Newbie's Feedback: How To Solve Majority Of Watframe's Problems

[HyokaChan]

Okay, to start with I'm going to say I'm not one of the people with 1000 hours in this game. I don't think I'm even close to 100 yet. I joined around U14, so keep that in mind.

 

Now, I won't beat around the bush with a long introduction and listing every problem out here; take a look around the feedback section, I'm sure you'll see a lot of the things explained better than I can. Steep learning curves, Warframes becoming useless, Equipment not being up to par, grind walls that seem out of place...

 

There's one solution: Scaling. It needs so much attention I'll repeat that again: Scaling. In fact, I need to repeat it one more time: Scaling. Actually, that's not even enough: SCALING. In fact, it's so magical I'll have Spongebob help me with this:

 

"What scaling?", you ask? Well, there's so much scaling to add and to adjust in this game I'm having troubles thinking of what to tackle first...

 

...So, by recommendation from my clan leader, I'll start with two of the most current and most glaring issues as of the latest update: 1) Warframe abilities, and 2) Syndicate Reputation.

 

1) The most recent updates have been attempting to balance Warframes around: Excalibur being the first to receive actual change, followed by every warframe with the removal of the ability slots. This was supposed to make players focus more on all 4 of each warframe's abilities instead of just one. Sure, opening access to all 4 was a good idea and I like it, but it didn't work out: even if you didn't have to pay mod capacity to have access to Slash Dash, Shuriken, Tesla... No one would really use them unless you didn't have access to anything else/trying to grind affinity, or you were a total newbie. 

 

This is because the majority of damage abilities do not scale. Ember and Hydroid are the best examples of this problem, since all of their abilities except Accelerant deal straight damage. The solution? Add scaling.

 

An easy method of doing this is to simply make it deal x + y% of ____(replace with appropriate factor, most likely going to be enemy health) damage. Slash Dash can deal x + y% melee weapon damage. Fireball can deal x + y% enemy health as damage. Make power strength either multiply the total damage or just the y%. To balance this, all boss/assassin-type enemies will have an innate mechanic that halves (or simply reduces) this y% value when the ability is used on them.

 

The result? All frames may now be taken to any level and have their abilities be viable. And that's how it should be, because while you can have your equipment progress, your warframes can't. There's only so much a potatoes and formae can do, and for a game where each and every warframe is supposed to be important, to have a few of them not viable in the least in endgame/high level content is simply against the concept.

 

2) Syndicate Reputation is an even more recent issue, with it lots and lots of complaints and indirect nerfs. The concept is simple: You join a faction, work with them for a long time to gain their trust and respect, get rewards. Just like how each Samurai served their lord. Immediately, the forum exploded harder than Ember's World on Fire ability about how ridiculous it was going to be getting to the maximum rank without purchasing anything.

 

Yeah, I understand DE didn't want players flinging their way through content they designed to take a long time to complete. Cue lots of Viver direct/indirect nerfs and, well, look what happened to some of the most popular endgame warframes.

 

The problem has been pointed out by many others already: Reputation scales with affinity. Not cool.

 

One could easily eliminate Viver farming and exploitation completely by simply changing how Reputation is gained, and how it scales.

 

There are many solutions posted by others, and the one I liked the best was simply have multipliers for your mastery level + syndicate rank, then scale reputation to a "mission score": Total damage dealt by squad - Total damage taken by squad or something similar. 

 

The result is that now you can boss for reputation. Yes, endless will still be the strongest source of reputation, but now you can bring a full set of equipment over into T4 endless and get good reputation, too.

 

As I've already said, there are more problems than just the above two that needs scaling/scaling tweaks: Stalker too hard for newbies and too easy on veterans? Adjust his scaling formula. Grineer too OP? Adjust their scaling formula. Sentinels/Kubrows not cutting it in endgame? Add scaling!

 

TL;DR:

Edited November 13, 2014 by HyokaChan

[Calsius]

You've put a lot of thought into this. Its certainly a better way to handle things then they are being handled right now. Well done.

[--Exalted--]

props, but this has been suggested thousands of times and it is unlikely DE will give this a second glance.

[nickelshark]

It's always good to feedback from someone who hasn't dumped a life time into warframe give some feedback. It often brings a more cool headed logical approach rather than having feelings of loss of investment, regret, and whatever else flies from the hearts of tenno mixed in.

 

I agree. abilities simply do not scale well at all. In endgame abilities are purely used for CC and utility while weapons are used for dmg. Having abilities actually scale would be hugely beneficial and add a lot more variety to endgame instead of it being funneled down to a hand full of frames.

 

And as far as the Syndicate the xp thing was a flop honestly. I like the idea of it being based on dmg output or something along those lines would make it easier to get rep in a variety of places.

 

Having choices make people happy.

[Neocyberman]

Yep, nail on the head there buddy.

[HyokaChan]

props, but this has been suggested thousands of times and it is unlikely DE will give this a second glance.

Well, that's because it isn't the biggest glaring issue at present and DE keeps pushing out new content that they will easily listen to feedback on.

 

But not this stuff.

Edited November 14, 2014 by HyokaChan

[HyokaChan]

I have decided to bump this topic because the explosion of feedback after the triple warframe nerf has subsided due to address by DE.

 

I didn't mean to focus it on syndicates or viver, but just warframe's balance in general, so now I can pretty much remove the 2) from the first post.