To the Devs: On Damage 2.5, and Mentality

[Dragon398765]

So Perhaps I am beating a dead horse, and this may be in the wrong thread, but I feel this needs to be said. This serves as both a Letter to the Devs and a post for the debate of the community.

Lets head way back to one of the more controversial moves DE attempted, and then decided against making.

Multishot

I'm sure many people remember this one. A proposed change that would make multishot consume ammo, imposing a heavy nerf in effect. This was an attempt to Diversify the Builds of Primary Weapons. Most people agree that while that principle is a good idea, the implementation of that idea was impractical and lacked any real reference to the rest of the game. In a game without insanely high scaling, insanely tough enemies at this scaling, and mobs that come in hordes, this idea would have been good. But then, it wouldn't be Warframe, the game we've all come to know and love. Which brings me to a more recent development

Gara

These are still some pretty fresh bruises from the nerf bat, so criticism is definitely in order. The nerf was way over the top. What Gara needed was work on the area affected. What was a very good ability with a bit too much unilateral power became a way to extend another ability, and nothing more. The castle became a shanty. It seems to me that the nerf was very hasty, and the bat was used to say "Stop using things in ways we didn't design!" I love Warframe and DE, but rushed work has never been the best work in this game, and what was a fun frame now sits in my roster waiting for her time to shine again. And my roster tends to collect dust, which leads into the next piece

Mentality

Looking through the history of Warframe's balance passes, the great majority follows a principle of nerf first, and ask questions later. Unfortunately, this usually means a lot later. The two above examples are simply due to one being a truly bad idea with some of the worst backlash the game has faced (though not the absolute worst, that event remains unnamed), and the other being a recent rush to seemingly lower Gara out of her top-tier-ult status. I personally find this problematic because it will be a long time before recent nerfs are properly fixed. The shotgun buff was amazing, but took well over a year of an entire category of weapons being mediocre to happen. But these were the early days, right? Doesn't seem that way...how long was Oberon weak? How long has scaling been a problem? How long was it before Mag got attention, and how long will it be? Will Zephyr always be flappy bird with tiny beak? How long were daggers useless before Covert Lethality? The list goes on. When a nerf is overdone, whatever got nerfed becomes useless until a major buffing spree or huge balance pass. And Warframe has grown large enough, while gaining DE plenty of experience and tenure, that I've personally come to expect better than that. So each time DE does a major nerf, I find it very disappointing, because that gear and everything attached to it is going to collect dust for a long time, even if it was fun to play. So finally, the big one

Damage 2.5

Again we see the mentality at work. Slash is going to be nerfed to a fraction of its power in many cases, without fixing the problem. Impact and puncture are becoming glorified versions of their former selves, which is still pretty mediocre. In other words, nerf slash so the other two become viable by default. The goal being to Diversify the Viability of Weapon Damage Types. To which I simply have to ask, DE, did you learn nothing from the Multishot Controversy? DE decided against that and have over time reduced the need for mandatory mods by adding so many good mods that you have no choice but to diversify your build. Set mods are kinda weak as a whole but some are fairly good, and it's enough to push the balance. Covert Lethality allows for a specialized playstyle. Hunter's Munitions accomplishes the goal of making far more weapons viable, on it's own. Rivens, despite being a heated debate, still serve to both empower old weapons and diversify builds in varying degrees. 

And many of these steps towards diversity will be reversed by Damage 2.5. Nerfing slash in the proposed manner kills Hunter's Munitions on any weapon that isn't already very powerful, which is a nerf to diversity as a whole. Rivens will be sought after more for slash weapons and less for others. Galatine Prime will become only more powerful than impact or puncture weapons. DE, the way you envision the impact of Damage 2.5 is not what will happen. People will leave behind weapons that were on the low end of high tier for those closer to the top. Slash weapons will become ever more preferred because it's still the only damage incentive. Impact will if anything be avoided at all costs, and puncture won't be cared about. That's the opposite of your goal here.

There are already plenty of ways that you could do damage 2.5 that would be great, proposed by tons of members of the forums, and on Reddit. To summarize a few:

• Give puncture a punch-through or spalling effect, or make it open up weak points. Both make way more sense than damage reduction for sure.
• Don't nerf slash. If you need to nerf the numbers a bit that's one thing, but ideally don't nerf it, just make the other two better!
• Make impact disarm, reduce awareness, or give an enhanced stagger. 

In Summary

DE, you have done your best balancing work in diversity over time, by releasing useful components. Your large-scale attempts at increasing diversity almost always backfire, please learn from the history of them. A nerf will never increase diversity, as a reduction of power is never an enhancement to anything else. In a game so heavily populated by min-maxing, powerful gear, and highly-scaling enemies, you increase diversity by buffing the weak, adding good options, and minor adjustments. You excel at creative content development and making unique gameplay options, so cater to your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

Edited December 29, 2017 by Dragon398765

[ACULonSeer]

I believe they postponed D2.5 because they realized how terrible their balance ideas were

[TripleWort]

20 minutes ago, ACULonSeer said:

I believe they postponed D2.5 because they realized how terrible their balance ideas were

That didn't stop them from ignoring every argument made about universal vacuum. 

[Urlan]

The proposed multi-shot change would have simply made it another attack speed mod, as DE acknowledged later, saying it was more complicated than just removing mods. It wasn't a very good idea overall. That said, you could take the idea of some players around the time, and make it more akin to a combi-weapon where you would have different types of secondary shots alongside the main fire-arm mode. Like a flamer multi-shot along normal bullets.

[steelblueskies]

25 minutes ago, ACULonSeer said:

I believe they postponed D2.5 because they realized how terrible their balance ideas were

so, didn't read their stated reason, or didn't believe it?

[A-Midnight-Shanking]

15 minutes ago, Urlan said:

The proposed multi-shot change would have simply made it another attack speed mod, as DE acknowledged later, saying it was more complicated than just removing mods. It wasn't a very good idea overall. That said, you could take the idea of some players around the time, and make it more akin to a combi-weapon where you would have different types of secondary shots alongside the main fire-arm mode. Like a flamer multi-shot along normal bullets.

Multishot essentially being another firerate mod would've been fine. As it allows for some customization on how your weapon handles (minigun or shotgun). Kinda wish they didn't turn back on that. Could've done so much more with that concept in mind.

Like a corrupted mod that added quite a bit of multishot at the expense of accuracy.

Edited December 30, 2017 by A-Midnight-Shanking

[ACULonSeer]

24 minutes ago, TripleWort said:

That didn't stop them from ignoring every argument made about universal vacuum. 

What's wrong with Universal vacuum? Imo the game is nearly unplayable without vacuum.

[A-Midnight-Shanking]

6 minutes ago, ACULonSeer said:

What's wrong with Universal vacuum? Imo the game is nearly unplayable without vacuum.

If I'm farming for stuff, do I take an AoE frame and have everything in a 100m radius pick it up thanks to UniV, saving me a bundle of time, or do I choose the frame I enjoy, which is unfortunately close-range and makes farming take multitudes longer becuase while I have UniV, I still have to go to each enemy..

Edited December 30, 2017 by A-Midnight-Shanking

[enizer]

There's nothing wrong with universal vacuum, the problem he's mentioning is how long it took to add, and the rather strange excuses DE gave for not doing so, for a VERY long time.

Before that, carrier was THE sentinel, and then there was mastery fodder for the slot if you wanted to level up.

Edited December 30, 2017 by enizer

[ACULonSeer]

2 minutes ago, A-Midnight-Shanking said:

If I'm farming for stuff, do I take an AoE frame and have everything in a 100m radius pick it up thanks to UniV, saving me a bundle of time, or do I choose the frame I enjoy, which is unfortunately close-range and makes farming take multitudes longer becuase while I have UniV, I still have to go to each enemy..

Wait a second I thought I knew what you meant by UniV. I thought univ was allowing all Sentinels to use vacuum, but you make it sound like vacuum is now a warframe perk??

[A-Midnight-Shanking]

1 minute ago, ACULonSeer said:

Wait a second I thought I knew what you meant by UniV. I thought univ was allowing all Sentinels to use vacuum, but you make it sound like vacuum is now a warframe perk??

All Warframes were given 3m Universal vacuum with Plains of Eidolon (Snuck in there by a dev). A nice QoL. Several players want the vacuum perk of sentinels to be inherit with Warframes as well. (And I can only assume would like it if you never had to pick up anything)

Edited December 30, 2017 by A-Midnight-Shanking

[ACULonSeer]

3 minutes ago, A-Midnight-Shanking said:

All Warframes were given 3m Universal vacuum with Plains of Eidolon (Snuck in there by a dev). A nice QoL. Several players want the vacuum perk of sentinels to be inherit with Warframes as well.

I can't play the game without a vacuum sentinel. Having to chase resource drops and ammo is so unbelievably annoying that I am all for making the perk added to Warframe's by default. Maybe then pets would be relevant- oh nevermind my Diriga doesn't age and can slow things with Taxon's laser. Also I don't have to pay plat to customize it's COLORS

Edited December 30, 2017 by ACULonSeer

[A-Midnight-Shanking]

11 minutes ago, ACULonSeer said:

I can't play the game without a vacuum sentinel. Having to chase resource drops and ammo is so unbelievably annoying that I am all for making the perk added to Warframe's by default. Maybe then pets would be relevant- oh nevermind my Diriga doesn't age and can slow things with Taxon's laser. Also I don't have to pay plat to customize it. 

And that's your playstyle. I prefer melee and as such am close range most of the time (but need to move more often). So vacuum holds little interest for me. If these ammo and resource drops are so far away from you due to using high range weapons, then that's a downside for using high-range weapons/abilities. Where my downside is that I need to constantly move around the battle.

Edited December 30, 2017 by A-Midnight-Shanking

[RistN]

9 minutes ago, A-Midnight-Shanking said:

And that's your choice. I prefer melee and as such am close range most of the time. So vacuum holds little interest for me. If these ammo and resource drops are so far away from you due to using high range weapons, then that's a downside for using high-range weapons.

You are trying to make you're point on how vacuum is not necessary but you are in that 0,5% of total number of players in this game that share youre opinion...

[A-Midnight-Shanking]

1 minute ago, RistN said:

You are trying to make you're point on how vacuum is not necessary but you are in that 0,5% of total number of players in this game that share youre opinion...

Right, and if everyone was jumping off a cliff you would too, right?... Universal Vacuum is certainly nice, to an extent. I don't interact with it much as I'm an up close and personal player. But from my perspective I view it as an AFK type of mentality. While yes it can be used to make gunplay more enjoyable in closer ranges,  it can also be used to abuse map setups and the Smeeta Kavat's Charm ability to further increase the potency of automated farming.

The idea isn't bad, but it can still be abused easily.

[Urlan]

1 hour ago, A-Midnight-Shanking said:

Multishot essentially being another firerate mod would've been fine. As it allows for some customization on how your weapon handles (minigun or shotgun). Kinda wish they didn't turn back on that. Could've done so much more with that concept in mind.

Like a corrupted mod that added quite a bit of multishot at the expense of accuracy.

No, It wouldn't have opened any new builds, it would have been just as required or even more than now. The multi-shot changes were, at the time coming along with removing of progression (sometimes called mandatory) mods; think anything that gives normal stat growth versus a negative trade-off or conditional. You would not have serration, or other damage increases and the idea for heavy caliber was to lower its bonus as I recall. This created a vacuum which made attack speed mods the defacto dps progression as it would in the current situation with just damage removed, take it even further and consider normal fire rate and shred mods removed as well - which was discussed at the time - and you have the environment that the acolyte mods were created for. Just as now, but without player progression mods and multi-shot is instead fire rate by another name.

[enizer]

The counterpoint to that is, that stopping to loot manually, is simply boring, and very much breaks the flow of an otherwise fast paced game.

Without vacuum, most of us would be forced to choose between regular stops in gameplay to gather up random drops, 95% of which we don't need at the time. Which isn't remotely exciting, as looting is in for example, diablo-like games, or continuing the "fun" part in exchange for probably missing something actually useful.

This led to the vast majority of the playerbase using carrier as the only sentinel option, and ignoring every other option.

Automated farming is better countered by other methods, like, say, AFK timers based on movement.

 

Even today I avoid the use of kavats and kubrows almost exclusively because of the lack of vacuum.

Edited December 30, 2017 by enizer

[enizer]

7 minutes ago, Urlan said:

No, It wouldn't have opened any new builds, it would have been just as required or even more than now. The multi-shot changes were, at the time coming along with removing of progression (sometimes called mandatory) mods; think anything that gives normal stat growth versus a negative trade-off or conditional. You would not have serration, or other damage increases and the idea for heavy caliber was to lower its bonus as I recall. This created a vacuum which made attack speed mods the defacto dps progression as it would in the current situation with just damage removed, take it even further and consider normal fire rate and shred mods removed as well - which was discussed at the time - and you have the environment that the acolyte mods were created for. Just as now, but without player progression mods and multi-shot is instead fire rate by another name.

Hmm, that's a good point, removing the "mandatory mods" would simply make many other mods take their place, as the new mandatory mods, and you would need to remove quite a lot of mods to get out of that completely.

As tempting as it might be to simply ask for serration to be deleted, and stats raised in exchange, that wouldn't fix the problem, only change it.

It seems like that a proper solution, would perhaps be more in the line of giving more choice in those areas, but limiting same stat stacking?

[A-Midnight-Shanking]

19 minutes ago, Urlan said:

No, It wouldn't have opened any new builds, it would have been just as required or even more than now. The multi-shot changes were, at the time coming along with removing of progression (sometimes called mandatory) mods; think anything that gives normal stat growth versus a negative trade-off or conditional. You would not have serration, or other damage increases and the idea for heavy caliber was to lower its bonus as I recall. This created a vacuum which made attack speed mods the defacto dps progression as it would in the current situation with just damage removed, take it even further and consider normal fire rate and shred mods removed as well - which was discussed at the time - and you have the environment that the acolyte mods were created for. Just as now, but without player progression mods and multi-shot is instead fire rate by another name.

Damage Wise? Nah, it wouldn't change much compared to firerate. I mean more thematically. I can have this damage increase be a result of firing faster or firing slower with more shot. User preference.

Edited December 30, 2017 by A-Midnight-Shanking

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

I also believe that a lot of this has to do with enemy scaling. As seen here, it is shown that the difference between a level 1 enemy and a level 30 enemy is minute compared to a level 30 enemy and a level 60 enemy. This exponential slope causes most traditional weapons and builds to become useless, with only the most specialized builds being capable of surviving. Should enemies have a more linear leveling pattern, we can assume that the variety of weapons and builds would indeed diversify to player preference as all but the weakest weapons would be viable in any given scenario.

[Dragon398765]

Quote

I also believe that a lot of this has to do with enemy scaling. As seen here, it is shown that the difference between a level 1 enemy and a level 30 enemy is minute compared to a level 30 enemy and a level 60 enemy. This exponential slope causes most traditional weapons and builds to become useless, with only the most specialized builds being capable of surviving. Should enemies have a more linear leveling pattern, we can assume that the variety of weapons and builds would indeed diversify to player preference as all but the weakest weapons would be viable in any given scenario.

I agree here. This is the single longest running balance issue in the game, as mentioned. DE takes an eternity to fix, but is rather quick to destroy. They do great when they really think out what they're doing, and I wish they'd do it more.

Edited December 30, 2017 by Dragon398765

[ACULonSeer]

Are mods like multishot mandatory?

Also can I use multishot instead of serration?

[Dragon398765]

20 hours ago, enizer said:

Hmm, that's a good point, removing the "mandatory mods" would simply make many other mods take their place, as the new mandatory mods, and you would need to remove quite a lot of mods to get out of that completely.

As tempting as it might be to simply ask for serration to be deleted, and stats raised in exchange, that wouldn't fix the problem, only change it.

It seems like that a proper solution, would perhaps be more in the line of giving more choice in those areas, but limiting same stat stacking?

It wouldn't be the first time I've discussed this, but a large variety of strong option, the use of very powerful corrupted mods, and limited slot space solves the diversity problems in tandem with each other.

[Dragon398765]

2 minutes ago, ACULonSeer said:

Are mods like multishot mandatory?

Also can I use multishot instead of serration?

Currently the "Mandatory Mods" for rifles are Serration and Split Chamber, as well as 2 elemental mods. Crit is sometimes mandatory as well, but really the 2 mandatories and elements are the big ones. They increase your damage unilaterally and there is no preferred mod setup without these 4 because nothing is strong enough to offer a good alternative.

[ACULonSeer]

1 minute ago, Dragon398765 said:

Currently the "Mandatory Mods" for rifles are Serration and Split Chamber, as well as 2 elemental mods. Crit is sometimes mandatory as well, but really the 2 mandatories and elements are the big ones. They increase your damage unilaterally and there is no preferred mod setup without these 4 because nothing is strong enough to offer a good alternative.

Would my damage be massively hindered if I dumped serration for a utility mod, such as a reload or ammo mutation?