Do you trust DE to nerf/balance things correctly?

[WyckXaos]

Here is how i see it:

There is a weird scaling of monsters that seems to make no sense, but there is a plenty of "cheese" to deal with it - seems perfectly balanced for me :) And variety of the "cheese" varies from patch to patch, from hotfix to hotfix to keep thing interesting. 

Only thing i have issue with is three categories of weapons : ungodly overpowered weapons, good weapons and MR fodder. It will be good to reduce it to two categories: ungodly overpowered weapons and good weapons with a few (dozen will) do really weird weapons that makes players wonder - why they are in the game ? :)

So things that DE makes for balance\nerf seems good  enough for  me to trust them to keep the things intersting :)

Edited May 16, 2016 by WyckXaos
grammar.. though i might missed something

[climatiseur]

In the last stream when they were asked about the one thing they would do it differently, Scott said he would tone down the mods, as they were actually too powerful. So I assume they realize the problem of overall weapons and enemies are scaling too steeply. However, due to some reasons they cannot do anything about it right now.

 

I really hope they could adjust this problem because that's the root of many other problems. If they can really put effort in it first, there would be much less effort for them on the other matters as well as future balancing.

[Vazkra]

I trust they have the ability to do it, however I feel they have introduced so many new frames, mods, weapons that balancing them all is quite the task and I doubt they have a dedicated balancing team large enough to do it. I just wish they would slow down with releases and balance what we have but of course from a business perspective probably not a good idea.

Until then I pray for reworks on Oberon. Oh mighty fairy king. *Bows*

[Rorgal_Sina]

I trust DE more than I trust the community in balancing, so that's one thing.

[ashrah]

8 hours ago, RealPandemonium said:

They maybe could do a good job, if they actually went for it instead of allowing themselves to be hamstrung by the risk of backlash from the playerbase.  WF is supposedly still in beta but DE is afraid to treat us like testers and won't commit to large-scale changes for the better.  If they keep listening to lowest common denominator feedback, the game will inevitably spiral into a mess (arguably this has already happened.)

You also have to account for that fact that DE overall isn't terribly savvy about the game that they make, so they end up making a lot of WTF changes/additions and often introduce things like non-projectile RJ and Greedy Pull that are obviously red flags balance-wise to an experienced/savvy player but fly under DE's own radar until it's too late and a backlash is inevitable.  

1+ game is currentlly all over the place

[Cyonan]

If we trust them or not doesn't matter much, because it would be significantly worse if they didn't touch anything. So them doing balance changes is better than them not doing balance changes.

The question is "Do I trust the community more than DE?" to which the answer is: Of course not. Gaming communities as a whole don't know what the hell they're talking about when it comes to game balance.

Sure they should look at feedback, but if you let the community have a major say in the balance you're going to have problems. Not just with Warframe's community but any gaming community when voting on issues of balance is going to have most people voting selfishly rather than for what's in the best interest of the game.

Basically a large portion of people will fall into one of two groups: 1. Nerf everything to make the game super challenging and everybody else is just scrub who needs to git gud, and 2. Don't ever nerf anything no matter how powerful it is because I find it fun and people who don't like it shouldn't use it. Yes I'm generalizing it quite a bit, but these are the main two groups I always see when it comes to community balance.

Both approaches to game balance generally are terrible and come with their own problems.

[CaliburxZero]

I've been here for over 3 years now and I can tell you... I do not.  At least not efficiently/in a timely manner.

Balance is a mess on the overall, and while they seem to be decent at buffing... they are terrible at nerfing.  And that's okay given the complexity of the game.  HOWEVER...  The time it takes for them to take action on anything in the name of balance is just awful.  Very slow for nerfs, even slower for buffs.

Look.  Scaling for enemies when it comes to damage and armor is terrible, then you have weapons (probably my biggest frustration in balance) like Tonkor floating around which could use a slight nerf and large MR rank increase, and on the other end of the spectrum... All Machete-type melee weapons, the Stradavar MR8 rifle that I really want to love but its too weak, Mesa is a joke, and a handful of frames are way too niche for their own good.  There are too many examples to list for weapons, and this is just... saddening.  Of course its not easy given the sheer volume of weapons, but let's take a look at say, the Ignis buff... how long did that take?  How about the Mesa buff... how long did it take for them to even notice that frame is honestly, complete trash?

In a game where its this popular, there's no doubt when it comes to things being weak, someone's going to tell me in this thread "hey!  I like that and its not bad!"  and i'll give you a round of applause.  At best, these people are just in love with the design which i can COMPLETELY understand because there are so many things on this game i want to love but its just not very good... which one thing comes to mind is the sword + shield class of melee weapons as a whole but ultimately.. aren't so good.  Then at worst... people who are way too bias for their own good, and this could come in the form of anything ranging from personal interests to "white knighting" to anything in between.  And that's okay too.  Because those people most likely have at least one or two reasons for being that way that have merit in some way.

Now, when it comes to balance design... overall, know that i am pro-Saryn rework.  I do like alot of the conceptual things warframe does, and honestly they do keep things interesting.  Some is more difficult to use than others, and i feel that's the sign of good design.  Too much simplicity leads to boring gameplay.  Saryn's spore build is amazing, and honestly ignis is borderline mandatory for it.  Anybody remember that april fool's mission where you only got a broken ammo drum as a reward?  I cleared it dealing... 78% damage of my entire team with that.  Now, design while interesting though... isn't always practical.  In a game where damage obviously plays a paramount role, some frames like, say, Vauban... is too niche and not really all that useful.  Amazing CC, yes, but can it keep up in general-use?  No, of course not.  Some could argue that's fine, but i'm of the opinion its too extreme in a few cases.

Powercreep will happen in any game, and its more or less unavoidable, just remember that.  However what DE has done to curb that....  is not good design.  Queue the newer corpus enemies, something that is disgustingly lazy i feel for a band-aid... i'm looking at you Nullifiers.  Then you got blatant mods that should just BE apart of an item's design... many can argue some of the augments which i can agree with, but something like for example... body count I feel is just silly, and isn't just applied to the entire combo counter system as a more silly way of indirectly nerfing us.  

 

Anyways, I do have hope DE will fix alot of these things.  Some are too embedded into the very core of this game which i'm a bit skeptical over but hey, I don't expect a perfect game.  What I am 100% worried over is how painstakingly terribad they are at how fast they accomplish this... of course items that need a design rework to be more powerful should take a fair bit of time, but when it comes to weapons... some just need some numbers changed.  There's no excuse for the slowness of doing that in my opinion.  

Edited May 16, 2016 by CaliburxZero

[QuiQuQa]

But if not DE then who?

[(PSN)official_79]

6 hours ago, Helch0rn said:

you seem to have no idea how saryn works now.

ok I admit she is next to useless on the star chart but only because the enemys die too fast or there are not enough of them.

Saryn starts working around level 80 and up to level 150 I did not have any problems. (I did not have enough time to go beyond level 150 as I have a busy schedule)

 

inb4 Brozimes "proof" that the rework is bad. Brozime is a noob that does not know how to Saryn, the build he used is cancer, and he fought a single enemy, when in reality you never encounter a lone enemy and Saryns skills reflect that

I do have an idea of how Saryn works now, when I said "well, Saryn" its because previously I perceived Saryn as "meh" and the rework hasnt changed that.

I saw that video while learning to play her, and I saw her do nothing while using the full combo.

But since im not a mindless sheep I tried it for myself, and had similiar results. Then I switched over to x20 lvl 100 lancers, since they are more common and had little success. Then I tried against butchers and BOOM, there was the melting everyone was talking about.

So what did I learn from this? Full squad CP is the only way to melt enemies at high level, and both her and her molt die very quickly, so toxic lash is a useless ability.

So not too good, not too bad, just meh

[(XBOX)R0T IN]

Gamma nerf was pretty knarly back in the day

[RealPandemonium]

7 hours ago, ShaneKahnnigan17 said:

Yeah, let's just nerf everything then. That should solve it. 

Just do what I do man, play the game and have fun the rest leave it to the devs. 

There's not much of a game for me to play any more, otherwise I would play with enthusiasm.  People are too myopic to look past the short term mess that would result from a re-balance.  Things would be screwy for a while, but after the rebalance is complete, the game would be in a much more satisfying state for all.  Because people are terrified of losing cheese, they won't support DE's desire to change things for the better.  It's similar to Americans voting against their economic interests in an election because of fringe issues like gay marriage.  

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

The new Mag and Volt re-works look good. They tend to put out mechanics like Greedy Pull. It racks up internal numbers and then they nerf it to hell and back. Then a few months later I figure internal numbers show nobody is using this content like the Mag anymore. Re-works come in and suddenly those frames are fun again and in Mag's case it helped that DeScott was using her.

With the Tonkor you can see its replacements in the Staticor, the Sonicor, and Synoid Simulor. In few months something will replace them, so long as the enemy scaling is infinite. And the hall monitors and trolls will enjoy getting a rise on calling for their nerfs. But don't fret. De will introduce new metas, you just gotta smile and say, nobody is going back to that first year pile of junk your holding onto until they make it OP. 

I don't trust the community. Trolling is an art and if someone can ride the wave of tears on a blatant weapon like the Tonkor or whatever other top teir meta weapon they can undermine, they will. 

Edited May 16, 2016 by (PS4)FriendSharkey

[GorgonKain]

4 hours ago, Rorgal_Sina said:

I trust DE more than I trust the community in balancing, so that's one thing.

 

[(XBOX)dude1286]

Overall, I trust them more than other game developers outside of some of the fighting franchises. If we get more reworks like the Saryn rework that buffs underperforming frames (Hydroid, Oberon) and side buffs the meta frames (Ash, Mirage) then this game would have more frame variety. Even making more weapons viable would be awesome.

Of course, the enemy scaling should be addressed sooner rather than later. If it can by addressed properly, powercreep can tuned to a much lower level than it is now.

[TheBright888]

They will balance as they balanced the Focus Schools... and thats OK with me, because I dont need balance.^^

[Shreiko]

One of the games fatal flaws for me is the enemy design and balance. It's horrid and keeps getting worse. As long as that keeps getting worse I dont think any amount of frame balance will improve gameplay.

[RealPandemonium]

38 minutes ago, Shreiko said:

One of the games fatal flaws for me is the enemy design and balance. It's horrid and keeps getting worse. As long as that keeps getting worse I dont think any amount of frame balance will improve gameplay.

And the main driver for stupid enemy scaling problems is that we are fighting level 70+ enemies when Damage 2.0 was designed for a level 40-60 tops endgame.  The reason for having level 70+ enemies in regular content is because DE kept accommodating the endless mission forum faction and let weapon powercreep go out of control.  DE hasn't fixed this for fear of backlash from the players who have grown accustomed to their huge damage numbers and quasi-godmode.  If DE had nerfed appropriately and kept things within reason, then we would not have wound up in this SNAFU in the first place and they would have been able to move toward a better, more sustainable Warframe without fear of repercussions.  

Edited May 16, 2016 by RealPandemonium

[Shreiko]

1 minute ago, RealPandemonium said:

And the main driver for stupid enemy scaling problems is that we are fighting level 70+ enemies when Damage 2.0 was designed for a level 40-60 tops endgame.  The reason for having level 70+ enemies in regular content is because DE kept accommodating the endless mission forum faction and let weapon powercreep go out of control.  DE hasn't fixed this for fear of backlash from the players who have grown accustomed to their huge damage numbers and quasi-godmode.  If DE had nerfed appropriately and kept things within reason, then we would not have wound up in this SNAFU.  

Trust me, enemy scaling is already ridiculous enough, but my problem is the actual enemy design and how they are balanced. You get enemies like Hyekka masters that deal insane damage, proc fire damage that leeches health and shields while they have oneshot hyekka running around. Then you have enemies being introduced that just have innate resistance to warframe abilities in general. In warframe you are forced to cheese abilities because enemies hit too hard and health orbs are few and far between. Counterintuitive to that design flaw is that new enemies are being introduced that provide their allies safe haven from our spam-abilities. It is a very stupid arms-race DE is playing with the player base right now.

[Firetempest]

Would be nice if they had an experimental branch on steam like some games have. They can do more radical changes away from live and see how more people respond to it, not only through what we say but by what the metrics in game show. Like the 6D movement of archwing. Many have been wanting it and DE said "eeeehhhh, it may not be as great as you think" for over a year, now Steve is saying it shows promise. We could be testing it at large but it is effort and time to set it up. But we could possibly avoid problems like the first Stamina change they had to reverse. Or event mechanics they struggle with for the whole event. Or the damage 3.0 in the future. They have some in the know tight-knit testers but its no broad audience.

I imagine they also worry about giving players too much in a open testing environment, so much so they they no longer have the urge to buy anything in the live game as they can get their game jollies from the experimental branch. And its again, time and effort to design a user friendly version that has only select parts of the game available. Its a hard idea to sell over how they handle additions now. Patch and pray we like it.

[Zenkudu]

Yes, Digital Extremes is the developer and publisher so I have to put faith in the people who made the game or I would not play it, let alone spend money on the game.

[dual1020]

Personally, i do have some faith in them, and for the most part the stuff they released in terms of weapons, frames, abilities,etc are pretty ok in balancing, and even then this game is mainly PVE. However though, i do not trust the community in the forums (or elsewhere) to come up with ideas to balance/nerf things, because its a will be a vocal minority to make a fuss out of something. A great example would be the fuss surrounding greedy pull, mesa, saryn, synoid gammacor. If there was a way to track the people who wanted changes to the ones i mentioned before, and ask their opinion on it whether they used that frame/weapon/ability more or less because of it... id love to see it.    

[achromos]

18 hours ago, (PS4)official_79 said:

As the title says.

Personally I don't. Since April I have been playing for little over a year now, and in that time I have seen Mag fall out of usefulness, Greedy pull turn into a waste of plat/standing, Mesa receiving a justified nerf but left with unjustified energy drain (chroma too),  and Saryn turned into.... well, Saryn.

 

But I have also seen Excalibur's rise into viability, well deserved buffs to shotguns and snipers, aswell as scythes.

From what ive seen its hit or miss if they get things right the first time, and until that changes they need to be taking feedback from the entire community with consideration, whether they are new or seasoned tenno.

 

If I didn't put my trust in DE, why am I here?  Why am I giving them money periodically?  Being honest, your trust and mine... really aren't important on the grand scheme of things.  When they end up breaching the confidence of their player-base at large and not causing a few disgruntled customers at a time like EVERY game/company/ect does from time to time...  THEN it might matter.

 

It is impossible to make everyone happy with every update, but it's always possible to make someone, somewhere, unhappy.

Edited May 17, 2016 by achromos

[1tsyB1tsyN1nj4]

I really would like to, but I find myself more on the side of not being able to. Much like you I've been playing the game for about a year+ now, and I've seen some of those buffs and nerfs too. Yea, it is their game, but they need to remember that WE are the ones playing it. Even worse imo is what's yet to come in future updates, for example damage 3.0. Instead of fixing and balancing what is already in the game and works, they slog out more and more fluff and then expect to bring everything up to those standards. Ask yourself, if Warframe was finished right now as is, would it still be a fun game? If they stopped updating, and just left it. Personally, I'd say yes, because it has enough content to play around with. But that isn't the case, it is still in minor development, and there are bugs that need fixing and some slight balancing of things. This argument really sucks, because everyone has different opinions on it because there is an &#! load of content already for everybody.

[hukurokuju5]

NO BECAUSE WARMCOAT

also, DE doesnt tweak numbers at all.....  we still have those 5% status mods that do absolutely nothing