August 6Th: Communtiy Hot Topics

[Loswaith]

It's still semi-problematic from a game-balance standpoint due to the fact that armor does just continually scale which still ultimately renders non-AP/AI weapons ineffective against an entire enemy faction late-game due to the fact that even the armor on weakpoints scale. The fact that the Corpus are currently the only faction that isn't plagued with the scaling armor nonsense doesn't help.

 

It basically renders non-AP/AI weapons dead content from the very instant they're released. Two good examples of such are the Seer and Vasto. Like the way those weapons look or feel? Doesn't matter, you're still stuck with Acrid or a throwing knife if you want a sidearm that's viable in the late game, whether you like them or not.

 

That's not a particularly good system for maintaining interest, since the amount of viable content keeps getting lower the higher you go in levels. As noted, it basically just turns the majority of weapons into mastery-fodder and at current, once you hit mastery 7 that's a pointless exercise - There's no real incentive for experimenting with a non-AP/AI weapon or attempting to become proficient with it anymore because it's going to be woefully ineffective against "end game" enemies no matter how skilled you are with it.

Allot of good points.  I do agree that the scalling can be an issue and am definatly more prefering of an armour system where the damage reduction is actually a percentage to not increase for the same unit based on its level.  The scalling style I dont think is good for warframe (even though it may be working as intended), it does make the armour ignore weapons inherently the better option and even eventually the only viable option.

 

My comment though was more towards mercury having the grineer with some decent armour ratings being obvious by their look.  If it looks armoured new players are going to expect it to reduce damage comparitivly (ie grineer look heavily armoured so its visually saying they wont take much damage from weapons, shoot the unarmoured bits).  Likewise one would expect armour ignoring weapons to be better against grineer than non-armour ignore, even if there are times that the armour ignore is the only way to damage a Grineer.  Still I'd prefer better units to have the better armour, not the same ones that are higher rank.

 

The issue isnt that it is only grineer with good armour after a while (who even start with it), every faction does.

[FlanShark]

To be fair even basic grineer units have the description "heavily armoured" underneath them

[Tyrian3k]

5) Armor (Scalability and Difficulty)

Several great posts have emerged that tackle “Armor” and its effectiveness at high levels and how this affects players options when facing high level enemies. This conversation boils down to what kind of changes will Armor undergo, if any? The answer is that Armor is currently working as intended and is unlikely to change, Edit: but now being discussed.

___

Our goal is to avoid having a single dominant weapon, build, mod configuration...

 

Those two things stand in heavy conflict. As long as there's scaling armor, weapons that bypass said armor will inevitably be dominant.

 

For example if you compare Kraken and Kunai, you see that they deal the same damage before armor, but against high level enemies the Kraken will end up with far less damage than the Kunai.

Let's assume that armor is scaled so high that all types of damage that don't bypass armor only deal 1 damage:

The Kunai will end up with 45 physics impact damage, 14 AP damage and 1 damage for each element, which is 62 damage in total.

The Kraken will end up with 1 bullet damage, 14 AP damage and 1 damage for each element, which is only 18 damage.

 

To deal the same damage as the Kunai in this case, the Kraken would need to have a base damage close to 200 and even then, almost all of the damage would be caused by AP.

 

 

You may argue that we never get armor that high unless we go to wave 100 in endless defense, but having the enemies' level affect the balance of the weapons is undeniably stupid.

 

 

Just to make a challenge out of it:

 

Mission: Xini

Target wave: 50

Handicap: - No damage types that ignore armor are allowed.

                 - Ancients may not be killed with shots to the leg or arm.

 

This challenge is just to demonstrate how dependent we are on the AP mod in our weapons. All other modded damage types become more and more useless the more the enemies' level increases.

[Taranis49]

*snip*

 

Basically what I said two or three pages back; it also doesn't help that sidearms have the least effective AP mod in the game, with rifles coming in second. The only reason shotguns manage to cling to viability is that their mods allow them to deal more than 100% AP damage.

 

Simply increasing the effectiveness of the AP mods for sidearms/rifles won't cut it either, because it means they won't just be a dominant part of the build, but one that's effectively required for higher level content.

 

Like I said then; when every enemy becomes a tank, the only weapons that'll remain effective and viable are anti-tank weapons. And that's what the armor scaling system does. It results in a shrinking content pool as you progress.

[litlit]

To be fair even basic grineer units have the description "heavily armoured" underneath them

 

Well, there's "heavily armored" and "bring Despair/Acrid or don't bother".

[Smoose3]

1) Alliances and Clan Splits:

All Warlords of 1001+ clans were contacted today by email to help facilitate the coming clan splits. If you are in a 1001+ person clan, spread the word to your clan leaders to check their emails to move forward with the split and Alliances.

2) Grineer Tile Set, event?

You may have seen a screenshot of the upcoming tileset, and heard whispers (more like yells) of Sheldon on Livestream # 11 about an event to bring the Grineer Settlement to Tenno hands and feet.. more to come as we decrypt messages internally….

3) Slow Support

We are actively hiring and training more CSR’s for Warframe.  One result of our growing playerbase is an overwhelmed support desk but we are working as quickly as we can to get through all requests. Here is a relevant post to those considering making support tickets:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/83148-getting-support-common-issues/

Thanks for everyone’s patience while we grow and improve our department.

4) The Great Mission Type Overhauls: Removal of Raid, Redoing of Spy, Deception, and Rescue, inclusion of Survival

In last week’s hot topics, the upcoming mission changes got brought up, please see this post: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/87926-july-29th-community-hot-topics/page-4#entry990940

This week we have an updated overview of the coming mission changes:

Raid, Deception, Spy, and Rescue are, on average, our least played missions. Raid is too similar to Sabotage and Capture in the designers eyes and needs to go to make room for a new mission type.

Deception, Spy, and Rescue need a complete overhaul to make them more compelling.

The Designers aim is to make Rescue a mission type that no longer has the Rescue Target follow you around levels, but instead you free a prisoner in a deployable escape pod. More details to come on this, this won’t be happening soon but the “Rescue Review” will happen given it is one of the least played mission types.

Raid will be removed for a much desired “Survival” mode game type. I’ve seen a lot of feedback about ways to tweak Raid to keep it in the pool, some which suggest make it the mission for Alerts when you are after a certain item (Reactor, etc). To be relayed and discussed.

5) Armor (Scalability and Difficulty)

Several great posts have emerged that tackle “Armor” and its effectiveness at high levels and how this affects players options when facing high level enemies. This conversation boils down to what kind of changes will Armor undergo, if any? The answer is that Armor is currently working as intended and is unlikely to change, Edit: but now being discussed.

6) Power Creep/Difficulty/High Level Gameplay

This complements the above topic but from a different perspective. To borrow a quote from the thread from  player 11.11.11:

“My point is, a lot of the games current difficulty is, as Litler puts it - not based around player skill or emergent game-play. Its simply about getting weapons that allow you to spit out enough damage per second, to take on incredibly beefed up enemies.”

This is an apt summary of player concerns and something that is being brought up around the office.  So many factors can go into “fixing” what is identified here, we are always tweaking and adding new content to allow for new gameplay experiences. Truthfully we like being Elite Tenno: Grineer, Corpus, and Infested killing machines, but we also love creativity in what our players can bring to the table. Finding balance in this is our continued goal.

7) Continued Warframe Buff

Trinity and Ember are currently on Scott’s list to be buffed. Mag, Rhino, and Volt got a brush up in 8.3 and are still being reviewed. The rest of the bunch will eventually be addressed as well, so if you don’t see “insert Warframe here” now, the time for review will come. Baby steps!

8) Buff Weapon “X”

Like the Great Warframe Buff, some weapons will receive a review as well to account for the evolving gameplay elements. When in doubt, read the FAQ:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/5898-warframe-faq/

Warframe/Gun X is over(or under)-powered! (Why did you nerf? Why did you boost?)

We are rolling out balance changes very quickly. We love the feedback (good and bad) and take it very seriously. Our goal is to avoid having a single dominant weapon, build, mod configuration...

I'm glad ember is being looked at! I love her and look forward to what you guys are going to do with her!

[DBugII]

Wait, Trinity needs to be buffed?

Trinity is already incredibly overpowered.

[msterforks]

I think the answer to armor is to simply scale the armor piercing mods higher. 60% on rifle does NOT cut it, nor does 30% on pistol. On shotguns, it can go as high as 150%, and I have no problems bringing a sobek into a T3 Defense mission because of it. Why not make these mods go to level 10 and max out at about 220% AP damage? This would give the more experienced players another goal to reach besides serration and hornet strike, and also create a bigger sense of "endgame".

[zelgaris]

Stats, show stats.

Promised to be implemented since alpha...

[GTG3000]

Wait, Trinity needs to be buffed?

Trinity is already incredibly overpowered.

 

Well, if you ever tried to stop a crowd with her, you know she needs to be buffed.

[Taranis49]

I think the answer to armor is to simply scale the armor piercing mods higher. 60% on rifle does NOT cut it, nor does 30% on pistol. On shotguns, it can go as high as 150%, and I have no problems bringing a sobek into a T3 Defense mission because of it. Why not make these mods go to level 10 and max out at about 220% AP damage? This would give the more experienced players another goal to reach besides serration and hornet strike, and also create a bigger sense of "endgame".

 

While it'd work, the issue with that is it runs contrary to their goal of not having a dominant mod configuration. Granted, serration/hornet strike suffer from the same issue.

 

Really, the entire armor system needs to be reworked. As-is, the only damage type beyond AP that's really worth equipping is Cold, and that's solely for the slow effect.

[GTG3000]

Well, as I see it, DE could, in some distant future when they have time between adding stuff to keep project afloat and fixing bugs, decide upon a top level of the enemies, and start separating them in tiers like, say, Lancers and Elite Lancers.

 

Each having different scaling protections, say... lancer grows in armour until the top of what the armour allows, then Elite lancer, having same protection from AP as the top Lancer, has his shield scale up. Then, don't know, some sort of change for heavy troops, which will be bulky, have armoured replacement limbs, and have weakspots in their joints, that will have buffer scaling AP resistance, but not electric. And so on.

[FallenDeath66]

I have a question, did you guys change the slot system for warframes? Because currently I only need one extra slot for a new warframe, I swear it was 2 before? If you did change it then thats a brilliant change. I was always annoyed by the fact that I need TWO extra slots when I am only getting ONE warframe

[CubedOobleck]

Well, if you ever tried to stop a crowd with her, you know she needs to be buffed.

Are you serious? Saying Trinity needs a buff because she can't nuke a crowd is like saying Volt needs a buff because he is weak against infested: plain stupid.

 

Trinity needs a buff not to kill stuff, but to support her team better and she needs to lose her infinite energy and godmode.

Edited August 14, 2013 by CubedOobleck

[GTG3000]

Are you serious? Saying Trinity needs a buff because she can't nuke a crowd is like saying Volt needs a buff because he is weak against infested: plain stupid.

 

Trinity needs a buff not to kill stuff, but to support her team better and she needs to lose her infinite energy and godmode.

 

Well, stopping a crowd is sort of suppoting her team, since using EV and WoL is too tedious even if you're shouting in voicechat about it. Trinity is only useful for the team if she has that godmode, because if she suddenly becomes vulnerable - bye-bye resurrecting teammates, hello sitting behind cover. If the energy and godmode are taken from her, she'll be just another gunplay-centered frame, that is - a frame with not enough all-round useful abilities.

[zelgaris]

I got one topic for next week.

Why is Phobos such a INVISIBLE WALL fest and great example of bad level design? Is it possible to do a open world level without S#&$load of completely non-logical invisible walls?

(BTW I like the atmosphere of the new tile set.)

[CubedOobleck]

Well, stopping a crowd is sort of suppoting her team, since using EV and WoL is too tedious even if you're shouting in voicechat about it. Trinity is only useful for the team if she has that godmode, because if she suddenly becomes vulnerable - bye-bye resurrecting teammates, hello sitting behind cover. If the energy and godmode are taken from her, she'll be just another gunplay-centered frame, that is - a frame with not enough all-round useful abilities.

I agree that WoL and EV should be buffed so that they are useful for the team not just your self, but EV shouldn't give energy to the caster because infinite energy is just broken even if you use it to spam Blessing instead of Link.

Link is just out of theme and OP, if a player wants to absorb damage he should choose a Rhino or Frost, if you have a Trinity to turn yourself invincible it means you are not healing; Link should be replaced with a good buffing power or something to revive players from afar.

Being vulnerable is not a problem, your team should always have enough health and energy to protect you and compensate for your lack of damage powers, not to mention you can heal your self if you did take some damage.

 

Ideally that's how I think it should work, but I can see not everyone will agree since they don't want to lose their selfish godmode.

Edited August 14, 2013 by CubedOobleck

[Deadshroud]

Those three characters that comes for free should be buffed.

[GTG3000]

I agree that WoL and EV should be buffed so that they are useful for the team not just your self, but EV shouldn't give energy to the caster because infinite energy is just broken even if you use it to spam Blessing instead of Link.

Link is just out of theme and OP, if a player wants to absorb damage he should choose a Rhino or Frost, if you have a Trinity to turn yourself invincible it means you are not healing; Link should be replaced with a good buffing power or something to revive players from afar.

Being vulnerable is not a problem, your team should always have enough health and energy to protect you and compensate for your lack of damage powers, not to mention you can heal your self if you did take some damage.

 

Ideally that's how I think it should work, but I can see not everyone will agree since they don't want to lose their selfish godmode.

 

Well, god mode is fun. Just as it is fun to run around with 91% damage reduction or spam hopelessly broken AI CC Ultis. 

 

Trinity acts like a semi-good healer so far solely because of how tough she is to put down. She can't really kill all the enemies by herself better than any other frame can, but she will be there when your glass cannon gets downed, and she won't take no slack from those puny enemies.

 

Would she have Aggro on link, it would be ridiculously OP. In fact, I think that it would be fair if DE found some way to make Linked Trinity the least priority target for the enemies. 

 

EV+Link combo is providing VERY solid gameplay for her, with it's ups and downs, but since it doesn't make it any easier to defend the cryopod, I suppose the statistics isn't in her favor. Trinity is only OP when compared to low-level frames without proper mods in them. As the level grows, she shifts from unstoppable machine of salvation to just a frame that doesn't care and doesn't kill that much. She has no AoE damage, no CC, and only so much utility. Blessing won't save from being instakilled, and being generous with EV just makes you run out of juice.

[VScipii26]

Basically what I said two or three pages back; it also doesn't help that sidearms have the least effective AP mod in the game, with rifles coming in second. The only reason shotguns manage to cling to viability is that their mods allow them to deal more than 100% AP damage.

 

Simply increasing the effectiveness of the AP mods for sidearms/rifles won't cut it either, because it means they won't just be a dominant part of the build, but one that's effectively required for higher level content.

 

Like I said then; when every enemy becomes a tank, the only weapons that'll remain effective and viable are anti-tank weapons. And that's what the armor scaling system does. It results in a shrinking content pool as you progress.

Just today, AP on side-arms was buffed.

What does this do?

Reinforce the sentiment that all weapons must have armor piercing occupying a mod slot to be useful.

And it's just a bigger damage buff to things like the Kunai.

[Loswaith]

To be fair even basic grineer units have the description "heavily armoured" underneath them

True, though heavily armour doesnt mean nigh invunerable to bullets.  Even at say 75% damage reduction for the lancer (and more for heavier units) Grineer would still be considered heavily armoured.  Sure armour ignoring damage is better on them but not the only weapons to do damage.

Edited August 15, 2013 by Loswaith

[Dirtyfouts]

Just today, AP on side-arms was buffed.

What does this do?

Reinforce the sentiment that all weapons must have armor piercing occupying a mod slot to be useful.

And it's just a bigger damage buff to things like the Kunai.

 

Yeah, I know I saw that too :(

 

What they NEED to do is, like many have suggested, change the armorpiercing-elemental-damage-type-which-makes-no-sense mod to a mod that simply ignores a % of enemy armor. This would obviously Not work on things that already ignore armor (such as kunai, and boltor) and could cap at like 75% or something (I don't think it should cap at 100%, or 90%, or close to 100 because if that were the case then the only reason to use a naturally armor piercing weapon would be to have 1 extra mod slot, which, in the weapon mods' current state, isn't that great.

[KiTaRoo]

I would like to swap saved up game credits with game platinum.    1milion credit= 10 platinum is good?