Why Does It Take So Long To Balance The Game? (De, Please Read)

[Casval_Rouge]

Right now, it takes DE at least 6 months to tweak something.  In very specific cases, they tweak them within a few hotfixes.  15.5.5 is a great example.  But it is also rare.  I've been playing since almost day 1, and I can tell you balance is never a priority for DE.  Overload was broken as hell (it can one shot Pluto's boss), it took them a few months to fix it.  Hek was also killing the boss in a few hits, that was also fixed, in a few months.  The alert swords?  Never.  Not until melee 2.0 did they received any changes.  But what about Ceramic dagger, Heat dagger, Kama, etc....No one cares about those, so they still remain very underwhelming. And no please don't tell me you can use it for copter or something like that.  That doesn't justify anything. 

 

The point is, keep crying, but it won't matter.  Come back in a few months and you might see some changes.  Weapons and Warframes tend to have a bit higher priority, so at least there's that.  Mods?  Pffttt, never.  I'm still counting how long it is going to take them to balance Diamond Skin, Intruder, Aviator (but you can use it when you use Super Jump or with Zephyr!), Warm Coat, status mods (lol these things, they were useless before, they still are after a remake).  It's been more than a year.

[Vance.Stubbs]

I'm here since U7 and pretty much gave up on "balance". It has been beaten up -> bandaged -> beaten up again until it cried -> given an analgesic -> shoved into a dark room where it could barely see the light.

 

My biggest concerns with their balance:

-Weapon lock by mastery rank

-Market vs Clan tech weapon

-Materials in construction

-Constant stats changes

-Constant mod changes / new mods

-Weapon mods for the weapon in cause (eg. Glaive, Burston Prime, etc)

-Tier weapons (Prime, Wraith, Vandal, Dragon, and 6 new from the Syndicates)

 

---

I'll give you an example. I really like X weapon, but why would I spend a catalyst ,several forma and time when 1.Stats may (will) change; 2. A better version may come out; 3. A much better weapon will be released. Same applies for Warframes.

 

I understand potatoes and forma need to have drains, but very few things cause as much anger then changing / releasing a better version of said weapon / frame. Countless things came to mind. Also primed frames have benefits (stats & from void) but no downsides in any way comparing to regular frames, this suggest a straight upgrade. Please be clear and confirm so people aren't afraid of selling a potato'ed and ~4forma Nova's (Rhinos, Mag's, Soma's, and so forth).

 

[DE] Scott, I would suggest you to gather a taskforce team (if you haven't already) to analyse and develop a better system for weapon balance and release. People will get mad with changes but it'll be to a much lesser extent than constant changing it in a very unbalanced way (Synoid Gammacor). If you want, present to us (players) the system (taking in mind bullet points from concerns)  and explain why. I think this would avoid a lot of rage inside the community.

 

 

 

Edit: Polishing text / errors.

 

Completely agree with taskforce team and futher explanations, this is what game trully needs if DE claim it to be a "community involved beta".

[Sasquatchias]

I agree with most of your post except for making Shotgun damage mod (Point Blank as an example) bigger, I'd actually argue that the Rifle and Pistol mods (Serration and Hornet Strike as examples, along with Heavy Caliber) are too big right now. 

 

Seriously those mods cause loads of balance issues, and in my humble opinion need to be brought down to far more manageable levels.

[Dede_Salomao]

I'll give you an example. I really like X weapon, but why would I spend a catalyst ,several forma and time when 1.Stats may (will) change; 2. A better version may come out; 3. A much better weapon will be released. Same applies for Warframes.

 

I understand potatoes and forma need to have drains, but very few things cause as much anger then changing / releasing a better version of said weapon / frame. Countless things came to mind. Also primed frames have benefits (stats & from void) but no downsides in any way comparing to regular frames, this suggest a straight upgrade. Please be clear and confirm so people aren't afraid of selling a potato'ed and ~4forma Nova's (Rhinos, Mag's, Soma's, and so forth).

 

[DE] Scott, I would suggest you to gather a taskforce team (if you haven't already) to analyse and develop a better system for weapon balance and release. People will get mad with changes but it'll be to a much lesser extent than constant changing it in a very unbalanced way (Synoid Gammacor). If you want, present to us (players) the system (taking in mind bullet points from concerns)  and explain why. I think this would avoid a lot of rage inside the community..

 

Sure that in the actual state of balance, huge changes should be made in several lines (weapons stats/mods bonus/Master rank requirement/Syndicate lvl) and those could cause some 'rage' in some players that can't see the necessity of the changes. Then your solution to make things clear in a DevStream before would be well fitted.

 

BUT rebalance should be a usual fix and, after the initial changes, the balance changes should be small and not that impacting and fearsome. They should have the only purpose of letting the player fit the weapons to their playstyle and likes instead of seeking for the Top loadouts in vlogs (sry Mogamu and Callypso, i love you guys, don't hate me =) ).

[Phoenix86]

+1 to OP,

the rate at which "balance updates" come out is utterly slow... meanwhile we get an average of 1 weapon/week (if not more)

[Renkai141]

Just feels like everything should be in variety.
Tier 1 ~ 4 keys.
every weapon should be seperated in tiers. Sure, certain weapons can become unrated(with amount of formas).
Certain PRIME weapons could use a polarity slot, JUST like every warframe PRIME. A good example was how the reaper prime came out, and it was a huge dissapointed. To me, I just feel like every primed weapon needs a polarity slot.

 

Tier list are hard to make, but it creates organization. And limiting players to mastery rank.

Mk 1 being Tier 1. Tier 2 being akbolto type weapons, Tier 3 around Galantine, and T4 around Dragon Nikana/Boltor Prime. No need to have a certain mastery rank, but organization and clarity can lead the game to a positive outcome. 

To me, Warframe feels like it started backwards. TOO many choices, no real path.

[Xana_Skullsunder]

Mostly because DE is still adding things, and still has not added the focus system, and still everything around your 11 things need to be balanced. More enemies are coming out... More tilesets... more bosses... more weapons... more warframes... more mods... there will always be more, more, and more...

 

Even if DE DID balance them... guess what? They are just going to keep balancing them. Infact they have gone back to balance those things in the past. REALLY... There is no reason to balance them now to be honest. I mean they probably are. I am wouldnt doubt Scott goes back. Looks along with his merry men, and women who work with him on this balancing thing. They all look. Then they go back and look at other factors in the game. I have a feeling there is a certain factor in the game that they are afraid of at the moment being effected if they were to change the effects of those mods any time soon. As I stated before focus could have any effect.

 

Also you run out of bullets with grakata, and glaxion? Did you try putting an ammo mutation on? Because THAT is what your supposed to do. Along with having buddies with ammo restore on. Imagine if grakata, and glaxion had more ammo? If they get more ammo their damage should go down they would immediately become TOO OP...

 

buff all physical mods...? They already go MUCH HIGHER than 90 on everything... wtf are you talking about?

 

but lets get to the point balance as a whole... is a VERY SLOW PROCESS... if they buff too much weapons might become too OP... I don't want the game going back to what it was during Closed Beta. It was fun being God... , but I don't want that in the current game. Infact I the new infested made me cry tears of joy thanks to the fact they finally made Veteran player level enemies that make us think for once...

 

Grakata, OP? What the hell are you smoking, man? I want some. And this is from someone who forma'd his grakata twice.

 

As for OP guns, they sure didn't care when they released Boltor Prime. And yet we still have crap like the frost/lightning mods capping at 60%.

 

I'm not convinced balance is a big priority for these guys. Pushing more content seems to be the goal.

[Psychen]

Sure that in the actual state of balance, huge changes should be made in several lines (weapons stats/mods bonus/Master rank requirement/Syndicate lvl) and those could cause some 'rage' in some players that can't see the necessity of the changes. Then your solution to make things clear in a DevStream before would be well fitted.

 

BUT rebalance should be a usual fix and, after the initial changes, the balance changes should be small and not that impacting and fearsome. They should have the only purpose of letting the player fit the weapons to their playstyle and likes instead of seeking for the Top loadouts in vlogs (sry Mogamu and Callypso, i love you guys, don't hate me =) ).

 

The problem is bandages do not fix the main problems, right now weapons and frame are very disorganized. Simply buffing stats won't cut it, their balances drop like innefective bombs most of the time (check Syndicate mods). For sure it's not all about power, but utility / different weapons (eg. Miter, Buzlock) have no current place in the current chain.

 

Just feels like everything should be in variety.

Tier 1 ~ 4 keys.

every weapon should be seperated in tiers. Sure, certain weapons can become unrated(with amount of formas).

Certain PRIME weapons could use a polarity slot, JUST like every warframe PRIME. A good example was how the reaper prime came out, and it was a huge dissapointed. To me, I just feel like every primed weapon needs a polarity slot.

 

Tier list are hard to make, but it creates organization. And limiting players to mastery rank.

Mk 1 being Tier 1. Tier 2 being akbolto type weapons, Tier 3 around Galantine, and T4 around Dragon Nikana/Boltor Prime. No need to have a certain mastery rank, but organization and clarity can lead the game to a positive outcome. 

To me, Warframe feels like it started backwards. TOO many choices, no real path.

 

They need to organize it more, that's for sure. That's why there's mastery ranks, clan weapons, faction weapons (inside clan tech), and so forth. I just hope that while they do it they search the community for feedback. It's their game for sure, but we're the ones playing it.

[MDRLOz]

I agree with most of your post except for making Shotgun damage mod (Point Blank as an example) bigger, I'd actually argue that the Rifle and Pistol mods (Serration and Hornet Strike as examples, along with Heavy Caliber) are too big right now. 

 

Seriously those mods cause loads of balance issues, and in my humble opinion need to be brought down to far more manageable levels.

I can understand where you are coming from. By reducing serration and heavy cal you can bring rifles down to shotgun level. 

 

However a quick and simple fix for shotguns would be to give them a 10 rank damage mod to catch up.  Also less people complain this way. 

[Xana_Skullsunder]

I can understand where you are coming from. By reducing serration and heavy cal you can bring rifles down to shotgun level. 

 

However a quick and simple fix for shotguns would be to give them a 10 rank damage mod to catch up.  Also less people complain this way. 

 

People will likely complain either way, tbf.

[Pbrandon1]

Right now, it takes DE at least 6 months to tweak something.  In very specific cases, they tweak them within a few hotfixes.  15.5.5 is a great example.  But it is also rare.  I've been playing since almost day 1, and I can tell you balance is never a priority for DE.  Overload was broken as hell (it can one shot Pluto's boss), it took them a few months to fix it.  Hek was also killing the boss in a few hits, that was also fixed, in a few months.  The alert swords?  Never.  Not until melee 2.0 did they received any changes.  But what about Ceramic dagger, Heat dagger, Kama, etc....No one cares about those, so they still remain very underwhelming. And no please don't tell me you can use it for copter or something like that.  That doesn't justify anything. 

 

The point is, keep crying, but it won't matter.  Come back in a few months and you might see some changes.  Weapons and Warframes tend to have a bit higher priority, so at least there's that.  Mods?  Pffttt, never.  I'm still counting how long it is going to take them to balance Diamond Skin, Intruder, Aviator (but you can use it when you use Super Jump or with Zephyr!), Warm Coat, status mods (lol these things, they were useless before, they still are after a remake).  It's been more than a year.

 Diamond Skin was at-least decent since Corpus and their lasers have become problematic but now...they changed it to radiation damage. Honestly, I don't know how someone thought was a really good idea. I wanna know how they thought that a proc, that only happens from two things, the detron crewmen, and void lasers, and thought that was better then damage resistance from lasers.

 

Honestly, it is mind-blowing how someone can be that bad at balancing....I...just can't...

Edited December 4, 2014 by Pbrandon1

[RealPandemonium]

I like how you complain that things are unbalanced and them make no mention of room-clearing 4s, godmode-granting abilities like MPrime, and Grineer armor scaling.  

[Vance.Stubbs]

I like how you complain that things are unbalanced and them make no mention of room-clearing 4s, godmode-granting abilities like MPrime, and Grineer armor scaling.  

 

This is weapon feedback forum, learn to read and come back. Or don't.