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

[Noble_Cactus]

I don't think efficiency should be reduced.

 

I do think that the abilities themselves should require more careful positioning. If the game's most powerful radial AoE abilities required line of sight or were blocked by cover, players would no longer be able to kill enemies two rooms away just by pressing 4. DE seems to be heading in this direction with regards to recent ability changes (the Radial Blind "nerf"). I think the game would also become more fun with these kinds of changes because they would require the player to actively think about when and where they will cast their abilities.

 

Certain abilities like M.Prime should ignore this rule, both for gameplay reasons and game logic reasons (the molecules should be able to pass through solid objects, and restricting its range with solid objects would cause Nova's usefulness to plummet).

Edited September 24, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[RiouHotaru]

75% Efficiency is a fine cap.  The only way to reach that is to use Fleeting Expertise which forces you to take a hit to duration.  So it's not like reaching the cap is no-strings-attached.

[LascarCapable]

75% Efficiency is a fine cap.  The only way to reach that is to use Fleeting Expertise which forces you to take a hit to duration.  So it's not like reaching the cap is no-strings-attached.

 

Well, power duration is not that a big deal on some frames or for some people. I am myself using a -50% duration fleeting expertise with maxed continuity (so I end with -27% duration) won Volt for exemple, my speed lasts around 8 seconds, and I find it perfectly fine, while ES lasts almost 19 seconds. I am not counting my Arcane Pulse Helmet in the stats.

 

Also not all frames are that much affected by power duration. Best exemple I have is Nova, even if I don't really know how she's doing with max efficiency builds since MPrime's modification.

[SIDESTRE4M]

Prime example is Saryn whose Ult gets even stronger with less duration.

 

Wannabe Embers can recast World of Fire while copterinig through maps...

 

I play only solo or with friends anymore. Warframe midgame randomgroup is just a pain.

[Shin]

Balancing based on infinite missions?

 

Tsk

Trying to balance the game around low levels are not logical either.

[Azamagon]

This is part of a bigger (balancing) issue. This is how I see things right now:

 

* Power efficiency is a bit too powerful, due to its exponential potency (Compare: 10% efficiency = +11% ACTUAL efficiency, because you can cast abilities 11% more often. On the other hand, 75% efficiency = +300% ACTUAL efficiency, since you can cast abilities 4x as often).

* Lots of powers are too underwhelming / far too niched (Like Freeze, Soul Punch, Switch Teleport etc)

* Lots of damaging powers don't scale well enough, but that's not mainly the fault of powers, but rather that weapon damagemods have far too high numbers and enemy health/armor/shields scale too fast. (Likewise are some defensive mods a bit too good + enemy damagescaling is also crazy in its scaling)

 

What I'd do then?

 

* Power efficiency uses the old linear formula again, which doesn't need a cap either, because +100% efficiency = You can cast abilites 100% more often (aka, costing half of the original value). With that, the powermods could need some rebalancing in their numbers too of course (Hypothetical example: Fleeting Expertise's penalty could be reduced to just half of its current value, 30% duration penalty instead of 60%)

* Most underwhelming powers needs to be far more powerful and useful. Powers should be more infrequent in use, but when they ARE used, they should mess things up quite nicely

* Reduce enemy defensescaling and reduce the values of our weapon damagemods, so the scaling is less absurd. This causes damaging powers to indirectly scale much further into the game too. You could say the scalings of powers and weapons would be a bit more in line with another. Doing these modnerfs and enemy nerfs would also be good for the newbies, as mods would be less necessary for them to put a dent in enemies (while the mods would of course still be nice to have).

Edited September 24, 2014 by Azamagon

[Azawarau]

Trying to balance the game around low levels are not logical either.

Howso?

 

BTW "either" admits that balancing infinite missions is bad <<

[Shin]

Howso?

 

BTW "either" admits that balancing infinite missions is bad <<

Anyone can storm through the low levels with starter weapons. Warframe powers arent exactly at their peak of usefulness there. They help clearing mobs, objectives faster so trying to balance the efficiency for low levels is not logical. 

 

But when we go to higher levels like 60 min mark on T4 survival, thats where efficiency shines. If there were no eximi's that drains our energy, that would be us roflstomping through waves with nyx+loki etc. Those eximi's are kinda balancing the efficiency on high levels. 

 

So far i only got to 65 min mark on T4 Survival for just once. I was loki and we had a nyx who kept using energy restoration kits to supply herself. If there were no eximi's there we could've gone more than 65 mins there. The reason why we quit was nyx used all of her energy kits and there were like 50 of these eximis around walking and keep draining our energy instantly.

 

Trying to balance the game around low level content isnt just that all exciting to me. Im saying this because there are a lot of people who never goes past 25 but keep asking for buffs and nerfs to their favourite/hated warframes and weapons. I mean i saw people who wanted loki's 4. ability to deal damage because it was too useless for them. That is the mind set of those people.

[Azawarau]

Anyone can storm through the low levels with starter weapons. Warframe powers arent exactly at their peak of usefulness there. They help clearing mobs, objectives faster so trying to balance the efficiency for low levels is not logical. 

 

But when we go to higher levels like 60 min mark on T4 survival, thats where efficiency shines. If there were no eximi's that drains our energy, that would be us roflstomping through waves with nyx+loki etc. Those eximi's are kinda balancing the efficiency on high levels. 

 

So far i only got to 65 min mark on T4 Survival for just once. I was loki and we had a nyx who kept using energy restoration kits to supply herself. If there were no eximi's there we could've gone more than 65 mins there. The reason why we quit was nyx used all of her energy kits and there were like 50 of these eximis around walking and keep draining our energy instantly.

 

Trying to balance the game around low level content isnt just that all exciting to me. Im saying this because there are a lot of people who never goes past 25 but keep asking for buffs and nerfs to their favourite/hated warframes and weapons. I mean i saw people who wanted loki's 4. ability to deal damage because it was too useless for them. That is the mind set of those people.

Ive gone 65 minutes without any of that

 

Nyx Nekros and loki were my teammates

 

A smart ny knows to use mind control on energy leches to stop the effect

 

Other than that enemies arent terribly impossible to kill aside from certain heavily armored units

 

I could show a video if you dont believe me

[Escantell]

Trying to balance the game around low level content isnt just that all exciting to me. Im saying this because there are a lot of people who never goes past 25 but keep asking for buffs and nerfs to their favourite/hated warframes and weapons. I mean i saw people who wanted loki's 4. ability to deal damage because it was too useless for them. That is the mind set of those people.

What saddens me is that more than half of the people I've seen have no idea how to play a loki, and hate him simply because he has no direct damage abilities like slash dsah.

Edited September 24, 2014 by Escantell

[SIDESTRE4M]

Anyone can storm through the low levels with starter weapons. Warframe powers arent exactly at their peak of usefulness there. They help clearing mobs, objectives faster so trying to balance the efficiency for low levels is not logical. 

 

But when we go to higher levels like 60 min mark on T4 survival, thats where efficiency shines. If there were no eximi's that drains our energy, that would be us roflstomping through waves with nyx+loki etc. Those eximi's are kinda balancing the efficiency on high levels. 

 

So far i only got to 65 min mark on T4 Survival for just once. I was loki and we had a nyx who kept using energy restoration kits to supply herself. If there were no eximi's there we could've gone more than 65 mins there. The reason why we quit was nyx used all of her energy kits and there were like 50 of these eximis around walking and keep draining our energy instantly.

 

Trying to balance the game around low level content isnt just that all exciting to me. Im saying this because there are a lot of people who never goes past 25 but keep asking for buffs and nerfs to their favourite/hated warframes and weapons. I mean i saw people who wanted loki's 4. ability to deal damage because it was too useless for them. That is the mind set of those people.

 

And when do people get that difficulty =/= level numbers/wave numbers/etc.

 

DE cut all level numbers in half without changing the diffuculty of the units some time ago. SO OMG I CANT KILL LEVEL 100 LIKE BEFORE.

 

What's the point? If it's harder to reach 40min than 60min before... what's the deal about it?

[Xana_Skullsunder]

It would be nice to see slightly more preventing CC/Ult spam. It makes many combat encounters trivial. It's not fun if I can play with my eyes closed.

[Astrotrap]

Two disadvantages of Efficiency.

 

1: To achieve maximum strength (therefore damage), one must reduce Efficiency.

2: To achieve maximum Efficiency (25 energy ult, woo!), one must sacrifice 50% of their Power Duration. With all three Duration mods AND Streamline and Fleeting Expertise on, you have +75% Efficiency, with only +107% Duration

[RealPandemonium]

Being able to use abilities relatively freely is a good thing.  Abilities that create boring gameplay (or practically turn it off) when spammed are the problem.

[Nihmo]

I think the way efficiency works right now is just fine, however, I really think that certain abilities could use a tweak to make them less spamable if needed.

The one that gets on my nerves a lot is miasma. When you're in something like an exterminate  and you're teamed with a saryn with rush who runs ahead and casts their ult every few seconds to wipe out the whole map without even having to aim a weapon.

 

I really feel like that kindof issue would be more easily solved by changing the ability's mechanics (make duration loss have a negative effect) instead of nerfing efficiency which could cripple utility abilities in the lategame, or ruin builds which rely on high efficiency to offset blind rage

[Shin]

Ive gone 65 minutes without any of that

 

Nyx Nekros and loki were my teammates

 

A smart ny knows to use mind control on energy leches to stop the effect

 

Other than that enemies arent terribly impossible to kill aside from certain heavily armored units

 

I could show a video if you dont believe me

Well like i said, i only bothered going for 65 minutes just once and as you can guess it was for loki part. Its possible that she didnt have chaos on i cant exactly remember. The thing about the run i had, i've never seen that many mobs in one room before. It was literally a zerg and half of those mobs were eximis.

[Azawarau]

Well like i said, i only bothered going for 65 minutes just once and as you can guess it was for loki part. Its possible that she didnt have chaos on i cant exactly remember. The thing about the run i had, i've never seen that many mobs in one room before. It was literally a zerg and half of those mobs were eximis.

W-why wouldnt she have chaos...?

[Somedude1000]

W-why wouldnt she have chaos...?

 

I just learned that Some people dont' even bother to slot 1-4 >.> 

[IceJolt]

Reducing energy efficiency is a nerf across the board for all powers and really only a few need it. Energy vampire, rage and to some extent energy siphon could still give you lots of energy as well. 

 

I'd rather they gave the few powers that need their ability to be spammed reduced some form of cool down, like Rhino stomp has or Blessing use to have. It would be easier for DE to implement, can't be circumvented and affects only the powers that need it.

[Azamagon]

This is part of a bigger (balancing) issue. This is how I see things right now:

 

* Power efficiency is a bit too powerful, due to its exponential potency (Compare: 10% efficiency = +11% ACTUAL efficiency, because you can cast abilities 11% more often. On the other hand, 75% efficiency = +300% ACTUAL efficiency, since you can cast abilities 4x as often).

* Lots of powers are too underwhelming / far too niched (Like Freeze, Soul Punch, Switch Teleport etc)

* Lots of damaging powers don't scale well enough, but that's not mainly the fault of powers, but rather that weapon damagemods have far too high numbers and enemy health/armor/shields scale too fast. (Likewise are some defensive mods a bit too good + enemy damagescaling is also crazy in its scaling)

 

What I'd do then?

 

* Power efficiency uses the old linear formula again, which doesn't need a cap either, because +100% efficiency = You can cast abilites 100% more often (aka, costing half of the original value). With that, the powermods could need some rebalancing in their numbers too of course (Hypothetical example: Fleeting Expertise's penalty could be reduced to just half of its current value, 30% duration penalty instead of 60%)

* Most underwhelming powers needs to be far more powerful and useful. Powers should be more infrequent in use, but when they ARE used, they should mess things up quite nicely

* Reduce enemy defensescaling and reduce the values of our weapon damagemods, so the scaling is less absurd. This causes damaging powers to indirectly scale much further into the game too. You could say the scalings of powers and weapons would be a bit more in line with another. Doing these modnerfs and enemy nerfs would also be good for the newbies, as mods would be less necessary for them to put a dent in enemies (while the mods would of course still be nice to have).

^- My quote

 

v- This guy explains very well what I mean about using the old linear formula, the more balanced one (I don't really agreed with his Streamline numbers change, but that's irrelevant)

Remove cap, change formula for efficiency to E = (base cost) * 100/(100 + efficiency).

 

So 100% power efficiency would let you cast powers 100% more often; in other words, 100% power efficiency = 50 energy for ultis, 12.5 for first abilities. After that, I'd retweak values for Streamline so max rank would be +48% efficiency. The result would be a linear bonus for power efficiency, which makes significantly more balance sense and would allow for more fine tuning.

 

With this change, power costs would be (Maxed Streamline/Fleeting/Both):

10 -> 6.8/6.3/4.8

25 -> 16.9/15.6/12.0

35 -> 23.6/21.9/16.8

50 -> 33.8/31.2/24.0

75 -> 50.7/46.9/36.1

100 -> 67.6/62.5/48.1

 

Vespa Nyx and Essence Loki could maximize efficiency at 15 + 48 + 60 = 123%, resulting in power costs of 11.2/22.4/33.6/44.8 energy.

 

While this seems like it just changes the cap to ~50% in the current system, it allows the devs to actually balance out power efficiency without shattering the game, and it makes for a much more fair system. It would require an efficiency of +300% in order to achieve 25-energy ultis like we have now, which means that it'd be pretty hard to "accidentally" get to where we are now.

 

If Efficiency has to be changed, I think this is the best way to do it. It'd get rid of spam while not making efficiency builds useless, because right now, I literally run max efficiency on every single Frame (except Ember!), and there's no reason why a player shouldn't do that with how much better efficiency is than every stat.

[vleessjuu]

This is part of a bigger (balancing) issue. This is how I see things right now:

 

* Power efficiency is a bit too powerful, due to its exponential potency (Compare: 10% efficiency = +11% ACTUAL efficiency, because you can cast abilities 11% more often. On the other hand, 75% efficiency = +300% ACTUAL efficiency, since you can cast abilities 4x as often).

* Lots of powers are too underwhelming / far too niched (Like Freeze, Soul Punch, Switch Teleport etc)

* Lots of damaging powers don't scale well enough, but that's not mainly the fault of powers, but rather that weapon damagemods have far too high numbers and enemy health/armor/shields scale too fast. (Likewise are some defensive mods a bit too good + enemy damagescaling is also crazy in its scaling)

 

What I'd do then?

 

* Power efficiency uses the old linear formula again, which doesn't need a cap either, because +100% efficiency = You can cast abilites 100% more often (aka, costing half of the original value). With that, the powermods could need some rebalancing in their numbers too of course (Hypothetical example: Fleeting Expertise's penalty could be reduced to just half of its current value, 30% duration penalty instead of 60%)

* Most underwhelming powers needs to be far more powerful and useful. Powers should be more infrequent in use, but when they ARE used, they should mess things up quite nicely

* Reduce enemy defensescaling and reduce the values of our weapon damagemods, so the scaling is less absurd. This causes damaging powers to indirectly scale much further into the game too. You could say the scalings of powers and weapons would be a bit more in line with another. Doing these modnerfs and enemy nerfs would also be good for the newbies, as mods would be less necessary for them to put a dent in enemies (while the mods would of course still be nice to have).

 

Pretty much this, though I have to nitpick that efficiency does NOT increase exponentially. It increases asymptotically (which is even faster, BTW). With the way efficiency is calculated now, +100% efficiency means zero energy cost and hence it's really infinitely efficient. That's why they put the +75% hardcap on efficiency.

 

The problem with the current formula is that it narrows choice: the difference between +0% and +10% efficiency is negligable, but the difference between +60% and +70% is huge. So if you go for efficiency, you pretty much have to go for as much as possible because of the increasing returns. See it like this: the first +50% efficiency give you double the spamming power. Getting just +25% on top of that (for +75% total) doubles your spamming power again. That doesn't make sense to me.