Steps to balance without losing Warframe's "feel"

[Volinus7]

53 minutes ago, fakeBOSHI said:

If that's the only level of understanding you have then sure, essentialize away. Here I thought complex problems deserved complex analysis and targeted solutions. 

Every issues in this thread have been discussed over countless threads in the past.

IMO Broad difficulty spectrum is kept because DE can use it as an excuse for releasing unbalanced contents, it's business after all.

This game is not complex and if you have played enough complex balanced games you should know that they cannot keep releasing contents that disrupt the balance this frequent.

[Mr.Lube]

10 hours ago, Volinus7 said:

Every issues in this thread have been discussed over countless threads in the past.

Because they are issues worth talking about. If there have been a lot of threads about these issues, don't you think that maybe something needs to change?

[Marthrym]

Well, some players have been at it for years now, asking, begging, even proposing extremely expansive and detailed possible ways to redo enemy scaling, weapon damage, CC mechanics and all that jazz., to make a game that deserves to be called "challenging". A term that this game, to this day, still hasn't earned in any way as far as I'm concerned. I won't hold my breath personally. Maybe after years without any actual improvement to this aspect of Warframe, I have become a tad cynical and can't see the devs do anything significant any time soon, if ever, to finally provide players with a fair and challenging experience.

 

On 3/24/2016 at 9:05 AM, Volinus7 said:

Every issues in this thread have been discussed over countless threads in the past.

IMO Broad difficulty spectrum is kept because DE can use it as an excuse for releasing unbalanced contents, it's business after all.

This is probably why indeed. Or at least partly why after so long, so many threads, ideas and concepts, things have only gotten worse... *sigh*

Edited March 25, 2016 by Marthrym

[EgAlia]

14 hours ago, Volinus7 said:

Every issues in this thread have been discussed over countless threads in the past.

IMO Broad difficulty spectrum is kept because DE can use it as an excuse for releasing unbalanced contents, it's business after all.

This game is not complex and if you have played enough complex balanced games you should know that they cannot keep releasing contents that disrupt the balance this frequent.

Sadly that is true, but those types of games are often meant to be competitive games against others players and an act of minimalism is important to keep the equilibrium of the game somewhat intact.

But I do think Warframe will be better like OP says of having a set model to balance weapons and warframes around, like the Akzani without mods felt balanaced at around lvl 1, the tonkor without mods felt balanaced at lvl 50, which feels wrong in my opinion all weapons should be balanaced around the same lvl somewhat. I mean my favourite aspect of the game is playing like a ninja getting out of the way of bullets and killing a few enemies at the time and using situational cc instead of having cc all over the map and killing all over the map XD. I hope there will be a gametype with enemies that do high damage without 1-shotting you, you can still kill the enemies if you use your brains instead of charging towards enemies without blocking, using cover or use situational awarness but still let you use your powers(not the gamebreaking ones). The only way I can do this somewhat is by playing solo at lower lvl's, would be fun to play with other people without feeling like your cheating.

[Mr.Lube]

3 hours ago, Marthrym said:

Well, some players have been at it for years now, asking, begging, even proposing extremely expansive and detailed possible ways to redo enemy scaling, weapon damage, CC mechanics and all that jazz., to make a game that deserves to be called "challenging". A term that this game, to this day, still hasn't earned in any way as far as I'm concerned. I won't hold my breath personally. Maybe after years without any actual improvement to this aspect of Warframe, I have become a tad cynical and can't see the devs do anything significant any time soon, if ever, to finally provide players with a fair and challenging experience.

I'm in the same boat as you, man. It really pains me to see the game like this; I've been playing for about 2¹/₂ years and love this game to death. It has so much going for it, but the combat is just so boring and un-engaging at this point that I find myself only playing for 20-30 minutes a day rather than my usual 3+ hours. 

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

On 3/8/2016 at 11:12 AM, chuckdm said:

You may be right, but other than Mag, where almost everyone can agree that Bullet Attractor is "meh" at best and every other ability has no downside from extremely low duration, what other frame has no drawback with, say, 50% or less duration?

 

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this to you...but mag was a really weird example, just saying (weird to me), out of all the frames that don't suffer from low duration. At 50% or lower, negative duration of you like, Ember does not need duration, her only duration ability is a weak fire ring that doesn't do anything to anyone after initial blast (accelerant maybe? No, no not really). Hey, even frames like Ash do not need duration if you only use smoke cloud as a stun (his invisibility doesn't really last that long anyway, if you wanted to be invisible Loki or ivara do it better), or zephyr who generally suffers from high duration, keeping everything around 100 actually seems to work best

[Mr.Lube]

On 3/25/2016 at 10:54 PM, (PS4)WINDMILEYNO said:

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this to you...but mag was a really weird example, just saying (weird to me), out of all the frames that don't suffer from low duration. At 50% or lower, negative duration of you like, Ember does not need duration, her only duration ability is a weak fire ring that doesn't do anything to anyone after initial blast (accelerant maybe? No, no not really). Hey, even frames like Ash do not need duration if you only use smoke cloud as a stun (his invisibility doesn't really last that long anyway, if you wanted to be invisible Loki or ivara do it better), or zephyr who generally suffers from high duration, keeping everything around 100 actually seems to work best

Basically every frame with a channeled ability can afford to lose some duration with barely any downside.

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

On 3/24/2016 at 6:01 PM, Satanistmicke said:

Sadly that is true, but those types of games are often meant to be competitive games against others players and an act of minimalism is important to keep the equilibrium of the game somewhat intact.

But I do think Warframe will be better like OP says of having a set model to balance weapons and warframes around, like the Akzani without mods felt balanaced at around lvl 1, the tonkor without mods felt balanaced at lvl 50, which feels wrong in my opinion all weapons should be balanaced around the same lvl somewhat. I mean my favourite aspect of the game is playing like a ninja getting out of the way of bullets and killing a few enemies at the time and using situational cc instead of having cc all over the map and killing all over the map XD. I hope there will be a gametype with enemies that do high damage without 1-shotting you, you can still kill the enemies if you use your brains instead of charging towards enemies without blocking, using cover or use situational awarness but still let you use your powers(not the gamebreaking ones). The only way I can do this somewhat is by playing solo at lower lvl's, would be fun to play with other people without feeling like your cheating.

But we are space ninjas. And our equals are the sentients. You do have to be stealthy and run around killing a few enemies at a time when you are fighting enemies on your level (sentients) let's get a sentient horde mode :D. When someone says we are over powered and shouldn't be able to kill trash mobs of grunts an masse, that's to me like saying the martial arts master in a Jackie Chan movie shouldn't be able to take on butt loads of average Joe enemies and survive. But he can, because they aren't on his level. I'm just sitting here on my liset, "git gud" on my bumper sticker, waving to all of the grineer and corpus who are beneath my level as an awe inspiring tenno.

[EgAlia]

On 2016-03-23 at 9:05 AM, Volinus7 said:

But we are space ninjas. And our equals are the sentients. You do have to be stealthy and run around killing a few enemies at a time when you are fighting enemies on your level (sentients) let's get a sentient horde mode :D. When someone says we are over powered and shouldn't be able to kill trash mobs of grunts an masse, that's to me like saying the martial arts master in a Jackie Chan movie shouldn't be able to take on butt loads of average Joe enemies and survive. But he can, because they aren't on his level. I'm just sitting here on my liset, "git gud" on my bumper sticker, waving to all of the grineer and corpus who are beneath my level as an awe inspiring tenno.

Okay, I hope I quoted you now XD, great post. Yeah I of course believe we should be powerful we are the Tenno. That's one thing I hate with scaling, like some frames in my opinion should be able to kill grunts with ease with some powers like Embers fireball for example no matter the level. But grunts should like get 1-shotted from single shot weapons and launchers, but high firerate weapons would require a few more bullets unless headshots and the bigger units would require stronger weapons like shotungs, bows, snipers, pistols(lex prime) etc. For example you would kill the grunts with like a soma or like a tonkor then switch to the lex prime for heavy gunners for example, the grunts would have to be killed quickly but the heavier units because they would spawn less would open up possibilites to use a high damage weapon. The idea I mean is that more damage would mean slower reload, more spread etc, but that damage would cap at a headshot for most heavier units in the game, and the grunts would have low health which would mean you could mod that weapon for more fireate etc. I do hope some idea like that would make it fun from like lvl 1 to 100, but still not opposed to difficulty modes when the highest would require frame synergies more then the lowest etc. That sentient mode sounds like fun XD, the sentients are pretty fun to kill like the juggernaut, I just had a game when our team almost got wiped out by that guy XD, but I managed to to kill him with landslide's invulnerability phase and a few shots from the sancti tigris, but I mean I thought we wouldn't make it:P.

[Mr.Lube]

On 3/27/2016 at 10:46 PM, Satanistmicke said:

Okay, I hope I quoted you now XD, great post. Yeah I of course believe we should be powerful we are the Tenno. That's one thing I hate with scaling, like some frames in my opinion should be able to kill grunts with ease with some powers like Embers fireball for example no matter the level. But grunts should like get 1-shotted from single shot weapons and launchers, but high firerate weapons would require a few more bullets unless headshots and the bigger units would require stronger weapons like shotungs, bows, snipers, pistols(lex prime) etc. For example you would kill the grunts with like a soma or like a tonkor then switch to the lex prime for heavy gunners for example, the grunts would have to be killed quickly but the heavier units because they would spawn less would open up possibilites to use a high damage weapon. The idea I mean is that more damage would mean slower reload, more spread etc, but that damage would cap at a headshot for most heavier units in the game, and the grunts would have low health which would mean you could mod that weapon for more fireate etc. I do hope some idea like that would make it fun from like lvl 1 to 100, but still not opposed to difficulty modes when the highest would require frame synergies more then the lowest etc. That sentient mode sounds like fun XD, the sentients are pretty fun to kill like the juggernaut, I just had a game when our team almost got wiped out by that guy XD, but I managed to to kill him with landslide's invulnerability phase and a few shots from the sancti tigris, but I mean I thought we wouldn't make it:P.

Trash mobs could definitely work in Warframe. As long as they are backed up by a hierarchy of commanding units that put up a fight.

Edited March 28, 2016 by Mr.Lube

[Mr.Lube]

On 3/27/2016 at 8:37 PM, (PS4)WINDMILEYNO said:

But we are space ninjas. And our equals are the sentients. You do have to be stealthy and run around killing a few enemies at a time when you are fighting enemies on your level (sentients) let's get a sentient horde mode :D. When someone says we are over powered and shouldn't be able to kill trash mobs of grunts an masse, that's to me like saying the martial arts master in a Jackie Chan movie shouldn't be able to take on butt loads of average Joe enemies and survive. But he can, because they aren't on his level. I'm just sitting here on my liset, "git gud" on my bumper sticker, waving to all of the grineer and corpus who are beneath my level as an awe inspiring tenno.

The thing is that being the very best gets stale. You ever seen a movie where a really powerful bad guy does a bunch of stuff for the sake of "wanting a real challenge"? I never really understood that until now.

[ViolettaFoxx]

When they were in the process of Damage 2.0 way back when and adjusting how enemy armor and HP scales, I made a topic in response to their provided exponential growth graphs.

Why don't we just use a logarithmic equation for scaling? Instead of exponential? For those who don't know logarithmic graphs vs. exponential;

 

<- Log  (Don't assume negative values of course, most likely assume x=1 would be the start)

 

<- Exp Growth (current calculations for enemy hp/shield/armor scaling)

 

Either pair this with OP's idea or not, I believe this will solve the issue of running into a wall where it is no longer worth to try and kill enemies, and instead just spam CC/invulnerability/invisibility/ect.

Edited March 29, 2016 by ViolettaFoxx

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

6 hours ago, Mr.Lube said:

The thing is that being the very best gets stale. You ever seen a movie where a really powerful bad guy does a bunch of stuff for the sake of "wanting a real challenge"? I never really understood that until now.

One punch man understands your feels

[Feallike]

I agree.

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

What If there were a multiplayer version of warframe where we were the grineer/corpus (and infested if you get infected) and we group up in teams and fought against the tenno (sort of like how evolve works) and you could upgrade and customize your character. Moving up through the ranks and getting new mechanical augments for your body as a grineer, or a higher position as a corpus

You would spend most time on gaame though fighting against grineer or corpus...imagine giant mech weapons rolling over desolate alien worlds with grineer waging war against everything on their quest to complete domination

Edited March 30, 2016 by (PS4)WINDMILEYNO

[Mr.Lube]

16 hours ago, (PS4)WINDMILEYNO said:

What If there were a multiplayer version of warframe where we were the grineer/corpus (and infested if you get infected) and we group up in teams and fought against the tenno (sort of like how evolve works) and you could upgrade and customize your character. Moving up through the ranks and getting new mechanical augments for your body as a grineer, or a higher position as a corpus

You would spend most time on gaame though fighting against grineer or corpus...imagine giant mech weapons rolling over desolate alien worlds with grineer waging war against everything on their quest to complete domination

I love Evolve. A spin-off of sorts would be kool.

[Mr.Lube]

On 3/30/2016 at 9:15 PM, (PS4)WINDMILEYNO said:

One punch man understands your feels

EXACTLY THIS.

[motorfirebox]

On 3/30/2016 at 9:29 PM, (PS4)WINDMILEYNO said:

What If there were a multiplayer version of warframe where we were the grineer/corpus (and infested if you get infected) and we group up in teams and fought against the tenno (sort of like how evolve works) and you could upgrade and customize your character. Moving up through the ranks and getting new mechanical augments for your body as a grineer, or a higher position as a corpus

You would spend most time on gaame though fighting against grineer or corpus...imagine giant mech weapons rolling over desolate alien worlds with grineer waging war against everything on their quest to complete domination

Could be cool. I'd suggest (instead of, or in addition to) making a PvP mode for it. If you're playing as the enemy, it works sorta like a Battlefield game, where you respawn as a new random unit if you die. Do better, respawn as a better unit.

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

5 hours ago, motorfirebox said:

Could be cool. I'd suggest (instead of, or in addition to) making a PvP mode for it. If you're playing as the enemy, it works sorta like a Battlefield game, where you respawn as a new random unit if you die. Do better, respawn as a better unit.

I havnt played star wars battle front yet (;_;) but I was imagining warframe PvP being like the old one on the original PlayStation ( or ps2?), but warframe themed. 

I almost ashamed to say this, but iv always wondered what would happen between a crossover of Destiny v.s. warframe enemies. Cabal v.s. Grineer/ Fallen v.s. Corpus/ Hive v.s. Infested/ Vex v.s. Sentients and Guardians v.s. Tenno (sorry). (I realized these games are pretty much the same thing, I don't know about you guys, the little robot that wakes u up and follows you around is the equivalent if not same thing as a cephalon)

Edited April 1, 2016 by (PS4)WINDMILEYNO
Clarificationing

[chuckdm]

On 3/25/2016 at 9:54 PM, (PS4)WINDMILEYNO said:

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this to you...but mag was a really weird example, just saying (weird to me), out of all the frames that don't suffer from low duration. At 50% or lower, negative duration of you like, Ember does not need duration, her only duration ability is a weak fire ring that doesn't do anything to anyone after initial blast (accelerant maybe? No, no not really). Hey, even frames like Ash do not need duration if you only use smoke cloud as a stun (his invisibility doesn't really last that long anyway, if you wanted to be invisible Loki or ivara do it better), or zephyr who generally suffers from high duration, keeping everything around 100 actually seems to work best

Ember?  Maybe.  I mean I see your point.  But keep in mind, low duration increases the drain of WoF, too.  Drain-over-time powers work that way now - duration AND efficiency effect the amount of actual energy used.  My Ember Prime is built with 105% duration just because I'm using a 50% fleeting, 25% streamline, and a maxed Prime Continuity.  I could understand a build at like 95% using a maxed fleeting and maybe Blind Rage but that's at least 1, maybe 2 more forma, and a minimal amount of strength gained for it.

Ash I agree completely, though I would argue that the problem there is that smoke bomb is so damn useless for stealth.  If/when Ash gets another rework, I sincerely hope they buff the base duration on it.  Still, in his current state, you are absolutely correct.  I just didn't think about him.  I don't use my Ash Prime much, frankly.

And my Zephyr is built about 90% around use of Turbulence+Jet Stream.  I have her modded with a maxed Redirection and she's my go-to frame for Hijack missions because she has the best shield capacity of any frame with a defensive layer power (i.e. more than Rhino and Nezha).  Obviously, I have built mine for duration.  Also, the distance traveled by Tail Wind AND the duration of Tornados are both tied to Power Duration.  Hell, if you want to get technical, the amount of damage you get from Dive Bomb is tied directly to how far she falls, so buffing Tail Wind distance indirectly buffs Dive Bomb damage.  Literally her whole kit benefits from Duration.

So...Ember, maybe.  Ash, definitely, though hopefully that will no longer be true eventually.  And based on the DevStream preview of Mag, we're gonna want more duration for her soon, too.  In short, basically every frame needs at least SOME decent duration.

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

1 hour ago, chuckdm said:

Ember?  Maybe.  I mean I see your point.  But keep in mind, low duration increases the drain of WoF, too.  

I never noticed, I'm the silly person who uses rage, equilibrium, rejeuvanation and fleeting expertise, someone told me my build was silly, but it works for me, I don't need no durations:D

[Mr.Lube]

On 3/29/2016 at 5:28 PM, ViolettaFoxx said:

When they were in the process of Damage 2.0 way back when and adjusting how enemy armor and HP scales, I made a topic in response to their provided exponential growth graphs.

Why don't we just use a logarithmic equation for scaling? Instead of exponential? For those who don't know logarithmic graphs vs. exponential;

 

<- Log  (Don't assume negative values of course, most likely assume x=1 would be the start)

 

<- Exp Growth (current calculations for enemy hp/shield/armor scaling)

 

Either pair this with OP's idea or not, I believe this will solve the issue of running into a wall where it is no longer worth to try and kill enemies, and instead just spam CC/invulnerability/invisibility/ect.

This. 

Listen to this guy.

[AwesmePersn]

I saw this post and I was thinking that maybe instead level going up into infinity and the amount of enemies getting close to that, couldn't we just have different enemies spawn when we hit the level cap? I mean, there is a joke about the grineer being stupid, but after a while wouldn't they start sending more elite units? Imagine that at the 1h mark or something, instead of the level going up even more, smarter and more specialized units spawn. Instead of blindly rushing forward, the shield lancers go to the front followed by the regular lancers that spread out as soon as they can which then have heavy gunners using suppressive fire on you to let the regulars get to cover. Honestly, even the corpus who are supposed to be of at least average intelligence are not even smart enough to work together at all.

Also, instead of having eximus units, how about having variants of ALL units. Like make units on cold planets have more units resistant to cold, units on hot planets have more units resistant to heat, units on organic planets have more resistance to toxin, and etc. Make variants of units that behave differently. You could have multiple different lancers if it was too complicated to have all the AI pushed into the regular lancer.

Sorry if I came across as rambling somewhat, but please ask me if I wasn't clear on anything.

[Mr.Lube]

On 4/25/2016 at 11:23 AM, AwesmePersn said:

I saw this post and I was thinking that maybe instead level going up into infinity and the amount of enemies getting close to that, couldn't we just have different enemies spawn when we hit the level cap? I mean, there is a joke about the grineer being stupid, but after a while wouldn't they start sending more elite units? Imagine that at the 1h mark or something, instead of the level going up even more, smarter and more specialized units spawn. Instead of blindly rushing forward, the shield lancers go to the front followed by the regular lancers that spread out as soon as they can which then have heavy gunners using suppressive fire on you to let the regulars get to cover. Honestly, even the corpus who are supposed to be of at least average intelligence are not even smart enough to work together at all.

Also, instead of having eximus units, how about having variants of ALL units. Like make units on cold planets have more units resistant to cold, units on hot planets have more units resistant to heat, units on organic planets have more resistance to toxin, and etc. Make variants of units that behave differently. You could have multiple different lancers if it was too complicated to have all the AI pushed into the regular lancer.

Sorry if I came across as rambling somewhat, but please ask me if I wasn't clear on anything.

First off, thank you for your contribution.

Now, more advanced AI and tactics is the dream. I'm sure everyone would love that; the problem is that it may not be practical in terms of what DE can do. Now I don't know much about game design but I imagine that having an advanced adaptable AI with different strategies in place is pretty tricky to accomplish. I don't think that DE is able to make something of that caliber. With that in mind, I feel that introducing mini-bosses and some nightmare mode attributes to the mission would be a good way to force players out. Because we simply need a mechanic that forces players out regardless of their equipment.

and no, you weren't rambling.

[hukurokuju5]

CC is king.

and isn't infinite scaling already a way to force players out? ( at some point enemies are too hard to kill = have to leave?)

 

honestly, PVE is always doomed to get boring much faster than PVP, where there are almost endless permutations to possible movesets.