Why Does De Hate Balance?

[ThePresident777]

DPS calculations clearly indicate the Soma has one of the best end-game DPSes in the game thanks to its scaling with crit, rate of fire, and excellent sustained DPS stats.  Meanwhile, Galatine has double the charge damage of its next-highest contender with faster swing speed, with greater range, at the cost of a mere .5s charge speed.  Numbers don't lie.

 

That's not balance.

 

Buff the weaker things.  There, balance.

[ThePresident777]

That's just not true.  Unless you're allergic to variety, and I certainly am not.

 

 

This game doesn't have enough missions, etc., to provide variety.  You could have 50 billion weapons and warframes, but, if you are doing the same 3 misisons under the same conditions over and over again, then you have very little variety if any.

 

DE could take a quick and easy first step to alleviate this problem if they would stop RNGing every god damn thing and put the Nightmare Mode challenges in a button on the menu bar just like the Game Modes so that we can do any location in the solar map under any challenge any time we want.  But, noooooooooo, because we're not meant to have fun:

 

[NikolaiLev]

The problem there is that leveling MK-1 Braton to 30 as a new player is not syncronized with level 1-3 enemies.  You open up higher level locations before you get the gun to 30 AND have mods to put in it so you can have fun against higher level enemies.  And, if you force people to grind low level enemies to get the gun to level 30 before getting another gun then they get bored.  New players are stuck hitching a ride with whatever better equipped players happen to come along.

 

Pretty much.  You and I agree on one thing at least.

 

Buff the weaker things.  There, balance.

 

Buff the dozens of weaker weapons instead of nerfing the few outliers?  That doesn't make any sense.  Buffing the starter gear and weaker options while nerfing things like the Soma and Galatine make much more sense.  The Galatine wouldn't be such a big deal if it dealt 250 charge damage instead of 400.  I'm pretty sure the Galatine still has high crit and status on its charge attack, but I can't confirm that since I don't own a Galatine anymore.

 

This game doesn't have enough missions, etc., to provide variety.  You could have 50 billion weapons and warframes, but, if you are doing the same 3 misisons under the same conditions over and over again, then you have very little variety if any.

 

DE could take a quick and easy first step to alleviate this problem if they would stop RNGing every god damn thing and put the Nightmare Mode challenges in a button on the menu bar just like the Game Modes so that we can do any location in the solar map under any challenge any time we want.  But, noooooooooo, because we're not meant to have fun:

 

 

At least we agree on two things!  :D

 

DE really seems intent on implementing grind.  It's amusing, because I'm pretty sure that person is the same person that insisted he had no idea people would grind for hours to get the Detron; he figured it was something you would get "on the way."  As though someone would be playing Invasions just to play them.

[Monolake]

The problem there is that leveling MK-1 Braton to 30 as a new player is not syncronized with level 1-3 enemies.  You open up higher level locations before you get the gun to 30 AND have mods to put in it so you can have fun against higher level enemies.  And, if you force people to grind low level enemies to get the gun to level 30 before getting another gun then they get bored.  New players are stuck hitching a ride with whatever better equipped players happen to come along.

Sadly, its almost impossible to get rifle mods early in the game so you have to get a better weapon and care about mastery later. MK1 and Lato are throw away weapons, no need and no point to level them to 30. And its not like you even need mastery, rank 2 is so easy to reach just by ranking your starting frame and unlocking nodes - and there you have Boltor and Kunai (Karak is rank 0 AFAIR and, but you still need Neurodes so you can't make it early)

But yeah, mods is another variable in the balance scheme, and currently its a very sad suffer situation for new players, while veterans with max mods 1-shot everything and need to endure 30-40 minutes of boredom in survivals to reach challenging enemies. 

And most of us probably never keep the new/midgame players in mind, only judging a weapon by its almost maxed moded potential.

[7grims]

Theres no balance cause of beta.

They are still making this game bit by bit, and since they are always inserting new content, makes it unworthy to keep balancing old stuff vs new stuff, and also would make it a constant struggle, plus ppl complaining about nerfs and buffs.

 

Hope they do balance stuff soon or later.

Because the gap of old stuff versus new stuff is getting ridiculous.

[7grims]

id also like to note, why wouldnt you want progression?

if the MK1-braton, lato, and skana were as powerful as everything else, you would just max them out and call it good.

sounds pretty boring to me. im all for progression.

 

Yah progression is good, but theres also no motivation to return to other weapons, once you have soma or synapse, makes owning all other weapons useless, unless for mastery.

Edited February 4, 2014 by 7grims

[Eyeless]

DPS calculations clearly indicate the Soma has one of the best end-game DPSes in the game thanks to its scaling with crit, rate of fire, and excellent sustained DPS stats.  Meanwhile, Galatine has double the charge damage of its next-highest contender with faster swing speed, with greater range, at the cost of a mere .5s charge speed.  Numbers don't lie.

 

That's not balance.

Those 'over powered' weapons may seem over powered in early/mid game but seriously. Start fighting level 70's and tell me how over powered they are. The top DPS weapons in this game are used the most by veteran players because THEY SCALE WITH END-GAME ENEMIES.

 

Take my word for it that as soon as you start fighting off level 85 units who's rounds make 1110 shields/health feel like tissue paper, you really want 'OP' weapons like these just so you can keep yourself alive, and even then you still feel things like the Brakk and Soma begin to lose some Steam no matter the elemental combination. 

 

Weapons that work well against exponentially scaling enemies up to a higher fixed point don't need changed, everything else just needs to catch up and I'd be completely fine with that.

 

I'd much rather all the weapons in this game act as cool and unique alternatives that function differently in some way. I desperately want every existing frame to have fleshed out abilities that scale exponentially with the enemy, synergize, and provide as much utility as the next variant of Tenno.

 

However the way DE have been taking this game, I honestly feel it's going to be a long way off. Probably never. At least until there's another game that plays somewhat similar but works on it's progress from the start rather than trying and then 'Oh here's more grind and shiny, oh so shallow loot!'. 

 

All in in all I agree with your initial post through and through and support the idea. Just not the idea of nerfing the only weapons that allow us to cope with End Game.

[PoinTmaN_BingA]

So...

 

When's the AkSoma coming out?

[ThePresident777]

Buff the dozens of weaker weapons instead of nerfing the few outliers?  That doesn't make any sense.  Buffing the starter gear and weaker options while nerfing things like the Soma and Galatine make much more sense.  The Galatine wouldn't be such a big deal if it dealt 250 charge damage instead of 400.  I'm pretty sure the Galatine still has high crit and status on its charge attack, but I can't confirm that since I don't own a Galatine anymore.

 

Nerfing the top percentile is not going to make the bottom percentile worth using.  Also, you are not looking at the average.  There is nothing inherently special about the average.  The average could be terrible too.  You have to look at the entire picture and how the parts interact.

 

Ultimately, we are talking about Time To Kill here.  Some people prefer a low TTK, others prefer a high TTK.  Nerf/Buff cycles are not going make anyone happy(except the developers because it's easy make work) and it never ends.

 

What is needed are challenges that effect TTK so the player base is self sorting.

 

DE really seems intent on implementing grind.  It's amusing, because I'm pretty sure that person is the same person that insisted he had no idea people would grind for hours to get the Detron; he figured it was something you would get "on the way."  As though someone would be playing Invasions just to play them.

 

THIS!  You're spot on with this one.  LOL, I got a laugh when he said that in the first live stream of this year, such  a ridiculous statement.  And how is someone going to get it along the way with such low chances?  And along what way?  DE made all mods, warframe components, and weapon components drop from specific enemies or in specific locations.  Different locations spawn different enemy squad compositions and different materials in different amounts.  How does this not lead to targeted farming?  Where does DE get the idea that we just wander around aimlessly all day in Warframe?  They must think we're infested.

 

The only other DE lesson I remember was Sheldon's "everything has a UI element."  At least someone learned something. 

[BadAimbot]

id also like to note, why wouldnt you want progression?

if the MK1-braton, lato, and skana were as powerful as everything else, you would just max them out and call it good.

sounds pretty boring to me. im all for progression.

 

That is the direct opposite of why we want weapons to be balanced. This is a very annoying strawman argument that makes no sense. I guarantee you that people would still use weapons like the Kunai, Ogris and Drakgoon regardless of how balanced they are.

[Monolake]

Those 'over powered' weapons may seem over powered in early/mid game but seriously. Start fighting level 70's and tell me how over powered they are. The top DPS weapons in this game are used the most by veteran players because THEY SCALE WITH END-GAME ENEMIES.

 

Take my word for it that as soon as you start fighting off level 85 units who's rounds make 1110 shields/health feel like tissue paper, you really want 'OP' weapons like these just so you can keep yourself alive, and even then you still feel things like the Brakk and Soma begin to lose some Steam no matter the elemental combination. 

 

Weapons that work well against exponentially scaling enemies up to a higher fixed point don't need changed, everything else just needs to catch up and I'd be completely fine with that.

 

I'd much rather all the weapons in this game act as cool and unique alternatives that function differently in some way. I desperately want every existing frame to have fleshed out abilities that scale exponentially with the enemy, synergize, and provide as much utility as the next variant of Tenno.

 

However the way DE have been taking this game, I honestly feel it's going to be a long way off. Probably never. At least until there's another game that plays somewhat similar but works on it's progress from the start rather than trying and then 'Oh here's more grind and shiny, oh so shallow loot!'. 

 

All in in all I agree with your initial post through and through and support the idea. Just not the idea of nerfing the only weapons that allow us to cope with End Game.

 

Are you really happy that you need to spend 1 hr in endless missions for the game to become challenging? You seriously want early game weapons to be total overkill for the content they are meant to?

[ThePresident777]

Are you really happy that you need to spend 1 hr in endless missions for the game to become challenging? You seriously want early game weapons to be total overkill for the content they are meant to?

 

The real issue here is TTK(Time required To Kill a particular enemy given a particular DPS).  What constitutes an acceptable TTK is a matter of opinion.  If you nerf DPS then you increase the TTK.  If you like a higher TTK, you already have many many tools at your disposal to achieve that.  For people who like a lower TTK, their options are limited.

[birdei]

Are you really happy that you need to spend 1 hr in endless missions for the game to become challenging? You seriously want early game weapons to be total overkill for the content they are meant to?

no I am not happy that I have to waste 30 min before I find the game interesting. I would like to see some missions that starts at the lvl 40-50 range with better rewards tied to the increase in levels.

Since PSO is one of the inspiring games from DE, I like how PSO has 4 difficulties you can choose. Maybe create something like that for missions.

[NikolaiLev]

Theres no balance cause of beta.

They are still making this game bit by bit, and since they are always inserting new content, makes it unworthy to keep balancing old stuff vs new stuff, and also would make it a constant struggle, plus ppl complaining about nerfs and buffs.

 

Hope they do balance stuff soon or later.

Because the gap of old stuff versus new stuff is getting ridiculous.

 

Nope.  Betas aren't there to Not Be Balanced.  This game will likely be in a perpetual beta (even after it's announced as "released") because development will continue.

 

There's no excuse to not be working on balance.  You can release new content that's also balanced.  It's not difficult.

[Monolake]

The real issue here is TTK(Time required To Kill a particular enemy given a particular DPS).  What constitutes an acceptable TTK is a matter of opinion.  If you nerf DPS then you increase the TTK.  If you like a higher TTK, you already have many many tools at your disposal to achieve that.  For people who like a lower TTK, their options are limited.

I can see that, some more high-tier weapons would be good, but only weapons that aren't accessible in the early/ mid-game.  I don't know why they refuse to make Supra more usable or buff the hard to get Braton Prime for example. But buffing low rank weapons would completely remove any remaining challenge from the game outside of endless missions. Even unpotatoed Soma makes all the normal missions a cakewalk already. And maxed Penta/Ogris 1-shots everything up to what, lvl 70? (dont have them maxed).   Thats without considering m-prime/roar.

 

no I am not happy that I have to waste 30 min before I find the game interesting. I would like to see some missions that starts at the lvl 40-50 range with better rewards tied to the increase in levels.

Since PSO is one of the inspiring games from DE, I like how PSO has 4 difficulties you can choose. Maybe create something like that for missions.

 

I asked for some nodes that start with 40-50-60 levels, of course unanswered, but I can understand that they dont want to push the powercreep further.

[NikolaiLev]

I can see that, some more high-tier weapons would be good, but only weapons that aren't accessible in the early/ mid-game.  I don't know why they refuse to make Supra more usable or buff the hard to get Braton Prime for example. But buffing low rank weapons would completely remove any remaining challenge from the game outside of endless missions. Even unpotatoed Soma makes all the normal missions a cakewalk already. And maxed Penta/Ogris 1-shots everything up to what, lvl 70? (dont have them maxed).   Thats without considering m-prime/roar.

 

 

Which is why things like the Soma should be nerfed.

 

Anyway, since no one has ventured to answer the topic question (it was rhetorical anyways): DE hates balance because it's not profitable.  While it would increase the game's long-term longevity by increasing variety and making the game better as a whole, it's far more lucrative to focus designer attention to things that can be sold for profit, or things that increase the amount of grind so people play for longer (and thus have a higher chance of purchasing platinum).

 

Another reason why DE hates balance is because the community does.  A lot of comments in this thread are proof of that, as well as the general attitude towards nerfs and adjustments.  I really hope it's the vocal minority, but a lot of posts I see indicate people are fine with there only being a few viable weapons.  Which is sad; you'd think most people would enjoy variety.  But then, you'd also think people would enjoy real gameplay and not mindless, repetitive tasks, but you'd be wrong on that one.

 

I really hope DE changes their attitude towards balance.  Because their actions so far have indicated they really couldn't care less about it.

[Monolake]

Which is why things like the Soma should be nerfed.

 

Anyway, since no one has ventured to answer the topic question (it was rhetorical anyways): DE hates balance because it's not profitable.  While it would increase the game's long-term longevity by increasing variety and making the game better as a whole, it's far more lucrative to focus designer attention to things that can be sold for profit, or things that increase the amount of grind so people play for longer (and thus have a higher chance of purchasing platinum).

 

Another reason why DE hates balance is because the community does.  A lot of comments in this thread are proof of that, as well as the general attitude towards nerfs and adjustments.  I really hope it's the vocal minority, but a lot of posts I see indicate people are fine with there only being a few viable weapons.  Which is sad; you'd think most people would enjoy variety.  But then, you'd also think people would enjoy real gameplay and not mindless, repetitive tasks, but you'd be wrong on that one.

 

I really hope DE changes their attitude towards balance.  Because their actions so far have indicated they really couldn't care less about it.

 

This is contradictory, balanced game will keep more players with more of them buying plat.

And its not like they sell op things for plat only, you cant buy Soma/Penta till rank 6 and by that time you have all the resources to build them. And one of the best (if not the best) frames - Rhino -  is the easiest/fastest to farm, no need to buy it.

 

Community hates obvious disbalance even more, there are even more people who are sick of Nova than those who don't want her nerfed. And of course no one likes weak 'useless' frames. Why DE doesn't do anything? 

 

Because they cant. For whatever reason, most likely time constraints and personal views and abilities of the lead gamedesigner. 

 

BTW considering 'beta' status - real betas get changed all the time, thats why they are betas - to be tweaked and tested repeatedly. if you played any beta test you know it. WF did the same with damage resistances that were changed like 4 times in a month. If they dont change something for half a year they probably think its fine or not important enough to spend time on. 

 

If after melee 2.0 (which is obviously their current focus) DE doesnt do a major frames balance overhaul I don't see a reason to stay with this game, sadly. 

Edited February 5, 2014 by Monolake

[Eyeless]

Are you really happy that you need to spend 1 hr in endless missions for the game to become challenging? You seriously want early game weapons to be total overkill for the content they are meant to?

I never said anything about the time it takes to find actually challenging enemies and ya know what? Yeah, I kinda do want more weapons to be on-par with our end-game weaponry. Unless DE starts making more weapons designed for End-Game to make our loadouts less stagnant. 

 

The only diversity we have in our weapon pool are things you'd only see in mid-game and below.

 

Want something for high levels? Well lets see here out of our 100+ weapons we have...

 

Soma

Synapse

Penta

Ogris

Vectis

Brakk

Detron

Galatine

Kestrel [under Appreciated Knockdown Utility]

(Possibly Straith/Boar Prime, haven't used either for late-game yet)

 

That might LOOK like an okay number until you see them as the only things players bother carrying. The Soma is so popular because it scales pretty far into the increasing health of enemy hordes. With that in mind I'm not sure why Nikolai is so keen on nerfing it beyond it being pretty damn efficient at mowing down low/mid tier enemies. C'mon Lev it's an End-Game weapon, you're supposed to be raining lead on lvl 45's and higher!

 

 

What I honestly want Monolake, is for there to be more readily accessible End-Game areas so we don't have to wait for the game to get challenging due to the ludicrous spawn system (when it comes to Grineer anyway. Rooms filled with 30+ Heavy Units? The hell man?)

 

I want more end-game weapons that yes, blow the low/mid tier stuff out of the water because it scales so well with the scaling enemy stats. I want more guns that work just as well as the Soma so we have more options to take with us to T3 Survivals and Defenses, I want more secondaries that can hold their own with the Brakk. 

 

I'd also like all our frames to be just as effective with their skills as Nova is, especially so people can quit whining about her, as the only pure damage frame who has damage that again: SCALES.

[ThePresident777]

no I am not happy that I have to waste 30 min before I find the game interesting. I would like to see some missions that starts at the lvl 40-50 range with better rewards tied to the increase in levels.

Since PSO is one of the inspiring games from DE, I like how PSO has 4 difficulties you can choose. Maybe create something like that for missions.

 

DE started to with Nightmare but immediately hide it behind RNG upon release.

 

DE should put a Challenge button on the in game menu bar that functions like the Game Mode button.  They should put the Nightmare Mode challenges in there, and more.  You would be able to play any challenge you want, whenever you want, on any location in the Solar Map.  It would immediately magnify the amount of choice and variety in the game.  Plus, it would provide DE with more usage statistics.  They could use it to test all sorts of ideas, like Stamina Nerf.

[NikolaiLev]

 C'mon Lev it's an End-Game weapon, you're supposed to be raining lead on lvl 45's and higher!

 

I do not think there should be such a thing as an "end-game weapon."  All weapons should be usable at the end game.  If a weapon is to be just plain more powerful, it should only be slightly moreso.

 

The current disparities leaves us with a pitiful amount of usable weapons end game.  That's not acceptable.