Feedback Megathread: Saryn Revisited.

[DSMatticus]

Late endless content is essentially a minigame that has no bearing on whether a frame's design is good or not.  Implying that a frame is trash tier because its design doesn't break gameplay is toxic feedback that implies that DE should make all frames game-breaking in order to be considered relevant.  The only real argument you can make for putting a premium on exploitable mechanics is because they allow players to milk keys by staying in endless missions indefinitely and allow the farming process to proceed in a streamlined, safe manner.   We need to get rid of the training wheels and farming tools in order for gameplay to matter in a reward-driven "endgame."    

 

First off, I have to say it again: read the posts you intend to respond to. I'm getting incredibly sick of your outright strawmanning. I did not say Saryn is trash tier because she can't speedfarm anymore. I specifically said new Saryn was not good enough at damage multiplication to compete with other damage multiplying frames who have better abilities and better kits.

 

Nova does damage multiplication better than Saryn, her damage multiplication comes with a massive debuff, and she has antimatter drop for crazy scaling damage when needed.

 

Roar does damage multiplication almost as good as Saryn (~90% instead of 100%), doesn't need to worry about spreading his damage mult, it lasts way longer and/or doesn't need to be sustained by continued spore popping, and comes on a frame with massive emergency CC.

 

Banshee does massive damage multiplication that requires finesse, and is also an amazingly great CC frame.

 

See how the complaint is NOT "Saryn isn't a speedfarm frame anymore, boo-hoo", but is instead "this is the new trick that new Saryn does; here are better frames that do the same thing, often better than she does. Why would I pick new Saryn over those frames?"

 

Beyond that, you apparently have no idea what makes this game so exploitable. It's not Saryn's DPS; it's the energy economy. If you get rid of every nuke in the game, you'll still be left with god-tier CC that we spam at will because we're getting infinite energy from Trinity or pizza spam, and the game will continue being trivial because an enemy who can't fight back is exactly as difficult to kill as an enemy who is already dead. Okay, so now get rid of all the CC. Okay, so now... screw it, at this point powers don't even really do anything anymore. Let's just get rid of them. Woohoo! Warframe is fixed!

 

No. If you want to really, really, really talk about putting a meaningful endgame into Warframe, it's not going to be done by piecemeal nerfing abilities until they're all so trash we never both using them and this is just another generic shooter. It'll be done by fixing the energy economy until we have to make meaningful choices about when to use our abilities and when to save our resources.

[RealPandemonium]

 

First off, I have to say it again: read the posts you intend to respond to. I'm getting incredibly sick of your outright strawmanning. I did not say Saryn is trash tier because she can't speedfarm anymore. I specifically said new Saryn was not good enough at damage multiplication to compete with other damage multiplying frames who have better abilities and better kits.

 

Nova does damage multiplication better than Saryn, her damage multiplication comes with a massive debuff, and she has antimatter drop for crazy scaling damage when needed.

 

Roar does damage multiplication almost as good as Saryn (~90% instead of 100%), doesn't need to worry about spreading his damage mult, it lasts way longer and/or doesn't need to be sustained by continued spore popping, and comes on a frame with massive emergency CC.

 

Banshee does massive damage multiplication that requires finesse, and is also an amazingly great CC frame.

 

See how the complaint is NOT "Saryn isn't a speedfarm frame anymore, boo-hoo", but is instead "this is the new trick that new Saryn does; here are better frames that do the same thing, often better than she does. Why would I pick new Saryn over those frames?"

 

Beyond that, you apparently have no idea what makes this game so exploitable. It's not Saryn's DPS; it's the energy economy. If you get rid of every nuke in the game, you'll still be left with god-tier CC that we spam at will because we're getting infinite energy from Trinity or pizza spam, and the game will continue being trivial because an enemy who can't fight back is exactly as difficult to kill as an enemy who is already dead. Okay, so now get rid of all the CC. Okay, so now... screw it, at this point powers don't even really do anything anymore. Let's just get rid of them. Woohoo! Warframe is fixed!

 

No. If you want to really, really, really talk about putting a meaningful endgame into Warframe, it's not going to be done by piecemeal nerfing abilities until they're all so trash we never both using them and this is just another generic shooter. It'll be done by fixing the energy economy until we have to make meaningful choices about when to use our abilities and when to save our resources.

All the frames you mentioned have been exploitable as hell since Corrupted mods were introduced.  

 

Your proposal of fixing energy economy holds merit but ultimately I seriously doubt that abilities will ever become not-spammable.  A more feasible solution in my eyes is to change abilities so that spamming them is not advantageous or does not have such an impact that the spam is exploitable.

 

I don't think that humbling abilities will make Warframe into "just another generic shooter."  Players need a significant nerf: both powers and weapons need to be humbled.  Interactivity and struggle should be part of every mission, with insurance (via overpowered abilities) being limited.  Maybe we could move some powers to a true "ultimate" slot that is limited by an actually scarce resource (without exploit "synergy" shortcuts) to act as that insurance.  In the meantime, I will support any design that makes us do more with less, since that's where gameplay comes from.  MPriming and Stomp chaining and Sonar stacking remove gameplay rather than create it; they need to go.  Even Spore's free Viral procs are cheesy to me, but let's see what they do with Damage 3.0 before speculating any further.  

Edited November 14, 2015 by RealPandemonium

[MaverickZero]

i dunno, seems alright to me, some of my usual suspects wanted to play Ceres Interception (keyword was play, yeah, we're weird, we actually played the Mission, we didn't AFK in it), and 16 Rounds in, our Squad that consisted of mostly Saryns seemed to be just fine.

It's funny that you mentioned that. I was playing Draco as Nekros with 3 Saryns. It seemed like a terrible idea to have 3 identical debuff frames but we proceeded anyway. From wave 4 to wave 8 we had a Saryn fall every minute or so (which made me punch their souls back in almost every time). One had a balanced build, the other had a high strength+duration build and the last one had max effeciency+range. The max range one had the most damage at the end with me being 4% behind as the FarmerNekros.

 

Molt was a huge issue as it evaporated instantly for the 3 Saryns. That's pretty much all of the 'survival' part of their kit. The 5% extra frontal block was useless in Draco. They were fine, as in fine with being outlived by a Nekros.

[DSMatticus]

Yeah, I'm never really impressed by people's "I made it thiiiis far, so everything is fine!" The question is, "and what about your frame contributed to your ability to get that far? Could you have gotten farther with a different frame? Would you have performed better in the same window with a different frame?" The fact is that eventually weapons are going to be your main source of damage and if you need to you can even get crowd control from status blasters. It is mildly difficult but not impossible to make up for the overall weakness of a particular frame by simply having really good guns and using cover/movement to mitigate damage and - particularly in interception - being smart about point control instead of picking fights with every mob you see. Those aren't the sorts of stories that prove a frame is good.

 

If four people can get together and do a T4S 60 minute no abilities 4x Oberon run, would that prove that Oberon is good? Because I have no doubt that that is a thing people could do.

[Frosty_2.0]

If they're running with this iteration of Toxic Lash, I would repeat the idea it should apply additive range to melee strikes. With the Proc & now Energy Restoration, shorter range weapons benefit even less from the power in comparison.

 

Not sure what the base range of Sparring/Daggers/Kamas/Tonfas etc.. are but; Let's say 3-4m additional range was applied, this would:

 - Boost ability to close on enemies, making up for Saryn's slow movement a little
 - Increase viability of short range weapons, enable them to actually proc & restore energy
 - Suit Saryn's theme & design, including theme of the ability itself ("Contagion" / "Lash")

If DE want to avoid even more range on Orthos etc.. then maybe an inverse or "Minimum Lash Range" (bringing short ranged weapons up to 4.5m for example, but not affecting weapons already reaching >=4.5m) could be applied.

An accompanying WF Energy Lash effect would be appropriate and enable players to clearly see the range & that the ability is active.

 

Additionally Toxic Lash could be allowed to be pre-loaded/primed ie. activated but the timer doesn't start until an enemy is struck.. and/or give an appropriate Energy Discount for recasts with time left on the clock.

 

[@Frosty_2.0; RE: Fleeting Expertise effect on Toggled Abilities]

That's not quite how it works. Fleeting expertise is a net 0% effect if and only if you equip no other duration or efficiency mods.

 

Consider R5 fleeting expertise + R5 streamline. That will reduce your duration to 40%, but increase your efficiency to 190% (the arsenal will tell you it's only 175%, but the arsenal is lying - for toggles the cap is applied only to the final result, not to efficiency). .1 energy cost / .4 duration = .25, or 25% - the minimum cost possible. Then you can use continuity to pay for transient fortitude. Or you can use continuity and drop down to a R4 fleeting for 80% duration instead of 40% (say, because you care about duration on your other powers. That's .2 energy cost / .8 duration = still .25.

I see I was actually tricked by the .63 EPS stat (EB's capped | .25 efficiency rounded) when I tested this some nights ago after it came up in clan chat. I used the Abilities screen on Excal & Ember to check modded power draw + the original build notes ref.
I had Primed Continuity & Streamline on my usual loadout while I switched out a couple of different ranked FE's which made no visible difference. Then I tried it on a blank loadout to simplify and figure the formula. With the formula found, I left it at that and went to bed... So, my mistake.

Thanks for the civil response ;)
 

[...] I specifically said new Saryn was not good enough at damage multiplication to compete with other damage multiplying frames who have better abilities and better kits.
[...]

I agree pretty much.

Also agree on Energy Economy, I actually commented about "Infinite Trin/Restore Spam VS. Relying on lotsa kills for RNG Energy drops" maybe 15 pages back.

The thing I love about Co-op Mass Effect 3's powers & cooldown system is it doesn't rely on pickups or mana pools, you always have powers available but just how quickly you can re-cast depends on your cooldown efficiency. This also makes the combo system - and there are lotsa combos - work naturally and requires a little thought on the risk, targeting & timing of powers. Plus it often bugs me how a "powered" character needs to keep picking up meta-mana ;)

- - - -
Really, a lot of things don't sit well in the game.. this piecemeal reworking onto the existing game compounds some of those problems. There's also just a lot of stuff in the game.

Frankly I don't have the time or inclination to dig into it and pore over tons of replies/posts, and this is not the thread for it, but I will say:
The tile-set system, tile design, spawn system and enemy behaviours make battles very samey & horde like. In Endless missions the combat is mostly standing-near/jumping-into the crowd and some retreating to get a breather, while enemies spawn & attack from all sides. Map flow, kiting or repositioning barely factor in, especially with the massive CC powers and Bullet Jump/Copter speed.

In ME3 Co-op or Killing Floor for example, most of the mission you need to be environmentally aware, kite & move intelligently, make your head shots and abilities count; You could never just drop a CC bomb or nuke and be done with it like WF.

I still like the game of course and taking out hordes of enemies in fairly elegant Magic-Space-Ninja style. The bits like skilfully flying into a cluster of high level heavies & nullifiers, dodging all the ground slams to hit them all hard with power, lined-up punch-through shots & blade can be sublime.

 

[Edit: Changed 'Additional Melee Range' numbers]

Edited November 18, 2015 by Frosty_2.0

[Noteybook]

as I have told you previously, fix the double RNG of void key acquirement so we don't have to milk every key endlessly, let's see how the moon works before we discuss the rebalance of guns

rep grind is real grind, void grind is not grind, is not even game, is gambling

 

+1

 

The loot tables are bad. The RNG is bad. There is account seed that screws with RNG even more. I have to grind for keys to grind for a chance to get X or Y loot. This is entirely where "farming" stems from-it's soul crushing to have these multiple layers of grind and RNG. I can't run tower survival unless I'm with friends on some voice program otherwise I will fall asleep out of boredom.

 

Energy economy has gone nuts, as has powercreep. If enemies spawned less, were harder, gave more xp, and had better drops, we could also talk about slowing down the rest of the game in terms of spam and powercreep. I miss the early 2013 Warframe's feel.

[RealPandemonium]

Yeah, I'm never really impressed by people's "I made it thiiiis far, so everything is fine!" The question is, "and what about your frame contributed to your ability to get that far? Could you have gotten farther with a different frame? Would you have performed better in the same window with a different frame?" The fact is that eventually weapons are going to be your main source of damage and if you need to you can even get crowd control from status blasters. It is mildly difficult but not impossible to make up for the overall weakness of a particular frame by simply having really good guns and using cover/movement to mitigate damage and - particularly in interception - being smart about point control instead of picking fights with every mob you see. Those aren't the sorts of stories that prove a frame is good.

 

If four people can get together and do a T4S 60 minute no abilities 4x Oberon run, would that prove that Oberon is good? Because I have no doubt that that is a thing people could do.

It would demonstrate that they are competent players (overpowered weapons notwithstanding.)  Warframe should be about what you can do with your frame, not what your frame does for you.  If "good" frames just make the game really easy/predictable with exploitable powers then what's even the point?  There's no struggle, there's no innovation, there's no thought involved; just an inevitable result with a low probability of involving the reward you want.

[IronWolfKnight]

I'd like to post some improvements for Saryn's abilities:

 

Spore: It should change its damage type & status proc to Corrosive if a target has armour and it switches back to Viral if the target has no armour left. It should also proc its status effect when you first select a target with it rather than have RNG decide if the first target is going to be hit with Viral or not.

 

Molt: I don't think giving it Snow Globe scaling is a good idea since Molt is supposed to be a Decoy skill, not a Defence skill. Look at abilities like Snow Globe or Tectonics and you'll see that they're defencive skills built to protect objectives or players and then look at Molt and you'll see that it functions as a distraction for the enemy while you or your teammates prepare. I think giving it 3 seconds of invulnerability is a better idea since it gives you enough time to prepare without it being destroyed in one second.

 

Toxic Lash: The only improvements I can give is to increase the energy you acquire from detonating spores with melee from 2 to 5 and any melee strike that detonates a spore has its damage converted to Finisher damage.

 

Miasma: First, reduce its energy cost to 75 since there are so many other ultimates that deal more damage and offer more utility than Miasma then make it so Corrosive procs increases miasmas damage the same way Toxin or Viral increases its damage. Another improvement is to make it so Miasma detonates any spores within range.

[akira_him]

It would demonstrate that they are competent players (overpowered weapons notwithstanding.) Warframe should be about what you can do with your frame, not what your frame does for you. If "good" frames just make the game really easy/predictable with exploitable powers then what's even the point? There's no struggle, there's no innovation, there's no thought involved; just an inevitable result with a low probability of involving the reward you want.

I sincerely think that thinking the build, squad component, efficient way to complete mission already involved enough thought in this dungeon crawler style of gameplay.

Although most of the time you only need to do it once unless you want to try something new, but I think the problem is enemy AI/design

we don't have such issue in monster hunter/phantasy star

Edited November 14, 2015 by akira_him

[RealPandemonium]

I sincerely think that thinking the build, squad component, efficient way to complete mission already involved enough thought in this dungeon crawler style of gameplay.

Although most of the time you only need to do it once unless you want to try something new, but I think the problem is enemy AI/design

we don't have such issue in monster hunter/phantasy star

I think people underrate DE's efforts to create gameplay through enemy mechanics.  Knockdowns, auras, and punitive spike damage are all factors that force the player to react.  Unfortunately, none of that matters when everything is permaCCed or dies instantly.  

[akira_him]

I think people underrate DE's efforts to create gameplay through enemy mechanics. Knockdowns, auras, and punitive spike damage are all factors that force the player to react. Unfortunately, none of that matters when everything is permaCCed or dies instantly.

because we don't have proper counteract that is actually interactive, all counteract you can do is "slap hand spring and forget"

you are helpless when you are hooked by an ancient/scorpion, provided that the hook is barely visible in the horde of enemies

there is no couteract to aura except shoot them down first

nullifer is actually fine in this case, at least you can see he is coming(it kills weapon diversity is another story)

Edited November 14, 2015 by akira_him

[RealPandemonium]

because we don't have proper counteract that is actually interactive, all counteract you can do is "slap hand spring and forget"

you are helpless when you are hooked by an ancient/scorpion, provided that the hook is barely visible in the horde of enemies

there is no couteract to aura except shoot them down first

nullifer is actually fine in this case, at least you can see he is coming(it kills weapon diversity is another story)

You can roll to avoid knockdowns and damage spikes, in addition to good movement habits in general.  Some dangerous elements should be more telegraphed but most of the feedback appears to be "wahh why can god ninja wizards fall down" or "give me more armor" instead of asking for more of an opportunity to respond.  

 

Auras promoting target prioritization is a good thing (remember that Radiation procs disable auras as well.)

Edited November 14, 2015 by RealPandemonium

[taiiat]

-snip-

sounds like those Players were... not up to the task of playing that Mission.

 

i think we had 4, maybe 5 deaths total for that entire Session.

 

Those aren't the sorts of stories that prove a frame is good.

just an example of that survivabiilty went fairly well. we didn't even have a CC Warframe, and we rarely died.

funny how that works.

 

i didn't pay attention to the other Molt, but mine as usual was lasting for most of it's entire Duration while distracting Enemies, despite the Enemy Level.

funny how that works.

 

You could never just drop a CC bomb or nuke

doesn't work in Killing Floor 2 (thankfully), but in Killing Floor, your nuke was throwing a bazillion Grenades at something you didn't want to fight. 

poof, it's gone.

 

in Mass Effect 3 MP - there were certainly Characters that had hilarious CC potential. sure, it didn't cover the entire map. but Enemes also didn't infinitely Scale so you could use your Abilities and attributes to close on Enemies and CC them effectively while Killing them.

some Characters had Abilities which functioned as localized Nukes, dealing pretty ridiculous Damage in a decent area.

 

engagement distances in this two games were generally even shorter than Warframe however.

which come to think of it, think about how small he ME3MP Maps were in general - and yet, Sniper Rifles weren't considered 'useless'! i feel like there's a bit of user error in Warframe behind them being 'useless'. they could certainly be more unique and Et Cetera ofcourse though.

 

(overpowered weapons notwithstanding.)

 

Warframe should be about what you can do with your frame, not what your frame does for you.  If "good" frames just make the game really easy/predictable with exploitable powers then what's even the point?  There's no struggle, there's no innovation, there's no thought involved; just an inevitable result with a low probability of involving the reward you want.

we definitely generally play everything pretty 'casually'. use whatever we feel like.

i mean, my Primary was a Grinlok, another's was an Unranked Ogris IIRC (maybe had a few Mods), and another was Dread.

secondaries consisted of my Sonicor (who's CC i took advantage of basically just to throw Energy Drain Enemies off the map), something else that was probably Unranked or had very few Mods on it, and a Furis.

 

all of the Weapons are things i can consider viable, most certainly. (even if Ogris has no purpose to exist because it deals similar Damage to other Explosive Weapons or less but doesn't do anything better than they do, making it a Weapon with no purpose or identity. but that's a different Thread)

and ofcourse, going to Round 16 was because we had nothing better to do. we expected a lot of death, didn't really find all that much.

 

anyways, aye. Abilities should have mechanics & functionality, and you put those to use. if you press a button and the Ability basically did all of it's stuff for you, that Ability probably should get looked at and improved.

 

Another improvement is to make it so Miasma detonates any spores within range.

i wouldn't actually want this. i prefer being in complete control of my Spores, deciding when to spread them.

i wouldn't want to feel like i shouldn't cast an Ability at times because i don't want to end an effect that i want.

 

because we don't have proper counteract that is actually interactive

(it kills weapon diversity is another story)

i will agree that it would be neat to have some interactive means to break Grapple Hooks early. you can wait until right before the dragging stops and shoot it, but that's a pretty long time to wait.

game also doesn't telegraph that your capability to do any actions has been restored, you can just suddenly use your Guns near the end.

 

ofcourse, Scorpions and Ancients actually Telegraphing Grapple Hook attacks before the Attack happens rather than at the same time as the Attack - would make great strides to Players not being hit by them all the time.

countless time of walking around a corner, and a Grapple Hook hits you about the time it took you to see the Enemy.

 

 

it does ostracize a small fraction of the Weapons, ones that fire at 2 Rounds per Second or less. to be fair however, that isn't a dramatically huge percentage of the existing Weapons.

[achromos]

Yeah, I'm never really impressed by people's "I made it thiiiis far, so everything is fine!" The question is, "and what about your frame contributed to your ability to get that far? Could you have gotten farther with a different frame? Would you have performed better in the same window with a different frame?" The fact is that eventually weapons are going to be your main source of damage and if you need to you can even get crowd control from status blasters. It is mildly difficult but not impossible to make up for the overall weakness of a particular frame by simply having really good guns and using cover/movement to mitigate damage and - particularly in interception - being smart about point control instead of picking fights with every mob you see. Those aren't the sorts of stories that prove a frame is good.

 

If four people can get together and do a T4S 60 minute no abilities 4x Oberon run, would that prove that Oberon is good? Because I have no doubt that that is a thing people could do.

 

 

What people don't seem to get is that Saryn, as they knew her is dead.  Could she nuke full rooms in a instant?  Only in low-mid, low level areas.  I agree that it isn't nessisarily the frame alone, but the ability of the players themselves and whatever warframe they are using at the point in time and how they utilize it. 

 

I know you aren't impressed by it, but it's possible for a saryn to solo T4S up to 40+ minutes, it's possible for a Saryn to pull top dps in High-End content.  What people are trying to say, when they post "I made it this far, so everything is fine!" is that saryn CAN if you want to learn her.  Could other frames deal damage?  Yes, can a Nova do a giant AoE that slows enemies, doubles damage against them ect?  Yes.  I can also take a saryn that has max range, Cast one, and then pop the spores and watch the whole T4D room fill up with spored enemies which while it dosen't slow them it does halve their health. 

 

Halving a enemies health means half the work needed to kill said enemy, you can say that Nova can already do that by doubling damage output on the tenno end?  Well what about combining them.  Making it twice as easy.

 

People need to stop with the salt (not saying you, directly on this but in general) about Saryn.  Take a look at the people who are saying "I made it this far, so everything is fine!" ask them how/what/where:  How did they do that?  What mods did they utilize to do that? and importantly Where did they do that?  Because if they are oneshotting things in Mercury I think they might be in for a bit of disappointment.

 

Frequently as a Saryn I get the most Damage output of the team, as well as enemies killed.  Could I do that with other frames?  Sure.  How much of that is weapon damage?  I only utilize my ignis to set off the spores easily and then rush in and use Miasma if needed or continue to hose down enemies and try and spread the spores.  Each time a spore pops that's a Damage increase.

 

We need to stop saying to ourselves:  Why use this frame when we have X?

 

Especially when X frame is as good as Y frame, it's good to have options and Saryn is a Option.  just because people are screaming that Saryn is dead doesn't mean that she is.

 

Does she need a bit of a tweak here or there, possibly but she is far from weak and broken.  The only thing broken is the instant satisfaction that people get by repeatedly pressing that "4" button and watching level 20 enemies die.  Whereas I'm having a wonderful time taking down level 50+ enemies once I have things down pat.

Edited November 14, 2015 by achromos

[czdj117]

I do not know what's meetings discussing just Saryn from lv 50+ is unplayable, it does not work for nothing

[DiosGX]

I feel like she's not getting enough energy back from Toxic Lashing spores off of enemies. The problem is that raising it up to a static 3-per spore would make it too easy as well.

 

Maybe some type of successive spore-pop combo? Such as, if you break let's say... 10 spores within ten seconds, successive spores popped after that could give 2.7 energy per pop. Just something that when you're actively trying to get a huge amount of energy back, it would allow you to do so without getting too broken.

[DSMatticus]

It would demonstrate that they are competent players (overpowered weapons notwithstanding.)  Warframe should be about what you can do with your frame, not what your frame does for you.  If "good" frames just make the game really easy/predictable with exploitable powers then what's even the point?  There's no struggle, there's no innovation, there's no thought involved; just an inevitable result with a low probability of involving the reward you want.

 

We are having a balance discussion. Balance is 100% "what your frame does for you," and 0% "what you can do with a (bad) frame." It's what the word literally means - a balanced game has a healthy variety of nearly equally good choices. It's "balanced."

 

You are telling us that the game doesn't need to be balanced (i.e., that it doesn't need a healthy variety of nearly equally good choices). That's absurd. The game absolutely should be balanced. The game should also be more difficult (and made so by tackling the energy economy, not by nerfing abilities into the ground into we're playing a generic third person shooter where our powers don't even matter, which is the direction you seem to want to take things), but it should also be more balanced. These aren't exclusive goals. You're just complaining that the game isn't hard enough so therefore we shouldn't try to balance it to begin with. It doesn't even make sense!

 

And yes, the same goes for you achromos: you cannot have a balance discussion without comparing options. We have to ask "why X when Y?" If you aren't willing to do so, then you cannot have meaningful opinions on whether or not things are balanced. Because you are specifically swearing off any attempt at a balance discussion.

Edited November 15, 2015 by DSMatticus

[RealPandemonium]

 

We are having a balance discussion. Balance is 100% "what your frame does for you," and 0% "what you can do with a (bad) frame." It's what the word literally means - a balanced game has a healthy variety of nearly equally good choices. It's "balanced."

 

You are telling us that the game doesn't need to be balanced (i.e., that it doesn't need a healthy variety of nearly equally good choices). That's absurd. The game absolutely should be balanced. The game should also be more difficult (and made so by tackling the energy economy, not by nerfing abilities into the ground into we're playing a generic third person shooter where our powers don't even matter, which is the direction you seem to want to take things), but it should also be more balanced. These aren't exclusive goals. You're just complaining that the game isn't hard enough so therefore we shouldn't try to balance it to begin with. It doesn't even make sense!

We shouldn't balance around Nova, Loki, Trinity, etc.  Balancing around training wheels will lead to a trivial game.  The exploitable powers need to be toned down; we should not be giving every frame exploitable powers to achieve "balance."  

 

A game where your powers help or add variety but don't create deterministic, trivial gameplay is far preferable to a game where you can still do this but not as often.  Inevitably, as long as things like MPrime and Blessing exist, the game will revolve around trying to pump them out as much as possible.  That can only be avoided by making it unfeasible to use those powers more than once in a while, which is not a result that is likely to happen, nor would it be considered desirable by most players.  It makes much more sense to nerf the powers themselves, and allow you to achieve similar results via interactions and caveats (similar to what they did with Miasma.)  That way the end result is still obtainable but is more tricky to execute (requiring interaction from the player) and not as exploitable for cheesing content.  

 

It's also crazy to balance things without the player's skill and level of effort in mind.  Players that get good at the game and make an effort to excel at it should be rewarded for that.  Right now if there is a Loki, Nova, Mirage, Trinity, etc. in my instance, there's a good chance that I'll hardly have to try at all to beat the mission.  They will render the mission unlosable, either by permaCC, infinite HP/shield/energy, or just 1-shotting everything with AOE.  My game knowledge, skills, and desire to win won't matter at all, since the mission is reduced to an assembly line slaughter.  That should never happen, IMO.  When a frame is capable of making the game so easy that you don't even have to make an effort, then that frame is overpowered, and will inevitably be exploited to bypass gameplay in the interest of farming/whatever.  Powers that play the game for you need to be revised; not added to every frame for the sake of "balance" or "fairness."  

 

Weapons that trivialize everything into the 70s and allow us to go into the XXXs alongside exploitable powers should also be culled so that non-infinite content actually means something.  Catering to the infinite content lobby has been nothing but toxic for Warframe, creating unsustainable expectations among players and severely skewing an already neglected power curve among available equipment.  

Edited November 15, 2015 by RealPandemonium

[akira_him]

We shouldn't balance around Nova, Loki, Trinity, etc.  Balancing around training wheels will lead to a trivial game.  The exploitable powers need to be toned down; we should not be giving every frame exploitable powers to achieve "balance."  

 

A game where your powers help or add variety but don't create deterministic, trivial gameplay is far preferable to a game where you can still do this but not as often.  Inevitably, as long as things like MPrime and Blessing exist, the game will revolve around trying to pump them out as much as possible.  That can only be avoided by making it unfeasible to use those powers more than once in a while, which is not a result that is likely to happen, nor would it be considered desirable by most players.  It makes much more sense to nerf the powers themselves, and allow you to achieve similar results via interactions and caveats (similar to what they did with Miasma.)  That way the end result is still obtainable but is more tricky to execute (requiring interaction from the player) and not as exploitable for cheesing content.  

 

It's also crazy to balance things without the player's skill and level of effort in mind.  Players that get good at the game and make an effort to excel at it should be rewarded for that.  Right now if there is a Loki, Nova, Mirage, Trinity, etc. in my instance, there's a good chance that I'll hardly have to try at all to beat the mission.  They will render the mission unlosable, either by permaCC, infinite HP/shield/energy, or just 1-shotting everything with AOE.  My game knowledge, skills, and desire to win won't matter at all, since the mission is reduced to an assembly line slaughter.  That should never happen, IMO.  When a frame is capable of making the game so easy that you don't even have to make an effort, then that frame is overpowered, and will inevitably be exploited to bypass gameplay in the interest of farming/whatever.  Powers that play the game for you need to be revised; not added to every frame for the sake of "balance" or "fairness."  

 

Weapons that trivialize everything into the 70s and allow us to go into the XXXs alongside exploitable powers should also be culled so that non-infinite content actually means something.  Catering to the infinite content lobby has been nothing but toxic for Warframe, creating unsustainable expectations among players and severely skewing an already neglected power curve among available equipment.  

Non infinite LV80-ish content is already/going to be a thing, just saying, I never played any raids or go further then 80 mins in T4S so I can really tell nothing about those, but

Loki is the only OP frame among the frame you mentioned, and we will have new enemies to deal with him

Nova still being one-shotted by snipers/wall penetrating homing missiles,

so do mirage (I don't understand why her blind needs no LoS, but DE logic seems doesn't agree both of us)

Trinity's problem is...well the problem isn't just her but other frames since there are restores

DE strategy on this probably is to make the game more approachable to the board casual player-base, not hardcore players like us

If we mid-to-hardcore players want challenge, we have to limit ourselves because devs cannot risk destroying the game for casual players

It is sad but this is how a game survive in this mobile game era, this is necessary evil

Edited November 15, 2015 by akira_him

[DSMatticus]

We shouldn't balance around Nova, Loki, Trinity, etc.  Balancing around training wheels will lead to a trivial game.  The exploitable powers need to be toned down; we should not be giving every frame exploitable powers to achieve "balance."

You have described 90% of the game's content as exploitable. You have described Rhino as exploitable. You have described "roar" as exploitable. Your standards for balance are insanely low. Boringly low. I'm actually curious: describe what you think CC frames should look like.

 

 

 

A game where your powers help or add variety but don't create deterministic, trivial gameplay is far preferable to a game where you can still do this but not as often.  Inevitably, as long as things like MPrime and Blessing exist, the game will revolve around trying to pump them out as much as possible.  That can only be avoided by making it unfeasible to use those powers more than once in a while, which is not a result that is likely to happen, nor would it be considered desirable by most players.  It makes much more sense to nerf the powers themselves, and allow you to achieve similar results via interactions and caveats (similar to what they did with Miasma.)  That way the end result is still obtainable but is more tricky to execute (requiring interaction from the player) and not as exploitable for cheesing content.

It is a simple fact that (against a particular difficulty of enemy), either powers (let's say miasma, to be specific) or guns (let's say the soma prime, to be specific) are going to give you the faster kill time. One is always going to be faster than the other. If you want to balance around infinite usage of both (i.e., never run out of energy, never run out of ammo), players are going to neglect one in favor of the other. That's just how it's going to be. If there are no limits, the only thing that matters are results.

 

You want to nerf powers because they provide quick-clears on T3-T4/Ceres/Pluto non-endless difficulty levels. And you also want to nerf weapons because they provide not-quite-as-quick-clears on T3-T4/Ceres/Pluto non-endless difficulty levels. And then people will just go back to spamming the new miasma chain, so you'll want to nerf that. But then everyone will just go back to shooting things in the face and ignoring their powers, so nerf that... it's seriously just a race to the bottom.

 

If you want powers and weapons to coexist, the answer is not "nerf both into oblivion until every enemy is a massive bloated bag of hitpoints that can't be CC'd." The answer is to just let powers be awesome, but put meaningful limits on their usage. Yes, people will still use powers as often as they can, but by limiting how often they can you create situations where they won't use them (or they'll use their weaker powers, instead of spamming their best one 24/7). And to be frank, balancing around infinite energy is what gave us the insanity that is raid, where enemies are bullet sponges who obliterate you nigh instantly and the One True Path to victory is perma-CC. Yes, raid is terrible, but it is terrible specifically because DE refuses to address the energy economy, and if they nerfed our abilities and the raid to the point where we didn't need abilities to beat the raid it'd be "just another boring mission except it also takes too long." The only way Warframe currently gets difficult is when it starts punishing mistakes with instant lethality, and that's really boring before it gets to that point (because you can't lose and it's ez-mode) and really boring after that point (because your defeat is the result of a completely untelegraped hitscan instadeath)

 

The fact is that this is a fast-paced horde game. Both powers and weapons need to produce significant results, quickly, because we're fighting dozens of enemies at a time who will be immediately replaced by dozens more when we kill them. The fact that Frost can freeze everyone in 20m for 6-10 seconds is not the problem. The fact that he can keep them frozen forever is the problem.

 

I would love to see the range of weapon damage compacted - alongside (and this is important) a massive overhaul of enemy armor/health/damage scaling. Not because I want enemies to take longer to kill; a sancti tigris really should oliberate 99% of the stuff you point it at - but because it'll make it easier to balance powers (which are usually less than 2x as powerful modded compared to unmodded) with weapons (which are often 25x as powerful modded compared to unmodded).

 

I would love to see a buff for T3-T4/Ceres/Pluto non-endless/early-endless stuff so that enemies there are actually intimidating and not a piece of cake. Most of that would come from an enemy damage buff, not an enemy health buff. Paired alongside real limits on power usage, that would make that content actually fun to play.

 

I would love to see a rebalancing of heavy units so that they actually feel like special enemies instead of just another unit that dies too freaking fast for me to notice. But that means reducing their spawn rate and giving them interesting mechanics (as well as that aforementioned compacting of weapon damage range, because as is weapon damage is all over the place).

 

I would hate to see powers nerfed to the point that they're situational/niche BS that no one really cares about.

Edited November 15, 2015 by DSMatticus

[RealPandemonium]

snip

I agree with a lot of this post, though it sounds like I have a much humbler vision of player power levels than you do.  

 

I think that if we were to take your approach, powers would have to be segregated into two groups: spammable, moderate impact powers and strictly-limited huge impact powers.  

 

I would also reduce spawn rates and make enemies more powerful individually (and even more powerful when working in concert.)  Warframe didn't start as a horde game, and it doesn't have to be a horde game now, at least in non-endless modes.  

 

Getting rid of infinite scaling (or creating a separate game mode for it) might be a necessary sacrifice for sensible design going forward, as well.  

[DSMatticus]

I'm fine with 95% of the enemies you fight being junk mobs that die quickly and are replaced quickly. I would like it if heavy units (heavy gunners/bombards/ancients/corpus techs/so on) were buffed to actually be difficult to kill and given more interesting mechanics to make them feel like minibosses, and if there were only a few of them active at a time so that you bothered to keep track of them and care what they were doing; you know, actual priority targets.

 

But the problem is that before you can do that, you have to totally overhaul the armor/health/damage system on both the enemy and player side. The range is just too large. The DPS on the sancti tigris can vary from 1k to 38k (or higher, really). It's impossible to choose a balance point in that range; it's just way too much variation. Whatever point you choose to balance around , you're either going to be making things nightmarishly hard for some builds or completely trivial for other builds or maybe even both if you choose a point in the middle.

 

Warframe needs its number range drastically collapsed. Not necessarily nerfs, just... things need to be condensed, because the more condensed they are the easier it will be to balance going forward and decide how to handle enemy difficulty and scaling.

[Gurpgork]

Warframe needs its number range drastically collapsed. Not necessarily nerfs, just... things need to be condensed, because the more condensed they are the easier it will be to balance going forward and decide how to handle enemy difficulty and scaling.

You have earned my +1. We're trying to balance around infinity, and that is fundamentally impossible. U18 damage scaling rework hype!

 

Also, the minibosses thing throws me back to some of those alert missions we had where the Corpus spawned Hyenas and Bursas. Those were awesome missions because you actually had to prioritize killing the Bursas or else they would kill you. Those missions provided real challenges, and I think DE should point to that for making the game more challenging and entertaining.

Edited November 15, 2015 by Gurpgork

[DSMatticus]

Also, the minibosses thing throws me back to some of those alert missions we had where the Corpus spawned Hyenas and Bursas. Those were awesome missions because you actually had to prioritize killing the Bursas or else they would kill you. Those missions provided real challenges, and I think DE should point to that for making the game more challenging and entertaining.

Yeah, those were great alerts. It wasn't just an endless wave of weak enemies marching to their deaths. It was an endless wave of weak enemies marching to their deaths backed up by the occasional miniboss who forced you to deal with them while still trying to avoid being overwhelmed by the aforementioned endless wave. If the alerts had been a little higher level all around, that would have been some genuinely difficult and interesting content.

 

I also really enjoyed that nightwatch Grineer exterminate; I went into solo and with almost zero CC abilities. The bailiffs didn't really do any damage, but they were aggressive, tanky, and could knock you down - and if you let them knock you down, odds are good you'd take a whole lot of damage from their very deadly friends' very deadly assault rifles. So most fights boiled down to the bailiff forcing me to dodge between different pieces of cover all while trying to clear the room to buy time to deal with the bailiff. That was also kind of fun.

[Vesiga]

I feel like people who are saying Saryn is bad now just haven't built her right or have found the right way to be playing her now. 

I've found something that has worked great and will take me past min 60 of tower survivals and planets. 

This Saryn change was very well needed, she's more fun to play. 
I loved her before the change, and love her after it. 


My advice; Don't build on that max duration. I have 95% duration 184% p.str and 160% p.eff and 145% range with a max vit and steelfiber for survival. 
Can rip down high levels in a heartbeat with spores, molt as a transmitter and defense to revive people, and miasma as a finisher. 
Toxic lash is activated before I miasma to gain energy back because you dont need to pop spores with the ability to gain energy back, they just have to die or get popped by anything. I rarely use Toxic lash, but I like using it on my Mios. 

You guys are correct that this change needs to sit and sink in on people. They're reacting too fast about it. 

Anyways though, goodwork on the change. Your reworks on frames have yet to disappoint. 

Edited November 15, 2015 by Vesiga