Why Nothing Bad Could Come From Removing (Or Changing) Damage Mods.

[Innocent_Flower]

Firstly, as a player, you can expect to be refunded in credits, cores and ducats for whatever you own. 

 

Secondly, Enemies will be rebalanced accordingly to what is nerfed/removed. (as an added bonus; Without players being able to increase their damage to an unpredictable degree with said mods, enemies would be more likely to get finetuned and improved, as each might live for more than a few seconds) This'd make infinite modes especialy good, as you'd no longer need to go through a long enemies-too-weak period (fairly unengaging) and then meet an enemies-instakill-and-don't take damage period. You'd meet tougher enemies as you progress through the solar system, but it'd be a more interesting difficulty change than just 'more health,more Armour, more damage, same everything else' 

 

 

Thirdly, Player progression becomes universal. Before, If you wanted to play venus for some alert, you'd need to dial back your gear for challenge. If progression wasn't a matter about how much damage you could do, but of how much more functionality your weapon has (Infinite clip, lightning reload, has punchthrough, sets enemies on fire, begins restoring energy after enough damage, has a wide cone of damage, chance of causing fear, does extra damage to heavy enemies) you'd have progression that you could use EVERYWHERE. Progression that would greatly assist you in the late game, whilst not being so damage-focused that the earlier game becomes an entirely passive experience as everything dies in one-shot from a full auto weapon.    To put it simply you could play with that MR4 kid and he'd think about how cool your weapon is, not how it instantly kills everything so he doesn't have a chance. 

Edited January 18, 2015 by Innocent_Flower

[Kthal]

The biggest downside to removing/rebalancing damage mods:

The top end numbers get smaller... And the screen gets slightly less cluttered.

Edited January 18, 2015 by Kthal

[Satwo]

damage increase mods are the only thing stopping new players from jumping into planets they shouldnt be in yet.

 

im all for ideas to change the mod system, but theres very few things that can actually replace strait damage, none of which you have really discussed. also, without damage growth, all endless missions would need an overhaul. in reality, youre suggesting on turning the entire game into mercury, turning endless missions into truly endless missions, and removing tiered void keys.

 

i dont see this happening without more conclusive options.

[(PSN)WiiConquered]

damage increase mods are the only thing stopping new players from jumping into planets they shouldnt be in yet.

 

im all for ideas to change the mod system, but theres very few things that can actually replace strait damage, none of which you have really discussed. also, without damage growth, all endless missions would need an overhaul. in reality, youre suggesting on turning the entire game into mercury, turning endless missions into truly endless missions, and removing tiered void keys.

 

i dont see this happening without more conclusive options.

That's another problem. That means there's no real difficulty change not caused by insurmountable numbers.

[(PSN)IIIDevoidIII]

Firstly, as a player, you can expect to be refunded in credits, cores and ducats for whatever you own. 

 

Secondly, Enemies will be rebalanced accordingly to what is nerfed/removed. (as an added bonus; Without players being able to increase their damage to an unpredictable degree with said mods, enemies would be more likely to get finetuned and improved, as each might live for more than a few seconds) This'd make infinite modes especialy good, as you'd no longer need to go through a long enemies-too-weak period (fairly unengaging) and then meet an enemies-instakill-and-don't take damage period.

 

 

Thirdly, Player progression becomes universal. Before, If you wanted to play venus for some alert, you'd need to dial back your gear for challenge. If progression wasn't a matter about how much damage you could do, but of how much more functionality your weapon has (Infinite clip, lightning reload, has punchthrough, sets enemies on fire, begins restoring energy after enough damage, has a wide cone of damage, chance of causing fear, does extra damage to heavy enemies) you'd have progression that you could use EVERYWHERE. Progression that would greatly assist you in the late game, whilst not being so damage-focused that the earlier game becomes an entirely passive experience as everything dies in one-shot from a full auto weapon.    To put it simply you could play with that MR4 kid and he'd think about how cool your weapon is, not how it instantly kills everything so he doesn't have a chance.

  

damage increase mods are the only thing stopping new players from jumping into planets they shouldnt be in yet.

 

im all for ideas to change the mod system, but theres very few things that can actually replace strait damage, none of which you have really discussed. also, without damage growth, all endless missions would need an overhaul. in reality, youre suggesting on turning the entire game into mercury, turning endless missions into truly endless missions, and removing tiered void keys.

 

i dont see this happening without more conclusive options.

This is a topic I agree with both sides presented.

[Innocent_Flower]

damage increase mods are the only thing stopping new players from jumping into planets they shouldnt be in yet.

 

Nope. Firstly a new player would have to work through planets to get to the later ones. Maybe with fine-tuned enemies they might just learn everything before they get to those planets. Secondly I've seen new players jump the ship entirely by trading for neccessary items, or players who ignore the ship entirely by tanking through, unchanging, in hard mode, with S#&$ weapons and great skill. I've met old players who're totaly crap. New players who're amazing. 

 

Turning the whole planet into mercury is something you'd only really consideer if you ignore the new enemy possibilities. Rather than enemies with higher numbers, perhaps DE could work on enemies with tricky abilities or devilish spawning that requires increased skill/utility to deal with. 

 

I don't think I could give 'more conclusive options'  because the amount of options this could open would be marvelous. 

Edited January 18, 2015 by Innocent_Flower

[Xennocide420]

All these staple mods are a real problem. I feel like im modding every weapon the same way and theres few mods that allow for increased strategy or technique. I look forward to a resolution.

[Kthal]

There are two separate scaling factors to consider, during the course of an endless mission and across the star chart. The two do not have to be linked, and can be changed separately to maintain balance.

 

Ideally, this is in my mind, Elemental mods should not directly add damage, but instead increase the elemental multipliers. For example, +180% Corrosive should increase the base damage by 0.75*1.8 (+75% damage, 180% efficiency) against Heavy Gunners.

 

If treated like this, the system should scale so that you can increase your damage by using 'higher tier' weapons, or by using the right elements against the enemies you are dealing with.

 

As far as I figure, Serration giving +60% damage would be balanced in line with my thoughts.

 

In short, the entire damage system needs a 3.0. Removing Serration might fix some things, but removing just Serration would leave the current elemental mods open to abuse.

[Jahadaya]

damage increase mods are the only thing stopping new players from jumping into planets they shouldnt be in yet.

 

im all for ideas to change the mod system, but theres very few things that can actually replace strait damage, none of which you have really discussed. also, without damage growth, all endless missions would need an overhaul. in reality, youre suggesting on turning the entire game into mercury, turning endless missions into truly endless missions, and removing tiered void keys.

 

i dont see this happening without more conclusive options.

The damage increase should simply be a passive gain you get as you level weapons (+5.5% damage per level, amounting to a total of +165% damage at level 30 - equal to Serration). 

 

This would keep the level of damage progression we currently have, while also essentially giving us another slot. If we got Conditional mods to replace them (Rebecca spoke about it on the livestream, like +x damage on headshot and +x damage on unalerted enemies) and the other damage mods we have were greatly nerfed (Heavy Cal does something like +20% damage and -15% accuracy. Elemental mods could simply not add damage, but convert current damage to elemental damage) and enemies we adjusted accordingly, I think that would be a nice way to balance this game. 

Edited January 18, 2015 by Jahadaya

[ClockworkSpectre]

One of the many problems with removing the base damage mods is that it removes a huge part of the game's progression.  Along with getting new weapons and frames, upgrading mods is something you work towards in the game.  Just removing them and handing players weapons that don't need the damage mods anymore removes a huge part of the game, its not a positive thing.  And if we just have weapons that are in different tiers to adjust for the removal of damage mods than the mastery system needs a huge overhaul with a large increase in weapons with mastery locks and some weapons needing to have their level locks bumped up significantly preserving the feeling of progression.  

 

I think a lot of people are forgetting about the huge amount of work that would be needed for re-balancing practically the entire game.  I'd rather get more content instead.  There are also many quicker and easier ways to go about this all, like leaving the damage mods in, and adding alternatives that have different stats but can't be equiped at the same time as the normal base damage mods, they could even be more effective if used properly to encourage people to use them rather than the normal base damage mods. 

 

Edit: something that just came to mind:

I also have a bad feeling DE may increase the amount of mods that go to rank 10, or the number of cores for upgrading mods, to make up for the loss of the base damage mods no longer taking up our resources for upgrading, they do love to give us grind after all. 

Edited January 18, 2015 by ClockworkSpectre

[(PSN)WiiConquered]

damage increase mods are the only thing stopping new players from jumping into planets they shouldnt be in yet.

 

im all for ideas to change the mod system, but theres very few things that can actually replace strait damage, none of which you have really discussed. also, without damage growth, all endless missions would need an overhaul. in reality, youre suggesting on turning the entire game into mercury, turning endless missions into truly endless missions, and removing tiered void keys.

 

i dont see this happening without more conclusive options.

Better enemy design. More difficult enemies at higher levels.

[Innocent_Flower]

Damage 3.0 

Yep. Talked 'bout that in one of my threads that made it into hot topics. (can't remember if i explicitly said 3.0, but pretty much) 

 

I'd say that elemental (and physical, to an extent) damage would need to be almost entirely based on status, with each flesh type being weak to some aspects of each status. 

 

Conversion rather than straight addition (or addition to a max of 30%) would also be another choice/ the choice for the other side of things. (you can use all methods) 

Edited January 18, 2015 by Innocent_Flower

[Repligon]

damage increase mods are the only thing stopping new players from jumping into planets they shouldnt be in yet.

 

im all for ideas to change the mod system, but theres very few things that can actually replace strait damage, none of which you have really discussed. also, without damage growth, all endless missions would need an overhaul. in reality, youre suggesting on turning the entire game into mercury, turning endless missions into truly endless missions, and removing tiered void keys.

 

i dont see this happening without more conclusive options.

There can be some weapon damage scaling, but not hellish x100 base damage on modded gun we have now.

 

And if difficulty is defined only by enemies tankyness and damage - it is not a real difficulty.

We need something else. Like new enemies on harder levels.

Imagine if there was only easy cannon fodder enemies with rare heavy units on low level, but heavy grineer tanks and agile Hyena-like robots were awaiting you at Ceres and Pluto.

[ThePredicament]

Except it would never change the meta game and newbies are obviously going to follow since it's what they'll see in the internet.

 

It's hard to quantify functionality and individual player skill but it's easy to quantify damage, which, in turn, is easier to design the gameplay around. Even without damage mods, there will always be an "optimum" build akin to the damage+multi+4 elements builds we have now. There should be something done with the core gameplay first, unfortunately, the engine's and/or dev's limitations will probably keep us at the same place for awhile.

[direcyphre]

Better enemy design. More difficult enemies at higher levels.

All of which would not come in one update, so removing damage mods also couldn't be implemented that soon.

 

Enemy diversity/design does not solve anything, as we've had quite a lot of new enemies added over the course of Warframe's development. The problem are those enemies being present in different places with different levels, all the way through endless mission types with infinitely (barring certain crashes) scaling numbers.

 

Better enemy design doesn't just happen, and the only references a person could possibly provide are closed games produced over the course of years by large publishers (Devil May Cry, Dark Souls, God of War, etc). They make for a fun game for the brief periods we play them, but they don't really apply to games like Warframe.

[DongfongBubaix]

this is the most retared post eva , or your just bregging to be u pro , but most of our players need bettr base dmg mods and better elemtl mods

as the enemy only get harder to kill

[(PSN)WiiConquered]

Except it would never change the meta game and newbies are obviously going to follow since it's what they'll see in the internet.

 

It's hard to quantify functionality and individual player skill but it's easy to quantify damage, which, in turn, is easier to design the gameplay around. Even without damage mods, there will always be an "optimum" build akin to the damage+multi+4 elements builds we have now. There should be something done with the core gameplay first, unfortunately, the engine's and/or dev's limitations will probably keep us at the same place for awhile.

If we remove all the damage components of mods (including elementals and Multishot), and use conditional damage mods instead, there won't. Playstyles will be more important. Right now, when weapons can be modded to do 70X the DPS of a DPS build over a non-DPS one, of course that's optimal. Without that, however, there won't be an optimal build.

[Chroia]

I've been thinking of Diablo 1.

You'd get 'guest boss' appearances from monsters that will become cannon fodder farther down the road, but for now - yikes!

(The Arkaine's Valor quest is a good example.

You've progressed past red-Fallen and through 2-3 colors of Skeleton.

You reach the quest objective, and are ambushed by a group of Horned Demons. Not even bosses, just a group of creatures.

But woah!

New creature variety, different AI, different tactics required.

And sure, you'll be mowing them down in a few levels, but for now they're fairly tanky.

 

Voila! Progression and variety in kind.

 

 

Better enemy design. More difficult enemies at higher levels.

^

Putting Corrupted Bombards/Nullifiers (regardless of the issues with those units) only in T3+ is a step in the right direction.

There's a similar thing with Antimoas, afaik. They only start appearing after Jupiter.

Now if there were a gradual introduction of units across the different factions...

e.g. the Mutalist units were staggered among the Infested nodes (ofc, the Infested only having 1 planet and Dark Sectors puts a bit of a crimp into this).

e.g. Grineer starting with Butchers+Lancers (basic melee+ranged). Introduce the Heavy Lancers (pre-heavy unit). Introduce Bombards (the heavy). Introduce Ballista + Shield Lancer (no more mindless Ramboing). Introduce Napalms (but don't stay too still). Introduce Heavy Gunners (In-and-out of cover, using her allies to block LoS, etc.)  This one is kinda the case atm. Sadly AI team synergy appears to be luck rather than intent.

Edited January 18, 2015 by Chroia

[SIDESTRE4M]

People will see a few waves less. That's it.

[Kthal]

^

Putting Corrupted Bombards/Nullifiers (regardless of the issues with those units) only in T3+ is a step in the right direction.

There's a similar thing with Antimoas, afaik. They only start appearing after Jupiter.

 

I've been thinking of Diablo 1.

You'd get 'guest boss' appearances from monsters that will become cannon fodder farther down the road, but for now - yikes!

 

The Hyenas would be perfect for this. I can easily imagine 3-4 appearing per round on Cerberus just to ruin our day, maybe an occasional Jackal (with reduced invulnerability) too.

 

As for the Grineer, the excuse could be made for 'clones of Rukh' to appear on higher level missions, with just a single phase of their chest opening after a shot, then staying open permanently.

 

In my mind, the Eximus system seems like a placeholder, with Nullifier-level nuisances being the eventual goal.

[Kruglov]

But there is a bad thing that can come from this Innocent Flower:

 

DE would then have to balance the new mods.

 

Remember this is Digital Extremes who:

 

- buffed the braton prime but lowered its backup ammo then released soma prime with 900 rounds of ammo

- created the marelock

- created the vaykor marelock

- created the synoid gammacor

- created the boltor prime

- nerfed shotgun status as a whole

- added falloff damage to shotguns when they already had spread

- think "desecrate" is a good ability and even added augments for it

- took several years to buff ember

- created Repelling Bastille

- nerfed frosts bubble and didnt really fix any of his other abilities

- nerf mag on a monthly basis

- nerf trinity on a monthly basis

- think invisibility make superjump a good ability

- created the ballistica

- created the raksa ballistica

- created Hydroid

- allow bombard and napalm projectiles to go through solid wall

- didnt test how nullifier bubbles react to damage before release

- didnt test how nullifier bubbles react to valkyr

- still award new players the Gorgon

- think its OK that limbo can prevent players from progressing through a map

- shock traps

- broken lights

- lech krill's entire boss fight

- created wyrm and wyrm prime's guns which miss every target and have done so for more than a year

 

Think really hard about these things.

Because any changes to the damage table will probably be akin to putting an aerosol can into a microwave.

[Repligon]

<...>

+Left coptering and wall-catapult.

+Made coptering 2.0 instead of aerial melee.

 

But to be honest, I doubt it's possible to make things worse than what we have now.

[LtZefar]

So topic starter. How different would it be too be on a Survival on Mercury compared to T4 Void Survival.

 

Seeing that if we have zero damage mods all we got are some boring mods to play with.

 

So Boltor Prime does 55 total damage. Would I have to fire like 50 rounds of them to kill a T4 unit? Or would it be like 5-10?

Would this number increase a lot when you progress further into Survival wave to the point where you'd need all of your bullets to kill it?

 

Because if enemies doesn't get more powerful I could just bring an unleveled Boltor Prime to whichever mission I want and absolutely wreck all of the enemies.

 

We'd have no critical weapons either or those would be the only weapons worth using. So that's like Soma and Soma Prime 24/7 one shotting pretty much everything.

 

What about skills? Nova would be ridiculous with Molecular Prime.  Banshee Quake would also be devastating if all enemies have low HP. Heh Excalibur would most likely be able to solo any map as long as he has good energy income.

 

Trinity wouldn't be able to die. Rhinos Iron Skin would most likely be holding up quite well on T4 as well.

 

All this would do is give the term Press 4 to win a full reality no matter how far in you get. Because now Ultimate deals far far more damage than your weapon does. You also can't just give enemies tons of HP with weak sauce weapon damage as some Frames don't have an Ulti that does damage or good damage skills.

 

 

Still think it wouldn't hurt the game? :/ Because I'm pretty sure you would kill it with this change.

[Innocent_Flower]

 

Seeing that if we have zero damage mods all we got are some boring mods to play with.

I kept reading past this bit, but only for politeness. Wish you'd shown the same amount of politeness and thought about the obvious answers before asking for them. 

[(PSN)jwernecke]

Why did we need another of these threads? I just left one. Fact remains the ammo drum is just to op. I demand that de give me fewer bullets, less damage, and remove that aweful carrier...I mean he picks stuff up for you... What is he your mom? Pick up your own crap...