A Lot Of Old Content Still Needs Revision (Have Suggestions Here)

[PaperAlien]

While I will agree that U9 has introduced and changed a lot, mostly for the better, I think it's failed its role as the polishing update. There's still a lot of flaws in the game's mechanics, and they should be looked at before new content:

-Armour scaling. This is perhaps the biggest flaw the update overlooked, and I can't stress enough the urgency of fixing this, especially before the introduction of new content, because it affects balance on such a basic level. Enemy HP already scales, so why also make Armour scale? Not only do you end up making effective HP scale exponentially, but it only happens for some weapons, while other weapons scale much more linearly. This simple flaw in the game design causes all of the following:

   -Charged attacks are generally better than normal attacks. Although the Pressure Point buff was a step in the right direction, normal attacks on slashing weapons still have nothing on charged attacks at higher levels. A normal attack will eventually do 0 damage on armour, whereas charge attacks bypass it. It's so inevitable that charge attacks become also universally used on these weapons. The Dual Ether avoided this problem, but the same cannot be said for all the other weapons.

   -Light Infested are obnoxious. They take reduced damage from AP, and their supposed weakness is Fire. Problem? They have scaling armour against everything but AP. That means that at high levels, the only way to even damage them is to use AP and deal about 30% damage against them. Or use armour-ignoring attacks.

   -Armour-ignoring attacks are infinitely better than other attacks. And this is entirely due to armour scaling. If armour was static, Armour ignoring weapons would have a constant slight advantage of avoiding %30 damage reduction on Grineer, for example. Right now, they end up being the only weapons that can deal damage at all on high level enemies.

   -Similarly, powers suffer this same massive divison. Avalanche/Crush vs Miasma? Avalanche/Crush might take the shield off a level 80 heavy grineer, while Miasma can pretty much kill it. Yes, I'm fully aware that the scaling at higher levels could have been intended to stop ults being instakill nukes. But scaling HP is enough, and it also doesn't seem to have affected all ults similarly at all.

   -For killing high-level enemies with weapons without armour ignore, only 2 out of the 5 damage mods are used: AP damage, because it's the only element that does damage at that point, and Base damage, but only to augment the AP damage. Fire, Cryo and Electric do nothing at all (apart from maybe stunning/slowing).

   -Weapons can be balanced around this flawed mechanic. The Fragor is a good example. Compared to the Scindo, it can ignore armour. So it must have a downside. Therefore, it (and blunt weapons as a group) should not do 3x damage to Infested to compensate. The end result, ironically enough, is that the Scindo actually makes the Fragor redundant, because charge attacks of the Scindo ignore armour anyway, and also maintain the 3x damage bonus.

   For such a major balance issue, the solution is incredibly simple: Armour should not scale. I have no real understanding of the game engine, but I'm 95% confident you can make this change in 5 minutes. The only other neccesary change is the give Blunt weapons some other advantage over armour, maybe 50% extra damage. And this will make all new content easier to balance. It's a change that has to happen, and the earlier it does happen, the less stuff you'll have to rebalance around the new system.

 

 

Point 2: Energy system. I don't think I'll need to elaborate much on the flaws of this system (incuding people to horde energy, vulnerability to disruptors, etc)  It's a decent system, and my suggestion for change involves only small tweaks to the system:

-Implement innate energy regeneration, maybe around current Energy Siphon levels.

-Buff up energy siphon a bit

-Remove/reduce effect of Energy Orbs.

 

On a similar note, the sustainability and viability of health and health-focus builds has been questioned often as well. I think a similar innate regeneration of health would be a nice mechanic too, although maybe the Nightmare Mode vampire effect should cancel this out if it is in effect ("vampire mode" is a pretty nice addition, btw!)

 

Point 3: Stealth system. After the changes of 8.3, the stealth system is quite balanced now (in my opinion, anyway). However, a few key things are still missing. Incentives, for one. Sure, stealth works now, but I still get more exp for going guns ablazing. Stealth kills should give extra XP, and finishing a run without breaking stealth should also give a reward (XP or items). And create all the missing stealth-kill animations (Moa, Ospreys etc). That is all.

 

Point 4: Balancing

Well, there's not a whole lot to say here. I really appreciate the buffs made in this update (Can't wait to try out Burston again), but there's simply not enough. There's not much to suggest, except look at more weapons. I hope you guys aren't already moving onto new content, when there's weapons like the Bo, Ether Daggers, Fragor, Strun (it's not bad, it's jsut overshadowed by Hek), longswords and stuff that still desperately need attention. Also, *flameshields up* don't be afraid to nerf some weapons.

 

I hope I don't come off as sounding ungrateful, I really appreciate the effort put into the new update 9 (nightmare mode is extremely refreshing, although you might wanna make it optional), but I just feel that it's failed to deliver on the polishing part, which is really, really important.

Edited July 14, 2013 by PaperAlien

[Cleesus]

Your right, for a polishing update, their was a distinct lack of polish. I think it might have been released earlier than it should of been. I was really expecting Warframe and weapon revisions in this update.( I know a nice amount of weapons got looked at but still, there are more out here that need to be fixed/given a purpose)