Is Efficiency Too Powerful Right Now? Should It Be Reduced To Reduce "spam"?

[Sasquatchias]

I've been seeing a bit of talk lately over Warframe abilities popping up in balancing discussions, with lots of arguments over whether they're good or bad, whether mechanics are good or bad, etc...

 

One discussion I saw that intrigued me a bit was of some people talking about efficiency, and it's effect on how people use their powers.

 

Specifically about how a frame with maxed or lowered efficiency could pop out any of it's abilities almost constantly due to the highly decreased energy cost, as opposed to someone without maxed efficiency who try to conserve energy for certain abilities for when they're needed.

 

The former, coupled with how many abilities are slowing becoming CC-Oriented, or are being made to cover entire rooms of enemies, leads the risk and challenge of fighting the enemies head on to either being drastically lowered or thrown right out the window. (This also happens to extend to a fair amount of the bosses who are not CC-Immune being absolute laughing stocks.)

 

Really the whole thing was quite intriguing, and I was wondering what everyone else's thoughts on the matter were?

 

 

[Rikage]

I believe the energy leeching eximi were added to annoy the heck outta people attempt addressing this

[SolarDwagon]

If that's true, that was the worst idea ever, since they had MORE impact on frames with less efficiency :P

[mistopportunity]

I um. K.

[Shin]

I believe the energy leeching eximi were added to annoy the heck outta people attempt addressing this

Yes. On low level missions you can just spam etc without really caring too much. 

 

But when you go to T4 Survival 60 min mark etc, there you see the hell. Those goddamn eximi's are draining every last drop of your energy and they are common as hell in there.

[Escantell]

No. Stop telling DE to nerf things.  I'm quite alright with my 4th ability taking 70 power instead of 100, it's much more reasonable.  This wouldn't affect the frames with spambilities,though. It would just be a kick in the nuts for the other frames that DON'T have such abilites.

[John89brensen]

Yes. On low level missions you can just spam etc without really caring too much. 

 

But when you go to T4 Survival 60 min mark etc, there you see the hell. Those goddamn eximi's are draining every last drop of your energy and they are common as hell in there.

Not too many people are equiped to survive 60 minutes in t4, if you can get that far you know your stuff.

 

But back to the matter at hand, i hate when people talk about nerfing, because when the nerf comes it cripples warframes/weapons. I do try to max efficiency but not in every warframe, for example i use it on nova to reduce the cost of blind rage.

Also maxing out efficiency isnt that good for all frames. Warframes that require duration, strength, and range (like ember) if you max out one (or balance 2) you are decreasing the other.

Edited September 24, 2014 by John89brensen

[VKhaun]

I can't think of one answer that suits the whole game.

 

Defense, offense and utility you could ask a question like that and debate an answer because the same numbers are used and mean the same things across the board. Armor and HP may be different values, but they interact the same way. A weapon might be crit or might be status, but those things play out naturally with the player's choice of mods. Powers are just way too different. They all do very different things, or do the same things in very different ways. I think the game needs to move away from trying to force the mod system to balance all of them at the same time and anything else is just going to be a work-around.

 

(I say this as someone who doesn't call every other thing in gaming a band aid... I think this is the proper use of the term...)

[Nova-IX]

Yes. On low level missions you can just spam etc without really caring too much. 

 

But when you go to T4 Survival 60 min mark etc, there you see the hell. Those goddamn eximi's are draining every last drop of your energy and they are common as hell in there.

yep they rape ones energy so its near impossibruu to spam even with max efficiency :b

[Wawazat]

many abilities mechanics work in such a way that the efficiency is almost wasted. (not every ability)

 

-any flat damage ability eventually becomes less effective than just using a weapon after a certain difficulty (most "1" buttons fall off almost immediately with some flat damage ults following shortly behind)

-several abilities cannot be used while an ability (or itself) is in use and so spamming is harder to do (such as rhino skin or stomp)

-some warframes really need to spam or use there abilities in unison in order to even be viable or fun. ( loki would be useless without energy and how could we call zephyr a bird if she cannot use fly repeatedly or even want to use dive bomb because it takes 50 energy (to fly up to desirable height))

 

crowd control seems to be one thing that efficiency is incredibly good for, loki radial disarm for one example. 

I think every warframe benefits from efficiency and mayb e that might be what is wrong but given enough dedication, everyone can have efficiency and its fun to have, broken or not. I consider it almost like a part of leveling up a frame, like health, shields and energy max. ( i almost wish fleeting expertise was even easier to get)

[Somedude1000]

Part of warframes allure is the ability to be Godlike by being able to near instantly throw in abilities to turn the tide of most situations. 

 

The big problem with efficiency is everyone goes with a nekros in their team in long games, and in simple short games most people equip energy siphon. This allows for much more surplus energy for warframes to exist than the energy droprate that we have without the + drops from desecrate, and multiple team members equipping energy siphon

[Sifu]

Mate... just NO. No no no no no.

 

If DE nerf energy eff mods, it maybe will balance the start game with later experience (maybe, but its not the problem actually and why make end game harder with it), but again, it took me alot of time to get Flow mod, less time for maxed duration mods. People already told you - to even try to survive on T4S\D 50+ you`ll need not only spam everything across the map and run like mad, you`ll need every last energy you can get. Suggesting something, think of the whole gameplay and community, not just yourself.

 

Its good to nerf bugged things like QT+Rage, but energy eff is a no-no. Its perfect now, dont touch it.

[SIDESTRE4M]

Then you adapt to the new difficulty and run only 40min without damaging your selfesteem.

 

For your info: The level numbers if enemies got halfed sometime ago and no one was whining, that they could kill only lower enemies anymore, because the difficulty matters... not some numbers without tangible reference.

[Azawarau]

Yes. On low level missions you can just spam etc without really caring too much. 

 

But when you go to T4 Survival 60 min mark etc, there you see the hell. Those goddamn eximi's are draining every last drop of your energy and they are common as hell in there.

Balancing based on infinite missions?

 

Tsk

 

No. Stop telling DE to nerf things.  I'm quite alright with my 4th ability taking 70 power instead of 100, it's much more reasonable.  This wouldn't affect the frames with spambilities,though. It would just be a kick in the nuts for the other frames that DON'T have such abilites.

70 is no issue

 

25-30 is where its at

Edited September 24, 2014 by Azawarau

[LascarCapable]

It REALLY depends of the frame used IMO. I may agree that 75% efficiency is freaky with CC frames, but with frames like Volt you kinda need it and it won't really make everything trivial.

 

Maybe efficiency should be capped a bit harder, but all powers should have their costs tweaked, so balanced frames with 75% efficiency wouldn't be affected while frames with monstruous and spammable CC would be tuned down a bit.

[H.Katsura_999]

Rather than nerf it why not just add a cool down timer on selected abilities.

[Somedude1000]

Rather than nerf it why not just add a cool down timer on selected abilities.

Had that in closed beta, people would just wait in rooms till the cooldown expired.

[SIDESTRE4M]

Had that in closed beta, people would just wait in rooms till the cooldown expired.

 

I would consider this to be difficult regarding survival/defense.

[NutritionalValue]

No, horrible idea. Why would you want to nerf it, Do you hate having fun playing this game?

[SIDESTRE4M]

Since when was ultspam fun?

[HolidayPi3]

He's asking for the community opinion on this topic, not asking for it to be nerfed.

[Tails-san]

I believe the energy leeching eximi were added to annoy the heck outta people attempt addressing this

 

Well then they failed spectacularly. Rather than actually reducing the effectiveness of power efficiency, they made it more necessary to even be able to use powers at all. It's very hard to get 100 energy when your energy is constantly being drained.

[SIDESTRE4M]

The corrupted mods allowed for more min/maxing instead of balancing. Some people consider this good... opinions may vary...

[(PSN)KestralSylver]

Don't you even DARE nerf power efficiency! I NEED to be able to cast Radial Disarm 100 times consecutively! NEED IT I SAY!!!

[IceJolt]

Had that in closed beta, people would just wait in rooms till the cooldown expired.

 

Is there a particular reason this happened in Warframe? I mean lots of games have cool downs and don't have this issue. Were abilities much more powerful than weapons at the time for example? If they reintroduced cool downs now I couldn't imagine people would bother waiting.