Press 4 To Win

[geninrising]

You talk about having the freedom to play the game how a player wishes to play, yet the rest of your post was about limiting how a player can play how they want to play. You literally just went in to describe a system where you can't use your powers as you see fit and opened it with "you can play how you want to play" and "Freedom" when your system isn't how that works. The beauty of WarFrame is that you can literally play how you want to play, and your proposed "change" or whatever you want to call it, goes completely against that because it hurts players for doing exactly what WarFrame is about, playing how you want to play. No one is being oppressive, a gunner could just as well run ahead and clear out a room before a caster gets there, just like how a caster can run ahead to do the same. It all comes down to how people play, but hurting everybody just because a few people play a certain way isn't any way to help the progression of WarFrame to be a better game.

 

In no way is that a good change, because it removes player agency, it removes the freedom to do so, it removes a core aspect of WarFrame that makes it WarFrame. None of us said anything about putting cool downs on weapons, or making them overheat from "overuse", because that would be stupid and silly, and limits gunners from playing how they want to play. You literally are proposing such a thing with powers, when they themselves already have obstacles to their use and function. See my post on how the systems work in tandem for why that was an extremely bad idea. So no, I stand firmly against that "change" you propose because it's no longer the players in charge of how they want to play, it's a system that dictates when and where they can play how they want to play. There is no place in WarFrame for that, not in my book.

 

Nighttide77 said it far better than I did:

 

 

So no, what "change" you proposed isn't a change so much as a massive nerf as to player agency, and how others want to play the game differently than others do.

Unfortunately I have to re-iterate this to you every time and it does not sink in. I will however keep trying.

The person using the weapon in their hands cannot in any way remove a nukers ABILITY to play the game.

 

However that cannot be said for the player that utilizes their nukes all the time without end.

Therefore nukes much change to allow others to even be able to experience gameplay.

 

This is simple the only thing that remains to discuss is how to implement it in such a way that does not reduce nuking to an UN-VIABLE(as in can be lived with) state.

 

Limitations on the current form only serve to promote a balanced gameplay scenario.

Currently there is no balance in gameplay and therefore change must occur.

[AlphaHorseman]

Unfortunately I have to re-iterate this to you every time and it does not sink in. I will however keep trying.

The person using the weapon in their hands cannot in any way remove a nukers ABILITY to play the game.

 

However that cannot be said for the player that utilizes their nukes all the time without end.

Therefore nukes much change to allow others to even be able to experience gameplay.

 

This is simple the only thing that remains to discuss is how to implement it in such a way that does not reduce nuking to an UN-VIABLE(as in can be lived with) state.

 

Limitations on the current form only serve to promote a balanced gameplay scenario.

Currently there is no balance in gameplay and therefore change must occur.

You're dealing with singular cases between players. What you yourself are not getting is that all the proposed changes in this thread just serve to hurt people for their play style and warn them away from playing how they want to play. WarFrame is a game where we have the freedom to do so. If someone plays how you don't like it, you tell them or they leave or you leave. You don't force them to be broken down from their play style because they play differently from you.

 

You have the choice, so do they. What you fail to realize is that nukes aren't the only powers in-game, and even in the Void the "nukes" don't usually get the job done. Whatever system you propose not only hurts nukes, but the rest of the powers as well. You literally just target casters and tell them "tough luck buckos" and write it off as a nerf to nukes. There is a need for improvements, but what you and Mecha propose are not improvements, they're changes and nerfs that hurt people who choose to go caster. I literally don't see how this "helps" in any sense because you're attacking peoples play styles and saying that this is still "Freedom" in some distorted way.

 

There is no "evil nukers" as much as people who play a certain way. You're distorting them to be bad players who should be punished for being bad. When in all actuality, they are players of the game who have a different play style than you and play the game differently than you. So if that isn't going to sink in on your end, then no, I don't see how this works.

[vaugahn]

You talk about having the freedom to play the game how a player wishes to play, yet the rest of your post was about limiting how a player can play how they want to play. 

 

Sadly, freedom to play only goes so far. 

 

At some point, we have to consider that certain playstyles are in fact bad for the health of the game.

[MechaKnight]

You're dealing with singular cases between players. What you yourself are not getting is that all the proposed changes in this thread just serve to hurt people for their play style and warn them away from playing how they want to play. WarFrame is a game where we have the freedom to do so. If someone plays how you don't like it, you tell them or they leave or you leave. You don't force them to be broken down from their play style because they play differently from you.

 

You have the choice, so do they. What you fail to realize is that nukes aren't the only powers in-game, and even in the Void the "nukes" don't usually get the job done. Whatever system you propose not only hurts nukes, but the rest of the powers as well. You literally just target casters and tell them "tough luck buckos" and write it off as a nerf to nukes. There is a need for improvements, but what you and Mecha propose are not improvements, they're changes and nerfs that hurt people who choose to go caster. I literally don't see how this "helps" in any sense because you're attacking peoples play styles and saying that this is still "Freedom" in some distorted way.

 

There is no "evil nukers" as much as people who play a certain way. You're distorting them to be bad players who should be punished for being bad. When in all actuality, they are players of the game who have a different play style than you and play the game differently than you. So if that isn't going to sink in on your end, then no, I don't see how this works.

 

"Play style?" tl;dr *presses 4*

 

Many people agree the game has become pointless due to 4 spam. Meanwhile if you've read a single word of what drafts I've been writing, it will only penalize players who spam a #4 nuke every 2 seconds 6 times in a row without pausing for even one second, and the penalty is only 20%. There is no way to justify such rapid spam. It's not about the play style, it's about limitations and what they add to gameplay.

 

Imagine if Warframe had no walk animations or gravity in any level. You just glided through it. Imagine if there was no energy or health limit. What if there was no distance falloff on the Imperator in Archwing, everybody could teleport where they please for no energy cost, and everything died just by looking at it? Coptering already resembles this somewhat but it's not as gamebreaking as radial damage spam.

 

You can carry 600 energy capsules with you in any given mission and deploy them all with no cooldowns. You can do the same with health, ammo, and shields too. I've seen players do just that and spam a nuke with Natural Talent and infinite energy cakes to the point where it would probably kill level 300 void bombards if they actually wanted to do it there. It's not about removing choice, it's about making the clearly insane options not valid.

 

Also, I'm impressed you didn't read a single word of my thoughtfully planned drafts. Literally all of the abilities were infinitely spam capable except for a radial damage nuke which you can only spam 5 times without penalty if you hit the button as hard as you could as fast as you could. From 6 casts on, penalty is only 20%. Why defend such broken gameplay?

 

My system even took into an account of up to a 200% buff on any and all abilities not used for an amount of time, including the radial damage nuke. What I proposed makes those abilities you called "weak" earlier in the thread often 200% as good since you're probably not spamming those, you're spamming a radial nuke. If you happened to be a player who used the other abilities and resisted the nuke, all attributes of it--range, strength, and duration--would be buffed to 200%. The community doesn't even read anymore, it's just "no sir please don't touch my overpowered perks, I'm too weak without them!" *chomps energy cake to avoid walking 5 steps to the orb*

 

It's not about hurting players who use abilities, or even the ones who use single ability spam builds. It's about saving this game's interest for sane people who are rapidly leaking out of this game. Of course the devs hate themselves for it, hence why the nullifiers are everywhere, and I wouldn't be surprised if the grineer ninja enemy steals abilities from you for 30 seconds on a single hit. They'll probably add those to hinder rep runs, just as the Corpus and Infested enemies have burdened players to avoid their missions. Grineer are the new easy mode for now, and soon they won't be. Meanwhile T4 keys are harder to get now by pure RNG on top of whatever new enemies appear.

 

I was very reasonable, but of course I could be unreasonable. One person earlier in this thread wanted a 30 second cooldown on any radial ability and I said it was too excessive. Someone else wanted to change Fleeting Expertise from a duration loss to a range loss--which I'm okay with. I haven't even previously requested a reduction in energy supplies we can carry, another dreaded Trinity nerf, line-of-sight on everything as the devs wanted, and going far enough to put linked cooldowns on every ability where all abilities would simultaneously go on cooldown when you use any ability, but the #1 ability would come back first, and the #4 ability would come back last.

 

I suggested none of that. All I suggested was respectable limits, and there was once a time in closed beta and beyond where the developers balanced every power and weapon as best as they could. Where's the attention now? 15% status on a weapon. Really?

 

I fear for the game as I miss everyone I know who's gone. Internally I feel that the devs probably won't solve this problem because it's too easy to make profit out of power-spamming idjits who don't have the sense to go, or stay and give good feedback and understand the developer's intentions.

 

Well, yeah. I still want to have faith in the game. A lot of us have gone but some still remain. It's not about harming your play style, I actually do want the abilities # 1, 2, 3 & 4 to matter to every Warframe's gameplay all the time. I want gunplay to feel awesome and I want the RNG and powercreep events to ease up. Sometimes though, I think the devs have already decided since that one business stock deal exactly where they wanted the game to wind up eventually.

 

Well, it's all murky waters. It's a new year. It's been over a year since closed beta and it's a new year. Still, this long and such an amazingly simple problem hasn't been solved? Baffling for those who wish to stay, very simple for those who are gone.

 

If we want good abilities, Archwizard's thread is solid. If you want good enemies, notionphil's is great. If you want good ideas for RNG in prize pools, just check General section daily.

 

So much good feedback, the threads may reach 2k upvotes and still have work to do beyond that. It's just the game, it's still in development. That's how it is I suppose.

Edited January 7, 2015 by MechaKnight

[AlphaHorseman]

Sadly, freedom to play only goes so far. 

 

At some point, we have to consider that certain playstyles are in fact bad for the health of the game.

So the solution is nerfing the usability of powers overall for the sake of a few powers some people think are bad? Yeah, that's a grand solution. Sometimes the reason people use only 1 power is the fact that it's the only one that works in a situation, or is the most effective, or it just suits their play style. DE is already implementing ways that make power spam difficult, Nullifiers for one, eximi that drain energy, infested units that provide buffs to their allies and debuffs to us.

 

 

"Play style?" tl;dr *presses 4*

 

Many people agree the game has become pointless due to 4 spam. Meanwhile if you've read a single word of what drafts I've been writing, it will only penalize players who spam a #4 nuke every 2 seconds 6 times in a row without pausing for even one second, and the penalty is only 20%. There is no way to justify such rapid spam. It's not about the play style, it's about limitations and what they add to gameplay.

 

Imagine if Warframe had no walk animations or gravity in any level. You just glided through it. Imagine if there was no energy or health limit. What if there was no distance falloff on the Imperator in Archwing, everybody could teleport where they please for no energy cost, and everything died just by looking at it? Coptering already resembles this somewhat but it's not as gamebreaking as radial damage spam.

 

You can carry 600 energy capsules with you in any given mission and deploy them all with no cooldowns. You can do the same with health, ammo, and shields too. I've seen players do just that and spam a nuke with Natural Talent and infinite energy cakes to the point where it would probably kill level 300 void bombards if they actually wanted to do it there. It's not about removing choice, it's about making the clearly insane options not valid.

 

Also, I'm impressed you didn't read a single word of my thoughtfully planned drafts. Literally all of the abilities were infinitely spam capable except for a radial damage nuke which you can only spam 5 times without penalty if you hit the button as hard as you could as fast as you could. From 6 casts on, penalty is only 20%. Why defend such broken gameplay?

 

My system even took into an account of up to a 200% buff on any and all abilities not used for an amount of time, including the radial damage nuke. What I proposed makes those abilities you called "weak" earlier in the thread often 200% as good since you're probably not spamming those, you're spamming a radial nuke. If you happened to be a player who used the other abilities and resisted the nuke, all attributes of it--range, strength, and duration--would be buffed to 200%. The community doesn't even read anymore, it's just "no sir please don't touch my overpowered perks, I'm too weak without them!" *chomps energy cake to avoid walking 5 steps to the orb*

 

It's not about hurting players who use abilities, or even the ones who use single ability spam builds. It's about saving this game's interest for sane people who are rapidly leaking out of this game. Of course the devs hate themselves for it, hence why the nullifiers are everywhere, and I wouldn't be surprised if the grineer ninja enemy steals abilities from you for 30 seconds on a single hit. They'll probably add those to hinder rep runs, just as the Corpus and Infested enemies have burdened players to avoid their missions. Grineer are the new easy mode for now, and soon they won't be. Meanwhile T4 keys are harder to get now by pure RNG on top of whatever new enemies appear.

 

I was very reasonable, but of course I could be unreasonable. One person earlier in this thread wanted a 30 second cooldown on any radial ability and I said it was too excessive. Someone else wanted to change Fleeting Expertise from a duration loss to a range loss--which I'm okay with. I haven't even previously requested a reduction in energy supplies we can carry, another dreaded Trinity nerf, line-of-sight on everything as the devs wanted, and going far enough to put linked cooldowns on every ability where all abilities would simultaneously go on cooldown when you use any ability, but the #1 ability would come back first, and the #4 ability would come back last.

 

I suggested none of that. All I suggested was respectable limits, and there was once a time in closed beta and beyond where the developers balanced every power and weapon as best as they could. Where's the attention now? 15% status on a weapon. Really?

 

I fear for the game as I miss everyone I know who's gone. Internally I feel that the devs probably won't solve this problem because it's too easy to make profit out of power-spamming idjits who don't have the sense to go.

 

Well, yeah. I still want to have faith in the game. A lot of us have gone but some still remain. It's not about harming your play style, I actually do want the abilities # 1, 2, 3 & 4 to matter to every Warframe's gameplay all the time. I want gunplay to feel awesome and I want the RNG and powercreep events to ease up. Sometimes though, I think the devs have already decided since that one business stock deal exactly where they wanted the game to wind up eventually.

 

Well, it's all murky waters. It's a new year. It's been over a year since closed beta and it's a new year. Still, this long and such an amazingly simple problem hasn't been solved? Baffling for those who wish to stay, very simple for those who are gone.

 

Limitations don't "add" to gameplay, they limit game play, that's what a limitation is. The system you proposed still limits people who wish to use their caster assets more so than their guns. I honestly don't see how this "adds" to their enjoyment.

 

You can also take ammo restores into matches, as you've pointed out. Is it bad that they have the gear? No. How they use that gear is up to them, but here I can see where the monotony gets boring for others. You have to ask yourself though, why is the player doing that? Farming? XP Gains? Resources? Or is the grind so diluted and annoying that sometimes you just want it over with quickly? It could be any of those. Sure, I'd say that how they were playing was boring, but just because one person, or even a few play that way, doesn't mean the entirety of the community needs to suffer for it.

 

I read every single bloody word in that post you made, trust me I did. How weak are we? Man, talk about a personal attack right there. The game play isn't broken. It needs improvement, yeah, I'll agree to that, but not a nerf like that. How weak are we? Wow, yep, lost all respect for you right there.

 

You don't make bad abilities better by making one ability weak, that's a stupid way to go about it. You make the entire kit good, you make it so that one power doesn't outshine the rest, and/or each power can function good individually, can be modded to be great for those who want to focus on one power. Or, for players that like the entire kit, can see that the kit itself synergizes well together, and go for that.

 

You DON'T, however, hurt one power simply because you want the rest to be better. All you get from your system is another type of ability spam, some player spamming that one power to make the rest powerful, and then spamming those other powers. This doesn't solve anything, it just adds another layer to it.

 

You're hurting people who go caster, that's what this does. How does this save the games "interest" if it hurts players for playing how they want to play? People play games for the enjoyment, if you start limiting that for the sake of the "games interest" you're literally working against that.

 

Idjits? Supernatural reference here? But to be more on point, I get that some people hate how some players go for only one power builds and make it strong, but on the flip side we have the freedom to go any which way we please, and that's a good thing. Sure, it's seen as bad by some when players make one skill extremely powerful, but hurting the players overall isn't going to help. You're punishing the many for the actions of the few.

 

P42W is a problem in the eyes of some, a viable play style in the eyes of others. That doesn't mean that we should hurt either side. I don't usually use just one power myself because it gets boring, but I do use all my powers on frames, and the changes you proposed hurts me for doing so, one way or the other.

[vaugahn]

So the solution is nerfing the usability of powers overall for the sake of a few powers some people think are bad? Yeah, that's a grand solution. Sometimes the reason people use only 1 power is the fact that it's the only one that works in a situation, or is the most effective, or it just suits their play style. DE is already implementing ways that make power spam difficult, Nullifiers for one, eximi that drain energy, infested units that provide buffs to their allies and debuffs to us.

 

Nuke spam is never the only solution.

 

Note that I said nuke spam. There's nothing wrong with nukes, the spam is the problem.

[AlphaHorseman]

Nuke spam is never the only solution.

 

Note that I said nuke spam. There's nothing wrong with nukes, the spam is the problem.

Spammability in the sense that players have gone for the full efficiency build I'm guessing is what you're getting at?

[MechaKnight]

There's nothing else to say about it. I've seen feedback threads around here that have gone over 1k upvotes since closed beta. Players who remain today don't like limits because for this long, we didn't have any. I pity those who've given such great feedback because they'll probably still be working hard on it for another year or two. If this is how players respond to DE's attempts to balance the game I can see why the RNG, bullet sponges, and hesitancy to buff anything is here. I figured it was easy enough for DE to add limitations since their new enemies and previous attempts at LoS was essentially trying to do just that. Instead of balancing radial nukes downwards, everything else has to be buffed alongside new content development. It'll be a long arduous process I'm sure will take more than 4 years.

 

 

Nuke spam is never the only solution.

 

Note that I said nuke spam. There's nothing wrong with nukes, the spam is the problem.

 

That's literally all I ask people to understand. With 4 abilities, 2 weapons, and melee, one button is not the only solution. It's so clear. It's just that players don't want to lose out, so we're just going to see more RNG, energy sappers, enemies that slow/crowd control, and other silly ways to interrupt players. I suppose it's a decent option--what players call "band-aids" have to an extent become the last option. At least for a long time. I don't know how long it will take to rebalance potentially 66+ abilities upwards to be as good as radial spam.

Edited January 7, 2015 by MechaKnight

[Shuuro]

-snip-

 

I think the problem here, stems from that one line that keeps getting thrown out. It's a play style.

 

Alright, I'm going to need your help on this one, because I can't even comprehend that.

 

Play style

 

Is it truly a play style if I were to bring my Rhino Prime, with rush, and arcane helm for maximum speed, with capped efficiency and as much damage as I could possibly get, with stretch slapped onto there for insurance, and just zoren copter rofl stomp low level areas for resources, all the while making sure that almost no one else gets to do anything? They leave the vicinity of my area and go down because they're not as overpowered as I am currently in that zone. Is that really.. fair?

 

Is it truly a play style to run around and cast single abilities to get the job done quickly?

 

Now. Before you get upset. Don't get me wrong. I know what casters are, and believe me, casters do not use only one spell. They usually have a plethora of spells for various use and function.

 

On the other hand, most spell casters in other games actually are bounded by limitations for mana, cool downs, kill gauges, etc, but here in Warframe, there is no said limitation, and usually it's only one skill that's even useful.

 

Some warframes do indeed have that luxury of having multiple skills being useful when modded, but others simply do not. In fact, quite a few warframes have a majority of their tool kit bent in a way that makes it unappealing to use after modding for something different entirely. If we could somehow fix this, then I'm sure a lot more diversity would be seen.

 

 

As the game currently stands, and I'm sure every single person who reads this is guilty of:

 

Whenever we enter a pug, or we're trying to speed through something because it is time limited, like an invasion reward perhaps, we try to Nuke through it. Why? Because it is effortless, it is swift, and it works.

 

If it works, then it should be fine right..right..?

 

Sadly. The answer is no.

 

To bring up my point, we'd have to look at few other things: Trinity, difficulty, and scaling.

 

Trinity

 

Hoo boy, Trinity. Remember how she used to make everyone in the team invincible? It was one of the only ways to go high end into survival. But was it fair? This is a co-op game, so immortality shouldn't have been an issue right?

 

But it was.

 

It removed all difficulty in the game, and it was unfair. At what point in time should it even be generally okay to withstand the backhanded righteous slap of a level 9999 ancient, and just giggle back as they helplessly try to kill the immortal you?

 

At this point, removing that invincibility wasn't about ruining everyones power trip of god mode, but it was to bring us to realize, that it just, wasn't, fair.

 

 

Difficulty

 

So what IS difficult in Warframe? From someone who's new to the game.. pretty freakin hard!

 

For someone who is new but has help.. pretty.. decently hard!

 

For someone who has a good plethora of mods.. Okay, they're getting the hang of things. Warframe aint too shabby. Not too hard, but there is hard content.

 

The moment an individual gets corrupted mods.. LOL WARFRAMES 2 E Z. #360NOSCOPE420BLAZEIT.

 

Corrupted mods have indeed.. corrupted. Warframe.

 

In what Value, does our energy even have, when we can sustain a 25~30 energy ultimate, with an energy pool of 400~700 Energy?

 

Slap on the orbs that drop, Energy Siphon, hell, put in a random Energy Vampire in there every 10 minutes. You never run out of energy. Ever.

 

Energy had become such a pitiful resource, it's embarrassing. For those of you who have played before the Direlect Vaults came out, before corrupted mods. I want you to ask yourself this question, and really think back to that point in time:

 

Did you value your energy and resources more than you did now?

 

Back then, an ult would cost a minimum of 70 energy, and a maximum of 100. To even use Trinities Energy Vampire, the target had to stay ALIVE. As it is now, targets flashing blue are an immediate 'KILL ME! FREE ENERGY!' neon blue sign. Back then, energy and using a skill felt like it had a bit more purpose, a bit more meaning.

 

The way energy is now, I might as well be using Ultimate Armor X in Megaman and one shotting enemies and making a joke of boss fights. It's cool, but it makes the game stale. It's there as an option, but it isn't the way the game was meant to be played. That's why it's a secret!

 

Scaling

 

Now, as much as I really hate this topic, it needs to be asked. Is infinite scaling really what we're looking for as an endgame? As it currently is, infinitely scaling enemies are one of the only things that will put a hamper down on cast spamming, because it will eventually deteriorate against them.. Unless your casting is meant for crowd control. Then that's great.. for you. Not all frames are built equal that way.

 

This brings me to Ash. He's my main, and it's funny in what kind of rut he's been through. From one of the worst, to Oh emm gee he's 2 OP pliz nurf!

 

As it stands, Ash can, quite literally, Blade Storm and kill everything in every node on the solar system. As soon as it begins to hit level 40+ enemies though, he'd need strength mods, and maybe help from one of his anti-matter exploding friends for twice the damage.

 

Getting to my point though. Is it really fair that someone using Ash, with corrupted mods, can just walk into a room, with 100m+ worth of range on their ability, and just kill, everything. On every node of the solar system. This even includes Voids.

 

The only thing hampering him, is infinite scaling. Is this what our endgame has become? Has endgame become a matter of how long can we stay interested in staying in this one room killing waves after waves of enemies looking for loot that the guy will never find for us every 5 minutes?

 

Currently we have a few enemies that make it harder to do, and require you to actually shoot your gun a few times: Ancients, and Nullifiers, but that's it. That is the only thing stopping anyone from being a nuclear explosion waiting to happen.

 

 

So, to recap. Just because we are currently capable of doing something now, doesn't mean it's fair, and all of it is certainly subject to change.

 

The resources for spamming abilities, in this case, energy, is so fundamentally flawed, it's saddening. We have caster frames with a large energy pool for that specific reason, but it's absolutely pointless if everyone in the game has borderline infinite resource to energy.

 

Finally, is scaling really what we're striving for in Warframe. Is fighting that level 1337 elite gunner really our endgame? Or is our endgame meant to be.. a little bit more?

 

I don't know about you guys, but I still kind of like my idea for implementing our own difficulty into games.

[MechaKnight]

I think the problem here, stems from that one line that keeps getting thrown out. It's a play style.

 

Alright, I'm going to need your help on this one, because I can't even comprehend that.

 

Play style

 

Is it truly a play style if I were to bring my Rhino Prime, with rush, and arcane helm for maximum speed, with capped efficiency and as much damage as I could possibly get, with stretch slapped onto there for insurance, and just zoren copter rofl stomp low level areas for resources, all the while making sure that almost no one else gets to do anything? They leave the vicinity of my area and go down because they're not as overpowered as I am currently in that zone. Is that really.. fair?

 

Is it truly a play style to run around and cast single abilities to get the job done quickly?

 

Now. Before you get upset. Don't get me wrong. I know what casters are, and believe me, casters do not use only one spell. They usually have a plethora of spells for various use and function.

 

On the other hand, most spell casters in other games actually are bounded by limitations for mana, cool downs, kill gauges, etc, but here in Warframe, there is no said limitation, and usually it's only one skill that's even useful.

 

Some warframes do indeed have that luxury of having multiple skills being useful when modded, but others simply do not. In fact, quite a few warframes have a majority of their tool kit bent in a way that makes it unappealing to use after modding for something different entirely. If we could somehow fix this, then I'm sure a lot more diversity would be seen.

 

 

As the game currently stands, and I'm sure every single person who reads this is guilty of:

 

Whenever we enter a pug, or we're trying to speed through something because it is time limited, like an invasion reward perhaps, we try to Nuke through it. Why? Because it is effortless, it is swift, and it works.

 

If it works, then it should be fine right..right..?

 

Sadly. The answer is no.

 

To bring up my point, we'd have to look at few other things: Trinity, difficulty, and scaling.

 

Trinity

 

Hoo boy, Trinity. Remember how she used to make everyone in the team invincible? It was one of the only ways to go high end into survival. But was it fair? This is a co-op game, so immortality shouldn't have been an issue right?

 

But it was.

 

It removed all difficulty in the game, and it was unfair. At what point in time should it even be generally okay to withstand the backhanded righteous slap of a level 9999 ancient, and just giggle back as they helplessly try to kill the immortal you?

 

At this point, removing that invincibility wasn't about ruining everyones power trip of god mode, but it was to bring us to realize, that it just, wasn't, fair.

 

 

Difficulty

 

So what IS difficult in Warframe? From someone who's new to the game.. pretty freakin hard!

 

For someone who is new but has help.. pretty.. decently hard!

 

For someone who has a good plethora of mods.. Okay, they're getting the hang of things. Warframe aint too shabby. Not too hard, but there is hard content.

 

The moment an individual gets corrupted mods.. LOL WARFRAMES 2 E Z. #360NOSCOPE420BLAZEIT.

 

Corrupted mods have indeed.. corrupted. Warframe.

 

In what Value, does our energy even have, when we can sustain a 25~30 energy ultimate, with an energy pool of 400~700 Energy?

 

Slap on the orbs that drop, Energy Siphon, hell, put in a random Energy Vampire in there every 10 minutes. You never run out of energy. Ever.

 

Energy had become such a pitiful resource, it's embarrassing. For those of you who have played before the Direlect Vaults came out, before corrupted mods. I want you to ask yourself this question, and really think back to that point in time:

 

Did you value your energy and resources more than you did now?

 

Back then, an ult would cost a minimum of 70 energy, and a maximum of 100. To even use Trinities Energy Vampire, the target had to stay ALIVE. As it is now, targets flashing blue are an immediate 'KILL ME! FREE ENERGY!' neon blue sign. Back then, energy and using a skill felt like it had a bit more purpose, a bit more meaning.

 

The way energy is now, I might as well be using Ultimate Armor X in Megaman and one shotting enemies and making a joke of boss fights. It's cool, but it makes the game stale. It's there as an option, but it isn't the way the game was meant to be played. That's why it's a secret!

 

Scaling

 

Now, as much as I really hate this topic, it needs to be asked. Is infinite scaling really what we're looking for as an endgame? As it currently is, infinitely scaling enemies are one of the only things that will put a hamper down on cast spamming, because it will eventually deteriorate against them.. Unless your casting is meant for crowd control. Then that's great.. for you. Not all frames are built equal that way.

 

This brings me to Ash. He's my main, and it's funny in what kind of rut he's been through. From one of the worst, to Oh emm gee he's 2 OP pliz nurf!

 

As it stands, Ash can, quite literally, Blade Storm and kill everything in every node on the solar system. As soon as it begins to hit level 40+ enemies though, he'd need strength mods, and maybe help from one of his anti-matter exploding friends for twice the damage.

 

Getting to my point though. Is it really fair that someone using Ash, with corrupted mods, can just walk into a room, with 100m+ worth of range on their ability, and just kill, everything. On every node of the solar system. This even includes Voids.

 

The only thing hampering him, is infinite scaling. Is this what our endgame has become? Has endgame become a matter of how long can we stay interested in staying in this one room killing waves after waves of enemies looking for loot that the guy will never find for us every 5 minutes?

 

Currently we have a few enemies that make it harder to do, and require you to actually shoot your gun a few times: Ancients, and Nullifiers, but that's it. That is the only thing stopping anyone from being a nuclear explosion waiting to happen.

 

 

So, to recap. Just because we are currently capable of doing something now, doesn't mean it's fair, and all of it is certainly subject to change.

 

The resources for spamming abilities, in this case, energy, is so fundamentally flawed, it's saddening. We have caster frames with a large energy pool for that specific reason, but it's absolutely pointless if everyone in the game has borderline infinite resource to energy.

 

Finally, is scaling really what we're striving for in Warframe. Is fighting that level 1337 elite gunner really our endgame? Or is our endgame meant to be.. a little bit more?

 

I don't know about you guys, but I still kind of like my idea for implementing our own difficulty into games.

Awesome, that's concisely said. It's kind of jarring to learn about corrupted mods and how immense their impact is on the game. It's also disheartening to play your favorite Warframe and then learn that with the metagame being completely based around corrupted mods, you tend to throw away elements of your kit. Some warframes suffer more severely than others. I happen to main Saryn.

 

That's the magic moment of disappointment right there. When your "best" build is destroying three of your abilities and both of your ability augments. Sure, it doesn't have to be as severe if you dont fully min-max, but because we're min-maxing nukes it is too enticing to go all-or-nothing into "press 4 to win." I have a friend who's a Trinity main who gets nippy when you tell him it's farming time and he's gotta pull out the Energy Vampire build. It happens.

 

The issue is "press 4", but the reason is corrupted mods. The primed mods are being implemented as such a band-aid (I mean this respectfully) to remedy the significance of corrupted mods in gameplay. They will not give as potent a stat bonus as the corrupted mods, but can yield a decent amount for no penalties. It will not kill off corrupted builds completely, but with time and effort applied these mods can slowly revitalize balanced gameplay. However, the fact that they can also be stacked upon corrupted mods can do strange things, but I have hope DE has figured it out well enough that a balanced build will have increased viability.

 

It's not about trying to be bad and "punishing" casters. Most warframes are casters to some degree. It's just that our energy abundance combined with corrupted min-maxing is making our game heavily stale. For now, maybe some more primed mods can show new potential, but after these are released it's time to investigate and critique the balance of corrupted mods. After it is decided whether each corrupted warframe mod is finely tuned, it's off to go buff some rarely used abilities.

Edited January 8, 2015 by MechaKnight

[AlphaHorseman]

-snip-

 

I don't know about you guys, but I still kind of like my idea for implementing our own difficulty into games.

1. No one told you to go and bring your end-tier gear to the map, you did so yourself. Not to mention that you can do the exact same thing with your weapons. Bring a Boltor Prime or Soma Prime into a room and you can bet your bottom dollar that room will be empty by the time your non-zoren-coptering allies arrive. Is the guns overpowered? No, they aren't. You modded them to be that powerful, you sacrificed your time, your effort, your credits, your formae, your fusion cores, to get your gun that far. Same thing with your frames and powers.

 

2. You use Trinity as an example, but literally nothing within the game now (bar Valkyr) can make you immortal. Your point brings about her negating all damage towards herself and the group (of which Valkyr herself cannot). No powers in the game allow you to withstand that kind of punishment you describe. Trinity's nerf to Blessing was a removal of invulnerability. On that I can agree with. But no other powers in this game make it possible for you to become immortal (except Valkyr). (Valkyr is good, doesn't need a nerf, I'm just pointing her out to make sure there's no backlash saying she's immortal.)

 

3. Your difficulty segment solely relies on one mod, Fleeting Expertise. That is the only mod that can do that to a WarFrames powers. The flip side to that is all the corrupted mods have penalties already built into them. Fleeting Expertise kills your duration, EVENLY with what it adds to your efficiency. Literally NO OTHER Corrupted mod has that high cost! You realize that? Corrupted Mods in and of themselves are the perfect example of tailoring builds to how people want them to be. You lose Duration on all your abilities if you equip Fleeting Expertise. That means Snow Globe, Chaos, Shadows of The Dead, Blessing, Link, Energy Vampire, Smoke Screen, Invisibility, Hall of Mirrors, and a tonne more abilities get their duration hit. But that's the sacrifices we make when we use Corrupted Mods, that's how they're supposed to function! They function as intended! Allowing players to build as they wish to tailor as they wish to ensure that they can play as they wish!

 

I use it on my Frost because I love being able to go the caster route with him. My duration takes a whack though, but it allows me to tailor my build to an offensive frost, rather than just defensive. Thus, my kit uses all his powers to keep enemies away or locked down, and I can use the globe for a moment's respite to either save a teammate, or simply hold my position. Corrupted Mods, along with mods overall, give us the dimension to make our WarFrames whatever we want them to be, not just cookie cutter into what the Devs give us as WarFrames. The Devs give us a frame literally as a slate to build off of. Sure, they give it powers and regular stats, but the in-depth customization we can do on our frames allows us to make them as we would wish. I've seen people go tanky survival Loki before the abilities change, with full armor, shields, health, and duration, only leaving on Invisibility as their power and make the game into their own little assassin shooter game. That's the beauty of the system right there, you can tailor your frames to your play style and create your own dynamics to how to play the game. 

 

4. Right now the only end-game we have is endless, it's sad but true. If we can expand end-game, I'd be happy to see what the expansions were. But hitting player choice isn't the avenue we should be taking to make end-game fun. End-game should be fun in and of itself, with interesting mechanics, interesting enemies, interesting obstacles, and so on and so forth.

 

5. I do actually like your point on allowing us to choose our own difficulties a lot, actually. It gives casters a way to go with their powers, and gunners a way to choose a path only guns. 

 

 

-snip-

Mecha, you realize you can build however you want, right? No one is telling you to build a certain way, you can build your way whenever you want to. Anyone telling you otherwise can shove it. I think I've said it many times already in this thread, but that's the beauty of the System. You can build however you want and play however you want.

 

"Best" is dependent on who you're talking to. Not to mention you don't have to use Corrupted Mods if you don't want to. As you've said, the Primed Mods offer an avenue with very little penalty other than their bloody massive cost to max out. THAT'S another choice that you can move towards. There's new Primed Mods coming out, and we have new Corrupted Mods coming out. Both cater to a different crowd. The min-maxers can go for the Corrupted Mods if they wish, and those who don't want to sacrifice too much on their other powers can go for the Primed Mods. They can stack, sure, but that's also the beauty of the system. You can build your way and play your way. No one should hurt you because you want to play your way.

 

The issue there though, is availability of the Primed Mods. I do hope that DE does give them out in a different way to make them more available to players. I think they haven't because they see how powerful the mods can be. Without active penalties, Primed Mods could elevate a WarFrame's kit to levels maybe even Corrupted Mods could not. Still, I hope they add in more ways to get them. Baro Ki' Teer is an annoyance to deal with, bloody dude eats up my Prime Parts inventory every time he comes around.

 

The Corrupted Mods are balanced. For the costs they make us pay, they are pretty balanced. We sacrifice power strength, duration, range, or efficiency in our kit to boost up one of those four attributes. For most mods the cost is somewhat lower than the gain in a certain aspect, but Fleeting Expertise costs you exactly the same duration as you gain in efficiency. I believe the Corrupted Mods cater to the min-maxers, while the Primed mods cater to others. You can use them in tandem to offset each others weaknesses, but that still limits your kit. All in all, it depends on the players.

[Nighttide77]

MechaKnight - "*chomps energy cake to avoid walking 5 steps to the orb*"  -- I wish we had energy cake just like we have health restores, heh...

 

MechaKnight - "It's about saving this game's interest for sane people who are rapidly leaking out of this game." -- I don't believe you read my post, either...  Toning down nuke abilities won't bring back players or keep them around, unless you have a counter-assessment to my observations on player psychology concerning their lack of self control to avoid the temptation of only using single powers.

 

MechaKnight - "Of course the devs hate themselves for it, hence why the nullifiers are everywhere, and I wouldn't be surprised if the grineer ninja enemy steals abilities from you for 30 seconds on a single hit." -- Do you have a proper quote or something?  We haven't seen one post from a dev or anyone to verify this.  However, I would love to be challenged by a grineer ninja that steals abilities and then uses the power, themselves...but doesn't keep you from using them for 30 seconds, that would be harsh...but I think I could take that challenge :-D

 

MechaKnight - "15% status on a weapon. Really?" -- Add that to also needing to update login rewards.  Sentinel XP on day 7?  Psh....

 

MechaKnight - "With 4 abilities, 2 weapons, and melee, one button is not the only solution." -- *sigh* Dude...and I know you're a dude cuz I've heard your voice on TeamSpeak...unless you were using a crazy good voice changer...  It's like you're saying you can't resist the temptation to use a nuke build to win.  What about those of us who can control the urge to nuke spam, but still want the option for when we are feeling like going on a nuke spree?

 

Shuuro - "Is it truly a play style to run around and cast single abilities to get the job done quickly?" -- I can't answer for Alpha, but in my opinion, yes it is :-P  Just like street fighting is a fighting style.  There are Tai Chi that may look down on MMA, and there are MMA rules that don't allow Hapkido, and I even have a friend who doesn't believe Krav Maga isn't a Martial Art.  The fact is, they are all art.  Just like a 5-year-old's scribblings are art.  It's opinion-biased.  Now, would I pay $5k for a 5-year-old's scribblings?  Probably not, unless those scribblings are actually the result of a prodigy and I'm just simply too unintelligent to see the genius in it.  But that doesn't change what it all is.

 

Shuuro - "At this point, removing that invincibility wasn't about ruining everyones power trip of god mode, but it was to bring us to realize, that it just, wasn't, fair." --  And even with the nerf, we're still seeing players leave...

 

Shuuro - "It's cool, but it makes the game stale." -- Well, that's what players get when they choose stale tactics.  You get your fill for your choices.  Players have to bear the consequences of their own decisions!  The logic behind the arguments only seems to be that the game should protect players from the consequences of their choices.

 

Shuuro - "Or is our endgame meant to be.. a little bit more?" -- Of course.  Personally, though, endgame shouldn't be being able to last an hour in survival, 100 waves of defense, or defeating a boss faster than anyone else, regardless of the methods.  Endgame should be something that improves each of our skills as players with increasing difficulty, not entirely based on what mods we throw on our frames and weapons.

 

MechaKnight - "It's just that our energy abundance combined with corrupted min-maxing is making our game heavily stale." -- This, right here, is the attitude I've been trying to highlight all along!  Players that mod in this way are making the choice to make the game stale, but are then blaming the game for letting them do that.  At the same time, the game is being blamed for allowing other players to make nuke-build choices that make the game stale for them, too.  However, it is entirely within each person's power to decide whether they want the game to be stale, and whether they want to team with people that may give them grief in one way or another.

 

If a player's attitude is that they only want to be the most powerful they possibly can be, and their perspective is that only one power amongst their kit is the the source of that strength, then the game will be stale.  It'll be stale for any game.  If anyone's solution to the staleness is then for the game to remove their power, then it is only a matter of time before that won't be enough.

 

Really, I don't care whether the devs implement LoS or a system to punish spamming powers that deal mass damage.  I don't play the game solely using nuke powers, so I'm sure the game play will always continue to draw me in.

 

What does massively concern me, though, is the ideology behind reasoning why damage-nuke abilities should be nerfed.  What I see is that people are saying the game isn't hard enough, and game play is stale, therefore the game needs to take freedom away and punish us for using tactics we cannot stop ourselves from using.

 

That ideology doesn't stop with powers that damage-nuke.  It'll pass onto weapons that one-shot enemies, powers that mass CC a whole level, and even move sets that have guaranteed proc, like jumping sidekicks.  The craving for increasing difficulties and challenges will not stop with the removal of damage-nukes or the punishment for spamming them.  Attitudes permeate into all facets, and are never restricted to only one area.

 

There is talk of wanting to guarantee the future of the game, keep new and old players, and make the game feel more rewarding.  I can guarantee, though, that the game will degrade and disappear if it tries to tell players how to play their game by restricting player choice too far.

 

I would really like it if someone who has stopped playing but still has an account would weigh in on this discussion.  Would that person come back and keep playing if they were punished by the game for using P42W?  If so, for how long would they keep playing before getting bored and moving onto another game?  Seriously, someone find a friend that they're still in contact with and ask them to post here their thoughts and feelings.

 

I honestly think that players will continue to play this game because they enjoy the game play.  If they move on, it's because they've done all there is to do in the game, gotten all the frames/weapons they've wanted to try, and gotten all the rewards there is to get.  Once they've sapped up all they think there is to get and explore, and see that any future releases of weapons, frames, and mods pretty much don't change the game play, they'll move onto new games with different rewards and different game play.  Punishing the spam of damage-nuke powers doesn't massively change game play unless you chose to use such powers in a spammy fashion, and neither does it give different rewards.  All it does is make players have to use other methods, of which other methods can quickly become just as stale...like running through levels just blasting the Ignis down every hallway.

 

Shouldn't players just push themselves to use different strategies, rather than the game pushing players to get creative?

[Shuuro]

-snip-

 

1. Yet that is exactly what you are promoting. You are saying it's okay. You are saying this is a play style for players. What you are suggesting is for it to be okay for players to do this all the way into the end game. Do I want people to do that? No. But because that's what people do, everyone is forced to play similarly or else they wont get any action.

 

If someone enters a mission with that mentality, then everyone else is going to feel rushed to get anything done because sir rush a lot just yolo'd the next three rooms.

 

and no, leaving or asking them to leave is not a solution. That just proves that there is a problem going on.

 

 

 

2. You completely ignored the point I was making. It's about balancing things to make it fair. God mode isn't ever fair.. anywhere.

 

The entire point of the trinity nerf, was to make it fair for everyone. not just a shameless nerf to trinity. Whats so exciting about a game where I can never die? I could make myself lunch, and eat it, while that trinity was in the party. There was no danger. That's why it was taken away. It took away the entire point of even trying to do anything. Why dodge? Why take cover? Why parkour over that group of enemies? All you have to do is hold up slightly on your controller or W on your keyboard and you advance through everything unharmed!

 

Balance is needed in a game. That. Was heavily unbalanced. See the problem now?

 

Oh and, yes, Valkyr will more than likely see her nerf coming one day. They'll probably just super buff her armor and keep the healing factor on. Just a simple guess.

 

 

 

3.Fleeting expertise comes with the highest negative cost?

 

Have you never used a full damage no duration build then? They're widely used for rep farming. Specifically on Excalibur. Rhino. Trinity. Mag. Saryn. Mirage.

 

No other mod has a cost that high... Overextend? Overextend on a LOKI? Hi? Broken tier right here folks. Loki uses NO damage what so ever. Overextend literally has no negative down sides to it, yet he can gain a free 90% range. Yay for corrupted mods.

 

Also. I hope you do realize that the negative output for Fleeting is easily negated. You might not know how to use specific mod ranks, but here's an example. Fleeting expertise gives 40% efficiency and -40% duration at rank 3. Slap on Continuity, and a Rank 7 Narrow minded. Slap on Stretch. Boom. You have everything at a positive scale, with only -3% range lost.

 

Please tell me again how that's balanced? Where again was the negatives to that? I pretty much now have possitive duration, neutral range, and with streamline, 70% energy efficiency. No downsides.

 

There are so many ways to abuse corrupted mods that it's mind numbingly easy to build for a single skill and have the others fine.

 

In fact, some frames can completely bypass a stat to make them overpowered in their entirety. Like Loki can. While other frames, like Excalibur, need to use all their stats to utilize all their abilities.

 

 

The entire tanky loki point made no sense. It had nothing to do with matter at hand. Are we still talking about balance in the game? In fact, you just proved my point. There are other ways to play the game besides being a nuke hungry power house. You were able to do these things even before corrupted mods, now you can just do it easier, and longer. Still does not change the fact that corrupted mods have made some pretty big changes, and not necessarily for the best.

 

 

4. Yes. We can agree on this. Our end game at the moment is pathetic. What the Devs chose to do for endgame could change the entire direction of this intellectual debate. You can't balance something towards infinity, it's just simply not done. When you try to, well, you have what we have now. A lot of balance problems, and quite a lot of power creep.

 

5. This is what I would desire the most. Then everyone wins, and everyone can live happily ever after the end. It would even let newer players enjoy the game more. I can't even begin to describe how upset I got when I invited my friends into warframe, and they had to witness this first hand. It is a horrible new player experience. It might be fun for that Rhino, that Excalibur, that nuking frame, but what they are essentially doing, is making the game worse for newer players that want to play the game. Not get carried.

 

and, please don't use the don't run with pubs excuse. If warframe wasn't revolved around pubs, it would have lobbies. Same reason Dark Souls doesn't have lobbies, it thrives on the randomness of grouping people together.

 

Most, if not all new players are almost shoe-horned into playing pug matches.

 

 

I'm going to have to say I'm sorry, but this is something I am going to have to disagree strongly against. I don't find Corrupted mods balanced. Fleeting is too easily abused with Narrow minded + stretch. Overextend can now be combined with three strength mods, and if you're modding for range, most likely your also modding for damage. But if your our special little Loki, you get away scot-free. No penalties for you Loki!

 

Corrupted mods as it is now, favor some frames, and shun others. Some builds cannot even be fully realized at the moment because of the way corrupted mods work.

 

They're great for some, bad for others. The most major offender in the group though, is most defiantly fleeting expertise. It is just way too simply abused as it currently is.

 

 

Something needs to change. Be it either a better energy system, a better difficulty system, or even a different modding system. Something out of it needs to change. As it currently is, Warframe is following a steady line of power creep, and the ridiculousness of all of this will only get worse, and worse, and worse.

 

 

Please realize, that these nuke everything builds that are commonly seen across the solar chart, might make the user themselves satisfied, yet they're making their entire team suffer. They are quite literally sucking the fun out of the game for them.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Shuuro

[MechaKnight]

For now, let's take this earlier draft post and add one small detail to it.

 

 

It's time to compound the earlier draft into some pseudo-code. The devs are looking for a streamlined way to understand and implement feedback so I'll get to it.

 

For the most part we're concerned with radial nukes but everything's fair game. The developers tend to implement their fixes and changes in patches so they'll probably implement this as a manual inclusion on all of them one at a time.

 

Since I decided earlier 2% per second fill rate and a drain rate of 25 energy per use on a meter of 100% is viable, I'll be building off that. I'll round down the penalty and lock it at 20% for now but more can be done later.

 

Start charge meter at 0

Increment 2 per second

Run standard cost of 25

 

>If User casts radial

>>Check meter

>>>If user has at least 25 score

>>>>cast full potency radial

 

>>>If user does not have enough score on meter

>>>>subtract down to zero

>>>>>cast 80% effective ability

 

End.

 

That's it really. It can simply be boiled down to...

 

Charge start = V

Charge max = W

Charge Rate = X

Cast Cost = Y

Overpull Penalty = Z

 

#Create limits for charge "meter" with V and W

 

Minimum meter V

Maximum meter W

Recharge at rate of X

 

>If User casts radial

>>Check meter

>>>If user has at least Y points

>>>>cast full potency radial

 

>>>If user does not have enough score on meter

>>>>subtract down to zero (V)

>>>>>cast (100-Z)% effective ability

 

End.

 

I mean, the overcomplicated thinking was to flesh out the concept really. It boils down to pretty simple implementation. For the most part this should still mean you're not casting this radial more than 5 times before waiting 12.5 seconds, otherwise you'll get a 20% stat penalty. Just wait 12.5 seconds past the penalty and the ability is back in full strength. Wait a bit more and you can cast it 5 times over again no problem.

 

These limits are extremely forgiving, but I'm impressed there have been none all this time.

 

In my earlier draft, ultimate #4 nukes would only be penalized if they were being cast as fast as humanly possible 5 times without penalty within a period of 12 seconds. After that, nukes would only be penalized 20% for a very short time of 12 seconds. The charge rate would be so fast for the other abilities they would usually overcharge to reach the 200% buff limit.

 

I'll propose these numbers for now.

 

30/20/12/3

 

I buffed the ultimate recharge rate to 3% per second. The cost is still 25%. This means even if you go on a nuking spree to nuke 6 times over, it will recharge to come back to full strength in 8 seconds.

 

What if I buffed it more? What if the values of 30/20/12/3 actually incremented inversely like auras? Similar to archwing, where players who are solo fly and capture much faster.

 

If you were solo, this rate would skyrocket to 120/60/36/9. The 200% overcharge would still be there. The charge rates would be slowed to 10% of their original when going to overcharge past 100%. This means your first ability would become twice as powerful in all attributes (duration, range, strength) in only about 8 seconds. Your second ability would be mega-buffed while solo to 200% in just over 16 seconds, and so on. It would take twice as long on a team of two players, and four times as long in a team of four players. That said...

 

For the immense power of having every ability on their warframe become exponentially strong with only a bit of patience, would players stop nuking the room by themselves every 2 seconds without end on a team of 4 players?

 

What bothers me is, no. Even if this limitation was only at all notable on a team of 4 players, and the penalty was only waiting 8 seconds or having a penalty of 20%, the casual playerbase would still complain that being penalized a tiny bit for spamming 6 times in a row in 10 seconds is not worth having exponential strength in abilities #1, #2, and #3.

 

The point I'm trying to make is, the relentless nuke spamming across the solar system where we clearly see one person dominate every and all missions with only coptering and #4 on a team of 4 people is silly. The limitations I gave even before were extremely nice. I just made them even more mild and buffed the system. It was already unfeasible in most cases that a player would spam nukes 6 times over in 12 seconds on a team of 4 people where someone else should be participating, and I still got backlash for the draft.

 

This is the problem with the playerbase mentality. I myself have gone on farming runs with squads of mastery rank 18 players, and gotten 85% of all damage done and an incredibly high amount of kills. They didn't even have the chance because I was that good at nuking and coptering. Then they started to seem flustered and switched to pick my warframe and weapons in an attempt to immitate and I still dominated. However, that's the problem... these limitations would not apply to a normal person. They would only apply to amazing single-man destroyers who could clear a map before anyone got to see a single enemy on it.

 

That's the problem with the community. Even with the most mild limitations that will only appear on a team of 4 players, most of us probably wouldn't want 200% stronger abilities (in all stats) for only an 8 second cooldown on only your nuking ability.

 

This is why players didn't like Nova, and she had to get rebalanced. The nuke problem is reappearing in a similar form. Balance isn't bad, it barely affects anybody. It just seems nobody cares for balance when they just dominate teams without giving them a chance anyway.

Edited January 8, 2015 by MechaKnight

[Kripnex]

     We want more, MORE ENEMIES!

Not less wtf... you got your facts backwards mate.

[MechaKnight]

1. Yet that is exactly what you are promoting. You are saying it's okay. You are saying this is a play style for players. What you are suggesting is for it to be okay for players to do this all the way into the end game. Do I want people to do that? No. But because that's what people do, everyone is forced to play similarly or else they wont get any action.

 

If someone enters a mission with that mentality, then everyone else is going to feel rushed to get anything done because sir rush a lot just yolo'd the next three rooms.

 

and no, leaving or asking them to leave is not a solution. That just proves that there is a problem going on.

 

 

 

2. You completely ignored the point I was making. It's about balancing things to make it fair. God mode isn't ever fair.. anywhere.

 

The entire point of the trinity nerf, was to make it fair for everyone. not just a shameless nerf to trinity. Whats so exciting about a game where I can never die? I could make myself lunch, and eat it, while that trinity was in the party. There was no danger. That's why it was taken away. It took away the entire point of even trying to do anything. Why dodge? Why take cover? Why parkour over that group of enemies? All you have to do is hold up slightly on your controller or W on your keyboard and you advance through everything unharmed!

 

Balance is needed in a game. That. Was heavily unbalanced. See the problem now?

 

Oh and, yes, Valkyr will more than likely see her nerf coming one day. They'll probably just super buff her armor and keep the healing factor on. Just a simple guess.

 

 

 

3.Fleeting expertise comes with the highest negative cost?

 

Have you never used a full damage no duration build then? They're widely used for rep farming. Specifically on Excalibur. Rhino. Trinity. Mag. Saryn. Mirage.

 

No other mod has a cost that high... Overextend? Overextend on a LOKI? Hi? Broken tier right here folks. Loki uses NO damage what so ever. Overextend literally has no negative down sides to it, yet he can gain a free 90% range. Yay for corrupted mods.

 

Also. I hope you do realize that the negative output for Fleeting is easily negated. You might not know how to use specific mod ranks, but here's an example. Fleeting expertise gives 40% efficiency and -40% duration at rank 3. Slap on Continuity, and a Rank 7 Narrow minded. Slap on Stretch. Boom. You have everything at a positive scale, with only -3% range lost.

 

Please tell me again how that's balanced? Where again was the negatives to that? I pretty much now have possitive duration, neutral range, and with streamline, 70% energy efficiency. No downsides.

 

There are so many ways to abuse corrupted mods that it's mind numbingly easy to build for a single skill and have the others fine.

 

In fact, some frames can completely bypass a stat to make them overpowered in their entirety. Like Loki can. While other frames, like Excalibur, need to use all their stats to utilize all their abilities.

 

 

The entire tanky loki point made no sense. It had nothing to do with matter at hand. Are we still talking about balance in the game? In fact, you just proved my point. There are other ways to play the game besides being a nuke hungry power house. You were able to do these things even before corrupted mods, now you can just do it easier, and longer. Still does not change the fact that corrupted mods have made some pretty big changes, and not necessarily for the best.

 

 

4. Yes. We can agree on this. Our end game at the moment is pathetic. What the Devs chose to do for endgame could change the entire direction of this intellectual debate. You can't balance something towards infinity, it's just simply not done. When you try to, well, you have what we have now. A lot of balance problems, and quite a lot of power creep.

 

5. This is what I would desire the most. Then everyone wins, and everyone can live happily ever after the end. It would even let newer players enjoy the game more. I can't even begin to describe how upset I got when I invited my friends into warframe, and they had to witness this first hand. It is a horrible new player experience. It might be fun for that Rhino, that Excalibur, that nuking frame, but what they are essentially doing, is making the game worse for newer players that want to play the game. Not get carried.

 

and, please don't use the don't run with pubs excuse. If warframe wasn't revolved around pubs, it would have lobbies. Same reason Dark Souls doesn't have lobbies, it thrives on the randomness of grouping people together.

 

Most, if not all new players are almost shoe-horned into playing pug matches.

 

 

I'm going to have to say I'm sorry, but this is something I am going to have to disagree strongly against. I don't find Corrupted mods balanced. Fleeting is too easily abused with Narrow minded + stretch. Overextend can now be combined with three strength mods, and if you're modding for range, most likely your also modding for damage. But if your our special little Loki, you get away scot-free. No penalties for you Loki!

 

Corrupted mods as it is now, favor some frames, and shun others. Some builds cannot even be fully realized at the moment because of the way corrupted mods work.

 

They're great for some, bad for others. The most major offender in the group though, is most defiantly fleeting expertise. It is just way too simply abused as it currently is.

 

 

Something needs to change. Be it either a better energy system, a better difficulty system, or even a different modding system. Something out of it needs to change. As it currently is, Warframe is following a steady line of power creep, and the ridiculousness of all of this will only get worse, and worse, and worse.

 

 

Please realize, that these nuke everything builds that are commonly seen across the solar chart, might make the user themselves satisfied, yet they're making their entire team suffer. They are quite literally sucking the fun out of the game for them.

 

Corrupted mods have really slanted gameplay. While I do like the balance of Primed Mods, the fact that they stack on top of corrupted mods is looking silly. The "penalty" on a rank 4 Fleeting Expertise is completely covered by a maxed Primed Continuity. As it the penalty from a rank 5 FE. As much as I want to see Primed mods as the return of balanced gameplay, many other players will only see them as "corrupt build balancers."

 

Meanwhile if I can carry some rank 18s through T4Es without them touching much behind me, imagine the usual player? My proposed limitations honestly... won't stop that from happening. But at least it'll be less obscene. A lot of the problem is a combination of the decadence of corrupted mods (which are irresistible for us smarter players), but it's also in how fast powercreep surges forward that bars new players from achieving our power. Until Primed mods repeat their cycle even once, I'll consider them another power surge in the community new players have to compete alongside or against.

 

I like being powerful as does anyone else. However I'm admittedly guilt ridden from dominating player experiences, so I simply choose not to anymore. Even with a build loaded with corrupted mods, I tend to use my whole kit for fun, and only resort to nuking if it seems the squad host is farming keys/planet nodes, and tells me they want me to nuke spam when I ask said host. However, most players don't have my discipline, and you know who knows how to nuke and who doesn't when it's just nothing but nuke through the entire run. I've played on all-nuke squads before. Although that technically means we all have a balanced chance at "gameplay", it does trivialize everything. The limitations I proposed are so mild, they still technically allow for the same dominating spam. There will just be an 8 second break to avoid a mild stat penalty players probably won't care about as they keep nuking. It even comes with stat buffs to all abilities that charge over time, with priority on the "weaker" abilities first.

 

This may look like a shooter game, but between the massive heaps of power, the rate at which it increases, and the imbalance between players new and old, what looks like a shooter is actually a rapid-pace small scale MMO of a kind. The power and imbalance is to be expected, but some examples are too silly. When I can dominate any squad to score over 85% damage and any new player is expected to deal only 1 or 2% of the damage, that's very disappointing in a shooter game. Corrupt mods are the threshold between what makes a player bad and what makes a player good. They're just that powerful.

Edited January 8, 2015 by MechaKnight

[Nighttide77]

So...I don't quote ya guys with the forum scripts and y'all ignore me... Meh, can't say that I haven't been ignored before when I've made points that no one seems to try to counter.

1. Yet that is exactly what you are promoting. You are saying it's okay. You are saying this is a play style for players. What you are suggesting is for it to be okay for players to do this all the way into the end game. Do I want people to do that? No.

"Do I want people to do that?" I'm sorry, but that's a little messed up for you to tell me how you want me to play Warframe...

God mode isn't ever fair.. anywhere.

Yes, it is. Does it make the game cheese? Sometimes. But some of us did play the first Doom on god mode just because they wanted to run through a level without losing ammo or having to deal with dying. Wolfenstein 3D? Psh, after I beat the game up to the point I could, totally went and started with all weapons and infinite health. More than once. Nerfing Trinity's 4th was well received, but the devs still maintained a lot of the frame's power to keep a team alive.

I still remember one survival I ran when the only frame I had was Excalibur. It wasn't easy lasting till 20min, but one time, I happened to pug with a group that had a Miasma Saryn and a Zephyr that spammed Tornado. Did it ruin the game for me? No. I thoroughly enjoyed watching them nuke whole rooms. Yet, there was still room for me to fight what little I could at the time, too. It also showed me what was possible further down the road, and made me want it. I also gained a few levels because of their help.

For the immense power of having every ability on their warframe become exponentially strong with only a bit of patience, would players stop nuking the room by themselves every 2 seconds without end on a team of 4 players?

What bothers me is, no.

...

It was already unfeasible in most cases that a player would spam nukes 6 times over in 12 seconds on a team of 4 people where someone else should be participating, and I still got backlash for the draft.

...

This is the problem with the playerbase mentality.

...

That's the problem with the community.

...

It just seems nobody cares for balance when they just dominate teams without giving them a chance anyway.

And that's what it comes down to. You're expressing your desire to impress your own game design on players that already like things the way they are. And the way you're putting it, it's like you're saying there's something wrong with us.

Have I dominated whole entire missions? Yes. Has anyone ever complained to me? No. In fact, a few times I've run those Grineer invasion missions, my pug squad stuck together even though one or two of us were primarily nuking anywhere that there were tons of enemies.

The two main things you seem to highlight in every one of your posts are that you don't like damage-nukes (although something like unlimited invisibility or a near unlimited Chaos is okay), and that everyone in a team should have an equal chance to take out some enemies. In other words, you don't want a game where players can nuke a whole map tile, and want everyone to be on the same level, including newbies. Hence an idea thrown out there to have level scaling when veterans go to lower level missions.

Given my example of my newbie experience, have you thought that some newbies wouldn't mind seeing whole rooms get nuked? I've even had a couple newbies in awe of the sheer power they could potentially develop, themselves.

-----

I'm going to try to relate some of my opinions in terms of other games where if you spend enough time, you'll be able to pretty much flow through the rest of the game with little effort, but still have fun.

Prince of Persia - Sands of Time got a high score in many of its reviews on its release. Single player, platforming with parkour elements seen in Warframe, and acrobatic fighting. Plenty of puzzle solving and lethal traps, along with enemies that had different ways of handling. If a player invests enough time, they'll get that special weapon at the end of the game that one-shots pretty much everything, and if there's an enemy that blocks too much, you can slow time to get behind them and still pretty much one-shot them. In fact, the time slow and rewind abilities were almost God mode, but people still loved the game.

Prince of Persia - Warrior Within also got a high score, and is the sequel to the previous game. Similar game play, except it was focused more on a "free form" fighting system. Variety of enemies with strengths and weaknesses, puzzles and traps, and pretty much same time-altering powers. Complete all the secret rooms and get the special one-shot sword at the end along with the actual game ending. I played through this game more than twice even though I already knew how to handle the traps. Why? Game play. What other game have I played that I can grab an enemy and throw them into other enemies? Did I always just one-shot enemies when I could? Not always. Only when I felt like it.

Fury3 ...heh, 1995 game. One of my first loved games. If you can imagine Archwing in 1995 graphics, but with bosses and being set on surface of planets rather than in the middle of space, you've got Fury3. Score? Google says 8.7/10 and 4.4/5. I'm not going to give citations :-P Single player, not many different types of enemies, a variety of weapons from your starting red lasers, to upgraded and faster firing blue lasers, a cannon that shot vollies of rounds in a cone, and your most powerful weapon: the F3 nuke that vaporized all visible enemies except bosses. All weapons, except the beginning weapon, had limited ammo capacity, but if you found that one trench run that had a guaranteed ammo for that blue laser, you could totally grind it and stack up your ammo that would last you for the rest of the game. Did I find that trench run with that F3 nuke? Yep. Did I grind that nuke till I had more than enough for the rest of the game? Oh yeah. Did I abuse the nukes? Newp, cuz it was only fun when I was surrounded and whipped out that wild card of WIN. Have I used the nuke when there was only one or two enemies? Well, yeah. Why wouldn't I if I wanted to?

Lastly, Onimusha 3, high score reviews (varying), single player, variety of enemies, game play focused on melee and pressing the attack buttons with proper timing to one-shot enemies or pull off that cool combo. Each weapon also happened to have a power that allowed you to wipe out enemies in a specific range given the weapon used. Oh, and boss fights that had varying mechanics in order to defeat, and telegraphed powers to help avoid dying. If a person spent enough time, they could easily grind through a sort of beginning dungeon, level up their armor, power and weapons, and just waltz through the rest of the game. There was even a weapon towards the end of the game that would pretty much make the final boss a piece of cake. If you completed a specific challenge, you could get a power-up that made all your attacks those one-shot moves. Never got it myself, though, cuz I already pretty much did that. Absolutely loved the game, so much I even told other people to play it.

Now, many people might be saying, "wait, Nighttide, all of those games are single player! How can they compare to Warframe?" Actually, that's kinda where Warframe prevails where those games stalled. The only thing that would make Prince of Persia - Warrior Within much better, in my mind, would be a co-op, where a friend could throw an enemy my direction, and then I hit them mid-air. If me and a friend could play Fury3, run those trench runs, and just nuke together. Even more so, each of those single-player games had a limited set of enemies and weapons and powers. Warframe continues to grow in enemies, weapons, powers, map tiles, and even boss reworks! Warframe is almost every one of those games I loved, but better and in continual development.

One aspect of endgame is the ability to nuke entire map tiles if you so choose to put the effort into being able to do so. Another aspect of endgame, at the moment, are those endless missions and seeing how long you can last. Endgame can be collecting all the mod cards like a card collector or Pokemon collector (we even have 4 different Kubrows). I've seen others go after the stance mods just to have them. As well, veteran players continue to make suggestions to make have more engaging endgame content, which is awesome.

Each of those games I mentioned got high reviews and were enjoyed by tons of players. Each of those games also had P42W mechanics, or variants thereof. To say that there's something wrong with the P42W Warframe community is to say that there's something wrong with every person that put forth effort to get that nuke weapon/ability in the aforementioned games.

Perhaps it isn't that there's something wrong with the P42W community, but that various MMO gamers' visions of what Warframe should be do not coincide with what Warframe is right now. Some gamers may think that Warframe would need a complete rework from the ground up because of its mechanics. However, based on the success of games that Warframe greatly resembles (even in Onimusha 3's channeling), it's not that Warframe needs huge reworks, but that various gamers do not have the tastes for what Warframe has to offer.

If Warframe was a supreme pizza, and there's a group of people who like pepperoni and a group that don't, Warframe should still be a supreme pizza. Further, the anti-pepperoni people have all the freedom to choose to pull off the pepperoni from the slices they get, all without the pro-pepperoni guys losing out. Sure, there may be some pepperoni that is still in the pizza, even remnants of flavor, but no one is making them eat the pizza. And there is nothing wrong with pro-pepperoni people :-P

Edited January 8, 2015 by Nighttide77

[MechaKnight]

The Short Story for those who don't like to read.

 

Add difficulty settings. The challenge: lower our limits Gate Crash style! Make the risk and limits worthwhile in the long run to players who are always playing and have every mod and weapon ever released.

 

I think I've found the solution. With it comes a story and very simple points.

 

To begin, Warframe is still in beta.

 

What does that mean? It's incomplete. What is an incomplete game? What is a game?

 

A video game is a piece of interactive media designed to entertain us. It begins with a blank page of script and evolves into heaps and heaps of said scripts. In the beginning, it is limitless. The code can do anything, as can the world and models in it. Attempt to implement a player character (probably a literal box in an XYZ plane), and attempt to move it. Congrats, you can move in all direction with no gravity!

 

Later with more refinement, our characters have bodies. We can walk around in the world, but then we find  hole in the map. We fall and... do NOT die. There's no HP yet. We can't die.

 

We then add the limitation of HP. Now we can die. But we don't have health rejuvenating pickups yet. So we add a feature. Now we have HP orbs with refill our health. We still don't want to take health damage so quickly however, so then we add shields. It's another feature that also has limitations. Shields regenerate but the rate at which they do and delay with which they do are limitations. Now we're getting somewhere.

 

What is a superhero movie game if the hero has zero villains and is perfectly safe in a perfect world? We add bad guys. Now there are obstacles. The experience is shaping up. Most games have some shape of this form. However, gameplay as is possible, we need goals.

 

Equipment can be earned. This is a goal. The goal is in the earning portion of it. I mean, what's a goal if it was instantly granted to you? What's a superhero movie if he just wished it done and it was so? It wouldn't be an adventure. It'd be a passing scene.

 

Well, it would be rather cheap if the hero just snapped his fingers to get what they want. Except we do that with our abilities quite often. Now, the only obstacle is fate. It's Random number gambles. Sure, it's okay to have an obstacle to make the goal more satisfying, but gambling and losing to forces you can't control always feels bad.

 

As of currently, we're heroes who fight against an enemy that can't be defeated. RNG is limitless, except for when it chooses to yield to us and grants us what we want. We are also nearly limitless in gameplay, which by what developers think, needs to be challenged. It just feels painful to know the challenge they give us is RNG. They are right to challenge us, but  we would not like RNG to greater extents. See, we keep getting more powerful with every content expansion, and our goals need to be hidden behind an obstacle. Because of our nearly limitless power, we need a foe this power can't touch. Hence RNG and it's prevalence.

 

Have there been games that once had no obstacles? Many, especially in beta phase. Beta phase is a test area where we want people to test things. However, in order to allow them to test adequately in a quick enough time, they need to be granted resources ahead of schedule. It wouldn't be right to keep getting broken, untested content because our testers had to fight the same obstacles we do in normal gameplay. They are granted it without limitation. This is not a game, this is testing. At least, it's partly a game, and partly testing. This game is in beta, and while we have some limits, we don't have anywhere near the full limits we will have on release.

 

Now I know how irritated people become, but it's the truth. Limitations will be here on release, that's a given. However, what strategies did other game developers use to expand upon unfinished games?

 

Minecraft was a good example. It's gone so far it's intimidating to remember what it was, and you can compare an early in-development build on their website at one point. It was limitless and boring, with no goals or obstacles. it was a sandbox. It did not remain a sandbox completely.

The game expanded to evolve from a live-action test to a possible game with obstacles and goals. Minecraft even has an end, although it's pretty weird.

 

Challenge was added with survival mode. Later, it was given further challenge with all kinds of other things as time went on, like more human survival limitations, difficulty settings, goals behind obstacles. As time went on, various features were added. However... it also preserved something like a sandbox. There was a cop-out for challenge that could be enjoyed with almost no reward. Creative mode.You can fly around (coptering) with unlimited resources (we have gained many), with no limitations to do anything we wanted. In this game, one can say we've broken and shattered our limitations with the power spam we are capable of producing using corrupted and primed mods. Our abilities are far more tremendously effective than they were in closed beta. With the mods we have now, we have crushed our limits. We can easily overcome any obstacle. Only RNG is an obstacle. After that, we earn our goal.

 

There are alternatives. Some games show valid paths for the future of Warframe. So I've given Minecraft as an example of what an empty creation can expand into. It has gone through a crazy amount of stages, like in-dev, infinite-dev, alpha, beta, and too many beta iterations to count. Challenge has been added but there was one little bastion preserved just to be limitless. Then again, remember said game mode had no reward or purpose other than to showcase the game.

 

We understand there's a problem: Warframe is resembling less of a game and more of a showcase display. This is normal because we're in beta.

 

We are in beta. There are ways to expand this showcase into a game. The most valid one...

 

 

I've been keeping an eye on this thread for a while, and I must admit. I do feel changes are needed in warframe to enrich our experiences here.

 

When I first played this game, way back over a year ago, with the old star chart, UI, etc. In my FIRST mission. I stealthed, and took things at a slow pace. I enjoyed it. I LOVED it. Save for the fact that I was playing solo and I had to be more cautious, I still loved the experience of getting through areas through my own understanding of the game. To me, this was fun. Overcoming a challenge, was fun.

 

and this is where things get.. complicated.

 

What. IS. Fun?

 

Fun for me? Well. Fun for me is going on a mass killing spree. NOT a press nuke to kill everything in the vicinity kind of mass killing spree, but a stealthy, assassin like kill spree, where I enjoy running around with melee in hand, bow in back, and silently taking enemies down, throwing a smokescreen to avoid inevitable detection (because 7 grineer in a tight hallway is so fair for stealth).

 

Fun for me, is being challenge as a PLAYER, which is why I enjoy things like.. Dark Souls. Not everyone likes the difficulty of the game, or how punishing it was, but I actually LOVED, that there was actually a game out there, that had some pretty challenging elements to it. Fun for me, maybe not too much fun for the next guy.

 

So that brings us to the next part of the question. What is, your version of Fun?

 

It could be.. being an overpowered demi-god ninja in space spamming that nuclear ability. It could be overcoming challenges too great to be completed by the average player. It could even be as simple as just chilling out in region chat, or even the new Relays and just socializing.

 

What could be fun for me, probably wont be fun for everyone, and that is a difficult thing to not only grasp, but to program into a game.

 

There are many 'flavors' of fun that can be seen in Warframe, but if we're going to see all of them become accessible, to us, it's going to take a very long time.

 

 

Now, I've been giving some of my own thought how we could possibly add in more difficulty, or flavor into the game, WITHOUT even changing the current warframe, and then it hit me. There was a specific series that, I loved to play years ago, and yet another game that I recently played that had the same feature.

 

Halo, and Sanctum.

 

Now, what did these two had in common? The ability to change the difficulty of the game, NOT ONLY, through the difficulty setting, but by adding in Skulls/Feats of strength.

 

By enabling these, the game would change entirely.

 

No Hud. Stronger enemies, heal and recover shields only when you melee. That kind of difficulty.

 

This would bring the option for more difficult gameplay, something that could be enable and disabled before entering a match. We could call these, Lotus marks, or Feats of Tenno, I don't know, horrible at making names, but you get the idea.

 

This image comes to mind, which can also be found on DevStream 43:

 

 

Imagine the ability to customize our matches to match our own liking of difficulty. Making matches harder could prove to.. increase drop rate? Increase affinity gained? Make rares drop more frequently. There are many options that could possibly await us.

 

It could even be possible to add in those diminishing returns to powers that MechaKnight had previously mentioned, which, I do think is a great idea. I was going to post a similar idea, since it revolved around the same concept in another game. Other abilities become stronger than others depending on play style, rewarding players for using more skill diversity instead of mindlessly droning away at ult ult ult.

 

 

We could essentially keep the warframe we have now, as the 'normal' mode of the game, and yet, be able to tweak it to our own difficulty curve through difficulty settings and Feats of Tenno/Lotus marks.

 

The way I see it, like this, we'd have our cake, and we could eat it too, without bickering about how that guys cake looks better than mine, because we all have our own flavor of cake.

 

 

The difficulty setting.

 

The difficulty setting will give us the challenge we want. It will give us a greater obstacle, but it should also come with additional limitations and goals.

 

Let's talk about limitations. So players don't want them in the base game, but the game is expanding. When a game is expanded, limitations are added. It is added to give us an obstacle.

 

The relationship is becoming clear. Rectangles are squares, but squares are not always rectangles. Limitations are obstacles, but obstacles are not limitations. Or rather, the obstacle has a limitation built into it.

 

So... how does one make an obstacle into a limitation?

Nullifiers.

 

These nullifiers are enemies which emit a shield which acts as a limitation to our problem-solving capacity. This shield blocks our bullets, and all things within it are guarded from our abilities. This obstacle is emitting a limitation, and is therefore emulating one. However, once we solve the obstacle, we remove the limitation.

 

This is a major problem in the long run. If obstacles are posing as limitations, we will eventually shed our limitations as we destroy obstacles. Limitations are forever, but obstacles are fleeting. We bypass obstacles, but limitations are something that is inherent to all we do. Gravity is a limit. The need to eat is a limit. Our movement speed.... or is it. I mean, if we drive a car, we move faster. If we copter in this game, we move faster. Limits are there, but can be extended. At least, the limitation is no longer in our legs, it's in the car. Or in whatever weapon speed and animation inertia you can generate to copter successfully. Or wall vault.

 

When we gained corrupted mods, we extended a limit. Our maximum efficiency, range, strength, duration. We extended all of our limits. However, when we did that, we flattened our obstacles to nearly nothing. That's quite pointless. A hero with no obstacles. If we could instantly bypass RNG, we have no goals. So if we have no goals, we have no game.

 

Warframe's decline may be in the fact that without limitations, we have no obstacles, and therefore no goals. Other games have expanded however.

 

I remember Digital Extremes mention on a devstream another game for its internal systems. Vindictus. Although it was a hard game, I was motivated to reach the then level cap of level 80. I experienced most of its content, obstacles, limitations, and goals. Difficulty setting was probably the most important feature. How? It provided different obstacles, different limitation, and different goals.

 

So what does this mean, piece by piece? For example, that game had three difficulty settings per mission: easy, normal, and hard (hero). Depending on the difficulty setting, the resources and items that dropped varied. Resources and items are goals. In higher modes, there were many special enemies with different behaviors--they were nearly identical to our eximus enemies. However, because our power in Warframe is nearly limitless, eximus enemies failed to really make an impact at all. At least, due to corrupted mods and our expanded limitations.

 

Every game has limitations to a degree, but some are worth investigating more than others. In Vindictus, enemies moved faster and hit much harder as the game went on. In warframe, they don't move faster but they do hit harder. Still, what works for one game is not enough. The limitations in Vindictus were stamina, movement in travel and dodging, and ability energy meter and cost. The abilities were quite limited.

 

You would say Warframe has these elements as well, but it mostly no longer does. Stamina 2.0 was extremely short-lived. Coptering has trivialized movement and tilesets, hence why the developers wanted to get rid of it at some point. Our possible efficiency has trivialized energy limitations. We no longer care since everything costs one energy orb or fewer, and they are everywhere. Our abilities are too effective for their own good, the entire game is now trivialized.

 

However, there is a solution: difficulty setting.

 

We need a legitimate difficulty setting. Scaling enemies to become lethal adamantine walls isn't a fun way to create a stronger obstacle. Additionally, the obstacles created by scaling don't feel rewarding. That's the major problem right there. What we need is difficulty settings independent of scaling. We need selectable difficulty.

 

This was emulated once before, but quite poorly. It was implemented in the form of various levels of void tower key. We have Tower keys 1, 2, 3, and now 4. The reason why this difficulty setting was not appreciated was because it imposed no new limits.

 

We need a difficulty setting that is optional which imposes more limits in exchange for significantly greater reward. Let's face it, survival in Minecraft isn't for everyone. Hero mode in Vindictus isn't for everyone. Apparently, not have power spam 24/7 all the time isn't for everyone. Make challenge for those who want and deserve it, but reward them for it.

 

You may think back, didn't DE want a hardcore mode? The idea wasn't stated correctly. The only challenge behind hardcore mode was in the loss of your gear permanently, but it did not actually lower our limits to a respectable level. It was a pseudo-challenge. There is no challenge in losing gear, unless you think RNG is a worthy challenge.

 

RNG is not a worthy challenge. Stop suggesting it. Hardcore mode as it was suggested wasn't well conceived. Losing that piece of gear only means you have to grind RNG to get it back. Grinding is not a satisfying thing. RNG is not a satisfying obstacle. What we need is legitimate challenge, and the only way is through optional limitations with significant cause.

 

Hold on, doesn't dynamic enemy scaling make our power less potent, to give us greater challenge? Yes, but it's not rewarding.

There's a major problem with enemy scaling, and it's easily seen in how people treat void keys. If it wasn't for the RNG required to gain void keys, we would not honor infinite scaling as much as we do. Our only obstacle is RNG. The key itself was gained through RNG. When we get into the orokin void towers, we battle more RNG. We only worship infinite scaling because it allows us more chances to reroll RNG. The experience itself is not rewarding, only the prize rolls.

 

The rewards we want--our goal--is hidden behind RNG--our obstacle. Perhaps we would have fewer obstacles if we had greater limitations. Creating obstacles with attached limitations--nullifiers--only works until we kill the obstacle. Our limitations are not there in the current state of mods and powers, and we don't want limits unless we get rewards. We deserve a suitable goal for our limitation.

 

Here is what I propose: A difficulty system with limitations and rewards, along with enhanced obstacles.

Now, let's imagine a parallel universe in development of Warframe: what if we always had difficulty settings, and nullifiers only appeared in hard mode? Well, you'd avoid hard mode. But what if hard mode dropped blueprints, materials, and mods not found elsewhere? Vindictus did that. You'd want to play it.

 

Let's refine further. So we expect different enemies in hard mode. Both literally new enemies, and those familiar variants that eximus provide us. In Warframe as in Vindictus, enemies did drop unique enhancements. Mods here, scrolls there. However, we could also do with a boss enemy with different mechanics. I mean, look at MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. Bosses can have unique mechanics. Additionally, selecting a different difficulty mode would make the boss battle gain additional mechanics. Translated to this game... do you remember Corrupted Captain Vor on release? He used to perform a very potent thunderstorm around himself that remained for prolonged period of time on the field. It was quite deadly. Normal mode would treat him just the same. Hard mode would bring this mechanic back.

 

Also, stage hazards. Let's bring those back. Do you remember broken lights on grineer ships? Do not tantrum out, try to remember them for their concept. They were pretty damn cool even if intensely deadly and stealthy. Now, we have arc traps. In easy mode, there are no traps. In normal mode, arc traps exist. In hard mode, the broken lights come back.

 

We failed at it already, but it's not too late. Nightmare mode was this promise. Literally nobody plays it except desperate new players who can't wait for the nightmare mode alert which gives you a specific mod. We run it like any other mission except with extreme caution. Nightmare would have been enough, but it's not rewarding in the long run besides filling your mod kit once. Additionally, we still have nearly no limits on powers, so guess what we do? Smash it with powers.

 

It's a recurring pattern, we simply have no limits. At least, we really expanded them to be severely thinned out thanks to corrupt mods. However, I have an excuse to keep them in game with my new proposal.

 

Add difficulty settings. The challenge: lower our limits Gate Crash style! Make the risk and limits worthwhile in the long run to players who are always playing and have every mod and weapon ever released.

 

This is a big thing. Huge. We need a way for our old players to feel challenged. We need limitations imposed on us to stop breaking the game. It should be optional, but it should be totally worthwhile for everyone who chooses it to be. We need it so old players can play alongside new players for a reason. We need a reason to revisit early planets like Mercury and Venus. We need it so we have a reason to be endlessly powerful.

 

It needs rewards though. Rewards for the new and old to keep us coming and keep the system alive. We need special blueprints, miscellaneous rewards like syandanas and attachments, we need increased collection of syndicate points, experience points, resources, mods, fusion cores. We could multiply every fusion core found.

 

I mean it. This system needs huge rewards. If we are going to limit ourselves it needs to be worthwhile. Best of all: it tones down the grind... kinda. I mean, technically all of the grind is RNG but some of it is generous and continuous in ways that feel guarantied and normal. Picking up resources and such. I'm surprised for this long, fusion cores have not been treated as a resource. The difficulty settings could aid this tremendously. A reason to play and tone down the grind. Also: increased prize-pool luck on end-mission prize tables and the prize tables in infinite content. Better prizes for cycles A, B, and C. The prizes have to be separated into common, uncommon, rare, and legendary, but overall...

 

This difficulty selection could be the key to solving drop-table dilution. Really. It was a strategy meta players had in Vindictus, it can work here. You are already looking for mods from specific enemies, some of which are found more commonly in lower levels. However, what if we could determine which mods were dropped from these enemies more frequently, which blueprint/part dropped from a boss mission, and which prize dropped out of a void prize table rotation. Clearly, common parts drop from easier content, and rare or legendary parts drop from hard content. You can scale yourself down to get rare and legendary content if you're strong enough. You can stay at low difficulty and stay strong to get those more common drops, or not play with difficulty.

 

Remember: it has rewards, but it needs to have limits in exchange. It's the reason "press 4 to win" is killing this game. It's the reason this thread exists. We've broken our limits, and the entire game is rendered trivially useless because of it. The only obstacle is RNG and it hurts. If we expand gameplay with difficulty settings, we trade easy-mode for a better game. That's the best way to say it, and it's an awesome prospect. Less rep farming, less void grinding. Less boss farming to assemble the Miter. A chance at cool and interesting prizes. An easier time ranking up mods, and an easier time ranking up that newly forma'ed weapon you're dragging around but not using because you're just leveling it. We need a difficulty system that imposes limits on our abilities in exchange for a better game. And it will be epic.

Edited January 8, 2015 by MechaKnight

[AlphaHorseman]

 

1. Yet that is exactly what you are promoting. You are saying it's okay. You are saying this is a play style for players. What you are suggesting is for it to be okay for players to do this all the way into the end game. Do I want people to do that? No. But because that's what people do, everyone is forced to play similarly or else they wont get any action.

 

If someone enters a mission with that mentality, then everyone else is going to feel rushed to get anything done because sir rush a lot just yolo'd the next three rooms.

 

and no, leaving or asking them to leave is not a solution. That just proves that there is a problem going on.

 

 

 

2. You completely ignored the point I was making. It's about balancing things to make it fair. God mode isn't ever fair.. anywhere.

 

The entire point of the trinity nerf, was to make it fair for everyone. not just a shameless nerf to trinity. Whats so exciting about a game where I can never die? I could make myself lunch, and eat it, while that trinity was in the party. There was no danger. That's why it was taken away. It took away the entire point of even trying to do anything. Why dodge? Why take cover? Why parkour over that group of enemies? All you have to do is hold up slightly on your controller or W on your keyboard and you advance through everything unharmed!

 

Balance is needed in a game. That. Was heavily unbalanced. See the problem now?

 

Oh and, yes, Valkyr will more than likely see her nerf coming one day. They'll probably just super buff her armor and keep the healing factor on. Just a simple guess.

 

 

 

3.Fleeting expertise comes with the highest negative cost?

 

Have you never used a full damage no duration build then? They're widely used for rep farming. Specifically on Excalibur. Rhino. Trinity. Mag. Saryn. Mirage.

 

No other mod has a cost that high... Overextend? Overextend on a LOKI? Hi? Broken tier right here folks. Loki uses NO damage what so ever. Overextend literally has no negative down sides to it, yet he can gain a free 90% range. Yay for corrupted mods.

 

Also. I hope you do realize that the negative output for Fleeting is easily negated. You might not know how to use specific mod ranks, but here's an example. Fleeting expertise gives 40% efficiency and -40% duration at rank 3. Slap on Continuity, and a Rank 7 Narrow minded. Slap on Stretch. Boom. You have everything at a positive scale, with only -3% range lost.

 

Please tell me again how that's balanced? Where again was the negatives to that? I pretty much now have possitive duration, neutral range, and with streamline, 70% energy efficiency. No downsides.

 

There are so many ways to abuse corrupted mods that it's mind numbingly easy to build for a single skill and have the others fine.

 

In fact, some frames can completely bypass a stat to make them overpowered in their entirety. Like Loki can. While other frames, like Excalibur, need to use all their stats to utilize all their abilities.

 

 

The entire tanky loki point made no sense. It had nothing to do with matter at hand. Are we still talking about balance in the game? In fact, you just proved my point. There are other ways to play the game besides being a nuke hungry power house. You were able to do these things even before corrupted mods, now you can just do it easier, and longer. Still does not change the fact that corrupted mods have made some pretty big changes, and not necessarily for the best.

 

 

4. Yes. We can agree on this. Our end game at the moment is pathetic. What the Devs chose to do for endgame could change the entire direction of this intellectual debate. You can't balance something towards infinity, it's just simply not done. When you try to, well, you have what we have now. A lot of balance problems, and quite a lot of power creep.

 

5. This is what I would desire the most. Then everyone wins, and everyone can live happily ever after the end. It would even let newer players enjoy the game more. I can't even begin to describe how upset I got when I invited my friends into warframe, and they had to witness this first hand. It is a horrible new player experience. It might be fun for that Rhino, that Excalibur, that nuking frame, but what they are essentially doing, is making the game worse for newer players that want to play the game. Not get carried.

 

and, please don't use the don't run with pubs excuse. If warframe wasn't revolved around pubs, it would have lobbies. Same reason Dark Souls doesn't have lobbies, it thrives on the randomness of grouping people together.

 

Most, if not all new players are almost shoe-horned into playing pug matches.

 

 

I'm going to have to say I'm sorry, but this is something I am going to have to disagree strongly against. I don't find Corrupted mods balanced. Fleeting is too easily abused with Narrow minded + stretch. Overextend can now be combined with three strength mods, and if you're modding for range, most likely your also modding for damage. But if your our special little Loki, you get away scot-free. No penalties for you Loki!

 

Corrupted mods as it is now, favor some frames, and shun others. Some builds cannot even be fully realized at the moment because of the way corrupted mods work.

 

They're great for some, bad for others. The most major offender in the group though, is most defiantly fleeting expertise. It is just way too simply abused as it currently is.

 

 

Something needs to change. Be it either a better energy system, a better difficulty system, or even a different modding system. Something out of it needs to change. As it currently is, Warframe is following a steady line of power creep, and the ridiculousness of all of this will only get worse, and worse, and worse.

 

 

Please realize, that these nuke everything builds that are commonly seen across the solar chart, might make the user themselves satisfied, yet they're making their entire team suffer. They are quite literally sucking the fun out of the game for them.

 

1. What? So we nerf experienced players for all their hard work to get their frames that far? No, that isn't a solution. That's cruel and down right wrong. Do YOU want people to do that, that's EXACTLY the mentality you're forcing on others. NO ONE said that you needed to do anything like that, it's your choice. That's EXACTLY WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY! WE HAVE CHOICE! WE CAN CHOOSE HOW WE PLAY! You and Mecha are making it to where that choice is REMOVED! You either play my way because I think it's "better" or you GTFO. That' isn't how the system works, we have CHOICE in this system, and we can so choose on how we play, and that's the best part, that we can choose how we play and play our way. No one is forcing anyone to play a certain way, that's the thing you need to realize.

 

And again, you have the CHOICE to play solo or co-op. You have the CHOICE to tell them "Hey, could you tone it down a bit with the powers?" You DO NOT, however, have the authority to tell people "No you don't get to spam your powers anymore, you play my way because I think it's better." That isn't how this game is laid out, nor should it be. Players have the agency, players themselves have the power, and that's how it should be. We shouldn't be telling them they can't play how they want to play because we think we know a better way. For all intents and purposes their way is better for them, your way is better for you, and we all enjoy the game in our own merry way.

 

2. Uh, yeah it is. For the hell we go through to customize and build up our frames, the payoff comes when we can wave a hand or squeeze a trigger and destroy anything in the room (on most levels). It's our CHOICE to do so. If it makes gameplay boring, well then a player has the choice to change up their style or stick with it if they want to stay powerful. They could easily change up their play style and find something else that is interesting or powerful, but they don't necessarily have to. THAT'S the beauty of it, you can CHOOSE HOW YOU PLAY! THAT is how it should be.

 

Yes, I should take your word on Valkyr because you're from DE -_-. 

 

3. Uh, yeah Fleeting Expertise has the highest cost. You're right though, Fleeting and Overextended do have the highest costs percentage wise. But the thing you need to realize is that each frame is affected differently by the corrupted mods. Just like the Loki and Excal example you gave. Fleeting alters different builds differently depending on how you want to build it. But, oh my gosh this is the thousandth time I've typed this, IT IS YOUR CHOICE ON IF YOU WANNA USE IT! You change one mod like that, and it affects a Hek of a lot of builds in very different ways. The agency comes from the players on what to use and where to use it.

 

You realize the sacrifice comes when a Player has to put in a mod merely to offset the Corrupted loss right? They could be putting in a QoL mod like Vitality or Vigor or Redirection or even an armor mod in that slot or whatever fits whatever build they're going for, but they choose to put in a duration mod to offset the duration loss. If they put in a Narrow Minded, like you said, then they sacrifice range, or could put in that stretch to mitigate the range loss. Therein, a player can choose to use 3 out of the 8 available slots he has to either flesh out other aspects of their frame, or try and shore up the losses he takes from using Corrupted Mods. THAT'S the choice a player themselves can make on their builds. That's the level of customization they can go into, and can make the decisions themselves on what they gain and what they lose.

 

The entire tank Loki thing was to show you that YOU CAN PLAY THE GAME HOW YOU WANT TO PLAY IT! NO ONE is telling you you can't! You have the ability to do so! You have a player like that who used maxed duration (which was pretty handy with Constitution and Continuity), and let him farm his Narrow Minded, and now he can enhance his play style to better suit how he plays! Same thing goes for the other Corrupted Mods! You can utilize them to better tailor your frames to your play style! Of course you get tradeoffs with the detriments of each Corrupted Mod, but that justifies why you get those gains. Not to mention the formae and leveling you have to go through if you wanna max out some of those mods.

 

4. Ok good.

 

5. Never said you couldn't run with PUBs. Just that you can ask people to not play a certain way if it bothers you. You can ASK them, not FORCE them. If you don't like it, you can leave and try to find another match. Or make a group with friends. It isn't an excuse, the option is there for you to take it. No one is forcing you or them to play one way or the other, but you can ask them if it bothers you.

 

Corrupted Mods are still coming out. The ones we have now don't cater to everyone's play style, but as time goes on there will be more coming out. And thus, we have more mods to choose from and to help tailor our builds. I wouldn't use Blind Rage on my Frost build because it kills my offensive capabilities with casting costs (155 for Avalanche HAH yeah right! And I need my globe for a pinch so Fleeting is a difficult choice at times.) But with Transient Fortitude out now I can go for offensive Frost even more so, but I lose out on my duration not only with the Globe, but with Freeze and Ice Wave for its slow proc. But that's how it is, for more power it costs you. It's your choice to slap on those mods or not, and its your choice how to build it.

 

You want the game to change to fit your idea of how the game is better. The thing you need to realize is that we can all play the game how we want it, and no one is forcing others to play the game how they want it. The changes you propose force people to play the game not how they want it, and that's just straight up wrong. Of course the game can be improved, upgraded, and expanded, but if it loses it's ability to allow players to be their own player, then that isn't helping the game along.

 

 

 

Corrupted mods have really slanted gameplay. While I do like the balance of Primed Mods, the fact that they stack on top of corrupted mods is looking silly. The "penalty" on a rank 4 Fleeting Expertise is completely covered by a maxed Primed Continuity. As it the penalty from a rank 5 FE. As much as I want to see Primed mods as the return of balanced gameplay, many other players will only see them as "corrupt build balancers."

 

Meanwhile if I can carry some rank 18s through T4Es without them touching much behind me, imagine the usual player? My proposed limitations honestly... won't stop that from happening. But at least it'll be less obscene. A lot of the problem is a combination of the decadence of corrupted mods (which are irresistible for us smarter players), but it's also in how fast powercreep surges forward that bars new players from achieving our power. Until Primed mods repeat their cycle even once, I'll consider them another power surge in the community new players have to compete alongside or against.

 

I like being powerful as does anyone else. However I'm admittedly guilt ridden from dominating player experiences, so I simply choose not to anymore. Even with a build loaded with corrupted mods, I tend to use my whole kit for fun, and only resort to nuking if it seems the squad host is farming keys/planet nodes, and tells me they want me to nuke spam when I ask said host. However, most players don't have my discipline, and you know who knows how to nuke and who doesn't when it's just nothing but nuke through the entire run. I've played on all-nuke squads before. Although that technically means we all have a balanced chance at "gameplay", it does trivialize everything. The limitations I proposed are so mild, they still technically allow for the same dominating spam. There will just be an 8 second break to avoid a mild stat penalty players probably won't care about as they keep nuking. It even comes with stat buffs to all abilities that charge over time, with priority on the "weaker" abilities first.

 

This may look like a shooter game, but between the massive heaps of power, the rate at which it increases, and the imbalance between players new and old, what looks like a shooter is actually a rapid-pace small scale MMO of a kind. The power and imbalance is to be expected, but some examples are too silly. When I can dominate any squad to score over 85% damage and any new player is expected to deal only 1 or 2% of the damage, that's very disappointing in a shooter game. Corrupt mods are the threshold between what makes a player bad and what makes a player good. They're just that powerful.

 

 

1. Corrupted Mods are more balanced than Primed Mods. Corrupted Mods give you a bonus while also giving you a detriment. Primed Mods just give you a bonus. Not to mention Primed Mods are the most expensive to max out in the entire game. But that's also a good thing, since they offer no downsides to use.

 

2. You're a maxed out player, and you're that surprised you can dish out that much damage? You maxed out all your mods, OF COURSE you're gonna be good at killing things! Being good enough to do 85% is pretty cool, I applaud you for that. Doesn't mean its wrong for you to do so. You chose to play that way, you chose to use that gear and those weapons and that frame. No one forced you to. You even asked, and that's pretty cool of you. But no one is forcing you to do anything, you make those choices yourself.

 

3. You have to realize that any "new player" most likely has an MK1 Braton which deals pitiful damage, doesn't know the mechanics of modding, and doesn't have any mods flat out. You're maxed out, of course you're going to be doing the majority of the damage. And again, you can make it a shooter if you want to, that is your choice. That Loki guy I used as an example did, doesn't mean it can't be done with any other frame.

 

 

 

The Short Story for those who don't like to read.

 

Add difficulty settings. The challenge: lower our limits Gate Crash style! Make the risk and limits worthwhile in the long run to players who are always playing and have every mod and weapon ever released.

 

I think I've found the solution. With it comes a story and very simple points.

 

To begin, Warframe is still in beta.

 

What does that mean? It's incomplete. What is an incomplete game? What is a game?

 

A video game is a piece of interactive media designed to entertain us. It begins with a blank page of script and evolves into heaps and heaps of said scripts. In the beginning, it is limitless. The code can do anything, as can the world and models in it. Attempt to implement a player character (probably a literal box in an XYZ plane), and attempt to move it. Congrats, you can move in all direction with no gravity!

 

Later with more refinement, our characters have bodies. We can walk around in the world, but then we find  hole in the map. We fall and... do NOT die. There's no HP yet. We can't die.

 

We then add the limitation of HP. Now we can die. But we don't have health rejuvenating pickups yet. So we add a feature. Now we have HP orbs with refill our health. We still don't want to take health damage so quickly however, so then we add shields. It's another feature that also has limitations. Shields regenerate but the rate at which they do and delay with which they do are limitations. Now we're getting somewhere.

 

What is a superhero movie game if the hero has zero villains and is perfectly safe in a perfect world? We add bad guys. Now there are obstacles. The experience is shaping up. Most games have some shape of this form. However, gameplay as is possible, we need goals.

 

Equipment can be earned. This is a goal. The goal is in the earning portion of it. I mean, what's a goal if it was instantly granted to you? What's a superhero movie if he just wished it done and it was so? It wouldn't be an adventure. It'd be a passing scene.

 

Well, it would be rather cheap if the hero just snapped his fingers to get what they want. Except we do that with our abilities quite often. Now, the only obstacle is fate. It's Random number gambles. Sure, it's okay to have an obstacle to make the goal more satisfying, but gambling and losing to forces you can't control always feels bad.

 

As of currently, we're heroes who fight against an enemy that can't be defeated. RNG is limitless, except for when it chooses to yield to us and grants us what we want. We are also nearly limitless in gameplay, which by what developers think, needs to be challenged. It just feels painful to know the challenge they give us is RNG. They are right to challenge us, but  we would not like RNG to greater extents. See, we keep getting more powerful with every content expansion, and our goals need to be hidden behind an obstacle. Because of our nearly limitless power, we need a foe this power can't touch. Hence RNG and it's prevalence.

 

Have there been games that once had no obstacles? Many, especially in beta phase. Beta phase is a test area where we want people to test things. However, in order to allow them to test adequately in a quick enough time, they need to be granted resources ahead of schedule. It wouldn't be right to keep getting broken, untested content because our testers had to fight the same obstacles we do in normal gameplay. They are granted it without limitation. This is not a game, this is testing. At least, it's partly a game, and partly testing. This game is in beta, and while we have some limits, we don't have anywhere near the full limits we will have on release.

 

Now I know how irritated people become, but it's the truth. Limitations will be here on release, that's a given. However, what strategies did other game developers use to expand upon unfinished games?

 

Minecraft was a good example. It's gone so far it's intimidating to remember what it was, and you can compare an early in-development build on their website at one point. It was limitless and boring, with no goals or obstacles. it was a sandbox. It did not remain a sandbox completely.

The game expanded to evolve from a live-action test to a possible game with obstacles and goals. Minecraft even has an end, although it's pretty weird.

 

Challenge was added with survival mode. Later, it was given further challenge with all kinds of other things as time went on, like more human survival limitations, difficulty settings, goals behind obstacles. As time went on, various features were added. However... it also preserved something like a sandbox. There was a cop-out for challenge that could be enjoyed with almost no reward. Creative mode.You can fly around (coptering) with unlimited resources (we have gained many), with no limitations to do anything we wanted. In this game, one can say we've broken and shattered our limitations with the power spam we are capable of producing using corrupted and primed mods. Our abilities are far more tremendously effective than they were in closed beta. With the mods we have now, we have crushed our limits. We can easily overcome any obstacle. Only RNG is an obstacle. After that, we earn our goal.

 

There are alternatives. Some games show valid paths for the future of Warframe. So I've given Minecraft as an example of what an empty creation can expand into. It has gone through a crazy amount of stages, like in-dev, infinite-dev, alpha, beta, and too many beta iterations to count. Challenge has been added but there was one little bastion preserved just to be limitless. Then again, remember said game mode had no reward or purpose other than to showcase the game.

 

We understand there's a problem: Warframe is resembling less of a game and more of a showcase display. This is normal because we're in beta.

 

We are in beta. There are ways to expand this showcase into a game. The most valid one...

 

 

 

 

The difficulty setting.

 

The difficulty setting will give us the challenge we want. It will give us a greater obstacle, but it should also come with additional limitations and goals.

 

Let's talk about limitations. So players don't want them in the base game, but the game is expanding. When a game is expanded, limitations are added. It is added to give us an obstacle.

 

The relationship is becoming clear. Rectangles are squares, but squares are not always rectangles. Limitations are obstacles, but obstacles are not limitations. Or rather, the obstacle has a limitation built into it.

 

So... how does one make an obstacle into a limitation?

Nullifiers.

 

These nullifiers are enemies which emit a shield which acts as a limitation to our problem-solving capacity. This shield blocks our bullets, and all things within it are guarded from our abilities. This obstacle is emitting a limitation, and is therefore emulating one. However, once we solve the obstacle, we remove the limitation.

 

This is a major problem in the long run. If obstacles are posing as limitation, we will eventually shed our limitations are we destroy obstacles. Limitations are forever, but obstacles are fleeting. We bypass obstacles, but limitations are something that is inherent to all we do. Gravity is a limit. The need to eat is a limit. Our movement speed.... or is it. I mean, if we drive a car, we move faster. If we copter in this game, we move faster. Limits are there, but can be extended. At least, the limitation is no longer in our legs, it's in the car. Or in whatever weapon speed and animation inertia you can generate to copter successfully. Or wall vault.

 

When we gained corrupted mods, we extended a limit. Our maximum efficiency, range, strength, duration. We extended all of our limits. However, when we did that, we flattened our obstacles to nearly nothing. That's quite pointless. A hero with no obstacles. If we could instantly bypass RNG, we have no goals. So if we have no goals, we have no game.

 

Warframe's decline may be in the fact that without limitations, we have no obstacles, and therefore no goals. Other games have expanded however.

 

I remember Digital Extremes mention on a devstream another game for its internal systems. Vindictus. Although it was a hard game, I was motivated to reach the then level cap of level 80. I experienced most of its content, obstacles, limitations, and goals. Difficulty setting was probably the most important feature. How? It provided different obstacles, different limitation, and different goals.

 

So what does this mean, piece by piece? For example, that game had three difficulty settings per mission: easy, normal, and hard (hero). Depending on the difficulty setting, the resources and items that dropped varied. Resources and items are goals. In higher modes, there were many special enemies with different behaviors--they were nearly identical to our eximus enemies. However, because our power in Warframe is nearly limitless, eximus enemies failed to really make an impact at all. At least, due to corrupted mods and our expanded limitations.

 

Every game has limitations to a degree, but some are worth investigating more than others. In Vindictus, enemies moved faster and hit much harder as the game went on. In warframe, they don't move faster but they do hit harder. Still, what works for one game is not enough. The limitations in Vindictus were stamina, movement in travel and dodging, and ability energy meter and cost. The abilities were quite limited.

 

You would say Warframe has these elements as well, but it mostly no longer does. Stamina 2.0 was extremely short-lived. Coptering has trivialized movement and tilesets, hence why the developers wanted to get rid of it at some point. Our possible efficiency has trivialized energy limitations. We no longer care since everything costs one energy orb or fewer, and they are everywhere. Our abilities are too effective for their own good, the entire game is now trivialized.

 

However, there is a solution: difficulty setting.

 

We need a legitimate difficulty setting. Scaling enemies to become lethal adamantine walls isn't a fun way to create a stronger obstacle. Additionally, the obstacles created by scaling don't feel rewarding. That's the major problem right there. What we need is difficulty settings independent of scaling. We need selectable difficulty.

 

This was emulated once before, but quite poorly. It was implemented in the form of various levels of void tower key. We have Tower keys 1, 2, 3, and now 4. The reason why this difficulty setting was not appreciated was because it imposed no new limits.

 

We need a difficulty setting that is optional which imposes more limits in exchange for significantly greater reward. Let's face it, survival in Minecraft isn't for everyone. Hero mode in Vindictus isn't for everyone. Apparently, not have power spam 24/7 all the time isn't for everyone. Make challenge for those who want and deserve it, but reward them for it.

 

You may think back, didn't DE want a hardcore mode? The idea wasn't stated correctly. The only challenge behind hardcore mode was in the loss of your gear permanently, but it did not actually lower our limits to a respectable level. It was a pseudo-challenge. There is no challenge in losing gear, unless you think RNG is a worthy challenge.

 

RNG is not a worthy challenge. Stop suggesting it. Hardcore mode as it was suggested wasn't well conceived. Losing that piece of gear only means you have to grind RNG to get it back. Grinding is not a satisfying thing. RNG is not a satisfying obstacle. What we need is legitimate challenge, and the only way is through optional limitations with significant cause.

 

Hold on, doesn't dynamic enemy scaling make our power less potent, to give us greater challenge? Yes, but it's not rewarding.

There's a major problem with enemy scaling, and it's easily seen in how people treat void keys. If it wasn't for the RNG required to gain void keys, we would not honor infinite scaling as much as we do. Our only obstacle is RNG. The key itself was gained through RNG. When we get into the orokin void towers, we battle more RNG. We only worship infinite scaling because it allows us more chances to reroll RNG. The experience itself is not rewarding, only the prize rolls.

 

The rewards we want--our goal--is hidden behind RNG--our obstacle. Perhaps we would have fewer obstacles if we had greater limitations. Attaching creating obstacles with attached limitations--nullifiers--only works until we kill the obstacle. Our limitations are not there in the current state of mods and powers, and we don't want limits unless we get rewards. We deserve a suitable goal for our limitation.

 

Here is what I propose: A difficulty system with limitations and rewards, along with enhanced obstacles.

Now, let's imagine a parallel universe in development of Warframe: what if we always had difficulty settings, and nullifiers only appeared in hard mode? Well, you'd avoid hard mode. But what if hard mode dropped blueprints, materials, and mods not found elsewhere? Vindictus did that. You'd want to play it.

 

Let's refine further. So we expect different enemies in hard mode. Both literally new enemies, and those familiar variants that eximus provide us. In Warframe as in Vindictus, enemies did drop unique enhancements. Mods here, scrolls there. However, we could also do with a boss enemy with different mechanics. I mean, look at MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. Bosses can have unique mechanics. Additionally, selecting a different difficulty mode would make the boss battle gain additional mechanics. Translated to this game... do you remember Corrupted Captain Vor on release? He used to perform a very potent thunderstorm around himself that remained for prolonged period of time on the field. It was quite deadly. Normal mode would treat him just the same. Hard mode would bring this mechanic back.

 

Also, stage hazards. Let's bring those back. Do you remember broken lights on grineer ships? Do not tantrum out, try to remember them for their concept. They were pretty damn cool even if intensely deadly and stealthy. Now, we have arc traps. In easy mode, there are no traps. In normal mode, arc traps exist. In hard mode, the broken lights come back.

 

We failed at it already, but it's not too late. Nightmare mode was this promise. Literally nobody plays it except desperate new players who can't wait for the nightmare mode alert which gives you a specific mod. We run it like any other mission except with extreme caution. Nightmare would have been enough, but it's not rewarding in the long run besides filling your mod kit once. Additionally, we still have nearly no limits on powers, so guess what we do? Smash it with powers.

 

It's a recurring pattern, we simply have no limits. At least, we really expanded them to be severely thinned out thanks to corrupt mods. However, I have an excuse to keep them in game with my new proposal.

 

Add difficulty settings. The challenge: lower our limits Gate Crash style! Make the risk and limits worthwhile in the long run to players who are always playing and have every mod and weapon ever released.

 

This is a big thing. Huge. We need a way for our old players to feel challenged. We need limitations imposed on us to stop breaking the game. It should be optional, but it should be totally worthwhile for everyone who chooses it to be. We need it so old players can play alongside new players for a reason. We need a reason to revisit early planets like Mercury and Venus. We need it so we have a reason to be endlessly powerful.

 

It needs rewards though. Rewards for the new and old to keep us coming and keep the system alive. We need special blueprints, miscellaneous rewards like syandanas and attachments, we need increased collection of syndicate points, experience points, resources, mods, fusion cores. We could multiply every fusion core found.

 

I mean it. This system needs huge rewards. If we are going to limit ourselves it needs to be worthwhile. Best of all: it tones down the grind... kinda. I mean, technically all of the grind is RNG but some of it is generous and continuous in ways that feel guarantied and normal. Picking up resources and such. I'm surprised for this long, fusion cores have not been treated as a resource. The difficulty settings could aid this tremendously. A reason to play and tone down the grind. Also: increased prize-pool luck on end-mission prize tables and the prize tables in infinite content. Better prizes for cycles A, B, and C. The prizes have to be separated into common, uncommon, rare, and legendary, but overall...

 

This difficulty selection could be the key to solving drop-table dilution. Really. It was a strategy meta players had in Vindictus, it can work here. You are already looking for mods from specific enemies, some of which are found more commonly in lower levels. However, what if we could determine which mods were dropped from these enemies more frequently, which blueprint/part dropped from a boss mission, and which prize dropped out of a void prize table rotation. Clearly, common parts drop from easier content, and rare or legendary parts drop from hard content. You can scale yourself down to get rare and legendary content if you're strong enough. You can stay at low difficulty and stay strong to get those more common drops, or not play with difficulty.

 

Remember: it has rewards, but it needs to have limits in exchange. It's the reason "press 4 to win" is killing this game. It's the reason this thread exists. We've broken our limits, and the entire game is rendered trivially useless because of it. The only obstacle is RNG and it hurts. If we expand gameplay with difficulty settings, we trade easy-mode for a better game. That's the best way to say it, and it's an awesome prospect. Less rep farming, less void grinding. Less boss farming to assemble the Miter. A chance at cool and interesting prizes. An easier time ranking up mods, and an easier time ranking up that newly forma'ed weapon you're dragging around but not using because you're just leveling it. We need a difficulty system that imposes limits on our abilities in exchange for a better game. And it will be epic.

 

 

Corrupted Mods have limitations. You gain something, you lose something. The fact we can only install 8 mods adds limitations. The innate traits of our WarFrames powers add limitations. The weapons and gear we have on hand adds limitations. Sure a Vet will have many options open to them, but there are still limitations. We lessen those limitations when we mod our gear, that's the point of modifications. Still, we lose out because we mod a certain way, but that's the trade off that we all pay. I go Offensive Frost, I'll lose out on the Defensive Benefits of going Defensive Frost. (not a good example, but I hope you get the jist] Not to mention our enemies have their own ways of debuffing/limiting us, Nullifiers, Eximus Units, Infested Healers Toxics, new Infested Moas, environmental hazards (as rare as they are) and so on and so forth.

 

Again, I don't know what makes you think the game is dying, we average over tens of thousands of players a week. Each event brings new players in or some old players back. Each update we have a rush of new people. Each added content sees some new people or old people come in. Sure some leave, but for the most part we have a game that's been stable for a very long time. The player base is expanding, and slowly we're getting bigger and bigger. Players play how they want to play, if they make it stale by playing a certain way, then that's their choice. Others choose to diversify how they play or become more in depth with how they play, and that can help them to stay on longer.

 

Remember that this solution, in your mind, may be the way to make the game "epic", but its not for everyone. I feel we don't need something like that, but you do. If it was optional, sure, then people can go die hard style for all I care. It's when you force that on me that I start getting ticked off. Our difficulty and rewards system comes from the progression of the Star Map and the Hell we have to endure in Void missions, especially T4. If you lock rewards behind whatever Gate Crash system you surmised, in other words moved rewards from the void to there, you're forcing it on to players to play that way. That isn't how it should be. If it were optional, sure, go for it. If not, hell no.

[MechaKnight]

Remember that this solution, in your mind, may be the way to make the game "epic", but its not for everyone. I feel we don't need something like that, but you do. If it was optional, sure, then people can go die hard style for all I care. It's when you force that on me that I start getting ticked off. Our difficulty and rewards system comes from the progression of the Star Map and the Hell we have to endure in Void missions, especially T4. If you lock rewards behind whatever Gate Crash system you surmised, in other words moved rewards from the void to there, you're forcing it on to players to play that way. That isn't how it should be. If it were optional, sure, go for it. If not, hell no.

 

It's completely optional. Playing on a higher difficulty would simply grant rarer rewards, more XP/syndicate reputation, more materials, more fusion cores. It can also do things like create new missions/scenarios if everyone in the squad was marked for high difficulty when they started the mission. The void rewards would be on the same list as they are now, but players on higher difficulty influence the drop chance/survival+defense rotation chance to spawn rare rewards more often than before. You can still get the same rewards, but you will only benefit from greater drop chance if a player in the squad was marked for more difficulty. You get even more prize chance for rare prizes if more players are marked, and even more for higher difficulty. Players who play on low difficulty forever will always get the chance to get rare drops. Player on high difficulty simply have a higher chance, and in general get more rewards regardless of what mission type it was, because the rewards of materials, fusion cores, XP, and syndicate reputation are multiplied upon completion.

 

It makes the game better for everyone. Players who like to spam powers do not lose any of their ability. Players who want to be more fair within the game in turn have the game be more fair to them. All players can get all rewards, but those playing with more difficulty get a better chance at them. Also, hidden rewards like special blueprints, bosses, and aesthetics to be found while playing with difficulty.

Edited January 8, 2015 by MechaKnight

[AlphaHorseman]

 

For now, let's take this earlier draft post and add one small detail to it.

 

 

 

In my earlier draft, ultimate #4 nukes would only be penalized if they were being cast as fast as humanly possible 5 times without penalty within a period of 12 seconds. After that, nukes would only be penalized 20% for a very short time of 12 seconds. The charge rate would be so fast for the other abilities they would usually overcharge to reach the 200% buff limit.

 

I'll propose these numbers for now.

 

30/20/12/3

 

I buffed the ultimate recharge rate to 3% per second. The cost is still 25%. This means even if you go on a nuking spree to nuke 6 times over, it will recharge to come back to full strength in 8 seconds.

 

What if I buffed it more? What if the values of 30/20/12/3 actually incremented inversely like auras? Similar to archwing, where players who are solo fly and capture much faster.

 

If you were solo, this rate would skyrocket to 120/60/36/9. The 200% overcharge would still be there. The charge rates would be slowed to 10% of their original when going to overcharge past 100%. This means your first ability would become twice as powerful in all attributes (duration, range, strength) in only about 8 seconds. Your second ability would be mega-buffed while solo to 200% in just over 16 seconds, and so on. It would take twice as long on a team of two players, and four times as long in a team of four players. That said...

 

For the immense power of having every ability on their warframe become exponentially strong with only a bit of patience, would players stop nuking the room by themselves every 2 seconds without end on a team of 4 players?

 

What bothers me is, no. Even if this limitation was only at all notable on a team of 4 players, and the penalty was only waiting 8 seconds or having a penalty of 20%, the casual playerbase would still complain that being penalized a tiny bit for spamming 6 times in a row in 10 seconds is not worth having exponential strength in abilities #1, #2, and #3.

 

The point I'm trying to make is, the relentless nuke spamming across the solar system where we clearly see one person dominate every and all missions with only coptering and #4 on a team of 4 people is silly. The limitations I gave even before were extremely nice. I just made them even more mild and buffed the system. It was already unfeasible in most cases that a player would spam nukes 6 times over in 12 seconds on a team of 4 people where someone else should be participating, and I still got backlash for the draft.

 

This is the problem with the playerbase mentality. I myself have gone on farming runs with squads of mastery rank 18 players, and gotten 85% of all damage done and an incredibly high amount of kills. They didn't even have the chance because I was that good at nuking and coptering. Then they started to seem flustered and switched to pick my warframe and weapons in an attempt to immitate and I still dominated. However, that's the problem... these limitations would not apply to a normal person. They would only apply to amazing single-man destroyers who could clear a map before anyone got to see a single enemy on it.

 

That's the problem with the community. Even with the most mild limitations that will only appear on a team of 4 players, most of us probably wouldn't want 200% stronger abilities (in all stats) for only an 8 second cooldown on only your nuking ability.

 

This is why players didn't like Nova, and she had to get rebalanced. The nuke problem is reappearing in a similar form. Balance isn't bad, it barely affects anybody. It just seems nobody cares for balance when they just dominate teams without giving them a chance anyway.

 

 

No one is forcing people to play a certain way, that's how they want to play. Changing the entire system because of a few powers, and because you think it isn't how it should be played isn't how it should be. Again, cool downs are a bad idea, objectively because of how fast paced the combat in this game is. Overcharge thing is cool, but can still be exploited. You're targeting singular abilities and telling people "no you can't use it whenever you have it available". They wanna play how they want to play, you shouldn't be forcing them not to.

 

 

 

It's completely optional. Playing on a higher difficulty would simply grant rarer rewards, more XP/syndicate reputation, more fusion cores. It can also do things like create new missions/scenarios if everyone in the squad was marked for high difficulty when they started the mission. The void rewards would be on the same list as they are now, but players on higher difficulty influence the drop chance to spawn rare rewards more often than before. You can still get the same rewards, but you will only benefit from greater drop chance if a player in the squad was marked for more difficulty. You get even more prize chance for rare prizes if more players are marked, and even more for higher difficulty. Players who play on low difficulty forever will always get the chance to get rare drops. Player on high difficulty simply have a higher chance, and in general get more rewards regardless of what mission type it was, because the rewards of materials, fusion cores, XP, and syndicate reputation are multiplied upon completion.

 

It makes the game better for everyone. Players who like to spam powers do not lose any of their ability. Players who want to be more fair within the game in turn have the game be more fair to them. All players can get all rewards, but those playing with more difficulty get a better chance at them. Also, hidden rewards like special blueprints, bosses, and aesthetics to be found while playing with difficulty.

 

 

Sounds interesting. Depends on what they come out with if they make a hardcore mode. Special blueprints?

[LtZefar]

If we're gonna let DE nerf this it'll be nerfed so hard there is no point in using Ultimates much more so it's all back to normal weapons 24/7 rather than a mix.

[Nighttide77]

The Short Story for those who don't like to read.

 

Add difficulty settings. The challenge: lower our limits Gate Crash style! Make the risk and limits worthwhile in the long run to players who are always playing and have every mod and weapon ever released.

 

-snip-

 

This I can get behind.

 

In terms of theorycrafting the concepts of limitations, obstacles, and rewards, though...  I'm almost sure this can be put into a mathematic equation.

 

Perhaps...  Limitation +/x Obstacles = Challenge

 

Challenge + Reward = Felt Value; if Challenge increases but Reward is constant, Felt Value decreases

 

If limitations stay the same, and obstacles are increased, there is greater challenge.  If both obstacles and limitation increases, challenge increases massively, too.  Whether limitation and obstacle should be additive or multiplicative, I'm not entirely sure.

 

If a greater challenge is met with a greater reward, there is greater felt value.

 

So, at the moment, vault runs have no limitation beyond a slightly hindering Dragon Key, of which the obstacles aren't any greater.  Thus, challenge is not much more than normal missions.  Only other obstacle is finding that vault.  At the end of the mission, if RNG isn't favorable, the Felt Value is worse than if RNG gives a valuable reward.  Thus, for the Challenge, vault runs feel grindy and boring (if the game play isn't enjoyed).

 

Nightmare mode: increased limitations (though, low grav, health vampire, energy drain, nor lethal exploding barrels are really that heavy of limitations) along with increased obstacles (in the form of just higher level, greater damage enemies, which is a bit dry), does not make much of a challenge, especially to players that can revert to just using good gaming marksmanship.  The challenge isn't always greater than regular missions, and the reward is behind RNG, of which even if RNG is favorable, the Felt Value isn't as high as it could be.  At the same time, if the challenge is constant, but RNG isn't favorable, Felt Value can be worse than that of playing a normal mission.

 

If we were introduced to a way to set increased limitations for any mission we're playing (where the limitations were on warframe powers and perhaps the way some weapons handle, like slower melee swing speed, lower fire rate, or higher reload time) and increased obstacles (given that the obstacle increase wasn't just higher level enemies, but enemies with creative and unique mechanics, such as immunity to CC or nukes), and was met with definite rewards not hidden behind an RNG wall, the equations basically point to a much greater Felt Value each time the game mode is run (such as increased credit and resource drops, increased affinity gain, and with completion of the mission given mini-objectives, getting a specific guaranteed reward, much like getting a Force vs Cosmic Specter in rescue missions).

 

This I am entirely for.  It doesn't change normal game play, and gives veterans and other players the option to easily play any mission in a way that increases challenge and maybe even emphasizes teamwork.  In fact, I would LOVE to see something like that.  It takes the best parts of some of the other missions, like Dark Sectors and Rescue, and puts them into one package as an option.  In fact, I have been kinda waiting for another even like Gate Crash, but maybe even increases the limitation of weapon handling...or even the limitation of increased gravity.

 

What's even better with this idea is that it takes things the developers have already implemented.  It's optional, can be entirely implemented, and would challenge players to change the way they play the game for unique rewards...perhaps rewards that can be traded with additional value for those that risked the limitations and obstacles...for a reward that does not decrease Felt Value at any point due to RNG.  Corrupted mods and Nightmare mods kind of have this value, but the Felt Reward isn't there.  And if some of the rewards are trade-able, people who don't want to run those missions can still get those items of value, just like it currently is with vault and nightmare.

 

Psh, if there's a petition on something like that, I'll put my name on it.

[MechaKnight]

Sounds interesting. Depends on what they come out with if they make a hardcore mode. Special blueprints?

Yes. Like an epic level Captain Vor who drops a variation of Seeker worth using. He'll be a much better battle. It's not about making him a bullet sponge, it's about making him more complicated. If 4 players queue in a squad with the same difficulty, the mission is started on that difficulty and therefore variations happen on what enemies spawn, what kind of eximus, how strong/fast enemies are, special invasions, and new boss/behavior that drops parts to a new weapon. It'll be like a 24/7 event with no expiration date. There's a special prize for fighting the boss in a squad when all 4 of you are on hard difficulty.

 

If not all 4 players are marked for the same difficulty, the mission is started at the difficulty of the lowest rating in the squad. As said, difficulty still acts as a passive multiplier for all things we like, such as materials, fusion cores, and XP/syndicate reputation.

 

However, just to make it clear: it's going to scale the player down using Gate Crash mechanics. All attributes of all abilities will be lowered optionally by the player as the difficulty setting indicates. Gate Crash also reduced health and shields per run too. I suppose this is a given that must be done since it would be unfair to win hardcore mode by using a warframe geared around not using abilities. It's optional per individual to nerf themselves in exchange for reward multipliers.

Edited January 8, 2015 by MechaKnight

[AlphaHorseman]

Yes. Like an epic level Captain Vor who drops a variation of Seeker worth using. He'll be a much better battle. It's not about making him a bullet sponge, it's about making him more complicated. If 4 players queue in a squad with the same difficulty, the mission is started on that difficulty and therefore variations happen on what enemies spawn, what kind of eximus, how strong/fast enemies are, special invasions, and new boss/behavior that drops parts to a new weapon. It'll be like a 24/7 event with no expiration date. There's a special prize for fighting the boss in a squad when all 4 of you are on hard difficulty.

 

If not all 4 players are marked for the same difficulty, the mission is started at the difficulty of the lowest rating in the squad. As said, difficulty still acts as a passive multiplier for all things we like, such as materials, fusion cores, and XP/syndicate reputation.

 

However, just to make it clear: it's going to scale the player down using Gate Crash mechanics. All attributes of all abilities will be lowered optionally by the player as the difficulty setting indicates. Gate Crash also reduced health and shields per run too. I suppose this is a given that must be done since it would be unfair to win hardcore mode by using a warframe geared around not using abilities. It's optional per individual to nerf themselves in exchange for reward multipliers.

Haha, sounds like something that could be very fun if implemented correctly. We shouldn't just limit it to nerfing powers and frames though, limitations should be also on guns, maybe lower fire rate, higher reload times, slower attack rate for melee, or a combination of limitations. If we could choose what limitations were placed on our frames it would be cool, but I can see that being exploited quickly. Players would choose to either nerf their reload/fire rate to keep their high damage weapons online, or abilities as well. So yes, a combination of detriments would be interesting to implement, and it could help to justify the hell we go through to get those rewards. Not to mention it whacks the RNG completely, that helps out a lot too.