Why Rebalancing is Necessary (and it is)

[BlackCoMerc]

51 minutes ago, Serafim_94 said:

As said above, they would. Becouse it's repeating same S#&$ over and over and over and over and over again, but now with more effort put into it, and, as such, more time spent, more annoyance, more failed attempts.
 

Also, bear in mind that any actual mechanic that gives us challenge is immediately deemed "unfair". Bursas? Unfair. Nullifiers? Unfair. Sortie conditions? Unfair, remove them. Hell, even enemy scaling in its current form is challenge. People keep saying that they want some mythological challenge, yet they are unhappy with what challenge is in game, and have significant trouble describing what is it the F*** they actually want. What kind of challenge do you want? Not just "rebalanced and improved" generic answer, but practical stuff.

Bullet Sponges and robbing of us of control are not challenging. Neither is arbitrarily forcing us to hit the same enemy 19 times before it dies.

Challenge comes from enemy tactics. Better AI. Better movement. Higher damage output, WITHOUT their also being Bullet Sponges. And reasonable Warframe powers that can no longer trivialize these things.

[WARLOCKE]

2 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Bullet Sponges and robbing of us of control are not challenging. Neither is arbitrarily forcing us to hit the same enemy 19 times before it dies.

Challenge comes from enemy tactics. Better AI. Better movement. Higher damage output, WITHOUT their also being Bullet Sponges. And reasonable Warframe powers that can no longer trivialize these things.

Higher damage output? Most frames are already in one shot territory by sortie 2, let alone three.

[(XBOX)Solargeo]

I sorta like the OP's idea/ But instead why not have maybe have like a few maybe three per endless wave and are like the squad leader(s) of that wave?  But they have tenno as the top of their priorities. 

[(PSN)antonislak]

5 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Or maybe, if missions were more engaging and challenging they wouldn't feel like such a chore.

Also, yes, Endless missions are a problem. Would love to see them given a definitive ending point, maybe a boss wave or boss fight. Something players could no longer strive to break.

this

[BlackCoMerc]

10 hours ago, WARLOCKE said:

Higher damage output? Most frames are already in one shot territory by sortie 2, let alone three.

Higher damage output from enemies. Without their also being sponges. Like the Nightwatch Grineer.

If the Nightwatch had had Rathuum AI, and a slightly less daunting Rathuum style power resistance, they would have been perfect high level enemies...

[PoobahTheGrand]

Question though.

 

Does DE actually care about rebalancing? Or are they only doing it because players beg for it? It seems pretty crazy to me that DE doesn't want us playing a certain way but they constantly give us the ability to do so. They designed and created the frame and should know it inside and out. With a good efficiency build along with range, plus the mechanics of prism that they created themselves, and shouldn't be a surprise that it's spam able. And look how long we had it. They don't want trinity turning us into tanks, and yet they released Inaros. A frame who can have 4K health along with tons of armor.

[Guest]

no bad meaning, lots of people/players/fans get trapped by what ?

playing and same time thinking what can be done "better", for what, i have no time and dont wanna spend time for getting "cared" about which can be developed as development means

you can screw on smth until you die, you can create a useful unfinished symphony or a useless one

what im directing is that DE SELLS development as caretaking which creates fans

im not in that direction, i simply cant understand why they doing it

the only understanding i get clear about is that this "development/caretaking" is nothing more then marketing

for understanding what im talking about i have to leave the theme, people/players and thread alone with and behind me, in the most friendlist way im able to

im "trapped" by the artistic expresssion and lore of this game, i would be in total war in a moment with the marketing part of DE and this game ^^)

just for making something or giving "something about this ongoing development-expression" another kind of feedback

i wanna play warframe, im not interested to think about "too much" about the development, because i end alwas in the same direction, 100 % geniusly artistic creations get eaten for 80 % from the marketing part, i really dont like that ...

doesnt matter if its needed or not ... ^^)

[undernown]

17 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

 

If you ask me to build you a road to accommodate 1000 cars per day, I'm going to ask you how the road will hold up if a trucker with a 20 ton load decides to use is as a shortcut. At rush hour. Then, I'm going to widen the road to accommodate that, even though some folks in the neighborhood probably don't want it wider.

 

As someone in the infrastructure business i understand this too well... P.s. I would be more worried about the thickness and corner widths then the straight parts.

On topic:

Yes some of our powers are a bit to easy to cheese with. But makinf a seperate node for veteran/elite players isn't necessarily the solution.

My suggestion is to focus more on mechanical scaling of enemies, then the numerical scaling, to make it challenging. Getting 1-shot, like you mentioned yourself, feels cheap. This is a common trend in most games, warframe should take note of that. Especialy as a action/mmo game.

The mechanical advantages for enemies are far more effective and fair at increasing difficulty. Example:

T4 defence to wave 40 is far more challenging. Then a T2 defence to 60 waves. It's not lvl's, it's just enemy types. T4 has nullifiers and bombards appear in later waves, who are far more capable of endangering players because of their knockdown effects and power resistance. Though i find part of their design cheap and forcing a playera playstyle to change, fundamentaly I agree with them more then high armor scaling and damsge scaling as a difficulty enhancer.

So i'd suggest:

Impove the equipment enemies cary as a mission go's up in lvl/difficulty.(higher lvl node, longer time in endless, etc.) A default grunt like a lancer gets a karak instead of a standard grakata for example. Or a crewman gets a quanta replace their usual Dera. This doesn't have to be weapons, but it's hard to think up other easy examples. My inspiration for this is the Opticor wielding Rathuum Exicutioner. It was just a slight upgrade to the Ballista we we're all familiar with, but now it has an AOE effect that players didn't expect. People's reaction to this was complaing about her "op-ness" even though a high lvl ballista can 1-shot you just as easily. It is a good example of a small change having a big effect.

[BlackCoMerc]

14 hours ago, WARLOCKE said:

[BlackCoMerc]

Ugh...this forum and mobile...

Another idea: how about new enemies as we level up? Earth could have grunts. Just Lancer and Grakata Grineer.

Next planet, you start to see Heavy Gunner, leveled accordingly. On the next, Napalm and -Bombard, leveled to this new location.

Finally, the higher tier planets feature Rathuum Grineer and Corpus Proxy mixed into normal missions and scaled accordingly.

This way low level.grunts stay low level. Visual consistency across all maps. But newer enemies could be tougher to compensate. So you might get 10 Grineer grunts level 1-5 on Ceres. But you could also see a rank 20 -Bombard, the saw blade guts, and a rank 30 Rathuum Grineer at the same time.

Not every enemy needs to scale. Making everyone special means no one is special. Instead, leave us some grunts and mix in mini boss units at higher ranks, complete with partial power resistance and Dodge moves, even.

[(PSN)KnowLedge]

19 hours ago, Drufo said:

Someone will come, and he will say that Warframe is fine as it is. I warned you.

I'm not going to say it's fine. However these threads are almost always basically saying, "I want you to play the game I want. Not the way they made it. Which makes you happy."

 

That is all....

[BlackCoMerc]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)KnowLedge said:

I'm not going to say it's fine. However these threads are almost always basically saying, "I want you to play the game I want. Not the way they made it. Which makes you happy."

 

That is all....

Go back and reap the OP.

That is absolutely not what this thread is stating. This thread highlights a very REAL reason rebalance is needed.

Devs design around the best, top tier strategies available to us when they seek to add challenge. If that is always Cheese It, then we will continue to see enemy cheese in return.

[WARLOCKE]

9 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Higher damage output from enemies. Without their also being sponges. Like the Nightwatch Grineer.

If the Nightwatch had had Rathuum AI, and a slightly less daunting Rathuum style power resistance, they would have been perfect high level enemies...

Yes and nightwatch enemies oneshot nearly every frame. Im not saying it can t be done. But if you think you hate bullet sponges wait until people are getting one shotted outside of sorties. The forums will implode.

[BlackCoMerc]

13 minutes ago, WARLOCKE said:

Yes and nightwatch enemies oneshot nearly every frame. Im not saying it can t be done. But if you think you hate bullet sponges wait until people are getting one shotted outside of sorties. The forums will implode.

Don't be so literal.

Tweaks would be needed. Balancing. Just thought Nightwatch are a good place to start, since they were dangerous without being sponges.

[WARLOCKE]

3 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Don't be so literal.

Tweaks would be needed. Balancing. Just thought Nightwatch are a good place to start, since they were dangerous without being sponges.

How can I be anything but literal when reading someones posts? I have no choice but to be. And what im driving at here is that bullet sponges are the lesser of evils. Im telling you right now almost every single player would prefer a sponge to increased damage. Besides,enemy damage hits a wall at a point. It cant be raised because at that point tanky frames start getting gibd. And if that happens they have to be buffed makign lower content even more trivial. In an RPG like system health is the easiest and only thing that scale infinitly. Damage cannot.

[Kotsender_Quasimir]

On 30.6.2016 at 8:19 PM, WARLOCKE said:

I find it silly to call a grind, a challenge. A challenge to patience perhaps. But it isnt a game play challenge.

yeah, i can hardly imagine warframe being a glorified slot machine was DE's aesthetic vision from the beginning... nope, pulling the lever a billion times is not challenging. just tedious and before long very boring. but mashing 4 with an ash is about as much "gameplay" as that.

[TheSteelRat]

On 6/30/2016 at 0:57 PM, BlackCoMerc said:

If you ask me to build you a road to accommodate 1000 cars per day, I'm going to ask you how the road will hold up if a trucker with a 20 ton load decides to use is as a shortcut. At rush hour. Then, I'm going to widen the road to accommodate that, even though some folks in the neighborhood probably don't want it wider.

Not because that's likely to happen. But because it COULD.

 

Um... my wife is a Civil engineer.  Road capacity per lane is 1000 cars per mile per an hour.  As you get close to that capacity you start getting traffic jams until traffic just stops.  Building more roads will just allow more cars to drive that section. at the point of maximum capacity (and gridlock) a trucker would be an idiot to try and use that section of road as a shortcut... better off finding an alternate route

So the analogy is flawed... but moving on

Gamers will always find the easiest fastest way to do anything.  Developers really do not have the time to playtest and brain storm every combination of styles, weapons and abilities.  One problem was, Mirage was able to lock down entire maps by jsut pressing 4.  Saryn did that, Ash could do it (and might not later), Valkyr still can, Banshee can with some help and some could say Ember can do it. DE doesn't want any "press 4 to win" in the game.  They want you to at least press one key, maybe a second key, aim and pull the trigger to win.

The game is still in beta, and WE are the playtesters playing around in the sandbox that DE has created.  Frankly i have to say this has been one of the best F2P games, and one of the best Co-op games i have ever played, so i don't have much to complain about...

well, I did gripe on the fact that DE-Scott didn't want us to have Primed Pressure Point.. but that is just being a bitter old man

[WARLOCKE]

24 minutes ago, Kotsender_Quasimir said:

yeah, i can hardly imagine warframe being a glorified slot machine was DE's aesthetic vision from the beginning... nope, pulling the lever a billion times is not challenging. just tedious and before long very boring. but mashing 4 with an ash is about as much "gameplay" as that.

Are you implying I play Ash?

[Kotsender_Quasimir]

Just now, WARLOCKE said:

Are you implying I play Ash?

nah, just random example of op stuff preventing any reasonable balancing benchmark. just wanted to illustrate your sentiment from the quote, which i share 100%.

[WARLOCKE]

1 hour ago, Kotsender_Quasimir said:

nah, just random example of op stuff preventing any reasonable balancing benchmark. just wanted to illustrate your sentiment from the quote, which i share 100%.

Because I dont play Ash, he is dirty. :P

[EmptyDevil]

12 hours ago, PoobahTheGrand said:

Question though.

 

Does DE actually care about rebalancing? Or are they only doing it because players beg for it? It seems pretty crazy to me that DE doesn't want us playing a certain way but they constantly give us the ability to do so. They designed and created the frame and should know it inside and out. With a good efficiency build along with range, plus the mechanics of prism that they created themselves, and shouldn't be a surprise that it's spam able. And look how long we had it. They don't want trinity turning us into tanks, and yet they released Inaros. A frame who can have 4K health along with tons of armor.

Making something doesn't mean you always know what kind of impact it will have when it's out. There was analogy i seen elsewhere about a guy that wanted to replace harmful things used in refrigeration, but ended up making something that harmed the ozone layer much more - he didn't intend for that to happen. Good intentions don't always have the best outcomes.

As for Inaros, he does not have tons of armor. Chroma has tons of armor and i'm pretty sure with the fire element is still tankier than Inaros, when using high strength and Vex Armor.

[PopGligor]

I greatly disagree with the OP. His intention is in the right place - design a fun game, don't care so much about people breaking it...
But when the tools to break the game are so easily available, when everyone can get a nova or mirage fairly easily and deck her out to shut down rooms easily, it will become the dominant strategy. It'll become the meta. It'll become the advice everyone is giving to others "Eh, just build a mirage and roflstomp this otherwise interesting mission". 

So in order for the game to be even remotely interesting, it has to be designed with the worst possible scenario in mind. For no other reason than the fact that the worst possible scenario is easily achievable.

I do think this game is all over the place. Enemies are designed with movement 1.0 in mind and haven't caught up to current movement, some interactions (mirage+simulor) are completely broken. The fact that banshee can kill everything in T4 def before it can even step in the main room is laughable. 

However, this is my question towards the OP - this game can be interesting. You don't have to lock down the rooms, you don't have to play a facerolling frame to enjoy it. Why aren't you? The game gives options to be challenging and fun. You can reliably claim it is not designed around the worst possible scenario... otherwise, mirage+simulor wouldn't be so gamebreaking. Banshee wouldn't work the way she does when combined with a good EV. 

There's definitely things I dislike about the game... like bursas and bombards, but it seems to me it is designed exactly like the OP suggests, which is what makes the game lack challenge in general. Because once players have these facerolling tactics available to them, they won't hold back on using them. Some may, but most won't. Hell, I play valkyr *only* because of the way she deals with bursas. :D

[BlackCoMerc]

4 hours ago, kkinnison said:

 

Um... my wife is a Civil engineer.  Road capacity per lane is 1000 cars per mile per an hour.  As you get close to that capacity you start getting traffic jams until traffic just stops.  Building more roads will just allow more cars to drive that section. at the point of maximum capacity (and gridlock) a trucker would be an idiot to try and use that section of road as a shortcut... better off finding an alternate route

So the analogy is flawed... but moving on

Gamers will always find the easiest fastest way to do anything.  Developers really do not have the time to playtest and brain storm every combination of styles, weapons and abilities.  One problem was, Mirage was able to lock down entire maps by jsut pressing 4.  Saryn did that, Ash could do it (and might not later), Valkyr still can, Banshee can with some help and some could say Ember can do it. DE doesn't want any "press 4 to win" in the game.  They want you to at least press one key, maybe a second key, aim and pull the trigger to win.

The game is still in beta, and WE are the playtesters playing around in the sandbox that DE has created.  Frankly i have to say this has been one of the best F2P games, and one of the best Co-op games i have ever played, so i don't have much to complain about...

well, I did gripe on the fact that DE-Scott didn't want us to have Primed Pressure Point.. but that is just being a bitter old man

Please quit using the Beta excuse. No reasonable person in the world believes a game going on its third YEAR of existence, with a full blown cash shop, including boosters for progress, is still in Beta. The term Beta has been coopted as a Get Out of Criticism Free card for far too long. And players are allowing it to happen.

The game might well be in perpetual development. Online games are like that. So just come out and say so. But the game is most definitely NOT a Beta.

[TheSteelRat]

3 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Please quit using the Beta excuse. No reasonable person in the world believes a game going on its third YEAR of existence, with a full blown cash shop, including boosters for progress, is still in Beta. The term Beta has been coopted as a Get Out of Criticism Free card for far too long. And players are allowing it to happen.

The game might well be in perpetual development. Online games are like that. So just come out and say so. But the game is most definitely NOT a Beta.

 

It is not an excuse but reality

 

It is not a release candidate, and it isn't going gold.  And the fact it is STILL in beta means we can have major changes like Second dream and Star Chart 3.0.. bugs and all

[DrBorris]

On ‎6‎/‎30‎/‎2016 at 2:06 PM, BornWithTeeth said:

You know, I kinda suspect that Endless missions may be a part of the problem. Specifically, the part where DE enforce the 'end' part by just making the enemies after an hour scale the very heights of Mt. Frigging Ridiculous. That kinda thing basically says to some players "Let's break it. Seriously, let's break it as hard as we can. It's there, so we not only can break it, but we should. We must." So they do, with cheesy, game breaking powers. Then DE nerfs those powers. Then people whine like DE shot their puppy.

 

 

Now, Raids are another thing altogether.

Endless infinite scaling is fine, infinite EHP and damage scaling is not. There are other ways DE can make the game endlessly harder that is not cheap.