Dev Workshop Part 2: ...& more Warframe Changes.

[gluih]

8 minutes ago, Arkvold said:

Okay DE.  I'm going to step back from the actual decisions being made here.  I want to talk about the philosophy behind them, and what you, as developers, need to be thinking about when you make these changes.  They smack of kneejerk reactions, without understanding the deeper meanings of why things happen the way they do.  So as someone who's worked in game development myself, I'm going to help you bridge the gap between player's-eye viewpoint and dev's-eye viewpoint.

Now, with any content you make, people are going to look for strategies that beat it.  That's the nature of the game.  It's the nature of every video game - to overcome the challenges the devs have put before you and reap the rewards, then use those rewards to meet and overcome the next set of challenges.  Your goal, as a developer, is to provide a challenge to your playerbase that is difficult enough to require strategy and tactics and preparation, but is also winnable within a margin of error that is humanly achievable.

Warframe's highest-end content has a serious problem with that.  Once enemy levels get into the 60s, 70s, 80s+, survival becomes increasingly binary.  You are either alive and strictly invulnerable, invisible, or sheltered behind tens of thousands of intervening effective health points, or you are dead the moment you are exposed to enemy fire.  First it's the bombards, who deal ridiculous damage over huge AoE.  Then you notice that seekers and eviscerators are one-shotting you too, and soon enough you fear stepping outside that Frost's bubble for even a half second lest you catch a stray Grakata round and spontaneously evaporate into a cloud of gore.

Some people look at that and go 'nope, not playing that, that's not fun.'  In the interest of full disclosure, I'm one of 'em, typically.  I've never been fond of games where one slight mistake will end you.  This is why I don't play sorties, despite the rewards.  I don't know a lot of people, I don't like trying to put together a team for it, and it has such strict requirements on what you can and cannot bring to the table that most of my arsenal is useless in it.

Others, however, look at that and go 'challenge accepted.'  They will look for ways to overcome even this extreme difficulty.  Like Ivara surviving while invisible and using sleep arrow and covert lethality to score kills regardless of armor and HP.  Or Blind Mirage rendering entire spawns comatose across an entire map and then merrily obliterating them one after another.  Or Ash using a combination of invulnerability and finisher damage to kill enemies he could never take in a straight fight.  Or Excalibur utilizing EB's range and blind-spin to get free finishers and stay out of reach of enemies while still benefitting from his sword boost passive.

The fact is, players look for ways to trivialize content because there's content that's very good at trivializing players.  It is, in fact, using content-trivializing strategies is the only way to survive player-trivializing content.

When health and armor don't matter, and shields are merely a formality between enemies and your health, your best guns take off mere slivers of enemy health, and all the buffs in the world won't fix either of those situations, that's when players reach for the nuke options - invulnerability, invisibility, scaling damage absorption, finisher damage, finisher openers, and instant-kills.

What's important to remember is that players are right to do this.  You made the content capable of obliterating anyone without these tools; therefore, players are going to use the tools you gave them that work.  And they're going to keep using them, until you either take the tools away (nerfing), or the tools are no longer necessary and there are more efficient and less-drastic means of accomplishing the mission.  If my guns started to deal damage again, and my shields and health could actually survive a bullet or two, I might decide to use them over wtfhax bladestorm/stacked snowglobes/BLIND BLIND BLIND SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP FINISHER FINISHER FINISHER.

So here's what you, as game devs, need to do.  Ask yourselves the question, "What are players SUPPOSED to do to defeat this content?"  And gear your changes towards THAT.  You need to make a hard decision as to what gear and what methods players are allowed to use, and which are exploitative and need to be either nerfed-out or compensated for.  The answer "Players aren't supposed to defeat this content" isn't an acceptable answer; it's a terrible GM that measures success in trashed character sheets, and likewise it's a terrible developer that measures success in Game Overs.

Finally, you need to look at rewards in the light of the effort required to get them.  If defeating a piece of content is supposed to be a difficult task and a momentous event when you and your cell succeeds, then the rewards should be commensurate.  The rewards need to be something immediately good and useful.  If you throw out player-trivializing content, and then say to those who beat it "Congratulations, now run it five hundred times more if you want a reasonable chance to get the actual good rewards from it" then they're going to look at you, scoff, and walk out.

This is how you make good gameplay.

A lot of this post is true, however-

It's not like every enemy in sorties will just kill you. Actually using defensive mods makes a big difference and modding your weapons correctly to make sure they are effective against the enemy type in that mission is very important. Sure there are some enemy types or sortie conditions where there is not a lot the players can do, but - and this is very important- it's not like the balancing doesn't work at all even at that level. Level 80-100 is where the armor scaling becomes a big problem and where the defensive options fall apart, but small changes to the system have a huge impact. So it's not like the cheesy tactics are actually needed.

Players are right to use whatever tactic is the best way to beat the mission. They will however not stop using those cheesy tactics, when they aren't needed. Blinding the whole T4 interception map on mirage is absolutly not needed, but players still do it, because it's an easy way to complete that mission.

[Magnulast]

12 minutes ago, (PS4)Cwellann said:

You don't always do this?  Ok, am I doing it wrong or is everyone else? :3

Honestly, I just think the minimum safe number's going to switch to 6.  The pad puzzle really isn't an issue.  Just block, might take an extra attempt or two, but I've been in 4 man's with a terrible Mirage, and got it done in under 5 minutes.  Frost for pad bubbles in the the tram part, Vauban/Loki combo can easily protect the tram, the two trins can stand on pads, and a Mirage can still be useful by spamming prisms sent out in different directions to cause overlapping blinds, assuming blind is LoS from the explosion. or, alternately, have the Loki stand on a pad after disarming the room, and have the Mirage run around blinding, allowing her to easily wipe the G3 too, as even a blind setup with a Simulor wrecks the G3 in NM pretty easily.

Well, no-one in my squad does, they just let me EV the thing. Sometimes people kill it, and sometimes they ignore it.

Basically all this is removing is the "required builds" to do a LoR.

[ScorpDK]

As neat as the adjustments are, I don't really believe in "slight damage buffs to compensate", considering that very few actually use damaging powers in end-game scenarios due to how the damage inflicted becomes laughable as enemies keep scaling up, while 95% of all WF powers do not. Given our powers are fueled by void energy, it wouldn't be wrong to assume that they should continue to be efficient even against a level 200, 500 or even 1000+ enemy. Same would apply to channeling void energy through your blade, dealing damage according to their base HP, rather than their scaled one. There can be a falloff to this, sure, but at the very least you will use all your tools and won't just rely on crowd control and the heaviest ranged/melee weapon you got on you.

I know that requires a lot of balancing, but it keeps all powers useful past the first few planets - and we know you're already working on some powers to make them more useful in later stages of the game (Such as Volt's Ultimate using the enemies' HP pools to base the damage on)

[(PSN)RenovaKunumaru]

25 minutes ago, Arkvold said:

Okay DE.  I'm going to step back from the actual decisions being made here.  I want to talk about the philosophy behind them, and what you, as developers, need to be thinking about when you make these changes.  They smack of kneejerk reactions, without understanding the deeper meanings of why things happen the way they do.  So as someone who's worked in game development myself, I'm going to help you bridge the gap between player's-eye viewpoint and dev's-eye viewpoint.

Now, with any content you make, people are going to look for strategies that beat it.  That's the nature of the game.  It's the nature of every video game - to overcome the challenges the devs have put before you and reap the rewards, then use those rewards to meet and overcome the next set of challenges.  Your goal, as a developer, is to provide a challenge to your playerbase that is difficult enough to require strategy and tactics and preparation, but is also winnable within a margin of error that is humanly achievable.

Warframe's highest-end content has a serious problem with that.  Once enemy levels get into the 60s, 70s, 80s+, survival becomes increasingly binary.  You are either alive and strictly invulnerable, invisible, or sheltered behind tens of thousands of intervening effective health points, or you are dead the moment you are exposed to enemy fire.  First it's the bombards, who deal ridiculous damage over huge AoE.  Then you notice that seekers and eviscerators are one-shotting you too, and soon enough you fear stepping outside that Frost's bubble for even a half second lest you catch a stray Grakata round and spontaneously evaporate into a cloud of gore.

Some people look at that and go 'nope, not playing that, that's not fun.'  In the interest of full disclosure, I'm one of 'em, typically.  I've never been fond of games where one slight mistake will end you.  This is why I don't play sorties, despite the rewards.  I don't know a lot of people, I don't like trying to put together a team for it, and it has such strict requirements on what you can and cannot bring to the table that most of my arsenal is useless in it.

Others, however, look at that and go 'challenge accepted.'  They will look for ways to overcome even this extreme difficulty.  Like Ivara surviving while invisible and using sleep arrow and covert lethality to score kills regardless of armor and HP.  Or Blind Mirage rendering entire spawns comatose across an entire map and then merrily obliterating them one after another.  Or Ash using a combination of invulnerability and finisher damage to kill enemies he could never take in a straight fight.  Or Excalibur utilizing EB's range and blind-spin to get free finishers and stay out of reach of enemies while still benefitting from his sword boost passive.

The fact is, players look for ways to trivialize content because there's content that's very good at trivializing players. In fact, using content-trivializing strategies is the only way to survive player-trivializing content.

When health and armor don't matter, and shields are merely a formality between enemies and your health, your best guns take off mere slivers of enemy health, and all the buffs in the world won't fix either of those situations, that's when players reach for the nuke options - invulnerability, invisibility, scaling damage absorption, finisher damage, finisher openers, and instant-kills.

What's important to remember is that players are right to do this.  You made the content capable of obliterating anyone without these tools; therefore, players are going to use the tools you gave them that work.  And they're going to keep using them, until you either take the tools away (nerfing), or the tools are no longer necessary and there are more efficient and less-drastic means of accomplishing the mission.  If my guns started to deal damage again, and my shields and health could actually survive a bullet or two, I might decide to use them over wtfhax bladestorm/stacked snowglobes/BLIND BLIND BLIND SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP FINISHER FINISHER FINISHER.

So here's what you, as game devs, need to do.  Ask yourselves the question, "What are players SUPPOSED to do to defeat this content?"  And gear your changes towards THAT.  You need to make a hard decision as to what gear and what methods players are allowed to use, and which are exploitative and need to be either nerfed-out or compensated for.  The answer "Players aren't supposed to defeat this content" isn't an acceptable answer; it's a terrible GM that measures success in trashed character sheets, and likewise it's a terrible developer that measures success in Game Overs.

Finally, you need to look at rewards in the light of the effort required to get them.  If defeating a piece of content is supposed to be a difficult task and a momentous event when you and your cell succeeds, then the rewards should be commensurate.  The rewards need to be something immediately good and useful.  If you throw out player-trivializing content, and then say to those who beat it "Congratulations, now run it five hundred times more if you want a reasonable chance to get the actual good rewards from it" then they're going to look at you, scoff, and walk out.

This is how you make good gameplay.

Let us know DE that you are tweaking the enemies to reflect the nature of the nerfs. One shot gameplay from either side of the spectrum of The Tenno vs their enemies isn't fun.

Edited May 27, 2016 by (PS4)RenovaKunumaru

[(PSN)Cwellann]

Just now, Magnulast said:

Basically all this is removing is the "required builds" to do a LoR.

The EV's always off in a side room for me >.>

And removing required builds is definitely not a bad thing.  But the whole reason there was in the first place (at least for nm) is that bloody binary situation again.  BZZAAP! LOLYOUFAILSORRYBOUTYOURKEYBRAH (this has only ever happened to me ... 5 times?  I think?  3 because of people hopping off pads willfully, I am not grinding an axe because wanh it's too hard).  I don't mind Nightmare being hard (that's, like, the point, man), but allowing literally zero margin for error is bad design and results in the cheesy meta we got.  As we all keep saying, it all leads back to broken enemy design.

[K0bra]

This arent changes! Name it by what they are ------> NERFS!

Its so annoying that some warframes gets Changes,buffs,nerfs,changes,buffs,nerfs.Some warframes are so overaffected by this that it isnt funny anymore.So tiring.These warframes are out for YEARS cant you arrange how they should be finally?Small adjustments or a complete rework are fine because the game is evolving but that ? You rework them and nerf them one year later?sorry i have to critize this.

In at least 2 years we will see the next changes ,nerfs ,buffs to these warframes.

Edited May 27, 2016 by K0bra

[Gelkor]

I agree with most of these changes except the Radial Spin Blind change, its such a low range as to be worthless anyways, now making it cost energy is just going to make slide attacks a hindrance, unless the range on it is increased, this is a silly change.

[DxAdder]

Just a question when will we see some buffs for under-performing frames ? It would have been nice to throw these in at the same time.

And please re-think most of the passives, they kinda suck.

 

 

[gluih]

4 hours ago, Geraion said:

No, that's silly for Excal. You can build for his abilities as you see fit, chaining them just makes him a muuuuch worse Nezha. It's fine as it is now. The changes to EB are ok as well, means I can go back to not using it most of the time and not feel awful for not using it, because it's so strong, you'd almost be $&*&*#(%& not to. Even on a finisher build.

 

Bleed proc for everything? No... Why?

...you can't use any other abilities while you spam 4, no point. And no point in using shuriken either, it sucks, and costs valuable time to use on -2- enemies. And not always the 2 you aim at.

Er...I smell Zed here. Also...why?

 

Leaving that to DE, as long as his stealth and TP still work more or less as they do now, I'm fine. Because I actually really dig the finisher TP. Which would render the change (or vice versa, if it happened) moot.

 

I agree with the armor reduction, it would help a little against insane enemy scaling.

 

As for healers, can't say much there, I despise spamming Trin's 2, and nothing else. Ever. Ugh.

I overall like the changes, but I would personally like to use excal more like an actual melee frame (most players don't even know that you have a combo counter with exalted blade- it's just that the waves don't add to it) + radial blind is extremely strong when you compare it to other "2" ablities.

Now the idea I had for a bladestorm rework is, that you actually don't just start jumping around when you use bladestorm. You would mark the enemies and then kill them actively yourself.

Every attack adding a bleed proc, not only gives you a lot of extra damage, but the rest of your team aswell.

The shuriken part could be changed so shuriken would just deal more damage to marked enemies- that might actually make more sense.

Leaving shadows at every enemy you attack would mean, that it can be used in a similar way that it is used right now.

I actually think the change to armor reduction would make a huge difference. Let's say you have 1 corrosive projection and you manage to proc corrosive 1 time. This would result in the armor being reduced by 55% already. Then you can use stuff like frost ultimate, abating link augment etc and you would only have to reduce the armor by 45%, rather than the 100% that is required right now if you want to remove armor completly.

Edited May 27, 2016 by gluih

[ThatOddDeer]

2 minutes ago, gluih said:

I overall like the changes, but I would personally like to use excal more like an actual melee frame(most players don't even know that body count does work on excal- it's just that the waves don't add combo counter) + radial blind is extremely strong when you compare it to other "2" ablities.

 

 

Just to clear it up. Unless its been recently secretly added, EB still doesn't work with body count or blood rush. Even if you hit an enemy with the sword itself you only get 3 seconds of timer.

[(PSN)Fazcnation]

Maybe this isn't the right place and I just didn't see it anywhere else but what about Zephyr? I think she needs a substantial rework since Parkour 2.0 was released. Let her fly, I'm all for a Freebird! Hope you got something coming up for her. Pretty Please! 

Edited May 27, 2016 by (PS4)Fazcnation

[Fi-le]

why dont just say "THROW  ALL YOUR WARFRAME AND USE ONLY EXCALIBUR"?! i HATE that f... excalibur, he can kill everything even with a melee without mods and there are warframe that can litterally nothing even to enemies lvl 30 (Banshee, Limbo, Volt, Hydroid, Nyx, Zephyr, and so on...) yeah just Destroy Mirage (i already don't do Raid because of "intelligent" people), destroy Varkyr,  destroy Saryn (everyone were complaining about her "strenght" and because she was Press4ToWin wich was not true, Excalibur is NOT Press4ToWin noooooooooo he is Press *MeleeKey"* to Win im sorry..... she was only used to make invasions missions faster, now she can't kill lvl 30 enemies. Why i should press 1-2-3-4 like 60times for trying to kill someone if i can use my pistol and shoot them in the head in less then 3seconds!?), destroy Mesa, destroy Ash, destroy Trinity (we already have to deal with Glaive and the charge attack then you "give it a look"...) just because Excalibur is the "Marscot" and everyone MUST use it...

I really apologize for my rudeness, but instead of "take a look" to the characters why not take a look at the enemies that shoot as if they have reload mods and magazine capacity mods...

it does not matter anymore because you will do so... che sarà sarà (What will be will be)

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)Fazcnation said:

Maybe this isn't the right place and I just didn't see it anywhere else but what about Zephyr? I think she needs a substantial rework since Parkour 2.0 was released. Let her fly, I'm all for a Freebird! Hope you got something coming up for her. Pretty Please! 

You can fly all you want in archwing missions with her ...

[Zarozian]

But what about Rhino?! ;<

[Nekrosmas]

55 minutes ago, Arkvold said:

Okay DE.  I'm going to step back from the actual decisions being made here.  I want to talk about the philosophy behind them, and what you, as developers, need to be thinking about when you make these changes.  They smack of kneejerk reactions, without understanding the deeper meanings of why things happen the way they do.  So as someone who's worked in game development myself, I'm going to help you bridge the gap between player's-eye viewpoint and dev's-eye viewpoint.

Now, with any content you make, people are going to look for strategies that beat it.  That's the nature of the game.  It's the nature of every video game - to overcome the challenges the devs have put before you and reap the rewards, then use those rewards to meet and overcome the next set of challenges.  Your goal, as a developer, is to provide a challenge to your playerbase that is difficult enough to require strategy and tactics and preparation, but is also winnable within a margin of error that is humanly achievable.

Warframe's highest-end content has a serious problem with that.  Once enemy levels get into the 60s, 70s, 80s+, survival becomes increasingly binary.  You are either alive and strictly invulnerable, invisible, or sheltered behind tens of thousands of intervening effective health points, or you are dead the moment you are exposed to enemy fire.  First it's the bombards, who deal ridiculous damage over huge AoE.  Then you notice that seekers and eviscerators are one-shotting you too, and soon enough you fear stepping outside that Frost's bubble for even a half second lest you catch a stray Grakata round and spontaneously evaporate into a cloud of gore.

Some people look at that and go 'nope, not playing that, that's not fun.'  In the interest of full disclosure, I'm one of 'em, typically.  I've never been fond of games where one slight mistake will end you.  This is why I don't play sorties, despite the rewards.  I don't know a lot of people, I don't like trying to put together a team for it, and it has such strict requirements on what you can and cannot bring to the table that most of my arsenal is useless in it.

Others, however, look at that and go 'challenge accepted.'  They will look for ways to overcome even this extreme difficulty.  Like Ivara surviving while invisible and using sleep arrow and covert lethality to score kills regardless of armor and HP.  Or Blind Mirage rendering entire spawns comatose across an entire map and then merrily obliterating them one after another.  Or Ash using a combination of invulnerability and finisher damage to kill enemies he could never take in a straight fight.  Or Excalibur utilizing EB's range and blind-spin to get free finishers and stay out of reach of enemies while still benefitting from his sword boost passive.

The fact is, players look for ways to trivialize content because there's content that's very good at trivializing players. In fact, using content-trivializing strategies is the only way to survive player-trivializing content.

When health and armor don't matter, and shields are merely a formality between enemies and your health, your best guns take off mere slivers of enemy health, and all the buffs in the world won't fix either of those situations, that's when players reach for the nuke options - invulnerability, invisibility, scaling damage absorption, finisher damage, finisher openers, and instant-kills.

What's important to remember is that players are right to do this.  You made the content capable of obliterating anyone without these tools; therefore, players are going to use the tools you gave them that work.  And they're going to keep using them, until you either take the tools away (nerfing), or the tools are no longer necessary and there are more efficient and less-drastic means of accomplishing the mission.  If my guns started to deal damage again, and my shields and health could actually survive a bullet or two, I might decide to use them over wtfhax bladestorm/stacked snowglobes/BLIND BLIND BLIND SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP FINISHER FINISHER FINISHER.

So here's what you, as game devs, need to do.  Ask yourselves the question, "What are players SUPPOSED to do to defeat this content?"  And gear your changes towards THAT.  You need to make a hard decision as to what gear and what methods players are allowed to use, and which are exploitative and need to be either nerfed-out or compensated for.  The answer "Players aren't supposed to defeat this content" isn't an acceptable answer; it's a terrible GM that measures success in trashed character sheets, and likewise it's a terrible developer that measures success in Game Overs.

Finally, you need to look at rewards in the light of the effort required to get them.  If defeating a piece of content is supposed to be a difficult task and a momentous event when you and your cell succeeds, then the rewards should be commensurate.  The rewards need to be something immediately good and useful.  If you throw out player-trivializing content, and then say to those who beat it "Congratulations, now run it five hundred times more if you want a reasonable chance to get the actual good rewards from it" then they're going to look at you, scoff, and walk out.

This is how you make good gameplay.

Edit: Oh my god I cannot agree more.

 

Nerfing Blessing, if that is the case, would be a rather underwhelming idea. Reasons had already been stated numerous times above.

On the Mirage nerf.

Look - I just got in to LoR with some of my friends, and Mirage's Blind is essentially what keep us alive in the first 2 phases. We have full CP yet the enemy is just insanely tough and impossible to clear out. The Damage buff is rather Meh as it's not most people use it for anyway - People want the Blind effect.

I Understand that it is rather silly to blind the entire map effortlessly, but PLEASE DE Consider scaling down the enemy in end game as well. You can't kill them all like earlier phases - stealth or blinding are the only way to get through missions like LoR. Without Blinding, many mission will suddenly become incredibly tough.

Basically, what I want to say is that when you are balancing Warframes, consider balancing the "Enemies" as well.

Edited May 27, 2016 by Alvin_1020

[(PSN)Pengu_Imperialus]

1 minute ago, DeltaRED said:

You can fly all you want in archwing missions with her ...

I maxed out her airtime and when I'm in low gravity missions it is the strangest thing in the world...  I'll just glide right past stuff and be cursing under my breath lol.

[gluih]

7 minutes ago, ThatOddDeer said:

Just to clear it up. Unless its been recently secretly added, EB still doesn't work with body count or blood rush. Even if you hit an enemy with the sword itself you only get 3 seconds of timer.

That's actually true. Edited the post. It doesn't make a big difference tho, since you don't really get to attack in melee with exalted blade anyway.

[(PSN)TENZA_ZANGETSU-]

Please change Ash bladestorm i am so sick going in sorties and see 3 ash primes and the just bladestorm the whole time

leave trinity bless alone

[Pandoran_Stallion]

@[DE]Rebecca Although it's been a while since I've posted on the forums, I have to say that I like the direction these reworks are going in. They balance abilities and gunplay, encourage build diversity, and prevent the meta that has emerged from trivializing more difficult content that has resulted in fewer players who can play the game flexibly. The transparency and the thorough explanation of the logic behind these changes is the polar opposite of the mentality that seemed to govern balance passes when Viver was the primary loot cave, and I hope that this openness in the development process regarding balance passes continues. 

On topic, I would like to voice my concerns with the Excalibur EB Blind along with some of the other replies to this topic. Energy drain is an unnecessary cost when the effects of EB Blind are mitigated compared to the original. I also wholly agree with the need to change abilities like Blessing and Bladestorm as well. Blessing is certainly too spammable- I think that a toggle may be in order. In addition, Bladestorm's lack of interactivity when used makes it a perfect way to 'cheese' gameplay. Putting more effort into the ability while increasing the reward could, in my opinion, foster the development of skilled players and reward players who select targets carefully.

If I may recommend one thing that needs a balance pass, it would be Mesa's Peacemaker- not because it is overpowered, but because it is lackluster. Her damage does not scale efficiently into late game, and the ability's zoom levels, while understandable in balancing, are too drastic to allow the ability to be effective. I will have to hold comments on Volt and Mag until their reworks are released, but judging from past reworks I expect that they will be balanced quite fairly.

[ThatOddDeer]

17 minutes ago, gluih said:

That's actually true. Edited the post. It doesn't make a big difference tho, since you don't really get to attack in melee with exalted blade anyway.

You do if you use shadowstep, 15% crit chance is enough to keep it going reasonably. But the problem is that you're doing 15-20% of the damage a crit melee with an impactful stance is doing but it costs you energy to maintain. 

[Yaerion]

I appreciate these due changes on Mirage. I still think that Sleight of Hand should affect enemies' firearms in some way (something similar to Mesa's Shooting Gallery but more random like jokes and novelties).

Regarding Excalibur:

I'd rather remove the blind from EB and make Excalibur perform a wide arc for the slide attack, releasing a powerful half-moon-ish wave expanding widely, able to stagger groups of enemies. Let's call the epic move "Half Moon" \o/
Also, please change Radial Javelin into a more defensive ability (summons an aura of flying blades deflecting damage (the blades are destroyed and the protection becomes less effective through time, so Excalibur can press 3 again and release the current Radial Javelin to be able to cast a new aura))... and remove the auto-parry on EB. This mechanic induces lazy gameplay, is unjustified, and teaches bad habits to the new players. Let us parry manually to achieve the perfect front-protection with the help of the brand new Radial Javelin explained above.

All of these changes would be imo more equilibrium to Excalibur: power 1 mobility, power 2 crowd control/team assistance, power 3 protection, power 4 offensive.

 

Thank youuuu for the hard work anyway!!

[ThatOddDeer]

3 minutes ago, Yaerion said:

I appreciate these due changes on Mirage. I still think that Sleight of Hand should affect enemies' firearms in some way (something similar to Mesa's Shooting Gallery but more random like jokes and novelties).

Regarding Excalibur:

I'd rather remove the blind from EB and make Excalibur perform a wide arc, releasing a powerful half-moon-ish wave expanding widely, able to stagger groups of enemies. Let's call the epic move "Half Moon" \o/
Also, please change Radial Javelin into a more defensive ability (summons an aura of flying blades deflecting damage (the blades are destroyed and the protection becomes less effective through time, so Excalibur can press 3 again and release the current Radial Javelin to be able to cast a new aura))... and remove the auto-parry on EB. This mechanic induces lazy gameplay, is unjustified, and teaches bad habits to the new players. Let us parry manually to achieve the perfect front-protection with the help of the brand new Radial Javelin explained above.

 

Thank youuuu for the hard work anyway!!

I've had a similar idea for radial javelin as well. Think of the blade ring that Virgil summons in Ultimate marvel vs capcom 3. 

Each blade could absorb hits and damage nearby enemies and each enemy struck with the ring could add a hit to the combo counter. This reinforces the synergy among excal's 4 abilties while providing something engaging to provide survivability more than just auto parry

 

And please, allow body count at least to work on EB. I'm tired of the weapon that costs energy dealing a 5th of the damage of my dragon nikana let alone my nikana prime or scindo prime.

Edited May 27, 2016 by ThatOddDeer

[(PSN)Cwellann]

3 minutes ago, Yaerion said:

remove the auto-parry on EB

NO.  This is his survivability.  Remove this, and he becomes incredibly squishy.  This, combined with damage falloff with range from the waves, really would be a bullet to his head.  This is a categorically terrible idea.  Please explain how constant vigilance against being flanked is "lazy gameplay", or teaches bad habits.

Edit:  I like the RJ idea though.

Edited May 27, 2016 by (PS4)Cwellann
additional thought

[Mazzuco_]

59 minutes ago, gluih said:

A lot of this post is true, however-

It's not like every enemy in sorties will just kill you. Actually using defensive mods makes a big difference and modding your weapons correctly to make sure they are effective against the enemy type in that mission is very important. Sure there are some enemy types or sortie conditions where there is not a lot the players can do, but - and this is very important- it's not like the balancing doesn't work at all even at that level. Level 80-100 is where the armor scaling becomes a big problem and where the defensive options fall apart, but small changes to the system have a huge impact. So it's not like the cheesy tactics are actually needed.

Players are right to use whatever tactic is the best way to beat the mission. They will however not stop using those cheesy tactics, when they aren't needed. Blinding the whole T4 interception map on mirage is absolutly not needed, but players still do it, because it's an easy way to complete that mission.

He probably had a bad experience with sorties, it’s no longer that hard.

The worst problem in my opinion, is that developers continue creating content to be played by both new and old players. Of course I will blind the enemies from round 1 in T4 interception. If I want to keep playing after round 15, this is one of the few tactics that will still work, and I would still have a big chance to die and fail the mission.

So, DE expect me to use only weapons in the early rounds and start using these tactics only when strictly necessary? Why not create a T5 (harder) interception mission, where the use of these tactics would be necessary from the early beginning, where I would receive rewards restricted to high mastery players, so I would not bother others by using these “OP” tactics along lower mastery players on missions they can play by themselves.

While DE keep wishing that both new and old players keep killing the same enemies, doing the same missions and receiving the same rewards, we can expect these nerfs all the way. Every game based on level progression system, if I’m a high level, and use a skill, even the weakest one, at a weaker enemy, of course he will die. 

I think it's the same thought as @Arkvold.

Edited May 27, 2016 by -GV--Mazzuco

[CptKornflake]

1 hour ago, Arkvold said:

Okay DE.  I'm going to step back from the actual decisions being made here.  I want to talk about the philosophy behind them, and what you, as developers, need to be thinking about when you make these changes.  They smack of kneejerk reactions, without understanding the deeper meanings of why things happen the way they do.  So as someone who's worked in game development myself, I'm going to help you bridge the gap between player's-eye viewpoint and dev's-eye viewpoint.

Now, with any content you make, people are going to look for strategies that beat it.  That's the nature of the game.  It's the nature of every video game - to overcome the challenges the devs have put before you and reap the rewards, then use those rewards to meet and overcome the next set of challenges.  Your goal, as a developer, is to provide a challenge to your playerbase that is difficult enough to require strategy and tactics and preparation, but is also winnable within a margin of error that is humanly achievable.

Warframe's highest-end content has a serious problem with that.  Once enemy levels get into the 60s, 70s, 80s+, survival becomes increasingly binary.  You are either alive and strictly invulnerable, invisible, or sheltered behind tens of thousands of intervening effective health points, or you are dead the moment you are exposed to enemy fire.  First it's the bombards, who deal ridiculous damage over huge AoE.  Then you notice that seekers and eviscerators are one-shotting you too, and soon enough you fear stepping outside that Frost's bubble for even a half second lest you catch a stray Grakata round and spontaneously evaporate into a cloud of gore.

Some people look at that and go 'nope, not playing that, that's not fun.'  In the interest of full disclosure, I'm one of 'em, typically.  I've never been fond of games where one slight mistake will end you.  This is why I don't play sorties, despite the rewards.  I don't know a lot of people, I don't like trying to put together a team for it, and it has such strict requirements on what you can and cannot bring to the table that most of my arsenal is useless in it.

Others, however, look at that and go 'challenge accepted.'  They will look for ways to overcome even this extreme difficulty.  Like Ivara surviving while invisible and using sleep arrow and covert lethality to score kills regardless of armor and HP.  Or Blind Mirage rendering entire spawns comatose across an entire map and then merrily obliterating them one after another.  Or Ash using a combination of invulnerability and finisher damage to kill enemies he could never take in a straight fight.  Or Excalibur utilizing EB's range and blind-spin to get free finishers and stay out of reach of enemies while still benefitting from his sword boost passive.

The fact is, players look for ways to trivialize content because there's content that's very good at trivializing players. In fact, using content-trivializing strategies is the only way to survive player-trivializing content.

When health and armor don't matter, and shields are merely a formality between enemies and your health, your best guns take off mere slivers of enemy health, and all the buffs in the world won't fix either of those situations, that's when players reach for the nuke options - invulnerability, invisibility, scaling damage absorption, finisher damage, finisher openers, and instant-kills.

What's important to remember is that players are right to do this.  You made the content capable of obliterating anyone without these tools; therefore, players are going to use the tools you gave them that work.  And they're going to keep using them, until you either take the tools away (nerfing), or the tools are no longer necessary and there are more efficient and less-drastic means of accomplishing the mission.  If my guns started to deal damage again, and my shields and health could actually survive a bullet or two, I might decide to use them over wtfhax bladestorm/stacked snowglobes/BLIND BLIND BLIND SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP FINISHER FINISHER FINISHER.

So here's what you, as game devs, need to do.  Ask yourselves the question, "What are players SUPPOSED to do to defeat this content?"  And gear your changes towards THAT.  You need to make a hard decision as to what gear and what methods players are allowed to use, and which are exploitative and need to be either nerfed-out or compensated for.  The answer "Players aren't supposed to defeat this content" isn't an acceptable answer; it's a terrible GM that measures success in trashed character sheets, and likewise it's a terrible developer that measures success in Game Overs.

Finally, you need to look at rewards in the light of the effort required to get them.  If defeating a piece of content is supposed to be a difficult task and a momentous event when you and your cell succeeds, then the rewards should be commensurate.  The rewards need to be something immediately good and useful.  If you throw out player-trivializing content, and then say to those who beat it "Congratulations, now run it five hundred times more if you want a reasonable chance to get the actual good rewards from it" then they're going to look at you, scoff, and walk out.

This is how you make good gameplay.

 

Said better than I ever could have

 

Looking at every post in this thread and seeing which ones have been ignored and which ones have been supported, it seems that there is an underlying theme.

Players who actually play endgame content do not want this nerf, and no pluto is not endgame. Instead it has been suggested multiple times that enemy scaling gets a look at, because nerfing frames without touching scaling would make any mission over lvl80 impossible.

I think it will be interesting to see whether or not DE actually goes through with these nerfs, or listens to the community like they said they would.