Hypotetical arguments, to balance or not?

[Fallen_Echo]

Hello there Tenno.

I came here with a hypotetical argument regarding balance and how much we need it actually.

This thread is not about specific nerfs or buffs its about how steep should one be.

To illustrate my points im going to ask a simple question related to both buffs and nerfs with the intent to show what am i thinking about.

 

The first one should be about nerfs. Lessening the power of one for the greater good or bending ones knee for the lesser evils? Lets start the sceniario.

In this far away dimension on earth C-137 DE has finally made an annoucment, they stated:

 

After many years of data collection and listening to feedback we came to the conclusion that the Tonkor, the Synoid Simulor and the Telos Boltace doesnt need any changes.

We will never going to nerf these items as we see them as proper damage support for the team and it should stay this way.

Any thread made about these weapons will going to get this official response posted then locked by one of our moderators.

 

As these words echoed across the angry sea of salt one question here stays lingering, what is the worse what could happen if DE goes this way? Everything would have stayed the same as it was for years, excluding the boltace ofcourse. Was this change something what forever changed our gameplay perpective or it just satisfied a few angry players and enraged another bunch?

As i asked what could be the worse to happen if DE never decides to nerf those weapons?

 

 

Lets think this throught and after it we shall proceed on the next question.

 

 

Done? Good.

Now onto our next subject, buffing. When shall buffing be enough? Shall this piece of equipment stay relevant throught the stars or it shall inherit weakness what must be compensated by sacrafices?

Our story starts in a far away world where the temporal agents managed to restore the timeflow with the help of Captain Archer.

In this universe DE with the Update 21 brings something what everybody wanted to see for a long time. Weapon buffs.

Heres a quick copy of what buff they got there:

On 2017. 06. 29. at 5:00 AM, [DE]Megan said:

AkBronco

• Damage increased from 15 to 38
• Status Chance increased from 14% to 20%
• Akbronco's Disposition has been tweaked to reflect these changes.

Pyrana

• Damage increased from 9 to 22
• Increased mag size from 5 to 10
• Mastery Rank 12 required

As you can see its almost the same as what we got expect one important change. The weapons there never got the damage fall-off put on them. These weapons got plainly buffed without any "drawback" expect what they already had. The question here is simple, is this the right way to do it? Whats the worse what could happen if they never intend to add in the balance we got? These weapons didnt got much more popularity after the buff here and the damage falloff managed to make some users of these guns abadon their weapons. Was the change what we got was soo important for balance that it shouldnt been left out or was it an unnecessary nerf?

As i asked again whats the worst could happen if DE goes the same way as this universe and they never put on the falloff?

 

[peterc3]

They're going to buff what needs to be buffed and nerf what needs to be nerfed. They have data we don't, which they use to make balance changes when they have the time to do so. There's nothing more they "should" do or that they need to do.

[Fallen_Echo]

16 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

They're going to buff what needs to be buffed and nerf what needs to be nerfed. They have data we don't, which they use to make balance changes when they have the time to do so. There's nothing more they "should" do or that they need to do.

As i said here this is a hypotetical argument, theres no data here or balance only opinions.

Do you think that those buffs badly needed the falloffs or that leaving those weapons what got nerfed untached would be that bad for us?

I could write of the weapon X and Y with made up stats but decided to not go that far.

[Dwolfknight]

1 hour ago, Fallen_Echo said:

As I asked what could be the worse to happen if DE never decides to nerf those weapons?

3

These weapons would keep being "Meta" weapons, hundreds if not thousands of players would keep using only them because why should they use anything else? These are better and easier to use, on the other side players that dislike this "Meta" weapons would keep quitting missions because of the other side of players, turning to only play alone or with very select friend, limiting their gaming experience.

10 minutes ago, Fallen_Echo said:

As I asked again whats the worst could happen if DE goes the same way as this universe and they never put on the falloff?

1

Then these weapons would become "Meta" weapons and the above would happen.

[LSG501]

Hmm... I wonder which thread this idea came from lol

 

Ok in the most simple terms and IMO:

Warframe/ability balance - Every frame should be able to work together using all abilities however the players wants to play the frame but still allow others to actually do something at ALL enemy levels, ideally and imo an ability should be there to support the player, not do everything for them.... Because some players seem so attached to the broken mechanics of certain frames DE would likely need to look at a scaling system for damage done (although in some cases a rework would likely be easier) on lower levels etc so no ability can literally just run through a level or just sit in the same spot killing everything. 

 

Weapon balance - this one is likely a harder one to fix until DE does something about enemy scaling but an easy fix would be to give higher level players an option to select higher level enemies to kill on the low level maps, even locking us out of the low level ones once we hit a certain mr unless we're in an invite only group...

Do we need all weapons to be equal, no, but they do need to have a cross section of damage versus mr requirements, so low mr requirement weapons should be able to manage really well at low level but will start to struggle at higher levels without riven or heavy forma additions.  All weapons should ideally be able to cover up to sortie level with enough mod and forma investment but realistically this isn't going to happen.

 

Enemies - the scaling system currently in place could do with a more linear approach than the current parabolic approach we have now... the corpus could also do with a change to the way that higher levels basically just seem to spawn more nullifiers (fixing the drone issues would be nice too), bursa's and sapping ospreys wouldn't go a miss.... maybe rework some units to be closer to how nox works on grineer. 

 

In essence a buff or nerf isn't necessarily the only answer, a change to the overall mechanics being used in the game play may be more beneficial in the long run.

Edited August 28, 2017 by LSG501

[Fallen_Echo]

8 minutes ago, Dwolfknight said:

These weapons would keep being "Meta" weapons, hundreds if not thousands of players would keep using only them because why should they use anything else? These are better and easier to use, on the other side players that dislike this "Meta" weapons would keep quitting missions because of the other side of players, turning to only play alone or with very select friend, limiting their gaming experience.

So in your interpretion the worse what could happen is that things stay the same way as they were. That doesnt sound that bad actually, this was only 3 weapon in the meta and almost every gun with faint disposition is part of the meta.

In all honesty i have never seen someone leaving a squad becuase i used the synoid simulor as mirage and still not see it when i use the synoid simulor as mirage.

7 minutes ago, Dwolfknight said:

Then these weapons would become "Meta" weapons and the above would happen.

You really think that not adding damage falloff to the akbronco would instantly put it in the meta?

 

12 minutes ago, LSG501 said:

Hmm... I wonder which thread this idea came from lol

 

Ok in the most simple terms and IMO:

Warframe/ability balance - Every frame should be able to work together using all abilities however the players wants to play the frame but still allow others to actually do something at ALL enemy levels, ideally and imo an ability should be there to support the player, not do everything for them.... Because some players seem so attached to the broken mechanics of certain frames DE would likely need to look at a scaling system for damage done (although in some cases a rework would likely be easier) on lower levels etc so no ability can literally just run through a level or just sit in the same spot killing everything. 

 

Weapon balance - this one is likely a harder one to fix until DE does something about enemy scaling but an easy fix would be to give higher level players an option to select higher level enemies to kill on the low level maps, even locking us out of the low level ones once we hit a certain mr unless we're in an invite only group...

Do we need all weapons to be equal, no, but they do need to have a cross section of damage versus mr requirements, so low mr requirement weapons should be able to manage really well at low level but will start to struggle at higher levels without riven or heavy forma additions.  All weapons should ideally be able to cover up to sortie level with enough mod and forma investment but realistically this isn't going to happen.

 

Enemies - the scaling system currently in place could do with a more linear approach than the current parabolic approach we have now... the corpus could also do with a change to the way that higher levels basically just seem to spawn more nullifiers (fixing the drone issues would be nice too), bursa's and sapping ospreys wouldn't go a miss.... maybe rework some units to be closer to how nox works on grineer. 

 

In essence a buff or nerf isn't necessarily the only answer, a change to the overall mechanics being used in the game play may be more beneficial in the long run.

Im not really sure where i got the idea, all i wanted is to ask people that when it comes to nerfing and buffing what should be the balance point? In upper i shown example if the secondary shotgun buffs what all come with a huge nerf to their range was that really necesseary OR on the weapons what got nerfed raising their mastery to mr 15 wouldnt been good enough as their power would now come with approtiate level requiement?

[Dwolfknight]

4 minutes ago, Fallen_Echo said:

So in your interpretion the worse what could happen is that things stay the same way as they were. That doesnt sound that bad actually, this was only 3 weapon in the meta and almost every gun with faint disposition is part of the meta.

In all honesty i have never seen someone leaving a squad becuase i used the synoid simulor as mirage and still not see it when i use the synoid simulor as mirage.

You really think that not adding damage falloff to the akbronco would instantly put it in the meta?

15

"Only 3 weapons" that was all a lot of players were experiencing, you say this as if it was not something bad, even among faint disposition weapons they were incredibly powerful and dull to use. This limits both sides experience, one side only uses a fraction of a fraction of the content and the other does not experience missions to it fullest, in other words, Burnouts become more common = fewer players playing overall.

That is because we, the ones that hated seeing those weapons, were already running private matches, or it was at a short enough mission that we could just wait.

Have you seen how powerful those weapons are now? The only reason they are not meta weapons is that of the damage fall off, they can out-damage the sicarus prime, which is the most powerful secondary currently.

[LSG501]

10 minutes ago, Fallen_Echo said:

Im not really sure where i got the idea, all i wanted is to ask people that when it comes to nerfing and buffing what should be the balance point? In upper i shown example if the secondary shotgun buffs what all come with a huge nerf to their range was that really necesseary OR on the weapons what got nerfed raising their mastery to mr 15 wouldnt been good enough as their power would now come with approtiate level requiement?

I think that would fall under my bit about weapons. 

The unfortunate thing with the way DE are currently balancing weapons is by ignoring part of the problem and that part is the enemies, we all know how broken the enemy scaling is and how in most cases it's better to just run with corrosive projection to remove the armour that gets added.  You can spend all the time in the world reworking existing weapons but is it really worth doing that until you've fixed the reason that the weapons need the rework in the first place. 

As I said in my first reply, I don't think all weapons need to be 'equal damage' but I do think the weapons need to be spread through the MR levels, partly to encourage players to try new weapons and increase their MR, but also to sort of have a 'level up' of weapon damage as well. 

A perfect example is the braton, we get the mk1 at the start, then the full version from the store a bit later and have the prime version if we really like it.  Now I'm not suggesting all weapons get the same treatment of low, mid, high damage versions like the braton (it would be weapon overload) but the weapons can easily be put into 'categories' like machine rifle, single shot rifle, burst rifle etc and be put into different tiers based on their stats.

These tiers can then be unlocked at different MR's, some of this is done now but I'm not sure all the weapons at higher MR are actually better than those at lower MR's...and we've still got a LOT of weapons that have no ranks whatsoever (according to wiki)... a nikana prime has no MR attached yet the dragon and normal nikana do...

Both soma and soma prime unlock at mr6 for example but imo a weaker weapon, the tenora (soma prime does more damage than my 'perfect fit riven' mod'd tenora), unlocks at mr10 so you could argue that the placement of said weapons is wrong and need moving around.

So I suppose what I'm trying to say is, the weapons don't always necessarily need a rework, just the MR unlock or location on starmap where it's made available in the game needs to be appropriate for the damage it's doing. 

[Fallen_Echo]

10 hours ago, Dwolfknight said:

"Only 3 weapons" that was all a lot of players were experiencing, you say this as if it was not something bad, even among faint disposition weapons they were incredibly powerful and dull to use. This limits both sides experience, one side only uses a fraction of a fraction of the content and the other does not experience missions to it fullest, in other words, Burnouts become more common = fewer players playing overall. A lot of players, i have heard this many times but never experienced it, rarely seen any tonkor users after the introduction of the Zarr, mirages were already rare as hell and the boltace now that was in an avarage amount.

That is because we, the ones that hated seeing those weapons, were already running private matches, or it was at a short enough mission that we could just wait.

Have you seen how powerful those weapons are now? The only reason they are not meta weapons is that of the damage fall off, they can out-damage the sicarus prime, which is the most powerful secondary currently.

With total 160 damage, the vaykor marelok outshines the sicarus prime also you forget one important detail. These weapons what mostly got buffed are freaking shotguns.

Shotguns supposed to deal high damage at long range. A military grade shotgun has an effective 70m range and not 18-20m.

This is not how shotguns supposed to work:

 

Due to the accuracy of our shotguns even without damage falloff only a fraction of the pellets would hit the target, the akbronco prime deals 50 damage per pellet and shots out 7 of them total. If we apply the multishot mods to this we will get 12 pellets per shot, losing 3-4 of them due to long range means you just lost 150-200 damage.

Even if we ignore the long ranges saying that most rooms are small, that would mean that the Mara Detron and the Pyrana are already meta weapons since their falloff starts from 15m but in reality thats not the case.

[Dwolfknight]

I feel I should share

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Chipputer]

On 8/29/2017 at 3:06 AM, Fallen_Echo said:

With total 160 damage, the vaykor marelok outshines the sicarus prime

Maybe on paper but definitely not in practice. Sicarus Prime is a monster now.

[InanimateAlex]

So what youre saying, In a roundabout way because clarity of information is overrated, is that you dont like damage fall-off and you want weapons that are so powerful that the invalidate the rest of the content of the game... 

Look, buddy...

Why would you want that?

[Serdinor_Darkrose]

   This is personal opinion, but due to the nature of the game, weapons should be buffed/nerfed based on this:

Regular weapons:

• Is the weapon accessible early? It should stay low in terms of power.
• Is the weapon of average difficulty to obtain and has some interesting properties? Make it good for early-mid level enemies, but not great for late-game content.
• Is the weapon hard to craft? Make it end-game viable, it should be worth crafting in the first place.

Special variants:

• Does the weapon have interesting properties and works in a niche way? Buff it so under certain conditions (enemy type, playstyle, warframe synergy etc) it is end-game viable, otherwise the interesting mechanic is wasted. It's a mechanic YOU as a developer worked upon, meaning you wanted to see this in-game, don't trash the weapon.
• Is the weapon a prime? It should always be better than the regular version, but not always end-game viable, for that refer to the regular version (if the regular version is bad then the prime cannot be strong, it makes zero sense that the Tenno version has degraded so much from the Orokin one).
• Is the weapon a syndicate exclusive? It should be end-game viable and if it is based on a tenno variant it should have an interesting mechanic to diversify it from the prime one (whether it's already in the game or not).
• Is the weapon a Vandal/Wraith/Prisma version? It's meant to be an upgrade, buff it so it surpasses the regular version.
• Is the weapon able to break the game in certain conditions or requires zero player effort, yet offers high rewards? Nerf it until this doesn't apply.

And that's the end of it. This is simple logic, and yet this doesn't apply to the core game as of now. Is Sibear end-game viable? Nope. Did Synoid Simulor make the game pointless, did the other players feel useless trying to aim down sight while the Synoid player could shoot randomly and wipe out the room? Yes. Was tonkor the only grenade launcher with extremely low danger compared to the rest? Yes. Should shotguns be beasts only close range and useless at long shots? Yes, but I don't see anyone complaining about this, why? People only complain about trivial stuff, they yelled at Trinity, Ash & weapon nerfs because they've become too lazy to press more than 2 buttons. It's the same laziness that makes people running into Spy vaults and failing the mission instead of taking 20 more seconds to do it properly. All weapons that DE considers end-game viable should be strong at the hands of an experienced player and not powerful because "hey we buffed everything with 30% crit chance and status!".

[Fallen_Echo]

4 hours ago, InanimateAlex said:

So what youre saying, In a roundabout way because clarity of information is overrated, is that you dont like damage fall-off and you want weapons that are so powerful that the invalidate the rest of the content of the game... 

Look, buddy...

Why would you want that?

Nah, you missed my point i just want to know whats the worst what could have happened if these changes dont come out in the name of balance. I just used this two as an example on what i want to talk about.

But heres another one for you. DE introduces a new weapon. Semi-auto, 1600 damage, 1 ammo/magazine, max 210 ammo, 20% crit x1,5 crit damage, 35% status, secondary chance for balancing it out they add in 3.7 sec reload time.

 

Do you think the reload time balance was needed here? IF yes why?

If they ever decide to nerf/buff this weapon what should they change about it and how?

 

Before you answer this weapon is a clone of an already existing gun in the game, i just rounded up the full magazines ammo into 1 powerful shot and increased the reload time.

2 hours ago, Serdinor_Darkrose said:

   This is personal opinion, but due to the nature of the game, weapons should be buffed/nerfed based on this:

Regular weapons:

• Is the weapon accessible early? It should stay low in terms of power.
• Is the weapon of average difficulty to obtain and has some interesting properties? Make it good for early-mid level enemies, but not great for late-game content.
• Is the weapon hard to craft? Make it end-game viable, it should be worth crafting in the first place.

Special variants:

• Does the weapon have interesting properties and works in a niche way? Buff it so under certain conditions (enemy type, playstyle, warframe synergy etc) it is end-game viable, otherwise the interesting mechanic is wasted. It's a mechanic YOU as a developer worked upon, meaning you wanted to see this in-game, don't trash the weapon.
• Is the weapon a prime? It should always be better than the regular version, but not always end-game viable, for that refer to the regular version (if the regular version is bad then the prime cannot be strong, it makes zero sense that the Tenno version has degraded so much from the Orokin one).
• Is the weapon a syndicate exclusive? It should be end-game viable and if it is based on a tenno variant it should have an interesting mechanic to diversify it from the prime one (whether it's already in the game or not).
• Is the weapon a Vandal/Wraith/Prisma version? It's meant to be an upgrade, buff it so it surpasses the regular version.
• Is the weapon able to break the game in certain conditions or requires zero player effort, yet offers high rewards? Nerf it until this doesn't apply.

And that's the end of it. This is simple logic, and yet this doesn't apply to the core game as of now. Is Sibear end-game viable? Nope. Did Synoid Simulor make the game pointless, did the other players feel useless trying to aim down sight while the Synoid player could shoot randomly and wipe out the room? Yes. Was tonkor the only grenade launcher with extremely low danger compared to the rest? Yes. Should shotguns be beasts only close range and useless at long shots? Yes, but I don't see anyone complaining about this, why? People only complain about trivial stuff, they yelled at Trinity, Ash & weapon nerfs because they've become too lazy to press more than 2 buttons. It's the same laziness that makes people running into Spy vaults and failing the mission instead of taking 20 more seconds to do it properly. All weapons that DE considers end-game viable should be strong at the hands of an experienced player and not powerful because "hey we buffed everything with 30% crit chance and status!".

I all around agree with you expect 2 things:

1)

2 hours ago, Serdinor_Darkrose said:

Is the weapon a prime? It should always be better than the regular version, but not always end-game viable, for that refer to the regular version (if the regular version is bad then the prime cannot be strong, it makes zero sense that the Tenno version has degraded so much from the Orokin one).

In fact we even have some weapons whats description says that the new era weapon crafters never managed to get the weapons as good as the old ones.

I say that every prime weapon should be medium to endgame viable.

2 hours ago, Serdinor_Darkrose said:

Should shotguns be beasts only close range and useless at long shots? Yes

This is here is one of the least realistic aspects of most games. A modern day military grade shotgun with buckshots have an effective range of 70m and they can destroy someones chest from half distance away. Theres absolutely no logic behind the fact that in a distant future with space magic advanced technology and energy weapon development they cant create a shotgun what can kill you from 30m away but they can create a pistol what has an effective range of 1km.

[InanimateAlex]

On 9/1/2017 at 4:43 AM, Fallen_Echo said:

Nah, you missed my point i just want to know whats the worst what could have happened if these changes dont come out in the name of balance. I just used this two as an example on what i want to talk about.

But heres another one for you. DE introduces a new weapon. Semi-auto, 1600 damage, 1 ammo/magazine, max 210 ammo, 20% crit x1,5 crit damage, 35% status, secondary chance for balancing it out they add in 3.7 sec reload time.

This example would make sense if this weapon was any good before the reload speed gimp (I mean x1.5 crit, 35% status on a single shot weapon) If all you wanted was a hypothetical, if we are honest they would keep having to release weapons that could perform on parr with these weapons (otherwise 90% of their content would be redundant) so it becomes a law of averages situation, Is it worth balancing your game around 1% of the content or the remaining 99%?

[Fallen_Echo]

1 hour ago, InanimateAlex said:

This example would make sense if this weapon was any good before the reload speed gimp (I mean x1.5 crit, 35% status on a single shot weapon) If all you wanted was a hypothetical, if we are honest they would keep having to release weapons that could perform on parr with these weapons (otherwise 90% of their content would be redundant) so it becomes a law of averages situation, Is it worth balancing your game around 1% of the content or the remaining 99%?

It depends on how that 1% performs for the game content.

Everything is weak as hell and cant kill the most basic mobs expect the 1%? Its time to buff up stuff.

Everything performs well expect that 1% what can kill anything ingame regardless of levels and setup? Time to look into it.

[InanimateAlex]

31 minutes ago, Fallen_Echo said:

It depends on how that 1% performs for the game content.

Everything is weak as hell and cant kill the most basic mobs expect the 1%? Its time to buff up stuff.

Everything performs well expect that 1% what can kill anything ingame regardless of levels and setup? Time to look into it.

Then you answered your own question

[Fallen_Echo]

1 hour ago, InanimateAlex said:

Then you answered your own question

Not really, our content is endless and we have more trash than weapons what vastly outperform the others.

Seeing this i think we must first attempt to let thing stay as is, before we decide that they must be "balanced".