What are we really looking for in damage 3.0?

[FAZZWARFRAME]

I'm not trying to be sarcastic, with all the community voices on wanting damage model revisions and armor scaling revisions, I'm generally curious as to what kind of end-state are we, as players, looking for?

A prevailing complaint is that armor scales too drastically on high level enemies and damage couldn't catch up.  But the way I see it, if we want a level 200 enemy to become easier to kill as something like a level 70 enemy currently, why don't we just fight the level 70 enemies instead?

[motorfirebox]

Well, for one thing, meaningful choice when it comes to mods. To some extent we're getting pretty close to that; with the Acolyte mods, the number of "must-have" mods has become larger than the number of slots available, so you actually have to make some choices. But there are still mods—base damage mods, multishot mods—where the difference between having them and lacking them is so large that they can't reasonably be replaced with anything else.

[Hixlysss]

I don't want to fight a level 200 enemy, the level 100 enemies are enough of an issue for me, unless I pull out "cheese builds" which are just...crazy in my opinion. I want the game to feel...good, to be fun again. Waaay back when, back in closed beta, there was a sense of worry when fighting the basic mooks. Fighting a group of lancer's got the heart pumping because they could KILL you, but you could kill them if you were smart, using cover, ect, it was far more tactical than it is now.

Currently we can stack our health and shields so high that we don't need to worry about cover, mooks don't do enough damage to us unless they are about 5x our level and by time they reach that point no amount of using cover is going to help you cause their armor is so high that you can't hurt them anywhere near as badly as they can hurt you.

[(PSN)Romulus93]

The game doesn't feel good when you're trying to kill things at that high level and trash mobs feel like trash. 

[Clovis15]

Realistically I don't want the wake of Damage 3.0 to give everyone making the most of Damage 2.0 the absolute short-end of the stick. There are people with seven polarities on their crit-pistols right now, all because of the various Primed mods released. Who cares if a new system is theoretically better for players whom haven't joined yet, if it burns the entire existing player-base in the process? I just want them to be extremely careful in how they handle the move, and to not make a single inch forward until they're ready to be that careful. I also don't want them super-trivialize weapons in the process, just like the Flux Rifle was forever made pointless by the loss of "Serration" class damage.

[Lost_Cartographer]

The people that want the scaling to be "fixed" don't understand what they're really asking for is to make it easier to go another hour or two into an endless mission.  There came a point in the old void where they needed to be told "stop" and armor did the trick.  OP is right, if you want to fight level 200 guys that die easily, why not just fight level 70's?  Nothing mechanically changes, just the numbers ramp up.

What I want from damage 3.0 is the death of climbing damage numbers.  I get that people think weapons need to increase their damage output in some way, but if we really want interesting enemies and not just hordes of one-trick ponies that we either mow down in a single round or spend an entire magazine plinking away into nothing, then DE needs to be able to balance weapons and enemies against each other such that said enemies last long enough to do anything, and I dare say this should happen at all skill levels.

But hey, I'm not the type to get a rush from tacking on an extra zero onto my 10 damage output and looking forward moving on from enemies with 100hp to enemies with 1000hp...

I'm actually hoping the utility mods get a respectable oomph (+15% status chance?  +30% magazine size?  WHO USES +MAX AMMO!?,) though I expect them to be completely ignored, and damage 3.0 to completely miss the mark in fixing anything.

Edited September 21, 2016 by Littleman88

[Me.KayOh]

i think it should be remembered that the status quo will always be in favour of the mobs. so whatever is done exactly will not change the status quo. for as much change that may be done to our weapons and frames, a similar change will go across to the mobs. ergo, i dont think anything significant change to the end result will be achieved. acolyte mods have taken into account, somewhat, a skill factor (like the headshot mods etc) but again, in everything endless that will become less and less significant.

its funny though. there's a group of ppl who cry for more endgame and more challenging things because things like sorties are "too easy". and then there's a group of ppl who cry for mob scaling nerfs.

i daresay the two groups are not mutually exclusive. =|. personally i'm happy playing normal starchart missions and utilising my various frames and weapons in such a way that fakes the status quo going into my favour. because that is where the pretentious sense of power comes from and that's how warframes were intially designed all the way back in 2012. they were supposed to be powerful and were suppose to give users that sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when the abilities are employed. why else did ppl abuse saryn and nova prior to their re-work? pressing 4 and jumping through missions. why else do ppl still abuse ash's bladestorm? or mirage + synoid simulor? because that's where the power rush is. that is the easiest route to getting that feeling while still playing what is considered to be "end game" content.

so is it DE making the game more difficult which gives rise to cheese builds? or is it the cheese builds that give rise to ridiculously difficult content? if its the latter, what happens to those players who dont use cheese builds? short end of the stick.

[ThePredicament]

Aside from armor scaling, there really isn't much left, only because armor is what makes or breaks a frame at late game (more than weapons and their damage/status). Even then, some frames are better than others in different parts of the game, Ember, for example, completely wrecks low to mid missions and Nyx is wildly unnecessary, while it's the opposite in higher end games.

On top of that, Damage 3.0 and endgame are going to be separate things to deal with, hopefully the damage rework first.

I think we're in way too deep to do any meaningful reworks aside from making the game more "tactical" as in everything has little health, utility is much more important (like reload speed, more ammo), stealth is not just a cheap option, etc. But that's not Warframe, that's something else.

[Xaero]

I'm mostly concerned with simple logic. How can a mere Lancer be stronger than Vay Hek (granted Lancer is dozens of level higher)? Enemy levels should no longer be a thing. I understand we are not supposed to stay in endless missions forever but scaling enemy EHP and damage is a cheap and unnecessary way. Enemies' difficulty could be set by their type for example. The longer we stay in endless missions, the more difficult enemy types we get over time. In the end we could be swarmed by hordes of Eximi and Nullifiers but at least it will be fair - no more one-shotting bulletsponge enemies. This could be the balance line of all the combat system. Perhaps if DE used it from the beginning, we wouldn't have tons of useless gear/insanely overpowered stuff as well as a huge gap between modded and unmodded gear. It's hard to not notice that lately devs pay much more attention to utility so proposed changes would work perfectly for this direction.

[Xekrin]

I want physical damage to actually be useful and not completely overshadowed by elemental damage.  In both numbers and resistances on enemies.  I want it to be feasible to select a single elemental damage type (fire or toxin) and be able to use it in a comparable way to combined secondary element types.

I want status to be more than just corrosive for stripping armor, viral to halve health if you're lucky, or gas because you're sayrn.  I want double status procs over 100%  I want status MODS that aren't dual damage mods to actually be better than their "combined" counterparts.  I want status to be comparable to critical in more than a couple situations.

I want my weapon to grow in strength as I rank it, including repeated forma.  Yes forma halves the mod energy needed which is nice but lore wise forma should actually be changing the structure of a weapon, its shaping the weapon into something new each time.  It should have a positive effect on more than just what mods I could slap on it (in it?), such as accuracy, or range or balance or performance.

I want noise levels to be a gradual thing, instead of ALARMING and SILENT and allowing a single mod to switch the two, I want levels.  My acrid that shoots darts is as loud as a tonkor?  Really?

That's all for now.  Good luck DE!

 

[(XBOX)TheLegend 64312]

My biggest issue isn't really necessary mods. I think our damage system is okay ish now. What I do think needs attention is exponential scaling.

One: we need ways to counter it more effectively. If there were more mods like acid shells and the one for jat kittag that would be good enough. 

Two: there needs to be scaling rewards. Right now, EHP of enemies scales exponentially exponentially. Yes I meant to say it twice since armor and health both scale exponentially. Affinity, however, scales in a root function. I personally think that fighting exponentially stronger enemies should yield exponentially higher rewards. Instead, it's the direct opposite. I also think that item drop rates should be slightly affected by enemy levels. That way, we are rewarded by and encouraged into fighting higher level enemies and content that currently have no point