Power Creep *and Armor Scaling* Is Destroying The Niches Of Older Weapons

[Vaskadar]

Here's the first thing: Weapon Tiers are BAD, mmkay?

While I hate to admit it, this game has become an arms race (a literal one at that) as far as weapons diversity and comparable damage relative to enemy health and damage. Evaluating the scaling is necessary so as to prevent power creep from destroying weapon usage distribution.

Update 10.6.0

What we now have here is an indication that power creep is the path that DE wishes to take to get people to spend more platinum on 'new toys' without any subsequent nerfs or balance adjustments. There has not been a real balance patch since update 9 or earlier.

-Furis/Afuris: Bad ammo economy and relative DPS when compared to similar weapons. Should be much more accurate than Viper, with relatively similar DPS when taking into consideration the increased accuracy.

-Strun: Terrible DPS relative to other shotguns, low accuracy, low range. Should do more damage than Hek to offset slow fire rate and reload. Should also reload one shell at a time, and be able to cancel reloading to resume firing.

-Boar: Terrible ammo efficiency (relative to other shotguns), weak per-pellet damage, made obsolete by Sobek. Ugly too. (As much as I love my Boar, she needs a facelift)

-Grakata: Lost its 15% crit chance in past update (or apparently never had its 15% crit chance). Now pretty weak once more due to terrible ammo economy relative to damage output. Update: Completely outdated and outclassed by soma.

-Vulkar: Still has terrible reload speed, still does 'normal bullet' damage, and still is effectively one of the worst weapons in the game.

-Supra: Travel time, inaccuracy, etc. make this weapon a chore to use, and it was already gimped when it first came out.

-1H Swords - Obsolete/UP, lacks any real diversity

-1H Daggers - Obsolete/UP, lacks any real diversity

-Bo Staff ;.; - Completely obsolete - Doesn't even do what it's supposed to

-Most normal damage weapons, now that I think about it.

These weapons just haven't kept up with the changing perception of 'endgame' and armor scaling. It's eroding the foundation of balance in a sad way. Balance isn't "They all do the same junk", it's "They should all do something different from one another". I see that, but it's not emphasized enough with some of the weapons.

TL;DR - More and more weapons are being made obsolete with each update, and that makes me sad.

Edited November 1, 2013 by Vaskadar

[http404error]

Grakata apparently never had 15% crit to begin with.

 

I agree with all of your weapon assessments.

[Ss3trnks2]

I also agree with this, with each new batch of weapons we get, a previous set is rendered obsolete so whats the point of getting anything other than the newest stuff? The only real caveat being that some of the newer ones "supra, ogris, acrid" require a certain mastery level, which is good for spreading out WHEN you get them. But weapons like kunai which do not require a mastery level and are simply resource bound make the other weapons it is compare to seem ineffective.

[theammostore]

1h swords were never good, 1h daggers were never good. They weren't ruined, they were bad to begin with. Afuris: higher sustained damage over Vipers, massive ammo count as well. Strun no idea, Boar, i agree.

 

As for power creep. This is a beta. Thanks for your feedback, now they'll start addressing it and working on it.

[Zukushi]

Power creep is indeed an issue in the game, but you haven't made a great job at providing examples. I mean, listing some low level weapons to complain about power creep? Come on. Might as well put MK1-Braton there.
 

[Strac_CRO]

I agree, but it was players constantly asking for buffs of new weapons (including the weapons from labs)

Making weapons too powerful also makes game too easy

Edited July 24, 2013 by Strac_CRO

[taiiat]

Power creep is indeed an issue in the game, but you haven't made a great job at providing examples. I mean, listing some low level weapons to complain about power creep? Come on. Might as well put MK1-Braton there.

 

at no point has it been stated to us that Digtal Extremes aims to have groups of weapons for early game, mid game, and end game. 

other than the starting gear, and a couple 'noobie' weapons, everything should be viable. even the 'noobie' weapons should be viable, but maybe not quite as much due to such ease of obtainment and low/no mastery requirement.

 

mastery requirements isn't a good excuse for a weapon to be underpowered or overpowered, i absolutely agree, lower mastery rank weapons should be more general use and fine in all situations, higher rank weapons consistently should get more and more specialized to excel in specific situations, while sacrificing some level of general purpose. they still should be useful for general purpose though! but holding one box above the others, rather than holding all the boxes in the same place.

[DeathByTeaCup]

now this might sound weird but im not too opposed to this idea.. however for it too work there would need to be 3 classes of mats.. not just the 1 set we have right now because the sobek is quite ez to make (slightly hard) and does not compare too well with the other gear.. so my idea is have the 3ranks and make it so as the game expands that there are subtypes of mats.

[Artaban]

Agree.

 

Instead of weapons having only full armor piercing or ignore, each weapon/damage class should have its specialty

 

For example,

 

bullets - general all purpose

bolts - strong vs armor and infested (though reduced slightly due to 25% chance of ap vs normal infested), weak vs shields.

laser - strong vs shields, average vs infested and armor (though armor can be neglected after multiple hits)

melee slash - general all purpose, completely bypass shields, 25% chance armor ignore

serrated blade - strong vs infested normal and ancient, weak vs armor and shields

shot - easier to hit criticals and weaknesses

 

Braton, bullets, 20% chance of armor piercing

 

Boltor, bolts, 75% chance of armor ignore, 25% chance armor piercing

 

Dera, laser, reduces target armor by 5% per hit

 

Various damage type and effects may also be combined,

 

Flux, serrated blade with armor reducing

 

Hek, shot, strong vs infested, average vs armor and shields. 20% chance to crit per pellet, 10% chance per pellet to automatically hit weak points (pellets must hit target 1st).

 

Basically each weapon has a niche that it excels in, thus making it irreplaceable by weapons from other niches.

[Taranis49]

Power creep is indeed an issue in the game, but you haven't made a great job at providing examples. I mean, listing some low level weapons to complain about power creep? Come on. Might as well put MK1-Braton there.

 

 

Pretty much. For example, I'd basically consider the Strun to be the "starter" shotgun, since it's likely to be the first one a player gets. Not only does it have the lowest mastery requirement, it's credit buyable.

 

With his other examples, as said, stuff like 1H Swords/Daggers always kinda sucked.

 

I agree, but it was players constantly asking for buffs of new weapons (including the weapons from labs)

Making weapons too powerful also makes game too easy

 

At later levels of play, very few weapons really excel aside from the ones that ignore armor (and it's worth mentioning that a good number of the research weapons don't ignore armor either)... and I consider that a problem with enemy resistance scaling more than the weapons themselves.

 

And people asked for buffs to the lab weapons because of the simple fact that quite a few of them were downright horribad (particularly for the effort it takes to make them), hell, some of them still are: Even at near-Mastery Rank 9 I still consider the Ignis the worst weapon in the game.

[Eirshy]

Right now the biggest problem is that they kinda shot themselves in the foot by not fixing the armor scaling this far into production, and that's ruined a lot of weapon viabilities.

 

You fix that you'll see less power creep, because they won't be buffing a weapon by 150% after release to make people use it. All those issues you listed really are more problems of aging. The Sobek merely got lucky with its release date.

 

 

 

And in total agreement with Taranis on clantech having needed buffs. I think the Supra was the only one that really worked as well as it should have at release (upgrade to the Gorgon). I only just hit mastery 7, but from working with numbers and watching Mogamu and MikeB weapon reviews....

 

- Lanka was incredibly niche and was eclipsed by the Snidal upon the Snidal's release.

- Dera started out with a base damage of 7 or something (lol), and the projectile speed buff was more QoL than anything.

- Flux was on-par with the Ignis for being "total S#&$", but then the Flux got buffed.

- Ignis is STILL total S#&$ (needs innate pen and it will at least be a working flamethrower).

- Torid was lolbad until the poison buff. Dealt incredibly poor damage, etc.

- Acrid was meh until the poison buff as well, now it's basically better than the Despair.

- Ogris still has blast shielding corpse issues.

- Spectra is like a pocket version of the old, S#&$ty Flux.

Edited July 24, 2013 by TheBlueJelly

[krisp]

I agree on the 1handers and the Bo, but Afuris does more sustained damage over time than Twin Vipers, the Boar still does more DPS than the Sobek and the Strun has its place as well.

 

I can post numbers if needed.

[Satwo]

i think what would fix this flux of power would be to take the vast number of overshadowed weapons and make their material costs near nothing. the lower ranking players need diversity to keep interest.

after that, high end "OP" weapons need to take longer to make once the materials are in place. highest currently is 1 day. things should scale with rankups, possibly 6 hours per required rank. this would go hand in hand with placing different weapons into player rank locks. we dont need 35 weapons open to everyone when they start. its overwelming to them and defers them from playing different kinds of weapons. i still to this day have never used a dagger because there was always a better option.

we are getting more and more weapons with each update. this also means max rank is going up. if we are gonna keep bringing in powerful weapons, its time to start considering placing some of them at rank 8 or 9 locks. itd give me something to work for.

[Tatersail]

Kunai/despair and Acrid are the only issues I see.

they stand at 2-3x more dps than every other weapon in game, and deal True damage.

 

the Strun is still a decent shotgun, and.... you can get it with cash at the very start of the game!!

Boar Power build is still doing crazy damage per clip at point blank.

Furis/Afuris have more ammo than Vipers and can hold a slightly longer burst

 

1 handed weapons where always broken

 

and yes I agree, the Armor system in this game is broken, I really want to Remove all Armor ignore off weapons, or Fix armor scaling.

 

Atm the only viable weapons are AI(true damage)

Edited July 24, 2013 by Tatersail

[Eirshy]

and yes I agree, the Armor system in this game is broken, I really want to Remove all Armor ignore off weapons, or Fix armor scaling.

 

Atm the only viable weapons are AI(true damage)

 

 

You remove all armor ignore and we're stuck using pea shooters that deal 1's and 2's (and 5's and 10's with sonar) against enemies with over 1k HP.

 

Fix armor scaling. Don't make the "inviable" weapon list *bigger*.

[Tatersail]

it would totally balance all weapons :P

[Amistyrja]

I'd like to see how long it takes for DE to realize that Priming gear isn't a good idea.

[Phoenix86]

nice topic, agree on all points, +1 and supporting!

[Mikki79]

That's how they make money, by making all old weapons and a lot of warframes (nova has seen to that) obsolete.

 

So you spent maybe even a hundred hours leveling up your current weapons polarizing them 3-4 times each, grinding defense missions for hours on end for those keys to get more forma. Well...

 

New patch is out, all old S#&$ is obsolete time to do it all again. You don't want to? Then buy those forma and a bunch of affinity boosters to do it in a fraction of the time.

 

There is no powercreep in this game, more like a powerrush. Way too fast to be creeping.

Edited July 24, 2013 by Mikki79

[Rhorge]

DE needs to do a major rebalance of the weapons.

[Cerebrawl]

Even at near-Mastery Rank 9 I still consider the Ignis the worst weapon in the game.

Sicarus. Also: all single daggers, including the alert-only ones.

[Vaskadar]

Though, firstly, they should really fix armor scaling. Once that's done, they can rebalance the weaponry appropriately.

[LazyKnight]

-Furis/Afuris: Bad ammo economy and relative DPS when compared to similar weapons. Should be much more accurate than Viper, with relatively similar DPS when taking into consideration the increased accuracy.

-Strun: Terrible DPS relative to other shotguns, low accuracy, low range. Should do more damage than Hek to offset slow fire rate and reload.

-Boar: Terrible ammo efficiency (relative to other shotguns), weak per-pellet damage, made obsolete by Sobek. Ugly too. (As much as I love my Boar, she needs a facelift)

-Grakata: Lost its 15% crit bonus in past update. Now pretty weak once more due to terrible ammo economy relative to damage output.

-1H Swords - Obsolete/UP, lacks any real diversity

-1H Daggers - Obsolete/UP, lacks any real diversity

-Bo Staff ;.; - Completely obsolete - Doesn't even do what it's supposed to

-Most normal damage weapons, now that I think about it.

 

Every one of the weapons you listed was never good past level 30 to begin with. They all have either terrible base damage and do not scale or are ruined as NPC armor scale. If they ever fixed armor scaling many weapons your list(and a few others) would STILL need a bit of a buff just because they are such poor quality to begin with. The new shotgun mods should NOT be underestimated and shotguns should be removed from that list.

Edited July 24, 2013 by LazyKnight

[ClockworkSpectre]

I disagree with the OP on most of his post, many of the weapons are just a step up from starter weapons and are not supposed to be awesome.  They are stepping stone weapons, something to use while you build your mastery level to get to the better weapons. 

 

I will agree though about single swords(long swords).  They seem to be UP, there isn't really even a single example of a good long sword. 

 

As far as the weapons with poor ammo economy that is a problem with many weapons, the ammo pickups are just broken, they should scale with the fire rate of the weapon.  Some weapons do poor damage per shot, so the high fire rate makes up for that.  The static number of rounds in ammo pickups is a huge handicap on those weapons, really poor balance. 

[Chloroment]

I agree, but it was players constantly asking for buffs of new weapons (including the weapons from labs)

Making weapons too powerful also makes game too easy

 

thats why its bad when DE listen too much to the players cause most players only ask for upgrades for their favority toy.. they do not think of the overral game experince and the balance that should be there.. DE needs to have bigger balls, and say NO even though some of their small kids customers would sit and "cry me a river trallaa........"

 

Just like with the pvp... it was said in one of the early livestreams that this game was about CO-OP gaming not PVP... and as of now is sounds more and more like its something they might consider as long as the crowd cries loud enough... the same with the content... We get loads of new frames and weapons to Waste our time on where we lack new CO-OP content.. Meaning content where you actually need a team of well playing players...

 

I love what DE has done to Warframe but after following the game for 6 month or so, i kinda get the feel that DE tries to be too much of a crowd pleaser instead of having a place they want to take Warframe.. If i had to sell Warframe to a friend i would have no idea what to say other than its a FPS game. Cause there is no goal for warframe put Down in stone from DE. Ohh well im rambling off topic...

 

just my 2cp.

Edited July 24, 2013 by Chloroment