loved the 2 archon fights because you didn't have op wfs blowing it up in seconds but a more engaging drifter fighting them.

I'm not gonna ask wf to be balanced or realistic, instead am looking forward to soulframe to see how interesting they can make bossfights and mechanics without powercreep in the way. 

[Yamazuki]

The issue just becomes people want Warframe to be more like other games, when they could instead be playing other games.

I may have missed it, but I don't recall a time where DE ever marketed Warframe to be the game some people claim the game should be... on the other hand, I can recall multiple instances of DE admitting Warframe is not meant to actually be difficult and caters to a more casual audience with lower player times. DE on many occasions even uses marketing material with varied playstyles, even though so many people keep calling Warframe a "shooter" with the implication it falls under the same category as traditional shooters; when it hasn't.

How Warframe gets treated is a prime example of how people get stuck in their old ways, or 'tradition'. The dominant games for decades have all been extremely restrictive, and developers have generally had an attitude of "you must play the game our designated way". I've seen classes/characters completely changed in games for being used in ways the developers did not approve of, even when said playstyle was vastly inferior to meta classes/characters.

Others are simply living in a fantasy world, where they think if it weren't for 'power creep' the game would somehow be difficult. Warframe at its core is not, has not, and will likely never be at the upper end of the difficulty spectrum for the average person. We've already had multiple completely isolated content islands with their own set of progression. It ended the same way, every single time. Basic simple enemy that poses zero threat when you know what you're doing, and just gets blown to pieces when you progress through the given content island. Just look at how big of a joke the first Necramech weapon was.

We recently had TNW quest, the bits where you had slowed down combat were insanely easy, enemies attacked in slow motion. Even the upcoming Drifter content, the attacks are deliberately insanely slow. If DE really wanted the game to have difficult combat scenarios, we would've gotten them with Operators initially, or with Operator x.0 that we now have. Instead it's just continuing the trend of simple relaxing combat scenarios as DE wants.

[MqToasty]

Some amount of power creep is unavoidable in a CRPG, and you are right that the power creep (or rather, Power Fantasy) is a major selling point of the game.  But as power creep increases, it becomes harder and harder to ensure both beginners and veterans can enjoy the game.

In order to ensure veterans with the current meta can enjoy the game, they will have to toss in harder enemies that can survive a few hits from the strongest weapons/builds.  But doing so might create drastic speedbumps that will turn beginners off the game.  This is not a problem in a single-player game, since players would simply have no need to go back to older areas, and the rate of progression can be managed.  But in a multiplayer game where you are constantly tasked to revisit older content (say, for fissures) and play with players at different levels, it becomes a nearly impossible task to ensure the content is at a reasonable level of difficulty for everyone.

tldr; Power creep creates a power divide between new and old players.  And if they need to play together, the more drastic the creep the less possible it is for the content be both non-trivial and possible to complete for everyone.

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

15 minutes ago, MqToasty said:

Some amount of power creep is unavoidable in a CRPG, and you are right that the power creep (or rather, Power Fantasy) is a major selling point of the game.  But as power creep increases, it becomes harder and harder to ensure both beginners and veterans can enjoy the game.

In order to ensure veterans with the current meta can enjoy the game, they will have to toss in harder enemies that can survive a few hits from the strongest weapons/builds.  But doing so might create drastic speedbumps that will turn beginners off the game.  This is not a problem in a single-player game, since players would simply have no need to go back to older areas, and the rate of progression can be managed.  But in a multiplayer game where you are constantly tasked to revisit older content (say, for fissures) and play with players at different levels, it becomes a nearly impossible task to ensure the content is at a reasonable level of difficulty for everyone.

tldr; Power creep creates a power divide between new and old players.  And if they need to play together, the more drastic the creep the less possible it is for the content be both non-trivial and possible to complete for everyone.

I just wanted to use this comment to springboard my personal experience as a new player in Warframe, and how powercreep affected me.

I played solo for a year. I was nearly ready to quit because I hadn't gotten good mods to drop, I didn't have plat for weapon/frame slots, energy was non-existent, and all my weapons were starting to just tickle enemies. I had 3 major speed bumps like this. The first was the Raptor boss. (the flying thing that you had to defeat, drop bombs down those tubes, etc)... My guns barely scratched that thing, and its missile bombardments would annihilate me. After hours of trying to figure out what I was doing wrong (nothing, just didn't have mods), I opened up my run to global to run with others... they one-shot the flying enemy, and made quick work of the boss encounter. I had no idea weapons could get that strong, so it gave me motivation to get the mods that would accomplish that.

EDIT: The 2nd speed bump was Sargas Ruk. Being a mostly melee player, and horrible guns, I would run out of ammo during his fight all the time, and could only SOMETIMES hit his weakpoints with melee... but it was so dangerous being that close to him, that I'd often die there. I finally brought in the CYCRON, with its infinite ammo... and after an hour fight, I FINALLY solo'd him. The Cycron was glued to my hip after that, and to this day, I think it's still my most used secondary... not that I actually fire it at anything though... I melee 99% of the time, and now I use the Catchmoon kitgun (my atomic sneeze).

The 3rd speed bump, much like the first, was mister tube-men. At first, I had a hard time keeping up with his movement speed, and doing any damage when he was near me. (turns out, that damage part was mods again), but I farmed Frost JUST for this encounter, because I figured if I could set up a snow globe around me, he'd be slowed enough for me to engage with... and I was right... he did slow down enough for me to hit... but while he couldn't kill me, I certainly couldn't tickle him to death either, at least not in a good amount of time. Again, I opened up this boss node to global play, entered the boss arena with the team, and they had him killed before I could put down my frost globe (which many people don't like, because of guns and stuff from the outside... whatever.)

So, again, I was motivated to achieve the power level I saw on display.

Once I got Inaros, with his pocket sand, and non-reliance on energy, I felt progress in the game. His pocket sand opened enemies to finishers, so my poorly modded melee weapons could instantly kill most enemies (or 2-3 finisher kill bombards and the like.) I also won some plat on a forum giveaway, and during a twitch stream, so I could finally build a larger selection of weapons and frames.

Now, I'm MR30 (under 20k from L1), and I have a blast playing the game, easily wiping out the enemies that tortured me for a year.

 

EDIT: I had 3 major speedbumps, not 2... totally blocked the 2nd out of my memory until posting this...

[MqToasty]

16 minutes ago, (PSN)AyinDygra said:

I just wanted to use this comment to springboard my personal experience as a new player in Warframe, and how powercreep affected me.

I played solo for a year. I was nearly ready to quit because I hadn't gotten good mods to drop, I didn't have plat for weapon/frame slots, energy was non-existent, and all my weapons were starting to just tickle enemies. I had 2 major speed bumps like this. The first was the Raptor boss. (the flying thing that you had to defeat, drop bombs down those tubes, etc)... My guns barely scratched that thing, and its missile bombardments would annihilate me. After hours of trying to figure out what I was doing wrong (nothing, just didn't have mods), I opened up my run to global to run with others... they one-shot the flying enemy, and made quick work of the boss encounter. I had no idea weapons could get that strong, so it gave me motivation to get the mods that would accomplish that.

The 2nd speed bump, much like the first, was mister tube-men. At first, I had a hard time keeping up with his movement speed, and doing any damage when he was near me. (turns out, that damage part was mods again), but I farmed Frost JUST for this encounter, because I figured if I could set up a snow globe around me, he'd be slowed enough for me to engage with... and I was right... he did slow down enough for me to hit... but while he couldn't kill me, I certainly couldn't tickle him to death either, at least not in a good amount of time. Again, I opened up this boss node to global play, entered the boss arena with the team, and they had him killed before I could put down my frost globe (which many people don't like, because of guns and stuff from the outside... whatever.)

So, again, I was motivated to achieve the power level I saw on display.

Once I got Inaros, with his pocket sand, and non-reliance on energy, I felt progress in the game. His pocket sand opened enemies to finishers, so my poorly modded melee weapons could instantly kill most enemies (or 2-3 finisher kill bombards and the like.) I also won some plat on a forum giveaway, and during a twitch stream, so I could finally build a larger selection of weapons and frames.

Now, I'm MR30 (under 20k from L1), and I have a blast playing the game, easily wiping out the enemies that tortured me for a year.

Yep, I had a similar experience when starting out.  I played solo-only until about half way into Steel Path, and since I had an over-reliance on melee, the nastiest speedbumps for me were Sargus Ruk and the Raptors.  Thankfully, the folks on this forum were really helpful so I built myself a Hek, collected some mods, and it carried me through.  My next major speedbump was the final arm of the Void (Aten?), where I again could not kill fast enough to defend the Mobile Defense terminals.  I had to build and learn how to use a Limbo to get past this stage.  IMO, Warframe is a very cool game, but it really would benefit greatly to give new(er) players some more guidance and a word of advice, especially when they fail a mission.

[Silligoose]

57 minutes ago, Cerikus said:

I agree 100%, however I have a different optics on the issue. I am going to say basically the same thing as you did, but differently:

Warframe has imo always been a toolbox game. There are gates put before you, that you need to open by aquiring proper tools. You can jump over one, you can dig under one, you can unlock one with special key, you can dismantle one with monkey wrench, etc. Eventually you get better tools and upgrade them so much that they become so versatile they can open any kind of door. At that point I personally feel like you have won the game and you cannot attribute that to poor balance, but simply to the fact, that you have aquired all, leveled up all mods and unless DE do some normalization (which would just make people angry) you have aquired the power to be literal god.

I don't see it as a bad endgame balance, I see it as the fact that you have basically finished the game. The game is not more simplistic at endgame, it's still the same, it's you who have become the ultimate solution to everything. I am asking the question, because I am unable to atribute me being allpowerful to bad game balance, but to thousands of hours I've put in playing and studying the game. If the endgame had different balance, it would have to be a different game, but I don't think that's possible in a game like that. At least at this point, after so many years.

Hades, Diablo 3, Borderlands 2, just to name a few, are games where one finishes the game and one has the option to run around and be all-powerful in the game, but the developers of those games have continued to push out content to bring value to the gear and/or skill one has acquired in pursuit of finishing the game, so that those who wish to continue experiencing engaging gameplay after they have finished the game, can continue to do so. They gave their games greater replayability and engaging endgames (the things players do after completing the game).

Even Blizzard seemingly cares more about their endgame players than DE, but the difference is that those games are buy2play. Warframe is an f2p GAAS (free to play game as a service) game - I'd argue the developer of a GAAS game needs to care more about player retention, needs to care more about ensuring the new items they release have practical value, than developers of b2p games, but DE doesn't.

Warframe not only gave players a toolbox, but it presents obstacles in which multiple tools had to be used to get past the obstacle as players progressed  from early- to midgame. Come lategame, players are given a bulldozer and the toolbox with all those tools players used to need, become obsolete. When a game's lategame/endgame has assets that render the vast majority of other mechanics and/or assets obsolete, it is imbalanced, because the assets that renders the vast majority of other assets obsolete, are overpowered. It results in the game slowly losing the depth it once had, slowly eroding the very essence that made it unique, while also making it more simplistic. Warframe is far more simplistic at lategame, because it is far less demanding to be successful and perform well than it was at  earlier stages of progression. One could argue that is DE's intention, but  the game is extremely imbalanced at later stages of progression.

DE could balance it properly rather easily, but they don't. They seemingly do not care nearly as much as other developers about the resource investment of players, be it time or money, as other developers do. I never used to look up what the endgame of a game is like before playing it, because every game I played had a fairly balanced endgame, but because of Warframe, I now do.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

1 hour ago, Yamazuki said:

The issue just becomes people want Warframe to be more like other games, when they could instead be playing other games.

I may have missed it, but I don't recall a time where DE ever marketed Warframe to be the game some people claim the game should be... on the other hand, I can recall multiple instances of DE admitting Warframe is not meant to actually be difficult and caters to a more casual audience with lower player times. DE on many occasions even uses marketing material with varied playstyles, even though so many people keep calling Warframe a "shooter" with the implication it falls under the same category as traditional shooters; when it hasn't.

How Warframe gets treated is a prime example of how people get stuck in their old ways, or 'tradition'. The dominant games for decades have all been extremely restrictive, and developers have generally had an attitude of "you must play the game our designated way". I've seen classes/characters completely changed in games for being used in ways the developers did not approve of, even when said playstyle was vastly inferior to meta classes/characters.

Others are simply living in a fantasy world, where they think if it weren't for 'power creep' the game would somehow be difficult. Warframe at its core is not, has not, and will likely never be at the upper end of the difficulty spectrum for the average person. We've already had multiple completely isolated content islands with their own set of progression. It ended the same way, every single time. Basic simple enemy that poses zero threat when you know what you're doing, and just gets blown to pieces when you progress through the given content island. Just look at how big of a joke the first Necramech weapon was.

We recently had TNW quest, the bits where you had slowed down combat were insanely easy, enemies attacked in slow motion. Even the upcoming Drifter content, the attacks are deliberately insanely slow. If DE really wanted the game to have difficult combat scenarios, we would've gotten them with Operators initially, or with Operator x.0 that we now have. Instead it's just continuing the trend of simple relaxing combat scenarios as DE wants.

Yea definitely. 

An example is when DE started doing community questions at the end of devstreams, and had to correct a number of misconceptions players just assumed about the game. They flat out said multiple times there are no plans to let people lock stats on rivens. 

Devstream 155 at 1 hour 15 minutes. Steve has to nicely say that the question asked was simply someone confusing what another person said, for what DE said. 

Many people also tried to say Railjack wasn't supposed to be in the game, and that it wasn't "real warframe", when it was already a part of Steve's vision for the game back in 2014.

[0_The_F00l]

4 hours ago, Cerikus said:

So in conclusion. I don't understand why power creep (a design backbone of this game) is such an issue now in 2022 and wasn't such an issue in the past. The main progression always was to give us more. More items, more weapons, more frames, more power. If we stop receiving power, what then?

I honestly don't understand it and would be grateful, if someone explained it to me.

What makes you think it is a recent issue ?

The thing is that people confuse power progression with power creep.

Power progression is expected and part of any game that has levels of any sort, one plays through content , overcomes it , gains power that is then suitable for the next level of content.

Power creep on the other hand is when you keep getting power (usually as new updates) but the actual content does not keep up from a challenge perspective.

The problem in warframe is that there is no clear indicator of power level. And there has been little to no change to the core gameplay and the access to the overpowered gear is from the get go instead of as a regular progression.

At a point the amount of power needed is just enough to overcome any content that exists , and any further power is just cosmetic.

That would be all hunky Dory , however don't forget this is free to play. DE makes money through plat sales. So how can DE add incentive to play or buy more stuff ? By turning the game from action into a slot machine simulator with more and more RNG needed with each update. 

You can see for yourself the kind of grind needed in the past against what is needed now.

[MutoManiac]

It been mentioned before and I have to agree that these discussions don’t usually take into account solo vs group play. I join pugs when something is hard and I don’t want it to take long. Otherwise playing solo, the game is plenty challenging. We just need someone who has the figures of how many play solo. If it’s more than 50%, then we can’t really complain about the game being too easy, if that makes sense.

[ShogunGunshow]

I don't mind power creep as long as said power doesn't lead to complete non-interaction with the game's mechanics being the most efficient way of playing.

(Which is why Wuclone with insert-meta-AoE-weapon-here is bad for the game.)

[Rakosta_Kai]

4 hours ago, Cerikus said:

Lately, there has been a huge increase of talks about power creep and generally it's understandable that power creep has purely negative connotation.

What I don't understand and I am honestly asking someone to explain that to me, why is power creep bad for Warframe, specifically.

Even though I wasn't here for the open beta, I have played Warframe for a long time and a lot, and it always seemed to me that power creep was and is the back bone on which this game and all it's updates stand. 

It's confusing behavior simply because you are correct.

One of the more pervasive problems we have in this game regards the fact that as players know DE listens they become more and more eager to put their own individual stamp on the game without recognizing or accepting what the game is as a whole.
Those folks lobby to see specific changes enacted and, once they are, the rest of the playerbase gets stuck with the result.

There are definitely items, mechanics, etc that do actually need tuning to ensure that players who wish to play in public groups can do so without needless friction or to raise QOL, etc; That said, most of the calls for changes "in the name of balance" are specious, as are calls to do so for the sake of parity.

[quxier]

5 hours ago, Cerikus said:

- Then we got the spoiler mode. More power.

5 hours ago, Cerikus said:

There used to be stamina. At some point the stamina was removed completelly and we got Parkour 2.0. More power.

5 hours ago, Cerikus said:

- Many reworks happened, that increased our power. Melee rework few years ago for example. More power.

5 hours ago, Cerikus said:

- With Deimos we got Helminth.  More power.
- We also got Voidrig. More power.

Not every upgrade is all about power.

Spoiler gave us nice interaction with Sentients (which were sadly "removed").

Melee improved melee movement (there are still many errors) and buffed weapons so there wouldn't be case where some large part of game were useless.

Parkour gave us different way to interact with environment & enemies. It's not "jut" better or worse. Of course lot of enemies hasn't keep up with us.

Helminth's invigorations & infusions are interesting element of game. However It has some problems. Infussion restrict you to use only 1 power, not ultimate and few other limits. Some frames has not very insteresting kit (after limiting them) so they give simple buffs like Rhino Roar. It's still has some potential to make frames better (not powerwise only). Invigoration are random buffs. It's interesting feature but it doesn't have too many buffs. Some buffs are just buffs for already good weapons (e.g. crit). It's still nice to get things like jump resets.

Mechs were meant to be different mechanics. Sadly, in my opinion, they just downgraded frames.

5 hours ago, Cerikus said:

- At some point Second dream happened and we got focus.  More power.

Talking about current Focus. Focus is not about "more power" but different power. We can already armor strip enemies or group them. Those focus power are about making gameplay more "different" than just pressing few keys of ability keys (of frames).

ps. of course it's not perfect

5 hours ago, Cerikus said:

The main progression always was to give us more. More items, more weapons, more frames, more power. If we stop receiving power, what then?

It's not all about powers. Just buffing few numbers won't be good for long run. We need variety. They give us variety from time to time. Of course very weak stuffs is bad. However decent gear with interesting gimmick is good thing to sell, imho.

4 hours ago, Yrkul said:

Incarno weapons, that kicks the power level up even further.

Sadly with incarnon weapons we get simply "more power", broken gimmicks (+100% jump is very micro) or very few interesting stuffs. Still they have managed to make Praedos slaming+heavy interesting.

Where is "different scopes" for guns?

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

I think all the games from the past, and games like WoW and Final Fantasy have been dominant for so long that people just weren't used to seeing a game give so much freedom. 

Every game from 1990 to 2022 has characters with slow movement, slow action and did a lot of hand holding. 

Even the games that are supposed to be in warframes category like Borderlands, have slow movement.

Warframe did amazing because they're almost in their own category at this point.

 

Slow and hand holding? Nope

Mario is not "like WF" but I wanted to add it.

Quote

More games should try to follow warframe in the future. Warframe is for people that don't want to spend 3 hours in a raid constantly reviving bad dps that get too close to the boss or can't follow instructions.

Then you spend hours or days praying that RNG is fair and it gives you certain item. That's bad too.

Quote

Even in warframe there are surprisingly people that can't even reach the actual amount of powercreep given, which is why you see people saying it takes 20 min to kill one enemy. Or that armor is hard to deal with. 

Some people don't want go all the way of "cookie clicker" route.

On other hand they may not have enough gear.

3 hours ago, Yamazuki said:

Others are simply living in a fantasy world, where they think if it weren't for 'power creep' the game would somehow be difficult. Warframe at its core is not, has not, and will likely never be at the upper end of the difficulty spectrum for the average person. We've already had multiple completely isolated content islands with their own set of progression. It ended the same way, every single time. Basic simple enemy that poses zero threat when you know what you're doing, and just gets blown to pieces when you progress through the given content island. Just look at how big of a joke the first Necramech weapon was.

*Me playing first RJ*:

- some guys fly & shoot -> I do the same

- ALL OF SUDDEN SOMEONE IS ON MY SHIP

- THERE IS FIRE

- THEY ARE SHOOTING

- SOMETHING WRONG WITH SHIP

- mission failure

It all depends on your gear or team's. Lots of stuffs is easy when you have "Gorgon 2000 Special edition".