Discussion Of The Important Of Balance In All Aspects Of Warframe

[Azawarau]

This has been a very hot topic lately and i think its about time we really sit down and get this out of the way

 

Now there are a few great examples of bad balancing in the game that stood out

 

Most notable are the original nova that ive heard so much about. I was told she could easily clear maps, leaving any other warframe literally in her molecular dust in terms of power

 

The second is the old iron skin. Pure immortality.

 

And the third offender is trinity with link and blessing. Again immortality but with greater damage potential and an entire team covered

 

There have been many arguments against changes to these things

 

Most notable again are

 

-Its PvE so what does it matter, it doesnt need balance?

 

-They dont have to be broken if they dont mod that way

 

-Its fair because theres still a chance to die

 

Ive personally found each of these arguments flawed in one way or another

 

Without balance a PvE game offers no challenge. Theres no reason to beat a dying horse you know?

 

Ironically games that would follow this path are just that

 

A dying horse thats being beaten until its no longer entertaining and people will move on to the next animal to poke at for a few minutes of fun before they get bored of that too

 

If you choose nott o use a broken build then youre intentionally gimping yourself for the sake of challenge that should be provided by the game. To a degree its ok to challenge yourself but it should be because you want to do it , not because you feel you have to for it to feel right. And palcing yourself under other players beause its the only way to make the game feel ok isnt right either. Youll be at a great disadvantage when youre not using the invincible rhino that everyone else has and still trying to become as strong as they are as quickly and easily

 

The third one is an interesting topic to sit on. The chance of death being a balance for a skill.

 

IMHO its not enough, Players should be punished for mistakes so they can learn to become better players and have goals to strive for.

 

They shouldnt be punished too heavily but the game cant be too forgiving either. Valkyr is a good example of this. She has no useful CC or damage abilities in exchange for extremely high defense and a get out of jail free card.

 

Hysteria being the tipping advantage for her. Its near impossible for valkyr to die with this ability alone. Despite lacking much else she can stand invincible eternally making her an extremely forgiving character for players of all levels

 

She does have the chance to die between casts but the chance is so very small that it almost might as well not exist

 

The same can be said for many other frames

 

Thats a very large concern when it comes to balancing a game. If 99/100 of your mistakes are forgiven then youll lose much of the challenge that comes with the fear of death.

 

Now the importance of balance in an MMO specifically is what id like to get to

 

As i said earlier the main argument is "Balance doesnt matter in a Coop game"

 

Well, it does

 

When you play a single player game where only you are against the AI it might not matter so much whether or not youre getting a challenge

 

If you gimp yourself then its at no loss to anyone else (unless you purposefully make it one)

 

When playing on your home console with friends it might not matter either to a point

 

But this is where things start changing

 

If your friend is weaker than you are and cant score as many points or level up as much they might not be able to keep pace or feel like their effort is being crippled by an unfair advantage. In Competitive games its moreso needed for a game to be balanced for obvious reasons

 

When you enter a game where there are millions of players the amount of balance needed scales tremendously

 

Youve created, whether you want to or not, a competitive PvE environment where players are always trying to move forward for their own gain (and before anyone says it there are players also motivated by team gains who dont care so much about balance but in their case they probably wont care either way unless they want to be overpowered)

 

Its important to balance frames and weapons with this in mind

 

For frames all of them should be more or less on the same level. Different but equal

 

For weapons you can have various tiers of weaponry that players can progress through with their frames so they feel like theyre growing even after maxing out their frames

 

This creates a good balanced environment that everyone can enjoy

 

To players who say itll ruin your fun

 

It wont

 

If the only reason youre having fun in warframe is your ability to destroy tons of enemies at the push of a button or because you cant be hurt then youre not playing the game the way it was meant to be played

 

If you believe that thats the only way you can have fun and that frames will no longer be fun once theyre in line with other frames all on an equal standing then this just isnt the right game for you.

 

Its not meant to be that, it never has been and never will be

 

Its a great game

 

Enjoy it for what it is and help it grow

 

This thread is open to all discussion of balance and hopefully will remain respectful and productive

[Archistopheles]

Speaking of beating a dead horse...

[VegetableBasket]

Why so many line breaks?

But yes the game needs to be less forgiving. Running in front of an enemy instead of flanking them should kill you, falling down a pit should kill you, not blocking should kill you, not dodging should kill you, most things should brutally murder you and push players towards being a space ninja and not a space deity with a machine gun. The normal gameplay should feel a bit more like conclave towards the later levels, mega intense and unforgiving.

 

Plus Nova was made better by the changes, I don't know where people get off saying she was nerfed.

Edited May 25, 2014 by VegetableBasket

[DudeManThingDude]

They are balanced when it comes to opinion and iron skin is not that good plus blessing was nerfed and nova is not the only frame that can clear maps

[Azawarau]

Speaking of beating a dead horse...

I didnt notice the irony

 

Why so many line breaks?

But yes the game needs to be less forgiving. Running in front of an enemy instead of flanking them should kill you, falling down a pit should kill you, not blocking should kill you, not dodging should kill you, most things should brutally murder you and push players towards being a space ninja and not a space deity with a machine gun. The normal gameplay should feel a bit more like conclave towards the later levels, mega intense and unforgiving.

 

Plus Nova was made better by the changes, I don't know where people get off saying she was nerfed.

I have a really hard time reading large chunks of text (bad eyesight)

 

I love the changes theyve made

 

Every single one is great

 

Though that speed buff on nova im not sure about yet

 

Going to find out whenever i get back to ranking her up

 

They are balanced when it comes to opinion and iron skin is not that good plus blessing was nerfed and nova is not the only frame that can clear maps

Well opinion can be very different from person to person

 

Popular opinion and basic balance design along with some common sense are really what should determine balance

 

I could say Soul punch is the best skill in the game and mean it, someone could agree with me

 

It doesnt make it true and its certainly a hard point to defend

 

Moist would agree that thats wrong

 

It might be perfect for one person but for most ..... Its not that good

 

TL;DR

 

 

"balance is important, because challenge is important. the game being PvE is not an excuse"

 

 

More or less

Edited May 26, 2014 by Azawarau

[(PSN)luminousvoid26]

I will just copy and paste what I put on one of these other countless threads and see what people think of the idea.

 

Many veteran players think that the only way to play the game is high level defense and survival. They don't even care about any other aspect of the game often and all of their complaints with "nerfing" is related to it's use in high level content. The problem lies in that a huge chunk of players are new and the same aspects making these high level missions easier makes every other area of the game insanely easy.

 

The  only true solution is to provide extremely high level content for the players that desire it with the proper mod/ability customization to still do some real damage with all of the balanced weapons/frames. But, the issue with that is that since all mods are able to be traded that anyone with money can buy max rank mods and breeze through the game and annoy those around them.

 

What I believe would help is a multifaceted approach. Creating difficult levels selectable in the options menu along with a matchmaking system that puts players together based on mastery level or conclave rating for public matches. Each difficulty level would scale mods/abilities/weapons slightly differently to account for the changes. Someone playing on hard or very hard difficulty would be starting with high level enemies and have slightly stronger equipment and be matched with similar players. It would likely be extremely difficult to implement and require a lot of feedback/balancing ideas but I cannot think of another way to do this than partitioning the community into difficulty levels to work with the extreme variance in playstyle and power of their loadouts.

[sixmille]

Nova got a buff and so did trinity. Now nova can make infested spawn run faster in vauban's vortex and trinity can still make her team play in god mode with the right mods and weapons. I The attempt to balance the game has failed but I feat nothing will change before a very long time.

Edited May 25, 2014 by sixmille

[zavienh5]

im not gonna read that

[Azawarau]

Nova got a buff and so did trinity. Now nova can make infested spawn run faster in vauban's vortex and trinity can still make her team play in god mode with the right mods and weapons. I The attempt to balance the game has failed but I feat nothing will change before a very long time.

Not to mention Blind rage + Trinity E Vamping in a party is a casters dream

 

im not gonna read that

TL;DR

 

Balance is very important

[MechNexus]

Sometimes I think that half of warframe's balance problems can be fixed by sticking a bloody cooldown on abilities.

[WhisperByte]

The problem with WF's balance is that the DEvs aren't committing to it. 

 

There are no defined tiers. There are no set power baselines. We can't provide ACCURATE feedback on balancing because we aren't given enough information and we have to rely on our gut feeling to determine what's OP/UP/Balanced.

It's especially problematic since different players use different metrics for that "gut feeling". One player might be using T3D wave 50 to assess the performance of our gear while another uses Pluto for that

 

And DEvs don't seem to care about balance as it takes away resources from developing content that would sustain the development of the game

Majority of the community don't seem to care about balance because they play WF just to blow S#&$ up

[Cwierz]

 

-Its fair because theres still a chance to die

 

Having come from recently playing the games from the souls franchise, I must say this argument is literally making me cringe. 

Do people honestly think this way? Because you have the chance of dying its balanced?

Gamers these days need to grow a spine, maybe thats why people consider the souls franchise so x-treme dif-cult nerf nao 2hard. Honestly, if this is actually an argument that has been made on the forums, I am afraid that DE made the wrong move taking feedback from this community seriously.

[HillsAndTheSea]

The problem with WF's balance is that the DEvs aren't committing to it. 

 

There are no defined tiers. 

 

except the dev's already stated their defined tiers.

 

easy (1-12)

medium (13-24

hard (25-38)

 

you are officially at the end of balance, once enemies hit level 40. (this is also the level cap)

and if you are using survival and defense, then 20 mintues/20 waves is the end.

 

the community just wants endless gamemodes to be balanced because there is more loot that way, they would rather the game be balanced for 50 minutes of survival because you get more exp and more chances for rewards that way.

 

the mission feedback survey said that to the majority of the community, challenge only comes 2nd to reward, hence we have no challenging content.

[Azawarau]

except the dev's already stated their defined tiers.

 

easy (1-12)

medium (13-24

hard (25-38)

 

you are officially at the end of balance, once enemies hit level 40. (this is also the level cap)

and if you are using survival and defense, then 20 mintues/20 waves is the end.

 

the community just wants endless gamemodes to be balanced because there is more loot that way, they would rather the game be balanced for 50 minutes of survival because you get more exp and more chances for rewards that way.

 

the mission feedback survey said that to the majority of the community, challenge only comes 2nd to reward, hence we have no challenging content.

Id like them to be more defined in a way

 

Frames and weapons tier locked a bit more to show progress

 

Rather than grabbing a prime and jumping right into end game...

[HillsAndTheSea]

Id like them to be more defined in a way

 

Frames and weapons tier locked a bit more to show progress

 

Rather than grabbing a prime and jumping right into end game...

 

the only way to "grab a prime and jump into endgame" is to buy all your content, and that is making a conscious effort to skip progress, so im not exactly sure what your point is.

 

and there are already frames and weapons locked by tier. its called the mastery system.

[Azawarau]

the only way to "grab a prime and jump into endgame" is to buy all your content, and that is making a conscious effort to skip progress, so im not exactly sure what your point is.

 

and there are already frames and weapons locked by tier. its called the mastery system.

Its not enough as is though

 

Board prime has a mastery limit of 2 and is considered the most powerful damage dealing weapon in the game (situationally,Ogris and such)

 

Latron prime is high tier and has a mastery of 0

 

I could go on longer but you get what i mean?

Edited May 26, 2014 by Azawarau

[HillsAndTheSea]

Its not enough as is though

 

Board prime has a mastery limit of 2 and is considered the most powerful damage dealing weapon in the game (situationally,Ogris and such)

 

Latron prime is high tier and has a mastery of 0

 

I could go on longer but you get what i mean?

 

no i dont get what you mean, unless you are trying to say the only thing that can stop a player from making a new account and getting endgame gear is mastery, which i would have to disagree with that entirely.

 

prime gear doesnt necessarily have the mastery requirements because it already has very heavy RNG requirements.

 

i was just stating that the mastery system does exist and locks you off from certain equipment. you cannot just start a new account and craft rhino/soma for example.

[Azawarau]

no i dont get what you mean, unless you are trying to say the only thing that can stop a player from making a new account and getting endgame gear is mastery, which i would have to disagree with that entirely.

 

prime gear doesnt necessarily have the mastery requirements because it already has very heavy RNG requirements.

 

i was just stating that the mastery system does exist and locks you off from certain equipment. you cannot just start a new account and craft rhino/soma for example.

Thats true

 

But you can still make some deadly weapons early on

 

Looking at it now...  most weapons are mastery locked

 

I really just flew trough those beginner ranks i guess

[ChinaTercel]

Honestly... tl;dr

[HillsAndTheSea]

Honestly... tl;dr

 

"balance is important, because challenge is important. the game being PvE is not an excuse"

[ADJCENT]

Reading that was painful, worse than a wall of text. Also, anyone who says balance is not important in a PVE game obviously likes to abuse unbalanced weapons/gear.

[Azawarau]

"balance is important, because challenge is important. the game being PvE is not an excuse"

TL:DRd it

 

Reading that was painful, worse than a wall of text. Also, anyone who says balance is not important in a PVE game obviously likes to abuse unbalanced weapons/gear.

Im pro balance so im hoping you didnt think i was on the opposite side