[Poll] Should Mods Have Less Influence On Damage Output?

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Unfortunately, with this, you have no scaling for new players, which means that ultimately, you have the same problem as not finding Serration in early game. Until you rank up the Mk1 Braton to x level, you're not going to get out of those first few planets. Not to mention the fact that building mastery requires you to either buy slots or recycle slots. Mastery is difficult to build when you start and at the end, you still have no content for high end folks. But it is an interesting idea. 

In the end, all systems are flawed in one way or another. Removing RNG for damage mods, however, is a great way to go, but hampers new players who don't have as much opportunity to get weapons that high end players do. 

I assume you haven't already read the thread.  I answer a lot of that in there.  The post Calayne linked you to in particular contains a lot of answers to objections with my proposal.

 

That said, I would like to directly answer your comment about early-game play here.

 

Early-game players will naturally be limited in power regardless of which system we choose to implement.  This is in the nature of new players.  In a Mastery-based system, they will be limited as before and the fear that they could have less chance to construct new equipment required to expand out and thus gain power is a concern.  While I agree with this on some level, I must point out that all it would require would be players maxing out their starter equipment to unlock the damage boosters (at least according to my system; other Mastery-based systems might not be such).  True, early-game players have limited ability to construct new weapons, but ultimately, I believe that this is of no consequence.

 

I believe I answer your concerns regarding slots in the post Calayne linked you to.

 

Regarding my system implementing endgame, that was never the goal.  Right now, we can't have endgame.  We have this:

 

The entire right half of that is impossible right now due to the current system.  My system sets up a foundation upon which endgame actually can be constructed.

 

This point only applies to T3 void, everywhere else in the game which is what most people would play, this point doesn't apply.

You don't think most people will elect to instagib when they can?

Edited February 28, 2014 by Volt_Cruelerz

[Drakontis]

-Snipped for her pleasure-

I've been reading through it, albeit slowly. As far as weapons go, I THINK most weapons, in order to build, require you to get at least to Earth. I need to look at ingredients again. I know the Boltor, which requires a Neurode, was one of my first step-up weapons. 

Also, selling for platinum is impossible when you can't GET TO content that will be able to be sold to other players. It's a theoretical fix, but not an actual one. Yes, selling for platinum is POSSIBLE, but it's not VIABLE for new players who have yet to get to end game content. With scaling damage dependent on mods rather than mastery rank, it's possible for players to get to late game content where they can sell for platinum without much issue. But when you lock progress behind mastery rank, that's impossible for a new player. Frank can't get to X variable to get Y variable to sell Y variable because he's locked in his damage and Frank doesn't want to sell his weapons to get new ones because he likes the Braton and doesn't want to gamble on a new weapon just yet. There are flaws in every system. We're able to point out the ones in THIS system because we've toyed with it long enough. Poking holes in new systems is a little more difficult because they have yet to be implemented.

Forcing people to cycle their weapons is a bad idea in my opinion. That's all. 

In the end, finding a way to "Fix" scaling is hard and removing scaling entirely just opens up new holes. 

[(NSW)Omgwtfl9lbbl]

Let's imagine a fully automatic gun that does 1 damage per bullet, and fires 1 bullet per second. It has a status chance of zero, a crit chance of zero, and an infinite mag (just for convenience's sake). We now have a gun that deals 1 damage per second, or 1 DPS.

 

We then add a maxed Serration onto it. That gives us +165% base damage, or *2.65. The 1 damage per bullet is now 2.65 damage per bullet. Not very impressive, huh?

 

Let's add a Split Chamber. This mod will increase our effective DPS by 90%, or *1.9. Our average DPS is now 2.65*1.9 = 5.035 DPS.

 

Let's add a Shred. This isn't even a fully damage oriented mod, but I am including it because Shred is one of my favorite mods for utility, so boohoo. In addition to the punch through, we get 30% fire rate. Now our DPS is increased by 30%, or *1.3. Our average DPS is 5.035*1.3 = 6.5455.

 

Let's add an elemental. Let's add 4 of them, actually. 4 90% elementals. That's an extra 360% damage, or *4.6. Our average DPS is now 6.5455*4.6 = 30.1093.

 

For our last slot, let's add a Faction mod. That's an extra 30%, assuming we're fighting the right faction. Our average DPS is 30.1093*1.3 = 39.14209.

 

Our gun is now operating at 3,900% of its original DPS. If we pretend that one of our elemental combos gets a 75% increase in damage, then our gun is at an effective 5,382%.

 

This isn't even the highest damage setup possible for this theoretical weapon, and this weapon is as vanilla as can be.

 

Let's imagine now a weapon that is identical to the previous, only now it has 40% crit chance (100% with a maxed out Point Strike), and a 2.0 crit damage multiplier. It then by default has 1*.6 + 1*.4*2 = 1.4 DPS. If every shot is dealt to the head and you are the host, that is 1*.6*2 + 1*.4*2*4 = 4.4 DPS.

 

Serration for 1*2.65 = 2.65.

 

Split Chamber for 2.65*1.9 = 5.035

 

Vital Sense and Hammer Shot, along with the innate 2.0 crit chance together give 5.035*5.6 = 28.196.

 

3x elemental for 28.196*3.7 = 104.3252.

 

Point Strike for the crit chance to bump to 100%.

 

You now do 74.518x your original DPS for body shots. If you get 100% headshots (4x multiplier when you headshot crit as host), that is changed to 94.8x your original headshot DPS. More if your elementals take advantage of whatever you're shooting.

 

Again, this totally discounts any sort of status procs.

 

Mods make weapons scale like crazy. Too much so, honestly. People talk about pressing 4 to win all the time because some frames have abilities that can clear rooms easily. The fact of the matter though is that most warframes with flat damage abilities pale in comparison to what any well modded gun can do. And this isn't a problem of the weapons themselves being too strong for the most part, either. For example, many flat damage abilities begin to struggle once they start hitting level 30 mobs or so. I can take a Mk1-Braton, the worst primary in the entire game in terms of DPS, and still kill things with little issue because of how powerful mods are. Put that on a regular weapon and you blow things out of the water.

 

I've said this for a long time, but I think that if DE wants to get any real semblance of balance in their game, they need to do some pretty hard nerfing of their mods.

[Deidaku]

I say yes because of serration and hornet strike 

[Volt_Cruelerz]

I've been reading through it, albeit slowly. As far as weapons go, I THINK most weapons, in order to build, require you to get at least to Earth. I need to look at ingredients again. I know the Boltor, which requires a Neurode, was one of my first step-up weapons. 

Also, selling for platinum is impossible when you can't GET TO content that will be able to be sold to other players. It's a theoretical fix, but not an actual one. Yes, selling for platinum is POSSIBLE, but it's not VIABLE for new players who have yet to get to end game content. With scaling damage dependent on mods rather than mastery rank, it's possible for players to get to late game content where they can sell for platinum without much issue. But when you lock progress behind mastery rank, that's impossible for a new player. Frank can't get to X variable to get Y variable to sell Y variable because he's locked in his damage and Frank doesn't want to sell his weapons to get new ones because he likes the Braton and doesn't want to gamble on a new weapon just yet. There are flaws in every system. We're able to point out the ones in THIS system because we've toyed with it long enough. Poking holes in new systems is a little more difficult because they have yet to be implemented.

Forcing people to cycle their weapons is a bad idea in my opinion. That's all. 

In the end, finding a way to "Fix" scaling is hard and removing scaling entirely just opens up new holes. 

Perhaps it's been too long, but I thought that every new player started with a spare Warframe slot and two empty weapon slots.  They can also buy more slots with starting platinum.  If things remain too harsh for new players, they can always start with an extra slot.

 

And resources by planet need to be revamped anyways.

Edited February 28, 2014 by Volt_Cruelerz

[WERElektro]

interesting.. it's almost 50/50 ...

I voted no, because.... why? it's fine the way it is.

[semigod22]

 

 

If you slap four on, that's about 400% more damage, meaning, you now do about 20 times the damage you used to, before considering weaknesses and punch-through. S#&$ is unbalanced. Nuff' said.

 

 

sure its unbalanced.. if u stay on mercury.

 

jesus ... if u play vs high lvl enemys its not even nearly OP as they take so much less dmg. 

[thegooseking]

I vote no.

 

The weapon itself is the reason to pick it, in that you can by and large pick one you like and mod it properly rather than being forced to choose between picking an efficient weapon and having fun.

[Calayne]

I vote no.

 

The weapon itself is the reason to pick it, in that you can by and large pick one you like and mod it properly rather than being forced to choose between picking an efficient weapon and having fun.

You do realise that the mods essentially create scenarios where specific guns are more viable than the rest, as opposed to what we're supporting, that is to make ALL weapons viable and thus increase flexibility and choice? Among other important topics such as game balance and such?

You essentially just voted for mods to always be more important than the guns themselves, you realise?

[thegooseking]

You do realise that the mods essentially create scenarios where specific guns are more viable than the rest, as opposed to what we're supporting, that is to make ALL weapons viable and thus increase flexibility and choice? Among other important topics such as game balance and such?

You essentially just voted for mods to always be more important than the guns themselves, you realise?

In the first part, yes, there are certain scenarios where specific guns are more viable, but I'd rather have certain scenarios where specific guns are more viable than a general case where specific guns are more viable, which is what would happen the other way. I don't see any logic in trying to improve balance by removing a check which promotes balance.

 

As to the second part, yes, I do realise that. That was kind of my point. If mods are more important than guns, you can choose the guns you like. If guns are more important than mods, the importance of personal preference is inevitably diminished.

[DJSmash]

Once again, this "question" is being brought up. It is a very valid question and it touches on the very foundation of how Warframe's damage/balance mechanics work.For those who are care anough about "balance", you know just how bad this game scales..

 

Do damage mod's need to be removed? No.

 

Do damage mods need to be altered? Very possible.

 

Does the damage system itself need to be rewritten AGAIN? Hell yes.

 

*Snip*

 

 

We actually had this debate before. I think it depends entirely on implementation. Volt had a more interesting idea, though, related to weapon usage and power growth. It's hard to explain here, but you should give it a read: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/181670-de-why-i-give-up-on-warframes-balance/

 

I personally am all for either approach: Volt's or a weapon growth system of some kind, if only to mitigate the gap between weapon damage, but modded and unmodded. 

 

The observation right now is that some weapon DPS can go up to 31,000% higher, while others remain at 1,000% or so, and that's a terrible place to be in. At least, if Serration is nerfed into the ground, Multishot consumes the ammo shot, and elementals convert damage instead of adding them, we'll be able to balance difficulty to an extent.

 

Volt's is a more comprehensive solution. Mine's a stop-gap band-aid if they cannot implement harder mechanisms, which I'd adore. 

Volt's topic is among the few that touches on the game's core. For those of us who are active in the forum/been long enough in warframe, this is nothing new.

 

I voted for Yes.

 

This will have massive consequences/changes to the game's core.. but if you care about future game content releases with regards to scaling/balance/damage/hp. This will be an important question & It will not end just there.

 

If the community is willing to give damage 2.0,melee 2.0, rng 2.0 ..why not give this a chance as well?

Without a proper Damage control, you will be forever be in this loop of balance/scaling differences.

(Dont get me started on Potata + 6 forma + uber mods and on top of that, between co-op vs solo play)

 

But you know what? Why bother? At the end of the day, I doubt the devs will make any "action" on these damage mods due to fear of backslash.

Please perform a search on similar topics in this forum and tell me ..they would do something. please.

 

 

 

#Edit1: Typo

 

#Edit2:

If all I need is just 1 bullet to headshot a grineer & kill it at mercury ..Why do i need a mod that gives me 100% damage increase just so that i can headshot a grinner to actually kill it at higher level planets. Why?

 

What do these level 30's or level 60's enemy eat that I have to unlouad a full clip of bullets into their head just so they can die..and I cant do that without damage mods..please englighten me. Why must we continue on with this damage model?

Due to forma?

 

 

Damage 2.0 was suppose to address a certain number of issues...yes it work in some cases but with damage mods around..it looks pretty much the same story like back in the old days of damage 1.0.

 

All i need is damage + multi shot + more damage. What the heck do i do about the rest of mods? complete utter waste siting in my inventory.

Edited February 28, 2014 by DJSmash

[(PSN)feel-T_ornado]

All mods should be like coolant leak, and focus system seems like a good way to try this out.

Shouldn't be scaling level on enemies, just a simple scaling on mission difficulties.

 

Main reason why I left PC version was because of the insane level of "pros", wich are in fact exploiters of this unbalanced universe...where you can one shoot a boss, or almost, thing that turns out to be the main reason why they have to keep alive this grind fest, new little additions per week, same all crap ak this ak that, horrendus rng, just pure numbers, no skill, no joy, just badassery.

 

I belive builds should be focused more in particular about twichs and advantages, not purely on raw damage that makes other weapons crap.

Levels should be about conditions, going from basic to hell; not because of tougher enemies, but by more enemies, more diversity, crazier enemies, etc. Mastery rank should be about style, kills, complete, in that order. Missions in the starmap need serious meaning not just being grinds till boss or rank.

 

All the above would change drastically WF, so just no. All WF needs is balance. Make Exc usefull on higher ends, or the skana or the lato, and not just frickin noob flags; thats balance, but obviously this aint part of DE's plan.

 

Just sending my toughts to the e, and hopefully... DE xD

 

Excuse bad grammar :D

Edited February 28, 2014 by (PS4)feel-T_ornado

[Drakontis]

Once again, this "question" is being brought up. It is a very valid question and it touches on the very foundation of how Warframe's damage/balance mechanics work.For those who are care anough about "balance", you know just how bad this game scales..

 

 

 

Volt's topic is among the few that touches on the game's core. For those of us who are active in the forum/been long enough in warframe, this is nothing new.

 

I voted for Yes.

 

This will have massive consequences/changes to the game's core.. but if you care about future game content releases with regards to scaling/balance/damage/hp. This will be an important question & It will not end just there.

 

If the community is willing to give damage 2.0,melee 2.0, rng 2.0 ..why not give this a chance as well?

Without a proper Damage control, you will be forever be in this loop of balance/scaling differences.

(Dont get me started on Potata + 6 forma + uber mods and on top of that, between co-op vs solo play)

 

But you know what? Why bother? At the end of the day, I doubt the devs will make any "action" on these damage mods due to fear of backslash.

Please perform a search on similar topics in this forum and tell me ..they would do something. please.

 

 

 

#Edit1: Typo

 

#Edit2:

If all I need is just 1 bullet to headshot a grineer & kill it at mercury ..Why do i need a mod that gives me 100% damage increase just so that i can headshot a grinner to actually kill it at higher level planets. Why?

 

What do these level 30's or level 60's enemy eat that I have to unlouad a full clip of bullets into their head just so they can die..and I cant do that without damage mods..please englighten me. Why must we continue on with this damage model?

Due to forma?

 

 

Damage 2.0 was suppose to address a certain number of issues...yes it work in some cases but with damage mods around..it looks pretty much the same story like back in the old days of damage 1.0.

 

All i need is damage + multi shot + more damage. What the heck do i do about the rest of mods? complete utter waste siting in my inventory.

 

The deal with Damage 1.0 was that you either needed Armor Piercing, Serrated Blade, or some other types of specific damage to even be able to TOUCH enemies at ALL in higher end content due to constantly scaling armor. Damage 2.0 got rid of that. 

[BETAOPTICS]

Yes but the weapons damage should remaim relatively same overall. This would give some guns more uses and give a chance and reason to use other mods while the games difficulty would remain same.

[BETAOPTICS]

The deal with Damage 1.0 was that you either needed Armor Piercing, Serrated Blade, or some other types of specific damage to even be able to TOUCH enemies at ALL in higher end content due to constantly scaling armor. Damage 2.0 got rid of that.

True but their goal was to also bring down the rainbow builds. Not just visually, but gameplay wise as well. It worked to some degree, visually it now is logical but best guns still utilize damage oriented builds for optimal efficiency. Whether the road original poster suggests is the right way to do it, is another debate all together, but he/she is arguably right about the fact that damage 2.0 did not succeed in accomplishing what it was set to do.

[Phoenix86]

i would say that i'd like dmg mods to be slightly reduced and utility mods massively buffed (such as reload time, recoil control, etc)

[Nerevar22g]

ok, grab unmoded soma go do some missions in Ceres, then post polls about mods not adding any damage lol

[xZARAx]

If a weapons damage also got scaled with weapons ranks that would be better in my eyes, makes everyone struggle through those early levels and actually try and not die

[Annnoth]

I assume you haven't already read the thread.  I answer a lot of that in there.  The post Calayne linked you to in particular contains a lot of answers to objections with my proposal.

 

That said, I would like to directly answer your comment about early-game play here.

 

Early-game players will naturally be limited in power regardless of which system we choose to implement.  This is in the nature of new players.  In a Mastery-based system, they will be limited as before and the fear that they could have less chance to construct new equipment required to expand out and thus gain power is a concern.  While I agree with this on some level, I must point out that all it would require would be players maxing out their starter equipment to unlock the damage boosters (at least according to my system; other Mastery-based systems might not be such).  True, early-game players have limited ability to construct new weapons, but ultimately, I believe that this is of no consequence.

 

I believe I answer your concerns regarding slots in the post Calayne linked you to.

 

Regarding my system implementing endgame, that was never the goal.  Right now, we can't have endgame.  We have this:

 

The entire right half of that is impossible right now due to the current system.  My system sets up a foundation upon which endgame actually can be constructed.

 

You don't think most people will elect to instagib when they can?

No. I don't think most people will elect instagib when they can. Why? Because it's not fun for them. 90% of my clan hates the soma and back because they are too powerful and incredibly boring to us, there are many people on the forums I've seen who have said they aren't DPS hogs and instead of going for a 1 hit KO gun they want to use something more fun.

[Rafajin]

NO just expand the game, make harder enemies

[DJSmash]

ok, grab unmoded soma go do some missions in Ceres, then post polls about mods not adding any damage lol

 

The point is..if you decide to forgo/change the damage mods..then you obviously have to re-work on re-balancing the entire faction + us tenno HP/shield/armour then only we can do that. Right now we cant.

 

 

NO just expand the game, make harder enemies

Please define "harder". What is "harder" enemies?

 

if you say more shield. more hp. more armour...then you ere promoting MORE powercreep into this game. No ?

So many older posting have been poured into this silly "powercreep" topic and so many suggestion have been made to "innovate"/"improve" enemy variery/Ai/fun...but instead...re-buff the already buffed enemy is the answer? please tell me what is your defination on HARDER enemies.

 

If this is the direction this beta product is heading..kindly remove every single non-damage mod. Just give us one x1000% damage mod. and then every enemy x1000% hp,shield,armour & quantity.

 

The end.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

NO just expand the game, make harder enemies

Except buffing enemies will be a worthless venture that dances around the problem...  The core problem underlying balance (that player growth is violent and unpredictable) precludes making enemies "harder."

Edited February 28, 2014 by Volt_Cruelerz

[-HAKUNA-YOUR-TATAS-]

It's a catch 22 with this argument.

 

You have one side which wants the game to be (for lack of a better example) Call of Duty or Halo with ninja swords, where everyone basically has the same guns/weapons and it's more of a matter of who gets there first and targets faster.  There's nothing wrong with that.  It's just a different choice in game design.  However, it would basically turn Warframe into a different game.  It would be like Ninja Gaiden mixed with Gears of War, the weapons wouldn't matter anymore and everyone's health and shields would be the same too right?  (because if you're going to target serration, then why not redirection and vitality too?)

 

On the other hand Warframe was described as an action shooter with RPG elements, so it's normal to expect that we'll build/grow/strengthen our characters/weapons too.  Now I won't speak for the pro/veteran players who have thousands of fusion cores sitting in their inventory, but it does take a good month or so (of casual playing) to accumulate enough cores to max a serration.  I feel that the power gotten from the amount of effort made makes sense.  In Warframe, we're basically a bunch of gear enthusiasts that enjoy applying mods to our stuff and seeing how it performs.  "leveling the playing field" so to say by removing all of that would literally take 75% of what we do in the game away.  For me that's the fun of this game...  Leveling up my gear to see what it does.

 

I read a post above about increasing difficulty of the enemies instead and the counter argument is correct.  What we have in this game are "bullet sponge" difficulty increases, and you only need more powerful weapons to combat that; so it's promoting powercreep.  (The end result is the devs may not be able to pay attention to and/or re-balance older weapons, etc. and it only gets worse when we have hundreds of weapons later on.)  So this is a problem.

 

However, should we be able to slaughter everything when we have a maxed serration/heavy caliber combo equipped?  Absolutely...  The fun in this game (which is basically an advanced shooting gallery) is the over the top carnage.  Let's not lie to ourselves here, we're here to see our enemy's corpses gibbed, flying, fragged, electrocuted, burnt, corroded, etc.  

 

The more glorified the kills are the better.  So...  I want big damage and damage mods SHOULD matter.

Edited February 28, 2014 by sushidubya

[Volt_Cruelerz]

 

In the first part, yes, there are certain scenarios where specific guns are more viable, but I'd rather have certain scenarios where specific guns are more viable than a general case where specific guns are more viable, which is what would happen the other way. I don't see any logic in trying to improve balance by removing a check which promotes balance.

 

As to the second part, yes, I do realise that. That was kind of my point. If mods are more important than guns, you can choose the guns you like. If guns are more important than mods, the importance of personal preference is inevitably diminished.

 

The problem isn't dominance of weapons or mods.  Personally, I lean towards weapons, but the fact is, you can balance the beginning or endpoint of either.  The problem is that mods don't support stable power growth which means that it's impossible for DE to balance enemy difficulty against us.

 

The deal with Damage 1.0 was that you either needed Armor Piercing, Serrated Blade, or some other types of specific damage to even be able to TOUCH enemies at ALL in higher end content due to constantly scaling armor. Damage 2.0 got rid of that. 

Endlessly scaling armor didn't die though :(

 

 

However, should we be able to slaughter everything when we have a maxed serration/heavy caliber combo equipped?  Absolutely...  The fun in this game (which is basically an advanced shooting gallery) is the over the top carnage.  Let's not lie to ourselves here, we're here to see our enemy's corpses gibbed, flying, fragged, electrocuted, burnt, corroded, etc.  

 

...

Which is why I advocate merely moving this power to wreak havoc to Mastery.  Such would make power growth much more predictable and we'd actually be able to have some semblance of difficulty in this game.  If you wanted to mop the floor with the faces with enemies, you'd just go back to lower-leveled planets.

[-CM-Sean]

Finally a thread that actually uses poll, I have been emphasizing the importance of polling for feedback to the developers.  I might just use this poll website.

 

on the issue of mod.  I don't think mods make anything unbalanced, infact they make things more balanced and more individualized.  For example many people say they don't like the reload time of dual cestras, or the recoil, and also it eats through ammo, YES it will take two or three mods two balance these out,  But i personally like using those mods to balance this sidearm this certain way.  A friend of mine does not care too much about recoil or reload time, so he goes for pure damage build.  there is a lot of personalization that is done with mods and its not only for damage.

 

Take the soma.  most people as myself build it for pure damage,  But there are ways to build this gun, its relaod time is 3 seconds, not too bad, but some might not like that, or some people love soma with shred on, and some dont. some go for pure damage.  Some put heavy caliber and do not care about the negative accuracy effects.  Mods give you the option to customize things.

 

Infact for those who think the mods make things imbalanced, they atually make things balanced to your preference.  I have not found any gun in the game to be overly OP as of Damage 2.0.  some can argue the brakk, but many don't even like using the brakk for various reasons.

 

There are always negative and positives to the weapons. things are already balanced.

Edited February 28, 2014 by -CM-Sean