The Root of All...Evil, kinda

[chuckdm]

So...after playing the Volt and Mag reworks today, and seeing all the salt about the various "nerfs" (some are completely unfair nerfs, some are totally fair nerfs, and I don't like calling the later a nerf) on the forums, I just wanted to make a short post about one simple thing DE needs, desperately, to do before they continue doing ANYTHING ELSE WHATSOEVER AT ALL with their game.

1. Pick an enemy level cap

That's it.  There are SO MANY problems in this game that are, in practice, impossible to balance against simply because the game has endless enemy scaling (or rather, endless armor scaling, though the damage a Heavy Gunner puts out at high levels seems insurmountable regardless of the gunner's armor, so it's really all the scaling)  I'm not even going to suggest what the level cap should be.

I mean, personally, I'd say lv80 because beyond that, you're looking at 100% CC and 0% actually killing the enemies, and a shooter should be about killing bad guys, plain and simple.  But that's a personal opinion.

What isn't an opinion, and isn't really even debatable, is that no matter what the level cap is, Warframe needs to simply have one.  Balancing this game - armor, weapon damage, ability damage, etc - is going to remain completely impossible until you have a set enemy to balance it against, and if you're doing what DE currently appears to be doing, i.e. balancing against enemies around lv40 (or MAYBE lv60) then the instant you're 40 minutes into a T3, tada, game isn't balanced any more.

So...I know a lot of this has been said in other threads, but I'm pretty sure nobody has made it a standalone thread yet.  I just wanted to start that here in the hope that, with enough support, DE might notice this.

[(PSN)Zashukitsune]

Can't disagree one bit and kudos for remaining civil too.  The "nerfs" aren't the problem, they're just responses to exactly what you're talking about.

I've been telling people that DE has to start somewhere at least, and I think they're on the right track, but sadly I still believe we're a long way from that point.  Who knows though, they might surprise us.

[Cray]

I'd be willing to accept drastic changes to the nature of endless mission types if it meant getting a proper level cap that wasn't so insanely high, only cheese and cheats can reach it.

Hell, putting a (reasonably sized) limit on endless missions, making them no longer endless, would be fine for me.

And all of this has one massive caveat: We need readily available missions that approach or are at this cap right from the get go. Missions like Sorties, Trials, and dedicated 'hard mode' mission nodes.

Edited May 28, 2016 by DeltaPhantom

[Cortanis]

3 hours ago, (PS4)Zashukitsune said:

Can't disagree one bit and kudos for remaining civil too.  The "nerfs" aren't the problem, they're just responses to exactly what you're talking about.

I've been telling people that DE has to start somewhere at least, and I think they're on the right track, but sadly I still believe we're a long way from that point.  Who knows though, they might surprise us.

I have to second this. They do need to start somewhere. Even in a T3 sur mission I don't even notice the ramp up until around 45-50 min in. Running Sancti Tigres and I just blow the heavies away while cc the rest out. Only when I hit somewhere in that almost 50 min mark do I do a double take when I haven't effectively one offed a heavy and the cc isn't outright wiping everything. It's clear up to that point that my guns and frame build are not even close to balanced in regards to general gameplay. Even that crazy def oxium farm for the potato caught me off guard at first, but once I realized what was going on it was cake. I could still cc the map around the point effectively running circles doing cc kills.

[PowerofTwo]

5 hours ago, chuckdm said:

So...after playing the Volt and Mag reworks today, and seeing all the salt about the various "nerfs" (some are completely unfair nerfs, some are totally fair nerfs, and I don't like calling the later a nerf) on the forums, I just wanted to make a short post about one simple thing DE needs, desperately, to do before they continue doing ANYTHING ELSE WHATSOEVER AT ALL with their game.

1. Pick an enemy level cap

That's it.  There are SO MANY problems in this game that are, in practice, impossible to balance against simply because the game has endless enemy scaling (or rather, endless armor scaling, though the damage a Heavy Gunner puts out at high levels seems insurmountable regardless of the gunner's armor, so it's really all the scaling)  I'm not even going to suggest what the level cap should be.

I mean, personally, I'd say lv80 because beyond that, you're looking at 100% CC and 0% actually killing the enemies, and a shooter should be about killing bad guys, plain and simple.  But that's a personal opinion.

What isn't an opinion, and isn't really even debatable, is that no matter what the level cap is, Warframe needs to simply have one.  Balancing this game - armor, weapon damage, ability damage, etc - is going to remain completely impossible until you have a set enemy to balance it against, and if you're doing what DE currently appears to be doing, i.e. balancing against enemies around lv40 (or MAYBE lv60) then the instant you're 40 minutes into a T3, tada, game isn't balanced any more.

So...I know a lot of this has been said in other threads, but I'm pretty sure nobody has made it a standalone thread yet.  I just wanted to start that here in the hope that, with enough support, DE might notice this.

This a zillion times, i go into (salty tbh) massive wall of text detail here in a post, but yes you've summed it up, enemy scaling is the real problem not the warframes. +1

[BlackCoMerc]

6 hours ago, DeltaPhantom said:

I'd be willing to accept drastic changes to the nature of endless mission types if it meant getting a proper level cap that wasn't so insanely high, only cheese and cheats can reach it.

Hell, putting a (reasonably sized) limit on endless missions, making them no longer endless, would be fine for me.

And all of this has one massive caveat: We need readily available missions that approach or are at this cap right from the get go. Missions like Sorties, Trials, and dedicated 'hard mode' mission nodes.

How bout mini boss after 10 waves, final boss after 20. Choice to extract any time after first five waves/minutes, as per now. 

You would also receive a bonus reward for defeating the mini and normal bosses. And best if all: no more life support, since the mission us no longer Endless.

Imagine Survival, with two new cool fights, bonus rewards and a balanced, fun, engaging finale that does not involve cheese and a desperate Lore breaking run for the exit.

[Fifield]

8 hours ago, chuckdm said:

1. Pick an enemy level cap

That's it.

They already did.  It's been 80 for ages, though someone said they raised it to 100 recently (makes sense with Sorties).

[Cortanis]

30 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

How bout mini boss after 10 waves, final boss after 20. Choice to extract any time after first five waves/minutes, as per now. 

You would also receive a bonus reward for defeating the mini and normal bosses. And best if all: no more life support, since the mission us no longer Endless.

Imagine Survival, with two new cool fights, bonus rewards and a balanced, fun, engaging finale that does not involve cheese and a desperate Lore breaking run for the exit.

Kind of like they did with that potato drop/oxium farm yesterday? I have to say, that was actually pretty fun and intense. The introduction of the Hyena pack into that every other round or so was pretty much what you're talking about and it was pretty fun and intense.

[BlackCoMerc]

4 minutes ago, Cortanis said:

Kind of like they did with that potato drop/oxium farm yesterday? I have to say, that was actually pretty fun and intense. The introduction of the Hyena pack into that every other round or so was pretty much what you're talking about and it was pretty fun and intense.

Perfect example.

This is actually the second run.of this Proxy event. It's incredibly fun.

Other mini bosses could be Eximus Squads. Or Nightwatch Grineer squads. Maybe the G3 as a boss.

I would rather end a mission with a fun, triumphant, lore friendly fight than run tail tucked for the exit against lore breaking enemies I can't even kill.

[Genitive]

I agree. Challenge can be increased in many ways other than rising enemy level. We need more variety in enemy types, mini bosses, and maybe environmental challenges turning after a certain amount of time.

And fixed damage and armor scaling.

[PowerofTwo]

54 minutes ago, Cortanis said:

Kind of like they did with that potato drop/oxium farm yesterday? I have to say, that was actually pretty fun and intense. The introduction of the Hyena pack into that every other round or so was pretty much what you're talking about and it was pretty fun and intense.

+1 To this for bumping sake. I actualy LOVE the idea

[chuckdm]

5 hours ago, Fifield said:

They already did.  It's been 80 for ages, though someone said they raised it to 100 recently (makes sense with Sorties).

If they did, then we have 2 more problems.

1) They didn't tell anyone.  Unless this was mentioned in a Dev Stream and I missed it - and hey, it could've been - then it has never been publicly disclosed.  Unless they inform us what their balance target is, we have no way to provide relevant feedback.  i.e. frames that might be already balance against lv80 right now might still be unbalanced against lv100, so we can't know if a frame is balanced or not without them actually telling us what their cap is.  Since I've never seen them disclose it anywhere, I've always assumed it was "Ceres+20" as that's the point where most damage starts to drop off and it becomes all CC and cheese.

2) If it really is lv80 or lv100 either one, then something is wrong.  Have you tried taking a frame like Zephyr or Hydroid to a lv80 Survival or Defense sortie?  It's a nightmare.  Not enough damage to kill, not enough hard cc (some soft cc, yes, but still) to cc.  This is to say nothing of the fact that every single player doing trials is CC-ing everything.  You have to.  Hell, DE's own streams don't show them killing hardly any enemies at all until they get to the boss arena.

It's a shooter.  You're supposed to shoot things, and kill them.  If their idea of balancing for lv80-lv100 is that you can CC enemies but not reasonably kill them with more than half the frames/weapons in the game, then that isn't balance in a shooter game.

So I'm assuming it's just that they don't have a set level cap.  By which I mean I'm assuming DE literally doesn't even pick a certain level to balance against.  The way I see it, this is the most generous interpretation of our current situation.  If they actually do have a chosen level cap, then they need to disclose it, and they're also clearly missing the target, so yeah, I'm assuming they just don't have one.

Edited May 28, 2016 by chuckdm

[Fifield]

25 minutes ago, chuckdm said:

Unless they inform us what their balance target is, we have no way to provide relevant feedback.

There might be something to this but ~75% of the feedback DE get is garbage.  It doesn't surprise me they don't cater to it.

26 minutes ago, chuckdm said:

2) If it really is lv80 or lv100 either one, then something is wrong.  Have you tried taking a frame like Zephyr or Hydroid to a lv80 Survival or Defense sortie?  It's a nightmare.  Not enough damage to kill, not enough hard cc (some soft cc, yes, but still) to cc.

Yet to try it with Zephyr.  Used Hydroid a lot.  He's quite tanky and has two nearly instant escapes.  One of them provides not full immunity and the enemies walk away from you so you can recover.

You can get over 1000 EHP on any frame with 2 or 3 mods.

All frames have the same damage since a) they can all take the same weapons and b) weapons hit harder than powers.

BTW, if you're soloing, the game is a lot harder.

[DrBorris]

No, cap enemy EHP and damage (at a mere 2x), have other attributes of the horde (not the individual enemy). Simply capping the "enemy level" is a half-as'ed easy way out, there needs to be a lot more of a rework than just "cap at 180". And even at that level, all of the problems in Warframe are insanely apparent. One shots aren't fun and bullet sponges aren't fun. In general Warframes combat between low and high levels is so vastly different that it feels like two separate games. An hour into a survival should have the same "feel" as it did as when you started the mission, just have it be harder. How do you make something harder but keep the same feel? Quite simply you scale what makes the core combat of the game In the case of Warframe, this is NOT an individual enemy, it is the massive horde of enemies. When you are at that hour mark you should still be clearing hordes rather quickly, but maybe now the hordes are more organized, have more complex units, have special abilities, be more accurate, etcetera.

When I leave an endless mission I don't want it to be because the combat got stale, I want it to be because the horde is becoming too much for me. And yes, this includes a massive rework of our damage (Damage 3.0) too.

[RealPandemonium]

Accommodating players who asked for more support for endless content is a big part of the reason why we have this lopsided balance mess in Warframe now.  This is the #1 issue of the game currently and more people should be talking about it.  

Edited May 29, 2016 by RealPandemonium

[Volinus7]

The only thing that can defeat players is ultra high lvl enemy take that out and nobody would lose the game then ppl will complain about how the game is not challenging enough.

 

Most of the games draw restrictions of players before everything.

For example position and movement control to not let the player evades attacks too easy and need some plan for evasive maneuver, well you can bounce around as much as you want and there're hitscan weapons so this is meaningless.

Another basis is the time frame. The game will define a systemic time frame for each action. For example player's attack requires 2 seconds evasive maneuver grants 2.5 seconds of invulnerability and has 1.5 seconds of cooldown, boss attack1/2/3 require x/y/z seconds of prep time and a/b/c of hit time and boss pattern cycles in 18seconds loop before enter the same loop or start a new pattern. This will balance the ability between players and enemies you can play safe by using fast but low damage attacks for easy evasion or play high risk high return by long cast time or long combo attacks which leave you with little preparation time for evasion now players can draft their own tactics and attack rotation. Systemic time frame doesn't exist only in fighting game, a third personal view game like monster hunter is a good example.

Warframe has no such a thing. What's left is what we have today, play with numbers with no real equations to let them sit in. How can you tell that this amount of cast time is ok this amount of duration is ok this much range is ok or this damage potential is ok. Now comes the problem of "glory of the old days" there're many builds that grant you non stop invisibility or CC these things encourage ppl to farm mods to complete such build and it is the charm of mod system itself and also the very problem that destroy the balance.

The game itself focus so much on each frame's special field there's also no balance between each frame not just enemy-player balance.

TLDR : the game basis offers too much freedom to the point that you cannot maintain any balances.

PS. This is not a shooting game it's a musou game in space.