Should Warframe be more about balance?

[DrBorris]

No... I am not talking about that kind of balance. This is about the Tenno bringing "balance" to the system. Remember that? Lotus used to go on and on about how we are restoring balance but I have been hearing less and less of it lately.

 

Remember the old invasions? The Grineer and Corpus could actually conquer each other and take control of nodes, changing the spawns. Obviously this lead to issues especially when the G3 and Zanuka Hunter came out and people grinded the other faction into oblivion, leading to a faction losing entire control of planets (making farming stuff a pain). Despite those issues, it was pretty cool concept. Our actions having a significant effect on the system and actively changing how you play the game on a weekly if not daily basis sounds awesome.

 

So... with Star Chart 3.0, what if a sense of active "balance" was brought to the system. Have it so Grineer, Corpus and Infested can overrun each other, but with more significant pushbacks. So the new Star Chart has 5 regions, let's say each region had its own front. The Front could push back and forth, but every time the Grineer take over more territory the become actually more powerful in ALL missions in that region (more damage, armor, shields, speed, spawns, etcetera. Not sure what would be the best to scale). Something like this was done with the Sling Stone event, every region where the Fomorian was not destroyed had there drops cut in half for several weeks. That could actually apply. If a faction is losing in favor, their drops would start to drop. Then as a final thing to encourage keeping it near 50/50, give a bonus to drop rates if they are within like 10% of each other.

 

Then what if this did not apply only to Invasions? So every time you finish a capture or spy, you could choose to sell the data to the Grineer/Corpus for a reward. So you could fight the Corpus and benefit the Grineer for some rewards, pushing the balance more heavily, or you could just fight the Corpus and have little to no impact on the overall balance. Just throwing ideas out now.

 

And let's not forget about the Infested. Obviously the Infested are not part of "Balance," we would want them altogether gone if we could. They would obviously have a safe haven on Eris, but you could theoretically push them out of an area entirely. And to encourage fighting them, drop rates of Corpus/Grineer in the region would drop as they were taken over by Infested.

 

This is a lot of shots in the dark, it is a pretty basic premise with not much substance, what do you all think of something like this?

Edited April 19, 2016 by DrBorris

[crazyrr]

Hey Dr.Borris . This sounds like a great idea. I think it deserves  some serious consideration on DE's part. I would like to see other players expand on this too.

[Relentless.Zen]

18 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

Remember the old invasions? The Grineer and Corpus could actually conquer each other and take control of nodes, changing the spawns.

Yea, why did they even change it?

[--F--NerevarCM]

2 minutes ago, -S-O-Kranker said:

Yea, why did they even change it?

Because one day, Grineer took control of Jupiter, removing the spawn of Anti MOAs, Detron Crewmans and other enemies for days. Some people could not farm for mods that dropped from this enemies because all missions in Jupiter was full of Grineer. 

 

31 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

Obviously this lead to issues especially when the G3 and Zanuka Hunter came out and people grinded the other faction into oblivion, leading to a faction losing entire control of planets (making farming stuff a pain).

 

[DrBorris]

2 hours ago, -SDM-NerevarCM said:

Because one day, Grineer took control of Jupiter, removing the spawn of Anti MOAs, Detron Crewmans and other enemies for days. Some people could not farm for mods that dropped from this enemies because all missions in Jupiter was full of Grineer. 

What he said...

[(PSN)horridhal]

Considering balance, as it pertains to the 3 Factions we fight, is an incredibly subjective matter, how do you know we aren't?  The only faction we don't actively support is the Infested and, by killing Grineer and Corpus, we tacitly support them as well.

As to your idea, I see the same issues that we saw with every other system like it that has been implemented.  People will overwhelmingly choose one faction to support and the other two will take massive hits if there was any negative impact implemented as a result of that support.

I'd prefer it to me a more personal choice, the way it is now, that doesn't impact my game based on what the majority chooses to do. 

[(XBOX)DataStorm 8Bit]

A potential fix to a planet being taken over, is by doing this.

Start a 'grand invasion' on a planet, players will be payed by the original owner of the planet to play there and take it back from the opposing faction or infestation.

Also I want the infestation to actual feel like a very deadly disease, on Eris, they will be safe from take overs, however, if for example, the one corpus mission there gets taken over, an infestation is spread to another planet, and will begin to rapidly spread, nearly taking over the entire planet if not contained. (By the way, spreading only will happen after a node's invasion ends, and the infestation stay too-long)

The reason why we defend against these creatures? Simple, rewards and keeping our favorite nodes. Imagine if Draco became infestation, that's the fun factor out the window because infestation intercept is not fair.

So player will try to contain the virus, eventually containing it back in the quarantine known as Eris.

[Gelkor]

4 hours ago, -SDM-NerevarCM said:

Because one day, Grineer took control of Jupiter, removing the spawn of Anti MOAs, Detron Crewmans and other enemies for days. Some people could not farm for mods that dropped from this enemies because all missions in Jupiter was full of Grineer. 

 

 

Which, when you think about it, could be easily solved by making certain mods drop more from planets than from enemies, no matter who controls the planet, just make a drop equivalency table from different levels of corpus enemies to similar difficulty/rarity grineer and infested, etc.  Resources already worked like that.  The also did it chiefly because of Vey Hek Beacons from prosecutors, because if the Grineer got pushed off Ceres, no one could farm Vay Hek, but that's changed, and they never changed the rest back.

Edited April 19, 2016 by Gelkor

[(PSN)robotwars7]

the way I believe invasions should go:

each attack starts with one faction moving in on another's territory as they do now, with the most supported side taking over that node completely and replacing the faction that is supposed to be there. say the Corpus move on Ceres: if they are supported enough to win a node, it stays a corpus node, but the option to help the Grineer reclaim it would always be there, and the node would become a Grineer base again if enough players made it so.  when the Corpus take a node, there's a 2 day wait until they fight the Grineer on another node next to it, and so on until the whole of Ceres (except the Dark sectors and Boss Node of course) belongs to the Corpus.

in order to avoid resource problems, the resources for the planets would remain the same, and enemies would be given the drop tables of their enemy counterpart, e.g. Crewman would drop Lancer's mods, Techs would Drop Heavy Gunner mods etc. so anyone farming a specific enemy type doesn't get screwed over.

 

[DrBorris]

7 hours ago, (PS4)horridhal said:

Considering balance, as it pertains to the 3 Factions we fight, is an incredibly subjective matter, how do you know we aren't?  The only faction we don't actively support is the Infested and, by killing Grineer and Corpus, we tacitly support them as well.

As to your idea, I see the same issues that we saw with every other system like it that has been implemented.  People will overwhelmingly choose one faction to support and the other two will take massive hits if there was any negative impact implemented as a result of that support.

I'd prefer it to me a more personal choice, the way it is now, that doesn't impact my game based on what the majority chooses to do. 

I get where you are coming from with encouraging layer choice, but the other side of that coin is that it means the players actions have no effect on the world of Warframe. You don't have to play Invasions or hand over the data you retrieved, you can always keep it to yourself and ignore that aspect of the balance, it is your decision. As for one faction dominating the other, that is why I talked about the push backs. As one faction grows stronger in a region, all of their troops in that region literally grow stronger (harder levels). And if you manage to keep the Corpus/Grineer within 10% there should be some kind of reward like a region-wide +20% loot drop chance. Things like these that encourage the general player to maintain some sort of balance. And of course an individual can overwhelmingly support one faction, chances are another will be there to overwhelmingly support the other.

[(PSN)horridhal]

6 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

I get where you are coming from with encouraging layer choice, but the other side of that coin is that it means the players actions have no effect on the world of Warframe.

I get where you are coming from as well but, as I said, I would personally just prefer player interaction to be minimal and confined to events.  I just really don't like the idea of the player base being able to drastically affect the normal day to day missions but I don't mind our actions having an effect in the event setting.

I'm not meaning to poo-poo your idea by any means, just giving my thoughts on the subject.  ^_^