Powercreep, Does It Exist? [Debait]

[vaugahn]

It exists, but while it matters a lot in a PvP game, it doesn't matter all that much in a PvE game. 

 

This is not true. If anything, it matters more in a PvE game.

 

PvE games are all about player choices. Power creep takes away choices.

[ROXXXY]

I think new players around MR2 buying Soma Primes and Synoids and Boltors because they hear they are the absolute top tier weapons is a problem. It has been discussed many times, and presented in many ways, but when new players get a hold of this stuff most quickly complain the game is boring or easy. Thereafter they are liable to drift away from the game.

 

So yes, powercreep is a gigantic problem in relation to the ENTIRE playerbase, not just the veterans.

Then shouldn't there be a Good Weapons Discussions Page with 99.9% threads about how OP the Aklato are.

[Bernkastal]

By your definition, power creep exists. We have experienced an increase in the number of mechanics frames can use, damage types available, weapons and mods, and enemies to face. Logically, those implemented before can work with the new frames (the frames are designed with old playstyles in mind) but change is forced on them. That's how an in-progress or alpha/beta game progresses. Is it an issue? If the old content isn't properly adjusted, absolutely. Is it a problem seriously affecting warframe? Probably not in dire proportions, but things are able to be improved. Remember Nekros's soul punch full body animation and other QoL fixes? That was bringing an old frame back online to newer standards. As long as DE can reliably update older frames and maintain relatively equal mechanics in frames, we'll be enjoying all the content DE has to offer.

[Omnimorph]

This is not true. If anything, it matters more in a PvE game.

 

PvE games are all about player choices. Power creep takes away choices.

 

No it doesn't - it doesn't change anything. 

 

All it does, at worst, is make some earlier content redundant, and that's only a problem for the devs if they think it's a problem, and the solution is easy enough, unless the devs didn't build enough "headroom" into the numbers in absolute terms.

 

As I said, it's pure illusion, what matters is only player balance vs. mobs, i.e. the relative balance of the numbers wrt players vs. mobs; the absolute magnitude of the numbers doesn't matter.

 

To put it another way, in terms of the colour coding often used in MMOs with levelling systems - it's the relative balance of you vs. mobs that matters, whether they're, say grey (-3), green (-2) blue (-1), white (perfectly balanced, 0), yellow (+1), orange (+2) red (+3) or purple (+4) relative to you. 

 

And you can have that relative balance at level 1 (a 10dps attack vs. a 10hp mob) or at level 100 (a 1,000 dps attack vs a 1,000hp mob).  Nothing actually changes except personal player skill and player options.

 

Now in those terms, of course things can get "lumpy" - some weapons relatively more powerful, so everyone picks them, and that diminishes choice, in a way (although only for those whose concern is primarily to min-max, or for brainless players who just follow what they hear everyone else is doing - players who enjoy challenge often pick the weakest toons to see how far they can push them!).  But that's a balance problem, not a "powercreep" problem.

 

I'll worry about powercreep if and when the devs worry about it.

Edited February 18, 2015 by Omnimorph

[Vargras]

No it doesn't - it doesn't change anything.

False. In any game, any game, in which powercreep is present, there will always be that one setup that is best. There are no exceptions -- that one combination is simply better than anything else. If you don't use it, you're then gimping yourself, which either makes the player feel bad or leads to potential ridicule from their teammates, because they're then dragging everyone else down.

 

If you try and go into a Void mission with a Braton, Lato, and Skana when everyone else is rocking Prime weapons, your performance is going to be poor, and your teammates are going to wonder why in the world they're carrying you when you're contributing nothing.

[Turnoverman]

As has been said countless times here, power creep is obvious and rampant.

 

Primed heated charge comes to mind. Massive increase in damage to fire-using pistol builds because lolwhynot. Power isn't just creeping anymore, it's having massive leaks in random directions. Until the other three are addressed, pistol builds that involve fire are just flat out better than other pistol builds. Balance has been abandoned in favor of ridiculous grind.

 

 

well  Vaugahn if you were the dev of this game no one would play, because not everyone likes "MY LITTLE PONY"

[size=1]Also, I like my little pony :3[/size]

 

 

[TheErebus.]

False. In any game, any game, in which powercreep is present, there will always be that one setup that is best. There are no exceptions -- that one combination is simply better than anything else. If you don't use it, you're then gimping yourself, which either makes the player feel bad or leads to potential ridicule from their teammates, because they're then dragging everyone else down.

 

If you try and go into a Void mission with a Braton, Lato, and Skana when everyone else is rocking Prime weapons, your performance is going to be poor, and your teammates are going to wonder why in the world they're carrying you when you're contributing nothing.

I can confirm this. I've been looked down for bringing Hate as opposed to the dual ichor. They kept telling me to "get better" at the game and just didn't like me during the mission.

 

 

well  Vaugahn if you were the dev of this game no one would play, because not everyone likes "MY LITTLE PONY"

Ad hominem at its finest.

[havikryan]

the problem is the enemys as well, dat armor scaling is insane

[Omnimorph]

False. In any game, any game, in which powercreep is present, there will always be that one setup that is best. There are no exceptions -- that one combination is simply better than anything else. If you don't use it, you're then gimping yourself, which either makes the player feel bad or leads to potential ridicule from their teammates, because they're then dragging everyone else down.

 

If you try and go into a Void mission with a Braton, Lato, and Skana when everyone else is rocking Prime weapons, your performance is going to be poor, and your teammates are going to wonder why in the world they're carrying you when you're contributing nothing.

 

Once again: that's a balance problem, not a powercreep problem. 

 

Powercreep is something that becomes apparent when you have a situation where the content is out of whack with the players, it's not something that becomes apparent wrt players in relation to each other vs. mobs.

 

It's probably fair to say there's a bit of a balance problem in the game (some wfs and weps are "forced choices" - although again, only for players who don't have a mind of their own), but balance is always an ongoing juggling act for devs.

 

If the players ALL TOGETHER were vastly more powerful than mobs OF THE SAME NOMINAL LEVEL, that would be a powercreep problem.  But even that concept would be problematic in a game in which levels aren't so important, and mobs scale.

 

A game that does have a powercreep problem at the moment, or the last time I looked (acknowledged by the devs), is Star Trek Online.  In that game, a lot of earlier content is meaningless in level terms, because the whole playerbase has increased so much in power level on a per-level basis (i.e. a contemporary average level 5 player has about the power of a former average level 8 player, relative to mob power, that type of thing - that's powercreep).

Edited February 18, 2015 by Omnimorph

[Legion-Shields]

I am wondering what you guys think on this topic.

 

What is powercreep?

Power creep

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Power creep is the gradual unbalancing of a game due to successive releases of new content. The phenomenon may be caused by a number of different factors and, in extreme cases, can be damaging to the longevity of the game in which it takes place.

As new expansions or updates are released, new game mechanics or effects are introduced, making it increasingly difficult for older content to remain in balance without changes. Usually, this means new content releases grow successively more powerful while older content becomes regressively outdated or relatively underpowered.

This term is used outside games as well.

 

When I started, Forma's didn't exist. They were released, all mods are able to be put onto a gun now, what used to be a level 6 that can't kill at level 15 is now a level 6 that can 1 shot anything up to 25.

By time it hits level 30, I am able to 1 shot the Jakal himself. Something isn't quite clicking there for me.

 

 

(Way I see it, Enemies should be scaled up or weapons scaled down. Both are required to meet a minimum line level so its not like this.)

 

 

 

What are your guy's suggestions on ways to fix said problem.

Mine would be to nerf the mods given to the player.

You misspelled "debate".

[OniDax]

the problem is the enemys as well, dat armor scaling is insane

I've seen very few people bring up enemy power creep. I don't care much about how strong weapons are, but I can't stand the fact that enemies have better armor, shields, and health than some warframes.

[Lakais]

Honestly, what I believe DE should of given a harder look at is a system where enemies don't scale. A Lancer on mercury is just as deadly as a Lancer on Ceres. And then make the different types of enemies more powerful. So a Lancer alone poses something of a threat to someone who just started with gear that has nothing. And around gear 30 that lancer is not a threat. But if you become too recless a group of 5 or so can and will gun you down if you don't take them out fast enough (meaning don't AFK for 30 seconds and you're good to go). While as an Elite Lancer can be a threat all the way up to 15. With Heavy units being rare in their ranks. At further planets, you will see 1 or 2 heavies per "squad" enemies. (this also means that the overall number of enemies will be significantly reduced). And the Elite Lancer taking up the threat position the Heavy Gunner currently occupies (who really considers the heavy gunner a threat?). 

The Further along the planets you go, the more and more Troopers, Elite Lancers and Hellions start to replace standard Lancers. At the last planets you'd be lucky to even find a single lancer in the mission. 

 

What this kind of system would permit is much more control over what gun is capable of what kind of damage. If enemy levels stayed static, you could far more easily develop abilities that would work regardless if in the early game or late game, without running into the issue of enemy scaling making some abilities useless or completely change the function of an ability (radial javelin is primarily a direct damage ability, but once you reach the point where it no longer kills, it becomes a crowd control ability instead, an arguably effective one) 

 

Yes, that would require a MASSIVE over the board nerfs to many mods and abilities so they wouldn't scale "too well" to a scaleless system. Meaning you'd have really tunnelvision your mods to get a gun to get anywhere near +100% damage. Though it would make more then a few people raging angry, it would allow for much more viable weapon builds for variety. Same with health and shield mods. They would boost them enough to matter. But not 400%. 

 

But on the other end, we have to consider in general what you can put in the game. You can dance around a single concept only so long before every variable has been used up. You can play around with fire rates, damage models etc only as far as these chances make a noticeably change in gameplay. If you, as the player, can't feel the difference in two weapons functionally, then one of those weapons is redundant. Unless it was meant to be simply arsenal fodder in the first place. 

[cyrus106]

It's not even debatable. Look at Primed mods, enough said.

If you really want evidence, start with the boltor. Not the boltor prime, the boltor. it used to be THE gun to use during damage 1.0, due to how puncture worked in 1.0. Then I believe ogris and acrid reigned supreme, then flux rifle, then brakk, then synoid. This isnt all the examples but these weapons used to be/ are god tier, no doubt about it there is power creep

Edited February 18, 2015 by cyrus106

[(PSN)witex25]

I've seen very few people bring up enemy power creep. I don't care much about how strong weapons are, but I can't stand the fact that enemies have better armor, shields, and health than some warframes.

And that is why we need "power creep" stuff!

There is no power creep in this game. We can go endless missions so we need a few weapons that are able to kill quite fast enemy lvl 80! After that we all know that everything else is warframes!

Why the mod system? Because you can tune up a weapon that you like. Your starter planet was enemies lvl 1-3 on the last planet left to finish you had to deal with enemies lvl 38 so that pretty obvious that you need better weapon or put some more "love" on your current.

The ballance some said. ..off course there is ballance in weapons! Ehhh...suprice suprice ferrari is better than toyota! Soma is better than braton, and it should be!!! 10 years of hard trenning of mma will make you better fighter than begginers!! Playiung your a#$@ out every day to get mods and fussion should be rewarded some how. ..

Smom prime was not made for mercury missions!!!! Same boltor prime. Why there are different opinions about this? Because every player is different! And for personaly thd problem is ballance between players normally i ate fact that player who just started playing this game can use same weapons that i do (almost every) and can do same missions with same rewards that i do (mr 18) but...this is a free to play game and DE must make money somehow so my final standing about this is: i don't care! I can do wathewer i want in this game. When therd is alert on any solar mission i am not taking there my dread but my tiberon or magnus or dual ethers! Why? Because i cane make that i will have no poer creep or op warframes on missions that not require that!!

I've seen very few people bring up enemy power creep. I don't care much about how strong weapons are, but I can't stand the fact that enemies have better armor, shields, and health than some warframes.

And that is why we need "power creep" stuff!

There is no power creep in this game. We can go endless missions so we need a few weapons that are able to kill quite fast enemy lvl 80! After that we all know that everything else is warframes!

Why the mod system? Because you can tune up a weapon that you like. Your starter planet was enemies lvl 1-3 on the last planet left to finish you had to deal with enemies lvl 38 so that pretty obvious that you need better weapon or put some more "love" on your current.

The ballance some said. ..off course there is ballance in weapons! Ehhh...suprice suprice ferrari is better than toyota! Soma is better than braton, and it should be!!! 10 years of hard trenning of mma will make you better fighter than begginers!! Playiung your a#$@ out every day to get mods and fussion should be rewarded some how. ..

Smom prime was not made for mercury missions!!!! Same boltor prime. Why there are different opinions about this? Because every player is different! And for personaly thd problem is ballance between players normally i ate fact that player who just started playing this game can use same weapons that i do (almost every) and can do same missions with same rewards that i do (mr 18) but...this is a free to play game and DE must make money somehow so my final standing about this is: i don't care! I can do wathewer i want in this game. When therd is alert on any solar mission i am not taking there my dread but my tiberon or magnus or dual ethers! Why? Because i cane make that i will have no poer creep or op warframes on missions that not require that!!

[vaugahn]

off course there is ballance in weapons! 

 

Are we playing the same game?

[Circle_of_Psi]

Well, this is clearly a troll-bait/flame-bait friend

 

time to lock

[cyrus106]

And that is why we need "power creep" stuff!

There is no power creep in this game. We can go endless missions so we need a few weapons that are able to kill quite fast enemy lvl 80! After that we all know that everything else is warframes!

Why the mod system? Because you can tune up a weapon that you like. Your starter planet was enemies lvl 1-3 on the last planet left to finish you had to deal with enemies lvl 38 so that pretty obvious that you need better weapon or put some more "love" on your current.

The ballance some said. ..off course there is ballance in weapons! Ehhh...suprice suprice ferrari is better than toyota! Soma is better than braton, and it should be!!! 10 years of hard trenning of mma will make you better fighter than begginers!! Playiung your a#$@ out every day to get mods and fussion should be rewarded some how. ..

Smom prime was not made for mercury missions!!!! Same boltor prime. Why there are different opinions about this? Because every player is different! And for personaly thd problem is ballance between players normally i ate fact that player who just started playing this game can use same weapons that i do (almost every) and can do same missions with same rewards that i do (mr 18) but...this is a free to play game and DE must make money somehow so my final standing about this is: i don't care! I can do wathewer i want in this game. When therd is alert on any solar mission i am not taking there my dread but my tiberon or magnus or dual ethers! Why? Because i cane make that i will have no poer creep or op warframes on missions that not require that!!

And that is why we need "power creep" stuff!

There is no power creep in this game. We can go endless missions so we need a few weapons that are able to kill quite fast enemy lvl 80! After that we all know that everything else is warframes!

Why the mod system? Because you can tune up a weapon that you like. Your starter planet was enemies lvl 1-3 on the last planet left to finish you had to deal with enemies lvl 38 so that pretty obvious that you need better weapon or put some more "love" on your current.

The ballance some said. ..off course there is ballance in weapons! Ehhh...suprice suprice ferrari is better than toyota! Soma is better than braton, and it should be!!! 10 years of hard trenning of mma will make you better fighter than begginers!! Playiung your a#$@ out every day to get mods and fussion should be rewarded some how. ..

Smom prime was not made for mercury missions!!!! Same boltor prime. Why there are different opinions about this? Because every player is different! And for personaly thd problem is ballance between players normally i ate fact that player who just started playing this game can use same weapons that i do (almost every) and can do same missions with same rewards that i do (mr 18) but...this is a free to play game and DE must make money somehow so my final standing about this is: i don't care! I can do wathewer i want in this game. When therd is alert on any solar mission i am not taking there my dread but my tiberon or magnus or dual ethers! Why? Because i cane make that i will have no poer creep or op warframes on missions that not require that!!

I'm sorry all I read in this post was "power-creep == balance"

[(PSN)witex25]

I'm sorry all I read in this post was "power-creep == balance"

Power creep is an enemy lvl 100+

[cyrus106]

Power creep is an enemy lvl 100+

That's called enemy scaling, that's not power creep at all that's called a poor scaling system (that could be easily rectified by adding a soft cap to armor scaling). Back in Update 5 players were using nyx and loki to go hundreds of waves into Xini and fighting enemies level 1000+. What is your point? It could be done with weapons that were far weaker than they are now

[vaugahn]

Power creep is an enemy lvl 100+

 

Uhh, no. 

 

We don't balance for edge cases anyways.

[OniDax]

I'm of the opinion that enemies should scale with the warframe levels. As well, I'm ok with enemy weapons being stronger than warframes, but not with enemy health/shields being stronger than Warframes (because, imo, that makes the warframes obsolete). I think the majority of enemies should be weaker than Warframes of the same level and that these should be supplemented with enemies with armor, health, and shields that are no stronger than the warframes. As well, I think the strongest weapons should be the same across the board, for enemies and players. I think that enemy numbers, not strength, should be the thing that overwhelms the tenno.

[SteeleTheShow]

that guy with the 1 2 3 4 list.... you are a horrible person. But Waframe is a great game.

 

Add mini boss to all missions.

 

random hunts on planets

 

Dont want day one players with best gear make it Rank 8

 

maybe have mobs be able to block or parry like us.... not take away spamming

You mean me? Why?

Also none of your suggestions are even related to power creep O_O