Skill is not crowd control

[Chipputer]

On 6/21/2017 at 1:17 PM, Kotsender_Quasimir said:

sure in that sense you can regulate the game's difficulty level to your liking, but i can't help but feel that "gimp yourself" as enjoyment factor is detrimental to the game's overall progress based structure. all we do is strife to amass gear and mods and maximize it only to leave it in the ship? dunno. personally i can't feel the same satifaction overcoming a self imposed challenge like i would overcoming an external one, i think that's rather natural really. also doing so (playing self-configured hard mode) is only really possible with a dedicated group (good luck finding one) or solo. in most pug scenarios you will feel useless, not providing much to mission progress if you bring a serrationless gun e.g. ... also it's fact that some parts of the game are already balanced around that cheese, eg nullifiers. problems...

Nullifiers aren't balanced around any sort of cheese. They're simply balanced around the idea of stopping you from mindlessly spamming powers as your only offensive option. Sure they were, originally, intended to stop you from spamming AoEs and farming specific nodes in a super efficient manner, but now their purpose is to shake up your offense/defense. With the inclusion of the destroyable drone you've got three options, all suited to different playstyles, on how to tackle them and now aren't shoehorned into taking at least one automatic weapon to counter their bubble.

I also don't play any self configured hard mode. I use Oberon. Nothing he has turns the AI off. Nothing he has is able to completely destroy the game's difficulty. Nothing he has completely cheeses anything but bosses and, even at that, doesn't always do it fast enough to make the boss unable to respond in any capacity.

I also purposefully avoid weapons like Tigris Prime even though I have no problem with it. Does this suddenly mean I'm not contributing to the group? No. My Braton Prime can handle content through Sortie 3 just fine. My Zenith even better. Almost every bow I have can scale far into end game without completely destroying entire hallways of enemies, giving the enemy a chance to actually fight back while letting me deal enough damage to feel like what I'm doing matters. I fully agree that removing mods completely ruins the point of challenging content. I don't do that.

Your spin on this is entirely negative and a bit narrow minded. It doesn't take people purposefully gimping themselves to avoid cheese tactics in this game. It takes people understanding the mechanics of the game and avoiding doing things like using a high range Frost to freeze everything the next tile over in place, turning off their AI and ability to react to the player. It takes people changing their mindset from, "everything I have and do must be able to scale to level 1000 enemies or it's not good enough," and shoving themselves into a box.

Remember this, if you don't read anything else I post:

Challenge is mechanical. Challenging content implies difficulty.
Difficulty isn't necessarily mechanical and does not necessarily imply challenge.

Keeping this in mind is exactly why I'm okay with Nullifiers existing but not okay with Combas/Scrambus existing. One is a mechanical challenge with strict rules and the other is a needlessly difficult enemy with an invisible aura that turns off random powers with no ability for you to counter them unless you see them from a distance in a best-case scenario.

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

4 hours ago, Chipputer said:

Nullifiers aren't balanced around any sort of cheese. They're simply balanced around the idea of stopping you from mindlessly spamming powers as your only offensive option. Sure they were, originally, intended to stop you from spamming AoEs and farming specific nodes in a super efficient manner, but now their purpose is to shake up your offense/defense. With the inclusion of the destroyable drone you've got three options, all suited to different playstyles, on how to tackle them and now aren't shoehorned into taking at least one automatic weapon to counter their bubble.

I also don't play any self configured hard mode. I use Oberon. Nothing he has turns the AI off. Nothing he has is able to completely destroy the game's difficulty. Nothing he has completely cheeses anything but bosses and, even at that, doesn't always do it fast enough to make the boss unable to respond in any capacity.

I also purposefully avoid weapons like Tigris Prime even though I have no problem with it. Does this suddenly mean I'm not contributing to the group? No. My Braton Prime can handle content through Sortie 3 just fine. My Zenith even better. Almost every bow I have can scale far into end game without completely destroying entire hallways of enemies, giving the enemy a chance to actually fight back while letting me deal enough damage to feel like what I'm doing matters. I fully agree that removing mods completely ruins the point of challenging content. I don't do that.

Your spin on this is entirely negative and a bit narrow minded. It doesn't take people purposefully gimping themselves to avoid cheese tactics in this game. It takes people understanding the mechanics of the game and avoiding doing things like using a high range Frost to freeze everything the next tile over in place, turning off their AI and ability to react to the player. It takes people changing their mindset from, "everything I have and do must be able to scale to level 1000 enemies or it's not good enough," and shoving themselves into a box.

Remember this, if you don't read anything else I post:

Challenge is mechanical. Challenging content implies difficulty.
Difficulty isn't necessarily mechanical and does not necessarily imply challenge.

Keeping this in mind is exactly why I'm okay with Nullifiers existing but not okay with Combas/Scrambus existing. One is a mechanical challenge with strict rules and the other is a needlessly difficult enemy with an invisible aura that turns off random powers with no ability for you to counter them unless you see them from a distance in a best-case scenario.

If i may just push my opinions into this argument, sorry, excuse me, sorry.

I think DE tried to give people freedom in how they play, because you can take room clearing weapons and undying frames into missions or snipers and bows and squishy frames. Its all choice...and, before i say anything else, i agree with what you are trying to say...almost. I kind of made a face while reading the first part about nullifiers and cheese, because i instinctively want to pair the word "mindless" with cheese but thats not important or necessarily true as you have made a clear distinction between the two...nor is the nit picky part where i would say some players would feel compelled to use their favourite weapon which may just be the current cheese machine everyone else is complaining about and would feel gimped if they had to use something else....mmmm.

Its just that this specific argument doesnt help when you are ignoring all the easy things that are still there. I dont know how to get into this without stirring a hornets nest. 

I know alot of people will say you always need to bring the right tools for the job...but is the right tool the thing that will make the game easier, or the thing that will give you the most enjoyement? 

I think on a day to day basis, everyone is striving to find the easiest solution in warframe, which isnt that hard.

And you, are living outside that, by using bows and oberon, and such things

But...

Maybe the game is possibly going about this wrong?

Example: If i want to play Oberon, and use the same weapons i would use as my Volt (i did this in a sortie, against sargus ruk), i will find it is much easier to survive by shooting immobile targets than it is by fighting fair.  This of course was something i did before his rework (and i am not a fan of cc), but you could compare any two frames and decide which would be easier to play. (Before the rework, and i cannot claim to be an oberon main, so i probably did it wrong). I think oberon could hold his own now, but then theres Nyx....and frames who have one trick up their sleeve or they are dead...

And any two weapons. Room clearer v.s. aggresive pea shooter.

And not going for the easier option =/= gimping yourself (by no means) but its hard to not feel like it is after you see the difference between the two.

And the challenge being mechanical, but difficulty not necessarily being challenge part was enlightening, but i feel like that would better serve DE as a motivational poster...if only.

Which is why my naramon/cc rant was a thing...

I dont know if i made a point or did anything really...

 

[Kotsender_Quasimir]

@Chipputer Before we talk balance details i just wanna say when i do say i generally have official endgame in mind, meaning mainly sorties, raids and kuva floods, so enemy lvls around 120 max.

8 hours ago, Chipputer said:

Nullifiers aren't balanced around any sort of cheese. They're simply balanced around the idea of stopping you from mindlessly spamming powers as your only offensive option.

To be honest i don't see how being able to mindlessy spam powers is not cheesy. Yes, Nullifiers don't counter any specific skills / cheese tactics but that doesn't make them less of an anti cheese measure in general, does it?

8 hours ago, Chipputer said:

Sure they were, originally, intended to stop you from spamming AoEs and farming specific nodes in a super efficient manner, but now their purpose is to shake up your offense/defense. With the inclusion of the destroyable drone you've got three options, all suited to different playstyles, on how to tackle them and now aren't shoehorned into taking at least one automatic weapon to counter their bubble.

You sound like defending the Nullifier design, which you wouldn't have to: In fact i don't see any problem with them and i see how they became "neccessary" given circumstances. Even if our energy economy wasn't completely broken i'd welcome them as priority targets to shake things up. But they're still a good example of bandaid solutions for basic, unadressed problems. Just like, say, Eximi holdouts introducing an high degree of what you yourself well described:

8 hours ago, Chipputer said:

Challenge is mechanical. Challenging content implies difficulty.
Difficulty isn't necessarily mechanical and does not necessarily imply challenge.

Artificial difficulty. Unavoidable AOE where the eye can see and probably the most funny thing about: While this usually should make for almost impossible missions even those are still completely trivial with our possibilities. Tbh when i see an Eximi holdout my first thought isn't "Oh dear" but rather "hm nice, gonna hit my Syndicate cap early today".

More examples would be flamethrowers hitting you for insane damage through walls or Corrupted Bombards hitting you with unreasonably quick volleys of untelegraphed homing rockets, Ancients with their auras, Sappers turning the floor into lava for wide areas before one can react... Invincibity phases on bosses are arguably another one (although personally i don't mind them), but how to draw out boss fights otherwise? Even a sortie lvl Ambulas is mowed down in seconds with the right setup.

All bad design but still somewhat called for considering our total superiority in every conveivable way.

8 hours ago, Chipputer said:

I also don't play any self configured hard mode. I use Oberon. Nothing he has turns the AI off. Nothing he has is able to completely destroy the game's difficulty. Nothing he has completely cheeses anything but bosses and, even at that, doesn't always do it fast enough to make the boss unable to respond in any capacity.

Unlimited energy turns even a rather well designed frame like oberon into a potential cheeser. (Hallowed eruption nuke build).

8 hours ago, Chipputer said:

I also purposefully avoid weapons like Tigris Prime even though I have no problem with it. Does this suddenly mean I'm not contributing to the group? No. My Braton Prime can handle content through Sortie 3 just fine. My Zenith even better. Almost every bow I have can scale far into end game without completely destroying entire hallways of enemies, giving the enemy a chance to actually fight back while letting me deal enough damage to feel like what I'm doing matters. I fully agree that removing mods completely ruins the point of challenging content. I don't do that.

Look, i think we're pretty much on the same page actually. I had a 6 Forma Panthera even before the recent buff, i own a 5 Forma Cycron etc... I also enjoy sporting different gear just for the eff of it but have fun running around the stage looking for enemies to headshot when a resonant banshee is on your team... I also think if our AOE weapons weren't so obviously superior to everything else in 90% of situations single target DPS weapons like Snipers could finally shine (they'd arguably still be worse than bows but that's another question)...

8 hours ago, Chipputer said:

Your spin on this is entirely negative and a bit narrow minded. It doesn't take people purposefully gimping themselves to avoid cheese tactics in this game. It takes people understanding the mechanics of the game and avoiding doing things like using a high range Frost to freeze everything the next tile over in place, turning off their AI and ability to react to the player. It takes people changing their mindset from, "everything I have and do must be able to scale to level 1000 enemies or it's not good enough," and shoving themselves into a box.

Maybe i am running around with blinders, when you have a regular and year long relation to something one tends to concentrate on bad aspects. Like i stated earlier i still really dig the game's overall presentation and mechanics, it has seen LOTS of QoL improvements from when i started, despite everything i wrote i'd agree to the game being the best it's ever been now without hesitation (yes, i even feel relics really are better than t3 surv camping)... Still i am 100% convinced this game has powercrept itself into a corner with a terribly binary endgame experience.

What i would like to see is at the very least the energy economy being fixed in some way, giving different skill costs their meaning back, all the while revising their individual costs, which often don't reflect their effectivity relations at all... i really feel this being the root of alot of cheese. But yeah i don't see it happening either.

I salute people like you who enjoy going their way ignoring the META, but the latter still is what most people will always be going for, as it's just natural to pick the most efficient way possible. Why SHOULD they avoid Frost, especially when they bought him from the market for 500p due to him being vaulted? Honestly i don't feel like dicating other people's setups, neither do i enjoy soloing all the time. If i do a spy lvl as Volt with 2 Lokis on the team the other two will have rushed their vaults in no time whatsoever in comparison. I don't mind easy games but really in Warframe given you got the appropriate loadout you can basically skip ANY challenge whatsoever, which is why it's almost impossible to design a proper endgame for us.

I concur the usual arguing "the game is only starting with enemy lvl 1000" to be a joke, endless scaling obviously was never meant to be actually endless...

Again: i feel i we're pretty much on the same boat here. You obviously agree the game having prominent cheesy aspects and also seem eager to avoid them. The only difference is i feel it's DE's "job" to provide us with a balanced and therefore more engaging game design (as it'd makefor a better quality product imo), not mine.

Edited June 23, 2017 by Kotsender_Quasimir
1000th post *fireworks*

[AperoBeltaTwo]

On 22.06.2017 at 4:17 PM, (PS4)cdzbrbr said:

If that was irony, it was brilliant and i take my hat off to you; if not, oh my.

Still a pve game. Warframe was always a horde shooter. That's how it's designed. That core disign (intentional or not) is the primary reason why CC scales so well in this game - cause "controlling crowds" in horde shooters is the most improtant ability. And for the "skill" whatever it is supposed to be, there's just no room in this game. Mechanical knowledge - ok, I would understand that. But headshots, parcour, tactics etc. with cheesy powerful enemies like these, with dumb AI and such - forget about the skill. There's just no room for it.
 Especially in the current parcourframe   

Edited June 23, 2017 by AperoBeltaTwo

[(PSN)cdzbrbr]

9 hours ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

Still a pve game. Warframe was always a horde shooter. That's how it's designed. That core disign (intentional or not) is the primary reason why CC scales so well in this game - cause "controlling crowds" in horde shooters is the most improtant ability. And for the "skill" whatever it is supposed to be, there's just no room in this game. Mechanical knowledge - ok, I would understand that. But headshots, parcour, tactics etc. with cheesy powerful enemies like these, with dumb AI and such - forget about the skill. There's just no room for it.
 Especially in the current parcourframe   

Agreed but make no mistake, there's no skill involved in warframe, not PVE games in general. Most of them do require mastering rather than cheesing. Which is why I don't play warframe nearly as much; I just log in.

Neverwinter and MEA Online have all of my gaming time and money.

[AperoBeltaTwo]

7 hours ago, (PS4)cdzbrbr said:

Agreed but make no mistake, there's no skill involved in warframe, not PVE games in general.

 Warframe is just not that kind of game. You can't turn it into a skill-based game at this point and it doesn't really need that. What we need is a motivationally structured satisfying expierience - of which whatever little we had we lost with the Void 2.0 update. You're talking about skill, but current Warframe is a parcour simulator with incredibly short missions that don't allow a flesh out for 90% of the mechanics we have in the game right now. Core enemy levels are oneshottable with pretty much any maxed out weapon - and it's not like you really need to shoot anything much outside the endless survivals anyway. Especially with melee weapons masterrace that is getting ANOTHER BUFF soon (melee rivens, DE, really?). 
 The highest level of technical difficulty this game could ever achieve is with specified grouped squads of enemies that spawn together and complement each other - but that's a lot of work to code and should not be a priority with the terrible state Warframe is in right now (same as making new one-note quests and more useless gear that nobody would be able to use to the fullest). There are just way more pressing issues right now. 

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

21 hours ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

 Warframe is just not that kind of game. You can't turn it into a skill-based game at this point and it doesn't really need that. What we need is a motivationally structured satisfying expierience - of which whatever little we had we lost with the Void 2.0 update. You're talking about skill, but current Warframe is a parcour simulator with incredibly short missions that don't allow a flesh out for 90% of the mechanics we have in the game right now. Core enemy levels are oneshottable with pretty much any maxed out weapon - and it's not like you really need to shoot anything much outside the endless survivals anyway. Especially with melee weapons masterrace that is getting ANOTHER BUFF soon (melee rivens, DE, really?). 
 The highest level of technical difficulty this game could ever achieve is with specified grouped squads of enemies that spawn together and complement each other - but that's a lot of work to code and should not be a priority with the terrible state Warframe is in right now (same as making new one-note quests and more useless gear that nobody would be able to use to the fullest). There are just way more pressing issues right now. 

What are the way more pressing issues?

You have listed off these issues the game has, but make it sound like there is something bigger plaguing warframe...what is that?

[AperoBeltaTwo]

1 hour ago, (PS4)WINDMILEYNO said:

What are the way more pressing issues?

You have listed off these issues the game has, but make it sound like there is something bigger plaguing warframe...what is that?

Effort-reward system is broken. I've talked about it here:

 In short, all games (and I mean all games) require some form of a carrot on a stick system. Some form of progression and some kind of a goal (unreacheble\or looped for online games).

 We had something like that half a year ago - it was bad, but it existed: staying longer in endless missions provided more ducats and rolls for a single key, while difficulty of the mission kept increasing with time. And to stay longer in those scaling missions there was a reason to farm new mods and warframes, and max new gear. This one single established relationship between effort (endless scaling and minmaxing) and reward (ducats tradeble for plat) - validated all the time players put into the game.

 No matter how loud they scream about fun and that games are meant to be fun, and that players should be creative and all that nonsence... if people don't feel satisfaction while playing the game. If reward doesn't trigger endorphin generation in your brain, the game not gonna do anything for you in the long run. This is especially true for online games like Warframe, which compensate lack of quality quests and quality gameplay with endless progression towards an unreacheble something on the horizon, feeding the players with little rewards along the way so they don't burn out too quickly. 

 In current Warframe after Void 2.0 this relation between the carrot and a stick is broken. Relation between effort and reward in this game doesn't exist anymore. Because as a new player you could just jump into any random que fissure mission with unmaxed gear, do nothing except pick up lemons for the entirety of the mission and still get the same rewards as the rest of your teammates. And the worst part is that the exact same logic is applied to endless fissures as well - you gain no added value for extra effort anymore, which makes staying for first rotation only - the most effective way to farm void.

To quote Elon Musk all of a sudden: "Whatever is incentivized will happen." In current Warframe short brain-dead melee-coptering parcour missions are incentivized. And minmaxing, interacting with the game's mechanics and spending time in missions - isn't incentivized anymore at all. This breaks the whole value system of the game, making primed gear to accessible for no effort at all and the worst-worst part is that you don't really need better (or any) gear anyway - because it's enough to max a single warframe and a random melee, and nothing in the regular missions would ever pose a threat to you (apart from invincible enemies and nulls that you can't combat with better gear anyway - and they're not too dangerous at low lvls either).

 I got me ranting again...Ugh. "In short", yeah. 

Edited June 25, 2017 by AperoBeltaTwo

[(PSN)zero1872001]

On 6/11/2017 at 10:46 PM, Ordosan said:

im feeling the salt but ya thats todays players for you. I think some of the biggest complains I hear (and a few i heard out of some big 'important' people) is "nullifiers were a mistake" and "enemies having knockdown is bs"...basically anything taht prevents ability use or anyone using the ONLY form of effective CC the enemies have...are "bs"

Players now days just want things easy. and half of them see no issue with it because "this is a PVE game"...these people (or at least there attitude) is the same as people who TGM or turn on inf ammo in games...cuz its singleplayer so why should they care.

...there I added in my rant to join in...cuz i agree with the overarching issue...(and this is without touching issues like the fact that blood rush gives WAY to much crit chance. because the mod alone wouldnt have been an issue...if blood rush,and drifting contact afterwords...wernt an issue)...

TLDR...the easier and more mindnumbing the gameplay is (less skill required) the 'more fun' it is apparently.

The only thing I'm truly annoyed about with nullifiers. Is them canceling out Desecrate. >.< Having to recast that every 5 seconds in a long &amp;#&#33; orokin survival or something. beyond ludacris. i mean it does no damage to enemies.. soo.. Eh.

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

4 hours ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

Effort-reward system is broken. I've talked about it here:

 In short, all games (and I mean all games) require some form of a carrot on a stick system. Some form of progression and some kind of a goal (unreacheble\or looped for online games).

 We had something like that half a year ago - it was bad, but it existed: staying longer in endless missions provided more ducats and rolls for a single key, while difficulty of the mission kept increasing with time. And to stay longer in those scaling missions there was a reason to farm new mods and warframes, and max new gear. This one single established relationship between effort (endless scaling and minmaxing) and reward (ducats tradeble for plat) - validated all the time players put into the game.

 No matter how loud they scream about fun and that games are meant to be fun, and that players should be creative and all that nonsence... if people don't feel satisfaction while playing the game. If reward doesn't trigger endorphin generation in your brain, the game not gonna do anything for you in the long run. This is especially true for online games like Warframe, which compensate lack of quality quests and quality gameplay with endless progression towards an unreacheble something on the horizon, feeding the players with little rewards along the way so they don't burn out too quickly. 

 In current Warframe after Void 2.0 this relation between the carrot and a stick is broken. Relation between effort and reward in this game doesn't exist anymore. Because as a new player you could just jump into any random que fissure mission with unmaxed gear, do nothing except pick up lemons for the entirety of the mission and still get the same rewards as the rest of your teammates. And the worst part is that the exact same logic is applied to endless fissures as well - you gain no added value for extra effort anymore, which makes staying for first rotation only - the most effective way to farm void.

To quote Elon Musk all of a sudden: "Whatever is incentivized will happen." In current Warframe short brain-dead melee-coptering parcour missions are incentivized. And minmaxing, interacting with the game's mechanics and spending time in missions - isn't incentivized anymore at all. This breaks the whole value system of the game, making primed gear to accessible for no effort at all and the worst-worst part is that you don't really need better (or any) gear anyway - because it's enough to max a single warframe and a random melee, and nothing in the regular missions would ever pose a threat to you (apart from invincible enemies and nulls that you can't combat with better gear anyway - and they're not too dangerous at low lvls either).

 I got me ranting again...Ugh. "In short", yeah. 

If you want to prioritize one over the other, a more permanent/better implemented reward system is definitely going to come before better gameplay, especially if it can help keep warframe afloat between periods of new content, or even after they stop releasing new content with each update. That being said, all those problems you listed earlier would still be problems, and would need to be worked on at some point. This game, with better rewards, but the same gameplay and short missions, would still be lacking that little extra it could easily get from something like a better melee system, etc

[AperoBeltaTwo]

38 minutes ago, (PS4)WINDMILEYNO said:

If you want to prioritize one over the other, a more permanent/better implemented reward system is definitely going to come before better gameplay, especially if it can help keep warframe afloat between periods of new content, or even after they stop releasing new content with each update. That being said, all those problems you listed earlier would still be problems, and would need to be worked on at some point. This game, with better rewards, but the same gameplay and short missions, would still be lacking that little extra it could easily get from something like a better melee system, etc

I agree with this.

The thing is, we have both "sufficient" gameplay and fleshed out rewards in the game - but they never meet. We have endless missions, which are however flawed, the best base concept for continuous core gameplay this game will ever have. And we also have Ducats and now Kuva which both are indirectly tied to the trade system, providing rewards universally aknowledged and valued by the playerbase. But they never meet in the game in a way that creates relationship between profit-efficiency and effort.