Vertical Progression Vs. Horizontal Progression

[merryfistmas]

This video/article perfectly explains why vertical progression has so many problems. Why players are frustrated with the way difficulty scales, the immense amounts of grinding (essentially playing content that isn't fun in order to gain access to content that is). The guy in the video/article explains it better than I can in my own words so just watch/read it.

 

http://taugrim.com/2012/04/19/why-games-should-scale-horizontally-instead-of-vertically/

 

The guy in the video explains the problems that arise from using vertical progression in an MMO and how horizontal progression could be used to solve those problems. I'm going to talk about games that already utilize horizontal progression, why it's effective, and how it could be applied to Warframe.

 

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (yes, I know it's not an MMO, bare with me).

 

As you progress through Deus Ex, you accumulate XP and money. Money can be used to buy various consumables and weapons while XP is converted into praxis points which are spent on upgrades.

 

Here's the key with Deus Ex, you can beat the entire game without spending a single praxis point or buying anything; the upgrades simply give you more ways of playing the game. Invisibility, radar, and hacking allow a more stealthy style while improving accuracy on the move and and maximum energy lends to a run and gun play-style.

 

The reason why this makes Deus Ex so much fun is because starting the game each time is a fresh experience. Playing through once using non lethal weapons and stealth is a completely different experience than bombing and machine-gunning your way through an army of Chinese gang members, it's almost a whole knew game. You also don't feel obligated to get certain upgrades or do certain missions for practical reasons. In Warframe, stacking as many damage mods as possible is objectively the most effective way to play. In Deus Ex, you can't do this because there are no damage mods, upgrades either give you new ways of dealing damage or allow you to complete missions in ways other than dealing damage.

 

Obviously, a character with upgrades is objectively better than a character with no upgrades, the point of implementing horizontal progression isn't to make every player the same strength regardless of their play time and number of upgrades acquired. The point is to; A) make all content relevant to all players, B) minimize power creep and min/maxing, and C) make progression fun rather than grindy by encouraging players to pursue their preferred play-style to complete content instead of grinding for a higher tier weapon.

 

Actually, I think I'm going to stop here, I don't need to list more games with horizontal progression, it'll just be redundant, NEXT!

 

Possible Objections:

"but people won't play as long or as often without the lure of better gear to drive them."

I have two responses to this: If you're motivating factor for playing a game is the compulsion to get better gear then you should reconsider why you're playing that game *cough* Skyrim *cough*. My second response is this, games such as Super Smash bros, Starcraft, and League of legends lack this compulsion  yet millions of player, including myself have spent upwards of a thousand hours playing them. I know that the PvP is what drives people to play these games and it is therefore, dis-analogous to compare them, my point is that having fun core gameplay will retain players more than any amount of shiny loot.

 

"Games can have horizontal progression within tiers."

Yes they can, and most games with vertical progression, including Warframe, do. The reason why I'm advocating the removal of vertical progression is that it causes most of the content to be irrelevant at any given time. There's no reason to play Mercury or any other low level planets if you have end game gear, even if you're leveling it, and alerts are a poor band-aid fix for that. This extends to weapons too, there are a few weapons that are simply better than everything else. If somebody likes the feel of the Karak or Furis than they should be able to use them all game. You might respond to that by saying "Prime and wraith variants of outclassed weapons solve that problem." This is true, but it also requires DE to make tons of content that will only be experienced briefly, if at all. I'm sure game developers want to get as much use out of all their work as possible and horizontal progression helps achieve that.

Edited October 4, 2014 by merryfistmas

[merryfistmas]

Okay, I guess I'll move onto ways I think Warframe would benefit from using horizontal progression over vertical.

 

Before I get into that I'd like to say that I want to hear your guys' ideas. Many people having a discussion will probably yield better and more interesting results than one person.

 

-I'll start with something that will both (I hope) address concerns about invalidating peoples hard work and hours of grinding that would result by removing tiers, scaling, etc. and fix the janky mod system. All damage mods are removed. Serration, multishot, elemental damage, everything. In fact, let's get rid of mods in general and convert everybody's mods into points. A common mod is worth 1 point an uncommon mod is worth 3 and a rare is worth 9 (the exact number could be tweaked based on how hard mods are to find/level). leveled mods would obviously be worth more points, for example a rank 10 serration would be worth 3072 (It takes 1024 serration duplicates to max serration, 1024x3 = 3072) points and a rank 5 lethal torrent would be worth 288.

 

These points would be used to buy upgrades that would range from converting part of your weapons damage to elemental damage to faster wall-running to unlocking a greater variety of acrobatic moves. They could also be used for a separate skill tree specific to the Warframe you have equipped (I wasn't playing when Warframe had the original skill tree so if what I'm suggesting may overlap with it). The upgrades would improve certain aspects of your Warframe at the cost of some of the others, a lot like the corrupted mods. This would allow players to specialize their warframe to their own play-style and to the requirements of the mission they're playing.

 

And yes, I'm aware that some people have spent real money on mods and that it wouldn't be fair to them to take those mods away and replace them with something that players wouldn't necessarily spent real money on. My only solution to that is to refund their platinum that they spent.

 

-Endless defense and survival type missions: They wouldn't go away, there could still be game modes were enemies scale up infinitely to appeal to the crowd that likes those missions. What I'm suggesting would do the following to mission types that have infinitely scaling enemies, endless defense on Mercury and and Ceres would have the same base level, that is enemies on the first wave on Mercury would have the same health and dps as enemies on the first wave of a Ceres endless defense. The difference would be that you would encounter far more advanced enemies, far more frequently on Ceres than on Mercury and the map would probably allow for more advanced tactics and have environmental hazards or something to that effect. So if you wanted to have the feel of CoD zombies you'd play Mercury endless defense and if you wanted miniboss style enemies and environmental hazards (not that all Ceres maps would have them) you'd play endless defense on Ceres.

 

-More diverse melee weapons. By this, I don't mean more weapons with more damage types and stance mods. I mean the melee weapons currently in the game need to be more interesting. As of right now, all heavy weapons are essentially the same, so are dual weapons, martial weapons, etc. My reasons for choosing a melee weapon are currently, "what looks best?" and, "What does the most damage?", not "what is most fun to use?" (because most weapons feel the same as the other weapons in their class and none of the classes of melee weapons are that fun to use).

 

For example, the lecta (and other whip weapons) could enhance mobility by allowing players to grapple short distances. This could be used in conjunction with wall-running to amplify the space ninja feeling. Anyone who wanted to use a melee weapon for short range grappling could use a whip and they'd have ( as of right now) three weapons to choose from, all of which would be effective against different types of enemies. There are other ways they could be balanced as well, the lecta could have the lowest overall damage but enhance mobility more than the scoliac or the Atterax while the Atterax would have greatest dps but grant the least mobility.

 

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These are things I just made up as I was typing. The point of this isn't to suggest specific things that I think DE should implement, it's to come up with concepts  that I think would be interesting and try to get other people to add to the discussion.

Edited October 5, 2014 by merryfistmas

[vaugahn]

Wasn't this something that the devs just talked about? To quote, "more game, not end game."

[Archistopheles]

Wasn't this something that the devs just talked about? To quote, "more game, not end game."

Indeed. To paraphrase Scott n Rebecca:

Rebecca: "So wider foundation, not taller?"

Scott: "We want to add/have both"

[OneUp.]

TL;DR

[-CM-Tiffany]

This looks more like a lecture and less like a discussion. :x

 

Senpai, what am I supposed to discuss? Sama is confused.

[DCypherThis13]

Very well worded, with a few hitches.

 

Deus Ex does not have enemy/player level scaling. Warframe does. Our gear ranks up so that we can equip mods and take on tougher content. The enemies get tougher the further you go into the Sol System as a result of this.

 

Deus Ex has a stealth system that works. Warframe does not. We are ninjas, yet enemy awareness blows our cover every time and there is no way around that.

 

Deus Ex can work with horizontal progression because the enemies do not scale or become more powerful with time. Warframe has nothing but enemy scaling. Therefore, Deus Ex(A great game, don't get me wrong) is a bad example of what Warframe should be.

[Hydroking77]

You are trying to compare MOBAs and fighting games to Warframe?

[Jinryusai]

What would help mitigate this "power creep" would be releasing remodeling skins with stat changes for weapons rather than simply creating stronger versions of such weapons. The devs are far to worried about losing sales over catalysts and not much return than improving the weapons.

 

if they want greater return, they must create different weapons.

 

What also helps is implementing weapon adjustments changing the way the weapon works perhaps shooting something different improving on the old weapons.

 

If you like a weapon, why stop using it, why not make it worth of being mastery locked?

 

​The devs are far too obsessed with new weapons that they make the mistake if releasing old weapons with new stats and new looks that function the same. Simply a remodel skin with stat changes would have sufficed.

 

Seems they have replaced remodeling with feeding new creations old weapon w/o considering the loss of levels and upgrades...Interesting, yet disappointing seeing as they don't remodel anymore.

Edited October 4, 2014 by Jinryusai

[merryfistmas]

I haven't watched the latest dev live stream so I didn't know they addressed this but I'm glad they did

 

Very well worded, with a few hitches.

 

Deus Ex does not have enemy/player level scaling. Warframe does. Our gear ranks up so that we can equip mods and take on tougher content. The enemies get tougher the further you go into the Sol System as a result of this.

 

Deus Ex has a stealth system that works. Warframe does not. We are ninjas, yet enemy awareness blows our cover every time and there is no way around that.

 

Deus Ex can work with horizontal progression because the enemies do not scale or become more powerful with time. Warframe has nothing but enemy scaling. Therefore, Deus Ex(A great game, don't get me wrong) is a bad example of what Warframe should be.

Ideally, I'm advocating the removal of enemy scaling but I know DE has put a lot of work into the game thus far so I know it won't happen. I'm not trying to say that Warframe should be modeled after Deus EX, I used it as an example because of how well it does the multiple play-styles thing and I would like Warframe to have just as many viable ways to play the game that all feel like a fresh experience.

 

You are trying to compare MOBAs and fighting games to Warframe?

No, I'm compared their methods for player retention and why I think one is better than the other.

 

This looks more like a lecture and less like a discussion. :x

 

Senpai, what am I supposed to discuss? Sama is confused.

Well, if you disagree with me about something, have a counter argument, or just something you'd like to add then I guess that would be what to discuss. I'm sharing athis article because I think it's applicable to Warframe and will interest other players here even if they don't agree with it.

Edited October 4, 2014 by merryfistmas

[Oystar]

so your asking DE to take away all the things people have ground for and some people play the game specifically for just so every one can have an even playing field this does not work with warframe it cannot and will not be done however good this idea is were in to deep already so even if the devs see this and say wow what a great idea and then they'll say "oh wait wouldn't we have to remove all infinitely running game mode's and those being the game mode where people spend the most time on" the second employ will say  "why yes it would mean that because there would be no way to simulate a difficulty curve if your damage scales with the health and defense of the enemy and the only way to increase the difficulty would be increasing the number of enemies spawned which is not very much fun and would just lag older and worse systems" the first employ would the aquess "well it seemed like a good idea but i guess we have to undo years of work to implement it" so that is the flaw in your argument it would involve uprooting what the game is and ruining it for all the people who love it for what it is the biggest time sync ever although because its a big time sync i would like a little more vertical than we currently have because while what we have is fun i would like a little more immediate challenge than having to wait a half hour in a survival before it gets hard 

 

Edit:and every thing i just said has been made obsolete by what has been said while i was typing this...don't you love when that happens

Edited October 4, 2014 by Swiftfingers

[vaugahn]

so your asking DE to take away all the things people have ground for and some people play the game specifically for just so every one can have an even playing field

 

i would like a little more immediate challenge than having to wait a half hour in a survival before it gets hard 

 

Do you see the contradiction there?

 

Scaled up enemies are not challenging. All they test is your ability to have a min-maxed frame or weapon. Other than that, killing a level 90 enemy is really no different than killing a level 10 enemy. If you want actual challenge mechanics, infinite stat scaling has to go. 

[PeripheralVisionary]

Very well worded, with a few hitches.

 

Deus Ex does not have enemy/player level scaling. Warframe does. Our gear ranks up so that we can equip mods and take on tougher content. The enemies get tougher the further you go into the Sol System as a result of this.

 

Deus Ex has a stealth system that works. Warframe does not. We are ninjas, yet enemy awareness blows our cover every time and there is no way around that.

 

Deus Ex can work with horizontal progression because the enemies do not scale or become more powerful with time. Warframe has nothing but enemy scaling. Therefore, Deus Ex(A great game, don't get me wrong) is a bad example of what Warframe should be.

You know, Warframe doesn't necessarily have to have scaling. If we're going to take out damage, why not take out the leveling as well?

Warframe would be a radically different game if it adopted Deus' style, which WF could take a few pointers from.

[SleepingSentry]

There's both horizontal and vertical progression in this game?  The only reason I keep playing is for more weapons and frames (horizontal), while also extending that playtime by maxing my favorite weapons and frames (vertical) which I don't need to progress.  You can beat any mission with your starting gear, once you level up your mods.  Any gun with a catalyst is more than good enough for beating the entire game.  The only thing some weapons and frames are not able to do is maximize the reward you get from your T4S / D / Int keys, and perform optimally in (completely unrewarding) PvP.

 

In the beginning it feels like a steep incline to climb slowly if you don't shell out the money, after awhile though it's a walk around the park with a small hill here and there.

 

They can make the game more challenging without having to remove stats and levels.  More nightmare difficulty modifiers (and void modifiers too) though we also need more of a reason to do nightmare missions besides a few rare mods.  Can be as simple as more xp / resources / credits for doing them.  

 

Along with cutting down on revives in some way, limited number of bleedouts before you have to revive instead of being helped up by a teammate, new enemies, more enemies, more energy drain attacks (preferably avoidable) + cooldown on energy restores, stamina draining attacks and inability to copter or sprint slide when out of stamina, more random bosses, new elite enemy affixes with them able to have more affixes simultaneously, etc.

Edited October 5, 2014 by SleepingSentry

[Jinryusai]

so your asking DE to take away all the things people have ground for and some people play the game specifically for just so every one can have an even playing field this does not work with warframe it cannot and will not be done however good this idea is were in to deep already so even if the devs see this and say wow what a great idea and then they'll say "oh wait wouldn't we have to remove all infinitely running game mode's and those being the game mode where people spend the most time on" the second employ will say  "why yes it would mean that because there would be no way to simulate a difficulty curve if your damage scales with the health and defense of the enemy and the only way to increase the difficulty would be increasing the number of enemies spawned which is not very much fun and would just lag older and worse systems" the first employ would the aquess "well it seemed like a good idea but i guess we have to undo years of work to implement it" so that is the flaw in your argument it would involve uprooting what the game is and ruining it for all the people who love it for what it is the biggest time sync ever although because its a big time sync i would like a little more vertical than we currently have because while what we have is fun i would like a little more immediate challenge than having to wait a half hour in a survival before it gets hard 

 

Edit:and every thing i just said has been made obsolete by what has been said while i was typing this...don't you love when that happens

There is always that utility section for mods and a feature to adjust things to work differently...

[Oystar]

Do you see the contradiction there?

 

Scaled up enemies are not challenging. All they test is your ability to have a min-maxed frame or weapon. Other than that, killing a level 90 enemy is really no different than killing a level 10 enemy. If you want actual challenge mechanics, infinite stat scaling has to go. 

your right there is a contradiction i said hard when i meant fun they are not the same thing and a challenge is not fun for me the kind of gamer i or you are is important fun for me is being overwhelmed by the slowly increasing power of my enemy and my puny weapons eventual no longer being able to stop them (can you tell i play cod zombies) and my only option is to run a challenge is not fun in this case where in you have to shoot the helmet off the corpus before you can kill it that's just busy work in a survival is it to much to ask for a higher starting point when in the enemy's start off as level 80s instead of the cap being level 40 and as i side note can we get the old level system back taking on level 150 infested felt so much cooler than the level 50s that are the same thing this is a request from my caveman brain that wants to fell empowered

[merryfistmas]

your right there is a contradiction i said hard when i meant fun they are not the same thing and a challenge is not fun for me the kind of gamer i or you are is important fun for me is being overwhelmed by the slowly increasing power of my enemy and my puny weapons eventual no longer being able to stop them (can you tell i play cod zombies) and my only option is to run a challenge is not fun in this case where in you have to shoot the helmet off the corpus before you can kill it that's just busy work in a survival is it to much to ask for a higher starting point when in the enemy's start off as level 80s instead of the cap being level 40 and as i side note can we get the old level system back taking on level 150 infested felt so much cooler than the level 50s that are the same thing this is a request from my caveman brain that wants to fell empowered

If enemies were changed so that they required more, to use you word "busy work", to fight then health and damage would have to be scaled up while the number of enemies would be scaled down. This would mean that instead of having 20 corpus crewmen in a room with 1000 health and 100 dps, you'd have 5 crewmen with 4000 health and 400 dps. They would have the same amount of overall dps and health but the amount of helmets you'd have to shoot off would be reduced. However, I don't think that requiring players to shoot the helmet off the average enemy is a good idea, I think that kind of thing should be saved for more advanced enemies.

 

As for enemies getting harder and harder until you can't beat them anymore, that wouldn't go away, there could still be game modes were enemies scale up infinitely to appeal to the crowd that likes those missions. What I'm suggesting would do the following to mission types that have infinitely scaling enemies, endless defense on Mercury and and Ceres would have the same base level, that is enemies on the first wave on Mercury would have the same health and dps as enemies on the first wave of a Ceres endless defense. The difference would be that you would encounter far more advanced enemies, far more frequently on Ceres than on Mercury and the map would probably allow for more advanced tactics and have environmental hazards or something to that effect. So if you wanted to have the feel of CoD zombies you'd play Mercury endless defense and if you wanted miniboss style enemies and environmental hazards (not that all Ceres maps would have them) you'd play endless defense on Ceres.

 

EDIT: I'm going to paste the second paragraph in an earlier post.

Edited October 5, 2014 by merryfistmas

[ra9una]

Like they mentioned in the livestream, let's do both. Make the whole game one huge square chunk of a Cartesian plane with all kinds of things to do for everyone at every stage of the game. 

[ARavenousPanda]

DE has stated they ARE NOT removing mods from warframe, its what makes it unique. They are thinking of adding something akin to point upgrades, based off mastery level.

[merryfistmas]

DE has stated they ARE NOT removing mods from warframe, its what makes it unique. They are thinking of adding something akin to point upgrades, based off mastery level.

Mods aren't what makes Warframe unique, the wall-running, the mobility, that "space ninja" feeling is what makes it unique.

 

 

Like they mentioned in the livestream, let's do both. Make the whole game one huge square chunk of a Cartesian plane with all kinds of things to do for everyone at every stage of the game. 

The issue is that there aren't all kinds of things to do for everyone at every stage of the game and the reason that's the case is that you have to spend most of the grinding in order to acquire or level weapons that are going to be outclassed by the next update.

[vaugahn]

The issue is that there aren't all kinds of things to do for everyone at every stage of the game and the reason that's the case is that you have to spend most of the grinding in order to acquire or level weapons that are going to be outclassed by the next update.

 

What they talked about on the livestream was adding content that anyone can play. They don't want their endgame expansion to be something you can only get into when you're MR13 with a boatload of stuff. And they've also been doing a pretty good job avoiding power creep, so there's that. 

[merryfistmas]

That's true, power creep has gotten a lot better lately, I need to go watch the latest live stream now.

[Oystar]

The issue is that there aren't all kinds of things to do for everyone at every stage of the game and the reason that's the case is that you have to spend most of the grinding in order to acquire or level weapons that are going to be outclassed by the next update.

so your saying you don't like warframe because that's all i'm getting from you your not suggesting an improvement to a single system your talking total overhaul of the entire game that i'm sure if you have a brain you know it wont happen however good a system total horizontal is its not for warframe and you should give the "it MUST be totally horizontal" thing a rest because thats good for single player games but not a mmo like warframe there are people like myself who take great joy in squeezing every last drop of overpoweredness out of every weapon even the ones you say are outclassed there is no useless weapon in this game only useless players without the drive to dig in and make them good

[Judgebanks]

My second response is this, games such as Super Smash bros, Starcraft, and League of legends lack this compulsion  yet millions of player,

 

The problem is the core gameplay of those games are competitive, where as the core gameplay of Warframe is non-competitive. Moreover, you don't even really benefit from playing with other players; thanks to scaling, which only one mmo in the history of mmo's has done right(Hint: it's not GW2).

[merryfistmas]

I've stated before that I realize Warframe won't go full horizontal because they've put so much work into it already (and also because vertical progression is proven to make money and game designers are afraid to try anything new because it might fail and making games is expensive and I don't blame them for that), obviously I haven't thoroughly explained how an overhaul of this kind would take place because that would take weeks to do and I'm not a game designer, I don't know how it would take place. But I did try to come up with a way to smooth a transition into a MORE horizontal game. If DE said that they're not removing mods then you can disregard anything I said about removing mods.

 

I'll give suggestions now and try to be short and concise:

 

1. As you get to higher level planets, have more advanced enemies with attributes and abilities that allow them to be resistant enough to our abilities so that they can utilize their own abilities and thus, pose a challenge to us.

 

2. "there is no useless weapon in this game only useless players without the drive to dig in and make them good" I'm aware of this. I can use a Karak for endgame missions, I can complete a mission using nothing but shurikens and I can kill most bosses with a Skana. The point isn't that weapons become obsolete, when you're playing PvE nothing is ever truly obsolete, it's that, when they become outclassed, using them means gimping yourself and it's the game that should provide the difficulty, not the player. Moving towards a more horizontal game makes it easier for the game developers to provide the difficulty rather than the player.

 

3. Like I explained earlier with the endless defense Mercury vs. Ceres thing. Having complex levels with multiple layers of difficulty in the form of more advanced enemies, environmental hazards, whatever caters to players who enjoy a challenge. You can still have the type of missions we have now that are similar to CoD zombies, but having both simple (CoD zombies) and complex (what I'm describing) levels adds a greater variety to the game and we can have both regardless of whether the system is horizontal or vertical.

 

4. Make melee weapons more unique. I'll try to come up with a few ways of making them interesting off the top of my head. Jat Kattig's channeled attacks launch you forward, or make it propel you in some way (it's a jet powered hammer after all), Whip weapons increase mobility (see second post), have extensive combos for fist and martial weapons. By this I mean make it feel like you're dancing around the battlefield, flipping and gliding your way from enemy to enemy as you dispatch them, martial weapons should feel fluid in combat.

Edited October 5, 2014 by merryfistmas