Steps to balance without losing Warframe's "feel"

[Mr.Lube]

                                                                                       Warframe is Operating Under Two Extremes

 

     Originally, when I made this post I believed that simply balancing one side of the equation before the other would be a solution to Warframe's age old problem with balance. Simply put, after much thought and feedback my stance has changed, but not by much. Warframe is operating under two extremes. By that I mean that both sides of the equation (Enemies and Warframes) are too powerful/extreme.

We had a pretty balanced game, then we got more powerful with the introduction to corrupted mods which was fine. The problem was that the enemies never really played catch-up, and we kept getting stronger and stronger until the game was a complete cake walk. We were operating at an extreme. Players wanted a challenge, but nothing could really challenge us in a fair and fun manner. So then Nullifiers, Spam-CC Bursas, and Sorties at level 80-100 were introduced. Now the enemies are operating under extremes and it is seen as cheesy, rightfully so. People want balance but they don't understand it goes both ways.

Original Thoughts -

Spoiler

 In Warframe's high level content you are punished for not having spammable CC, invisibility, or invincibility. Enemies become too potent to handle with conventional methods (like killing and out maneuvering....in a space Ninja game...wot). Enemies' armor and damage scaling is so bad that there comes a point when not killing the enemies and just refreshing ability timers becomes the most effective way to complete a mission. That is ridiculous.

Warframes that do not have one of these features (Mass CC/Invincibility/Invisibility) are punished by being one shot by enemies you can't even see. These are the frames that are deemed "useless" by a large number of the community and although I want to disagree (so badly) I really can't. Useless may not be the correct term but they are, without a doubt, at a serious disadvantage. Unfortunately, when these frames that are struggling are "buffed" they are typically seen sporting some random type of CC that was slapped on one of their abilities in order to make them viable, but by doing so they have therefore made that frame or another frame less interesting.

 

By continuing down this path of reliance on CC or Invincibility every frame would essentially be doing the exact same thing with a different visual effect. Because of this DE is so limited to what they can do in terms of Warframe design and it is so sad. Stop trying to make frames conform to it because all it does is limit what you can do. A hefty overhaul is in need to keep Warframe healthy.

 

My theory is that the biggest hindrance of Warframes balance is the infinitely scaling enemies. Let me explain why. Without a set enemy power level there is no real model to balance Warframes and weapons around. A new weapon/Warframe is released that pushes the boundaries that other equipment isn't able to accomplish, therefore making the older equipment less valuable. This also results in "mastery fodder". 

 

In short, the devs are trying to balance their content around a faulty and broken system. It is a fools errand, and the devs need to start looking at the bigger picture.

   There are two parts of the equation and, therefore two parts to balance. Let's start with enemies first.

 

Solution: (Part 1, enemy scaling)

 

1. Cap enemy scaling. Enemies will stop getting stronger after a certain point. Call this cap level 100.
2. Adjust enemy armor/health/damage scaling to be gradual and stop at the new level 100. Level 100 grunts should not be able to tank or one-shot us.
3. Introduce an enemy hierarchy. Grunts (Lancers/Butchers/Crewman/Prodman) should be commanded by more powerful units that give buffs/resupplies/cover.
4. Grant commanding units diminishing returns to CC and disabling powers.
5. Apply Sortie/Nightmare like de-buffs and/or mini-bosses to endless missions after level 100. This forces players out but can be endured by those skilled enough.

 

These changes; in my eyes make sense from a gameplay and a lore standpoint. Focusing key targets will become a well practiced tactic, making single target abilities along with Snipers more valuable. The classic Warframe feel of destroying hordes will remain as well.

Solution: (Part 2, Warframe ability/energy management)

 

1. Remove Power Efficiency mods. (I know this is big, but I feel like it's the biggest thing holding Warframe back from being a fun balanced experience where Nullifiers aren't needed.)
2. Remove Primed mods. Players will be refunded.
3. Increase all Warframe's base energy at max rank to match that of an equipped flow mod. (ie. level 30 Ash base energy goes from 150>300)
4. New flow mod now increases Warframe's max energy to match that of a currently equipped Primed Flow. (ie. level 30 Ash max energy goes from 300>450)
5. Energy Siphon is now innate to all Warframes.
6. Duration no longer effects efficiency in any way. This was a band-aid to Fleeting.
7. Nullifiers are removed or re-purposed. We do not need them anymore.
8. Warframes start with full energy at the beginning of each mission.
9. Energy restores are capped at 5 per mission. Or are changed to increase energy regen for a short period of time upon activation. (Not stackable)
10. Trinity's Energy Vampire is replaced with another ability. I understand this is going to get a lot of hate, but remember that unlimited power is what got us in this mess in the first place. There needs to be a bit of sacrifice.
11. Damage abilities now scale. Something like (Base damage + % of enemy health) or (Base damage + % of your max energy)
12. Reduce all ability costs by 30%, matching that of a Streamline. Streamline is and always will be essential, this gives players more modding freedom.

 

These changes seek to remove a lot of unwanted "cheese" from the game, while not going into extremes such as cooldowns. Players will have to manage their energy more than they do now, but that really isn't saying much. These changes will also free up a lot of mod space taken up by essential mods, like Streamline. The addition of ability damage scaling will ensure that players will not need to waste too much energy to kill their targets.

 

I understand that the removal of Primed and efficiency mods will rub a lot of people the wrong way, but I feel it is essential to keep the game from feeling "bloated" with too much power. Feedback as always is appreciated.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Mr.Lube
Complete revision.

[Gurpgork]

I could not agree more. Infinite scaling is the source of almost every single balance problem in this game. 

Fortunately Damage 3.0 is in the pipelines, and that should change things for the better. 

Edited February 26, 2016 by Gurpgork

[DiabolusUrsus]

Agreed. Attempting to create a system where things like invisibility and wide-area CC are on-par with everything else by altering the abilities themselves is a fool's errand. 

The simplest solution would be to settle on a definitive maximum level (like when they rebalanced enemies so that 40 was the new 100 and then promptly forgot about that effort, so now we're back to fighting level 100 crap at the endgame...) and balance damage abilities and weapons around that point. They should solve the issue of CC and Invisibility by giving enemies scaling resistances to those types of abilities - duration/magnitude reduction to CC, and increasingly accurate responses to things like weapon and movement noise for invisibility. 

I don't understand why DE keeps churning out scaling rebalances when they've said themselves multiple times that endless mission types are not supposed to be 'balanced' after a certain point.

[CY13ERPUNK]

as soon as i saw that the LoR trial required STANDING STILL ON PADS, i knew that someone on the DEv team had 'jumped the shark'

like, clearly we have a balance/cc/scaling issue if the only challenge that the DEv team can come up with, is a bunch of non-sense with us standing still in corners waiting for other players to stand still in another corner =[

[ClinkzEastwood]

 

[ShortCat]

It is sure a very good suggestion to move away from CC meta, but how can this be done? At this point in game I don't see a possible way. The issue manifested itself long time ago, but was ignored and further build on. A reasonable change, I would like to see, will be considered a mass nerf from the side of many players, especially newer ones, who doesn't know anything else in Warframe.

Just look at some recent topics: there was a complaint about Mirage's mass blind, and yet a lot of people are OK with this. Or the Valkyr discussions.

Furthermore, if you look back at some recent reworks, particulary core game mechanics, DE does not have a good track.

[CY13ERPUNK]

16 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

It is sure a very good suggestion to move away from CC meta, but how can this be done? At this point in game I don't see a possible way. The issue manifested itself long time ago, but was ignored and further build on. A reasonable change, I would like to see, will be considered a mass nerf from the side of many players, especially newer ones, who doesn't know anything else in Warframe.

Just look at some recent topics: there was a complaint about Mirage's mass blind, and yet a lot of people are OK with this. Or the Valkyr discussions.

Furthermore, if you look back at some recent reworks, particulary core game mechanics, DE does not have a good track.

bottom line, DE should have done a massive/wide nerf to frame powers a long time ago... {this is coming from a majority loki player, i fully enjoy loki, but i also like how the enemy AI has gotten better over the years tracking the noise i make and or how random fire can down me if im not careful}

but where we stand currently, it is still better to do it sooner rather than later 

eventually they are going to have to get some consistency across the board, like diminishing returns on most everything and LoS on most everything 

better/smarter and more complex enemies and AI will/can also help along the way 

and the players that QQ about 'nerfs' without understanding the context would QQ about something else regardless, so trying to avoid or appeasing them is a fool's errand 

and DE could very well significantly reduce our infini-scaling perma-cc potential but still leave the frames the power-houses that they are intended to be, the enemies just need more counterplays than the hamfisted nullys/combas

our powers as frames need more gradient instead of on/off, and our enemies need more resistances instead of just on/off

for example, maybe enemies should be able to shoot/atk while being held by bastille? but with reduced accuracy? bastille could potentially give frames within its confines a DR or armor bonus as possible 'compensation' or maybe not even, as our powers do not all need to necessarily completely hard-cc/lockdown our enemies as long as the insane scaling gets addressed

disarmed enemies by loki are technically still dangerous, even thought typically much less so, but maybe enemies should have individual/unique melee options instead of all having silly stun batons? thereby allowing different units to retain different degrees of danger/lethality whether armed with their guns or their melee

i think frost's snowglobe is a great example of an ability that works well but doesnt completely 'shutdown' enemies, they can destroy it and are diminished within its confines, but instead of having a stupid enemy like a nullifier just completely remove it, how about some enemies that just have varying degrees of resistance to the slowing effects?

there are literally tons of great ideas on how DE could deal with the power disparity between us and the npcs, they just need to accept that it is an issue that needs to be addressed and they need to come to an agreement on how they want to roll it out

preferrably later in 2016, but if im going to be a realist, i wouldnt count on anything earlier than 2017 =/

Edited February 26, 2016 by CY13ERPUNK

[AdunSaveMe]

It would require a hell of a lot of work to make it how it needs to be, but as they keep adding on to it, it just gets more broken, with every new enemy or warframe building on top of a faulty foundation. It's worrying.

[OvAeons]

sure is fun using what you want. That is what i do :p

but yeah in too many cases there is an indefinite need for perma CC and heavy bless... too bad that has come into necessity cause of apesh*t spawns 

Edited February 26, 2016 by OvAeons

[DiabolusUrsus]

28 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

It is sure a very good suggestion to move away from CC meta, but how can this be done? At this point in game I don't see a possible way. The issue manifested itself long time ago, but was ignored and further build on. A reasonable change, I would like to see, will be considered a mass nerf from the side of many players, especially newer ones, who doesn't know anything else in Warframe.

Just look at some recent topics: there was a complaint about Mirage's mass blind, and yet a lot of people are OK with this. Or the Valkyr discussions.

Furthermore, if you look back at some recent reworks, particulary core game mechanics, DE does not have a good track.

1. Nerf the Fleeting Expertise + Streamline combo. This stops the spam-casting.
2. Apply a scaling debuff to CC abilities that increases with enemy level past a specified maximum level for balanced content.
3. Apply a scaling increase to the accuracy of enemy responses to detection triggers for invisibility that follows the same rules as step 2.
4. Balance Warframes and weaponry so that they start to struggle near the level cap. 

Congratulations, you have now created an iteration of Warframe where CC frames and damage frames start to struggle in the same place, and the CC meta - while still arguably existent - no longer impinges on the freedom of more relaxed playstyles at end-game levels. 

[ShortCat]

5 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

1. Nerf the Fleeting Expertise + Streamline combo. This stops the spam-casting.
2. Apply a scaling debuff to CC abilities that increases with enemy level past a specified maximum level for balanced content.
3. Apply a scaling increase to the accuracy of enemy responses to detection triggers for invisibility that follows the same rules as step 2.
4. Balance Warframes and weaponry so that they start to struggle near the level cap. 

Congratulations, you have now created an iteration of Warframe where CC frames and damage frames start to struggle in the same place, and the CC meta - while still arguably existent - no longer impinges on the freedom of more relaxed playstyles at end-game levels. 

Those are some great suggestions, however this will never happen.

The last opportunity DE has to fix the problem, is new Starchart. If they really intend to cut down the number of missions, they need to revaluate exp gain, enemy scaling, damage, droprates. This is a lot of work, I mean it is a snowball rolling for some years. I suppose Damage 3.0 will come with Starchart 3.0. If it doesn't or if it fails, there is no hope for the game.

[Mr.Lube]

8 hours ago, AdunSaveMe said:

It would require a hell of a lot of work to make it how it needs to be, but as they keep adding on to it, it just gets more broken, with every new enemy or warframe building on top of a faulty foundation. It's worrying.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

[motorfirebox]

I agree. The current Warframe design meta is very "all or nothing". Either you destroy your enemies with ease, or they instagib you. Your CC powers either completely neutralize all enemies, or a nullifier walks in and your CC powers are useless.

And I think that as long as the enemy design meta remains "send hordes of idiots running directly towards you with no thought of tactics or strategy", it's going to remain that way. In order to build a better design meta, DE needs to build a better enemy AI that can use better tactics. 

[Casval_Rouge]

The problem is the enemy damage scaling is broken.  They do too much damage above LvL70.  Not only does it make more fragile Warframes and defensive mods less effective, it also means in order to deal with the equally insane armor values, CC or invulnerability are the way to go.  If DE nerfs CC, something needs to be done about enemy damage as well. 

My suggestion is to lower the curve on damage a little bit, but also increase aim time, and further lower accuracy on airborne, sprinting and dodging Warframes.  Buff Melee Block. Give us more viable skill-based methods to avoid damage, especially hitscan ones.    

Edited February 26, 2016 by Casval_Rouge

[Mr.Lube]

5 minutes ago, Casval_Rouge said:

The problem is the enemy damage scaling is broken.  They do too much damage above LvL70.  Not only does it make more fragile Warframes and defensive mods less effective, it also means in order to deal with the equally insane armor values, CC or invulnerability the way to go.  If DE nerfs CC, something needs to be done about enemy damage as well. 

My suggestion is to lower the curve on damage a little bit, but also increase aim time, and further lower accuracy on airborne, sprinting and dodging Warframes.  Buff Melee Block. Give us more viable skill-based methods to avoid damage, especially hitscan ones.    

I would love to melee without needing a ton of armor or invincibility. Good suggestions.

[Quovander]

100% agreed with you, OP. This also applies to weapon meta as well.

[ValkyrieSequence]

15 hours ago, CY13ERPUNK said:

bottom line, DE should have done a massive/wide nerf to frame powers a long time ago... {this is coming from a majority loki player, i fully enjoy loki, but i also like how the enemy AI has gotten better over the years tracking the noise i make and or how random fire can down me if im not careful}

but where we stand currently, it is still better to do it sooner rather than later 

eventually they are going to have to get some consistency across the board, like diminishing returns on most everything and LoS on most everything 

better/smarter and more complex enemies and AI will/can also help along the way 

and the players that QQ about 'nerfs' without understanding the context would QQ about something else regardless, so trying to avoid or appeasing them is a fool's errand 

I am inclined to agree. I actually made a Trinity Rework post arguing for what is essentially a Nerf to the frame. Her ability to grant what is almost immortality (almost being only in the fact there is a millisecond of down time for a 99% blessing build) is frankly astounding to me. I come from a line of MMO healing and tanking so the sheer ability to just completely ignore mechanics via that type of damage mitigation was wonderful at first but the novelty wears off. My only real concern is what is the the best way to implement a large degree of changes like this? I mean it has a few things to consider. For one, it would need some serious man-hours/work-time to get every frame to a new base level fitting in with this system, and on the other hand some people would vocally oppose it. Granted I know not everyone can be happy I know, but I can only imagine it is something they would approach very carefully. 

Regardless I am on board with the ideas

[FitzSimmons]

i agree! 

err but i wouldn't say warframes without massive CC/invisibility/invincibility is at disadvantage, they're called useless because their ability mostly only help themselves not teammates. like in Trial mode without massive CC, when i use volt its not hard to survive there but i just can't help all teammates thats in trouble.  

 

Edited February 27, 2016 by FitzSimmons

[Prophet]

Hail the Limbo!

At least he'll still be viable after DE reworks everything else.

[Mr.Lube]

On 2/26/2016 at 5:14 AM, DiabolusUrsus said:

1. Nerf the Fleeting Expertise + Streamline combo. This stops the spam-casting.
2. Apply a scaling debuff to CC abilities that increases with enemy level past a specified maximum level for balanced content.
3. Apply a scaling increase to the accuracy of enemy responses to detection triggers for invisibility that follows the same rules as step 2.
4. Balance Warframes and weaponry so that they start to struggle near the level cap. 

Congratulations, you have now created an iteration of Warframe where CC frames and damage frames start to struggle in the same place, and the CC meta - while still arguably existent - no longer impinges on the freedom of more relaxed playstyles at end-game levels. 

I think these changes would help the game a lot. I can't seem to bring myself to play Warframe for more than 40 minutes at a time these days due to the complete imbalance of the game. I'm either bored out of my mind when we spam CC, or extremely frustrated when being one shot because we didn't spam CC. 

[Mr.Lube]

Made a little addition to the OP providing a more in-depth look at what's wrong with the enemy scaling based off feedback.

[Teridax68]

There are probably more things affecting Warframe's long-term health, including perhaps vertical power scaling itself, but I agree that the current method of making enemy difficulty scale through raw numbers has not worked out very well, and restricted viable warframe and loadout builds to a small fraction of the roster in high-difficulty missions. If we are still to have some sort of vertical difficulty scaling, perhaps a better solution would be to increase the concentration of more difficult units, instead of simply jacking up their stats. Though there are probably terrible situations that may arise from that (imagine a Corpus mission with nothing but Bursas), that would still offer more opportunities for less hard CC/utility-oriented frames, and what problems may arise could likely then call for targeted adjustments to specific enemies (namely, the aforementioned Bursas, which are notoriously unpopular), which would then improve the game as a whole.

[Kettunen]

Power creep is a real factor in pushing the devs towards corners. By implementing more cheese they're basically necessitating cheese of opposite direction. Hence nullifiers, bursas etc. It's like when moving near light speed, when all the weird S#&$ becomes the norm. And in the narrowest of margins is the star chart where things seem reasonable and against which the gameplay is allegedly designed.

Anyway, as a band I'd be tempted to suggest removal of fleeting expertise but that'd just unhealthily necessitate Trinity and overeating pizzas.

[Mr.Lube]

1 hour ago, Kettunen said:

Power creep is a real factor in pushing the devs towards corners. By implementing more cheese they're basically necessitating cheese of opposite direction. Hence nullifiers, bursas etc. It's like when moving near light speed, when all the weird S#&$ becomes the norm. And in the narrowest of margins is the star chart where things seem reasonable and against which the gameplay is allegedly designed.

Anyway, as a band I'd be tempted to suggest removal of fleeting expertise but that'd just unhealthily necessitate Trinity and overeating pizzas.

Fleeting is just a symptom of a bigger problem. Until enemy scaling is changed in some way we will never have true balance.

[Currilicious]

The main issue here isn't with the abilities. People get pigeon-holed into a particular build is because of either efficiency or it's simply mandatory. It's the mandatory part that is the issue. Like any team based game, once strict coordination is required, people tend to gravitate towards a viable solution that has the most lenient execution curve, in this case mass CC. This is true for most RPGs out there. You want to raid the highest level dungeon, you build your gear to fill a role, often a build only viable in certain situations (IE: 2s EV Trin, Link completely gimped, Bless half-gimped).

The question is, what does the community want in end-game? Challenging content or just stat checks?

Challenging content will mean most gear setups will not be viable in end game. You cannot be effective and play what you want most of the time and the game punishes your team brutally if you do attempt that.

OTOH, a gear check end game is much more relaxing. You build your gear. Effectiveness is not such a bother as long as your gear is properly leveled and modded. But the content will get stale after a while.

Edited March 4, 2016 by Currilicious