Let us leave the System of the Weak

[Fallen_Echo]

So heres my problem, currently almost all of my weapons and frames are too powerful for the regular solar system.

No matter what node i go in i will face enemies much weaker than what i am capatable to do. Unless we talk about endless runs, where your frame and weapon choice is put on a trial to see how good are you but thats all.

Only sorties and raids grant real challange but these are daily missions other than these you have no option to go.

What will a player do in this case?

He will go to akkad, hyeracon,draco or another popular farming place where he certanly going to overkill anything and possibly annoy someone who wanted to kill some grunts to test his new pistol.

But heres the solution!

Once you have enough mod points (aka how upgraded your mods are) the Lotus contacts you and gives you secret mission cordinates where you can fight enemies on much higher level than what you could see on normal nodes.

Why mod points you ask? Because mastery is irrevelant, weapon and ranks are irrevelant and even the total playtime one has doesnt tell anything about how powerful a certain player could be, BUT having maxed mods (or atleast mods at 50%) actually tells what could this player achieve.

Now how should these new secret nodes would look like?

On every planet players could find 4 new nodes. Two nodes from starting lv60 and lv100 for normal missions like Spy, Exterminate, etc and two nodes with lv60 and lv100 start levels for endless missions.

Why would someone go here instead of farming akkad you wonder?

Because

1. Each of these nodes would offer +50% resource drop rate along with +10% affinity boost. Best for farming mats.
2. Each normal mode mission would drop rare mods only obtainable from here, if you meet specific conditions. (for conditions and mods scroll down)
3. Each endless run would drop weapon parts and bp's every 10 minutes. These drops contain new modified weapons designed for these nodes. (for weapons scroll down)
4. To make sure no one would abuse this place, only weapon parts would be tradeable so if someone want to get power he has to do these missions.

 

Conditions:

Apart from the regular rules of the normal missions, the nodes here would have bonus objectives. When someone or the group manages to complete the objective they get a rare mod as a reward.

The conditions are revealed once you entered the mission so players must plan ahead on what gear they bring and how they should act on the mission.

These conditions could be:

• Speedrun: Finish this mission under X minutes
• Balance: Everybody in the squad should have the same number of kills
• Swordplay: Only use melee weapons
• Space magic: Dont shoot or attack any enemy with weapons, use powers only.

Mods:

As the reward of completing a normal mission with the conditions fulfilled the player will get a random mod.

These mods would have extra stats and bonuses what could spice up normal gameplay such as:

• Fusion resistant elements. Now you can add an element without losing it when you add a second one it.
• Fused elemental mods. Ever wanted to have a pure radiation mod? Now you can.
• Accuracy mods. 15% on normal and 10% with another element.
• Spreading elements. Ever wanted firewatch napalm on another projectile gun? Now you can have it.
• Exploding punchtrought. This mod deals small explosion when punches throught enemies.

And soo on...

Weapons:

When someone survives 10 minutes or 10 waves of enemies in an endless mission their courage and bravery is rewarded with weapons can only be found in these nodes.

Each of these weapons would be upgraded, more powerful variant of normal weapons with stats made specifically to fight against enemies at high levels (lv100 and higher).

You could get weapons like:

• Mutalist Skana, the mutalist version of the skana now with higher damage and base toxic/viral/gas damage
• Prisma Galatine, the prisma version of the Galatine has been lost forever or so we have thought
• Vaykor Sobek, the experimental vaykor weapon was deployed here to help the steel meridian troopers
• Opticore Wraith. When did the Corpus designed a wraith weapon? Who knows, you can find it here.
• Ogris Vandal. Are these guys steal designs from each other or what?

As an extra when you obtain a syndicate or baro weapon, they would come up and gratulate you for finding their stuff.

Bonus:

Before anybody comes up here and tells me that these weapons will be overpowered as hell and we shouldnt have them, i have a solution for that problem too!

The Power Amplificator

This wonderful invention analyses the enemies around the player and sets the power of the weapon accordingly.

Each of the obtainable weapons would have a note stating that theyre are most effective against lv100 enemies.

When a player attempts to use one of these powerful weapons on low level nodes the system would note that it cannot "sap" enough energy from them to work at full power.

For every level under 100 these weapons would lose 1% total damage, which means lv10 enemies would only see 10% of the weapons damage potential.

 

[DeccanTraps]

Honestly, I think a better solution might be rather than endlessly being caught in the Red Queen's headlong run just to stay in place, creating over powered tools that necessitate ever more over powered content and grant still more over powered rewards, we instead fix and dramatically lower the buffs from mods, the effect of powers, the health and other traits of enemies.

With a flatter vertical progression more content is challenging to more people allowing a greater range oc things to be played and of skill levels to mix. a Flatter curve means the difference between meta of the week and obsolete is less key too, widening the range of gear that can be used.

[LSG501]

Or the dev's could just add a new 'tab' to each location on the map, which can unlock after you've cleared the planet or at a set level, where you can select a higher starting level of enemy from a range of choices, restricted to a few settings so we can still do public groups etc but this would also allow us to go play lower levels like earth, which is far too easy for anyone over MR2 really, without needing to nerf our frame/weapons to make it more than a quick jog in the park.  As the OP says we don't need stronger weapons, we need stronger enemies on lower levels. 

I'm thinking something like the below which doesn't really require much change on the dev's side of things.  

Original levels and then a new 'drop down' where you can select from a range of start levels such as 20, 40, 60, 80, 100... and so on (bit like simulcrum but with restricted enemy levels rather than singular increments - this is where the dev's already have the basic code in place to do this).    No levels lower than the original obviously. 

They could also add a simple tick box for 'random' sortie enhancement on the enemies as well. 

Now this would take away some of the boredom I'm starting to feel in being basically restricted to higher level content due to my weapon/frame levels, by giving lower levels harder enemies I can go play any map I want because at the moment I'm not really going to see the new earth lighting rework etc because well I'm too powerful for the enemies to bother going there. 

The dev's could also maybe tweak drop levels/credits etc dependent on levels of enemies but this is more for 'end game' players who want something to do rather than needing specific items.

Obviously I'm ignoring the obvious issue of enemy/player scaling etc.

[Fallen_Echo]

17 minutes ago, DeccanTraps said:

Honestly, I think a better solution might be rather than endlessly being caught in the Red Queen's headlong run just to stay in place, creating over powered tools that necessitate ever more over powered content and grant still more over powered rewards, we instead fix and dramatically lower the buffs from mods, the effect of powers, the health and other traits of enemies.

With a flatter vertical progression more content is challenging to more people allowing a greater range oc things to be played and of skill levels to mix. a Flatter curve means the difference between meta of the week and obsolete is less key too, widening the range of gear that can be used.

But thats the same as the original problem. You either buff the weak stuff up to match enemies (my suggestion) or nerf the powerful stuff along with the enemies.

Lets say everything gets 90% health, shield, armor and damage decrease. We are standing on the start becuase objectively nothing has changed just the numbers gone down.

Instead of this:

tenno with rifle dealing 100 damage per shot fighting mob with 10K hp

We would have this:

tenno with rifle dealing 1 damage fighting a bob with 100 hp.

 

And on the other side if you flatten the progression too much, people will stop playing because they have reached the true endgame and theres nothing left to do.

[DeccanTraps]

2 hours ago, Fallen_Echo said:

But thats the same as the original problem. You either buff the weak stuff up to match enemies (my suggestion) or nerf the powerful stuff along with the enemies.

Lets say everything gets 90% health, shield, armor and damage decrease. We are standing on the start becuase objectively nothing has changed just the numbers gone down.

Instead of this:

tenno with rifle dealing 100 damage per shot fighting mob with 10K hp

We would have this:

tenno with rifle dealing 1 damage fighting a bob with 100 hp.

 

And on the other side if you flatten the progression too much, people will stop playing because they have reached the true endgame and theres nothing left to do.

well the counterpoint, is is it really more power if along side say seration which gives +150% damage at lvl 9, every mob late on gets 500% more Hp? To me, not really.

There is no way to make content engaing with just numbers. what makes it fun is thae actuall gameplay, the motion the shooting, the tactics promited in shifting context.

Right now late on enemy damage and HP get so out of whack that your options are 1: lockdown everything with CC and AOE, or 2: die.
Creating a new system with bigger numbers wont change that.

Altering the game so the numbers re less big and you can bring something less than a prime modded multi forma death stick, would not only make dev resources more efficient as less weapons end out as MR fodder, but would also allow more play to make things fun and challenging without just taking away our powers or inflating HP.

But it needs to be done on both sides, cant reballence the players and weapons without also simultaneously re-balancing our foes.

[(PSN)wildcats1369my]

usually the harder difficulty should be based on number of enemy spawns that eventually overwhelms the player rather than being bulletsponges with 1 hit kill. like how even the most elite soldier can be killed by a zombie horde.

but wf is different because of skills that can  wipe out entire maps if mobs dont have enough ehp.

also wf is most enjoyable because it allows spamming of overpowered skills.

here is my observation.

on pre nerf ash the reason it has become unstopabble press 4 to win is because it can replenish or even save up energy with each cast of blade storm instead of being a hard to cast super strong skill.

the issue comes from energy efficiency and abundant energy orbs thus unlimited skill cc.

cc is fine but the ability to cc infinitely is what makes the game very easy.

so my proposal is either remove efficiency or limit energy orbs drops.

the only nerf im seeing is trinity ev, all trinity in party should not gain energy from ev to make her actually run out of it.

basically the best way to achieve difficulty is to make the team exhaust resources with the growing number of enemies. the team who can coordinate to efficiently cast skills wins the longest.

next issue is melee as it is usually a 1 hit kill and does not need ammo, it is also fast. the change should be is that there should be a pause after each attack combo. it can be fast but the next combo should not come right away. this will give time for mobs to counter after a melee attack.

primary weapons are ok as it is because even if you can 1shot anything the reload speed is significant.

the real question is the game engine capability on how much enemy can it spawn in the game.

[(XBOX)CannyJack]

I don't care about challenge, I just desperately want to shoot something new.

[skinotik]

Did you just describe what nightmare mode was suppose to be ?  If I remember correctly nightmare mode was suppose to bring more challenge to the starchart, but that system is kind of old.  Maybe we are ready for a good redesign and shake up of the nightmare mode instead. 

Edited April 3, 2017 by skinotik
typo

[DeccanTraps]

The thing is, that adding a new more endgame end game isnt a long term fix One of 2 things would happen.

If this area has no signifigant rewards, then people complain they are better off in the Origin system and no one plays the new stuff.

If it does offer signifigant rewards, then people will use those to gain still more power, hit the new cap and complain things are too easy.

At this stage, the only way to offer fair, engaging and consistent challenge is to go back to basics and balance the game deliberately by thinking across systems about the results of their interactions. Not doing it piecemeal.

[Fallen_Echo]

18 minutes ago, DeccanTraps said:

The thing is, that adding a new more endgame end game isnt a long term fix One of 2 things would happen.

If this area has no signifigant rewards, then people complain they are better off in the Origin system and no one plays the new stuff.

If it does offer signifigant rewards, then people will use those to gain still more power, hit the new cap and complain things are too easy.

At this stage, the only way to offer fair, engaging and consistent challenge is to go back to basics and balance the game deliberately by thinking across systems about the results of their interactions. Not doing it piecemeal.

Well i see the endless runs as the key of the challange.

If we add powerful weapons what lose power if you go under there desired level of usage (under lv 100) no one could complain they overkill stuff in the basic star system and they could continue adding more and more powerful gear.

An endless circle.

You get better gear->you face harder challange->you get better gear

 

The other way to fix things is to overhaul the enemies, giving them tactical abilities. Just imagine seeing a commander on the map as he calls orbital strike on your team, a corpus tech dropping his weapon to project an inpassable barrier so they can eradicate you or the moment you see an ancient on the map releasing a cloud of toxic gas buffing all infested damage while covering them for temporal invisibility.

[Liminal]

On 4/1/2017 at 8:30 AM, DeccanTraps said:

With a flatter vertical progression more content is challenging to more people allowing a greater range oc things to be played and of skill levels to mix. a Flatter curve means the difference between meta of the week and obsolete is less key too, widening the range of gear that can be used.

And it'd have the added benefit of making skill matter a bit more.

[Wrum]

I think a solution would be content where the goal isn't necessarily "kill all the things". I found the pacifism defect to be quite fun and technically you don't need to kill anything just keep every thing from killing your wards.(please make this a permanent addition to the game DE).

you could also maybe implement something like bonus rewards for not killing any enemies in spy missions or going 30 minutes in survival without using a life support module. this might encourage players to play differently than they normally would.

Or perhaps missions that make you use specific weapons(like the quick steel event) instead of your OP stick of BOOM!

 

[DeccanTraps]

20 minutes ago, The_Doc said:

And it'd have the added benefit of making skill matter a bit more.

This too, it would be us playing the game, not the stats playing the game.