Huge Number Values May Be Unhealthy for Warframe in the Long Run

[PsychedelicSnake]

With that obligatory image out of the way, let's begin.

I can't help but feel that with the release of Octavia with Update 20, one of Warframe's larger problems is back in the spotlight: obscene number values. This includes things such as buff percentages, damage numbers, enemy health and armor, and so on.

Why do I bring Octavia into this? Well, it has to do with her classic archetype: the bard. Traditionally, bards in games provide buffs for allies and debuffs for enemies. Octavia highlights exactly why a Warframe built entirely around providing buffs and debuffs would not work, as well as why number values in Warframe may be far too high.

Let's face it, we as players are incredibly powerful. Some would argue too powerful, and that's a can of worms I won't be opening right now. There's nothing wrong with allowing the player to feel powerful. I welcome it, in fact. However, problems arise when the player is so powerful on their own that they can stomp through the majority of content without breaking a sweat. To make up for this, enemies are given high health and resistances. But the enemies can't do enough damage to the player to give any sort of challenge as their health and armor values are so high, compounded with any buffs they may be receiving. So, the enemies are given obscenely high damage. It's a vicious cycle of cause and effect.

Ultimately, I feel this can hurt Warframe in the long run. Why? Well, aside from the whole cause and effect thing, I feel having such high number values could hurt the creativity of the developers. They may run into a situation where they want to create a Warframe that provides a certain benefit, but are unable to because the values would be far too high. They wouldn't be able to lessen the values, because then it wouldn't be on-par with other Warframes or their abilities. Again, this would potentially draw in the dreaded cause and effect.

I know many people won't agree with this, and that's fine. I just can't help but feel this is a problem that should be solved sooner rather than later. Not an easy task, I freely admit. However, I do feel it is necessary. 

[Aigloblam]

*Engage Salt Shield*
 

[(PSN)Magician_NG]

Well, Steve and Scott have committed themselves to not removing damage mods.

I fear players are stuck with either one-shot-killing everything or cheesing everything.

[Hemmo67]

well if u look at borderlands. the king of number simulator, high numbers if done right can actually be good

ofcourse it depends how DE decides to go forth c.c

[PsychedelicSnake]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Magician_NG said:

Well, Steve and Scott have committed themselves to not removing damage mods.

I fear players are stuck with either one-shot-killing everything or cheesing everything.

They have changed their minds in the past.

And who knows, maybe they will find that rare but oh-so-glorious third option that will be the best of both worlds. They have done so before.

[PatternistSlave]

So remake the entire game with absolutely no progression.  This vague idea a lot of you have that there is some better way for the game to get steadily harder or you just think the entire game should revolve around one specific level.  Even "armor" isn't really this big issue you seem to think it is.  Take away Grineer armor and they're just infested.  The joke of enemy types.  What a fit you'd all throw if they had Grineer and Infested nullies.  Of course at the same time powers all need nerfed constantly.  It's an endless cycle of the grass is greener syndrome.

[(PSN)Magician_NG]

3 minutes ago, PsychedelicSnake said:

They have changed their minds in the past.

And who knows, maybe they will find that rare but oh-so-glorious third option that will be the best of both worlds. They have done so before.

I appreciate your optimism.

But I've come to accept that there's no middle ground or midgame in Warframe.

DE will continue to use multiple invincibility stages on content so that players don't annihilate new content straight away because they refuse to rollback player power.

[PsychedelicSnake]

1 minute ago, PatternistSlave said:

So remake the entire game with absolutely no progression.  This vague idea a lot of you have that there is some better way for the game to get steadily harder or you just think the entire game should revolve around one specific level.  Even "armor" isn't really this big issue you seem to think it is.  Take away Grineer armor and they're just infested.  The joke of enemy types.  What a fit you'd all throw if they had Grineer and Infested nullies.  Of course at the same time powers all need nerfed constantly.  It's an endless cycle of the grass is greener syndrome.

I never said to remove progression. Nor did I say I know a 100% better way than the Devs do. Nor did I say to remove armor. I get that you disagree, but can you please refute what is actually said in my post instead of putting words in my mouth.

[ashrah]

10 minutes ago, Hemmo67 said:

well if u look at borderlands. the king of number simulator, high numbers if done right can actually be good

ofcourse it depends how DE decides to go forth c.c

that is so true...u stary with sniper who do 50 dmg  and end up with sniper who do 700k

[Skaleek]

Yeah, any game as old as Warframe hits a progression wall. I quit playing wow after vanilla but i recall only having a few thousand HP, and upon talking to a friend who was playing one of the Wow expansions, indicated he had millions of health. I don't think there's any way to truly avoid power creep, all we can do is hope it slows down. It made me sad to hear that they weren't removing serration/hornet strike/pressure point, but hey whatever, im along for the ride.

Someone recently made a post, i think it was @Momaw, that described that in order to balance effectively, an objective value needs to be set. Ie. This weapon should kill this enemy in 2 glancing shots or 1 head shot, instead of just how the weapon/ability "feels". Anyways, I thought that was a pretty insightful post maybe he can reiterate his thoughts in this thread.

 

[AEP8FlyBoy]

All that I want is armor that doesn't scale alongside health for enemies with both.

You can just make the health scale faster, but I really don't think armor and health should scale at the same time.
I understand the problem though, it is a vicious cycle of "if we can't make stronger enemies (functionally), we need to make them deal so much more damage to compensate for players who can push that high." Leading to one-shot kills against us at some point, even with buffs and super high EHP.

Our offensives are strong enough, and the enemies defensives and offensives scale stupidly past level 100. I think our defensives should get a generic upgrade sometime, one that we don't even have to mod for. But the entire system needs to get a check and balance soon.

Edited April 5, 2017 by AEP8FlyBoy

[PatternistSlave]

Just now, PsychedelicSnake said:

I never said to remove progression. Nor did I say I know a 100% better way than the Devs do. Nor did I say to remove armor. I get that you disagree, but can you please refute what is actually said in my post instead of putting words in my mouth.

No you don't which is the point.  It's this vague idea that there is a better way.  What way?  There's only so many options for infinite scaling or do we equalize all levels?  Remove endless?  Have enemies scale slower?  Have enemies sponge more bullets?  Less?  Is there something specific you're trying to convey, because I'm honestly not seeing it.

[Rekkou]

6 minutes ago, Hemmo67 said:

well if u look at borderlands. the king of number simulator, high numbers if done right can actually be good

ofcourse it depends how DE decides to go forth c.c

Ehh, no Borderlands is the worst example of this. At very high level you are basically obliged to cheese as your normal gameplay. Many abilities and weapons becomes obsolete and you always need broken OP Weapons, Gears and abilities just to play normally.

Current warframe is in danger of becoming this.

[PsychedelicSnake]

2 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

Yeah, any game as old as Warframe hits a progression wall. I quit playing wow after vanilla but i recall only having a few thousand HP, and upon talking to a friend who was playing one of the Wow expansions, indicated he had millions of health. I don't think there's any way to truly avoid power creep, all we can do is hope it slows down. It made me sad to hear that they weren't removing serration/hornet strike/pressure point, but hey whatever, im along for the ride.

Someone recently made a post, i think it was @Momaw, that described that in order to balance effectively, an objective value needs to be set. Ie. This weapon should kill this enemy in 2 glancing shots or 1 head shot, instead of just how the weapon/ability "feels". Anyways, I thought that was a pretty insightful post maybe he can reiterate his thoughts in this thread.

 

One way I can think of that might help with creeping health values in enemies is to have the difficulty come from a large set of modifiers rather than infinitely scaling health.

[Skaleek]

2 minutes ago, PsychedelicSnake said:

One way I can think of that might help with creeping health values in enemies is to have the difficulty come from a large set of modifiers rather than infinitely scaling health.

I've always wanted a mad moxxi's underdome style mission type. Where you keep getting debuffs/enemy buffs with increased loot/drops/rewards/xp the longer you go. Even FF7 Battle arena would be a great model. 1/2 energy pool. 1/2 shield. 1/2 health. 1/2 power strength/duration/efficiency.... etc etc Theres a lot you can do. 1/2 max ammo primary. 1/2 range melee. Theres so many modifiers you could randomly add and make things harder, and i didnt even list buffs for enemies.

[Pro3Display]

the idea that enemy hp and armor and damage values of both tenno and enemy weapons need an overhaul exist since like update 7 if not more

we can only hope they change that

at least linear enemy scaling, for starters

[PsychedelicSnake]

Just now, PatternistSlave said:

No you don't which is the point.  It's this vague idea that there is a better way.  What way?  There's only so many options for infinite scaling or do we equalize all levels?  Remove endless?  Have enemies scale slower?  Have enemies sponge more bullets?  Less?  Is there something specific you're trying to convey, because I'm honestly not seeing it.

I'm trying to convey that I see a problem and it can potentially lead to unhealthy stuff down the line. I even gave examples of what may happen, and clarified some possibilities of what can be done within the OP as well as in the replies. The point of the thread is to put a spotlight on an opinion and get juices flowing. Provide a small amount of feedback in addition to giving discussion, which is the whole point of the forums in general.

[PsychedelicSnake]

1 minute ago, Skaleek said:

I've always wanted a mad moxxi's underdome style mission type. Where you keep getting debuffs/enemy buffs with increased loot/drops/rewards/xp the longer you go. Even FF7 Battle arena would be a great model. 1/2 energy pool. 1/2 shield. 1/2 health. 1/2 power strength/duration/efficiency.... etc etc Theres a lot you can do. 1/2 max ammo primary. 1/2 range melee. Theres so many modifiers you could randomly add and make things harder, and i didnt even list buffs for enemies.

Definitely. It's something that I really like. I know it probably won't happen, but having scaling stop after a certain point and a set of buffs, debuffs, and modifiers add extra challenge would be more interesting than infinite scaling. With the modifiers especially, I feel it would be more dynamic in that players would need to think on their feet and adapt as they are applied over time. It's one of the reasons why I like the idea of Nightmare and Sortie missions so much.

[Guest]

Why not just put a hard cap on scaling and damage? Or make it so that mods will scale as the mission goes on and their cap is whatever lvl the mod is at. So before the mission, you can have a maxed serration, but when you go into the mission (lets say a survival mission) it will start at rank 0 and increase its level by 1 or 2 every 5 min or so until it reaches its actual level. This would be tied to the scaling of enemies so that both the player and enemy do the same amount of damage and health/shields, but both have a hard cap on dmg, health, shields & armor. This would make it so that enemies stay somewhat challenging but aren't just cannon fodder, but also allowing for buffs/debuffs etc to make things easier or harder. As for crazy amounts of armor, can we at least have new models for enemies like sargus ruk, where you slowly blow apart his armor? Seems kind of dumb that a lvl 10 lancer is the exact same as a lvl 100 lancer, yet the latter has more armor than an entire tank. Or maybe just go back to having the weak points on enemies and save the crazy high damage numbers for that. Normal shots will a regular amount of damage regardless of mods/buffs/debuffs, but hitting a weak point lets you do crazy high damage.

But what do I know, I play Nidus :P

[Skaleek]

18 minutes ago, PsychedelicSnake said:

I know it probably won't happen

No reason for it not to happen... it just needs enough popular support. It would get my upvote, but i can't speak for the rest of the forum community. The problem is in order to effect change, in my experience on being these forums for 4+ years, it has to be loud and obnoxious (Vacuum changes got fixed in a day because there was an uproar). There has to be many posts popping up regarding the issue. It sucks but whatever. If this question somehow got asked on a devstream it may gain a lot of traction. Anyways, it'd get my upvote. 

Just judging the weather based on the forums right now, I'd say its time to limbo under the bar of nerf expecations.

Edited April 5, 2017 by Skaleek

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

11 minutes ago, SigmaLambdaOmega said:

Why not just put a hard cap on scaling and damage? Or make it so that mods will scale as the mission goes on and their cap is whatever lvl the mod is at. So before the mission, you can have a maxed serration, but when you go into the mission (lets say a survival mission) it will start at rank 0 and increase its level by 1 or 2 every 5 min or so until it reaches its actual level. This would be tied to the scaling of enemies so that both the player and enemy do the same amount of damage and health/shields, but both have a hard cap on dmg, health, shields & armor. This would make it so that enemies stay somewhat challenging but aren't just cannon fodder, but also allowing for buffs/debuffs etc to make things easier or harder. As for crazy amounts of armor, can we at least have new models for enemies like sargus ruk, where you slowly blow apart his armor? Seems kind of dumb that a lvl 10 lancer is the exact same as a lvl 100 lancer, yet the latter has more armor than an entire tank. Or maybe just go back to having the weak points on enemies and save the crazy high damage numbers for that. Normal shots will a regular amount of damage regardless of mods/buffs/debuffs, but hitting a weak point lets you do crazy high damage.

But what do I know, I play Nidus :P

I like this idea, and I believe the AI should not be mindless "walk out and die" but use strategies that are centered around a "commander" or "general" like a "mini sargus ruk" where the enemies are more coordinated in their attack patterns and we need to take out the "leader" first, to disrupt their symmetry and then their accuracy suffers and the enemies start to "panic"...  Then maybe we can get rid of nully bubbles and auto aim-botting and we can focus on out thinking our opponents by anticipation and not by out cheesing. 

Edited April 5, 2017 by (XB1)FCastle74

[PatternistSlave]

7 minutes ago, PsychedelicSnake said:

I'm trying to convey that I see a problem and it can potentially lead to unhealthy stuff down the line. I even gave examples of what may happen, and clarified some possibilities of what can be done within the OP as well as in the replies. The point of the thread is to put a spotlight on an opinion and get juices flowing. Provide a small amount of feedback in addition to giving discussion, which is the whole point of the forums in general.

Well your "problem" is the existence of meaningful progression.  The "solution" is to completely change the game from the ground up and equalize all levels.  So you would go to a mission and enemies would always take exactly the same damage regardless of what level it was and what gear you had.  Likely involves completely changing the business model as well and kindof doubtful the game could even survive that way.  Subscription models are prone to failure and upfront cost generally means a limited shelf life.  I've literally played games without this "problem" you're talking about (copying WoW is pretty common) and have also watched them die because of it.

[Prof_Blocks_007]

7 minutes ago, PsychedelicSnake said:

To make up for this, enemies are given high health and resistances. But the enemies can't do enough damage to the player to give any sort of challenge as their health and armor values are so high, compounded with any buffs they may be receiving. So, the enemies are given obscenely high damage. It's a vicious cycle of cause and effect.

Increased durability of newer enemies has already been seen with Hyekka Masters and Comba/Scrambus units. As for damage, the ranged Comba/Scrambus and most of the Kuva Grineer deal more damage than 'older' enemies (with the exception of enemies like Corpus Tech and the Glaxion Capture target, who seem to have both benefited from buffs to the Supra/Glaxion respectively (although the Glaxion Capture target's damage was extreme before)).

Enemy accuracy appears to scale with level, making evasion almost pointless in Sorties and the like. The enemy reaction speed is near-instant, which makes the accuracy issue even worse.

Buffs and damage numbers aren't the only issue though. Heavy Crowd Control skills (e.g. Avalanche, Stomp, Bastille) can shut off enemy fire entirely. Invisibility can do the same, and if the whole squad is invisible, nothing fires (at players, defense targets would still be attacked). Tanking enemy fire with Chroma works, although invulnerability (e.g Wukong, Valkyr, Nyx) is needed to survive in Physical/Elemental Enhancement Sorties with Puncture/Toxin/Corrosive.

Spawn rates have a large effect on the difficulty too. Lech Kril's boss fight spawns loads of enemies that flood into the arena and fire instantly on sight, making CC/Invisibility more of a requirement than ever. (Although I have made it through the fight by spamming Health Restores with Chroma to somehow stay alive).

A rough list of suggestions:

• Rebalance enemy damage output (e.g. lower Corpus Tech damage output) and reduce the severity of damage/accuracy scaling so that they are survivable at high levels with evasion and/or powers.
• Increase the enemy reaction time.
• Rebalance player CC, and give heavier units resistances to them (Atlas's Petrify already has this sort of mechanic). "Fodder" units would remain vulnerable to 100% of power effects, to keep the 'hoarde shooter/godmode' feel of gameplay. For example, Avalanche would have a shorter duration on Heavy Gunners. Freeze would still work on them for the full duration though, as it's single-target focused.
• Rebalance invulnerability and damage resistance skills to account for the rebalanced enemy damage outputs.
• Rework enemy armor scaling and Corrosive Projection (and maybe armor removing powers like Avalanche and Sonic Fracture).
• Adjust enemy knockdown/stagger attacks (Scorpion/Ancient hooks and Bombard rocket knockdowns come to mind) to make them avoidable without CC/mods (Handspring/Pain Threshold).
• Shield Gates
• Remove power nullification units now that heavier units have resistances instead. These could be changed to squad buffing units like Ancient Healers.

This list of suggestions isn't comprehensive or final, merely suggestions on what could be changed.

As an additional note: the reworked CC and CC resistances would call for a rework to Law of Retribution's 'stand-still-on-the-pad' mechanics, as locking enemies down wouldn't be possible (depending on how CC is changed). I would suggest something like Kela's boss fight pads, where players need to shoot at the targets to activate the switches. (This would mainly apply to the stage 2 Symbol puzzle and the stage 2 Tram Hijack).

[Liminal]

Yeah I agree. It's ridiculous that at this point 99% of the content in the game is so trivial I could probably walk through it using a Guitar Hero controller. The gap between our "level 1" state and our "max level" state should be smaller, so that enemy scaling and abilities could be more reasonable as well. That's why most games with rpg mechanics don't go the "+220% damage" way, they do little "+3%" here and "+7.5%" there things.

We'll never be able to have any semblance of balance if we keep these insane numbers.

[TaylorsContraction]

Personally I feel there isn't much of a need to scale enemies above level 150. Yes players can cheese their way all the way to 3,000 and beyond, but that's beside the point.

In normal gameplay, level 150 enemies are at a point where they will 1-shot most frames that aren't tanky. This means at this point, tanks can still serve as tanks, and squish frames rely on CC, abilities and movement to survive. Yes playres can trivialize level 150 enemies with cheese tactics BUT. Consider a scenario where the enemy diversity is such that you're fighting groups of lv. 150 enemies and some of them have resistances to some types of cc, while others to others. If there is enough enemy diversity, and a few enemies are immune to bastille, but not molecular prime, and a few enemies are the reverse. Some enemies are melee and fast thus they can ignore disarm, but are short range. Some enemies are immune to mind altering effects, thus can't be irradiated or mind controlled. Such a battle-field will pose continual challenge to the players. Due to the enemy level there is always a possibility of just being killed, but tanks aren't invalidated. Similarly CC isn't invalidated entirely, you just don't have one spell to rule them all. Teamwork will help to control the battlefield.

For a banshee there is little difference betwen a level 200 enemy and a level 300 enemy. Both will kill me in one hit, and if I intend to kill them I'll have to use some cheese tactic like spam sonar, or naramon, or covert lethality and so on. There really isn't a point to scaling enemies beyond level 150 imo. What needs to happen is for there to be a greater enemy diversity in general. This enemy diversity needs to include enemies that have resistance to SOME TYPE OF CC, but not all.

Such a system with diverse enemies and abilities or resistances can easily present challenge without infinite scaling. Furthermore if DE wants to make even harder missions all they have to do is raise the enemy level from 150 to 200, not 9999.

Of course the worst thing that can happen is the scaling kept as is, unlimited scaling + enemies resistant to certain CC. That just forces the cheese even more.