Frames Balance: Lets Help Scott

[Monolake]

So you have probably watched the recent developer stream where they touched the frames balance.

Here is the link to the time

 

Our feedback makes DE-Scott, the design director, very sad since everyone wants different things and he cant make everyone happy so sometimes he "does nothing because there is no consensus". 

Could we help him with this problem by developing some general standards for balance and comparison of frames and abilities instead of focusing on separate skills and our personal preferences. Points of reference.

 

For example: Instead of listening to the communitiy' controversial opinions what is OP and what is useless, Scott and DE could test and evaluate every ability and frame as a whole - combination of abilities and stats - against 'reference groups' of enemies of low-mid-high-veryhigh levels. lvl10-20-35-50(?) including armored units of course. 

For low levels use just maxed abilities and low level weapons (could use not-fully ranked frames).

Mid levels - abilities with frames mods like Streamline, Flow, Intensity, Constitution and mid-level weapons.

And for high and very high use all the optimal combinations of the corrupted mods, max efficiency, duration etc. and best weapons.

 

 Such basic tests will vividly show what abilities become completely useless, dealing insignificant damage even to mid-high level armored units and offer nothing else to counter the enemies, no CC or utility; which abilities allow to roflstomp through most of the game making it very easy up to high levels and remain good at very-high; which abilities are moderately good, not making the game trivial, but never lose effectiveness due to high utility or scaling with enemies.  

 Combining all the abilities of a single frame and weapons you can evaluate how each frame performs at each stage of the game from low to high. How much corrupted mods make or break it.

No need to listen to personal opinions when you can have test-proven facts and balance on the facts, the real performance, not some varied preferences and wants.

 

Of course these tests are only a start, a basic idea. Further evaluation of frames performance in a team should be accounted for, considering what benefits entire team gets, and what role a frame could play (if any).

 

Please offer your ideas how to help DE and Scott to create general reference points for balancing all the warframes.

 

Considering the time constraints and business of DE team and Scott personally, Im sure many players could volunteer to do some testing, once the framework is established, and report results and record videos for DE to make a better balanced game together.

 

-----

Note: Im assuming, all the frames are supposed to be some-what equally useful at low-mid-high levels (35 as the highest level for the planets and void T3 non-endless missions), and struggle vs very-high level (I assume its 50, but its debatable). But I might be totally wrong here, only Scott himself could say what frames are supposed to be for what tiers of enemies. 

Edited March 22, 2014 by Monolake

[baron1357]

BUFF EVERYTHING 

[Archwizard]

Been there, done that.

[Orbister]

I think they should completely forget about chiclé tags like palladin, necromancer, healer, caster etc etc, and think carefully and technically about the function and possible synergy of abilities, how they work during real gameplay (and not on paper) and how they interact with each other. 

[TheStag]

Scott is Rhino, so I guess we are technically helping make him less OP as a person.

I am so freaking confused.

[(PSN)billy-d-squid]

I'd say it's not just a question of balance, it's a question of what do they actually want these frames to do, or what role do they want them to fulfill? At the moment many of them are all over the place, while others are almost spot on. 

 

Nyx, is a perfect example of being extremely well balanced, she is a CC frame, gets excellent utility, yet her powers damage wise are poor. But this is fine, considering she is built with a purpose of CC, hence Chaos, Absorb, Mind control all fit, her armour being light, not having high shields, but a massive energy store all fits. 

 

Then you look at Volt, yeah he's okay. But when he's positioned as an "alternative" to gunplay? He's really not, and anyone who argues that he is is out of their mind. 2 of his powers augment gunplay and melee rather than his direct damage abilities.Shock is great, but Overload is situational and does insignificant damage, while electric shield doesn't actually charge shock's damage by 50% and remove the range, but will with a gun? Wut? If Scott is reading this, can you see the contradiction?

 

Then you have Jack of all trades like Rhino, which is fine... until he can actually outrun most frames in the game. What do you want him to do? His abilities don't mesh with rushing, what are you actually trying to get him to achieve? The same with Frost, CC/ debuff with defence powers with some damage, but his ability to CC is one of the worst in the game.  Nova, nuke frame, but has CC capacity better than frost's. Nekros, I'm not even going there. Ash the supposed stealthy frame... which can't do so effectively.  

 

This seems to be a problem even before balance is taken into consideration. 

[shut]

BUFF EVERYTHING 

"And, on the day that Update 14 hit, Warframe became Maplestory."

[Ohmlink]

"And, on the day that Update 14 hit, Warframe became Maplestory."

WARFRAMES ASSEMBLE!!!

 

In general balance we need to decide where we want everything to fall off in effectiveness. Until Melee 2.0 happens most melee sucks after level 20, Damage powers fall off at 30-40, meanwhile many weapons carry 80 and beyond with little to no trouble.

 

If we want to get at least damage powers working right things need to fall off at about the same time.

Edited March 23, 2014 by Ohmlink

[UmamiSalami]

"But everything changed when the Tenno attacked......."

[Monolake]

WARFRAMES ASSEMBLE!!!

 

In general balance we need to decide where we want everything to fall off in effectiveness. Until Melee 2.0 happens most melee sucks after level 20, Damage powers fall off at 30-40, meanwhile many weapons carry 80 and beyond with little to no trouble.

 

If we want to get at least damage powers working right things need to fall off at about the same time.

You are required to beat maximum lvl 30-35 (excluding leaders) in the solar system and all the t3 void, thats why I used it as the "high level" reference. Thats the border of 'normal game', above that are endless missions that you play only for personal challenge and maybe rare alerts.

All frames should have something to counter these high levels (30-35)

Many damage powers are ineffective against lvl15 armored units already and are useless vs high levels (for example Oberon ultimate does only ~250 damage to lvl30 curruprted Heavy, who has ~4000-5000 hp!)

[Davoodoo]

Highest enemies seems to be lvl50+ leaders at t3 ext and they should already be pretty tough enemies.

 

As for frames role

 

mobility             defense

 

   aoe                     cc

 

pick 2 and a half and scale accordingly.

 

While i love strengths of valkyr she completely lacks aoe and cc is just bad, which overall makes her bad.(0.75 + 1 + 0 + 0.25 = 2.0)

Jack of all trades excalibur wont work either aoe is not strong enough defense is lacking cc is subpar only mobility is ok(0.5 + 0 + 0.5 + 1= 2.0)

Now offenders, nova, rhino and zephyr, nova has over excellent mobility and aoe dmg(1.25 in my scale) and decent cc(0.5) but lacks defense still bit too strong(1.25+ 1.25 + 0.5 + 0 = 3), rhino good mobility perfect defense good aoe and perfect cc(0.75 + 1.25 + 1 + 1.25= 4.25!!!) and zephyr perfect defense(1.5), perfect mobility(1.5), great cc(1) and decent aoe(0.5) makes her excell in most situations(4.5!!!ffs)

Edited March 23, 2014 by Davoodoo

[Hyunsai]

There was a 99% consensus on the Avalance "fix", so why it is not reverted yet ?

Edited March 23, 2014 by Hyunsai

[LazyKnight]

Many damage powers are ineffective against lvl15 armored units already and are useless vs high levels (for example Oberon ultimate does only ~250 damage to lvl30 curruprted Heavy, who has ~4000-5000 hp!)

The only two powers that scale, are the ones that do either radiation (For alloy) damage or corrosive (For Ferrite). The Grineer's and Corrupted units armor eats up all other forms of damage (if it does not match their weakness) at surprisingly low levels. Grineer's armor makes it pointless to use anything other than radiation on one weapons and corrosive on another.

 

Corpus are easy to kill with anything because they have pathetic health and barley scale. Infested are considered easy-mode for a reason, and only Oberon has a problem with them due to his powers being radiation and impact.

[Davoodoo]

The only two powers that scale, are the ones that do either radiation (For alloy) damage or corrosive (For Ferrite). The Grineer's and Corrupted units armor eats up all other forms of damage (if it does not match their weakness) at surprisingly low levels. Grineer's armor makes it pointless to use anything other than radiation on one weapons and corrosive on another.

 

Corpus are easy to kill with anything because they have pathetic health and barley scale. Infested are considered easy-mode for a reason, and only Oberon has a problem with them due to his powers being radiation and impact.

Only dmg power ive seen scale over lvl50 is world on fire, but that thing is monster, 23.5k to single target maxed + 5.725 times more dmg with accelerant.

[LazyKnight]

Only dmg power ive seen scale over lvl50 is world on fire, but that thing is monster, 23.5k to single target maxed + 5.725 times more dmg with accelerant.

Yeah combo can scale. Speaking of that, an idea popped into my head: What if Oberon hallowed ground acted is a magnifier for reckoning and Smite?

 

Anyway, Oberon is in need of a review on hallowed ground, and why he is so flimsy. It strikes me as a Warframe that should have at least 100-150 armor.

 

 

 rhino good mobility perfect defense good aoe and perfect cc(0.75 + 1.25 + 1 + 1.25= 4.25!!!)

His defense only scales to level 25 even with a maxed blind rage, and is worthless after that. It doesn't scale is an understatement verse Grineer.... His stomp should be affected by power duration and shouldn't work on boss units.

Edited March 24, 2014 by LazyKnight

[Davoodoo]

His defense only scales to level 25 even with a maxed blind rage, and is worthless after that. It doesn't scale is an understatement verse Grineer....

Im having no problem surviving face tanking lvl50 heavy gunner as my ember, as rhino i can take head on lvl60-70 gunner before they can drop me faster than i can cast new one.

Against lvls 30 i can cast it once and forget.

Edited March 24, 2014 by Davoodoo

[LazyKnight]

Against lvls 30 i can cast it once and forget.

That is only true against the corrupted light units( they do 12(?) damage per bullet in their burst at level 20), as they do not start hitting hard until level 40 at least. A level 30 Gunners will be able to cut through a maxed-out iron skin in a few seconds (they are never alone). 

 

Verse Nuovo Grineer, Iron skin might as well have a 10 second duration, because the gunners are not the most dangerous units (Shield lancers are by far the hardest hitting). T3 void isn't even hard compared to ANY Ceres mission, and it is getting annoying that people think void is hard, and it's not.

 

 

Im having no problem surviving face tanking lvl50 heavy gunner as my ember,

Exaggerate much? The only way that would be applicable, is if your TTK on them was less than 1-2 seconds. I just tested this, a level 36 Ice leader heavy gunner dropped 1110 shields in 1 second.  Also, I tested that verse a level 49 heavy gunner, and 1110 shields is about a second or two of life.

 

 

I am 90% certain the equation they use for damage was changed from: [(current_level - base_level)^1.50 * 0.01 * base_damage + base_damage] to [(current_level - base_level)^2 * 0.01 * base_damage + base_damage]. Every 10 levels their damage nearly doubles.

 

Corrupted are not as dangerous as the Grineer faction. The Void was over nerfed, and it was trivialized to the point that everything other than a heavy gunner can be ignored. They are even less dangerous than the regular corpus, and Void keys mission are just loot piñatas with RNG. 

 

Lets be clear on one thing: Zephyr > Rhino in effective health on all factions with guns. This is because she has absolute defense verse corpus (they can NEVER hit her, ever) and I soloed Pluto survival to 46 minutes without ever being in danger. Scott needs to take a look at turbulence as the defense is nowhere near as good as it is verse the hit-scan units (it is broken overpowered against all things with travel time).

Edited March 24, 2014 by LazyKnight

[nekrojiji]

Been there, done that.

Ok that is S#&$ ... next

[RealPandemonium]

I'd say it's not just a question of balance, it's a question of what do they actually want these frames to do, or what role do they want them to fulfill? At the moment many of them are all over the place, while others are almost spot on. 

 

Nyx, is a perfect example of being extremely well balanced, she is a CC frame, gets excellent utility, yet her powers damage wise are poor. But this is fine, considering she is built with a purpose of CC, hence Chaos, Absorb, Mind control all fit, her armour being light, not having high shields, but a massive energy store all fits. 

 

Then you look at Volt, yeah he's okay. But when he's positioned as an "alternative" to gunplay? He's really not, and anyone who argues that he is is out of their mind. 2 of his powers augment gunplay and melee rather than his direct damage abilities.Shock is great, but Overload is situational and does insignificant damage, while electric shield doesn't actually charge shock's damage by 50% and remove the range, but will with a gun? Wut? If Scott is reading this, can you see the contradiction?

 

Then you have Jack of all trades like Rhino, which is fine... until he can actually outrun most frames in the game. What do you want him to do? His abilities don't mesh with rushing, what are you actually trying to get him to achieve? The same with Frost, CC/ debuff with defence powers with some damage, but his ability to CC is one of the worst in the game.  Nova, nuke frame, but has CC capacity better than frost's. Nekros, I'm not even going there. Ash the supposed stealthy frame... which can't do so effectively.  

 

This seems to be a problem even before balance is taken into consideration. 

Nyx actually has good damage on Psychic Bolts (the skill is awkward to use and expensive though) and fantastic damage on Absorb (due to the vespa helmet).

 

Volt's overload does fine damage to non-grineer and shock's stuns come with good damage as well on big crowds.

 

Rhino's speed isn't really an issue, makes him able to res teammates easier so what's not to like?

 

Frost is the third best room-cleaner in the game with new Avalanche and Snow Globe remains useful.  His 1 and 2 could use re-tuning however.

 

Nova is super op, nothing we haven't heard before.

 

Nekros is fun and nuanced but needs tweaks on Terrify and his 4 to make them feel better to cast.  Soul Punch could use something as well.

 

Ash has a functioning stealth ability and one of the best 4s in the game.  His Smoke Bomb could use a duration buff and his Shuriken needs bleed or ragdoll to make it useful. 

 

Overall the biggest balance problem in this game is Grineer armor scaling. 

 

The Grineer have the most dangerous units to fight against due to their damage (hitscan weapons, Napalms, Bombards, Scorches, Eviscerators) as well as disabling ability (all heavy units have radial blast, Scorpions, Shield Lancers, and Rollers all have a debilitating knockdown).  At the same time they also have the highest defense and get exponentially tougher as their level increases due to increasing armor values. 

 

The Corpus have shields but shields can be bypassed via Toxin Damage and Corpus weak spots are easy to hit (particularly their moas) and much more fragile than Grineers'.  Infested also lack armor and are melee, which makes them the least dangerous faction. 

 

The only thing that can combat high level Grineer is a weapon with strong criticals due to the way critical hits interact with headshots, multiplying the damage twice (Soma, Boar Prime, Synapse, etc,) or a weapon that has huge raw damage like the Phage or the launchers (Ogris, Penta, Stug, etc.)  I believe this is an unintended situation.

 

At the same time feedback to DE is skewed by legions of players exploiting frames like Nova, Trinity, Rhino, etc. and using weapons like Soma, Phage, and Ogris/Penta/Stug.  Heavy Grineer are problematic enough to justify the use of the overpowered options, but they are a small, prevalent minority of the options that exist for players.  I'm not saying to nerf the overpowered stuff, but heavy grineer armor scaling should be addressed to provide a smoother gameplay experience that doesn't nullify most of the options available to players in Warframe.

[nekrojiji]

I suggest, as the most important thing, to balance the power/energy for each skill of one frame.

 

Only after all the frames will "want to" use all 4 skills we can start talking about power balance.

 

Here's what I noticed on the frames that I use:

 

Trinity:

 

Well of life is not only useless as utility and power, but also redundant. Blessing heals all the team for full HP and Shields why would I use Well of Life!? Energy Vampire is useless in the curent form. I prefer medium team energy restore over Energy Vampire. That's why mine has 2 of the power polarities changed.

 

Frost:

 

Freeze is a low damage and hard to hit weak CC.

Avalanche is not adding to Frost's DPS, but instead it decreases it, as for CC ...... yeah let's not go there!

That's why mine has 2 power slots formated.

 

Ash

 

Why would I spend 6 energy on Shuriken for 1300 damage when I can use a rifle or my melee?

On Ash I use only Smoke Bomb and Teleport, Blade Storm's damage falls off on lvl 30 enemies.   Count another 2 power slots formated for me.

 

Valkyr

 

Paralisys makes her start a stealth attack which deal 10 times less damage than a normal Hysteria hit. Add one more power slot changed with forma to my name.

 

Ember's Fire Blast has low damage and a very low chance to stun.

 

 

I have examples of good frames too .... where all the skills have a specific role. I can include here Vauban and Excalibur.

 

I have examples of bad frames alltogether like Oberon. His armor must be at least 190 and the heal should continue healing if damages has been sustained after reaching full HP if the ability is still active.

 

 

Last thing .... 25 50 75 100 is too inside the box.  

 

 

 

 

 

[Davoodoo]

Exaggerate much? The only way that would be applicable, is if your TTK on them was less than 1-2 seconds

Actually thats the case.

 

Braton prime can kill them under 2 seconds while boltor prime in less than second.

For higher lvl enemies i pack blast or radiation on my weapons. So this also let me survive longer.

Edited March 24, 2014 by Davoodoo

[Scherhardt]

Been there, done that.

Guys support!

[RealPandemonium]

I suggest, as the most important thing, to balance the power/energy for each skill of one frame.

 

Only after all the frames will "want to" use all 4 skills we can start talking about power balance.

 

Here's what I noticed on the frames that I use:

 

Trinity:

 

Well of life is not only useless as utility and power, but also redundant. Blessing heals all the team for full HP and Shields why would I use Well of Life!? Energy Vampire is useless in the curent form. I prefer medium team energy restore over Energy Vampire. That's why mine has 2 of the power polarities changed.

 

Frost:

 

Freeze is a low damage and hard to hit weak CC.

Avalanche is not adding to Frost's DPS, but instead it decreases it, as for CC ...... yeah let's not go there!

That's why mine has 2 power slots formated.

 

Ash

 

Why would I spend 6 energy on Shuriken for 1300 damage when I can use a rifle or my melee?

On Ash I use only Smoke Bomb and Teleport, Blade Storm's damage falls off on lvl 30 enemies.   Count another 2 power slots formated for me.

 

Valkyr

 

Paralisys makes her start a stealth attack which deal 10 times less damage than a normal Hysteria hit. Add one more power slot changed with forma to my name.

 

Ember's Fire Blast has low damage and a very low chance to stun.

 

 

I have examples of good frames too .... where all the skills have a specific role. I can include here Vauban and Excalibur.

 

I have examples of bad frames alltogether like Oberon. His armor must be at least 190 and the heal should continue healing if damages has been sustained after reaching full HP if the ability is still active.

 

 

Last thing .... 25 50 75 100 is too inside the box.  

Trinity: Energy Vampire is amazing with low duration, and can be combined with low duration WoL to nuke bosses and heavy units.  That said, WoL is pretty redundant in its intended use.

 

Frost: Freeze freezes the afflicted target for 10+ seconds. It is a powerful cc but is difficult to aim and only affects one enemy.  It is in need of changes but is not a weak CC if you land it (I would make it an ice version of Ember's Fireball but with AOE Freeze effect.)  Avalanche does the third-highest damage of all screen-clearing 4 abilities, not sure where you get lowered DPS from. 

 

Ash: Shuriken is weak, has no utility, and is not fun or satisfying to use.  Blade Storm is a powerful skill that can 1-shot or critically wound enemies until level 40.  Heavy units can be killed in two casts until the 50s. 

 

Valkyr: The stealth attack effect is a bug which will be fixed, also it is trivial to slam attack enemies who are paralyzed (which will take 4x the usual damage.)

 

Ember: Fire Blast is ok when stacked but is definitely the weakest link in her skillset.

 

Oberon: His heal is an awkward and weak ability but his survivability is already higher than average due to the extra health he gets and his Hallowed Ground and Smite abilities are useful.

Edited March 24, 2014 by RealPandemonium

[Wargasm_v2.X]

Ya, I saw the last DevStream and I lol'ed when DE-Scott made it seem like no balancing of frames is occurring because there's no consensus on the forums.

 

Here's an idea Scott - HOW BOUT PLAYING THE GAME!?

 

Spend just a few missions running with an M Prime spamming Nova or a Toilet Bowl (Vortex) spamming Vauban in ODD or World on Fire spamming Ember to gain a little insight on what's broken.  And that's just for starters.

[Transient_Tiefling]

Personally I would like to see DE take the guilty gear approach to balance, which is:

 

-Observe how players are playing the characters. Watch for patterns, combos, whatever.

-Instead of trying to balance the character into what they wanted them to be originally, they would instead balance them to how the players are playing them. 

EXAMPLE: let's say ember was back in her original state [sorry DE, ember is an easy example to use, I'm not trying to call you out or anything] , you know with the defense buff and stuff. At the time, ember's kit leaned more towards in your face, up close and personal, sub-tank like game play. If they took the GG approach, they would buff her defenses, lower her burst, but buff her DoT. So while she wouldn't be a burst mage, she would instead be a tanky DoT caster.

 

-refine until "perfect"

I find this method doesn't really require as much discussion as people are now, as they are simply refining the frames to how the players are already playing them.

Edited March 24, 2014 by animaCartographer