So There's A Big Guy In Big Armour, And He's Pathetic Here And Godly There.

[Innocent_Flower]

Lancer level 8. Lancer level 36. 

 

 

So the thing is; The lancer looks tough. This isn't an argument exclusively about the lancer. But I'l use him because I like him. If you fight a lancer on earth- He's too easy. It takes a bullet for a mid-ranking player to kill one. The same mid ranking player fights a lancer on ceres and he'l expend many bullets trying to get through that thick armour. The grakata will leap from something less harmful than a blade of grass to something that rivals the deathstar. 

 

But when you get the necessary mods to deal with this lancer; Do you actually feel like you've progressed?  You're now even with the same guy who you dominate on earth. It's the same guy. 

 

Yes. You can feel you've progressed by going back to earth, doing too much damage and taking far less- but now that's become boring. They're no challenge. Now go back to ceres, play survival till everything outlevels you and you'l realise how weak you are. How fake this leveling system is. You both easily defeat and get crushed by identical characters. There's no progression because the gameplay hasn't changed between Earth-Lancer and Ceres lancer. The weapon is the same. The appearance, minus the paint, is the same. The tactics are the same. The abilities are the same. The only difference is numbers. 

 

So instead could we do something like this? 

 

 

Easy missions for grineer use more light soldiers. Light melee. Light infantry (rather than lancers you have new units which are essentially butchers with guns) medium units like Lancers themselves are uncommon and tough. Corpus use many men and few/lesser robotics. Infested are more sparse and weaklings are common. 

 

Grineer Medium missions use both medium and light infantry. (lancers are common. Light infantry still exist) Corpus use more/better robotics and few men. Infested are at eris levels. 

 

Hard only keeps the light infantry with powerful weaponry. Otherwise medium infantry (and elite infantry) make up the bulk of enemies. Corpus use better and larger robots like jackals and Hyena almost commonly. Infested are larger, altered from being longer infested. 

Edited October 23, 2014 by Innocent_Flower

[EversorNinja]

So much yes

[NlGHTSHAD3]

^^^ This ... I like this!

[Void_Soldier]

I like this idea. It'd be nice to feel a sense of the challenge gradient from more than just how many enemies turn up who glow orange.

 

The only change I'd suggest from a lore perspective is perhaps instead of the Corpus using lots more men and less robotics in the easier missions, perhaps robotics with less armour plating and potentially scale up the models for their targeting gear as the missions get harder, allowing for a similarly gradiated level of accuracy from them... 

 

So on Venus you might essentially have the home or industrial security robo-forms but by the time you reach Neptune it's the hardened military versions of the same basic designs (as well as the bigger ones).

[CrazyCatLad]

The whole scaling system doesn't bother me as much as it does some but I would totally be down for this system instead.

[notionphil]

typically, progression based games that scale up enemies put in at least a passing effort to tweak colors, models and names accordingly. I see no reason why that shouldn't be incorporated along with your suggestions.

 

Also note that enemy composition does change, albeit slightly at higher levels. Heavies etc are far less likely to spawn in earlier content and planets.

[letir]

This is usual progression in most "action" games. That's called "vertical progression".

Edited October 23, 2014 by letir

[Davoodoo]

Good thing imo was to introduce elite lancers after lvl 25 some time ago, but this idea was scrapped when drops 2.0 hit due to drops being tied to specific units.

Edited October 23, 2014 by Davoodoo

[Liminal]

I dream of a day when I can replay every single mission in the game without OHKing everything / being OHK by everything while using the same loadout.

But I don't think they are going to normalize enemy levels / damage mods / shields / hp. It's pretty much the foundation of WF now :/

[Scryed]

this is a great idea, especially for survival.

[superbot34]

well you just unveiled one of the biggest problems in warframe that no one seems to care about. people complain that the game is too hard, then obtain a mod that lets them tear through enemies or a new weapon that is designed for hard content and say the game is too easy, and to increase the difficulty. over several interactions, this has caused the game to become ridiculously hard for players who start out and even for players a month into the game. 

 

and yet, people still complain about frames being too overpowered, as they maximize their possible efficiency or damage with mods. they complain its too easy when they forma their boltor prime enough to the point that it deals the maximum possible damage. 

 

Weapons have tiers, mods fix that, but they also push forward already powerful weapons even further. nerfing isn't the problem, its making more mods specific to tier weapons. the lato, furis, and sicarus get a special mod that increases their damage or effectiveness, but the marlok does not get this mod. think a thunderbolt mod in the sense that only some weapons can use it. 

[(PSN)VariantX7]

+1 to OP's post. It feels like there is ZERO progression because you're killing the same guys you did when you first installed and created your warframe account at the end of the solar map. These supposedly low tier guys in the faction just do way more damage to you now not because they're better trained or better equipped, but simply just because.

[Archistopheles]

We want more enemies? Well yeah, of course we do.

[Neocyberman]

More enemy types, yeah!

More challenge derived from enemy behaviour and power, yeah!

Use existing heavy units to replace the light infantry position... nah(This happens ingame in survival missions)

New units like advanced light and medium and heavy infantry yeah!

 

I'm on board and as far as I'm concerned this should have been the main design goal.

[(XBOX)ShapelessHorr0r]

Problem being that we'd run into thousands of butchers and snipers.

The current system is the only way to ensure diversity unless DE was willing to create 3-4 more enemies per faction. Infested could get off the hook with 1 or 2 though.

[Innocent_Flower]

Let me expand on my ideas for the grineer a bit, though don't let this poor post worsen your thoughts on the OP if it's terrible. 

 

 

Enemies like lancers, seekers, hellions are medium units. Bombadiers/napalms/heavy gunners are heavy units. Light units are butchers, snipers, powerfists, scorpions. 

 

In this, We're expanding the types of light unit just a little. 

 

The main light infantry guys will be Butcher models with grakata/hinds. You can see butchers with bratons in 

and we've still got "lancers" in the void (butchers with dera) so it's not like they weren't ever considered for this roll. 

 

That on it's own should be an easy to make addition to the grineer forces. 

 

Extra light elite grineer (the ones that still apear on hard)

 

*Butcher models with rocket launcher.You could use an ogris but I'm thinking a more powerful one shot RPG, (partialy because I want a one-shot RPG). 

Homing RPG grineer. Easy to kill. Once killed the rocket looses it's target. The rocket is slow, undogable but easy to shoot down. An interesting game mechanic

*Butcher/female grenadiers. Throw lots of grenades.

Cannon grineer. Easy to kill guys who point a laser at the player. The player then needs to kill/seek cover as the laser is part of a portable cannon with a slow charge (think spartan laser but grineer) 

Stug user. Maybe with a jetpack. 

Explosive dart gun user. A dart is fired. After a few seconds it explodes. 

Those are mostly fun little ideas that don't all need to be implemented. Anyhow the main theme behind the elite light units is that they're easy to kill and hold powerful weapons that the player can take steps to avoid (skill based gameplay. Wooooo!!!) 

 

Edited October 23, 2014 by Innocent_Flower

[Insidiatorii]

Oh yes please!!! Make more meaning to the game!!!

[Innocent_Flower]

Did I kill my own thread; or is it so agreeable that people don't post? 

[Liminal]

You killed it with good ideas.

[Innocent_Flower]

Well, Is it to soon to bump this? It kinda got buried amidst the U15 stuff. 

 

If someone could bring it up to the devs; I'd love them forever. 

[Innocent_Flower]

U15 spam is much dead. thread's time to shine. 

[Neocyberman]

Yeah, thats the bad thing about having concise points and well thought out ideas. There isnt much discussion about it to keep the thread afloat.

[DSMK2]

Hard/high level missions should have us fighting tanks, aircraft, and mechs; the various enemy factions literally scaling up in the fight against the Tenno, instead of somehow-standard-gear becoming magically stronger. I've always had the same sentiment as the OP regarding the weird non-canonical enemy scaling.

[SSC-47]

It would be interesting to see this implemented.

[34Brewster]

I could NOT agree more to this. Honestly, it's been overdue. DE is slowly getting there with the recent influx of new units (mutated ospreys, drahk masters) but there's still a lot of room for improvement.