Power Design And Mechanic : Room For Improvement.

[neKroMancer]

The recent change of Rhino, Volt , and Mag (well, not so much for Mag) is a step in the right direction. However power design in Warframe still suffer from debilitating scaling issue, especially in the case of pure damage power.

 

Imo, damage power is 'fine' in low and mid level but spectacularly fail in higher level without Focus mod. Even with Focus, which provide 30% more damage, player will still face certain doom fighting against high level enemies. Rhino stomp's change which combined both utility (in this case stun, flying, whatever) and damage is a good concept. However, there are other powers which require attention (most of damage powers, actually). Slashdash, Radial javelin, Shuriken, Bladestrom, Ember's powers, etc. all of which still have scaling problem : Godlike in the beginning and suck badly in endgame.

 

These points lead to our current situations: How to improve power scaling?

 

The problem is about core design of each power. 2 ways to make this work are:

 

A) Rhino stomp's route.

Adding utility into powers will make them useful even when their damage is already useless. Buff, debuff, and CC are three primary types of utility which we could use. Imagine Crush that can permanently reduce target's armor by percentage. Sweet. There are lots of unused buff/debuff/CC left in the game.

 

- Armor reduction.

- Shatter armor (reduce armor rating of a single target to 0).

- Toggle powers with pro and con within the same power (turn it on permanently and reduce max energy/energy gain during the duration, press the button again to deactivate) : Increase weapon damage and accuracy at the expense of max shield, add damage reduction to shield while reducing power damage, add power damage at the expense of health, etc. (reminds me of ME3 Sentinel class)

- Infrared vision power - see through wall and temporarily grant puncture effect to hitscan weapon.

- Thorn effect - bounce back damage and reduce damage taken.

- Vampire effect - leech health/energy from target. 

- Various straight buff - range/melee/power damage buff (Roar is a bit all too 'wide', really. Scott seemed to forget that granting one power ability to buff all kinds of damage will make his work significantly harder in the future). Shield buff, shield strenght buff (adding fixed armor value into shield), elemental damage buff, etc. 

- Fear - Ai is inflicted with fear and run away from player.

etc.

 

B) Damage calculation.

I don't think DE will be able to add utility to all powers. Some of them will remain pure damage, just for the sake of varieties. Therefore damage calculation must not be based on flat damage + enemy weakness + Focus mod if we want them to scale better in higher level without breaking low/medium level.

 

Percentage of health + flat damage. 

 

This calculation is simple, if power deal fixed damage to target's health in form of percentage then scaling problem will be partially solved. However, to prevent this type of power from having the same performance from Mercury to Pluto, flat damage is added to make a difference.

 

Example - Bladestrom : 75% health + 200 damage.

 

Mercury Grineer (100 HP) - Bladestrom deals 75 damage straight to health and extra 200. OHK.

Ceres Grineer (500 HP) - Bladestrom deals 400 damage straight to health and extra 200. OHK.

Pluto Grineer (1000 HP) - Bladestrom deals 750 damage staright and extra 200. 50 health remaining.

Nightmare Grineer (2000 HP) - Bladestrom deals 1500 damage straight and extra 200. 300 health remaining.

 

The difference from flat damage is percentage makes damage viable regardless of level. Even if player can't kill target outright with power, it still deals significant damage to target to be useful in high level gameplay.

 

Suggestions are welcomed. 

 

PS. Any thought on current energy system is also welcomed. As long as it doesn't involve any 'regeneration' or 'CD'. These type of changes really slow down the game play or require massive rework of power design. 

[fatpig84]

I suggest X% scaling instead for flat figures.

 

Like Shuriken doing XXX% of your charged weapon DPS (yes DPS, so not just big numbers on weapons but swing speed also) so the damage scales as your player scales.

 

Or Iron Skin giving XXX% over shield, so a Rhino would at least "grow" with his skill. Sure his iron skin won't be as tough as he was at low levels but at least he can take sustained 3 to 5 seconds of beating from in case he got knocked down by level 80 enemies.

[MetalGerbil]

for A) i feel is the most interesting of the two.

it is an effect you can plan on and remains just as useful regardless of where you go altho not necessarily as effective. which isnt a bad thing as skill should make up for any slack at later levers. in a game with skills AND guns, you would expect guns to be just as much a part of the equation.

the biggest problem is avoiding the being fit one to one. i read a post where some guy claimed banshee was the only option for sniping thanks to sonar. or having a frame with an armor debuff and saying "well clearly he is the only option for grineer".

its easy to find yourself in a situation where people focus on one effect as the most useful and disregard anything and everything else. any weapon buff suggestion now a days reads "give it armor ignore and it will be viable". so very annoying.

for B) - that sounds overly simplistic.

how do you deal with a lvl 30 grineer? one skill plus 2 shots.

how do you deal with a lvl 150 grineer? one skill plus 5 shots.

you have turned the already identical feel of the game even more samey and monotonous than it is now.

skills are fine. the only time they become completely nullified is in endless defence. where DE has stated they never expected people to make it that far in terms of waves. and you can clearly see this in other areas for the game where powers are plenty effective at hitting things hard or wiping them out entirely.

not to mention that you should be going in with a group. its not just YOUR powers being put on target, its that of the other 3 dudes. with a percentage based system you completely remove the need for those 3 other individuals. just looking at your numbers you can see that you would ever only need 2 guys, ever, to wipe out a room.

[neKroMancer]

I suggest X% scaling instead for flat figures.

 

Like Shuriken doing XXX% of your charged weapon DPS (yes DPS, so not just big numbers on weapons but swing speed also) so the damage scales as your player scales.

 

Or Iron Skin giving XXX% over shield, so a Rhino would at least "grow" with his skill. Sure his iron skin won't be as tough as he was at low levels but at least he can take sustained 3 to 5 seconds of beating from in case he got knocked down by level 80 enemies.

Problem is the fact that weapon-damage based calculation will make some weapons more desirable than others. Most of the time, these same weapons will also perform well in term of damage by themselves. In order to cast, player has to equip Gram/Scindo to maximize power damage. Killing blow will make this problem substantially worse. You'll see casters with certain setup running in high level like typical RPG games.

In case of defense buff, Iron skin, I don't believe that stat-based in the answer as well. At some point, AI will be able to crush you with pure stat which is an intended effect by design. Still, the problem is of scaling similar to offensive power. I believe that percentage reduction mixed with base stat is the answer like my second proposal. However, I see nothing wrong with your solution but the percentage increase will have to be balanced with max setup which drive the min-max strategy.

[neKroMancer]

snip.

One long answer, have to snip it.

OK, I concur that the A solution is better and drive the game into something interesting. I believe that certain frames are created to fit certain concept. Rhino is CC/buff class. Banshee is semi-stealth and damage buff. Loki is field manipulation. Etc. However, there is no doubt that frame that can debuff AI's armor will be exceedingly powerful since it will be able to negate AI's most powerful defense aspect. Creating said frame will require other stat balancing and make it a debuff/support frame while retaining solo play viability. Ehh, it could be done. Look at the Volus from ME3MP, these shorties are for very advanced players and downright deadly in their hands.

Sometime it depends on the player to figure out power combinations and their potential.

As for the B solution. As we know, some of them will be pure damage and suffer from scaling problem. With the introduction of Rhino, I think power design in Warframe is shifting and any powers that don't possess utility factor will be considered 'not viable' in the future. My point in the B solution is to give these powers better damage scaling, regardless of AI's level.

About teamwork : "you're not supposed to go in there alone" idea is good. However, many ultimates simply disregard this notion with their capability in damage. To be frank, it's ultimates that is the problem since it eliminates any kind of teamwork and depth/tactic in combat. The topic "press 4 to kill everything" which has been under debate for quite a while just showed that many players use these powers to get out of situation they shouldn't be in the first place. Using ultimates to eliminate difficulty. What is the point of asking DE to create complex AI behavior and better designed AI if players are going to obliterate them with one button?

Is Warframe supposed to deliver depth and tactic only in endless defense?

To create depth and teamwork in Warframe, first we have to eliminate a design which destroy them in the first place.

A strong, downright fanatical idea. Really.

Edited July 11, 2013 by neKroMancer

[Kaltfiur]

I've noticed a few things myself in some 200 hours of gameplay, not as much as some, more then others. And it's this. Each Warframe DOES have a single power that scales better, and will serve better in all situations more consistently at all levels, and this is normal for any game, and is typically called Bread and Butter. It's commonly used, and expected. Loki's Invis for example can be focused on exclusively to make that normally easy to kill frame incredibly dangerous. Banshee's Sonar is the same way, I've seen Banshees run without it, but they're never as effective as someone who uses it, and happens to be able to hit that crit spot for the 500% multiplier. Her other skills are useful for their utility, but her ult loses it's wipe power into areas like Void Runs and the like, requiring the player to fall back into hitting these high damage spots, preferably with some kind of crowd control involved, like Sonic Boom's knockdown.

 

As for min-maxing, that becomes a problem whenever a decent percentage based scaling ability is involved, currently most prominently seen in Loki, which personally, because of his low shield and health values, I'm actually okay with because that's just pretty acceptable on what is obviously a glass cannon. As for running with a group? Although a personal choice, it's definitely the safer of the 2 options, and when it's done that way, in a team oriented game like warframe, the skills scaling as they stand functions just fine.

 

Most of the complaints I've seen about damage do come from solo players, who fall back onto powerful armor punching weapons like the Paris or Despair, and there's nothing wrong with that either, but the game shouldn't be tailored to these players, as they aren't the majority, and if you're going to try and wipe out the hostile population on a ship all on your own, and didn't bring the right tools for the job (High end weapons picked with that enemy in mind, and the right skills) then yea, you're going to have a hard time. Mixing Bladestorm, with Stomp, works incredibly well on any room, bringing to mention a simple 2 man team that synergizes very well. Another one is Banshee using Sonar, and Loki focusing on Invis, Sonar allowing Banshee to use long ranged tactics while Loki takes brutal advantage of his melee bonus, and gaining the benefit of enemy radar, as well as added damage crit spots that can be struck with a melee weapon.

 

Do I think there is room for improvement? Sure, but I don't think it's all that severe a problem at the moment. Both Loki and Ash currently have percentage based scaling for damage on their abilities, and serve as very viable solo play options, as does Banshee, but that's 3 good choices to run just about anything on your own, with other frames more oriented at coop play styles. I personally would love higher damage on Sonic Boom for Banshee, but as it stands, that skill really is more about the CC then the damage.

 

Ember's Overheat for example, although not all that high on the damage end of things, provides a 70% damage reduction at max rank, and becomes an amazing tanking utility ability that makes her incredibly hard to take down, while World on Fire provides the brunt of her skill based late game damage. Frost is another good example, although his damage is great early game, come late game, his skills CC options such as his Freeze or Globe, become more useful, and are specifically geared towards running with a team. Excalibur is a flat dps frame, but he's also supposed to be a melee damage brawler with the backup of other people, the standard CC+Damage=Win setup. Running Solo on any frame, will most likely require a person to focus on the frame's bread and butter ability, and max it's and their weapon's effectiveness to function well late game alone, especially in void runs, and this is from a guy who started with Loki, and who still mains him specifically because he has no damaging abilities, simply a damage steroid and great utility, because it's utility that wins battles in the long run.

 

Would it be great to feel like the uber badass and just wander in, echoing with huge bursts of inescapable energy, obliterating your foes with the sheer aura of your E-Peen? Sure! But that's not in the spirit of this game, the Tenno are a faction, not one man against the universe.