Flood of meaningless weapons

[Azrael]

Just now, DimkaTsv said:

1. Sorry... I am Russian and on russian wiki was said that cloud damage cann't be boosted. I was wrong

Ah, I see. It probably just hasn't been updated yet. When it came out, the mutalist cernos had un-boostable cloud damage, but there was an outcry and DE changed it.

 

3 minutes ago, DimkaTsv said:

I agree that Prime should be better than base version of weapon, but i think that making base version of new weapon more balanced comparing to other weapons of such type would be a good idea

Yeah, powercreep is a problem, but also somewhat necessary. It's a tough balancing act. Some of the non-prime weapons actually do have advantages over the prime version, though. For example, the Vectis has a different IPS spread than the Vectis Prime, it's weighted more towards slash. While the Vectis Prime does more damage, the regular Vectis is much better for slash/status builds, and slash/status builds are surprisingly effective versus armored enemies on the vectis.

[LuckyCharm]

>.> i would love them to go back to some older guns and give them some love though, the ever expanding arsenal doesn't always let less used weapons -cough dual swords cough- get some love. The entire melee experience starts to feel super dated when you realise you only ever have 1-3 stances to choose from per weapon category

 

[Azrael]

Just now, LuckyCharm said:

The entire melee experience starts to feel super dated when you realise you only ever have 1-3 stances to choose from per weapon category

Definitely. I would love some new stances so much...

[DimkaTsv]

13 minutes ago, Lord_Azrael said:

Yeah, powercreep is a problem, but also somewhat necessary. It's a tough balancing act. 

I meant why Dual Aether Daggers even not comparable to Fang

Or... Silva and Aegis to Ak and Brant? 

Despair to Spira? 

Vulkar to Vectis (not even Vectis Prime) 

Secura! Penta to Tonkor? 

Paracyst to Harpak?

I meant this disbalance... 

Prime and base version differences are different... As you said on Vectis/Prime example each have own nice sides... But with most weapon Prime verison simply OP version of base... ex. Galatin/Prime, Nikana/Prime Akstilletto/Prime, Soma/Prime, Tigris/Prime e.t.c

But when even sindi weapon cann't be compared with its Primed version (Tigris) it isn't good... 

 

[blackheartstar_pc]

3 hours ago, JSharpie said:

My thoughts are the same for all threads like this: A weapon is only as useless as you let it be. Most of the newer weapons that have come out do stand out in stats, and personally I haven't touched the Lex Prime, Soma Prime, or Nikana Prime in months, to name a few. I have not had a weapon that couldn't hold up in Sorties,

Exactly my thoughts as well.

[-HAKUNA-YOUR-TATAS-]

I have a load out that I call "MK1" which consists of an Excalibur, Braton MK1, Kunai MK1 and Bo MK1.  With the right mods it still wrecks house with almost everything in game bar the highest leveled enemies.  The power is in our mods not the weapons themselves.  Sure I understand that base stats matter, but you can take maxed out starter weapons into anything and still do relevant damage.  That is a very good thing.

[Xzorn]

I've said myself many times they need to stop working on content a fix the core mechanics of the game. Said content lasts an hour or two or comes Dead on Arrival due to said broken systems.

You're prolly going to get a bunch of contrary arguments to the concept of "useless weapons" because people in this game play at all different level ranges.

As an endurance runner who owns 140 weapons; I can agree from personal experience that only about 15 of those weapons hold up when it comes down to it.

It's not always a fault of the weapon though, the broken damage system is to blame for most of it. Then again there are weapons which are introduced with blatantly low stats while others suffer from WAY overcompensated power creep.

In Void 1.0 there were actually even less than 15 choices due to Nullifiers. If I wanted to do a lvl 300 run or quad levels with friends there were prolly 10 or so weapons to choose from. Outside of this the Armor scaling that some players complain about actually gives value to otherwise low end weapons like Pracayst, Tysis and even Braton Prime. People actually pick specific gear and weapons outside of simple modding to deal with Armor. Yet no one bothers with "Shield Shredding Weapons" or "Infested Killers" because they don't matter or are easily bypassed. It's a shame really that people want Armor nerfed when it's actually good for the game.

[Azrael]

9 hours ago, DimkaTsv said:

Vulkar to Vectis (not even Vectis Prime) 

Secura! Penta to Tonkor? 

Paracyst to Harpak?

All of these weapons have a different feel and may be used in different situations. For example, there are things you can do with the secura penta or regular penta that you can't do with the tonkor. The vulkar has a very different ips spread, and feels different as a gun, etc...

[blackheartstar_pc]

8 hours ago, Xzorn said:

It's a shame really that people want Armor nerfed when it's actually good for the game.

Agreed. I maddening every time a "fix armor scaling" thread.

[taiiat]

12 hours ago, Lord_Azrael said:

Oh, jeez, I missed this one! You may be unaware of this, but the stradavar was buffed. In single fire mode it gets decent stats now, and hits hard enough to justify messing with it.

yeah, and now Semi-Auto is strictly superior to Auto.
 

12 hours ago, Lord_Azrael said:

Mutalist Cernos

Mutalist Cernos is great in specific situations (usually using it for a few abusive methods), otherwise it's outclassed by many Weapons. it is capable of having more Elemental Status Types than most Weapons, but that's not likely to be a selling point for most Players, when sacrificing so many other things to get it. (like effective Status Application, since Status Bows have a very steep hill to climb)

9 hours ago, Xzorn said:

It's a shame really that people want Armor nerfed when it's actually good for the game.

having Armor is fine, exponential Health from Armor, not so much.
especially because we readily available have Armor Ignore to compensate for Armor, which means the Armor is a failure in the first place.

Armor Systems aren't awful, but the Armor System we have is no good. makes a lot of the same mistakes other games make with poor Armor Systems that don't work and make most of the game irrelevant when dealing with Armor.

[Azrael]

3 minutes ago, taiiat said:

Mutalist Cernos is great in specific situations (usually using it for a few abusive methods), otherwise it's outclassed by many Weapons.

But what I've repeatedly said is that it isn't necessary for a weapon to be *the best* in order for it to have "redeeming qualities." People have been repeating the same hyperbole over and over, that if a weapon isn't quite as strong as some other weapon, then it's "absolutely useless" or "without redeeming qualities."

Sure, the mutie cernos is outclassed by other weapons. But it's interesting, unique, and fun. And it works just fine for most of the content of the game. In my book, that makes it worthwhile.

[Xzorn]

52 minutes ago, taiiat said:

having Armor is fine, exponential Health from Armor, not so much.

especially because we readily available have Armor Ignore to compensate for Armor, which means the Armor is a failure in the first place.

Armor Systems aren't awful, but the Armor System we have is no good. makes a lot of the same mistakes other games make with poor Armor Systems that don't work and make most of the game irrelevant when dealing with Armor.

 

It's somewhat of a balancing act I think.

You can't have such trivial amounts of armor that you end up creating another meta where you only need a specific status proc rate either. I agree with exponential armor gains but it could stand to be a little less steep. That's of course considering our current status effects and damage types, which are flawed at best.

I think it's good for the game because the damage system and how much damage we do is so out of proportion that there would be even less competitive options without exponential armor gains.  At least in the current system the armor gain rate causes us to pick certain weapons which are better at shredding armor or abilities which can strip it. I don't think having abilities that strip armor makes it a failure, It gives us choices that we might not normally consider.....  At least until CPx4 comes into play later in levels and the damage system breaks once again. I've never really agreed with CP stacking.

It's nowhere near well designed but I really like the idea of picking weapons for a different task beyond simple modding.  Imagine if Toxic didn't bypass shields and they tippled shield gains of Corpus while removing bursa's armor, we'd have a whole other category of ideal weapons. Instead we just go pure toxic with whatever we want and dump on it.

I guess I just like the layers of weapons specialization on top of mod specialization and currently it kinda doesn't exist outside of armor.

[taiiat]

15 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

I think it's good for the game because the damage system and how much damage we do is so out of proportion that there would be even less competitive options without exponential armor gains.

I don't think having abilities that strip armor makes it a failure

uhh, intelligent discussion about our balance (not just the random whining people do) suggests heavily dividing Armor Scaling or EHP not being exponential in the first place - in addition to actually keeping Players in check on Vertical Progression and all stats in general.

if you have Armor, but can just casually ignore it, your Armor System is a failure. because completely ignoring it will always be the best option, meaning that anything that doesn't do that is terrible.
it doesn't work. the only way it could 'work' would be if everything can completely ignore Armor - but then you don't have Armor, do you?

 

[Azrael]

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

Mutalist Cernos is great in specific situations (usually using it for a few abusive methods)

Oh, and what's this about abuse? I am not aware of any abuse cases with this weapon. Are you counting a combo with saryn's spores "abusive?" Because I'm pretty sure that gas procs and armor stripping and synergy with saryn were all intended, and are hardly unbalanced.

[Slaviar]

1 hour ago, Lord_Azrael said:

But what I've repeatedly said is that it isn't necessary for a weapon to be *the best* in order for it to have "redeeming qualities." People have been repeating the same hyperbole over and over, that if a weapon isn't quite as strong as some other weapon, then it's "absolutely useless" or "without redeeming qualities."

Sure, the mutie cernos is outclassed by other weapons. But it's interesting, unique, and fun. And it works just fine for most of the content of the game. In my book, that makes it worthwhile.

Weapon doesn't have to be overpowered to be good. Prisma Skana is nowhere near overpowered but is decent weapon and I use it in entire content, including sortie. it's light years behind Galatine or Fragor Prime but is able to hold its ground. But then there's Ether Sword. I like its look but it's total trash. True, I can use it for majority of content but if I want to use it for high level it would be socket for EB mods at best. It wouldn't hurt game if weapons like Flux, Embolist or aforementioned Ether Sword, when modded, would be usable at high level content

[Xzorn]

20 minutes ago, taiiat said:

uhh, intelligent discussion about our balance (not just the random whining people do) suggests heavily dividing Armor Scaling or EHP not being exponential in the first place - in addition to actually keeping Players in check on Vertical Progression and all stats in general.

if you have Armor, but can just casually ignore it, your Armor System is a failure. because completely ignoring it will always be the best option, meaning that anything that doesn't do that is terrible.
it doesn't work. the only way it could 'work' would be if everything can completely ignore Armor - but then you don't have Armor, do you?

 

The only reason it's casually ignored though are flaws of the damage system like Bleed damage and CPx4.

The abilities that strip armor are mostly on frames which do not have any damage buffs. You're decision is to run armor strip over damage. The only frame that comes to mind which has both is Banshee and deservingly so since she's 100% offensive and made of paper. I wouldn't call that casually ignoring. Ideally. Like I said though, broken system.

For example if I run a damage buff with Paracyst spec to strip armor and a Soma or whatever with an armor strip ability. Ideally.. the results should be similar. In the current damage system this doesn't work because the exponential gain of armor is too high compared to health. I don't really think you're ignoring armor in either case though. A leaner armor gain might be required for that but I've not really compared.

I like the idea of faction based Auras I just disagree with how CP stacks because it does exactly what you said. It allows the player to casually ignore a mechanic of the game.

[taiiat]

6 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

Your decision is to run armor strip over damage.

which is always superior, defeating choices.

if you have Armor, you can't just ignore it because you feel like it. because then you don't have Armor.
it's a common rookie mistake with Armor.

[KnightCole]

Though if DE wanted to give us another heavy hitting machinegun, I wouldnt complain...haha. 

 

Also, redesign the Supra to be more like a large Cestra, instead of a car battery.  Also, buff that things accuracy to like 20....why 8?

[Xzorn]

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

which is always superior, defeating choices.

if you have Armor, you can't just ignore it because you feel like it. because then you don't have Armor.
it's a common rookie mistake with Armor.

 

Armor is their Health type though.

 I didn't mean any damage type. Yet again a problem with the damage system is that Radiation is supposed to be good against Alloy but it's not.

In both cases I was considering using Corrosive damage type with both weapons.

Corrosive being an exponential counter to Armor seems fine to me. I can see the argument that Armor doesn't need to exist in this case due to Corrosive basically being HP damage but then what do you do with status and weapon variation? The choice of a little status or a lot of status? Obviously a lot of status is going to be better eventually but you also have the choice of no status and an ability to strip armor. The lack of this variation is why you can get away with using basically anything against other factions.

A faction's HP type should take away your choices as they scale. Right now armor is the only health type that forces you to consider other weapons you wouldn't normally use for the sake of doing maximum damage to their HP type.

[--DSP--]

IMO, weapons with counterpart that is already strong doesn't need any more upgrades.

But weapons like Miter and Panthera, those fun yet *not useful* weapons which doesn't have any varient should have a buff or an upgrade.

Not every weapon should be top tier, but every kind of weapons should at least be relevant.

[Teridax68]

A few others, namely Chipputer, have said this a lot better, but I completely agree that it's sad to see how many weapons have turned into mastery fodder, simply because they're so heavily outclassed by competition. To DE's merit, they've mostly avoided this with recent non-Prime releases, offering weapons focused on some new aesthetic or gameplay mechanic, rather than raw statistical superiority. On the other hand, we have Galatine and Tigris Prime, which are respectively the best melee weapon in the game and one of the best guns around, and are pure statistical upgrades from their non-Prime versions. Power creep in general does the game no service, and while it may provide some short-term benefit by increasing plat/real money spending on release, especially for Prime Access, it harms Warframe in the long term by throwing a huge number of weapons into relative obscurity, and making the game's content pool shallower and less exciting overall.

Personally, I think the only viable solution should be to progressively give each weapon a unique mechanic: it doesn't matter what kind, if it makes that weapon the absolute best at one specific playstyle or situation, that's good enough reason for players to keep it around and even commit to it. That's why people pick the Torid, the Heliocor or the Opticor, despite there being far more powerful weapons around. DE have been updating a few weapons' visuals, so modding their stats shouldn't be too far a stretch, even if updating the whole weapon roster might take some time.