Mod the enemies

[nslay]

Before I begin: Who would ever play Steel Path?

Hey, we have all these mods and we had to play the game a lot to earn some of them. Could you add a way for us to empower our enemies with our mods too? What better way to scale with player power than for us to be able to give some of our power to the enemies too? It could be a feature provided by a special console in Teshin's relay room. We go there, review enemies and their weapons and mod them. We can make them hilariously strong... or weak (if you release Rivens with negatives for this purpose).

Some notes:

• For multiplayer, let's say player-customized enemy mod configurations are defined by host.
• To prevent griefing let's keep player-customized enemy mod configurations Steel Path-only.
• And to prevent players from cheesing Steel Path by making the enemies weaker... you'll need to complete all Steel Path mission nodes to unlock this feature.
• Peculiar mods and some enemy weapon augments could be extra special fun!

 

[LittleLeoniePrime]

would need an opt in/out toggle considering not everyone wants to be destroyed by the enemies armor stripping them.

I get you're goinmg for a "haha funny" angle here, but the enemies weapons damage already scales with their level (unlike ours for us a level 0 weapon is just as strong as a level 30/40 weapon - without mods) I don't know if they need access to gun CO and hunter munitions... that doesn't sound particularly fun to me...

[nslay]

20 minutes ago, LittleLeoniePrime said:

I get you're goinmg for a "haha funny" angle here

No, that's not at all what I am going for. What makes you think this post is a joke? Please explain this to me.

23 minutes ago, LittleLeoniePrime said:

that doesn't sound particularly fun to me...

And what's fun to you? Killing normal Star Chart enemies? Playing RNG loadouts in rotating Steel Path Circuit maps? Playing ... what was it? Level 400-500 enemies in Deep Archimedia with RNG loadouts? That's not particularly fun to a lot of players. And why were these modes created in the first place? It wasn't for the "haha funny" angle that you think I am coming from. It's because players want more challenge. And mods themselves make players really really powerful. Mods could probably make enemies more powerful than any of the content in the game currently... and some of us want that. It's not really the best substitute to a better balanced game or better enemy AI. As a cherry on top, some of us like messing around in Simulacrum and "meme builds"... really seems like it gives everyone the best the mod system could offer while making the game harder.

[Raarsi]

35 minutes ago, nslay said:

No, that's not at all what I am going for. What makes you think this post is a joke? Please explain this to me.

The general tone of your OP?  The very thought of the title that could be perceived as sarcastic?  The idea that enemy levels are intended to have the exact same purpose as mods anyway when it comes to increasing enemy power and does so in a way that's substantially more controllable?

40 minutes ago, nslay said:

And what's fun to you? Killing normal Star Chart enemies? Playing RNG loadouts in rotating Steel Path Circuit maps? Playing ... what was it? Level 400-500 enemies in Deep Archimedia with RNG loadouts?

Yes.  Yes it is.  I like being able to kick back and mindless mow down enemies with RNG giving me at least a little bit of spice to my life.

44 minutes ago, nslay said:

That's not particularly fun to a lot of players.

Oh, and this is another reason why this thread is a joke: you're assuming you know what the majority of the playerbase wants.

[nslay]

28 minutes ago, Raarsi said:

The general tone of your OP?  The very thought of the title that could be perceived as sarcastic?  The idea that enemy levels are intended to have the exact same purpose as mods anyway when it comes to increasing enemy power and does so in a way that's substantially more controllable?

I looked at it again. I tried to do it with a fresh set of eyes. I don't see it. What tone do you think it has? Where's the sarcasm? It even provides details of how you could make this system and how to prevent griefing and everything. What's the problem here?

29 minutes ago, Raarsi said:

Yes.  Yes it is.  I like being able to kick back and mindless mow down enemies with RNG giving me at least a little bit of spice to my life.

And how about the evolution of the game in the past few years? First Steel Path with higher level base enemies and Sortie multipliers, Steel Path Circuit ramps up the enemy levels quite rapidly that it even becomes practical to reach level cap. Netracells starts at something like level 200 enemies. And Deep Archimedia doubles that further. Just why do you think DE is adding content like this? Don't you think maybe DE is doing this to please a good portion of players that want some semblance of challenge?

33 minutes ago, Raarsi said:

Oh, and this is another reason why this thread is a joke: you're assuming you know what the majority of the playerbase wants.

I don't see anything that says "majority". Can you quote me where I say a "majority of players"? That's putting my words in my mouth... that's bad faith and it's not cool. Do you think DE would add content like Steel Path, Steel Path Circuit, Netracells, Deep Archimedia if a lot of players didn't want that kind of challenge? Do you think "a lot" is a synonym of "majority"? It's not.

[LittleLeoniePrime]

2 hours ago, nslay said:

And what's fun to you? Killing normal Star Chart enemies? Playing RNG loadouts in rotating Steel Path Circuit maps? Playing ... what was it? Level 400-500 enemies in Deep Archimedia with RNG loadouts?

gonna have to agree with @Raarsi here. Yes I do enjoy the challange of being forced to make a certain loadout work. Enemies in E/DA don't mow me down because they're simply better, if they do they did because I made a mistake and my tactics weren't sound.

But as I said in the beginning of my OP imo a system like this would just need an on/off toggle. I don't want to participate in it, if you do - cool enjoy your masichistic ways

[Pakaku]

There are too many problems with this, like handing that control over to players and expecting anyone joining their squad to just deal with it. Or how enemies are supposed to be dumb cannon fodder and killed quickly, which goes as far as the "challenging" missions like Steel Path. Spending all of that time to mod each one of them individually is a waste when they're really intended to be killed quickly at the core of the game's design, while basic level scaling is automatic and works just fine.

Mods that scale off of multiple kills, like the Galvanized set, are especially a waste when the game isn't designed around players dying constantly. Damage type mods are valueless when our own Player health is neutral to everything. At best, maybe you could introduce some DoTs to enemies that don't have it, but that's not exactly a step up in challenge.

Edited May 4 by Pakaku

[nslay]

12 minutes ago, Pakaku said:

There are too many problems with this, like handing that control over to players and expecting anyone joining their squad to just deal with it. Or how enemies are supposed to be dumb cannon fodder and killed quickly, which goes as far as the "challenging" missions like Steel Path. Spending all of that time to mod each one of them individually is a waste when they're really intended to be killed quickly at the core of the game's design, while basic level scaling is automatic and works just fine.

Mods that scale off of multiple kills, like the Galvanized set, are especially a waste when the game isn't designed around players dying constantly. Damage type mods are valueless when our own Player health is neutral to everything. At best, maybe you could introduce some DoTs to enemies that don't have it, but that's not exactly a step up in challenge.

I feel like if you're playing Steel Path, you could still take on custom modded enemies just fine. Admittedly I haven't thought about the problems, but I wouldn't expect problems for players experienced enough to play Steel Path. For Void's sake, you can already play level cap Steel Path solo without any issues. I get that @Raarsi and @LittleLeoniePrime have observed that enemy health/armor/shields/damage scale with their level ... but that's just not enough to kill an expert Warframe player. And even with respect to randomized loadouts, there are some players that can go through Steel Path Circuit and hit level cap!

It's not even so much to mod enemies to be bullet sponges, but also being able to change the damage types and behavior of the weapons too. Simple example: if you can make Void Nullifier's Lanka just fire faster, that could mess with a content-cheesing frame like Revenant! Well... not as much now that they added that unnecessary 1 second invulnerability for Mesmer Skin charges. Or perhaps the Nullifier bubble itself is an ability... a mod like Stretch could make it more potent!

[BlueAquatics]

Alternative idea; Why not just have features like the dragon keys or netrcacell keys etc for general use? Weaken your own frame instead of buffing the enemies for general content in squads would provide more then enough of a challenge for late game players, with much more modifiers you can choose from.  Plus i dont think moding all enemies yourself is actually feasibly doable for every mission.