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

[Innocent_Flower]

Notionphil, I'd like to throw in the following concepts; 

 

 

You can increase the rate of fire, clip size and ammo counter

 

Ellemental mods affect weapons differently. For instance with the Ignis you should be able to completely convert 100% damage to another element, whilst the max amount of conversion for physical projectiles would be much lower (maybe a max of 65%?) and that a small amount of damage wouldn't be converted but rather in addition. 

 

All mods that convert damage to slash/punc/impact are vastly more effective on guns and explosives. 

 

 

If serration were to remain at ten levels; maximum serration/hornet strike would give you somewhere between +40% and +75%

Edited June 16, 2014 by Innocent_Flower

[notionphil]

Notionphil, I'd like to throw in the following concepts; 

 

 

You can increase the rate of fire, clip size and ammo counter

 

Ellemental mods affect weapons differently. For instance with the Ignis you should be able to completely convert 100% damage to another element, whilst the max amount of conversion for physical projectiles would be much lower (maybe a max of 65%?) and that a small amount of damage wouldn't be converted but rather in addition. 

 

All mods that convert damage to slash/punc/impact are vastly more effective on guns and explosives. 

 

 

If serration were to remain at ten levels; maximum serration/hornet strike would give you somewhere between +40% and +75%

 

I agree 10000000% percent with elemental mods converting the majority of damage not increasing it. That one change alone will do much more to fix WF than any other single change.

 

I rallied for that before damage 2.0 and again after damage 2.0's release...and I probably will start another thread about it someday.

[Phatose]

Meh.  The only way I could get behind that change is if it wasn't 1:1, ie 2 points fire damage for 1 point physical, or if the damage were smart, and only changed the damage type on enemies that would take more damage from the elemental type.  With the varying resistances against damage types, a conversion type would be a trade-off of damage vs 1 enemy type against another.  It doesn't need to be a huge net plus, but I do expect it should be an increase.

 

You could probably make two changes and flatten the power curve instantly. 

 

1: base damage mods don't effect the damage addition on other mods.  So, a +210% damage mod gives you +210% damage, but doesn't turn your 90% elemental damage+ into a +189% elemental damage.

 

2: The extra shots from multishot do not gain damage from other mods.  Any shot beyond the first does base damage only.

 

Those two changes alone would eliminate multiplicative stacking, essentially dropping maximum power from 70x to around 10x in one swoop.  Base damage and multishot mods would take a significant hit to their utility - but base damage mods on primaries and secondaries at least would remain the single biggest bonus you can get, so as to not totally devalue them.

[taiiat]

hohoho. here's a thought.

 

the 'Difficulty' stat on Missions, instead of only controlling average Enemy Spawns and a few other background things for the Dungeonmaster - also have that 1-5 dictate 'Enemy states'. 

meaning that 'state 1' Enemies would be less of a threat than 'state 5'. basically, instead of levels from 1 to 1,000,000,000, we'd have set increments so Enemies in certain Missions would be in a higher 'state' and have some scaling applied to them.

 

nothing huge, but enough so you'd notice a real difference. 

 

 

so in other words, let's say, the starting Sector on a Planet, a... Spy Mission. a practical introductory Missions to a Planet, going in and collecting some information all quiet like.

this Mission would have 'state 1', and then perhaps Enemies would be the equivalent of lv5.

 

as you progress through that Planet, and you escalate further and further, to the Survivals and Defenses, which would be state 3/4, and finally to the Assasination Mission which would be state 5. 

 

 

stack this with Enemies being able to have some differences between Planets - such as we do now, but with less 'levels' and more 'escalation' - and we'd be able to have Enemies that play relatively equally in all situations, but would make themselves a fair bit more impeding as the Missions escalate, and such.

 

 

 

oh, yeah, and see what i did there? organizing Gamemodes to make an appropriate storyline so there's some sense of direction as you play Warframe. rather than seemingly random Missions.

if every Gamemode is preferably represented on each Planet, make it fit into the 'storyline'. don't just butcher things to make it all fit, make the things you want to fit fit inside the current 'storyline'.

 

 

it's not difficult to accomplish many goals at the same time! we don't need a 'N 37.5.0' complete overhaul of one small piece of the game all the time, when you can kill half a dozen birds with one stone since you're editing things anyways, and might as well do it right so you don't need to undo all of your work when something else even slightly related needs some polishing.

[Phatose]

That sounds cool to me, but I'm not sure how exactly that relates to our current enemy scaling vs player scaling problems.

[Ryjeon]

City of Heroes worked somewhat like this. Missions and party members were scaled to be in relevant levels to one another. And enemy groups had different pack types depending on the level range. For example "Circle of Thorns" would have generic mage packs for the first 10 levels. Then it would have Firey themed packs for levels 10-20. Then Earth themed packs for level 20-30. So different enemy groups could pose very different challenges depending on what range of missions you were doing. It played wonderfully and I hope to find more games that scaled as smoothly.

[UnknownBlademaster]

WF is already easy enough. Just because you can't one-shot some higher level enemies doesn't mean they need to be buffed. Stop crying and think about it before you make a thread like this. It just trashes up the forums.

[DSMK2]

I... Kinda wanna keep my god powers.

 

*hides his mods*

 

Though this is pretty much want I want to see in Warframe, it still feels kinda weird to me when a Grineer Elite Lancer from a low level planet is able to do more damage to me on another... With the same gun! Orokin influence?

 

Instead of increasing levels, different difficulty settings which affects what enemy types to spawn (hard spawns a lot more Grineer soldiers who have better tools to fight Tenno... Troopers with Drakgoons), and not to forget, what kind of mission environment to create (hard missions have more hazards to cross or special "rooms" with some sort of challenge).

[JoAziraya]

I've been playing Warframe for about a month or two now. While I'm definitely not completely geared, I can certainly hold my own for the first 25-30 minutes of a normal survival mission without too much of a problem. I just put a second forma into a Sybaris, and soon to be a third (and eventually fourth). My Serration is nowhere near maxed, but I have the solid foundations of a crit build with quite a few of the fancy rare mods. My opinion is coming from someone who is just now freshly stepping from lower players and getting my first peeks at what it feels to be godlike.

 

At this point in my play, I feel unsettled. I see myself swapping out my beloved Swift Hands for the generic damage mods as soon as my weapons have enough rank for it. Yeah, it makes my numbers bigger than I've seen before and that's a thrill but it doesn't really do anything for my actual enjoyment of the game. Putting on Swift Hands and seeing the difference makes me much happier than the difference a damage mod makes, but with how the progression system is now I'm forced to put in damage anyway. I'll play with a newer teammate and see them struggling while I stomp on everything, barely letting them do anything. I remember that feeling: it sucks. I still know that feeling because despite me nearing the cusp of "ultimate power", I still see people come in and put all of my effort to shame with a laughably easy spray of a Soma. The amount of power between "ultimate" and "almost there" is far too wide. By shortening this gap, newer players feel more useful and the more experienced players can't just look down at them as noobs who only slow them down. You start to see a better community with people saying "You're new? Let me show you something" instead of "You're new? You haven't been blessed by the RNG/grinded enough to come with". Of course there needs to be some content that only the most experienced players can handle, but a new player shouldn't be sitting there feeling like they're not contributing in any way.

 

I don't like the decisions I have to currently make when modding, because right now there is no real choice. I want to make a choice of "Do I want to do 2.5K with a 2 second reload, or do I want to do 2K with a 1.5 second reload?" I want to be able to choose if I want an extra burst in my clip by using Wildfire instead of stacking more and more crit damage. Let me tell you, that extra burst is an immense breath of fresh air! But I have to drop it if I want the "optimal build" to stay useful in end-game content. I don't want to make a choice of "Do I want to do 5K with a 2 second reload, or 2K with a 1.5 second reload?" because with that much of a damage difference paired with how enemies scale in this game it's not really a choice. I want to choose mods in a way that changes how my gun fundamentally works instead of "Bigger numbers = better".

 

Many of the changes proposed/being flushed out in this thread is exactly what I think this game needs. Let's put skill a bit more into the mix instead of "my number lets me murder them". In a survival mission, I want to feel the enemies slowly squeezing me down more and more as I get more desperate. I don't want to be destroying them and then 5 minutes later them laying waste to me because I simply can't do enough damage.

 

TL;DR

If implemented well, changes of this type will, I feel, greatly increase the quality of this game and the overall community at the same time.

[Guest Tehnoobshow]

They were worthless even before event mods.

 

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!

 

More specifically, the Electrical damage for the Amprex (and other pure elemental weapons) is treated as if it were in a 9th mod slot after all other mods. So, if you put an elemental combo that doesn't involve Electric, then there will still be electrical damage left over. But, if you put only a single elemental (such as only Heat mods), it will combine with the base Electric damage of the Amprex (to form Radiation).

[Guest Tehnoobshow]

- Moar (short) cooldowns or energy rebalancing. 

 

- Small power resistances, Like effects lasting for a shorter duration on certain enemy types.

 

One interesting one I thought of that'd happen with powers like rhino stomp and bastille would be that at somepoint during floatation the enemy remember how to shoot, even whilst they're floating. 

 

Eximus Opponents that can remove the effects of powers from their allies. 

How about putting target limits on any AoE ability, like Terrify? That way nukes will still result in guaranteed kills, but won't clear rooms.

[Marthrym]

I'm in favor of any system that gets rid of the current scaling...

 

And is better of course.^^

[Doforcash]

so is the different between long term/hardcore mission and easy mission is just Elites enemy and some new Eximus ?

 

and how could people that just *cough*wasted*cough* they entire Fusion core on Serration/Honest Strike mod to approve this ?

 

Edit: Secretly i just donated a like for u, but would be nice if u can explain this to me, thank (^.^)b

Edited September 10, 2014 by Doforcash

[Liacu]

I don't want to remove levels entirely but I do wish the game's progression was scaled back a bit. (i.e, deal 5x damage at end-game instead of 50x like it is now) This would better alleviate the issues we have with high level players one shotting everything, even bosses.

 

Also this is one helluva necro post.

Edited September 10, 2014 by Liacu

[Acidtrees]

I agree with the OP on both counts.

 

Monster levels are a small problem to me. They seem out of place for a fast paced shooter because making monsters take 5x more bullets to kill isn't content and it doesn't add fun. Other fast paced shooters don't mess with monster health when you raise the difficulty for this reason. And there's already tiers of enemies, it's not even strictly necessary in Warframe to scale monsters up. Why am I still fighting fodder on Pluto, just use higher tier monsters more.

 

The bigger problem though is definitely the power creep of mods. Unmodded guns do -okay- in the starter areas, but they're fun to use and that's what counts. As you mod, and catalyst, and forma, your gun power starts to go up exponentially. What starts out as a weapon that fight off a few enemies but not 30+ ends up very quickly being a gun that can one shot literally every non-boss outside of endless missions, and it makes a joke out of bosses too. It makes the vast, vast majority of this game (the non-endless modes) face rolling easy mode. This is boring, and bad, and a problem IMO. The mods need retooling. They should add more horizontal upgrades, maybe with a drawback, rather than something that makes regular combat trivial.

[Xeo_Nespydonum]

It's interesting, but I'm pretty happy with the system we've got.  The only thing that bothers me is the ridiculous armor scaling far into endless missions, even that is easy to deal with with a Corrosive Projection squad.  I suppose it does make the meta a bit shallow for late game though.  It's an interesting idea that could use some testing.

[Whatarewordsworth]

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.

 

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. 

This last suggestion about combining damage and utility is actually really cool. I love the idea of different ammo types for guns. Imagine being able to swap from split-shot to high-caliber bullets on the fly to accommodate different situations in battle!!! Need to mow down some grunts? use frag rounds. Need to get rid of high-armor heavies? use armor piercing. Of course, ammo of each type should be limited and perhaps only a certain number of types can be brought into battle as part of a loadout. The problem is, we'd be asking DE for what would effectively be Damage 3.0. 

Edited September 10, 2014 by Whatarewordsworth

[DSpite]

WF is already easy enough. Just because you can't one-shot some higher level enemies doesn't mean they need to be buffed. Stop crying and think about it before you make a thread like this. It just trashes up the forums.

 

Why did you continue this thread if you are trying to avoid "trashing the forums"? It was MONTHS old.

 

AND of all things, an IF thread. Double whammy.

[Guest Tehnoobshow]

So much easier than balancing weapons.

[saltshaker42]

Yes! Please!

 

I was about to suggest to make the enemies cap off at 30 instead of not level at all, but this is pretty much exactly the same thing. As a veteran in both the game, and the forums (yea, yea my post count. I don't have to reply to everything I read), I have to say that this is needed BADLY.

 

Since the beginning of time - as I know it - (around U7) people have been asking for more challenging content, and a better progression system. We've all been craving a challenge, and so far DE hasn't given this to us properly. They band-aid it with infinitely scaling enemies, and cheap enemy tactics like knockdown, grapple, 100% instant energy drain, and poison.

 

While the core gameplay of the game remains broken, more and more content is piled on. We're essentially building a house on a broken foundation (a sink hole if you can't accept that the foundation can be arbitrarily "broken"). The house looks very nice. Not just the exterior, but the interior as well! We enjoy this house, and DE does too. They knock down walls to expand rooms. Add new rooms. Maybe a pool or 2. Maybe 3. A lovely greenhouse. Another pool.

However, the more they add to the house, the more they'll have to take apart, break, and ultimately need to fix again when it comes time to fix the foundation. Unless they don't fix the foundation, in which case everything will come tumbling down anyway. Despite their best efforts to fix it. Duct tape, and string can only go so far.

 

As of right now, most of the newer players in my clan are asking me which warframe they should choose, and things like that. I tell them they should pick the warframe they love to play as most. Some are determined - dead set on making even the most useless frames passable for end game. Damage frames that fall short in content past level 40. Why do I have to crush their dreams? That's something a warlord should never have to do, but I have to do it. Only a handful of warframes are actually useful, and it just breaks my heart. A beautiful idea such as this - and others like it are required if we don't wanna crush the dreams of new players when we have to tell them they can't play their favorite frame. We don't need "OP," "UP," or useless warframes and weapons.

 

In a perfect world, only mk1 weapons are useless.

 

please keep this thread alive!

[-SLX-J3tAc3]

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 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 bank account, obviously. 

 

 

I wish you'd make a space game, Innocent_Flower. I'd really like to play that one!

[Narfanar]

Honestly, honestly, reading threads like this just make me depressed because it isn't already in the game.