Most If Not All Damage Skills Become A Waste As Game Goes On Due To Lack Of Scaling

[Neocyberman]

I wanted to make the title "Warframes issues with enemy scaling make tier one skills and indeed all damage skills more and more worthless with time mostly due to that there is little to no ability scaling to match enemies"

 

But that would be overkill. The sentiment is the same.  

 

Problem

Damage based abilities and in particular those tier one abilities that rely on their damage experience really bad fall off as the game goes along. Enemy health scaling as well as armor scaling with enemy level cause skills to lose importance and worse yet they become wastes of mod space.

 

This is such a prevalent issue and one all players come across because the game implements a level based enemy scaling algorithm in order to create challenge. Enemies vary as you get up there but above all enemies just get bigger and bigger numbers in place of their stats. This is how challenge is derived in warframe but I'm not here to criticize this.(Though please take a better look at that) The issue I'm trying to get at is that this scaling is out of sync with the damage numbers you are capable of and it is frustrating. Once you enter higher levels of void even with specialization only a select few frames are useful and I can tell you now its not the ones entirely based on damage without a strong degree of utility or an ability to take out enemies without doing damage.  

 

Back to the title point. This has a notable effect that occurs across almost all warframe tier one abilities because they for the most part are almost entirely damage based. It also occurs outside of those abilities.

 

Why? Well two things. One, and this is the big issue, enemy armor scales exponentially(and does so infinitely) and damage put out by the player more of less has a stopping point after it scales in a mostly linear manner. Second, very few abilities are percentage based or otherwise have a combination of damage and utility. 

 

Example

Slash dash is a damage based skill and one of the more efficient damage dealing skills if you spec it properly. But with time it becomes difficult to keep in your mod lineup because you cant "count" on it to do what it does. In the begining I used to count on the ability to either kill or to deal a lot of damage. This then turned to me counting on it causing a slash proc if I used it enough or as a quick finisher. Now it is a mobility skill and nothing more. To me it used to be a damage skill. Now it is utility.

 

This repeats itself with smite, pull, Rhino charge and so on and so forth.

 

 

Solutions

There are many. One I think could be most effective is to introduce more complex damage calculation:

 

-How about "true damage" on particular skills that strike beyond armor values instead of limiting it to corrosive procs. 

 

-Introduce a percentage damage dealt on top of the base damage which scales with the enemy level.

 

-Bring enemy scaling into line with current ability balance

 

ANYTHING that isnt what we have now.

 

 

Conclusion

The level to which you can add damage to damage abilities through mods does not match up with the level of enemies that the player encounters and this remains a constant factor throughout the game. This I think is part of a larger issue with the mod system and progression in the power of abilities in addition to bad balancing for the levels the player encounters. But this is another topic I will have to detail. What I want you to take away from this is that the numbers for ability damage and enemy health do not match up. Enemies in warframe gain incredible scaling but what you can do, the skills that you use and to some degree the weapons you use do not scale in turn. In a game of numbers and stats the math just does not add up.

 

Also utility is king. It is incredibly frustrating to see a warframe, learn its abilities and ditch most of them and indeed a bit of the games content because they just do not work in the context of the areas of the game that they were balanced for. The only ones that remain are ones with strong utility as utility does not need scaling to remain relevant.

[don231]

or we could make all damage skills instakills (except boss)

[RSITH]

^ that's also a idea

[Catalyst1945]

Look, damage in this game will never be the way you want it to be, no matter how much you hope. Yes, all damage skills fall off late unless they lack utility, but I'm pretty sure that was DE's idea. It's simple; Don't use damage abilities for late game things (T4's). That's what utility is for. Although, I still think there should be a press 1 that does damage based off % health.

[vaugahn]

This ties back to the root problem of infinite scaling. As usual, it's the source of most of our woes.

 

Go try a damage skill out on some normal enemies, in a fixed-spawn mission. Anywhere in the solar system, and even in low-leveled voids, they're really not that bad. However once you move out of that, you start to have problems. And since we've all become accustomed to infinite stuff, and we've been given a very powerful (too powerful?) set of tools to deal with those scaled-up enemies, I'm sure you can see the problem there.

 

One way to go about fixing this would be to have percentage based skills. For example, right now slash dash does 500 damage at max rank. However, it it did 500 damage plus 20% of the enemy's health, it would stay useful for a much longer time. 

 

I'd prefer if we fixed it at the source and capped enemy scaling. That's an issue for another thread though.

[Janzer]

Also utility is king. It is incredibly frustrating to see a warframe, learn its abilities and ditch most of them and indeed a bit of the games content because they just do not work in the context of the areas of the game that they were balanced for. The only ones that remain are ones with strong utility as utility does not need scaling to remain relevant.

 

Please define the context of what you consider areas of the game that they were balanced for. Is this in reference to in system (planetary) missions only? Or is this in reference to T1, T2, T3, or T4 missions? Are you're specifically referencing 1 hour plus survival, defense missions of round 50 plus, or enemy levels of a certain range (10-20, 20-30, 30-40, 40-50, etc.)?

 

We could get a better idea of what you're trying to point at if you clarified that.

 

Personally I feel like the lowest rank powers should become utility, as you perfectly stated that Utility is relevant regardless of level.

[Uluu]

-How about "true damage" on particular skills that strike beyond armor values instead of limiting it to corrosive procs. 

 

 

They tried this back in damage 1.0 with weapons having Armor Piercing and Armor Ignore weapons, and look what happened. The stat was boring, bland and either made or broke a weapon if they did or more importantly didn't have it. I really don't want a stat like that back into the game that gives DE the power to say "This weapon is good, this weapon is bad" again. Yes I can see an argument of "But DE still has the power for Warframe abilities." and I can agree to some of it, but at least they are trying to move to giving skills utility instead of just damage.

 

They haven't finished revisiting the frames for this idea yet (Excalibur and Nekros seem to be the new targets for this), and a few I would like to see being revisited (Ember needs a rework badly). But adding "true damage" won't be a solution, cause it was already tested, they didn't like it, and they moved away from it.

[Somedude1000]

Correction, infinite scaling makes all damage based skills pointless, but I assume your point may carry more validity since infinite scaling seems to be a popular idea

[Neocyberman]

Please define the context of what you consider areas of the game that they were balanced for. Is this in reference to in system (planetary) missions only? Or is this in reference to T1, T2, T3, or T4 missions? Are you're specifically referencing 1 hour plus survival, defense missions of round 50 plus, or enemy levels of a certain range (10-20, 20-30, 30-40, 40-50, etc.)?

 

We could get a better idea of what you're trying to point at if you clarified that.

 

Personally I feel like the lowest rank powers should become utility, as you perfectly stated that Utility is relevant regardless of level.

Sorry, I assumed everyone was familiar with the DE staff's statements about balancing for level.

 

As I have heard DE stated that they balance for about the 30s. That frames are meant to keep their roles to around that point. I find this not to be true and for some frames its a lot earlier than that. 40-50 is your T4 void type of enemy but in the area of 30 ish you are talking pluto if I am not mistaken.

 

Frames like Oberon overall loose a lot of their viability before then and have to fall back on their ultimate skill. Without specialization Ember falls into this category and she was touted as being a nuker.

[Neocyberman]

They tried this back in damage 1.0 with weapons having Armor Piercing and Armor Ignore weapons, and look what happened. The stat was boring, bland and either made or broke a weapon if they did or more importantly didn't have it. I really don't want a stat like that back into the game that gives DE the power to say "This weapon is good, this weapon is bad" again. Yes I can see an argument of "But DE still has the power for Warframe abilities." and I can agree to some of it, but at least they are trying to move to giving skills utility instead of just damage.

 

They haven't finished revisiting the frames for this idea yet (Excalibur and Nekros seem to be the new targets for this), and a few I would like to see being revisited (Ember needs a rework badly). But adding "true damage" won't be a solution, cause it was already tested, they didn't like it, and they moved away from it.

I see, I was not there for that era but I did realize how this could be an issue while thinking about it as I was typing. Maybe the math could be tweaked but to hear that they completely moved on from this idea for the reason they did does make me feel like the idea would not work/will never see implementation.

[taiiat]

-How about "true damage" on particular skills that strike beyond armor values instead of limiting it to corrosive procs. 

Finisher Damage.

it's exactly that.

 

we could apply that to all Abilities, perhaps. have a small portion be Finisher.

 

I'd prefer if we fixed it at the source and capped enemy scaling. That's an issue for another thread though.

may be the best solution, but probably not a very popular one.

[AlphaHorseman]

Remember that this is something that becomes a problem with infinite scaling situations. At level 30, any of our frames can wreck anything on the Star Map. Take it into the void survivals, or even any survivals/defenses, and this kind of situation isn't encountered.

[Spacetimer]

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/320667-adding-utility-to-damage-abilities/

 

For your consideration.

 

The issue is really that the enemies have to become more dangerous, not just railroad you into a power curve you can't maintain by design. The difference isn't screamingly obvious but consider this:

 

 - Enemy health and shields scale linearly, up to a maximum at Lvl~100

 - Armor is fixed

 - Enemy damage scales linearly, but faster and with no cap

 

With a capped maximum health (for argument's sake, say x20 base health) and no scaling armor, there comes a point where enemies don't become harder to kill,  but still become more and more dangerous. For instance, we know that Heavy Gunners will, at most, need 37.3k damage to kill (or 11.3k Corrosive, or 21k Viral etc.). So enemies, while tough to take down with low-level gear, will not be difficult to take down at higher levels. This will help take emphasis off how much damage we can deal in one second, but how we can kill things without getting into direct firefights.

 

Note that this is already the case for really long survival runs - eventually you have to figure out how not to get hit. As it stands, the main progress stopper is still health and armor scaling. If that goes, we'll need different ways to challenge us - which should've always been the goal anyway.

[Neocyberman]

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/320667-adding-utility-to-damage-abilities/

 

For your consideration.

 

「Snip」

 

Note that this is already the case for really long survival runs - eventually you have to figure out how not to get hit. As it stands, the main progress stopper is still health and armor scaling. If that goes, we'll need different ways to challenge us - which should've always been the goal anyway.

 

Agreed absolutely completely.

 

Had I more time I too would have detailed the issues with skills that lack utility on a frame by frame basis.

 

The second bit is something I also think needs to be expanded on. For the most part all challenge comes from the infinite scaling and not from enemy tactics and over-reliance on this leads to the issue at hand.

[7grims]

why u think so many were complaining about excalibur radial blind nerf?

cause all those ppl have understood that utility abilities are far better then damage abilities.

 

also all pleas to ability scaling or balance, all suggest scaling up, never scaling down.

its the same problem of going into low difficulty levels, its looses challenge and fun to overkill everything.

[legendarysidekicksteve]

Part of what DE has done to strengthen late game utlitiy of damage based powers is to give them some sort of status proc. For example, they gave Ash's shuriken a slash proc, Oberon's smite radiation and puncture proc, etc. Status is the way to go if you want to mix damage with utility.

[Neocyberman]

Part of what DE has done to strengthen late game utlitiy of damage based powers is to give them some sort of status proc. For example, they gave Ash's shuriken a slash proc, Oberon's smite radiation and puncture proc, etc. Status is the way to go if you want to mix damage with utility.

Oh yeah, I can see that but this only works if the procs are guaranteed and if the element effect you have in mind is actually useful. Don't get me wrong I would love to see this on abilities like slash dash, and Nyx's psy bolts. But these procs suffer a fall off of their own. Like slash is based upon the original damage being done as damage over time on a percentage. This causes slash to loose its luster as your damage starts not to match up with health numbers. This and slash based on its calculation seems to be geared towards being most useful as a proc on high damage attacks. Rather than as a result of the damage an individual projectile attack would do.

 

I would agree entirely if slash was calculated  as a small percentage of enemy health done as damage per tic with a consideration for the damage dealt when it proc's.

 

So on a lower level enemy the slash proc would deal the most of its damage from the power of the weapon in that calculation and on a higher level enemy most of the damage comes from the flat percentage on the health of the target. Just an idea.

[PlayerNone]

Look, damage in this game will never be the way you want it to be, no matter how much you hope. Yes, all damage skills fall off late unless they lack utility, but I'm pretty sure that was DE's idea. It's simple; Don't use damage abilities for late game things (T4's). That's what utility is for. Although, I still think there should be a press 1 that does damage based off % health.

 

Why should it be acceptable that the majority of warframe abilities, the things that make a warframe a warframe (which in turn make Warframe what Warframe is) become absolutely useless in high level content? If I wanted to play a generic 3rd person shooter, I'd go do that. I'm here because I want to go fast and use my powers and feel good doing it. However, now that I've progressed in the game quite a bit, anything in the solar system (RIP star map) is very, very boring because it's all very, very easy. I've been grinding far too hard and far too long just to needlessly gimp myself and play against level 20 enemies just so Fireball and Psychic Bolts are viable means of dealing damage.

 

Enemy health and armor cannot scale infinitely and need to have a cap (if they must do so, at least make the scaling logarithmic). Abilities need to be reworked to be a little more imaginative than "deal 500 slash damage" when everyone is working to point where they will go up against Heavy Gunners that can eat 50 such attacks and ask for more.

[Neocyberman]

I've begun to notice quite a few damage dealing procs have the same sort of calculation as slash and are just as much victim to scaling issues.

 

50% of base is dealt in toxin, heat, slash and elec. All falling prey to damage vs utility issue. of these all but slash have some sort of utility use. Elec stuns, heat causes flailing (occasionally...), toxin strikes at health below shields. Even then there are issues. The ones listed are all base damage types and you would get more raw damage from combining them with others, removing the ability to proc the original status. Furthermore the combined versions have better use than these base ones in my experience.

 

Why deal toxic instead of viral if your enemies health is off the scale, why deal elec with the chance of a stun when magnetic does better for shields in both damage and proc, why heat for the chance of a flail (if ai will cooperate) if you can generally do more with radiation against broader enemy typed for more damage and a better proc, why deal slash if its not PvP.

[Malikon]

What about having each skill, regardless of if it is a "DD" or not, have some manner of utility built in.  Fire skills guarantee ignite which makes things flail around helplessly for a moment.  Ice skills guarantee snares, roots, or frozen status.  Taking that route you could have said procs do some kind of "true damage" (i read that as percentile based), some manner of CC, or a self/team buff.

 

Granted that wont fix the fact that the damage portion of each skill will inevitably get scaled out of usefulness, but at least then each skill will provide SOMETHING which would allow it to be at least marginally useful at all times.

[ShardsSuperior]

Percent of health based skills are good in this game, because skills are completely spammable. Either:

1) Percent is too high (even 5-10% of enemy HP would be impossible to balance, when 10-20 casts = dead mobs)

2) Percent is too low (would 1% of health lost actually mean anything at ANY level?

 

It's also counter-intuitive. Why would your skills do MORE damage as monster strength increased?

(For some, this problem isn't that bad, but it gets really wonky with some.).

 

Remember, endless games are meant to be lost at some point. The damage curve ending with negligible skill damage is one part of that.

[Deruser]

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/320667-adding-utility-to-damage-abilities/

 

For your consideration.

 

The issue is really that the enemies have to become more dangerous, not just railroad you into a power curve you can't maintain by design. The difference isn't screamingly obvious but consider this:

 

 - Enemy health and shields scale linearly, up to a maximum at Lvl~100

 - Armor is fixed

 - Enemy damage scales linearly, but faster and with no cap

 

With a capped maximum health (for argument's sake, say x20 base health) and no scaling armor, there comes a point where enemies don't become harder to kill,  but still become more and more dangerous. For instance, we know that Heavy Gunners will, at most, need 37.3k damage to kill (or 11.3k Corrosive, or 21k Viral etc.). So enemies, while tough to take down with low-level gear, will not be difficult to take down at higher levels. This will help take emphasis off how much damage we can deal in one second, but how we can kill things without getting into direct firefights.

 

Note that this is already the case for really long survival runs - eventually you have to figure out how not to get hit. As it stands, the main progress stopper is still health and armor scaling. If that goes, we'll need different ways to challenge us - which should've always been the goal anyway.

 

I really like this idea. This will end up to be something like the mysterious shipment alerts, which I really dig. Maybe enemies can have abilities that will unlock as their levels go higher. That will create more varied scenarios and make the game a little less repetitive.

[Neocyberman]

Percent of health based skills are good in this game, because skills are completely spammable. Either:

1) Percent is too high (even 5-10% of enemy HP would be impossible to balance, when 10-20 casts = dead mobs)

2) Percent is too low (would 1% of health lost actually mean anything at ANY level?

 

It's also counter-intuitive. Why would your skills do MORE damage as monster strength increased?

(For some, this problem isn't that bad, but it gets really wonky with some.).

 

Remember, endless games are meant to be lost at some point. The damage curve ending with negligible skill damage is one part of that.

 

What you are talking about is a survival or excavation or some such mode where you are supposed to leave 

 

What I'm trying to address is that without utility all damage based powers and the frames they are attached to loose viability as the player progresses because one, there are scaling issues and two, this causes portions of frames to become worthless. It might not be ideal to have flat percentage based damage but that is just an example of the sort of damage calculation that might be necessary to keep damage skills viable in a game with damage centric characters. Because the alternative is mostly linear damage scaling against enemies with geometric armor. I didn't direct my complaints at the mission scenarios you are describing. This scaling issue is one that is prevalent in the game in general.

 

This being said the modes I've listed are those in which challenge is meant to increase with time and the scaling we have presented to us is the manner by which that challenge is achieved. I think that our current scaling as a design solution is wrong. If this scaling is the only way that challenge is given to us then why use anything but the most damaging equipment? Why not limit ourselves to only a few frames with so great a utility as to be prevalent in all situations? Why not just never build or use the frame types that use damage as their main skill? The answer is that we do. We have to limit our choices and in doing so deny ourselves access to content, frames in this case. At times it feels like the frame I play is unfinished or does not belong in the game after a point. It becomes unfun to play frames in areas where content is designed to be more difficult based purely on a busted algorithm.

 

If frames are supposed to be designed to match content and be useful within the range DE has said they need to be then the design choices are not reflective of that.

[Zage23]

They just need to add a new system that allows you to forma (and in turn mod) the warframe abilities.  Guns run deep.  System is probably working as intended and unfortunately other warframes outshine others based on the setting they are being used in.

 

Doesn't mean I'm not open to the idea of it changing.

[RealPandemonium]

Infinite content is not relevant to balance.