Is More Damage Actually The Best Way To Go?

[Innocent_Flower]

So warframe already had this problem:

 

You'd go into a low level mission and forget to nerf your 8-damage mod weapon appropriately, so you now kill enemies with a single scratch, resulting in absolutely no challenge. 

Or,  You forget to use a weapon with 8 damage mods and you find you've entered real warfare armed with a nerf gun. 

Or you play an infinite gamemode with scalling and need to go through long periods of zero challenge to get to five mins of balancedForYourEquipment which precedes that period of time in which trash mobs instakill you. 

 

Nobody finds that actualy fun or stimulating. There are people that say they like being preposterously overpowered, But they're lying (to themselves) and you can't actually make involving gameplay if you wanna just throw big numbers everywhere. m1+W with a boltor prime gets old real fast. 

 

And now DE wants to make it worse? Primed Point blank? What's next? Primed pressure point? Primed split-chamber? Primed cryo-rounds~? 

 

Once everything dies from a single bullet from a full auto 200 round gun, You're really doing the wrong thing. 

 

All those threads saying "I want a challenge" and "this is too hard, nerf this enemy" are a direct result of this corrupted modding system in which you just add an incalculable amount of damage to each gun. 

 

Just adding more and more +damage  mods is clearly a poor decision; The fools will ask for more void teirs, the instant-death spray guns will be more prevalent. This isn't even a pure mod thing though: new weapons get more and more powerful. Why can't you just try and get them to be sold for their mechanics? 

 

The best mission in this game is still the opening tutorial, just because of it's exquisite balance (due to you not having access to a gun with +damage+multishot+elemental damages+crit/phyiscal damages and the mission's enemies being built around that)  The game doesn't need power creep. It needs a power recession.  

[TheStag]

Damage combined with utility is the best that there is. Damage will carry you into the late game, and utility will carry you through the end game.

[jordanforever]

I'm currently happy with the game right now, but i do agree. There should be some mode added to nodes or even the void to make it hard. But i don't recomend making it easier just because of exploits

[Makya]

Yet without +damage to separate beginning game and late game and a gun is good for both 'low level' and 'high level' then you lose progression.

 

You say increasing damage is 'poor design' yet.. can you name a progression game where you don't 'become more powerful' and 'trivialize starter content with advanced content tools'?

[Magicfingers]

"Nobody finds that actualy fun or stimulating. There are people that say they like being preposterously overpowered, But they're lying (to themselves)"

 

finally!!!! someone who knows what everyone wants and took it upon themselves to let the world know that they, and only they, know what everyone wants!!! i didn't know i was lying to myself all this time. i thought i enjoyed being over powered, but i guess i was wrong....forgive me for being so stupid i didn't now what i really wanted. thank you...thank you...thank you for pointing out the error of my way and putting me on the path i should have been following all this time i thought i was having fun....how wrong i was.

 

in case you didn't know, i was being sarcastic

[Innocent_Flower]

Yet without +damage to separate beginning game and late game and a gun is good for both 'low level' and 'high level' then you lose progression.

 

You say increasing damage is 'poor design' yet.. can you name a progression game where you don't 'become more powerful' and 'trivialize starter content with advanced content tools'?

Tons and tons of utility mods. 

 

 

*sigh* I didn't mean a player shouldn't get more powerful, but I do mean that a player shouldn't get more powerful by increasing his weapon damage tenfold. 

[egregiousRac]

The problem with the scaling in this game is that player damage scales exponentially while tankiness scales linearly (for the most part). On the flip side, both enemy stats scale fairly linearly. This causes players to kill enemies absurdly fast, but everyone sub-Valkyr dies nearly instantly even to level 40-50 enemies, which are still easily killed.

[Bizzaro21]

the main issue is that NPCs use total brute force (i.e armor,damage,etc.)

IMO,the way to balance this is simple.... gice NPCs brains to use on us instead of power... i may have made this weird, but really a gunner leech eximus in t3 needs no cover she can face tank your whole squad and even kill you.... as their level goes up, make them smarter not just stronger eventually they should end up like a bunch of stalkers but less lethal... i mean come on.... warframe NPCs are way more than dumb as hell.... only Grineer should be cuz their genetic issues, but corpus? how are thoee dumb@sses engineers and merchants? if i shoot one with a silent weapon no one notices the corpse!!

keep the gamage up to balance against the armored enemies, but if they get smart they could kill you with your best weapons in terminus.....

Edited December 27, 2014 by Bizzaro21

[Makya]

Tons and tons of utility mods. 

 

*sigh* I didn't mean a player shouldn't get more powerful, but I do mean that a player shouldn't get more powerful by increasing his weapon damage tenfold. 

So skipping damage.. Faster RoF, larger Magazine, faster reload.. Shift of focus from one bullet to three in the same time. If weapons end up not cutting it for people.. well.. Warframe has a larger 'Press 4 to Win' status for a reason for quite a few reasons, this would add to them: 'Guns are weak'.

 

Also if you lower weapon damage, you then need to address enemy scaling and.. just the whole thing starts over again of finding 'The best base weapon'.

[Innocent_Flower]

So skipping damage.. Faster RoF, larger Magazine, faster reload.. Shift of focus from one bullet to three in the same time. If weapons end up not cutting it for people.. well.. Warframe has a larger 'Press 4 to Win' status for a reason for quite a few reasons, this would add to them: 'Guns are weak'.

 

Also if you lower weapon damage, you then need to address enemy scaling and.. just the whole thing starts over again of finding 'The best base weapon'.

But in that scenario the best base weapon isn't 26262 times more than powerful than everything else, so it's an improvement. 

Edited December 27, 2014 by Innocent_Flower

[SquirmyBurrito]

1. "Nobody finds that actualy fun or stimulating. There are people that say they like being preposterously overpowered, But they're lying (to themselves) and you can't actually make involving gameplay if you wanna just throw big numbers everywhere. m1+W with a boltor prime gets old real fast. "

 

2. "And now DE wants to make it worse? Primed Point blank? What's next? Primed pressure point? Primed split-chamber? Primed cryo-rounds~? "

 

1. False. Some people DO find being OP fun. Games like Saints Row 4 revolve (eventually) around being a stupidly overpowered being running around in a sandbox environment. Not every game aims to be (or has to be) SoulsSeries-esque.

 

2. Shotguns are terrible. Primed Point Blank isn't shifting the meta any.

 

the main issue is that NPCs use total brute force (i.e armor,damage,etc.)

IMO,the way to balance this is simple.... gice NPCs brains to use on us instead of power... i may have made this weird, but really a gnner leech eximus in t3 needs no covercit can face tank your whole squad and even kill you.... as their level goes up, makke them smarter not just stronger eventually they should end up like a bunch of stalkers but less lethal... i mean come on.... warframe NPCs are way more than dumb as hell.... only Grineer should be cuz their genetic issues, but corpus? how are thoee dumb@sses engineers and merchants? if i shoot one with a silent weapon no one notices the corpse!!

keep the gamage up to balance against he armored enemies, but if they get smart they could kill you with you best weapons in terminus.....

 

 

The Grineer are actually pretty intelligent. You can't design working proxies (rollers), various robotic limbs, and space ferrying vehicles (including the fomorians that are causing us so much trouble) without being fairly intelligent.

Edited December 27, 2014 by SquirmyBurrito

[Chroia]

No. All you want is enough damage to 1-shot anything you may shoot.

Anything beyond that is overkill.

 

 

Just adding more and more +damage  mods is clearly a poor decision;

<snip>

Why can't you just try and get them to be sold for their mechanics? 

<snip>

And now DE wants to make it worse? Primed Point blank? What's next? Primed pressure point? Primed split-chamber? Primed cryo-rounds~? 

Coming up with new mechanics, or substantial variations on old ones is hard after a point.

Cranking out new gear with '+5 all stats' every other week is a lot easier.

Heck, WoW's been doing it for, what? 8 years now?

(Of course, there (at least as far as bossfights go) it comes packaged with mechanically different content, beyond just visually.)

 

Same deal with the Primed mods.

Ignore the fact that most mods (i.e. any except Archwing chassis mods) are ridiculously powerful already.

Ignore the fact that most of their bonuses are multiplicative, granting an exponential power increase.

(

 

If someone swings twice as fast, and hits twice as often and hits twice as hard, he will be doing eight times the damage. He will not be doing (100% + 100% + 100% + 100% = 400%) damage, he will instead be doing 800% damage.

Source)

(You start with a gun.

Maxed Serration turns your gun into ~2.6 guns.

Split Chamber then turns it into ~5.4 guns.

Each 90% elemental mod then adds another ~5 guns.)

 

Ignore the fact that maxing one, let alone multiple R10 rares already takes a fair bit of time.

 

Just toss out another, bigger carrot everyone once in a while. Then make enemies harder once every slightly longer while.

More power and more grind! \m/_

Quick and easy solution.

The skinner box is alive and well.

 

 

 

Edit:

My ideal game is mostly horizontal progression focused, with a small-but-noticeable per-stat increase (which exponential math will amplify).

That said, I don't have an inherent problem with vertical progression in games where it's appropriate.

Specifically, in linear games.

Which Warframe (kind of) isn't. And I honestly do feel that it'd benefit from more horizontal and less vertical progression, unless they mean to keep churning higher tiers of Tower every 6 months.

(P.S. @DE - If you do, please tell me now so I can quit now and save myself 6 months.)

But this is DE's game, and they've clearly chosen a direction, so I'm not going to start crusading.

 

 

My bigger problem with power creep vertical progression is that it's a lazy game design choice, unless one is careful to use it only as a tool in their kit; rather than using it as the only tool in their kit.

 

 

I don't think that Warframe's lost to this. The recent, obvious, examples are: Archwings, augments, hubs, syndicates which are all drastically new (and new types of) content, and as long as they continue being developed (as well as older systems being revisited *coughParkourcough*), I won't complain too loudly about the power creep.

Edited December 28, 2014 by Chroia

[Makya]

But in that scenario the best base weapon isn't 26262 times more than powerful than everything else, so it's an improvement. 

Have you seen the Opticore and many sniper weapons? They are mostly utility to get them up to speed and working well.. Their damage is heavily front loaded with a lot of other problems. Currently there are several weapons that aren't used as much because if you build them for pure damage you are wasting your time.

 

Imagine this change with the Ogris if there were no +damage.. firerate, ammo conversion, fire rate, blast radius, two slots to convert to a different damage type, reload speed, flight speed...

 

You end up with weak weapons staying weak and those with front loaded damage being miles better than anything else.

[Bizzaro21]

The Grineer are actually pretty intelligent. You can't design working proxies (rollers), various robotic limbs, and space ferrying vehicles (including the fomorians that are causing us so much trouble) without being fairly intelligent.

i didnot mean lore part, i meant the normal mobs.... also, all NPCs' ai is too easy to break... example? ever saw the beautiful sight of an enemy totally ignoring you and running around in circles? no? ok try this:

1: wait for an enemy to take cover

2: go far from him then hack alarms

3: wait a few seconds then go back to him

4: stand behind him and take a selfie if you like he won't notice you.....

not convinced? today i was doing a sabotage alert against grineer... when they detected me, everyone went to positon and began shooting me.... all but one enemy shield lancer, i swear i saw him and stared at him... he just walked slowly and unalertedly in the middle of the fire line....

Edited December 27, 2014 by Bizzaro21

[Kruglov]

Welcome to RPG's.

 

Warframe is an rpg, despite what mental gymnastics people will perform to deny it.

[SquirmyBurrito]

i didnot mean lore part, i meant the normal mobs.... also, all NPCs' ai is too easy to break... example? ever saw the beautiful sight of an enemy totally ignoring you and running around in circles? no? ok try this:

1: wait for an enemy to take cover

2: go far from him then hack alarms

3: wait a few seconds then go back to him

4: stand behind him and take a selfie if you like he won't notice you.....

not convinced? today i was doing a sabotage alert against grineer... when they detected me, everyone went to positon and began shooting me.... all but one enemy shield lancer, i swear i saw him and stared at him... he just walked slowly and unalertedly in the middle of the fire line....

 

If you aren't talking about lore then what did you mean when you said "warframe NPCs are way more than dumb as hell.... only Grineer should be cuz their genetic issues, but corpus? how are thoee dumb@sses engineers and merchants?"?

 

I already know how easy it is to break enemy AI... not sure why you assumed I'd disagree with/not believe you.

[Chroia]

Welcome to RPG's.

 

Warframe is an rpg, despite what mental gymnastics people will perform to deny it.

Please don't do that.

Warframe might grow into an RPG some day (though I doubt it), but it certainly is not one now.

 (3:53-4:30) =/=

. Edited December 28, 2014 by Chroia

[Vallerian]

It's pretty hard to come up with an alternative in the current state of the game

 

Warframe at its core is an RPG, which means grind for items and grind for damage.

 

They could make it into like Halo Firefight mode, but then what's the point of grinding for mods?

[taiiat]

but I do mean that a player shouldn't get more powerful by increasing his weapon damage tenfold. 

actually, it's 55-110 fold between a new Weapon and a full set of Mods.

55x ish for non Crit Weapons, and 110x ish for Crit Weapons.

[SquirmyBurrito]

Please don't do that.

Warframe might grow into an RPG some day (though I doubt it), but it certainly is not one now.

 (3:53-4:30) =/=

.

 

How is Warframe not an RPG?

[akira_him]

Warframe is a JRPG with shooter elements

 

Please don't do that.

Warframe might grow into an RPG some day (though I doubt it), but it certainly is not one now.

 (3:53-4:30) =/=

.

The current situation of WF now is better described by this episode

Easy Games:

[Chroia]

How is Warframe not an RPG?

Depends on how you define an RPG, of course.

Since you asked me:

I play RPGs for the story - passive 'reading', active 'creating' and just general abnegation / immersion -, the self-expression (i.e. the actions I choose to make in the game world), the combat puzzles, the 'how does this system work, and how can I "break" it' and occasionally for the spell system.

 

Warframe has, at this point:

* some setting, but no story beyond the setting for the various operations. The only abnegation it offers is flow. Which, while an incredible thing if it "happens", is a completely different (and less common, to me) experience.

-> While I enjoy immersion in any game, it is one of the main reasons I play an RPG as opposed to, say, a shooter or any strategy game.

* No means of self-expression (beyond the cosmetics, which holds some-but-little appeal to me).

* Very few combat scenarios that are mentally puzzling. It does have some "execution challenges"... but if I wanted those, I'd play, off the top of my head: Osu, Last Blade 1/2, Touhou.

* The systems are fairly straightforward, and there isn't much interaction(/synergy) between them.

Mods are mods: Weapon mods they offer limited options beyond tailoring to Damage 2.0.

Warframe kits are static. You have 4 abilities. You take 4 abilities. No extras, no alternates. (I'll get to Augments in a moment.)

Warframe mods give you some scope for personalization (a.k.a. self expression), but there's very little trade-off. All there is is opportunity cost.

All the Corrupted mods are for is for ability-focus hyperspecialization. Where's the '+Sprint speed -armor' mod? The '+energy -health'? Heck, the '+melee attackspeed +weapon recoil', to pick some obvious choices.

(And even if they existed, how often would they get used? ... But that's a whole different issue.)

And even with the advent of Augments there are (currently) only a handful that offer some kind of mechanical change as opposed to a straight increase to the parent skill's efficiency.

Which also covers the spell system. At best, I can sit and theoyrcraft the optimal composition for <gamemode>. Though, again, Augments are a start, here.

 

tl;dr - I play RPGs for the story-and-immersion, and for the thought puzzles.

You won't find a Charwood Village (Neverwinter Nights) in Warframe.

It doesn't feature near as variable a character-building system as... well, since I already started with it: D&D.

And the execution puzzles... I can't speak for a shooter-centric player, but I'm emphatically not one. The only scenario that comes near is an 'equal level' fight, like a new character first tackling the Jackal, or trying to last to the next 5 minute breakpoint in a Survival after it's scaled past your gear's ability to handle.

 

 

I'm sorry, it's 5 AM and this isn't a subject I've formulated before. I hope this is cogent and coherent.

 

Off the top of my head.

[akira_him]

Depends on how you define an RPG, of course.

Since you asked me:

I play RPGs for the story - passive 'reading', active 'creating' and just general abnegation / immersion -, the self-expression (i.e. the actions I choose to make in the game world), the combat puzzles, the 'how does this system work, and how can I "break" it' and occasionally for the spell system.

 

Warframe has, at this point:

* some setting, but no story beyond the setting for the various operations. The only abnegation it offers is flow. Which, while an incredible thing if it "happens", is a completely different (and less common, to me) experience.

-> While I enjoy immersion in any game, it is one of the main reasons I play an RPG as opposed to, say, a shooter or any strategy game.

* No means of self-expression (beyond the cosmetics, which holds some-but-little appeal to me).

* Very few combat scenarios that are mentally puzzling. It does have some "execution challenges"... but if I wanted those, I'd play, off the top of my head: Osu, Last Blade 1/2, Touhou.

* The systems are fairly straightforward, and there isn't much interaction(/synergy) between them.

Mods are mods: Weapon mods they offer limited options beyond tailoring to Damage 2.0.

Warframe kits are static. You have 4 abilities. You take 4 abilities. No extras, no alternates. (I'll get to Augments in a moment.)

Warframe mods give you some scope for personalization (a.k.a. self expression), but there's very little trade-off. All there is is opportunity cost.

All the Corrupted mods are for is for ability-focus hyperspecialization. Where's the '+Sprint speed -armor' mod? The '+energy -health'? Heck, the '+melee attackspeed +weapon recoil', to pick some obvious choices.

(And even if they existed, how often would they get used? ... But that's a whole different issue.)

And even with the advent of Augments there are (currently) only a handful that offer some kind of mechanical change as opposed to a straight increase to the parent skill's efficiency.

Which also covers the spell system. At best, I can sit and theoyrcraft the optimal composition for <gamemode>. Though, again, Augments are a start, here.

 

tl;dr - I play RPGs for the story-and-immersion, and for the thought puzzles.

You won't find a Charwood Village (Neverwinter Nights) in Warframe.

It doesn't feature near as variable a character-building system as... well, since I already started with it: D&D.

And the execution puzzles... I can't speak for a shooter-centric player, but I'm emphatically not one. The only scenario that comes near is an 'equal level' fight, like a new character first tackling the Jackal, or trying to last to the next 5 minute breakpoint in a Survival after it's scaled past your gear's ability to handle.

 

 

I'm sorry, it's 5 AM and this isn't a subject I've formulated before. I hope this is cogent and coherent.

 

Off the top of my head.

That's traditional western RPGs, which you can express yourself

However, Warframe right now, works totally the same as Phantasy Star Online,

and you know, Phantasy Star Online is definitely a JRPGMMO

 

Moreover, the story of WF is delivered by events/quests, and the only event we have choice is the The Gradivus Dilemma

Most events we don't have choice, which is the major characteristic of JRPGs

[fatpig84]

No one puts Vile Acceleration or Speed Trigger on everything for moar DPS.

That is enough for me imo.

[Vallerian]

Tons and tons of utility mods. 

 

 

*sigh* I didn't mean a player shouldn't get more powerful, but I do mean that a player shouldn't get more powerful by increasing his weapon damage tenfold. 

 

You still encounter the same issue, but probably wayyy worse.

If we had a lot of great utility mods instead of damage, we'd just stun the enemy forever and they'd either never die because we do no damage, or DE would rescale them to be weaker and then we're back to square 1 where everything is super easy to kill.

Edited December 28, 2014 by Vallerian