Will Warframe Ever Be Challenging?

[Liminal]

I believe all these issues stem from scaling. It's the bane of a "skill based" (shooter) game such as Warframe.

[XRAY0128]

I believe all these issues stem from scaling. It's the bane of a "skill based" (shooter) game such as Warframe.

I agree.

Rather than introducing new enemies with different abilitiss in higher levels, we just get the same enemies in larger numbers with higher stats

[notionphil]

I believe all these issues stem from scaling. It's the bane of a "skill based" (shooter) game such as Warframe.

 

Scaling poses a balance/challenge issue, but only until the player power cap.

 

There is a soft player-power-cap on offensive output (8 forma soma + best mods + ally buffs). There is also a near infinite defensive cap (blessing etc) which the enemies need tools to overcome.

 

Whatever high mastery rank challenge is created can take the offensive and defensive caps into consideration - power doesn't scale from the max point.

[Liminal]

Scaling poses a balance/challenge issue, but only until the player power cap.

 

There is a soft player-power-cap on offensive output (8 forma soma + best mods + ally buffs). There is also a near infinite defensive cap (blessing etc) which the enemies need tools to overcome.

 

Whatever high mastery rank challenge is created can take the offensive and defensive caps into consideration - power doesn't scale from the max point.

Yes but those caps are way beyond the average build's offensive/defensive stats. If you take those into account forget about ever using Saryn with a Karak. The current scaling only exacerbates the difference between extremely good weapons (or powers) and the rest.

 

And I'm suddenly talking about variety... sigh

[Recel]

I believe all these issues stem from scaling. It's the bane of a "skill based" (shooter) game such as Warframe.

 

And you're right. Tho it comes moreso from the fact that things scale differently compaired to one another.

 

For instance mods give huge, huge bonuses to a weapon, often doubleing a stat. And ofcourse you can mash up eight of them into your weapon. On the other hand, skills don't scale all that well damage wise, even with mods, while the frame it self scales very well again.

 

Compaired to this, enemies don't scale well. You have to leave the intended level range for them to end up on that level, or surpass it.

 

And if you look more into it, with different mods/weapons/frames scaling has huge gaps in between. One mod can make one godly, while it's totally useless for others. Other things are straight out garbadge compaired to most other choices. And due to these scaling problems, you also have mods that are a must in every situation, like Serration.

 

And on top of this unbalanced (and in my oppinion unbalancable) system, there's a poor AI and cheep ways to enforce a fake feeling of challange.

[notionphil]

Yes but those caps are way beyond the average build's offensive/defensive stats. If you take those into account forget about ever using Saryn with a Karak. The current scaling only exacerbates the difference between extremely good weapons (or powers) and the rest.

 

And I'm suddenly talking about variety... sigh

I'm mostly OK with that.

While Saryn (and all frames) should be made viable in all content as per DE's "buff all frames to nova tier", all weapons don't have to be as long as there is enough variety at this 'power cap' tier.

Lest we turn this into a balance thread, let's just say for now that we are talking about high mastery challenge only, and there are currently enough viable weapons at that point to create variety (soma ogris penta boltor p castanas stugg latron p bursron p detron Brakk various melee etc)

[AuroraSonicBoom]

I agree.

Rather than introducing new enemies with different abilitiss in higher levels, we just get the same enemies in larger numbers with higher stats

 

True. And that's a valid flavour of challenge if it's part of what makes your game challenging, but not if it's pretty much the main course.

 

You know, I sometimes wonder how T3 defense would play if each wave reduced the amount of enemies coming at you, but increased the level of the rest every wave by 2. Somewhere down the line you'd end up with a small group of super powerful boss like enemies that take serious time to bring down and keep from shooting you or the pod. Yeah, it wouldn't be endless defense anymore, but it would gave you a different experience that would surely make for some interesting fights.

 

I've run a couple of T3 exterminates with a group of freshly forma'd Rhinos and me as Valkyr. We didn't have any powerful guns with us, so all we could do was stun lock heavies and chain finish them to get their health down. It felt like we were actually fighting for our lives there and if that heavy had gotten its gorgon rolling before we killed her we'd have been in serious trouble. Most of my memorable moments in warframe center around these kinds of situations, and I would love for them to appear more frequent.

[XRAY0128]

[quote name="AuroraSonicBoom" post="2558277" timestamp="1398269577"

 

You know, I sometimes wonder how T3 defense would play if each wave reduced the amount of enemies coming at you, but increased the level of the rest every wave by 2. Somewhere down the line you'd end up with a small group of super powerful boss like enemies that take serious time to bring down and keep from shooting you or the pod. Yeah, it wouldn't be endless defense anymore, but it would gave you a different experience that would surely make for some interesting fights.

 

That sounds pretty cool actually, heck maybe youd eventually get actual bosses spawning. Would definitely spice things up.

[notionphil]

You know, I sometimes wonder how T3 defense would play if each wave reduced the amount of enemies coming at you, but increased the level of the rest every wave by 2. Somewhere down the line you'd end up with a small group of super powerful boss like enemies that take serious time to bring down and keep from shooting you or the pod

 

 

That would be a step in the right direction.

 

The issue here is not that it's difficult to implement balance due to scaling, or that there aren't a plethora of simple solutions...it's that DE doesn't seem to want to try.

 

Similar suggestion from different thread:

 

 

Every wave in Dark Sector Defense and every ~2 mins in Survival, a Grineer or Corpus Leader unit will spawn, with a small contingent of its allies.

• The leader and his allies spawn at 2x the level of the other enemies. EX: a lv 20 wave will spawn a lv 40 Leader.
• They will always appear on the mini-map so the team can band together to take them on
• These mobs serve as announced "mini-boss" squads that mix up static gameplay & unite the Tenno in a serious challenge

 

[BlueSilkMetallic]

challenging ?

why not.

 

unkillable ?

immune ?

fighting one enemy 10 minutes ?

no thanks.

[Axterix13]

You know, I sometimes wonder how T3 defense would play if each wave reduced the amount of enemies coming at you, but increased the level of the rest every wave by 2. Somewhere down the line you'd end up with a small group of super powerful boss like enemies that take serious time to bring down and keep from shooting you or the pod. Yeah, it wouldn't be endless defense anymore, but it would gave you a different experience that would surely make for some interesting fights.

Sounds pretty boring.

I can already see how it would play out though: CC to make the mob stand around and do nothing. AMD to kill the thing. That's how long term endless runs get done now. Don't see how or why it would change with less mobs, well, other than there would be a greater emphasis on energy regen.

You can't have interesting content as long as massively overpowered CC exists. Nor as long as offense is so potent that it is the best defense, and by the time it starts to tail off, enemies hit hard enough that you have to rely on overpowered abilities rather than shields/hp.

Edited April 23, 2014 by Axterix13

[LordAsmolicious]

You look like a person who has never played no shields nightmare mode....

Thats rather easy. Trinity Loki or Rhino... Easy. Hell on other frames its still do-able Zephyr survives longer in no-shield than Rhino... in my own experiences. =D

[AuroraSonicBoom]

Sounds pretty boring.

I can already see how it would play out though: CC to make the mob stand around and do nothing.

 

Well, I wrote all of what I did already including DE's reluctance to nerf any of the established frames and infinitifely scaling ability. It's easy making things challenging again if you take people's OP toys away, and if they decided to do that, I'd be pretty damn happy. I do think, though, that that happening is even more unlikely than them improvin on AI and giving enemies resistancies across the board.

 

I was pleasantly surprised, though, when I found out that Rhino stomp - the CC in the game in terms of who it works on - only works for a few brief moments on Vey Hek before he breaks free.

[Janzer]

Asks for WF to be challenging. Uses high ranked weapons mods and Warframe

 

In all fairness I feel this is not accurate. I used a level 9 Zephyr and solo defended 4 sets of 5 rounds of a mission against starting level 20+ enemies...just using Tornado. From what I've seen, with each new Frame that comes out, their Ultimates just become more and more overpowered. I had no worry about dying, because nothing could ever touch me.

[notionphil]

In all fairness I feel this is not accurate. I used a level 9 Zephyr and solo defended 4 sets of 5 rounds of a mission against starting level 20+ enemies...just using Tornado. From what I've seen, with each new Frame that comes out, their Ultimates just become more and more overpowered. I had no worry about dying, because nothing could ever touch me.

 

True, but even if it were accurate...the entire metagame of WF is about becoming more powerful.

 

We shouldn't have to artificially reduce our power to find challenge in the game! Why become a warrior-diety if you're surrounded by ants?

[GolDraG]

Why should people have to limit themselves to get a challenge?

so .. u rather like that devs would do it?

[Recel]

This issue will only get resolved if DE decides to face the fact that there is a huge power creep in the game, instead of rolling with it, giving us even more tools and gadgets to become even more powerful.

 

Also, with this power creep they are too busy makeing things for the "end-game", which really hurts new player experience.

 

so .. u rather like that devs would do it?

 

Last I checked it's not the players responsiblility to make the game challenging.

Sure you can make it challenging your self, but usually that means the game has problems, so you're bored of it and handicap your self to find more fun in it.

Edited April 23, 2014 by Recel

[notionphil]

so .. u rather like that devs would do it?

 

No, we'd rather be able to use the full force of the powers we've spent 100s of hours earning....to overcome even greater challenges than the ones that got us here.

[notionphil]

This issue will only get resolved if DE decides to face the fact that there is a huge power creep in the game, instead of rolling with it, giving us even more tools and gadgets to become even more powerful.

 

Also, with this power creep they are too busy makeing things for the "end-game", which really hurts new player experience.

 

This is a good point which has yet to come up in this thread.

 

I'm not sure why DE feels that most gameplay types, enemies etc needs to scale from level 1 - endgame. There is no reason for a Stalker/G3 to hunt down a newbie. There is no benefit to placing Interception missions on Earth where players are using unranked mods. No reason for enemy leaders to gundown and energy drain rank 1 players.

 

Endgame/max challenge content should not be anywhere near the new player experience. All that promotes is 'watering down' the challenge, so that it's possible for newbies, which means more numerical scaling to try and buff it back up for the max cap players.

 

Lose lose.

[theammostore]

To be honest, I'm waiting for some more challenging enemies as well. I en joy being a space ninja and I deliberately go out of my way to not have a 'press 3(4) to win' scenario. I go for unusual builds (like battle nekros (aka damage focused nekros)) and unique weapon setups, but I don't feel like I should have to do that to have a challenge. Yeah I'm having fun, but eventually I'm going to just be able to nuke everything regardless of how odd my builds are.

 

DE, please. Work on the AI. U14: The Enemies React. I understand AI is a tough concept, it's inherently hard to make good AI, and I get that, I'm not asking for one single update which fixes everything with the AI, but is it possible to have an AI team? A single dedicated AI team to work on this undertaking? Failing AI work make more complex enemies, make serious buff leaders, massive Anti-Tenno Hunter-Killers that are worked into the main spawn system. Give them things like The Drakgoon, plasma rockets, shadowy infested remnants of actual Orokin soldiers. Something, please. Use Wraith Squads and Vandal Squads, Prime Corrupted, things like that.

 

It's not that you can't do it, the first Darvo alert where we fought the Stalker showed that, when scaled properly, the Stalker is actually a very challenging and difficult fight that isn't just crazy. Do more things like that, more things with Scaled-Stalker-Like enemies. Again, I know it's hard to do but please work on that before adding anything new any more. Finish up the current projects, then shift everything, one at a time, over to the new stuff.

[notionphil]

U14: The Enemies React.

 

Honestly, we need to make this a thing. I thought U13 was going to show a sea change in Grineer power...turned out their marketing team was bigger than their bite. They got one RNG based mob, and a new boss that I'll never see again.

 

I guess Vay Hek really is a propaganda machine.

 

We need to keep the topic of challenge on the forefront otherwise it will continuously be passed over in favor of ammo 2.0, guns 2.0, powers 2.0. Yes, those are critical, but without challenging enemies to use them on, whats the point?

[izzatuw]

Honestly, we need to make this a thing. I thought U13 was going to show a sea change in Grineer power...turned out their marketing team was bigger than their bite. They got one RNG based mob, and a new boss that I'll never see again.

 

I guess Vay Hek really is a propaganda machine.

 

We need to keep the topic of challenge on the forefront otherwise it will continuously be passed over in favor of ammo 2.0, guns 2.0, powers 2.0. Yes, those are critical, but without challenging enemies to use them on, whats the point?

Meh, they need Enemies X.0 quick. There are differences with hard and tedious enemies such as the Jetpack Grineer (Helion) I think and the Heavies. They should also amp up Corpus a lot they are the weakest of the three factions. The one enemy that does knockback takes a second to lift his foot and players will have time to actually react. But Grineer heavies, they're immediate reaction. Infested win in numbers but in a small pack they can't exactly win.

[Recel]

Meh, they need Enemies X.0 quick. There are differences with hard and tedious enemies such as the Jetpack Grineer (Helion) I think and the Heavies. They should also amp up Corpus a lot they are the weakest of the three factions. The one enemy that does knockback takes a second to lift his foot and players will have time to actually react. But Grineer heavies, they're immediate reaction. Infested win in numbers but in a small pack they can't exactly win.

 

While corpus are the weakest, they do have the best mechanics in terms of challange. Not much instant stun, no homing misiles and so on.

 

The Shockwave MOA, while it's speed to do its move should be increased, makes a wave you can avoid or jump over and when he lifts his leg it is clear as day it will do something. The Oxium Osprey gives a clear audible and visable que when it's about to charge. The Shield Osprey has a visable que that it buffs enemies unlike the Regulators.

 

That is a big part of challange. We don't just need enemies that are better with more skills to use, but we also need these signs to show us when they do it, so we can avoid it.