Orb Vallis needs a level readjustment.

[CoffeeSorcerer69]

I'm not talking about lowering the levels by any means, I very much like the challenge.  However, the enemies of the OV don't match their levels and need to have their levels readjusted, because the OV stating that it's levels 10-30 feels deceptive in a way that makes it seem like the devs hate your guts and don't want you touching open world content.  OV enemies are equivalent to level +40 enemies, and it should say that, because level is how you tell players that they're not supposed to be in that area yet if they don't have the right equipment.

Not to mention that OV enemies scale fast if you don't know what you're doing, you can be fighting what it tells you are level 10-30 enemies for 5 minutes, and at that last second of the 5 minute mark, a level 50 enemy that's equivalent to a level 120 enemy flys over and steamrolls you like they're Dio from part 3.

tldr; Orb Vallis Enemies are deceptively strong, and their level should match their strength.

[CoffeeSorcerer69]

I just remembered one other thing, the Toroid drop rates are absolute dogwater.  I spent a solid 3 hours farming the temple of profit the other day, and came out with 1 revive left and two toroids.  Like why are they so low?

[Packetdancer]

The  enemy scale being a little out of sync with what folks would expect for the labeled level is not unique to Orb Vallis; all three of the Free Roam zones have this problem to one degree or another.

(I do agree 100% they could stand to have better labeling.)

Edited July 22, 2023 by Packetdancer

[CoffeeSorcerer69]

22 minutes ago, Packetdancer said:

The  enemy scale being a little out of sync with what folks would expect for the labeled level is not unique to Orb Vallis; all three of the Free Roam zones have this problem to one degree or another.

(I do agree 100% they could stand to have better labeling.)

True, I suppose I singled out the Vallis specifically because it's just so much more noticeable, at least in Planes the enemies are more in line with the rest of the star chart, and Deimos doesn't scale the enemies as hard until you get to the later level bounties.

[(NSW)Greybones]

I’ve always found it a bit odd that there seemed to be some kind of discrepancy with the levels. I’ve wondered whether it’s meant to reflect a more multi-player approach…? (Railjack kind of does it too, but I figured that’s to make the crew with their limited numbers more dangerous because they don’t have endlessly respawning backups)

Like, if you jump into a level 30 bounty built for level 30 enemies alone, it’s rougher going than in standard missions, but if you and three others also built for level 30 jump in, it feels better…? Dunno, the balancing has always been a mystery in terms of exactly how the missions are balanced even if it’s possible to get a rough feel for it

[CoffeeSorcerer69]

6 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Like, if you jump into a level 30 bounty built for level 30 enemies alone, it’s rougher going than in standard missions, but if you and three others also built for level 30 jump in, it feels better…? Dunno, the balancing has always been a mystery in terms of exactly how the missions are balanced even if it’s possible to get a rough feel for it

It might have to do with free roam activities mostly being for multiple people at once, so instead of normal mission scaling, they just have the enemies roided up constantly.  Which may also be a way to increase performance in open world, since the entire map is rendered most of the time, and is on an entirely different scale than normal star chart missions.  So when you do free roam with a group of 3-4 people, it's properly balanced because that's just how free roam was balanced in the first place.  But that's more my speculation about the devs dealing with their old spaghetti code.

[trst]

Yeah it's a bit odd but is something that only really matters on one's first visit and first attempt at endless farming. Though that isn't saying that they shouldn't get a level/scaling readjustment to better reflect it.

The reasoning might be the same as with Railjack as there enemies also have higher scaling relative to their level but it's due to their sparse nature with all the separate areas eating up the spawn cap. So it might be the case in open worlds, especially in Vallis due to being the largest, as they're trying to account for players loading/abandoning enemies in areas around the map. Basically DE expects you to not be able to encounter that many enemies at once and thus buffed their scaling to compensate.

But that all goes out the window when in solo or endless farming anyways so again it's still a weird decision on DE's end.

Edited July 22, 2023 by trst

[taiiat]

you can't just increase their Level Numbers as then the Enemies would suddenly get like 2-3x as much Health and probably like 50-75% more Damage.
why their base Stats are significantly different from other Enemies though, idunno.

[Birdframe_Prime]

2 hours ago, CoffeeSorcerer69 said:

Not to mention that OV enemies scale fast

Okay, just to be absolutely clear on this, are we all clear how Warframe's level posting actually works?

Level 10-30 indicates the starter levels of anything. In a Survival that would indicate that the fodder enemies are around level 10, and the high end would be 30. If, however, you go through a rotation, the range of 10-30 means there's a 20 level increase as part of the rotation increase. The next rotation will be rated at 30-50, and the next at 50-70.

Orb Vallis enemies can be tougher because they can surround you, and act differently to many other enemies of a similar nature. With Nullifier Melee units that charge you, or Moas that leap to you. Also your abilities that have a very large range while in normal tiles, don't actually seem to have that large of a range when compared to the size of the areas in the Vallis. There's also been a thing about the stats for a while now, but the stats were already nerfed a few months after the Vallis was released to make them more fair.

Basically, the Vallis starts at level 10, the enemies can scale up to 30 on normal functions, but if you do something like Alert a Base (as part of the take-over) or run up your Alert level to maximum stars, that's an increase that can scale them very quickly up to level 70.

Unless players are reminded of why there's a range on the mission's base posting, this kind of confusion can happen.

[(NSW)Greybones]

42 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Okay, just to be absolutely clear on this, are we all clear how Warframe's level posting actually works?

Level 10-30 indicates the starter levels of anything. In a Survival that would indicate that the fodder enemies are around level 10, and the high end would be 30. If, however, you go through a rotation, the range of 10-30 means there's a 20 level increase as part of the rotation increase. The next rotation will be rated at 30-50, and the next at 50-70.

Orb Vallis enemies can be tougher because they can surround you, and act differently to many other enemies of a similar nature. With Nullifier Melee units that charge you, or Moas that leap to you. Also your abilities that have a very large range while in normal tiles, don't actually seem to have that large of a range when compared to the size of the areas in the Vallis. There's also been a thing about the stats for a while now, but the stats were already nerfed a few months after the Vallis was released to make them more fair.

Basically, the Vallis starts at level 10, the enemies can scale up to 30 on normal functions, but if you do something like Alert a Base (as part of the take-over) or run up your Alert level to maximum stars, that's an increase that can scale them very quickly up to level 70.

Unless players are reminded of why there's a range on the mission's base posting, this kind of confusion can happen.

Just to clarify for myself, when you say “Base posting”, you’re referring to the bounty level…?

[(PSN)robotwars7]

DE tweaked the Orb Vallis enemies a bunch of times before deciding that they should be more challenging and leaving it at that, however their levels definitely don't reflect their damage output: IMO they should be considered just as much of a threat as Nightmare/T4 Void Multiplier enemies, perhaps even more if you're goign to do a long farming run. the lower levels are probably to reflect that you're still only on Venus, the second planet in the game, which is supposed to be more inviting to newbies (but ends up being deceptive and potentially lulling an unprepared newbie into a fight that is too difficult for them).

2 hours ago, CoffeeSorcerer69 said:

the Toroid drop rates are absolute dogwater. 

Calda (Orange) Toroids aren't too bad with a resource chance booster and an optimal farming setup with a Nekros for example, but the other ones are a rough grind. if you need the toroids for rep, you'd be better off runnign Exploiter/Profit Taker. if you need those specific toroids though.. well good luck, you won't ge much better than using a booster and a Nekros. 

one suggestion for improvement could be to have supply convoys travelling through the Vallis: they'd be well guarded but if you ambush them and kill all the enemies, you can open a Coildrive and get a few Toroids guaranteed; the convoys would be more difficult to attack at higher levels but would also grant more Toroids.

[CoffeeSorcerer69]

Before people get the wrong idea; I'm not saying that I don't understand enemy levels and how they work in the game.  I'm essentially saying that the carpets don't match the drapes.  So when newer people go into the Orb Vallis, they're probably expecting that the enemies will be a slight bump in difficulty, but then they get ran over and die to an enemy that punches far higher than their stated level without even understanding why.

If anything, a band aid that they could put onto this for newer players, would be for there to be a warning for the first time that they enter Free Roam content, that states something along the lines of: Enemy scaling is different, and will prove more challenging than traditional star chart content.  But there's honestly no good reason that they could give for the enemies level to not match their strength from the get go.

15 minutes ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

one suggestion for improvement could be to have supply convoys travelling through the Vallis: they'd be well guarded but if you ambush them and kill all the enemies, you can open a Coildrive and get a few Toroids guaranteed; the convoys would be more difficult to attack at higher levels but would also grant more Toroids.

Also, absolutely.  This is something that all the open worlds could use more of to provide a better experience, and maybe add complications and more loot to missions, sorta like thumpers in the Planes when they decide to join along in your travels until you *break their legs.

Edited July 22, 2023 by CoffeeSorcerer69

[Corvid]

It's worth noting that there are technically two versions of most Orb Vallis enemies. Below a certain level threshold (either 20 or 30, IIRC), they spawn as regular enemies that use similar base stats to non-Terra Corpus. Above that threshold, the game switches to spawning "elite" versions which have higher base stats (and thus are exponentially more durable).

The reason for this is that when the Orb Vallis was first released, the enemies all had the higher base stats that are now seen in the elites, which made the area extremely unapproachable to newer/less powerful players. DE decided to switch to the current system so that the lower-levelled activities are more doable for said players while still preserving the original challenge at higher levels.

[Birdframe_Prime]

2 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Just to clarify for myself, when you say “Base posting”, you’re referring to the bounty level…?

No? Partly. Bounties have the same thing.

I mean when you hover over any Mission on the Star Chart, whether that's a Bounty or a Survival on Ceres and it says 'Survival, Level 30-34' or 'Orb Vallis, Level 10-30'.

Whenever it says 'Level X-X' that's the scaling. If the mission only has one objective, or one wave, such as Exterminate or Capture, then it has enemies in that range. If it has escalation, like Survival or Disruption, it means that the first Rotation will be in that range, then every subsequent Rotation will scale up to the next iteration.

On the Orb Vallis, and to a lesser extent the Plains, the escalation is not just linked to the Bounty Level, it's linked to your 'wanted' rank too, with more enemies and higher level ones able to spawn.

[(NSW)Greybones]

4 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

No? Partly. Bounties have the same thing.

I mean when you hover over any Mission on the Star Chart, whether that's a Bounty or a Survival on Ceres and it says 'Survival, Level 30-34' or 'Orb Vallis, Level 10-30'.

Whenever it says 'Level X-X' that's the scaling. If the mission only has one objective, or one wave, such as Exterminate or Capture, then it has enemies in that range. If it has escalation, like Survival or Disruption, it means that the first Rotation will be in that range, then every subsequent Rotation will scale up to the next iteration.

On the Orb Vallis, and to a lesser extent the Plains, the escalation is not just linked to the Bounty Level, it's linked to your 'wanted' rank too, with more enemies and higher level ones able to spawn.

Ahhh gotcha gotcha.

I had a rough idea of how it worked for the sake of knowing whether I’m overbuilt or underbuilt for a mission, but hadn’t looked too deep into it and have since learned a little more about it now