On Power Creep

[OverlordKyron]

I see a lot going around about the state of Power Creep within the game, and how Rivens are causing even more of an RNG-Driven Power Creep arms race.

I have a few thoughts on the issue, mostly in favor of Power Creep, but I also have a few ideas on how to mitigate it.

Enemies, even with resistances and scaling armor and health values are still going to spawn in at huge rates (save for probably exterminate missions), and eventually a sort of enemy-health-creep if you will would start happening where enemies at higher levels would become eventually unkillable without some form of debuff or focus fire on them (which might be what some people want) but with the sheer amounts of enemies that can attack all at once sometimes it becomes effectively impossible to do decent damage without exorbitantly powerful weapons.

Also, especially with the new introduction of Rivens, we're seeing more non-meta weapons make their way into "god tier". I actually heard a joke a while back about how enemies work on a binary health system in Warframe: Dead or Not Dead. There are more and more weapons reaching the ability to one-shot just about anything, and it seems like there is no way around this becoming the standard (probably not a good thing) but there really isn't a 'silver bullet' solution to this. I think Rivens were a step in the right direction, but what should really be looked at is the mechanics behind the weapons such as damage calculation and falloff, weapon drawbacks, and enemy resistance interaction. An exilus-style riven mod slot would be okay too, but that will hopefully become  un-neccessary with the inclusion of Damage 3.0 that will roll up mods like Serration and Multishot into a scaling system that goes by level.

Finally, I think there's a lot to be said about the power-fantasy in Warframe. Warframe does a great job of making the player feel amazingly powerful, and in my opinion that's what makes enemies like Assassins, Nullifiers, Kuva Guardians, and Manics so impactful. Nerfing all weapons to the point where it takes actual work to kill something would destroy the power-fantasy completely, though I really wouldn't mind if the weapons behaved a little differently, like the Tigris series having more spread or dropoff at medium range but still eviscerating enemies point blank.

Long post, Just wanted to get my thoughts out there and see what other people thought. I think Power Creep is a big and multifaceted issue right now, especially between veteran players like myself who have cleared most if not all of the starchart and have a huge variety of extremely powerful weapons at their disposal and nothing to do with them but farm. I do realize that the core of Warframe's balance changes target the low to mid grade players which makes sense, but taking steps towards going full Doom and making all weapons capable of insanity, slaughtering whole planets worth of Grineer all at once, or reigning Warframe back down a little bit towards a more stealth based team-centric approach would be a good thing.

I wonder if the real solution is diversification of the game modes, rewarding certain styles of play in certain situations above others. I really hoped to see some Operator action in War Within, being forced to stealth around unprotected and outgunned, but that's a whole other thread.

Edit: formatting.

Edit 2: Didn't finish a sentence right.

Edited December 31, 2016 by OverlordKyron

[-Apple-Pie-]

Really long post for me, but, from what i understand, you want less powerful weapons and less enemies? You say power creep, i would like to inform you, that you dont need the extraordinary powerful weapons to clear out the whole star chart. If you want to go further, you take the risk, bring most powerful weapons to the mission etc. Of course Tonkor or Tigris will kill lvl 50, but try that against lvl 100 and further. 

49 minutes ago, OverlordKyron said:

rewarding certain styles of play

I dont understand what do you mean here. Is there another way to finish and excavation? Or a spy? Or an extermination? Or defense? Or capture? Elaborate for me please.

[(XBOX)Tanta Cinta]

Power creep is an issue, but Rivens are a sort of way to boost the older weapons to compete with the new. I agree with you there. 

50 minutes ago, OverlordKyron said:

really hoped to see some Operator action in War Within, being forced to stealth around unprotected and outgunned, but that's a whole other thread.

Since you've mentioned this, have you heard of Tenno Defton? He has a series on YT called "Operator vs The World." It's awesome. He runs spy missions to exterminates to assassinations - all using the operator. I think you'll like it.

[Trichouette]

To solve the power creep we need a full damage, enemies and scaling rework but MOSTLY, we need DE to finally tell us if they want a "beat them all" type of gameplay, with hundreds of puny enemies and some strong ones that spawn from time to time, or a kind of gameplay based on less numerous but more powerful enemies.

Because right now, we have a mix of both, and you can't balance anything with that.

We have a huge amount of tiny enemies and when the mission gets longer we have more and more powerful & tanky enemies while the tiny enemies get more powerful and tanky, the only way we can deal with these are immortal frames or huge CC and our OP powercreep-fueled weapons.

 

Also don't forget that power creep = money sometimes...

[John89brensen]

I think the main problem with power creep is how DE keeps releasing weapons more and more powerful that make previous builds irrelevant, a lack of balance on how enemies scale, and nerfs to Warframes to avoid "cheese" tactics. If the game is just a power fantasy, then nerfing powers shouldnt be necessary, since ultimtely crowd control is the only thing that matters at high levels. Warframe doesnt even use cooldowns for powers, which would avoid spamming them, quite the contrary.

As long as DE doesnt adress enemy scaling, balancing Warframe will be impossible.

As for the diversification of game modes, i agree with you. Currently there is no reward for playing stealth, other than the bonus affinity for stealth kills. Game modes in Warframe, other than endless missions, sorties and raids, are generally completely unrewarding. Moving some rng based rewards to this missions would greatly encourage people to play them. Take Assault as an example, a really fun game mode, that you can tackle guns blazing or stealthly, and yet it doesnt yield any meaningful reward and no, going treasure hunting for caches is not a proper reward for a high level, and pretty long, mission. This has been said in other posts, but distributing Rivens amongst the different Kuva Fortress missions (non endless) would give players a reason to play this new tyleset. As another example take how DE removed rewards from Archwing missions, now there is no reason to play them, other than to level AWs and weapons, which thanks to the new movement system and lack of rewards is a more of a chore than a pleasure.

[Trichouette]

2 minutes ago, John89brensen said:

ultimtely crowd control is the only thing that matters at high levels.

This And trinity/energy pads is why I believe we need cooldown in the game instead of energy (and a rework of enemie scaling) & damage of course but DE said no to cooldown and players are angry when I use that word.

[(PSN)KikoEschobar]

13 minutes ago, Trichouette said:

This And trinity/energy pads is why I believe we need cooldown in the game instead of energy (and a rework of enemie scaling) & damage of course but DE said no to cooldown and players are angry when I use that word.

Because cooldowns are a pain in horde games. Need a Frost bubble to rez a teammate? Wait 7.23 seconds until you can use it again. What about channeled abilities ala PM and EB? How the hell would they even be applicable? 

 

So, tl;dr- cooldowns are unwanted, unnecessary, and completely impossible to manage......so no.

[John89brensen]

Just now, Trichouette said:

This And trinity/energy pads is why I believe we need cooldown in the game instead of energy (and a rework of enemie scaling) & damage of course but DE said no to cooldown and players are angry when I use that word.

Exactly!! Cooldown is the most basic balancing mechanic, its the best way to avoid power spamming, and yet DE refuses to implement it.

[Trichouette]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)KikoEschobar said:

Because cooldowns are a pain in horde games. Need a Frost bubble to rez a teammate? Wait 7.23 seconds until you can use it again. What about channeled abilities ala PM and EB? How the hell would they even be applicable? 

 

So, tl;dr- cooldowns are unwanted, unnecessary, and completely impossible to manage......so no.

The point would be balance, difficulty, and a spam more controlled.

Tiny ability ? that means short cooldown, spam it.

Huge CC ability ? Use it carefully, it will matter.

you need a snow globe to revive someone and you already used it ? well that's your fault, and as many would say, git gud and don't waste your ability.

And for the channeling abilities, simply give them a max active duration, a cooldown, and a cooldown reduction is cancelled before the end of the duration.

1 minute ago, John89brensen said:

Exactly!! Cooldown is the most basic balancing mechanic, its the best way to avoid power spamming, and yet DE refuses to implement it.

They refuse because the game would be harder and people wouldn't be able to rely on trinity & energy pizza anymore to spam and cheese their way through levels.

Edited December 31, 2016 by Trichouette

[(XBOX)ThermalStone]

Power creep is fine and healthy for the game.  Why would veterans stick around and spend money if they are not excited for new weapons and frames?

[John89brensen]

1 minute ago, (PS4)KikoEschobar said:

Because cooldowns are a pain in horde games. Need a Frost bubble to rez a teammate? Wait 7.23 seconds until you can use it again. What about channeled abilities ala PM and EB? How the hell would they even be applicable? 

 

So, tl;dr- cooldowns are unwanted, unnecessary, and completely impossible to manage......so no.

Not every power should have a cooldown, but whats the best way to avoid a miasma spam? or a peacemaker (old peacemaker spam? or a world on fire afk build? a cooldown.

 

10 minutes ago, Trichouette said:

They refuse because the game would be harder and people wouldn't be able to rely on trinity & energy pizza anymore to spam and cheese their way through levels.

It would be balanced, it would imply the rework of some of the powers, but all in all it works perfectly for other grind-based coop games. And given how enemy scaling works right now, you go from one shooting enemies, to getting completely massacred, only crowd control hold at high levels.

[Trichouette]

Just now, John89brensen said:

Not every power should have a cooldown, but whats the best way to avoid a miasma spam? or a peacemaker (old peacemaker spam? or a world on fire afk build? a cooldown.

 

It would be balanced, it would imply the rework of some of the powers, but all in all it works perfectly for other grind-based coop games. And given how enemy scaling works right now, you go from one shooting enemies, to getting completely massacred, only crowd control hold at high levels.

The thing is, most players see this as a horrible thing that shouldn't happen because they won't be able to spam anymore and game won't be as easy.

Of course all powers would have to be rebalanced and given a cooldown, and enemies & scaling should be reworked in term of hp and resistance, but in the end enemies wouldn't get one-shot waves by waves, simply because if your ability one-shot them, well then it's on cooldown, so you have to use something else.

3 minutes ago, (Xbox One)ThermalStone said:

Power creep is fine and healthy for the game.  Why would veterans stick around and spend money if they are not excited for new weapons and frames?

Because a new weapon should be "different", not just plain better. Just like sarpa is different than redeemer, it's not really better or worse, just different.

18 minutes ago, (PS4)KikoEschobar said:

Because cooldowns are a pain in horde games.

By the way, as I said earlier, I don't really consider warframe a horde game, I mean, in a horde game you don't face heavy unit by dozens, you get a sh*tload of tiny/medium units and one big from time to time that you'll have to focus on while avoiding the tiny units. In warframe there are nullies / bombard / heavy unit eeeeeeverywhere at some point.

[(XBOX)ThermalStone]

3 minutes ago, Trichouette said:

 

Because a new weapon should be "different", not just plain better. Just like sarpa is different than redeemer, it's not really better or worse, just different.

Things can be different and better.  I don't have him yet obviously, but everyone says Nidus is really unique and good enough that some idiots are calling for nerfs.  Everyone is really excited about him.  Most players viewed sarpa as mastery fodder.

If none of the new weapons or frames were good enough to replace anything in veteran players' loadouts, the game would stagnate.

[Trichouette]

9 minutes ago, (Xbox One)ThermalStone said:

Things can be different and better.  I don't have him yet obviously, but everyone says Nidus is really unique and good enough that some idiots are calling for nerfs.  Everyone is really excited about him.  Most players viewed sarpa as mastery fodder.

If none of the new weapons or frames were good enough to replace anything in veteran players' loadouts, the game would stagnate.

As I said, it can be "as good and different" or "better in some situations" instead of "plain better".

For example, sancti tigris is just better in every way (or almost, regular tigris has a better crit damage and accuracy but nobody care) compared to the default tigris.

On the other hand, sarpa is a nice weapon that is close to being "as good as the redeemer", because it offers a different damage type and trigger.

Other exemple, ember deals a lot of damage in an AOE, that's great, but at high level or later endless mission, she deals pathetic damage. Nidus on the other hand deals close to no damage at the start of the mission and after some waves he deal more than any frame (I just reached 80k with his first ability earlier today)

In my opinion he should be fixed but not necessarily nerfed, however other frames should be reworked to be as good... I mean look at nidus' link that last for 60 sec while trinity's link last for 12.... it's pathetic. Or nidus' passives, he has so many useful passives, and meanwhile oberon has the ability "to tame wild animals", what a joke.

Edited December 31, 2016 by Trichouette

[Xzorn]

Power Creep is a natural thing to a game where your items are not lost or stolen.

You need Power Creep to keep player's interested and invested in their gameplay. Do they go overboard? Yea, definitely.

This game already has a natural combatant to Power Creep though, which is scaling enemy levels. The issue is that we can't easily access these upper levels outside of a daily mission or spending an hour+ in an endless mission. We also receive about 1/10 the Defensive Power Creep (mostly through abilities) than we do Offensive which has led to the situation where you can still easily kill enemies yet they can also one shot you well before your damage output starts to fall off.

[Goodwill]

3 hours ago, Trichouette said:

This And trinity/energy pads is why I believe we need cooldown in the game instead of energy (and a rework of enemie scaling) & damage of course but DE said no to cooldown and players are angry when I use that word.

If I were in DE's shoes, I'd say no to cooldown due to my pride as a game designer. It's true that it would be an easy way to balance abilities, but that's all it is, easy. Warframe would start conforming more to your typical skill key games just with parkour. If anything, DE should just rework the energy costs. Take out energy pads or limit the amount of items you can take per mission.

What you are describing how cooldowns would affect gameplay is essentially a new player playing the game. Base energy, no maxed or primed mods, need to be conscious about what to spend your energy on.

[Trichouette]

10 hours ago, Goodwill said:

If I were in DE's shoes, I'd say no to cooldown due to my pride as a game designer. It's true that it would be an easy way to balance abilities, but that's all it is, easy. Warframe would start conforming more to your typical skill key games just with parkour. If anything, DE should just rework the energy costs. Take out energy pads or limit the amount of items you can take per mission.

What you are describing how cooldowns would affect gameplay is essentially a new player playing the game. Base energy, no maxed or primed mods, need to be conscious about what to spend your energy on.

Well at least the game would be balanced... So far all we have is "spam spam spam CC and enemies can't do anything"

At some point if they want to balance the game they'll have to nerf CC abilities, or they could introduce cooldown and let the abilities be OP, but not as spammable.

[Goodwill]

11 hours ago, Trichouette said:

Well at least the game would be balanced... So far all we have is "spam spam spam CC and enemies can't do anything"

At some point if they want to balance the game they'll have to nerf CC abilities, or they could introduce cooldown and let the abilities be OP, but not as spammable.

Introducing cooldown is not the only fix to the problem and will be a solution that brings more problems than it will fix.

[Trichouette]

23 minutes ago, Goodwill said:

Introducing cooldown is not the only fix to the problem and will be a solution that brings more problems than it will fix.

problems like ?

unless players' anger because they can't cheese the missions like they used to, and the fact all frame would require to be worked on to implement the feature, I don't see any problem.

And the only other fix possible is "nerf nerf nerf everywhere" or "greatly reduce the ways we get energy", which is worse than cooldowns.

Edited January 1, 2017 by Trichouette

[TheChaotic1]

50 minutes ago, Trichouette said:

problems like ?

unless players' anger because they can't cheese the missions like they used to, and the fact all frame would require to be worked on to implement the feature, I don't see any problem.

And the only other fix possible is "nerf nerf nerf everywhere" or "greatly reduce the ways we get energy", which is worse than cooldowns.

As if cooldowns will somehow make the game harder. If there are cooldowns there will be cooldown reducing mods, which means the cheese will get even worse because powers become free. Energy and minor cooldowns could work but, there isn't a single ability in this game that can keep up with the guns.

Also, the sheer amount of work that would be needed to do this is insane. There wouldn't be any new content for at least a year. Just reworks.

[Trichouette]

1 minute ago, TheChaotic1 said:

There wouldn't be any new content for at least a year. Just reworks.

Is that a bad thing ? not sure. the game needs content to attract new players but rework could make older players that got fed up with the game (and god knows there are so many) come back.

1 minute ago, TheChaotic1 said:

If there are cooldowns there will be cooldown reducing mods

Who said that ? And who said these mods wouldn't be balanced, unlike the current energy efficiency mods that make OP abilities cost absolutely nothing (i'm looking at you maim...)

[aligatorno]

3 minutes ago, Trichouette said:

Is that a bad thing ? not sure. t

This is what made Warframe succeed and what makes Warframe different from other mmos. The devs said in multiple devstreams this very thing. 

Edited January 2, 2017 by aligatorno

[Trichouette]

1 minute ago, aligatorno said:

This is what made Warframe succeed and what makes Warframe different from other mmos. The devs said in multiple devstreams this very thing. 

What ? You mean "never finish any feature and always pile up new unfinished feature on top of them" is what makes warframe different ? Well yeah it's true, is it a good thing ? not sure...

Edited January 2, 2017 by Trichouette

[TheChaotic1]

1 minute ago, Trichouette said:

Is that a bad thing ? not sure. the game needs content to attract new players but rework could make older players that got fed up with the game (and god knows there are so many) come back.

Who said that ? And who said these mods wouldn't be balanced, unlike the current energy efficiency mods that make OP abilities cost absolutely nothing (i'm looking at you maim...)

Listen, the chedder always rises to the top. Always.

If there is a mechanic, there will be a mod to alter it, that's just how warframe is, the only thing without mods is operators. And lets say the cooldown mod starts at 30% at max, because thats how they usually are, eventually there will be a 55% version of the primed form. Add in a corrupt mod of some sort, lets say 'Hastened Fury' 45% cooldown reduction, -30% duration. Shoot lets go ahead and add a drift mod for 10% reduction. That leaves us with 105% cooldown reduction if we build for that. With three mods.

[aligatorno]

5 minutes ago, Trichouette said:

What ? You mean "never finish any feature and always pile up new unfinished feature on top of them" is what makes warframe different ? Well yeah it's true, is it a good thing ? not sure...

That may be, but Warframe is still in beta, still in constant developing and changing, you can only do so much with a team of their size when you have to focus on both new content and old.  Stagnation will most likely be the death of Warframe. 

Edited January 2, 2017 by aligatorno