Epic's Take On The Dev Steam 'gun Shot's Fired Banter'

[HeelSouls]

So Basically in the Stream a topic, this one to be precise https://forums.warfr...on-of-warframe/ was discussed and what Steve had so say shocked some while others agreed with his opinion.

 

Personally, I believe Steve was right in what he said to a large degree however I don't believe Zamboni is wrong, just that he is barking up the wrong tree. The main issue with warframe's progression is how easy it is for veteran players yet how difficult it is for newer players. Zamboni stated that No skill was required for Warframe which got Steve a bit heated which I can understand as this game does require skill. The points at which this skill is required is very extreme however while there seems to be no middle ground.

 

Early players seem to have a difficult time progressing unless they get hold of the 'mandatory mods' which is what makes early game so difficult, like Serration, Split Chamber etc. I wont discuss this as much as with UD14 there is a system deemed to fix this giving early players access to weaker versions of these mods which is a good solution to the problem. However with late game when veteran players, (which I believe Zamboni is) Zamboni is frustrated about how easy it is late game unless you commit to very long runs of survival or defence.  When you have your main damage mods maxed or near max the game becomes very easy unless you start doing 1hour+ Survival on Pluto etc. Or even 50min + T4 survival. This is what players dislike about warframe the lack of difficulty late game and this causes players to leave especially when with the current mod system where there are clear 'cookie cutter' mod set-ups with weapons but not so much warframes themselves. An example of this is if I wanted to do a t4 void mission, I would equip my boltor prime put on corrosive and cold elemental mods and max damage mods purely because its the best damage for the corrupted not because it bears any utility, what Zamboni was trying to say was there is so much possibility for customization but if you use it you make yourself inferior to the mandatory combinations, he believed that a complete revamp of the system was needed but that is far from necessary. Warframe modding however is a bit more varied as there is a lot more customization possibilities between frames like with my Ember prime for example I have to debate if I want lots of damage,less duration and good efficiency or Lots of duration,good efficiency and less range. There is quite a lot of debate about mods like handspring etc as they cost mod space which is extremely valuable to Warframe's particularly but bare little value in game. Personally i believe if you have all your slots polarised you could get a new slot added to your frame as with all these utility mods its hard to find a place for them when you have damage,survivability, duration and efficiency to mod for. 

 

This is my take personally but others may disagree with me. I apologise for any grammar and spelling, I'm very tired you see. :)

[RitaVrataski]

tldr need better line design.

[Sidathe]

We could take damage amping out of the equation entirely. o: See what happens.~

Not entirely certain on how to fiddle with Warframe stuff entirely though. Melee might need some guaranteed effects based on what it is or something. My brain's kind of farting here, so yeah.

 

Edit: Also, from what the last guy said in your first one, split the paragraphs up better. Easier reading. :P

Edited July 4, 2014 by Sidathe

[HeelSouls]

Sorry this topic got posted twice due to a forum bug

[LascarCapable]

Duality strikes again !

 

Merging this one. :p

[nefrai]

Wow, when I read that as "Epic" and "Steam", no wonder this was confusing at first, lol. I need to watch this dev "stream" asap, sounds like I missed all kinds of fun controversy!

Edited July 4, 2014 by nefrai

[GreyEnneract]

Steve completely ignored mod space being a problem.

[Methanoid]

i suggested the following in an oldish thread of mine after trying the new player experience myself and watching my brother in law and cousin play warframe from the beginning (both quit btw, this was during earth lua/eurasia issues).

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/199542-feedback-on-weaponsbase-damage/#entry2319547

^ i felt thsi would have zero impact on vets, and assist new players with no actual change for max'd weapons/mods either way, its no different to the way frames level up so didnt see why weapons cant do the same.

[Sidathe]

Steve completely ignored mod space being a problem.

Or we just need to work on the question to ask. Sentence Structure is everything!

[Yaerion]

Switch teleported from General Discussion.

[WERElektro]

..hm... none of my buisness, but it sounded a lot to me like they've had this discussion before...

[thegamer118]

i too debate on how should i mod my frame, more damage but less efficiency and normal duration or less duration but damage and efficiency 

[beldhan]

Steve completely ignored mod space being a problem.

 

i think actually it's the most bad point in the mods systeme in the game.

as you get more mods, the space you have is often too small for allows real customization. when you try to do higher level mission you need a certain level of power and survivability for be able to face the enemy.

 

let's take the melee weapon, with the stance+the catalyst+ forma, you can reach quite the high level of capacity for your weapon. i take the case of my dragon nikana, only with the catalyst and the stance, i have still 8 point of capacity not used (and i have one mod on the wrong polarity) meaning i loose 2 point of capacity.

 

i think it's bad to have capacity unused on a weapon. instead to put a number of place of mod we can add, why not simply get ride of it, and allow people to use as much mod than the capacity of the weapon allows it?

 

i dunno, don't get me wrong i understand steve point, he is right, sadly, with more of 300 mods and only 8 to 9 slot for weapon and warframe, you have soo little choice actually. because if you play for do some high level content, you need a certain level of damage, efficiency or survivability. (depending of which frame you use) honestly i don't see how make thing better, but the mods space is really hurting at a certain level.

[VKhaun]

Classing RPG/Action game misunderstanding.

 

Some people are playing an RPG, where they have a comfort zone skill level that they do not push beyond. If the game gets 'hard' they feel they need to go get more stats.

 

Some people are playing an action game, where they have a comfort zone skill level that they WANT to be PUSHED beyond. If the game gets 'hard' they feel they need to get more headshots, use cover better, etc... but if that doesn't work then the game is 'broken' or 'grinding' because they need to go back and get strength, or enemies are 'bullS#&$' because they can't negate 100% of them at all times.

 

 

The solution is the same for both: structure.

 

If we had some kind of loadout quantifier like weight/energy/conclave and missions were bracketed with min-max expected ranges (maybe incentive for being within the range) then players would know ahead of time exactly where RPG and skill were supposed to meet. RPG players would understand that they're not supposed to one shot everything with their 4 like it's space wizards. Action gamers would understand that their random low tier weapon with all utility mods isn't supposed to one shot things just because they make one face shot.

Edited July 4, 2014 by VKhaun

[Lost_Cartographer]

Raising difficulty for late game only exacerbates the problem with modding.  People take the best damage output setup, then complain about content being too easy.  The real solution is that people dial back their damage output, but they don't really want to.  You see, the problem isn't that content is too easy, the problem is that people want a difficulty wall they can climb over where others can't.  

 

It's easy enough to remove serration.  There, hardmode enabled.  What isn't provided as a result is this notion that as a player, you're better than those that couldn't pass the mission.  In the back of too many minds the thought is "I'm gimping myself," not "I'm challenging myself."  They're competing with other players, even if they don't consciously recognize that they are doing so.  Truth be told, every mod and item in game can be acquired from 10-15 wave/minute defenses/survivals.  People can intentionally gimp themselves to make those first 15 waves/minutes difficult, they just won't, because they're comparing themselves to others.  So instead they'll keep optimizing their somas and marelok's, while complaining about one shotting everything because apparently they're playing 40+ minutes into a survival simply to be challenged, not because they want the rewards every 5 minutes (seeing the tragic flaw in their argument I'm trying to point out here?)

 

DE would be better off reworking how damage mods and enemy scaling works than just providing tougher and tougher bad guys.  The former approach would ideally open up customization options.  The latter just encourages optimal damage builds even harder.

[Psycomet]

There is a valid reason for serration to be there. Up until recently it was extremely difficult to rank up a serration. That gave players something to do. I remember when I used to do defence farming for cores. At the end of these missions I used to fuse as many as I would get although that would make the meter barely move. Yet, I said to myself, I'd get there someday.

 

Now with the rare5 fiasco that has gone out the window. I got 100 rare5s in a week. This is something the players brought on themselves. DE knew that their game had no established endgame so they kept those serrations there to give players something to do. Players becoming veterans too soon (as I have seen in my own clan), can become quite a problem.

 

Veterans could be a little more constructive than suggesting every now and then that DE throw away the entire core game mechanics and somehow "remake" warframe.

 

OP has been able to get the gist out of Zamboni's post and presented it in a nice way.

 

Just my two cents to some others here: the mod slot limit isn't really a problem, rather a necessary limit. You can't say stuff like "oh okay I'll put that handspring in IF I get a free space to put it in." You have to decide to SACRIFICE something else for it. That's the whole point of it! You wanna put it in well then MAKe sPace for it! Though some mods need serious rework, slot limit is hardly the problem for me. You want to have unlimited slots? Just imagine where that will leave balance...

[Katinka]

[rant]The thing that bugs the hell out of me on this topic is the 'Game is too easy unless you do X time in Defense/Survival' and 'Game requires X mods in guns' arguments. 

 

Step 1:  Take Split Chamber out of your gun.  The game is too easy for you anyway so it's not like you need to double your DPS.

Step 2:  Put in one of the mods you thought you didn't have room for.

 

Oh my F'ING GOD!  We just got the game being harder AND build diversity in two easy steps that we can all choose to do ourselves!  Before anyone says anything like 'Enemies taking longer to kill =/= harder, just more bullet sponges', okay, okay, do the same with your Warframe.  Take out Redirection, take out Vitality, put in Vigor if you want some extra survivability.  Now the game is more difficult because enemies kill you quicker so you have to use terrain and team work and you have some room for different mods.

 

The problem is not the game, the problem is people subscribing to the idea that a mathematically optimum DPS is the be all and end all then complaining that they don't have room for non-damage and the game being too easy because you do so much damage.  If we had more mod space people would just fill it with damage anyway until they learn that sometimes it is better to be able to reload faster or have a larger clip size than it is to be able to one shot an enemy for ten times their maximum health.[/rant]

[Archistopheles]

Look, I mean, DE is a professional game company, but they are still human.

 

If you're going to go in front of a camera and talk to thousands of people, you need to know what questions you're going to be asked.

 

I still to this day do not know why DE doesn't sit down and rebecca give them a run down of which questions are going to be asked - or even just email them the question list.

 

If Steve had responded to the thread Rebecca was talking about instead of just the intro paragraph, the answer would have been better.

[OriKlein]

Skill? Hmm.

From my perspective, having pumped a lot of cheat codes (AKA platinum "abuser"), my experience requires tiny bit to zero skill .
I can cut through most anything with much ease and next to no trouble or effort on my part.
I only want more power. I want the perfect weapon, the perfect setup, more slots so I can create the perfect Ash.
I want to become a solo god to the inferior non-tenno who are beneath me.
For me, it is more about knowing the game enough to not make silly moves that end up getting the team scrapped (going rambo in a defence mission) and the mission failing.

However, playing on my second account as a non-payer, from the perspective of a player who just farms for gear, reactors, catalysts, forma, no additional slots (and assuming no willingness to invest money into the game in order to get some short cuts, such as forma), then I can easily see the game becomes quite the slow-progress, highly depended on personal skill and patience as well as pretty much forced spamming of abilities and strong teamwork for the mission's survival/victory chances..


Best Regards,

[beldhan]

ok, i miss something there... Even Steve have said that is part of the skill how we mods our frame and weapon, right?

and there, you are saying to the people that have a looooot of mods to....downgrade them skill (take out damage on them weapon) for what? diversity?

 

the point? i means, personally i don't have all the mods, but seriously i can't even use them. indeed i can take out some mods for get more specific build... but it's pointless.

 

let's look at the melee weapon, one more time, let's say i want to mods my dragon nikana for be deadly against grineer only. the anti grineer mode for melee add +30% of damage for 9 capacity (when it's maxed). i want you to check up what cost 9 capacity as damage upgrade and check the number. the nightmare mode that increase slash and puncture, for 9 capacity at max, it increase +60% of slash damage and +80% of puncture damage. even the double mods elemental+ %of status is 7 at max for 60% of elemental damage.

why use the increase damage against the grineer, when you have soo little place. please, tell me!

 

and a looot of mods are like this, thrust me i want to have more choice, but i can't have more choice, since i'm limited to 8 mods max! and when you t4 and play ash, like me in full melee (exept for vor actually) you don't have the choice ot increase at the max your damage done by your weapon.

and that not the only mods like this, a lot of easy get mods are outshined by the rare mods, the mods that increase status chance maxed cost 7 capacity and increase the melee status chance of...15%. the dual mode increase of 60% for the same capacity, why use it?

 

i think they need to look at every mods and see if some can't be changed for be more... interesting. a lot of mods, like the one for the parade are useless, try to max the one for the auto parade.... your character will be stuck at chain parade and you can't attack!

[Methanoid]

Switch teleported from General Discussion.

[neKroMancer]

[rant]The thing that bugs the hell out of me on this topic is the 'Game is too easy unless you do X time in Defense/Survival' and 'Game requires X mods in guns' arguments. 

 

Step 1:  Take Split Chamber out of your gun.  The game is too easy for you anyway so it's not like you need to double your DPS.

Step 2:  Put in one of the mods you thought you didn't have room for.

 

Oh my F'ING GOD!  We just got the game being harder AND build diversity in two easy steps that we can all choose to do ourselves!  Before anyone says anything like 'Enemies taking longer to kill =/= harder, just more bullet sponges', okay, okay, do the same with your Warframe.  Take out Redirection, take out Vitality, put in Vigor if you want some extra survivability.  Now the game is more difficult because enemies kill you quicker so you have to use terrain and team work and you have some room for different mods.

 

The problem is not the game, the problem is people subscribing to the idea that a mathematically optimum DPS is the be all and end all then complaining that they don't have room for non-damage and the game being too easy because you do so much damage.  If we had more mod space people would just fill it with damage anyway until they learn that sometimes it is better to be able to reload faster or have a larger clip size than it is to be able to one shot an enemy for ten times their maximum health.[/rant]

This is equivalent to asking players to play with one hand tied behind their back. The game should promotes diversity through structure of the game itself not by asking them to take out powerful loot which they earned through trading or RNG drop. You suddenly lose ability to fight in higher level gameplay for what? More ammo that can't penetrate the AI's armor or shield? Yeah, enjoy Jupiter for the rest of your life Tenno.

Real problem is we need more viable choices in mods. We need limitation on stacking since player will always choose power over customization. You can't stop them. We need more tradeoff other than mod point. At the same time, we need AI design that actually promote build diversity and not power builder.

[notlamprey]

I'm glad Steve stuck to his guns, but it felt like his ability to give a comprehensive rebuttal was hampered by the poor wording / focus of the question.

 

Rebecca did her best to try and dig out what the question seemed to be struggling at. Sometimes misunderstandings and poor communication aren't really anyone's fault.

[Lost_Cartographer]

This is equivalent to asking players to play with one hand tied behind their back. The game should promotes diversity through structure of the game itself not by asking them to take out powerful loot which they earned through trading or RNG drop. You suddenly lose ability to fight in higher level gameplay for what? More ammo that can't penetrate the AI's armor or shield? Yeah, enjoy Jupiter for the rest of your life Tenno.

Real problem is we need more viable choices in mods. We need limitation on stacking since player will always choose power over customization. You can't stop them. We need more tradeoff other than mod point. At the same time, we need AI design that actually promote build diversity and not power builder.

 

People want a challenge.  The problem is all more "challenge" would provide is a greater emphasis on damage output.  Shield Lancers can be taken out without punch through, punch through just makes them laughably easily.  No one like's the prosecutors because they require a player to setup for specific elements (I just melee them to death, the multiplier makes quick work of them after a point.)  They hate knockdown, but refuse to use knockdown resistance or recovery mods.

 

There's really no way to encourage greater build diversity beyond those inconveniences because power is power.  People don't care if everything in the level takes 500 damage to kill, they'll continue to build to dole out 3000 damage per shot then complain the enemy doesn't have 3000-6000 damage and that there is no room for customization.  What they don't realize is they don't have to go 45+ minutes into a survival/defense.  You just provided an example of why they don't want to - they don't think of removing serration as a giving themselves a challenge, they think of it as gimping themselves.  Yet they then turn around and complain things are dying too quickly.  

 

There are some mods that could REALLY use a pick me up, like pure status chance mods going from +15% to +100%, or mods like ammo drum providing +100% ammo, not 30%, or magazine warp providing 50% or even 100%, but a large part of the problem isn't ever going to be in DE's power to fix, and that's player mentalities.

[neKroMancer]

People want a challenge.  The problem is all more "challenge" would provide is a greater emphasis on damage output.  Shield Lancers can be taken out without punch through, punch through just makes them laughably easily.  No one like's the prosecutors because they require a player to setup for specific elements (I just melee them to death, the multiplier makes quick work of them after a point.)  They hate knockdown, but refuse to use knockdown resistance or recovery mods.

 

There's really no way to encourage greater build diversity beyond those inconveniences because power is power.  People don't care if everything in the level takes 500 damage to kill, they'll continue to build to dole out 3000 damage per shot then complain the enemy doesn't have 3000-6000 damage and that there is no room for customization.  What they don't realize is they don't have to go 45+ minutes into a survival/defense.  You just provided an example of why they don't want to - they don't think of removing serration as a giving themselves a challenge, they think of it as gimping themselves.  Yet they then turn around and complain things are dying too quickly.  

 

There are some mods that could REALLY use a pick me up, like pure status chance mods going from +15% to +100%, or mods like ammo drum providing +100% ammo, not 30%, or magazine warp providing 50% or even 100%, but a large part of the problem isn't ever going to be in DE's power to fix, and that's player mentalities.

The fact that we can stack means we will stack for power to make sure that we can reach highest level possible to maximize number of loot in one run. DE practically incentivize player to do so with endless defense and survival. The longer you go, the higher the chance to get something you want from that run. Keys are scarce and players need to max each key's potential. You can't blame them with 'mentality' when DE just beg for it to happen.

What you described about build diversity is a recurring problem in ARPG genre. The most recent example is Blizzard's Diablo3. Theorycrafting Thursday build vs Torment6 cookie cutter build. While the Theorycrafting builds are exciting and fun to play, they can not breach the Torment 3 level due to lack of most common statistics required on higher level which cookie cutter builds offer.

The problem is that we don't even have that much theorycrafting in Warframe and stacking to reach highest level possible for loot is the norm. Items that we have don't change how we play at all!

This is the core problem of the current damage/mod/AI resistance problem. How do we stop stacking effect without taking away too much effect of players' choice and keeping the game appropriately challenging through the course of the game. Even if you buff some of these less used mods up, player won't use them anyway due to lack of raw statistic number increase.

We need to either put a structure on the mod system and treat it like an attachment system or put a diminishing return on subsequent stacking. The AI should be toned down and give appropriate defense that doesn't solely relies on number.