What If The Enemy Didn't Have Levels And Nobody Was Op?

[Innocent_Flower]

I Think warframe's mix of fast paced shooter gameplay with such a strong progression system is a bit detrimental. A third of the time the enemy are just right. The second third is where the enemy are far too easy and the other third of the time the enemy is just too strong. Progression in warframe is clunky and although I don't suggest we get rid of it entirely I do propose that we neuter it a bit. 

 

Warframe could become more fun if: 

 

 

- The health and damage of the enemy didn't change. Lancers around mercury would be just as strong as lancers around jupiter. There might be more Elite lancers in the ranks towards the end game, but the regular lancers health and damage would remain the mostly same. 

 

- At the most, Mods could make a weapon two and a half times more powerful, and that's if you set the elemental damage to specificaly target one type of enemy. On the other hand this'd make weapon tradeoffs more interesting. No longer are you whacking on serration, multishot and four ellemental mods for every single rifle owned. Instead you're more likely to use reload, extra ammo, larger clip size , rate of fire changes. Serration would still exist, but it'd be less effective each level. elemental damage mods would convert damage rather than add it and multishot mods would either cost damage and accuracy or cost more bullets. 

 

- The same would be true for warframes. Redirection and vitality would still exist, but they'd affect the game less (remember; Enemies are doing a set amount of damage, so you're not going to need over a thousand shields for hard void games) One great thing that comes from all this is that offensive powers will forever be usefull. Fireball or slash dash would still be valid attacks in the late game. 

 

on harder missions, the enemy use more units and give units more abilities. For Examples:

- Elite variants take the place of a portion of regular variants. (elite lancer, elite crewman, elite seeker, elite tech, heavy anti moa, heavy shield osprey, toxic primordeal) 

- The enemy 'unlock' abilities. Butchers can sidestep, seeker mines hunt down and reveal invisible tenno, moa become more foolhardy and charge in more agressively,  

- More opponents that work on a tactical level. Like an eximus unit who can heal/buff. an eximus that can remove debuffs from allies.  or an osprey that grants it's allies some degree of multishot. 

 

 

Got progression, got difficulty, Far more friendly for new players and more captivating for the old ones, Initially it'd be difficult but In the long run it'd be easier to balance. Plus we'd be able to spend less time customising gear if we didn't want to. 

 

 

 

 

It's better for:

New players. 

Casual players

Long term players. Since it'd make regular gameplay more fun. 

Hardcore players, because it'd make leveling items feel more natural. You wouldn't need to regulate what map you play by your gear. 

DE, since warframe get a bigger playerbase. 

Everyone who likes balance. 

Everyone who likes being OP, because there'd still be builds that could make you op, you'd just need to be more clever in obtaining them.

 

 

Who wouldn't this be good for? 

 

My wallet and bank account, obviously. 

 

 

Edited October 29, 2014 by Innocent_Flower

[OptimumBow0]

I can't say it's good or bad.

 

Someone get a smart person to look at this, ASAP!

[CBAROG]

Hmm, interesting. But 

 

Someone get a smart person to look at this, ASAP!

[Nagisawa]

We would have a space version of Call of Duty.

 

Pass.

[Innocent_Flower]

We would have a space version of Call of Duty.

 

Pass.

That's sarcasm right? 

[Krion112]

This is seriously the way to go, and not the ranking system we have right now. You want our enemies to be harder in the long run? Don't just have their arbitrary number above their name get bigger and say they have more health, armor, shields, and damage. Instead, introduce harder units. Make more difficult units more common and introduce even harder ones, like you say. And the little guys should get new abilities as the players progress.

 

This is honestly how I feel difficulty should scale, not the arbitrary ranks for the enemies we have now. Of course rank still exists, but it shouldn't say "Hmm, my number is bigger, therefore my health, shields, armor, and damage increase," it should progress as introducing new abilities on old units and introducing harder new enemies the further you get.

 

And like you say, it makes mods a little more balanced. You could start seeing ammo capacity, reload speed, and damage mods used on even ground, and we could still feel god-like one-shotting the small enemies but it should take thinking and skill to take down bigger targets. It's the satisfaction thing; It's not fun to kill everyone in one shot, but it is fun to kill bunches of small guys and then turn and have to intelligently take on a big guy.

 

I feel like reworking the rank system to match this style of enemy progression would be much more efficient, quite a bit more satisfactory, and would be a lot more easily balanced than it is now.

[notionphil]

this is an interesting topic, i will think more about it and put some thoughts together on what it would mean for WF

[SockBadger]

To John Lennon's Imagine:

 

Imagine they're no planets, nothing above us but sky.

 

Imagine they're no levels, between us nothing but equals.

 

Imagine all the people... living just for mods... ooh ooh!

 

But seriously it's not a bad idea, you would just have to run a seperate closed beta with a small number of frames, weapons and enemies to test the initial concept. Then if it could potentially work tweak (rather than twerk) the other factors of the game so that enemy difficulty progression, the impact of mods accross the board made worthy differences. Not to mention loot drop tables. The point is that places like the void are meant to be difficult, if they lost that due to balance changes, the void wouldn't be special.

 

I suppose as DE have themselves admitted, balancing enemy ai, difficulty and ability is one of the most challenging things they face. As many threads also attest, not every decision to change the enemies difficulty or ways of approach are met warmly by the community.

[Mokkania]

 

feel like you're asking for another game altogether

 

 

Overall it's somewhat nice but it'd need the game to have more diversity since less progression mean you need something else to compensate (special missions, modes, quests etc...)

But for rebalancing and killing the overpowering mode it's nice though maybe too simplified

 

as a possible idea for DE, not impossible but the current trend I see is that since they are focused on their "content" they usually take the easy path and don't touch too much certain core problems.

Not impossible that when they think they'll have added every things they wanted for the game they go for some global rebalance ; not impossible in X time

Edited June 14, 2014 by Mokkania

[Noobstein]

I wouldn't play that game. I would in stead play what I love most: Warframe!

[Nagisawa]

I wouldn't play that game. I would in stead play what I love most: Warframe!

I like WF, I mean it's not perfect, and I wish some things would be very different, but this game is the one I want.

 

I want to be a Warrior God, I want to be able to mow down hundreds of minor soldiers.  But a challenge, in the form of a Boss is also appreciated.

[-Scourge]

so you're saying that to make harder enemies they will have to make new enemies at different levels?

 

hell yes! while it might be too much work i think it's definitely worth it. as it gives different enemy types the unique-ness they deserve.

[Warriorrogue]

feel like you're asking for another game altogether

This. You seems to want to remove one of the basic essences of WF, and insert a diffferent one. Pass.

[Innocent_Flower]

But it's the worst essence of warframe. It excludes new players, it degrades the rest of the gameplay by making it 'all about da grind'  and furthermore: it isn't realy important to warframe. You can be a space ninja demigod with balance you know! 

I can't say it's good or bad.

 

Someone get a smart person to look at this, ASAP!

I wouldn't have thought so, but you're looking to be right. 

Edited June 14, 2014 by Innocent_Flower

[Lost_Cartographer]

Why are people acting like this is the first time this idea has been brought up?

 

Any FPS progression game that focuses more on the horizontal progression aspect as opposed to the sheer vertical aspect (and Warframe is so vertical any horizontal is essentially lost) has greater customization, nor does it render prior content obsolete AND it stays skill based.  If you get into Zombies Monsters Robots' beta (or play the dozens of foreign released incarnations if you can manage it like I did before region blocks went up everywhere) take a look at how that works.  Weapons don't grow more powerful, enemies do however, but that's in relation to the difficulty the player opts to play at.  This same concept is applied to just about every other FPS out there in fact.

 

You all have been feeling it for a while.  You max out serration, split chamber, your elemental mods of choice, get all the formas on your Soma/ogris/whatever, and then you start one shotting everything while brushing off their rounds like a gentle breeze until the XY minute mark where they just simply overwhelm you with statistics.  At this point, the only thing that could introduce real customization options are more nightmare and corrupted mods.

 

I wouldn't say we're too late for Warframe to change its approach to modding, but the modding system itself very unlikely it will change... much like anything else that is fairly broken.  However, the Secret Shipment event showed us one possible solution in mobs with greater damage output but small to reasonable quantities of health to change things up a bit.  No use hitting something with 5000 damage in a single bullet when all it takes is 3000 damage, and likewise, what good is redirection if it only affords ~5-6 rounds of life and there are two dozen guys shooting at you instead of the standard six to eight?  Suddenly, extended mags, faster reloads, and even faster shield recharge rates become a little more valuable to keep on killing while avoiding dying.

Edited June 14, 2014 by Littleman88

[SPiRALFACToR]

i want what your smoking OP.

must be pretty good.

[Krion112]

This. You seems to want to remove one of the basic essences of WF, and insert a diffferent one. Pass.

 

I wouldn't play that game. I would in stead play what I love most: Warframe!

 

feel like you're asking for another game altogether

All of these statements are untrue: the difficulty progression in a game, though very important, is only one mechanic of a game. And right now, the difficulty scaling we have in Warframe right now is not optimal. Its the games worst essence right now, alongside RNG walls built with RNG walls.

[DaWolv]

As I said here:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/242928-new-content-with-a-side-of-nerf-please/

 

Most of the fun of Warframe gets sucked out of it, because you have to either not be challanged at all, or endure seemingly "endless" waves of enemies before they get "difficult".

And they only get difficult because they have BS-mechanics like:

 "Come into my arbitrary radius and all your energy will be gone."

(That is the only Eximus I have respect for, since he's the only one that can stop a well equipped team!)

 

All of the players that are rooting for a progression system like the one we have right now are, in my humble opinion, not really out to have fun: They are chasing carrots on a stick. Warframes problem is, instead of cutting all carrots to the same lenth and slowly but surely getting rid of them, they keep adding bigger and more tasty carrots for you to chase after.

 

 

Most recent problem: T4 is only obtainable through Interception.

Newsflash: INTERCEPTION IS BORING!

T4 Interception is fun, and the one on Ceres is ok, but if you want a T4 Exterminate key you need to go to the lower ones...you know..

those that never spawn more than 3 enemies at once.

Also the keys are a joke: Why can't we have a token system already? Do higher level missions-> get more tokens.

That way I wouldn't have to bore myself to death obtaining T1 Survivals and then bore myself to death playing T1 Survival for the off-chance of getting a Loki Chassis drop...

 

*takeasipofJägermeister*

I'm clam now.. I'm calm...

Seriously, though - this stuff is driving me insane!

[Innocent_Flower]

this is an interesting topic, i will think more about it and put some thoughts together on what it would mean for WF

I'm awaiting some kind of epic response 5 pages long. I expect nothing less. 

[SableSonata]

It would be an improvement. The most fun I had in Warframe was when I was just getting new mods and I had cool things like bigger magazines, faster reloads, faster fire rate, and a little bit of extra damage.

 

Now I just slap the exact same mods on virtually every weapon because the game's idea of difficulty is more health and more armour. I have no meaningful choice in mods because in order to keep up with the enemy health, I have to use specific mods. Damage mods, in particular.

 

Similarly, status effects are pointless. No one picks elements because they like the status effects; they pick them for the arbitrary bonus damage. It would be better if elemental mods added stronger status effects, rather than just more damage, and only weapons with innate elemental damage would get the bonus damage for said element.

 

Plus, there's a distinct lack of interesting utility mods; most are underpowered for their cost, and the few that aren't are still far less useful than damage/elemental mods. Would like things like ricochet, split-shot (turns regular shots into shotgun-spread), slug (shotguns into single-projectile), seeking (near misses hit instead), homing (projectiles follow the reticle like Antimatter Drop), and various dual-stat mods that have a benefit and (small) penalty. 

[Cwierz]

I have always liked ideas like this.  There are a lot of ideas in this forum that if combined would create a much better alternative to what we have now.

I would personally like for mods as a whole to be near-scrapped, this form of progression added, balancing of all of the content in the game, followed by mods being re-introduced as actual customization, followed by a huge project of adding true enemy diversity. (IE: Each enemy has unique mechanics, instead of holding a different weapon and having a different set of health/armor/shields with a new texture slapped on)

[DaWolv]

Similarly, status effects are pointless. No one picks elements because they like the status effects; they pick them for the arbitrary bonus damage. It would be better if elemental mods added stronger status effects, rather than just more damage, and only weapons with innate elemental damage would get the bonus damage for said element.

 

Status effects are only worthless because (as of recent) the mods that could get you to a status chance with a limited amount of weapons that was considered desireable were only obtainable through events!

The standart status mods need a buff so hard!

 

Check this out:

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Damage_2.0/Viral_Damage

 

"Viral reduces a target's max health by 50% for 6 seconds and does not stack after Update 12. If the target's current health is more than the new maximum: current health will be lowered to meet the new maximum. The lost health for meeting the new maximum is not returned when viral expires."

 

 

On my Amprex I have a build with 60.3 Electrical and 90.5 Viral Damage at 66,8% Status/Sec. - which is, I think, the highest you can get.

That particular build is not that big of a deal in early game, but in late game, where "half health" can mean up to 20k health - this thing is arguably the best DPS you will ever get!

 

(EDIT: I'm not using the regular status chance mod in this build yet, because frankly it doesn't do much to make me consider it)

Edited June 15, 2014 by DaWolv

[CBAROG]

Status effects are only worthless because (as of recent) the mods that could get you to a status chance with a limited amount of weapons that was considered desireable were only obtainable through events!

They were worthless even before event mods.

 

On my Amprex I have a build with 60.3 Electrical and 90.5 Viral Damage 

How do you have pure Electrical and Viral on Amprex? You get Magnetic and Toxin or Corrosive and Cold. No way to keep pure Electrical and get Viral.

[DaWolv]

 

 

How do you have pure Electrical and Viral on Amprex? You get Magnetic and Toxin or Corrosive and Cold. No way to keep pure Electrical and get Viral.

 

Nope! Only when you add an Electricity Mod will it combine with what else you got on there. I only have Toxic and Cold Damage on there and it forms Viral. The electrical damage is the standart damage on the Amprex. Try it out!

[GodOfSuperWheat]

Truthfully, I like the idea. Tying health to enemies rather than to an arbitrary level would make progression feel a lot more significant. Feeling like a badass on Mercury becomes fairly irrelevant when I fight the same enemies and get murdered on other planets. This would require a major overhaul as well. Mods, enemies, enemy behavior, weapons, abilities, everything. That's a large undertaking.

That being said, I also feel this being a murder machine is a bit destructive to the game. There's such a focus on it that everything else seems to be put aside. Due to that, the game doesn't feel progressive and all the enemies just blend together. Some people would attribute that to all enemy AI being so similar, and that could definitely add to that feeling.

Going on a completely different note, even if my feelings are completely off-base and dumb (they may be) the game is too far along to change I believe. With the in-game marketplace put into place now I doubt the developers will do any more mod overhauls. It could very easily anger the playerbase. Not to say they wouldn't gain more players or have a better game in changing it, just that I sincerely doubt they would agree to do so.