Sorties Show Just How Broken Armor Scaling Is Currently

[tnccs215]

42 minutes ago, Kevyne_Kicklighter said:

Specialized frames are nice, I love playing the Holy Paladin as my main in WoW for example - not melee not caster, a hybrid caster/tanky toon.

But when a player is dropped in Grineer territory to begin their first mission (and with zero mods!), then their existence until much later to even get to Corpus it's hard to defend specialization in Warframe.

The progression curve is missing. Either it's too easy or too difficult to the point of ridiculousness. No smooth gradient from ease to hardcore. A player can even feel on endless when they hit that hard "Please leave the instance now" message, when a SWAT team of annoyances hits you if solo or the team.

Some frames will have advantages over others, but opening the map that's where the balance is needed. Mag has to survive (if she's a player's starting frame, especially!) the journey to even get to trying other frames.

I complain a lot about it because that curve doesn't exist now. A smoother curve, it can be just right.

well... I'm forced to agree with that.

[(PSN)VariantX7]

8 hours ago, Lynxh said:

To be honest, this is a problem with having endless game modes. Even if DE tones down the armor scaling, sooner or later enemies will have health pools that will effectively achieve the same thing.

Reducing the armor scaling will only enable us to last longer until we run into the same "problem". There are only so many ways the game can make it harder on us, with all the means we currently have. I'd agree we need to tone it so it doesn't ramp up as fast as it does now though. Personally. I have damage numbers turned off since they serve no purpose. TTK is the only thing that matters to me, and as this topic shows, people seem to get down when they see small numbers. Seeing a huge damage number and not seeing my enemies health bar move is a lot more discouraging I'd say.

You could increase difficulty in other ways by adding modifiers to the missions as they go on.  Energy dampening fields that reduce the effectiveness of powers, armored coatings that eats a certain amount of damage before allowing you to damage the targets main health pools, higher ranking grineer start spawning with shields, orbital strikes from drones and later fomorians, corpus units that revive broken mech units, enemies gaining elemental damage. All these modifiers keep stacking in random orders while the mobs are still gaining levels should be enough to push players out without relying on making it so our weapons seem worthless  

[Fifield]

Some decent suggestions there.

6 minutes ago, (PS4)VariantX7 said:

 Energy dampening fields that reduce the effectiveness of powers

Would need to be intuitive, and people complain a lot about nullifiers.

7 minutes ago, (PS4)VariantX7 said:

armored coatings that eats a certain amount of damage before allowing you to damage the targets main health pools

No real difference from enemy scaling?

7 minutes ago, (PS4)VariantX7 said:

higher ranking grineer start spawning with shields

Not much difference from current scaling and would diminish Corpus identity.  Not totally averse to this idea though, nor giving some Corpus some armour.

8 minutes ago, (PS4)VariantX7 said:

orbital strikes from drones and later fomorians,

Indoors?

9 minutes ago, (PS4)VariantX7 said:

corpus units that revive broken mech units

Neat idea.

10 minutes ago, (PS4)VariantX7 said:

enemies gaining elemental damage.

Would again need to be obvious.  Enemy damage types don't currently play much of a role in the game.

[Kevyne_Kicklighter]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)VariantX7 said:

You could increase difficulty in other ways by adding modifiers to the missions as they go on.  Energy dampening fields that reduce the effectiveness of powers, armored coatings that eats a certain amount of damage before allowing you to damage the targets main health pools, higher ranking grineer start spawning with shields, orbital strikes from drones and later fomorians, corpus units that revive broken mech units, enemies gaining elemental damage. All these modifiers keep stacking in random orders while the mobs are still gaining levels should be enough to push players out without relying on making it so our weapons seem worthless  

Then the problem of what happened in WoW that I personally dislike: yellow text that states, IMMUNE, so your abilities you even have don't work against the targets.

This was the key to WoW's 12+ million player success: "Why nerf the boss, buff the player"...

I LOVE destroying the Infested with that Tonkor -- I killed more of them than ANY faction, because I feel powerful against endless enemies.

BIG yellow and red crits.

And laughing seeing them being launched into orbit!

Buffed and enjoying the experience.

Now that's not the case with Grineer, and if that's all Warframe has to offer as a gate/"challenge"/headaches, then it's time to mothball the game. Because then it's ALL work, not having some Zombiefest 3.0 on the side.

Progression curve. Time and place for everything makes a game fun to different demographics. Not one-size-fits-all and then nobody is happy.

Lots of lessons in WoW, lots of what not to repeat in other games to cause the same problems they're facing, too.

[(PSN)VariantX7]

1 hour ago, Fifield said:

Some decent suggestions there.

Would need to be intuitive, and people complain a lot about nullifiers.

yes , a lot of players dont like the modular corpus units because their cues are audio oriented rather than visual.

No real difference from enemy scaling?

I was thinking along the lines of " if target has x health ,then the coating cant go beyond 1.5 - 2.0 * x " it's probably not the best way of going about it I admit.

Not much difference from current scaling and would diminish Corpus identity.  Not totally averse to this idea though, nor giving some Corpus some armour.

I sort of looked at it as the grineer getting more desperate and using stuff they'd normally reserve only for their elites like tyl, ruk, or kela 

Indoors?

I figure whatever works thematically for the tileset ex. Tentacle hazards  spawning on the  eris tileset  that slow down tenno when they get too close

Neat idea.

Would again need to be obvious.  Enemy damage types don't currently play much of a role in the game.

Right, but the procs are way more debilitating, one guy getting a radiation proc equals a self-inflicted team wipe from a careless cast or dying because you were procced while they were casting and you were in range

 

Edited May 25, 2016 by (PS4)VariantX7

[Dracorya]

5 hours ago, Fifield said:

Oh no, teams having to co-ordinate where they stay longer than they're supposed to in Tower missions.  Whatever next?

Whilst this is a problem for solo players and 3x CP should not be obligatory, this is hardly a major issue.

The primary issue is the boringly-repetitive Care-Bear-easiness of the game.  Nerfing enemy scaling will make it even worse.

I do think it's damage that should be exponential...

And EHP the opposite, comme ci comme ca::

But for the love of God, let us have some challenge before you start nerfing enemies you shouldn't even be fighting.

Because we're talking about Sorties and somehow you bring in Tower missions. Okay thanks for that lesson. I clearly can't tell the two apart. /sarcasm

Edit:

You honestly somehow comparing Towers, which you HAVE to gather up a team with and thus easier to coordinate with, against Sorties which often most people jump into as Pubs is just silly by the way.

Edited May 26, 2016 by Dracorya
Clarification.

[Kevyne_Kicklighter]

2 minutes ago, Dracorya said:

Because we're talking about Sorties and somehow you bring in Tower missions. Okay thanks for that lesson. I clearly can't tell the two apart. /sarcasm

It doesn't matter if it's missions, Void, Nightmare modes or Sorties, the armor scaling isn't smooth. It's level 20-50 and "Okay, we can handle this"; level 60 BOOM DEAD scaling.

There's no ramp up, it's baseline to extreme in one level change.

[Dracorya]

1 minute ago, Kevyne_Kicklighter said:

It doesn't matter if it's missions, Void, Nightmare modes or Sorties, the armor scaling isn't smooth. It's level 20-50 and "Okay, we can handle this"; level 60 BOOM DEAD scaling.

There's no ramp up, it's baseline to extreme in one level change.

I don't disagree. Armor scaling needs to be smoothed out.

Just pointing out its easier to counter armor in Voids because you can actually coordinate with your squadmates. Versus Sorties were generally unless you form a group, you're just slapped together with random people who may or may not have what is needed to counter armor. That guy claiming I somehow want things to be "easy" clearly had no idea what the topic was about.

[Fifield]

1 hour ago, Dracorya said:

Because we're talking about Sorties and somehow you bring in Tower missions.

No.  You're not.... unless you're hanging around after the mission ends.

Scaling isn't broken in Sorities.  Even the one where enemies get high level is Corpus only.

[DrBorris]

I'd love to know who at DE thought exponential EHP scaling was a good idea. 

[Kevyne_Kicklighter]

1 minute ago, DrBorris said:

I'd love to know who at DE thought exponential EHP scaling was a good idea. 

It's the big numbers draw penalty. People want scaling mobs as a challenge, and this REALLY gets challenging!

The issue is the scaling isn't smooth, it's tiered, and while busy fighting you won't know that next tier mob ate your team and you when it arrives.

Add the back-to-back spawning mobs, killing one mob only to be replaced by a 2nd that quickly spawns in it's place, oooooh combat needs tweaking.

[Valar.Morghulis]

On 5/23/2016 at 1:53 PM, owendawgx said:

I mean this really shouldn't need any further explanation. 

Enemies should become harder to kill because they have more health, not because weapons completely cease doing damage after a certain point. It's silly, and just mandates certain team compositions (as in all corrosive projection), therefore eliminating aura diversity completely.

Maybe Mag rework will alleviate this to a degree, but that's still ignoring the bigger issue. 

Flat armor values with scaling health would make much more sense. It seems like you're punishing players who want to take on high level missions by limiting their options if they want to be even remotely effective.

I posted a thread a while back addressing Aura Diversity, If they tripled Aura effectiveness but made them not stack it would make more sense then the current system.