Is being OP worth it?

[ACULonSeer]

This is... going to be a little controversial, mainly because it challenges the philosophy that warframe seems to be based on: don't limit the players, let them be space ninjas

But at what cost does this come? What are the consequences of allowing damage values, armor, and power strength soar so high?

-Enemy identity

The enemies of warframe are incredibly well-designed, and have diverse powers and weapons that make them unique, but how does any of that matter if their individual  lifespans are less than a nanosecond? Even if you have 6 health left, you will never feel threatened by a single Lancer, because he'll probably die in one slide attack. This means enemies have to come in enormous, mindless swarms with little personality. This is especially true for grineer, where even after 200 hours I couldn't tell you the difference between lancers and... uh... whatever the shotgun troops are

-Farming simulator 

Because we can push our damage values so high, and because enemies have to come in such huge swarms to compensate, alot of the combat just becomes a farming game. Farming with bullets. Woo. Sure sometimes farming is necessary, in regards to absurd acolyte reward rates, certain stances, and annoying resources like neurodes, but it shouldn't be the ONLY thing we do. When I do a  defense, I wanna feel endangered, but deep down I know the endless swarms pose almost no threat unless it's a nightmare mission.

-Annoying countermoves

There are some enemies that stand out front the cannon fodder. Enemies that force you to take notice of their presence, that command respect... because they are immune to all damage, can one-shot the team, and are annoying to hit. Yes, I mean sentients. Some of Warframe's high-high-priority enemies seem to be blatant attempts at countering how OP we've become. Others are simple bullet-sponges (bombards) which are less irritating but still worth noting. Without them the combat would be tedious as hell, but I still don't think it should be NECESSARY for enemies like sentients to exist. 

Maiming strike, bloodrush/bodycount, any slash mod, they're all pushing us into the realm of absurdity. They make standard combat so trivial, endgame enemies have to be made into immortal tanks to compensate. How can this trend continue? Why is maiming-whip-cheese considered acceptable? Is all this absurd DPS really fun, or does it kill the feeling of challenge and urgency that a game like this should have in spades? I'm not saying warframe isn't fun, but I think it would be MORE fun if damage was more standardized and if enemie's threat level was determined by something other than their outrageous armor scaling.

[A-Midnight-Shanking]

End-game? No, not really. Makes everything trivial and if something speedbumps us we get killed instantly. Like you say.

Early/Mid-game? Hell yeah. If I want to putz around with a sword and board using heavy attacks because I find it fun I'll do that for quite a while.

DE just has to find that mythical balance in which End-game and Early-game options are evenly distributed across the scaling system. Which, thanks to Grineer and their absurd armor scaling mechanic (which really shouldn't exist and each enemy should have a unique static armor value and works off of Base Health scaling, but anyway...), has caused the creation of the high scaling combos of Condition overload and Maiming+Blood+Slash that we see now.

Edited December 30, 2017 by A-Midnight-Shanking

[ACULonSeer]

10 minutes ago, ACULonSeer said:

This is... going to be a little controversial, mainly because it challenges the philosophy that warframe seems to be based on: don't limit the players, let them be space ninjas

But at what cost does this come? What are the consequences of allowing damage values, armor, and power strength soar so high?

-Enemy identity

The enemies of warframe are incredibly well-designed, and have diverse powers and weapons that make them unique, but how does any of that matter if their individual  lifespans are less than a nanosecond? Even if you have 6 health left, you will never feel threatened by a single Lancer, because he'll probably die in one slide attack. This means enemies have to come in enormous, mindless swarms with little personality. This is especially true for grineer, where even after 200 hours I couldn't tell you the difference between lancers and... uh... whatever the shotgun troops are

-Farming simulator 

Because we can push our damage values so high, and because enemies have to come in such huge swarms to compensate, alot of the combat just becomes a farming game. Farming with bullets. Woo. Sure sometimes farming is necessary, in regards to absurd acolyte reward rates, certain stances, and annoying resources like neurodes, but it shouldn't be the ONLY thing we do. When I do a  defense, I wanna feel endangered, but deep down I know the endless swarms pose almost no threat unless it's a nightmare mission.

-Annoying countermoves

There are some enemies that stand out front the cannon fodder. Enemies that force you to take notice of their presence, that command respect... because they are immune to all damage, can one-shot the team, and are annoying to hit. Yes, I mean sentients. Some of Warframe's high-high-priority enemies seem to be blatant attempts at countering how OP we've become. Others are simple bullet-sponges (bombards) which are less irritating but still worth noting. Without them the combat would be tedious as hell, but I still don't think it should be NECESSARY for enemies like sentients to exist. 

Maiming strike, bloodrush/bodycount, any slash mod, they're all pushing us into the realm of absurdity. They make standard combat so trivial, endgame enemies have to be made into immortal tanks to compensate. How can this trend continue? Why is maiming-whip-cheese considered acceptable? Is all this absurd DPS really fun, or does it kill the feeling of challenge and urgency that a game like this should have in spades? I'm not saying warframe isn't fun, but I think it would be MORE fun if damage was more standardized and if enemie's threat level was determined by something other than their outrageous armor scaling.

I appreciate the lack of "HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THE WARFRAME GODS REEEEE" in your post. Also, I do agree with you. Grineer are the source of alot of the game's problems. On one hand they're so dumb and weak they're absurdly easy to farm, and on the other hand they're so Tanky they force you to build your ENTIRE mod setup around killing them instantly

[--F--NerevarCM]

25 minutes ago, A-Midnight-Shanking said:

End-game? No, not really. Makes everything trivial and if something speedbumps us we get killed instantly. Like you say.

Early/Mid-game? Hell yeah. If I want to putz around with a sword and board using heavy attacks because I find it fun I'll do that for quite a while.

DE just has to find that mythical balance in which End-game and Early-game options are evenly distributed across the scaling system. Which, thanks to Grineer and their absurd armor scaling mechanic (which really shouldn't exist and each enemy should have a unique static armor value and works off of Base Health scaling, but anyway...), has caused the creation of the high scaling combos of Condition overload and Maiming+Blood+Slash that we see now.

The problem is find this "mythical balance"

Destiny tried that in the first game. But got more end game than early game. Lasted 3 years.

Destiny 2 put more early game than end game. Don't know if will last 3 years.

This legendary sweet spot is the bane of many games out there.

Even with the lack of end game and challenge in Warframe, this game being the escape for many other players furious with other games being too limiting makes up for it.

Like some people say, if you like grind, Warframe is the Diablo of Sci-fi Shooter games. Create a account, be a space ninja and have fun.

Edited December 30, 2017 by -SDM-NerevarCM

[A-Midnight-Shanking]

@-SDM-NerevarCM

Heh, yeah. That mythical balance will only ever be a teeter-totter. The real question is how much it is from the ground with each oscillation.

[Tsardova]

Not really.

I mean, we're bound to hit the point where we have the MEANS to be op but we can scale it down if we wan't "challenge".

Anyone who keeps saying "Why should we nerf ourselves down for the sake of challenge" have been nonsensical at best since they wanted the challenge and they have the means of getting it albeit they're feigning ignorance on it.

Balance is a fkin myth in this game and it never was challenging per se.

[ladymayneth]

2 minutes ago, -SDM-NerevarCM said:

The problem is find this "mythical balance"

Destiny tried that in the first game. But got more end game than early game. Lasted 3 years.

Destiny 2 put more early game than end game. Don't know if will last 3 years.

This legendary sweet spot is the bane of many games out there.

Even with the lack of end game and challenge in Warframe, this game being the escape for many other players furious with other games being too limiting makes up for it.

Like some people say, if you like grind, Warframe is the Diablo of Sci-fi Shooter games. Create a account, be a space ninja and have fun.

"warframe is the diablo of sci-fi Shooter games. create a account, be a space ninja and have fun." yeah that sums up warframe about destiny as someone who got roped into the disappointing mess that it was fun for a while i think de could out do destiny if they took their time with it adding the fabled tau system could be a start

[o.0-]

Well, I've been trying to discuss an idea that runs along these lines for some time now, mainly focusing on aspects of how mods and scaling work. So having enemies and Level still be there as a gear check system as we progress, but also then ranking-up mods and min-maxing for full effects on mods would be more for endless where existing scaling up works pretty good already.

The synopsis here is that in static non-endless missions, players and enemies relate as the devs intended the design, and if a player is below level, they'd struggle, but if players are above level they won't simply cheese their way through either. So progress through the Solar System could be experienced as imagined by the devs and use systems if a player is not meeting the gear checks.

That way, a highly optimized build would be able to feel a challenge on Mercury and not negatively impact brand new players and still be rewarded for their investments of time and resources, where it would truly matter as enemies dynamically get stronger in endless.

So on an endless mission, this would have a level playing field up half way through to the first 5 min mark or first 5 waves, and scale beyond that as those missions currently do. That way both enemies and players gain in power, until enemies begin to out pace us, as we have static mods in our loadouts as how the system already works.

A creative use of modifiers that already exist in Sorties could be the basis for adding to such an idea, in how a level playing field could be conceived to how mods factor in and allowing devs room to craft the intended encounters, if there is no other clean way of dynamically releasing the power of a highly optimized build in endless content.

And we have examples of the faction damage mods that can be another conceptual basis for how such a system could be devised in Warframes' context, to make more of the game feel more consistent, have our mods still be used as gear checks and achieve a different sense for the world of Warframe.

Now such an idea will still need to see changes to how enemy armor increases and reduces damage, how certain systems like Mods, Status, Multishot, Enemy setup and so on. Maybe the devs have enough metrics behind the scenes to flesh out such an idea that go beyond what I'm thinking of, as I can try to detail more here if asked.

That way, Endo, Kuva and the current static mods remain in place, and allow content anywhere in the star chart to be a challenge and not harm new players still looking to figure things out. Then things like Raids, Sortie and Nightmare can be where players truly can find their endgame within this new context.

I feel that such an approach to scaling could be worth exploring further, and could include ideas that adjust what enemies drop over the course of a mission, as I realized recently that I often completely forget about enemy drop tables and how they factor (in other words, they are after thoughts that need to change after other systems get tweaked, but I realized that the FtP model is another annoying factor that keeps getting in the way).

For non-endless, for example as a means to reacquaint with such a premise, as lots of work has gone into the star chart over the years, and along the way provides the devs more tools and wiggle room, as to how the star chart is experienced.

Not to mention the often distinctions made on the forums and other mediums as to how long time players relate to content, and existing systems like Sortie, Nightmare and even Trials can be handled now; compared to having more strict limits that can make lots of in-universe sense and still grant power to ranking mods up in endless situations.

Therefore. if the devs can be allowed a means to hold a set of facts constant through the star chart, a different sense of balance could be plausible and still honor long time vets through endless content here and there as they have already tried, something that would be beyond brand new players and more casual Tenno, such as Rathuum, tougher Index, Nightmare and so on.

Hope this conceptualization is making sense, as it would need the devs to look at what their intended design was with content through the star chart and make any necessary adjustments from there.

A side consideration that is still important though is then adjusting such values for rewards, I just hope could be done after other considerations as I've listed earlier.

 

TL:DR from what I glean of how the math works between mods, loadouts, levels and then enemies, the devs could make different sets of adjustments as they deem necessary to get to their initially intended vision of Warframe.

If a different approach could be applied to what seems to be currently used, the devs could then rework systems here and there more along what they seem to have initially intended, and still allow high ranked mods to shine in endless content as it has all this time, while providing more consistency in the star chart, as the focus is on fitting players to the static star chart and then modding is there to scale with endless mission content to test our mettle as usual.

Sure there could be resistance to such changes, but what if even more players would be willing to embrace a new vision like this for Warframe? In this context, we can still feel like super soldier ninjas and get to keep our OP gear in the process. I think this detail sits at the heart of such balance discussions in different ways and so on, and why I'd like to discuss it.

[polarity]

11 minutes ago, -SDM-NerevarCM said:

The problem is find this "mythical balance"

Destiny tried that in the first game. But got more end game than early game. Lasted 3 years.

Destiny 2 put more early game than end game. Don't know if will last 3 years.

This legendary sweet spot is the bane of many games out there.

Even with the lack of end game and challenge in Warframe, this game being the escape for many other players furious with other games being too limiting makes up for it.

Like some people say, if you like grind, Warframe is the Diablo of Sci-fi Shooter games. Create a account, be a space ninja and have fun.

I think Guildwars 2 might be a game other developers should take more interest in.

It still has the same 80 level cap that it did when it released, and it still has the same top tier of ascended gear.

What changes in the game is its world.  The capital city and a number of zones have been completely remodeled over the course of the game, as well as new areas regularly being added, and one-time-only events running for limited duration (although the dungeon parts of these can be added back later as part of the 'fractals' dungeons, which are basically a parallel reality).

Then there's the level scaling system.  Increasing your level only unlocks access content, as you increase to match the enemies there.  Unlike other games though, it doesn't make any of the game's content obsolete, because you level will always scale down to match the area you are in, and its enemies.  Meanwhile the rewards that are given scale up, so that you can always craft gear relative to your level, no matter where you are.  The more you play, the more content there is to play, unlike a traditional MMO, where you only have a fraction of the total content appropriate to your level at any time.

Much of the leveling process, as well as unlocking traits is done through completion of challenges throughout the world, or completion of entire zones.  Doing that involves such a diversity of content that it is impossible for it to ever become a grind.  There is no real way to do any PvE task repetitively, and have it be the best way to play.  If I want X amount of a rare resource to craft a specific piece of gear, then I just play the game, and then go to the auction house and sell all of the rewards that I received but don't want, instantly (because it is a fully functional trade system, just like in EVE online, where you can place both buy and sell orders, so the patient get the best prices, and the impatient get to turn everything they want into gold, without any wait), and buy what I do want.

And going back to those one-time-only events, they truly are available to any player, regardless of their character level, because in those areas of the game, character levels are also scaled up.  I did one event's group content with 4 level 80s, and a level 10, and the boss fight was equally hard for everyone, basically being a long safety-dance.

When GW2 does an event, it's diverse in the range of content it provides.

[DrBorris]

It's interesting, I watched a LifeOf Rio video the other day where he used Banshee in a solo Mot Survival. The point of the video was to show off how Operators can be used to navigate the battlefield in a way Warframes can only dream of, but what I found interesting was how it looked to me like "skillful" gameplay. He was using the movement Warframes has to offer to its fullest capabilities, and despite him dispatching enemies with ease it was by no means something that could easily be done. I would dare say that 95% of the Warframe community (me included, and I would call myself a Banshee "main", or as much of a main as is possible in Warframe) would not be able to survive under the circumstances he was.

 

Now sure, you can argue he was nerfing himself by using Banshee, a Warframe known for her poor survivability, but this does show that the core gameplay of Warframe does leave room for skillful play. Part of the problem, however, is that most people don't want to do that. They want to be able to succeed by playing Warframe like CoD, but with the option of jumping around if they want. 

 

For a long, long time I have been a proponent of bringing Warframe's damage (on all fronts) in line so that we could make gameplay something more than CoD with the option of jumping around. To actually give a meaningful skill curve that would yield the possibility for a true end game content. But alas, it will probably never happen, as I discussed in detail here...

(TL;DR: The community can't stand nerfing and have no idea what is for their own good, but they think they do and will quit for "honor")

Can't believe that is over a year old now...

 

The Warframe (Forum) community has changed. I recently read through a few 2+ year old threads out of curiosity and the open-mindedness and willingness to have a discussion were noticeable higher back then. We have grown to be like a grouchy elderly person, resistant to change and quick to assume. I am not going to try and figure out why because it does not matter, this is just what we work with now. 

[Chipputer]

23 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

the core gameplay of Warframe does leave room for skillful play. Part of the problem, however, is that most people don't want to do that.

This is the crux of the issue.

These forums are full of people who will complain that Maiming Atterax is a problem yet will not hesitate to use it, themselves, then have the gall to say that the game is a boring grind fest full of cheese-or-be-cheesed tactics.

Aside from that you also see a distinct disconnect between people not understanding the intended top level content versus what they can achieve through focused, hardcore endless gameplay team comps. It's difficult for the developers to even figure out what to balance the game for when they're working on their intended metric but people are giving them feedback based on level 500 to 5000 enemies.

[(PSN)fullblast35]

has anyone ever thought about why they are reworking IPS?  i know alot of players are already disappointed, but OP is exactly why they are doing this and Khora frame is just the front to justify the change.  When the majority of a player  base is OP the outcome is no incentives and always complaining about a lack of content or challenge.  Most of my top frames/weapons are OP but not that fun anymore.   Sometimes have to downgrade or try new modding just to challenge myself.  

[Buttaface]

Agree with OP, but WF will never be a learned skill game, rather a learned level game. This allows people to "win" the game without having to learn skilled tactical play, they just have to repeat until they learn the level or which of a multitude of overpowered character powers turns the difficulty down to something they can handle without too much effort. That is where the money is, console-like rote learning games. Better scifi hybrid shooter games with more challenging PvE in the past like Global Agenda failed due to requiring skilled team tactical play to progress and having balanced character powers. Games like WF just require repetition to progress. WF is a casual, easy game for casual players. Anyone who can press a button can win, and that's the way these games are since WOW and since the PC/console overlapping began.

It would be nice to have a tactical skill space ninja game similar to WF that required more strict team play to progress, but AFAIK, that game doesn't exist and wouldn't likely be commercially successful. So if you are waiting for WF to turn into that, you may be waiting a long, long time.

[Fallen_Echo]

The main problem apart from the unacceptable armor and damage scaling is something many people forget.

Warframe is a progression based game. Surely the implemention of it is bad as we have weapons below mr 8 in the meta and weapons over mr 10 as trash tier mastery fodder, but this is what essentially creates the power differences in gears and frames. This combined with the armor scaling pushes people into using the best of the best and theres no incetive to switch to low power gear just because you are doing low level missions.

In an optional warframe update our weapons would been set up to be able to handle different tier of enemies without any problems and our enemies would have been set up to be a reasonable danger to the tier they are in.

But in reality we are as far from this as we can, the scaling is too steep and to compensate for this the avarage player is forced to pump out absurd amount of damage and crowd control. No one here (expect a few mad people) would not claim that maiming strike and blood rush is OP on certain weapons if we would have to find against mobs what needs avarage 3 shots to kill us and have reasonable amounts of health. Same goes with everything else, the only reason we have OP tricks is because we want to be able to play the game and not die every second because a bombard looked at us for 0.0002 seconds.

If the tiering could be redone to make sense on both sides, DE could go and remake the entire damage system and people would like it.

I like being challanged as avoiding gas clouds, taking out healers in a crowd, taking down the nully drone but i dislike to see my warframe instagibbed from carrier osspreys, endless corpus minefields or play ragdoll champion when heavy units cant stop their cc moves.

The problem is that DE has to do both changes at the same time (hard to pull off) or do it from the enemies side. The the best would be starting from enemies because even if they broke down something the game stays playable. If they go from the players side and something bugs out the whole game gets in danger because the playability is what cant work.

Edited January 2, 2018 by Fallen_Echo

[ACULonSeer]

10 hours ago, Buttaface said:

Agree with OP, but WF will never be a learned skill game, rather a learned level game. This allows people to "win" the game without having to learn skilled tactical play, they just have to repeat until they learn the level or which of a multitude of overpowered character powers turns the difficulty down to something they can handle without too much effort. That is where the money is, console-like rote learning games. Better scifi hybrid shooter games with more challenging PvE in the past like Global Agenda failed due to requiring skilled team tactical play to progress and having balanced character powers. Games like WF just require repetition to progress. WF is a casual, easy game for casual players. Anyone who can press a button can win, and that's the way these games are since WOW and since the PC/console overlapping began.

It would be nice to have a tactical skill space ninja game similar to WF that required more strict team play to progress, but AFAIK, that game doesn't exist and wouldn't likely be commercially successful. So if you are waiting for WF to turn into that, you may be waiting a long, long time.

Making enemy elemental resistances/weaknesses more relevant, toning down slash damage, and lowering armor scaling limits (at higher and lower levels, balance them out) would be a good start

[Xzorn]

It's primarily because DE has refused to address and embrace scaling as a solution to inevitable Power Creep.

We as players are and have been far to powerful to be fighting the same level of enemies we fought 4 years ago and DE has refused to address enemy damage scaling or allow players access to higher levels in spite of having frames able to push 100k eHP and 300k DPS who will never be challenged otherwise.

When you actually push levels all those enemies stand out for what they are and it's a shame it takes 2+ hours to see. Instead they seem content in creating damage gates, resistances and other cheap tricks that wholly remove a player's proportional power in order to present some level of adversarial conflict, not to mention the unjustified nerfs.

The situation in Warframe is similar to having a full set of Primal Ancients in Diablo3 and being stuck on Torment 2 except every once in a while there's an enemy that just ignores 95% damage for no reason and if you try to go up to Torment 3 everything one-shots you. 

[ACULonSeer]

14 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

It's primarily because DE has refused to address and embrace scaling as a solution to inevitable Power Creep.

We as players are and have been far to powerful to be fighting the same level of enemies we fought 4 years ago and DE has refused to address enemy damage scaling or allow players access to higher levels in spite of having frames able to push 100k eHP and 300k DPS who will never be challenged otherwise.

When you actually push levels all those enemies stand out for what they are and it's a shame it takes 2+ hours to see. Instead they seem content in creating damage gates, resistances and other cheap tricks that wholly remove a player's proportional power in order to present some level of adversarial conflict, not to mention the unjustified nerfs.

The situation in Warframe is similar to having a full set of Primal Ancients in Diablo3 and being stuck on Torment 2 except every once in a while there's an enemy that just ignores 95% damage for no reason and if you try to go upentire to Torment 3 everything one-shots you. 

That last part literally sums up the entire Grineer experience 

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

The biggest reason I have no issue with the power creep is that the resource requirements for anything new is absurdly high, and the rng drop chances absurdly low.

This includes for relic (both getting them and opening them) runs.

So long as the low drop chances and high crafting requirements are there, we need the ability to kill hordes of enemies quickly.

If you take away the power creep, can you imagine being a new player to the game? You would never be able to build anything just so a few veterans who "want a challenge" get their wish.

 

 

[Xzorn]

On 12/29/2017 at 8:41 PM, DrBorris said:

It's interesting, I watched a LifeOf Rio video the other day where he used Banshee in a solo Mot Survival. The point of the video was to show off how Operators can be used to navigate the battlefield in a way Warframes can only dream of, but what I found interesting was how it looked to me like "skillful" gameplay. He was using the movement Warframes has to offer to its fullest capabilities, and despite him dispatching enemies with ease it was by no means something that could easily be done. I would dare say that 95% of the Warframe community (me included, and I would call myself a Banshee "main", or as much of a main as is possible in Warframe) would not be able to survive under the circumstances he was.

 

That's actually one reason Rio prefers the Void to most tilesets. The enemy design for the Void remains one of the best in the game. Majority of the enemies use projectile weapons and allow for mobility and skillful play to shine through. Nullifiers excluded to some extent, the faction scales pretty decent.

Many other enemy types negate skill. Hyeka Masters fan the room with fire. Napalms nuke the room regardless of where their projectile hit. Commanders teleport and stun you regardless of position. Scrambus can no longer be heard until they're on top of your position. Waves of Ancients Disruptor's try to hook you and drain your entire energy pool.

There's a lot of enemies in the game that just don't care how good you are and I always thought it was strange that DE wanted to take us out of the void to show us just how broken the other factions scale. You will prolly never see Rio solo Selkie with Banshee, not because of skill but because it just doesn't work thanks to Napalms.

It would only take a few tweaks to key enemies and one could argue there's skill in Warframe.... if you're willing to spend an hour+ in a mission.

[DatDarkOne]

13 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

Scrambus can no longer be heard until they're on top of your position.

That one change almost triggered me.  

[Xzorn]

14 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

That one change almost triggered me.  

 

Yea, it makes me simply avoid maps that spawn them.

They never adjusted Scrambus for being further away with that sound update so now you can only hear them when you're within range of their aura.

They used to be a somewhat fair enemy. You just had to stay in open rooms and shoot their helmet off before they get close. Now you're dispeled and they've launched 3 volleys of Angstrum at you before you even know where they are which makes the fact it works through walls that muffle sound even more unfair.

[(PSN)Crixus044]

Look, I say this a lot and I'm gonna keep saying this. Enemy Level changes everything. How do I know? I've been there at level cap. I've played this game long enough with mathematical excellence to see the real "balance" struggle this game has gone through. The balance struggle is not weapon vs weapon as people think. It's player power progression vs enemy levels. I remember back in the day when level 100 was an eyebrow raiser. Back in the phoenix intercept excalation days. We were fighting level 150s and people said that it was too hard. back before CC was king and crit or status was the meta. Mogamu even said in his Phoenix intercept video that people should stop fighting the level 20s and start getting into the higher levels. Players were craving challenge because they said that they were OP. Then raids and sorties came out to have DE match the rising power of the tenno once level 20-40 became too easy. This is the warframe I grew from. That's my generation of players. Anyone who remembers the Phoenix Intercept Escalation and has that Rift Sigil, I raise my glass to you.

If you compared an "OP" setup back then to a normal setup nowadays, you'd laugh your pants off on how weak we were. Ever since late 2015, warframe has been on an escalating power creep, to the point now that people are calling level 100s too easy. DE has been constantly increasing player power, but it has been sporatic in increasing the mission levels we fight. This is why we have fluxes of "So and So is OP" and then a couple years later "Can I Has Buff?". What warframe needs now is an expansion of levels, because what people are complaining about is that enemies die too quickly. Easy way to fix this is to pit us players against higher EHp enemies so that they don't die as fast. Rather than get cheesy mechanics to constrain our power, DE has 9899 levels of enemies to eventually be able to match out power through EHp alone. On top of this, tanks have enough EHp to cakewalk through normal missions, but put them up against a level 1000, and only the strong will survive. It's what most games go through, which is progression.

I know what the most common response is "Raising levels won't fix the the issue. Enemy damage is stupid high. Cheese and Rice. Scaling sucks. Enemies are imbeciles." To this, I disagree, but I'll entertain the idea because there's a simple solution. These problems brought up with increasing levels are simply knob tweaks that DE can fix along the way, but we'll never know until we can even get the content. Let's get the content first and fix it from there. You can't fix endless scaling if all you're fighting is the low end of it. It's like trying to repair a car when all you've seen is the interior of it. You're liable to fix the wrong thing, as DE has been doing by demand of the community.

Most people shed a negative light on power creep, but power creep is not bad. It's good, on one condition, if there's a enemy level present to challenge that power. Power creep is the creation of progress. Back in the day, most builds had only elementals and base damage with channeling being a thing. Then we got reworks, Shadow Debt, primed mods, primed weapons, status overload, and finally rivens. We saw this as power creep, but if you consider the journey of the player, what us vets are seeing is the real time process of creating long term gameplay, also known as progress. A player first gets the damage and elemental mods, then gets his shadow debt mods and focus, then gets primed mods and weapons. After this, he will probably get the status overload mods and finally, he'll finish off his build with a possible riven mod. All the while, he's learning, getting better, and getting a power progression, such is the way of a long term relationship....with a game. DE has this idea down solid. There's just one missing component, and that's the enemies present to challenge this power progress.

Edited January 3, 2018 by (PS4)Crixus044

[Holonomic88]

15 hours ago, (Xbox One)Tucker D Dawg said:

The biggest reason I have no issue with the power creep is that the resource requirements for anything new is absurdly high, and the rng drop chances absurdly low.

This includes for relic (both getting them and opening them) runs.

So long as the low drop chances and high crafting requirements are there, we need the ability to kill hordes of enemies quickly.

If you take away the power creep, can you imagine being a new player to the game? You would never be able to build anything just so a few veterans who "want a challenge" get their wish.

 

 

This.  If you want a true challenge, then play survival or defense for a long time.  I realize that there are people who want to feel challenged, but I think that most people play WF because of the power fantasy.  It is fun to feel powerful and rewarding to work towards such a high damage cap.  I do agree that Grineer armor scaling needs addressing, but if you rebalance the game, I see three possible outcomes.  Either the new player experience becomes broken, the 'end game' player experience becomes broken, or as I saw suggested, a scaling system makes progress in the game meaningless because enemies scale with you.

We already have things like nightmare mode and sortie modifiers, so I think that expanding these systems is the best way to offer veterans a challenge rather than nerfing things in the hope of finding some balance that will simply shift as more content is released.

Personally, I play WF because I enjoy being the most powerful thing on the battlefield, and the fantastic weapon diversity in the game.  It simply wouldn't fit the lore if the tenno were pushovers.

Edited January 3, 2018 by Holonomic88

[BlackCoMerc]

On 12/29/2017 at 8:41 PM, DrBorris said:

It's interesting, I watched a LifeOf Rio video the other day where he used Banshee in a solo Mot Survival. The point of the video was to show off how Operators can be used to navigate the battlefield in a way Warframes can only dream of, but what I found interesting was how it looked to me like "skillful" gameplay. He was using the movement Warframes has to offer to its fullest capabilities, and despite him dispatching enemies with ease it was by no means something that could easily be done. I would dare say that 95% of the Warframe community (me included, and I would call myself a Banshee "main", or as much of a main as is possible in Warframe) would not be able to survive under the circumstances he was.

 

Now sure, you can argue he was nerfing himself by using Banshee, a Warframe known for her poor survivability, but this does show that the core gameplay of Warframe does leave room for skillful play. Part of the problem, however, is that most people don't want to do that. They want to be able to succeed by playing Warframe like CoD, but with the option of jumping around if they want. 

 

For a long, long time I have been a proponent of bringing Warframe's damage (on all fronts) in line so that we could make gameplay something more than CoD with the option of jumping around. To actually give a meaningful skill curve that would yield the possibility for a true end game content. But alas, it will probably never happen, as I discussed in detail here...

(TL;DR: The community can't stand nerfing and have no idea what is for their own good, but they think they do and will quit for "honor")

Can't believe that is over a year old now...

 

The Warframe (Forum) community has changed. I recently read through a few 2+ year old threads out of curiosity and the open-mindedness and willingness to have a discussion were noticeable higher back then. We have grown to be like a grouchy elderly person, resistant to change and quick to assume. I am not going to try and figure out why because it does not matter, this is just what we work with now. 

One caveat: that kind of Operator navigation is unavailable to players using Controller, as we Experience horrendous input and response lag for transference and dashing. DE... doesn't seem aware.

[DanteAdams]

Le 30.12.2017 à 03:49, Tsardova a dit :

Not really.

I mean, we're bound to hit the point where we have the MEANS to be op but we can scale it down if we wan't "challenge".

Anyone who keeps saying "Why should we nerf ourselves down for the sake of challenge" have been nonsensical at best since they wanted the challenge and they have the means of getting it albeit they're feigning ignorance on it.

Balance is a fkin myth in this game and it never was challenging per se.

The essence of challenge is when i can use everything game offers me and still be threatened to go backward and have no progress and offer a reward i would not get otherwise. Removing all or most mods to make yourself weak and enemy even more of a bullet sponge than they already are is nothing like getting a real challenge.

The fact that we never had a challenge in no way means whe shouldn't ever have that.