Difficulty, Balance Of Power Vs Skill, Powercreep And More

[AlphaArctus]

Indirectly bumping...

 

I keep relating this game to my own experience with WoW and TF2. The games are certainly very different from Warframe, but from a gamers perspective, the experience felt is very relatable. 

 

For instance the progression system and balance in Warframe feels like it will be nostalgic of the persistent dancing WoW developers would enact attempting to balance what essentially is the player experience. X Warframe is buffed and the remaining alphabet complains. Y gets some attention, the remain complain. But the complaint's aren't all invalid, the majority of players are affected by the buffs introduced and direct comparisons between the player's experiences can be made. Already it feels like the rug is starting to slip under DE feet, and too much is starting to exist in Warframe that feels unbalanced. But I may be feeling this wrong. Regardless though, imagining the Warframes and their weapons as a set of incomparables would be much more amazing to play, if done well.

 

Separately, new players and veteran players are literally leagues apart. If a new player jumps into a game of TF2, are they seperated by such differences in gaming experience from their friends/players? No, or at most not necessarily. Sidegrading is I feel lacking from this game and the OP couldn't have put it more simply.

 

I can't agree more with the suggestion of placing more control over difficulty in the players hands, and rewarding them the difficulty of their accomplishments!

 

Cheers eStecko :) I hope your post does at least get some kind of formal recognition from DE.

Edited August 18, 2013 by AlphaArctus

[eStecko]

 

Cheers eStecko :) I hope your post does at least get some kind of formal recognition from DE.

 

 

<3

 

I think it already did. We made it into sticky thread "Frequently given feedback" and my points we're in last 2 "Community Hot Topics" -> i put those into news area in the main topic aswell.

[zezzame]

<3

 

I think it already did. We made it into sticky thread "Frequently given feedback" and my points we're in last 2 "Community Hot Topics" -> i put those into news area in the main topic aswell.

 

Things is they need to act on what is said here, they have started but hope they do more than just lower the broken armor. We need some real difficulty not bullet sponges. 

[eStecko]

Things is they need to act on what is said here, they have started but hope they do more than just lower the broken armor. We need some real difficulty not bullet sponges. 

 

Yet you can't make this over night by a whip of a magic wand. ;)

[litlit]

New enemies in Phobos location.

 

Helios. This is what i've been talking about. New enemy types with interresting abilities - jetpacks - make the combat way more fun and more challenging by increasing Grineer's mobility with danger element of exploding jetpack going wild after unit dies. GOOD JOB DE!

 

Desert Skale is a great enemy that gives a unique feeling to the area, provides a player with atmosphere, that there is hostile organism, that is dangerous to its settlers on this planet. Although it alone, does not do much in terms of difficulty. Making them smaller (~30%) and spawn in bigger groups as lurkers might be better in this regard.

 

Bosses are quite easy... dual boss mechanic is nice, but since i can 3 shot Vor with my Snipetron and Kril does pretty much nothing. >.>

 

Agreed. The double bossfight is a good touch, but everyone who's farmed them for the Miter/Twin Gremlins knows exactly how the fight works in practice:

 

-Rush to boss

-Force both bosses to their invulnerability frames in less than a second

-Stand around waiting till the health gate wears off

-Kill them in less than a second

 

edit:

 

The direction they're heading with bossfights gives me hope, though. The Vor fight is actually decent if you're a new player just getting through Mercury, and the new J3 Golem seems promising.

 

One problem, however, is that the grind necessary to obtain Warframes (or weapon) blueprints quite jarringly clashes with DE's intent to make bossfights more interesting (it seems to be much easier to farm rare components from Mobile Defense and endless Defense missions, so I'm not going to worry about rare component boss runs for now). When you're farming for something, health gating is always annoying, regardless of how fun or engaging the fight is the first time. On the 20th Kril run when getting my frost, I found myself wishing I could just run up to him and kill him like I do with Anyo or Tyl Regor.

 

I'm not really sure what DE's thought process is on this matter. It's not going to matter how cool/fun/engaging a boss is when 1) players are forced to grind it over and over, and 2) players with maxed out equipment can trivialize any bossfight (especially low level bosses; if I bring my maxed out Redirection I can stand in front of Vor until I kill him, eating his shock traps without taking any health damage).

 

If the goal is to make fun bossfights, DE needs to consider the player's mental state when they approach it. The current mentality is "okay I want blueprints, i might have to do this 20-50 times so I'm going to get through this as fast as possible". That kind of mentality severely undermines enjoyment and ensures players won't be having fun after a few farming runs. This isn't to say that grind is a bad thing or that I think DE should get rid of grinding (a f2p game without grind? lol). But, if they want to change from easy-to-farm bullet-sponge bosses to interesting, engaging, larger-scale boss encounters, then the current model of rapid, consecutive boss speedrun grinding needs to change with it.

Edited August 18, 2013 by litlir

[eStecko]

Agreed. The double bossfight is a good touch, but everyone who's farmed them for the Miter/Twin Gremlins knows exactly how the fight works in practice:

 

-Rush to boss

-Force both bosses to their invulnerability frames in less than a second

-Stand around waiting till the health gate wears off

-Kill them in less than a second

 

edit:

 

The direction they're heading with bossfights gives me hope, though. The Vor fight is actually decent if you're a new player just getting through Mercury, and the new J3 Golem seems promising.

 

One problem, however, is that the grind necessary to obtain Warframes (or weapon) blueprints quite jarringly clashes with DE's intent to make bossfights more interesting (it seems to be much easier to farm rare components from Mobile Defense and endless Defense missions, so I'm not going to worry about rare component boss runs for now). When you're farming for something, health gating is always annoying, regardless of how fun or engaging the fight is the first time. On the 20th Kril run when getting my frost, I found myself wishing I could just run up to him and kill him like I do with Anyo or Tyl Regor.

 

I'm not really sure what DE's thought process is on this matter. It's not going to matter how cool/fun/engaging a boss is when 1) players are forced to grind it over and over, and 2) players with maxed out equipment can trivialize any bossfight (especially low level bosses; if I bring my maxed out Redirection I can stand in front of Vor until I kill him, eating his shock traps without taking any health damage).

 

If the goal is to make fun bossfights, DE needs to consider the player's mental state when they approach it. The current mentality is "okay I want blueprints, i might have to do this 20-50 times so I'm going to get through this as fast as possible". That kind of mentality severely undermines enjoyment and ensures players won't be having fun after a few farming runs. This isn't to say that grind is a bad thing or that I think DE should get rid of grinding (a f2p game without grind? lol). But, if they want to change from easy-to-farm bullet-sponge bosses to interesting, engaging, larger-scale boss encounters, then the current model of rapid, consecutive boss speedrun grinding needs to change with it.

 

Rushing to a boss is common practice, since RNG and drop rates are still quite messed up, but on Phobos, ~70% of the time in Assassination, enemies havent even spawned until we got to the bosses. ^^

 

Health-gating works in MMO's, because players there are not capable of 2-shoting bosses like my clan mate can with Lanka crits for over 8k. It has a purpose to divide the fight into phases to introduce player group into different strategies and adaptation in order to beat the boss. It is true, that in Warframe the invincibility time between the phases is darn too long and everyone found himself waiting 10-15 seconds for Vor to get out of his bubble to die in next 2 seconds.

 

Vor is actualy very well done as a boss, except for the bubble time. Although as you rightly point out, it goes against the nature of players - kill boss asap and our ridiculous weapon power differences vs boss and in general enemy scaling. Sometimes i feel that Warframe is trying to use mechanics that work on MMO's, but crumble in fast paced coop game it is.

 

It is one of those difficult areas... and my personal view, that our gear is just too much powerfull, especialy when re-visiting lower level areas. Today i've rushed Jackal around 50 times to get Rhino Systems (obviously i got 8x chassis and 5x helmets, that rng...), 2-shoting Jackal with my Snipetron in mere seconds and was on my way to the extraction. Spending more time running trough the level, then killing stuff. If i got stuck by enemy mob, press 4 on Saryn. Pickup mods that sometimes drop. <- insert same story with Ember Systems for yesterday (no, i have not found systems aswell). But thats just me complaining...

[Nagisawa]

Rushing to a boss is common practice, since RNG and drop rates are still quite messed up, but on Phobos, ~70% of the time in Assassination, enemies havent even spawned until we got to the bosses. ^^

 

Health-gating works in MMO's, because players there are not capable of 2-shoting bosses like my clan mate can with Lanka crits for over 8k. It has a purpose to divide the fight into phases to introduce player group into different strategies and adaptation in order to beat the boss. It is true, that in Warframe the invincibility time between the phases is darn too long and everyone found himself waiting 10-15 seconds for Vor to get out of his bubble to die in next 2 seconds.

 

Vor is actualy very well done as a boss, except for the bubble time. Although as you rightly point out, it goes against the nature of players - kill boss asap and our ridiculous weapon power differences vs boss and in general enemy scaling. Sometimes i feel that Warframe is trying to use mechanics that work on MMO's, but crumble in fast paced coop game it is.

 

It is one of those difficult areas... and my personal view, that our gear is just too much powerfull, especialy when re-visiting lower level areas. Today i've rushed Jackal around 50 times to get Rhino Systems (obviously i got 8x chassis and 5x helmets, that rng...), 2-shoting Jackal with my Snipetron in mere seconds and was on my way to the extraction. Spending more time running trough the level, then killing stuff. If i got stuck by enemy mob, press 4 on Saryn. Pickup mods that sometimes drop. <- insert same story with Ember Systems for yesterday (no, i have not found systems aswell). But thats just me complaining...

Thing is, that ease of killing bosses (with high powered and/or maxed weapons) is the reason they have the constant mob respawn.  To wear you down until you get there.

 

The issue is, as you noted, there are easy ways to avoid that.

[eStecko]

* merged the topic with my less constructive (its more of thoughts) topic about power gaps/progression, feel free to critique *

[zezzame]

* merged the topic with my less constructive (its more of thoughts) topic about power gaps/progression, feel free to critique *

You just said all my problems with the game, oh and forma is a pain and stopped me all together.

[Xenrax]

That's the kicker, isn't it?  Enemies that don't just rush at you blindly.  Enemies that are intelligent and adapt rather than just being bullet sponges with more armor/health.

Have we really come so far since the days of Doom on the PC back in the days of 56k modems and shareware? :P

[eStecko]

That's the kicker, isn't it?  Enemies that don't just rush at you blindly.  Enemies that are intelligent and adapt rather than just being bullet sponges with more armor/health.

Have we really come so far since the days of Doom on the PC back in the days of 56k modems and shareware? :P

Haha, true indeed.

 

On a serious note, Doom offered many variable enemy types, which mostly used projectiles and if not, their hitscan bullets did low amount of damage and you had a ways to dealing with them. The game was hard and obeyed its own rules. Like Demon/Dark Souls or many platformers we get today, that do not have a slap of "unfair difficulty - d*ck game". But hey... get a bullet weapon and shoot trough walls in this game... ^_^

 

To express my opinion on the topic of my wall of text... after update 10.

Iam disapointed...

What i was expecting was the armor/damage overhaul coming in as a fix (or call it a "feature" if you wish) and that being a main theme of the update. I do understand that its not ready yet... but then why do we get mess update and pre-update (oh those great 4 days of host crashes) with grind item, to unlock new area, where you grind to get to a new boss, which you then grind to meybe get a blueprint. And if the drop rate are same as on everything, oh rng gods help you. Iam sorry, but i get kinda frustrated, if i play the game for a month, trying to get ember and rhino systems... and i get milions of helmets. Moar weapons... new melee, that does nothing new, but has few stats different and it looks different (why not make it a skin instead for existing weapons). Dojo expansions, so you can build more statues in it, instead of those awesome community ideas i've read months ago as clan missions, armory, clan customization of your Tenno's. New scarfs, when Uru is waste of platinum, since you cannot color customize it and its physics goes nuts when you move. New UI is nice and all, but its not a thing that shoud developers be focusing on right now with bigger issues being in the game for months now. So i just take a break from Warframe for few months, keep the eye on few forum topics and when iam back, i hope the design path is laid in the right direction and game is not dead already...

 

And the biggest problem i can see miles away... Conclave. This will in future turn players towards elitism aka looking for Conclave X players as Gear Score in mmorpg's. Vote kick coming soon, so they can kick lower geared = less skilled = less grinded players?  Oh, just the idea makes me a sad panda...

Edited September 16, 2013 by eStecko

[zezzame]

They are going to need to do a lot to turn this massive grind around, the armor overhaul is a great start.

 

The new bosses (haven't versed update 10 one) are boring, they have a damage gate, require little tactics just shoot more and have spammy abilities.

 

new gun is more spam bullets everywhere, I thought it would be like the latron, single shot, high crit, high accuracy. But it has all those but as a bullet hose as well. Not fun or interesting.

 

New melee weapon, still not useful end game.

 

And then even more PvP when they said there would be no more PvP...

 

Haven't played for a month now,  don't intend on starting any time soon.

[Shinobi-kun]

Armor 2.0 and new weapons. Feels like we're having an arms race. Newer weapons released are sometimes shone in more favorable light than the old ones. 

[Nagisawa]

 

Regardless, even as a pyromancer Dark Souls wasn't easy.  But it wasn't because enemies had ridiculous health pools or insane damage, which to me is fake difficulty.

Once you figure out the patterns, it IS easy.  And that's the issue.  It stop being 'hard' and becomes tedious, there is no 'reward', just more of the same.  Warframe needs to work on a better model to emulate.

 

Armor 2.0 and new weapons. Feels like we're having an arms race. Newer weapons released are sometimes shone in more favorable light than the old ones. 

Well, they did just retire four weapons, including another bullet hose that wasn't.  Poor Gorgon, mislabeled a 'heavy machine gun' when in reality it was a highly inaccurate assault rifle...

 

Nagisawa of Clan Arisawa

Edited October 21, 2013 by Nagisawa

[zezzame]

Anyone play the new patch? They seemed to have changed a lot

[eStecko]

Well this topic was created after U11, therefore obviously it will be outdated. :P

 

And they changed stuff indeed. Currently its a mess which doesnt resemble balance at all. More of like a huge stick which is all the way down in one direction. There seems to be many bugs in current proc and crit damage system (i got 300/300/300 damage on my vectis with 4x crit multiplier, yet i crit for 4k, 6k, 8k and sometimes even 16k on enemy weakspots, wtf?), not mention some mods are rendered totally useless. Want 1% extra status proc chance for 9V slots on your weapon? Nope...

 

Dodge and block are still useless even if they got actual role and support. Yet you can face tank everything with just Redirection and supreme warframe abilities on high levels. To expand on this, dodge doesnt prevent you from being knockdowned or pulled, nor has invincible frames to let you avoid ocasional big spikes in a skillfull way. Block drains your stamina and does nothing. If you choose to take reflect, you will still take damage from attacks and the proportion of enemy damage reflected on their health is laughable, which means you are better killing enemy by weapons/abilities.

 

Cant say much about weapon and warframe balance at this moment, since everything is new, but i mentioned some of the problems above already, although thats not enough information to go into this part any deeper. Anyway by the looks of it, proc chances are way too low on some weapons to be even looked at. Seriously? 7% on sniper rifle and 9% on machine gun? Well guess iam not using any element on my sniper rifle then. ^^

 

Anyway, the combat itself is now less annoying, frustrating and is more fluid. Removal of stuggering effects on pretty much everything was a nice move. You cannot be knockdowned, while already knockdown or pulled, resulting in infinite stun and your death. Still i would love to see this effect going on for 1-2 seconds after getting up, as then you can be knockdown once again (i hate you shield lancers).

 

Powercreep? The game itself is a powercreep inside of a skinner box. The huge amount of weapons and warframes that i will never look at again, since they are weaker then stuff i have already won't be going away and as DEvelopers already confirmed, those things will be tiered by mastery. Which in other words means, yes to powercreep in MMO style. Forma'd you favorite weapon 4x? Too bad, prime version with few gold thingies and more bass sound will come soon, then they will re-skin it to Vandal version for weekend event. Even if this is a sarcasm, it is one of the reason why i dont want to forma/potatoe any warframe... because there will a prime version at one moment, that is just better.

 

On a matter of Stalker (Who's Stalker? I dunno.), hes now a challenge now. I like it. Hes still dumb enough to get exploited by incredibly stupid hitscan weapons firing from camera, instead of a weapon, but without using this exploit, he is actualy a viable endgame boss to be scared of.

 

So... there is plenty of room for balance, especialy in status proc chance, fixing numerous bugs introduced in this patch (as in every big content patch) and making basic moves viable. Even after all this, the content patch made the game better and combat more fun.

Edited November 23, 2013 by eStecko

[Revel72]

eStecko have you fought against Stalker yet? It is now good fight against him. I fought against him twice and it was amusing.

[eStecko]

If you we're to bother to read my wall of text, you would knew the answer. :P

[zezzame]

Well if this is the start of a revamp for the damage system it means that they are willing to change, I just want to know what these things do to what. Which I am sure the community is working very hard to solve.

It is a start, hopefully they continue to change things.

 

Also on prime gear, I still do not like that it is a tier system but it still gives you something to work for, and that was the largest problem with warframe. Once you got the weapon you wanted you where done and had no reason to play because you where the best. So adding this extra tier gives some incentive to go on. Hopefully the next step will be making player skill a much larger factor in combat.