Could *this* work as solution to powercreep & scaling? (enfasis on questionmark)

[Zoretor]

(I suppose this (or some version of this) has been mentioned by someone in some post somewhere, but I want to separate this specific idea and put it out there and see if it'd actually be viable or not)

I don't really understand the "deep maths" involved with scaling (even after having watched many videos and read many posts explaining it), but what I do understand is the "in-game feeling" that scaling provides. It's an unpleasant feeling. Specifically when regarding "bullet sponge".

Bullet sponge^(tm) is a problem to me, in any game. It's a cheap, lazy, and most importantly boring way to provide "challenge". Many players don't really care about this, especially when they use their 6 forma'd Sancti Tigrises or Synoid Simulors. The "meta" players don't really care for this, in many cases because CC spam dissolves bullet sponges. Or whatever.

This thread is not really for arguing about CC or meta, but to argue about fun gameplay. I'm not just talking about my fun, though, but a way to make the game fun for all, without losing the "challenge" aspect (challenge is definately fun, for the majority of gamers). I'm talking about fun gameplay, which in my humble opinion bullet sponge^(tm) is most definately not.

Of course bullet sponge^(tm) is directly linked to our good friend "powercreep", and in theory, to the eventual "damage 3.0", in that in order to solve "powercreep", bullet sponge^(tm) is implemented (or vice versa). Stronger weapons => more bullet spongy enemies => stronger weapons, etc.

So, after that loooooooooooong intro that I hope laid out the context for my proposed solution, which tries to tie in "damage 3.0" with "powercreep" and bullet sponge^(tm). Here it is:

TL;DR: Make enemies' EHP cap at level 30, but keep their damage scaling. Kill 'em before they kill you! Optional (margin idea): Enemy accuracy increases with difficulty.

(optional craziness) Elemental mods could now simply provide their respective status effects, instead of stacking damage (this would actually be such a huge change to how elemental and status works, beyond what I could ever imagine, that I'll definately just leave it as optional, but I just really like the sound of it).

The gameplay and systems rework that would birth from this concept I truly think would make for a more "tough but fair" approach. Enemies can actually be killed relatively easily, and you better get on that, or you're dead, because they can still one, two or three shot you (speaking of high level missions, of course).

A list of other immediate benefits I can think of:

• Suddenly there's a use for many mostly unused weapons.
• The supposed "damage 3.0" Serration removal would be easier to manage, and would actually make more sense.
• The supposed "damage 3.0" multishot ammo cost would have more of a chance to play into "player choice" modding.
• Many unused utility mods could now be considered for using.
• All warframe "damage powers", even the "1"s and whatever other currently "lame" ones, can now maintain their use throughout.
• CC powers are now in line with damage powers, so, everybody wins? (questionmark?)

 

So what'cha think, diverse Warframe forum community?

[360Broscoper]

I like the idea, but unless some of the more powerful crowd controlling weapons are given a massive nerf, it would be incredibly easy. I really hate the "endgame" that Warframe has, for it takes away from the true nature of the game, which is to run around like crazy dodging bullets and killing enemies swiftly. They replace it with trying to slow and impede your enemies as much as possible until you can fall asleep from boredom. 

[Xgomme]

Imo the scalling needs tweaking, but the problem is getting one shotted by anything, more than bulletsponges.

And the real problem is AI... If HL ennemies could do more smart things, like if the nulifier could stay away, with units hidden in his bubble and really using is sniper as a sniper, if the grineer commander could switch two of his mates, to bring a melee guy just near you, etc, etc...

With real mechanics, and smart ennemies, we don't need any powercreep. But they still have to work with weapons, cause a lot of them are just bad versions of another, and a lot of them are just the best of a category. Imo any weapon should shine in something

Edited August 15, 2016 by Xgomme

[I_AM_JUGS]

the whole multi shot removal is a worry to me, because i love being able to carpet bomb a room with my kulstar more so for the visuals than for the effect, when that gun came out it kinda emulated my reaction from when i started playing ages ago and first upgraded to the standard boltor from the braton and nailing people to walls just felt awesome, the effect of the weapon just made playing so fun and with multi shot it just looks and feels so freaking awesome it's hard to explain. maybe the damage is crazy but for the PVE i feel like fun should always take priority over balance and just the visuals and feel of laying down a blitzkrieg with a handgun felt so awesome to do.

but maybe to most of the community balance is a bigger thing to them, i can't fault it since we all play for our own reasons, personally i like bringing the epic shock and awe.

[Teshin_Dax]

The Multishot Change will be a nerf into the gound...

Theres no reason to use multishot if it consumes more ammo... Only disadvantages like ...more reloads and so on..

There was nothing wrong with the current multishot... this game changes .. and with every change .. i can only enjoy the past

[Zoretor]

2 minutes ago, Xgomme said:

-snip-

That's just the thing, you might get one shotted, but since you can more easily wipe the floor with almost any weapon, or warframe power, it'd be more about actual skill in dodging, evading, as well as aiming, etc.

1 minute ago, I_AM_JUGS said:

-snip-

Don't worry, multishot ain't going anywhere. What DEScott said they'd do to it is more along the lines of each additional shot actually using ammo, so it'd be a balance between more damage vs less ammo, whic, with this system, wouldn't be such a huge problem. (if this multishot tweak were implemented as things are now, people would just mostly stop using it)

[Vali]

Here's the issue:

Warframe HP does not scale.

New weapons with mods do scale.

Your system is complete opposite of this.

 

What DE needs to do is introduce better AI, lessen the enemy count but add better enemy mechanics so that they do more than just walk around and die.

After that,  sort out all weapons to be in a certain power curve and adjust enemy scaling accordingly, newer weapons need to be more mechanically diverse rather than being an increased stat version of others. Anything that goes over the power curve will just be contributing with power creep. 

This kind of balancing would takes weeks or months to plan out, not to mention developing new AI that wont be straining on the game engine. Due to how frequently and rapidly things are added, I doubt DE can do this anytime soon. 

Edited August 15, 2016 by Agentawesome

[Xgomme]

1 minute ago, Zoretor said:

That's just the thing, you might get one shotted, but since you can more easily wipe the floor with almost any weapon, or warframe power, it'd be more about actual skill in dodging, evading, as well as aiming, etc.

Yeah, I mean it's almost actually the endgame of warframe, cc/nuke or dodge like a tardis, or eat your OS

I'm ok with high damages, cause you should learn how to move your butt to evade bullets, but OS from anything is not good. I can't even imagine HL scorches with your rework x)

[-PP-Sonicz]

I think at most they should cap enemy levels at 100 and not way beyond that level. That way it's still killable and challenging for veterans but not entirely too impossible. 

[Zoretor]

1 minute ago, Agentawesome said:

Here's the issue:

Warframe HP does not scale.

New weapons with mods do scale.

Your system is complete opposite of this.

Despite what you say about HPs not scaling, the issue of "bullet sponge" still is a thing. And it ain't fun. That's mostly the point of my thread: keeping the "fun" in gameplay.

Killing enemies, regardless of their stupid AIs (which I agree would rock if they were improved), is fun. Not killing them isn't fun.

2 minutes ago, Agentawesome said:

After that,  sort out all weapons to be in a certain power curve and adjust enemy scaling accordingly, newer weapons need to be more mechanically diverse rather than being an increased stat version of others. Anything that goes over the power curve will just be contributing with power creep. 

Agree that weapons should be more diverse, but I could imagine that by fixing the "bullet sponge" issue, weapons could actually be just that...

[I_AM_JUGS]

1 minute ago, Zoretor said:

That's just the thing, you might get one shotted, but since you can more easily wipe the floor with almost any weapon, or warframe power, it'd be more about actual skill in dodging, evading, as well as aiming, etc.

Don't worry, multishot ain't going anywhere. What DEScott said they'd do to it is more along the lines of each additional shot actually using ammo, so it'd be a balance between more damage vs less ammo, whic, with this system, wouldn't be such a huge problem. (if this multishot tweak were implemented as things are now, people would just mostly stop using it)

but because of that it will be going away, i can pull the trigger on my gun 4 times and each time that sends out 3 grenades that detonate and turn into like 5 more bombs per grenade, but after they change it i can only pull the trigger twice and the second pull will only have one grenade (if it works off of magazine).
now with the gun i can kill most enemies in the game i can encounter in one or two pulls of the trigger before entering really high levels, but i often go for overkill cause like i said i think it looks really cool.

like just to really emphasize it, im very much a simple minded action nut so BIG over the top explosions really agree with me

[Naftal]

Unless you rebalance every weapon against level 30 enemies ehp (with the strongest mod loadouts), this idea is very stupid.

The content in this game already caps at around level 100 which is fine.

[Zoretor]

7 minutes ago, I_AM_JUGS said:

like just to really emphasize it, im very much a simple minded action nut so BIG over the top explosions really agree with me

Hey, I hear ya, big action movie explosions and mayhem is fun, and that's exactly what I could imagine this system providing, you still wreck house, even if the multishot rework was implemented.

 

8 minutes ago, -PP-Sonicz said:

I think at most they should cap enemy levels at 100 and not way beyond that level. That way it's still killable and challenging for veterans but not entirely too impossible. 

Maybe, but I just think 30 is a good place to have them die easy and allow for example for warframe "lame damage" powers and "lower tier" weapons to still be relatively effective, which at 100 they most definately wouldn't be.

 

4 minutes ago, Naftal said:

Unless you rebalance every weapon against level 30 enemies ehp (with the strongest mod loadouts), this idea is very stupid.

The content in this game already caps at around level 100 which is fine.

Yes, weapons would clearly have to be rebalanced, including the removal of Serration/Hornet Strike/Pressure Point, etc, as I mentioned. Of course, Forma would be less of a "thing", but then with a rebalance, maybe not. Even at level 30 some weapons still benefit from at least 1 forma.

But more importantly I guess you missed the whole part about bullet sponge being a boring gameplay system, and about how some warframers, probably like yourself, wouldn't even consider this a thing because you already x-forma'd your tonkor and can easily clean house, but, wouldn't you want for all weapons and warframe "lame damage" powers to be viable, and so therefore you could use whichever you like the "feel" of, instead of simply the "most dps" one?

 

Edited August 15, 2016 by Zoretor

[Kinetos]

17 minutes ago, I_AM_JUGS said:

...  fun should always take priority over balance... 

Unbalanced makes it not fun. Balanced doesn't mean everything is weak, it means nothing is miles ahead or behind everything else so that you can take anything and be effective and have fun. 

[SquireAngel]

The best way to combat powercreep is for a new tier of enemy content to come out. While we can certainly use stronger weapons, if the weapons on our side grow without something on the enemy AI side to match that, we simply begin to cheese content. DE either needs a hard cap to possible power growth, or needs to come out with higher tier enemy content. 

[I_AM_JUGS]

6 minutes ago, Zoretor said:

Hey, I hear ya, big action movie explosions and mayhem is fun, and that's exactly what I could imagine this system providing, you still wreck house, even if the multishot rework was implemented.

 

Maybe, but I just think 30 is a good place to have them die easy and allow for example for warframe "lame damage" powers and "lower tier" weapons to still be relatively effective, which at 100 they most definately wouldn't be.

that's the thing though, if it does work how i imagine it does that the explosion count goes from a potential 36 individual explosions to a potential 12 explosions, so since im used to the former it'll feel like a massive scale down whereas to anyone who never used it before it will feel awesome because that's where there bar to comparison would be at for them.
it's more just a problem of me being familiar with what it looked like now and it never feeling that way again.

im sure it wont feel weak and im sure it'll still look cool, but it'll probably not match up with what i was accustomed to it doing is the concern for me, but im happy to be proven wrong because that'll mean it still feels awesome to use.

[Bizzaro21]

i think health should have a cap yea, but lvl 30 is a bit too low, also, armor scaling is the problem here, i can keep killing infested and corpus until level 200 no problem, because they have no armor, i think first step towards fixing this is to make armor NOT scale, but have a fixed damage reduction percentage, capped at 50% for heavy units, and then we can say enemies are balanced

[I_AM_JUGS]

6 minutes ago, KinetosImpetus said:

Unbalanced makes it not fun. Balanced doesn't mean everything is weak, it means nothing is miles ahead or behind everything else so that you can take anything and be effective and have fun. 

comon man, read the rest of it, i follow up with me admitting that my opinion was selfish because its about what i personally want out of the game and i stated that others have their opinions that aren't wrong because we all play the game for our own reasons, at least give me that much credit instead of taking me that far out of context to assert your reasons for playing as the only "right" way of playing. that quote was me talking about the visuals of a weapon that i enjoy more than its performance being affected by a possible change, the damage isn't my worry for that thing, the aesthetics were.

my opinion in the matter is that i'd much prefer everything we have in the game to be amped to the extreme cause im an action nut that likes feeling awesome, but i accept others reasons for playing because we want what we want out of this awesome game, some people like to fight difficult enemies cause the challenge is where they get their enjoyment and some people like a midground of there being a decent amount of difficulty vs them still feeling like a badass.

more often than not the same person will want different things out of the game at different points in time, some days maybe you just wanna turn armies to dust, the next day maybe you wanna feel like your opponent is a real force to be reckoned with, none of these reasons are right or wrong in my opinion but they may not be what i personally want at any given time.

[(XBOX)Prime Pedestal]

15 minutes ago, Zoretor said:

Yes, weapons would clearly have to be rebalanced, including the removal of Serration/Hornet Strike/Pressure Point, etc, as I mentioned. Of course, Forma would be less of a "thing", but then with a rebalance, maybe not. Even at level 30 some weapons still benefit from at least 1 forma.

But more importantly I guess you missed the whole part about bullet sponge being a boring gameplay system, and about how some warframers, probably like yourself, wouldn't even consider this a thing because you already x-forma'd your tonkor and can easily clean house, but, wouldn't you want for all weapons and warframe "lame damage" powers to be viable, and so therefore you could use whichever you like the "feel" of, instead of simply the "most dps" one?

A nice sentiment but there is two major problems I see with this. The first is from the players perspective, a lot of players (myself included) own most if not all weapons in game and will have put 3-6 forma into most of the them, asides from melee which generally don't need any, or at the most 2. If they were to cap EHP at lvl30 they would essentially be giving the finger too a huge percentage of the community in terms of wasted time, resources and, most importantly plat. It's all well and good reimbursing players for one mod that was reduced in rank from 10 to 5 with a legendary core but here we are talking about hundreds of forma. It would cause a huge amount of animosity within the community.

Which brings me nicely onto DE's perspective which is loss of revenue. Now I can't say 100% here but I'm willing to bet that a huge chunk of platinum gets used on buying/rushing forma, reactors and catalysts, the most popular of the three being forma. If EHP is capped at level 30 then there's a fairly large weapon pool that can cope with this level not only without forma but without any mods at all. They will essentially be removing the need for forma and thus cutting their revenue, which in turn would negatively affect the community with smaller development budgets. 

[Urlan]

That is one possible solution, capping survival stats while still allowing damage to go up. I feel however that we might be able to go one further and instead link enemy stats in general as are players' own; to mods. I agree fully that enemy scaling is tied to power creep; but I believe that the link is that enemy scaling into bullet sponges causes the developed weapons to power-creep so as to become viable and thus as the weapons/warframes become more popular, inspire more enemy pumps.

We can not have a balanced environment with endless scaling. Endless scaling either for the player or computer is inherently imbalanced; however if we take the already working growth method for players and apply that to enemies we create a situation where add or subtract, the playing field is the same. If we have enemies using Serration for example, they have both a clear beginning and end of their power just as the players themselves do. If we remove the Serration, nothing changes balance wise, as the enemies have lost the same damage scaling. This methodology can be applied to all scaling stats and would help eliminate the need for power-creep or nerf hammers for the sake of balancing.

Edited August 15, 2016 by Urlan

[LABAL]

Increasing accuracy with level is one of the worst ideas I've seen so far on the logical side of spectrum. It makes sense, but you're absolutely going to regret it.

[Tizodd]

I haven't read through all the posts so if someone has mentioned this already I apologize for saying it again.  If ehp is capped at 30, abilities like Spore, Maim, Stomp, Bladestorm, Polarize, Discharge, even World on Fire and Reckoning would destroy everything even faster than they already do.

For your suggestion to work, abilities would have to be nerfed to the ground otherwise all content would be trivial.

[LABAL]

To say plain and simple, enemies need to have less passive defense and more active defense. Like scrambus' one-direction shield or manic's hasty retreat.

[Zoretor]

47 minutes ago, (XB1)AnnoyedHaddock said:

Which brings me nicely onto DE's perspective which is loss of revenue. Now I can't say 100% here but I'm willing to bet that a huge chunk of platinum gets used on buying/rushing forma, reactors and catalysts, the most popular of the three being forma. If EHP is capped at level 30 then there's a fairly large weapon pool that can cope with this level not only without forma but without any mods at all. They will essentially be removing the need for forma and thus cutting their revenue, which in turn would negatively affect the community with smaller development budgets. 

Yeah, I guess the revenue issue in Forma sales, as well as "hot new powerful weapon" sales, more so than others, is the absolute roadblock to this concept.

I guess if anything, something along the lines of this:

1 hour ago, Bizzaro21 said:

i think health should have a cap yea, but lvl 30 is a bit too low, also, armor scaling is the problem here, i can keep killing infested and corpus until level 200 no problem, because they have no armor, i think first step towards fixing this is to make armor NOT scale, but have a fixed damage reduction percentage, capped at 50% for heavy units, and then we can say enemies are balanced

. . . could probably be the way to go.

 

Anyway, all valid points. Thanks everyone, I've learned a lot.

[Bizzaro21]

12 minutes ago, Zoretor said:

. . . could probably be the way to go.

 

Anyway, all valid points. Thanks everyone, I've learned a lot.

glad I actually said smth that makes sense! lol