Possible Way To Enhance Build Variety And Give A Use To Otherwise Useless Mods.

[Vicious_Raptor]

First off, I want to say I'm not thinking of removing pure damage mods, as I don't consider it a solution, as the only thing that needs to be rebalanced is enemy scaling.

That being said, the change I thought about, for both Warframes and weapons of all sorts, is adding two extra slots, with a particular restriction on the mods they can be used for, say Augment slots for Augment mods. This would address the issue with both Warframes and weapons' Syndicate augment mods, and beside those, more mods of utility could be moved to the Augment section (say, Fast Hands, Ammo Drum, Ammo Conversion, Zoom, -x% Recoil mods, etc).

Simple as that. What do you guys think about it?

[MechaKnight]

Removing damage mods can still help, both by reducing veteran player effectiveness on "endgame" enemies, and decreasing the discrepancy between new and old players. It will as a consequence free up a slot.

 

Adding a slot that is locked for only one type of mod is okay. Granted, these mods should be the kind that are not used often anyway. As for scaling, the developers already said everything is up for consideration. Damage types, status effects, abilities ,weapons, etc are all fair game.

 

There are definitely more problems with the game than just killing things too quickly with weapons. ..

 

>There's also the issues of #4 ability spam, supposed lackluster quality of abilities #1, 2, 3.

 

>Discrepancy between new/old players in areas that shouldn't even be an issue (base damage mods are a must have, delaying new players from participating), exclusive mods already gone with no decent substitute (event mods are 60/60 combo, but standalone status is only 15%).

 

>Various false-choice mods that are generally inferior, often not used. You mentioned this for a solution.

 

>If considering our overall scaling compared to the highest level of non-infinite scaling content, veterans are obviously way too powerful. Rebalancing enemy scaling across the solar system will be helpful, but the way grineer armor scales is abusive and should be changed. Also, stuns from abilities are usually too short, which leads to spamming.

 

>End game meta based on extensive use of corrupted mods. Heavy Caliber on most weapons is seen to be useful with no perceived drawback except a mostly meaningless number stat on most weapons. For abilities, they allow us to optimize on only one ability then spam infinitely, utterly trivializing the game to the point of removing gameplay.

 

>Coptering can be used to trivialize tileset maps. This means players would still never consider using Rush or Maglev.

 

>PvP has no server hosting, leading to various exploiting.

 

>Game modes not used to full potential. Only 3 infinite game modes feel rewarding for the most part. Most of us haven't even played Corpus Hijack.

 

Many, many problems. Your proposed solutions solve two of them. The extra restricted slot is fine, but enemy scaling changes may possibly have to come with an end to player taxis.

Edited January 20, 2015 by MechaKnight

[(XBOX)ShapelessHorr0r]

Remove all mods that give an objective increase in power.

Eg. Serration, vitality, steel fiber, etc.

[[DE]Grzegorz]

Removing damage mods can still help, both by reducing veteran player effectiveness on "endgame" enemies, and decreasing the discrepancy between new and old players.

And this achieves what exactly? You seek to make high level players less effective against low level enemies but then you make any high-level play borderline impossible (it's not like DPS matters at all... but it's nice to have any ammo efficiency), or maybe it's freeing one mod slot? Or minimizing the pool or necessary mods? You remove damage mods and what exactly happens? You are going to finish at first rotation instead of second or so? This solver exactly nothing.

 

I think that void should stay as it is, but starchart missions should be scaled separately for every single player in lobby (like Dead Island), because I doubt that turning raw damage into percentage-based one would happen any time soon, if at all.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Mofixil

[MechaKnight]

And this achieves what exactly? You seek to make high level players less effective against low level enemies but then you make any high-level play borderline impossible (it's not like DPS matters at all... but it's nice to have any ammo efficiency), or maybe it's freeing one mod slot? Or minimizing the pool or necessary mods? You remove damage mods and what exactly happens? You are going to finish at first rotation instead of second or so? This solver exactly nothing.

 

I think that void should stay as it is, but starchart missions should be scaled separately for every single player in lobby (like Dead Island), because I doubt that turning raw damage into percentage-based one would happen any time soon, if at all.

 

I may as well quote myself.

 

Whatever they decide to do with straight-up damage mods (like Serration), it will definitely incorporate a healthy look at how damage scales and how enemies scale so as not to have changes break the current system.  I'm all for a removal of Serration and stacking base damage increases on rank, but they haven't set anything in stone just yet.

 

 

As for the rest of our little back and forth, most of us are just miffed at the fact that it has gotten so out of hand.  I think the biggest culprit is the augments that allow skills to do extra damage.  I didn't beef my xcal's damage at all and I was in a Draco PUG with some Oberon who used the Smite Infusion augment.  Man I could wail on their junk like no tomorrow.  We got up to round 4 and stopped at the key but we could have kept going.  There was no signs of a slowdown.

 

I think its safe to say that DE should balance the damage output around what they consider to be balanced content.  If they want decked-out frames to be able to nuke rooms until level 40, they're going to have to consider balancing content beyond that point.  The simple fact that your can press a button and clear everything demands that players seek a greater challenge for greater rewards.  And they do.  But they seek it in what isn't considered balanced content.

 

 

The team synergy augments are neither a problem nor are they necessary--this kind of killing spree was possible before syndicate mods. I can stack three power strength mods alongside Corrosive Projection to gain the desired effect. What's really the problem is the amount of damage enemies can take before they die versus the amount we can dish out, as well as how we dish out damage.

 

We can gain a level of power on our weapons and abilities most things in the solar system are not able to handle. Let's look at a few quickly thrown together builds to understand the problem.

 

Experiment Section

 

The Weapon Conundrum

Balance between new players, old players, and the effect of base damage + multishot

I will only be comparing burst DPS

 

Mk-1 Braton with no mods: http://goo.gl/TVJdVx ; 140.40

Mk-1 Braton with ideal mods: http://goo.gl/ay8UlQ ; 8442.60

Mk-1 Braton missing base damage and multishot mods: http://goo.gl/1S1y4N ; 1033.44

Boltor Prime with no mods: http://goo.gl/pqtu05 ; 577.60

Boltor Prime with ideal mods: http://goo.gl/aQlOYw ; 34725.60

Boltor Prime missing base damage and multishot mods: http://goo.gl/kIRuK4 ; 4250.56

 

I only used the Boltor Prime as an example of a decent "end game" weapon that mods similarly to the Mk-1 Braton. It is by no means the best or worst example, simply the easiest to translate. I made three builds for each: no mods, ideal mods, and the same "ideal" set, with the core cookie cutter mods removed.

 

The result: the full kit of mods we can apply to a generic non-crit damage gun will multiply damage output by 60x. However, if the base damage and multishot mods were removed as developers were intending--being cookie-cutter mods with no variety--the damage multiple would only be increased 7x. Clearly, our mods are an amazing factor in the damage dealt between players using the same weapon. As for "bad gun" compared to "good gun", the Boltor Prime is 4x better in dealing burst DPS than the Mk-1 Braton. Overall, when comparing a min-maxed Boltor Prime to a new Mk-1 Braton, experienced players tend to deal around 247x as much damage as a fresh beginner.

 

Despite being a shooter game, Warframe balances like an MMO. The trouble with Warframe is, while MMOs tend to separate players heavily across different world regions and only entice them back to farm craft materials they could buy from other players on the market, Warframe throws all kinds of players together into alerts and missions. The solar system has some sort of separation, but it can easily be defeated by taxi'ing players past it all. Alerts also host a wide range of players, and are also susceptible to the taxi. This means Warframe has to struggle to accommodate so many ranges of player strength per mission. In general, it just means letting highly powered veterans stomp content without any difficulty+reward scaling.

 

Radial Conundrum

For our nuke ability, I will propose Excalibur's Radial Javelin. One calculation with Overextended, and one without. Both are assumed to use Stretch.  I will apply Intensify, Transient Fortitude, and Blind Rage rank 2 into the calculation. Unless specified, assume all mods are maxed.

The below are simply damage calculations. I will also use the radial circular area expression area = pi*r^2 to give an idea of the relative theoretical killing capacity of each configuration. This area will be multiplied by damage.

 

With Overextended: 1520 damage in 58.75 meters ; 16.48 million damage capacity

Without: 2120 damage in 36.25 meters ; 8.75 million damage capacity

 

It's a no-brainer that despite the damage disadvantage given by Overextended, it's practically an auto-include into nuke builds because it increases damage potential by nearly double. This is simply because range is an exponentially important component to a nuke. The damage is secondary. There's currently no penalty for spamming radials through walls with infinite punchthrough.

 

 

Enemy Durability

For our test subject, I will propose a Grineer Bombard unit. It will start at level 40.

 

I will calculate its stats using this figure: http://imgur.com/gt3Tjc0

 

Health: 5832

Armor: 1322.72

 

Using the equation here http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Armor

Effective health = nominal health * ( 1 + net armor / 300 )

 

Effective Health: 31545.68

 

The below comparisons are not factoring Damage 2.0 modifiers.

 

At maximum effective health, the heavy unit would not even last against one whole second of damage from an optimized Boltor Prime. This "high level" enemy is fodder to us veterans.

 

The same Bombard would last less than 4 seconds against a maximized Mk-1 Braton. It goes in line that the Boltor Prime is 4 times as good as the Mk-1 Braton. The enemy is still barely noticeable though, and this is a heavy unit of a level you'd find on planet Ceres.

 

Against an unmodded Boltor Prime, said enemy would last 64.6 seconds. Far too long. However, just removing the base damage and multishot from the ideal build, the enemy would last against gunfire for 7.4 seconds. Maybe the developers have a point about Serration and Split Chamber. This is long enough to experience the enemy. Maybe even long enough to see it do something. The Mk-1 Braton would probably take 4 times longer to be around 30 seconds of shooting. Pretty long time. In general, new player weapons are perhaps too weak compared to the usual weapons. I mean, the Lato is terrible. Perhaps alongside the mod and damage tweaks, bad weapons can be brought within a closer margin of good weapons. So I don't need to feel like I've betrayed someone every time I try to invite a friend to this game.

 

Now for abilities. Let's assume Overextended is being used on the Radial Javelin build I mentioned.

Since the enemy at level 40 has an EHP of 31.5k, it would take quite a few Radial Javelins to down it. Twenty one of them. That doesn't seem like the "Press 4 to win" I was talking about. However, what about Corrosive Projection. Four of them. Well, now the enemy has no armor. The Bombard's EHP is only it's calculated HP on its level now. That's just less than 6k HP. This only requires 4 Overextended Radial Javelins to kill. This is the strongest enemy that will spawn on non-scaling missions on the highest planet node.

 

What does this mean though? Considering we generally run maximum efficiency to carry around 6 canned nukes without the need to refill on Warframes not using Flow as well, we can easily clear a room with no trouble regardless of how many enemies are in it on the highest non-infinitely scaling node in the solar system. If we kill anything at all (which we will), and pick up any energy orbs we see (which we will--or not with energy packs and syndicate buffs), we can clear maps forever. In any non-scaling mission, even on the "hardest" difficulty.

 

At least, that's how it is for grineer, the durable enemy in the solar system. We used to farm Corpus on Viver before those pesky nullifiers came along. They didn't have armor. Just apply the no-armor logic in our grineer experience and it's easy to see how trivial the corpus were.

 

 

 

With the above summed up, we understand the game is not challenging for veterans even on the highest level nodes in the solar system and void, provided infinite scaling is not in action. We also know how much the "cookie cutter" core mods of the weapon contribute to our imbalance between new and old players and make balance difficult. Radial damage nukes really do win everywhere except infinite content. Grineer are indeed insanely Ruk'ing durable compared to everything else, but we can still trivialize them. What are possible solutions?

 

Well, change is possible, so many solutions can be considered. Devstream #44 looked promising, as did the overview.

 

Well, assuming the speculated damage, enemy, status, and weapon rebalances take everything into account with precision we can only dream about until we see it, player weapons and mods should first be balanced to have less of a gap between their ability, with more viability in choice between everything; weapons, mods, elements, anything you can remember. Next, use this standardized expectation of applied power to balance the durability of enemies across the solar system. Current Grineer armor scaling needs to be scrapped, it's pure madness. Once these elements are targeted, gameplay can start taking a form where we actually do feel more challenge across the solar system's many planets. Also, rewards need to be scaled upwards for challenge. There is seriously no incentive for going to higher level planets--we're practically making easy mode the best option unless the dropped void keys differ between nodes.

 

What about abilities? This is an abilities thread, and one of the game's largest facets are abilities. Our concern is mostly behind radial (spherical) damage abilities, especially "ultimates", usually ability #4. There are many ways to solve that situation. Considering how similar most instant-damage radial abilities are in comparison to each other, they could be made more unique by trading a portion of damage for unique custom statuses and effects (offensive/defensive/supportive). As powerful as Nova is, her participation in the game is no longer as game-breakingly destructive as it once was. Alternatively, abilities can keep their original stats, and be balanced more closely to the game by tweaking the values of abilities mods which work with said abilities. Yet another choice is to just balance ability stats along with the rest of the heap, while making a choice as to whether they are powerful yet limited, or more average within the kit and just as unlimited as before. Even better, bump all #4 abilities to #5 abilities, and implement something balanced for the new #4. Make now ability #5 run off something that is not energy. A completely different limitation that is more suitable to an epic room-clearing mega ability.

 

In short, level 40 heavy grineer units (Bombards) typically die within less than a second of gunfire from a decent weapon. If you're using the same build on an Mk-1 Braton, it will only take 4 seconds. Radial Javelin and other nukes can still clear any and every non-endless mission with max range and max efficiency.

 

The issue is either powercreep, imbalance, or the game isn't big enough to accommodate veterans and needs an expansion. Even then, veterans are constantly going to run missions in low level content, so implementing only an expansion is not the solution.

 

You reinforced my perceived problem within your own post. You cited infinite game mode rotation. DE has already stated countless times they don't consider infinite balanced, but as a veteran player with over a thousand in-mission hours myself, it's pretty obvious that's the only place we see decent challenge and decent rewards.

[[DE]Grzegorz]

The issue is either powercreep, imbalance, or the game isn't big enough to accommodate veterans and needs an expansion. Even then, veterans are constantly going to run missions in low level content, so implementing only an expansion is not the solution.

 

Imho the issue that should be solved is weapon tiering, because there's quite literally no progress (except a handful of XP locked weapons), as top-tier weapons are just as easy to acquire as the crap-tier ones.

 

I, as a player, spend most of my time in endless gamemodes and my opinion is obviously biased.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Mofixil

[Vicious_Raptor]

Removing damage mods can still help, both by reducing veteran player effectiveness on "endgame" enemies, and decreasing the discrepancy between new and old players. It will as a consequence free up a slot.

 

Adding a slot that is locked for only one type of mod is okay. Granted, these mods should be the kind that are not used often anyway. As for scaling, the developers already said everything is up for consideration. Damage types, status effects, abilities ,weapons, etc are all fair game.

 

There are definitely more problems with the game than just killing things too quickly with weapons. ..

 

>There's also the issues of #4 ability spam, supposed lackluster quality of abilities #1, 2, 3.

 

>Discrepancy between new/old players in areas that shouldn't even be an issue (base damage mods are a must have, delaying new players from participating), exclusive mods already gone with no decent substitute (event mods are 60/60 combo, but standalone status is only 15%).

 

>Various false-choice mods that are generally inferior, often not used. You mentioned this for a solution.

 

>If considering our overall scaling compared to the highest level of non-infinite scaling content, veterans are obviously way too powerful. Rebalancing enemy scaling across the solar system will be helpful, but the way grineer armor scales is abusive and should be changed. Also, stuns from abilities are usually too short, which leads to spamming.

 

>End game meta based on extensive use of corrupted mods. Heavy Caliber on most weapons is seen to be useful with no perceived drawback except a mostly meaningless number stat on most weapons. For abilities, they allow us to optimize on only one ability then spam infinitely, utterly trivializing the game to the point of removing gameplay.

 

>Coptering can be used to trivialize tileset maps. This means players would still never consider using Rush or Maglev.

 

>PvP has no server hosting, leading to various exploiting.

 

>Game modes not used to full potential. Only 3 infinite game modes feel rewarding for the most part. Most of us haven't even played Corpus Hijack.

 

Many, many problems. Your proposed solutions solve two of them. The extra restricted slot is fine, but enemy scaling changes may possibly have to come with an end to player taxis.

Ikr, my thread was just an example of tweak on the current modding system. Warframe has many, many flaws, and therefore there are many more ways to improve it.

[MechaKnight]

Imho the issue that should be solved is weapon tiering, because there's quite literally no progress (except a handful of XP locked weapons), as top-tier weapons are just as easy to acquire as the crap-tier ones.

 

I, as a player, spend most of my time in endless gamemodes and my opinion is obviously biased.

Indeed. Removing base damage mods only reduces the scaling between old and new players. The Boltor Prime used i my example is 4 times as good as the Mk-1 Braton. If equality is desired, this game can be reduced. If equipment tiers and objective quality is desired similar to an MMO, they can be purposely fine-tuned and given an iLvl in their stats so you know which weapon is objectively better than another.

 I myself also spend a ton of time in endless missions, but I do miss the old days when I felt really awesome for soloing those early planets and fearing every enemy--Mk-1 Braton and no mods was not easy, but I liked the challenge.

 

 

Ikr, my thread was just an example of tweak on the current modding system. Warframe has many, many flaws, and therefore there are many more ways to improve it.

Yeah, no offense to you if I came off too strongly. It's really just... the long list of fixing. I know the developers probably struggle managing it, and suggesting the perfect idea that won't be hated when it is released.

[are2dude]

The reason why nobody uses those mods is that they are generally weak at what they are supposed to do. How about we buff the magazine capacity and reload mods to about 10 times more powerful than what they currently are? Then we have some viable options to straight damage builds.

[The3doM]

just some random thoughts

i think that some additional "augment/utility" slots could be a solution for currently underused utility mods. just to name a few for primary/secondary:

projectile speed, punch through/aoe (Firestorm mod), recoil, zoom, reload speed, magazine capacity/max ammo/ammo mutation)

in my opinion we need to separate mods that add damage or directly/indirectly influence dps (attack speed, crit/status chance) from mods that change or add utility (see above). also we could remove plain damage mods like Serration and instead gain flat damage per level.

my idea is that each weapon starts with a default number of damage and utility slots. as we level your weapon it will slightly increase in its base stats like dmg, status chance, attack/charge/draw speed, depending on the weapon's mechanics (DE could be creativ at this). furthermore if we polarize our weapon not only would it add a polarity but also unlock one additional utility slot each time the weapon is polarized, to a max of X.

Edited January 20, 2015 by The3doM