incentivising playstyle variety

[SDGDen]

so, one of the key complaints about basically every meta this game has ever had is that it's all you see. we've seen it with the really old saryn meta, with the old ember meta, with the boom and zoom meta, etc.

and this problem will never go away, even if you nerf the current meta, a new meta will take it's place since people naturally gravitate to whatever is the most effective.

while i do agree that in many cases nerfs are needed to the most effective items, those nerfs are for the sake of balance, NOT because it'll increase variety. nerfs don't really affect variety that much.

 

instead, lets incentivise variety by using the same mindset that creates meta's: "i'll run what's most efficient", by implementing a new starchart-wide system:

in the starchart menu, there will be a new tab that will present you with 5 "challenges", these arent goals to complete like nightwave but rather static things such as: run this specific frame, run only a specific weapon type, use a build with over 1K shields, use a single target weapon, use an AOE weapon, etc.

for each challenge, the player is given +25% to one of the various booster categories, these challenges can stack. 

they're entirely optional, however for many farms it'll end up being "most efficient" to start running whatever the challenges say. this will make the mission more difficult in exchange for minor boosts.

if instead, these boosts were multipliers on final mission rewards, they could even have challenges such as "get mostly kills with abilities" or "get at least 50% headshot kills".

to avoid the "run a dummy mission to reset your challenges" issue, these challenges would stay for an hour at a time, this also means you dont have to change your loadout every mission.

they should also be per-player (just like the bonusses you get in arbitrations and archon hunts) so you dont end up with a full squad of yareli's with sniper rifles.

 

what do yall think of this suggestion? would this incentivise you to use a larger portion of your arsenal? 

[Aruquae]

Hear me out… we should have a Simulated Universe mode

High levels+buffs for your loadout that can fit into your playstyle. You can create a niche playstyle with the combination of weapons/frames/and those buffs that would push towards playing what you want to play, less on efficiency. 
Idk I play HSR too much, but it would be cool

Edited February 5 by Aruquae

[Merrcenary]

5 минут назад, SDGDen сказал:

this will make the mission more difficult in exchange for minor boosts

and then the community will start crying again "reee we need BETTER rewards for this difficult content, de give it us for free because we are doing extraordinary things"

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

While I wouldn't be against this suggestion, I likely wouldn't alter my play style to accommodate it either.

Consistency is key for my enjoyment of the game. I like my favorite frame. I like my favorite weapon.

I highly dislike Duviri, forcing me to use a very small selection of random options... so I don't play Duviri, for instance.
I rarely run Arbitrations, and when I do, I don't even really look at the bonuses.
I never even unlocked the Helminth invigoration module, because it won't change which warframes I use, and the frames I do use, don't really need invigorations to make me want to play them... they're tools for jobs.

That's one player's perspective on this, at least.

[Xzorn]

Level Scaling is what originally improved build variety. Things that worked at level 40 didn't work at level 300.

Sadly because DE never gained control with Enemy Exponential Damage Scaling. CC got abused then attacked relentlessly. If they had made it more linear and maybe even kept the weak points from Damage 1.0 things might have turned out differently. Now DE can't reward difficult content because they've totally lost control balance.

Tons of frames, build comps and weapons were used at higher levels.

Link Nidus to Banshee. Old Accelerant Ember with Fireball Frenzy in CPx4, Trinity + Gara DR layering, Garuda with old Saryn Viral Spores using big bang weapons, Mag with everyone using non-Crit weapons. Volt Shock Trooper to spoof Corrosive Proc weight. Countless configurations for both frames and weapons.

All many of us wanted was to just start at level 200-300 or have faster scaling. Instead we got the opposite with enemy defense soft caps.
Along with the status effects change this pretty much had the opposite effect of variety.

___________________________________________________________________________

Long time ago I made an Arbitrations 2.0 concept what was an endless missions with bounty objectives. It used the Orb of Vallis Alert system which gave enemies extra abilities and increased their scaling speed. It also cause environmental effects. Not like fire on the ground but something like a whole section of a galleon being exposed to space and objectives having elite guards. It also used mini bosses which had soft counter at Tier 3 Alert and hard counters at Tier 4. Tier 4 was group only as the counter measures the mini-bosses would use could shut down certain frames from being effective. Forcing your team to help cover for you. Each one had it's own "meta" counter.

One day I might write it up again. Some community devs liked it but also got put in a dead zone of the forums.

[Aruquae]

58 minutes ago, Merrcenary said:

reee we need BETTER rewards for this difficult content, de give it us for free because we are doing extraordinary things

My script for the moment this feature is implemented somehow makes its way into the thread

Edited February 5 by Aruquae
Let’s see if anyone gets this reference

[Tsukinoki]

1 hour ago, SDGDen said:

they should also be per-player (just like the bonusses you get in arbitrations and archon hunts) so you dont end up with a full squad of yareli's with sniper rifles.

The problem with this is then you get someone with a "Kill with abilities", therefore running a large AoE nuke frame to fullfill that requirement, combined with the "User a sniper class weapon and get at least X number of kills with most of them being headshots."

And they are now in direct competition for kills in the mission.

After all if one player gets their reward the other player is denied theirs because their challenges are directly at odds with each other.

 

See the problem that this will cause in missions?

Now you'll have people whinging in the forums and chat that they can't complete X challenge because other people with Y challenge come in and prevent them from doing their challenge at all.

 

There are already threads on the forums bout various playstyles not being fun and ruining their missions, we don't need more that go "Depending on who you get matched with, you may be actively denied your bonuses just because someone has a challenge that is completely counter to your own!"

 

Especially depending on how complex you see these challenges becoming.  The more complex challenges just become unmanageable in multiplayer because you have too many challenges that are directly competing for the exact same resource: enemy kills.

1 hour ago, SDGDen said:

what do yall think of this suggestion? would this incentivise you to use a larger portion of your arsenal? 

Personally it wouldn't for one big reason:
If the extra time needed to fulfill the requirements wasn't compensated, and a bonus on top, with the bonus rewards, then what would be the point?

Sure I could jump through 5 different hoops to double my mission rewards.....or just zoom through the mission 2 or 3 times in the time it would take to satisfy each and every challenge and get more rewards that way.

 

But what about survivals/defense/etc?  Then I just point to my point above where now I'm in direct competition with the rest of the squad where eithere we are fighting over kills so we get our rewards (and likely preventing other players from getting theirs)
OR just doing the bare minimum to trigger the reward (such as headshot requirements) and then just leaching so my bonus stays locked in....After all if I do kills without headshots I'm potentially losing that bonus, so why would I risk that once I know the bonus is triggered?  Safer to just stop killing at that point then to risk warframe registering a kill as not a headshot and losing the bonus....

Edited February 5 by Tsukinoki

[(NSW)warfare3376]

This would honestly not incentivize me to use more of my arsenal than I already do. Look at it this way, if you were to just do a normal mission with the optimal meta equipment you can very easily get that mission done significantly faster than the optional mode that limits your gear choices to less optimal ones so at that point is the extra rewards atcually worth it when you can just run the version of the mission that reward less but can be done twice as fast? Alos, personally I find "challenges" that limit gear choice in any way kinda lousy as it just creates artificial diversity but doesnt actually fix the issues that lesser used gear has making it just feel awful to play and kinda forced.

Warframes meta has been the same for basically forever for a reason, killing tons of enemies as fast as possible is the most rewarding thing you can do for a huge majority of the games content, that plus the fact the game provides those tons of enemies quite often. The problem the game has with the meta it has is that the gameplay has remained the same forever, sure we have gained new modes here and there that add in small gameplay features but the core still remains shoot at and kill hordes of brain dead ai. If you want a more diverse meta the only way to achieve it is to have diverse gameplay where one particular playstyle isnt best for all like it is now, personally I feel its long overdue for a mission/enemy rework and get to the root of the problem rather than just nerfing the strong tools or arbitrarily limiting gear choice.

 

[trst]

The problem with such a system is you'd then have the crowd of players constantly complaining that they're "forced" to engage with it for rewards. Meanwhile players who're done with all the basic resource grinds/only play content for the unique rewards would have no reason to engage unless they only want to see their worthless resource numbers get bigger.

 

Really the variety issue isn't one that really can be solved in a game that doesn't have strict balancing/limitations. The only solution here is to keep nerfing the metas that're disruptive (really just AOE metas since they take gameplay away from others) while ensuring other options are powerful enough to be viable in current end-game content. That way there's room for other options to exist in the first place and players don't feel like they're artificially restricting themselves by using those other options.

[taiiat]

we got way bigger problems. like Enemy designs that make most Abilities arguably not worth using. so you just shoot things and apply buffs to your Guns.

there's your lack of variety.

[trst]

2 minutes ago, taiiat said:

we got way bigger problems. like Enemy designs that make most Abilities arguably not worth using. so you just shoot things and apply buffs to your Guns.

there's your lack of variety.

That's a lack of creativity, not variety. Outside of survivability/buff abilities pretty much every frame has abilities that're still useful for damage (either direct or via spam) and/or have utility effects that're relevant. And even the case of abilities that're really just there for applying status effects being a roundabout weapon buff that's still an ability that's worth using.

But slapping buffs on and running through a mission spamming AOE weapons is the least effort playstyle there is thus plenty of players will gravitate towards it even if they don't like it.

[Aruquae]

1 minute ago, trst said:

That's a lack of creativity, not variety. Outside of survivability/buff abilities pretty much every frame has abilities that're still useful for damage (either direct or via spam) and/or have utility effects that're relevant. And even the case of abilities that're really just there for applying status effects being a roundabout weapon buff that's still an ability that's worth using.

But slapping buffs on and running through a mission spamming AOE weapons is the least effort playstyle there is thus plenty of players will gravitate towards it even if they don't like it.

I don’t know about lack of creativity. My creative Nyx build that revolves around CC madness seemed pretty creative… until I realized most enemies can’t be CC’d anymore.  

[trst]

8 minutes ago, Aruquae said:

I don’t know about lack of creativity. My creative Nyx build that revolves around CC madness seemed pretty creative… until I realized most enemies can’t be CC’d anymore.  

Ah yes, the one effect that's been dead in the water for the majority of the game's life. Raw CC with no other effects has been a dead mechanic for many years now with the only relevant CC being grouping abilities.

As far as Nyx goes her utility is a limited armor strip ability, an invulnerability build, and the ability to reverse/"steal" Eximus effects. But her primary gimmick of weak CC has been a joke for most of the game now.

Edited February 5 by trst

[taiiat]

13 minutes ago, trst said:

That's a lack of creativity, not variety. Outside of survivability/buff abilities pretty much every frame has abilities that're still useful for damage (either direct or via spam) and/or have utility effects that're relevant. And even the case of abilities that're really just there for applying status effects being a roundabout weapon buff that's still an ability that's worth using.

But slapping buffs on and running through a mission spamming AOE weapons is the least effort playstyle there is thus plenty of players will gravitate towards it even if they don't like it.

yeah lemme get real creative and just magicu up ways to have interesting Abilities that aren't just Weapon buffs or DR stacking, when faced with ever increasing Enemies that which are immune to the things that Abilities are actually better than Weapons at most of the time - that being, things other than DPS.

just like other ever increasing types of "this Enemy is immune to some/many Game Mechanics, cuz". you just gotta be more creative bro, if you cope hard enough then Enemies that are immune will suddenly not be.
it's not a lack of variety that so many choices just don't work bro, you're just supposed to exploit things that unintentionally work until that gets fixed and move on to the next bug and use that until that gets fixed. see bro, it's easy.

 

 

 

 

we definitely aren't seeing a dramatic increase to Weapon buffs and Et Cetera Augments or whichever being added, or Abilities being given Weapon buffs in recent times, as a way to bandaid things by letting everyone have some of those to use to 'make up for' most of their kit not working :^)
(oh wait, that's exactly what the game has been doing in recent Years)

Edited February 5 by taiiat

[UnstarPrime]

1 hour ago, SDGDen said:

so, one of the key complaints about basically every meta this game has ever had is that it's all you see.

With respect, it seems like this complaint exists in opposition to reality.  We have data on weapon and frame usage, and that data clearly demonstrates that even the most-used weapons and frames are only being used around 5% of the time.  So there's literally no way that anyone can honestly say that any given meta is "all you see".  What seems far more likely is that folks are falling prey to confirmation bias and then being hyperbolic when they express it.

And that fits with my personal experience.  I love seeing variety in builds and playstyles, which is why I actually pay attention to every piece of gear that my squad mates are using.  If you look at every equipment slot for your teammates without cherry-picking, you'll find that it's far more common for an equipment slot to be filled with something that you would not consider "the best".  Most players are playing with stuff that fits their play preferences while also being "good enough".

That being the case, I don't see any reason to incentivize more diversity in play; just keep giving players a variety of different flavors of passable options, and players will do the diversity part themselves.

 

[Raikh]

Most of the time, these kinds of restrictions breed more frustration than creativity or diverse gameplay. It doesn't make different playstyles shine, it only forces you into them, whether you enjoy playing like that or not. And extra rewards dont make it intrinsically more rewarding to play in different ways either. It will often feel more like a compensation for you having to put up with random nonsense over playing how you want to play.

Circuit is already a good example of that. And I personally think the game mode is ruined by forcing you into randomized loadouts, atleast for the SP version. Sometimes I get to play things I like and I'm having a blast trying to see how far I can push it, but most of the time its miserable and consists of either trying to reset by doing a single stage and dip or simply play some workable but for me personally unenjoyable loadout just to get it over with because the rewards are too desirable to ignore.

In order to create more diverse gameplay you need places or opportunities for different kinds of playstyles or roles to shine. But for that you also need some form or game balance, which Warframe doesn't really have. You can push damage to such extremes that people can obliterate level cap enemies, when no content in the game incentivizes fighting enemies anywhere close to that. And with damage being over-trivialized the only things that still matter are how fast you can kill as many enemies as possible and how you can survive the dmg intake that becomes a problem much much earlier.
And on that end, disabling abilities or making enemies status immune doesn't fix that either, its the world's worst band-aid that only curbs diversity instead of making it flourish.

Edited February 5 by Raikh

[CrownOfShadows]

If you want playstyle variety slapping constraints isn't the way to accomplish it. If you mean BUILD variety, maybe.

Playstyle variety would be accomplished by doing things like Stealth 2.0 - i.e things other than wiping the map of enemies.

There are points and counterpoints I can think of when it comes to build variety. Nightmare missions tend to force a little 'build variety' in that people use Inaros for his advantages there. Whereas netracells despite similar debuffs encourage almost no new builds, but rather emphasize speed frames because of the map size. On the other hand, buffs like the Arbitration/Archon missions don't ever move the needle. However, helminth invigorations can sometimes encourage some creative building. The main lesson I draw from this is that the buffs/debuffs need to be strong enough and long enough to force something otherwise they're DOA, and also that debuffs work better than buffs at creating build variety. Debuffs feel bad though, so ideally you want both buffs and debuffs combined.

If a player has to live with a changed situation for an extended period of time, that is incentive to invest in a new build. If the player only has to live with it for one mission, nah it's a pass. New build variety = forma investment & leveling.

Another related factor that should be considered when it comes to build variety is build space. We simply do not have the mod space (or creative enough mods) to really experiment in deeply creative ways, especially not at high levels where survival and damage are paramount.

Edited February 5 by CrownOfShadows

[trst]

2 minutes ago, taiiat said:

yeah lemme get real creative and just magicu up ways to have interesting Abilities that aren't just Weapon buffs or DR stacking, when faced with ever increasing Enemies that which are immune to the things that Abilities are actually better than Weapons at most of the time - that being, things other than DPS.

just like other ever increasing types of "this Enemy is immune to some/many Game Mechanics, cuz". you just gotta be more creative bro, if you cope hard enough then Enemies that are immune will suddenly not be.
it's not a lack of variety that so many choices just don't work bro, you're just supposed to exploit things that unintentionally work until that gets fixed and move on to the next bug and use that until that gets fixed. see bro, it's easy.

Literally what immune enemies? Aside from bosses (who even then have mostly partial immunities) the only enemies we see that have any immunities are Eximus (only CC until their overguard breaks), Sentients having damage and ability adaptation, the new lab enemies having full/partial headshot immunity, some Deimos Infested being immune to Viral status, and Necramechs having status caps (and maybe ability adaptation?). And Hek nullifying effects have even stopped being a mechanic and only returned for the secret boss in the Labs.

None of this is preventing the use of builds that don't rely on weapon damage (in fact most of it hurts weapon builds more). Nuke/spam builds still work in all these cases and things like status priming and debuffs all still work. I guess the only thing that has suffered is finisher builds as a lot of enemies have been immune to front/back finishers.

[Aruquae]

40 minutes ago, trst said:

Ah yes, the one effect that's been dead in the water for the majority of the game's life. Raw CC with no other effects has been a dead mechanic for many years now with the only relevant CC being grouping abilities.

As far as Nyx goes her utility is a limited armor strip ability, an invulnerability build, and the ability to reverse/"steal" Eximus effects. But her primary gimmick of weak CC has been a joke for most of the game now.

Precisely, it's hard to be creative when the game punishes some creative playstyles such as CC frames

[(XBOX)zThulsaDoomz]

Or players can avoid this altogether by forming their own groups or running solo.

When everyone was spamming pink energy brammas and zarrs all over the place, I simply stopped playing in pubs.  Easy solution. 

At some point realization will dawn that random lobbies will equal random results.  It's not a complicated concept to understand. 

[(PSN)robotwars7]

3 hours ago, SDGDen said:

what do yall think of this suggestion? would this incentivise you to use a larger portion of your arsenal? 

Personally i use a lot of different frames and weapons already, so it wouldn't change much for me, just like how when Duviri got added, people struggled with randomized loadouts because they'd stuck to just investing in a few weapons, meanwhile i've always enjoyed it.

Still, your suggestion would risk taking us from one overall meta into several metas, one for each challenge, e.g. If you had one for using only hitscan non-AoE weapons, nobody would be taking Grinlok or Vectis, they'd take something full auto with minimal recoil like Soma Prime. As you said yourself, you can't kill the meta, only change it.

24 minutes ago, (XBOX)zThulsaDoomz said:

At some point realization will dawn that random lobbies will equal random results.  It's not a complicated concept to understand. 

I've been waiting on that for years and trying to tell people this the whole time.... Trust me, they won't get it. They never do...

[trst]

1 hour ago, Aruquae said:

Precisely, it's hard to be creative when the game punishes some creative playstyles such as CC frames

Except CC is the only playstyle that really suffers while Nyx (and I guess Limbo?) is the only one that suffers from the state of it. The only thing hampering any other playstyle is co-op in some cases (slower playstyles suffer thanks to the breakneck speed of the game) and sustainability powercreep (killed support aspects of nearly all frames).

And even then all of those have their place in all corners of the game and there's more than enough room to be creative with these and other aspects when it comes to builds. CC can still be used on non-overguarded enemies, some CC effects still ignores overguard, and pairing them with effects that specifically counter overguard (ie: void damage). Slower playstyles work just fine in solo, in missions where players can/have to split up, or just by being faster than other players. And supporting effects still work for one's own build opening up room for other options to be used (ie: Trinity never needs mods/helminth/arcanes for energy).

[Loza03]

Step one.

Just. Just fix all the out-of-sync scaling. Seriously. It's not the whole problem by far, but so much would be better if there was consistent underlying maths for all the different things that scale.

[Xzorn]

3 hours ago, taiiat said:

we got way bigger problems. like Enemy designs that make most Abilities arguably not worth using. so you just shoot things and apply buffs to your Guns.

there's your lack of variety.

 

Yea, Overguard is a silly design which insures that Shield Gating cannot be properly address because some frames can't do a thing about it.

We went from room wide AoE CC to eHP + DPS, to kinda the same just with more bad ideas stacked on top further limiting options.

The new status system is a nice icing on the cake to insure weapons don't even have the same build variety.

[Merkranire]

Incentivising playstyle variety, is it?