The DExtreme™ Rework

[Gandergear]

TLDR GUIDE: Read the stuff in bold: I get it, we're all busy. I won't take it personally.

Spoiler

I'm MR25 and have done basically everything in the game, from raids to trios i've sped run them, analyzed them, and dissected them. Please don't make the assumption I want things easier or harder, I want things to be more balanced and more engaging.

Problem Statement: Enemies do not scale appropriately with level, weapons have to brute force through insane armor leading to CC (CheeseyCheeto) effects to allow players to more easily dispatch enemies. The gameplay loop is as follows.

Low Level Enemies: Die to AOE auras or ez nukes (ember, rhino, etc) (0-30)

Mid Level Enemies: Die to AOE auras or ez nukes (30-50)

High Level Enemies: Die to melee cheese, buffs (memes/ CO / saryn / Rhino, etc) (60-80)

Super Duper High Level Enemies: Die to melee cheese, buffs (Rhino) (80+)

Insane Mode XXL Level Enemies: Die to melee cheese (John Prodman index with Rhino/Nova/Ash or EV) (Level 250+)

The following is a scorched earth leave no survivors, all chips in fix that guarantees the game to be in a highly balanced state.

Step 1: Depower Mods

For this to work the first step is to reduce the power of warframes significantly. Nearly all mods (except notable awful ones and QOL ones) will need to have their effects reduced on average by a factor of 10.

Spoiler

Hornet Strike goes from 220% -> 22%, Vital Sense goes from 120% to 12%, Point strike goes from 150% to 15%, Intensify goes from 30% to a measly 3%

Metal Auger, sinister reach, primed fast hands etc remain untouched. Each mod however would have to be a case by case basis.

"But my 100% status or 250% crit!"

Spoiler

Reducing the power allows for weapon progression to follow more closely to the weapons rank rather than the mods rank. Mods are still very important for imparting improved status and the like, but their effects will no longer be as required. 398% super maximum power strength won't be attainable and will instead be 140% power strength which is a GOOD THING!

Step 2: Basic is Beautiful

Now that mods have a limited effect on the actual effect on the weapons true stats (22% increase from hornet strike is still impactful i promise), since the range of possible damages is severely limited the balance of the game can actually be controlled meaningfully without turning enemies into massive walls of meat that needs to be cheesed through with our boy chroma or rhino.

Step 3: Depower Enemies

Armor: No enemy should ever have more than 300 armor. Just, no. 300 armor is 50% reduction in incoming damage. This will devalue the importance of corrosive projection (i think CP will be fine staying at 30% reduction)

Health/Shields: the tigris primes base damage is right around 1560 damage and the opticors is 1000. with this in mind I think the most HP+Shields any enemy should have at 'maximum level' is 3000*.

This allows enemies at max level to be killed in 4 shots with the opticor with body shots (headshot is likely going to still be 1 shotting that) if the enemy has 3000 hp and 50% DR**, i.e. 6000 EHP. To use a less strong weapon as an example a MK1-Braton has a base damage of 18, with this system the braton still fails to kill a max level enemy but shouldn't have trouble killing de-leveled enemies in the lower tiers (say a grineer lancer with 100hp, 100 armor). Add in elemental modifiers and players will be able to kill enemies consistently rather than the weird situation we have where a level 30 bombard is completely immune to a newer players weapons. With the HP balanced as well the large buffs and minus (in some cases 75%) to elemental bonuses will also become more significant since it's no longer possible to 'out power the negatives'.

*(weapons should be about 50% stronger rather than 5300% stronger with max power decks, this is the power increase from my opticor build)

**(27 with a full damage build, not likely anyone would commit to it but hey, braton prime's upgraded damage would be 63)

Damage: Minding that the maximum HP of any warframe (inaros) with my 'nerfs' in place will still be inaros at a whopping unmodded 2200 hp (3423 hp if you try REALLY hard with mods) and the minimum hp being frames like with a paltry 225 (351 if you try really hard again), you have to balanced to make it so the ivara doesn't get destroyed instantly and the inaros doesn't feel invulnerable.

Furthering this line of thinking it should be clear that there is no way to make this work except by one major, new feature. Aggro. Guardian Derision just can't cut it anymore, allies with higher hp need to be prioritized by enemies as targets over squishier frames. A recommended way to do this is by replacing many frames CC effects with aggro manipulating abilities instead. For example, inaros' sandstorm can be changed from... what it is now... to a protective ability that redirects damage your allies take to you.

Next with this system in mind we can determine the damage that'd be appropriate in terms of DPS. I believe firmly it's reasonable to assume that a frame shouldn't be able to live for longer than 5 seconds of sustained enemy dps (i.e. you're sitting there taking it) and none should die before 2 seconds (let us have reaction time). With these bounds an enemy would have to do almost 800 damage per second to kill a super inaros yet would have to do 250 dps to not kill a basseline ivara (525 shield+health). Please note i'm ignoring armor effects for the moment. However since inaros is very clearly a tank frame we can assume for fairness and consistency that 250 dps is the maximum fair amount for an enemy to do without worrying about instant killing players. But now how do we implement this so that enemies do the same?

Enemies are weaker as a group, the more enemies firing at you, the less damage they'll do. Obviously one lancer should have about 50 dps at maximum level, two would have each doing 50, and so on until the 250dps cap is reached, but once you add that 6th lancer they all instead do 42 damage, a 7th brings this down to 36, and so on. Eventually even though you may have 30 grineer all firing at you they will still only do 250dps to you. This is good because even though you may kill 5 of them, they're still equally as threatening as they were when there was 30. This lowers the requirment for CC even more since players don't have to worry about being one shot. Mind that this damage can be weighted differently. An eximus present may increase the cap to 275 dps, requiring players to have slightly faster reactions to stay alive when they show up.

Step 4: Bosses

Now this is the juicy part, since everything has been brought down to a consistant baseline, bosses hp and damages can be readjusted to be fair for players of all skill levels. No longer will the sergeant be one shot since his EHP can be set to 10000 (for a boss this would take about 6 opticor shots or 370 rounds of mk1 braton). The awful invulnerability phases of bosses can be down right removed in most cases since players can no longer just skip them, Lephantis can finally be killed by a group of normal players!

Step 5: What I didn't talk about

Obviously I didn't cover everything, arcanes, pets, operators, there's just too much to talk about! The broad concept towards each of these is to follow a baseline of power for the game and to not exceed a certain threshold.

Appendix A:add natural energy regen

With the maxim efficiency allowed being 9% vs 75% and the effect of flow also being reduced to 9%, players will no longer be able to spam abilities to no tomorrow. This also means they dont have much reserves. To work around that energy regeneration similar to conclaves could be added to keep ability usage usable. This gain would be a percentage of your maximum pool * efficiency,with the hopes of being able to cast your basic 25 energy ability once every 15 seconds if you solely relied on it for energy.

Conclusions

Depowering everything down to base stats and working on slight improvments rather than massive number shifts allows for DE to balance the game more easily, reduces the gap between high and low level players, decreases the perceived grind from this gap, and weakens meta gaps that focus towards CC. Mods such as maiming strike and condition overload no longer become as significant and natural crits and status procs will feel more rewarding rather than expected.

Examples

Spoiler

Excalibro is a rank 0 excalibur, with his starting stats of 100 shields he's attacked by 6 grineer lancers who each have a DPS of 6. This means that our brave hero has almost 3 seconds to deal with them before he begins taking health damage. With his trusty MK1-Braton (27 damage per shot) he quickly dispatches the grineer in mere moments (Each grineer only has an EHP of 50 at his level, and a headshot is an instant kill). Basically the new player experience hasn't changed.

Excalbro is now a rank 30 excalibur and has upgraded to a Burston (30 damage * 3 = 90 per trigger pull), he's now having to fight some tougher enemies down the road of the star chart and has mostly invested his endo into upgrading his warframe stats (He now has 432 shields), he's in Regor's labs when he's now fighting 7 lancers along with an eximus backing them up. With a total DPS of 275 and an individual DPS of 32dps (eximus has a dps of 57) our hero must now take out the enemies before they get him as he only has 3 seconds before they take him out. He's able to dispatch of the eximus with some work since its adjust EHP is about 500, taking 6 trigger pulls of his trust weapon to take it out. With the threat gone he's able to take his time to use headshots to eliminate the rest with one burst each (headshot mult of 2x = 180 damage per trigger pull). The midgame has become more balanced

A current meta eidolon hunting party is taking out a trio. The chroma is now limited to only buffing damage by 3.75 if he invests into literal maximum power, with his trusty lanka (~750 damage a shot with full mods) he's capable of hitting the monster for  2900 damage, barring a critical hit. Since this was the maximum he was able to do DE can adjust the health on each synova to 10000x (x is number of players), to make sure each player in the squad hitting the synova around 4 times in quick unison would break the limb, the health of the eidolon itself is likely just a static 50k. This makes the late game requirments lower while making it harder.

RhinoMcMadSmash is finally doing his John Prodman Run, he's beaming with enthusiasm but we're 55 minutes in and the man of the hours going to show soon! However our hero still needs to keep the index points flowing so he chooses his new target. Our good friend Jen Dro is level 250 now and as such has 1200 S, 1800 HP, and 300 armor. Her EHP is 6000 and her DPS is 400 (adjusted since she's an index miniboss). Our hero is currently carrying many index points and his current EHP is 100 and will basically die instantly if they break through his iron skin (silly him forgot iron shrapnel). As such he onyl has 5 seconds to dispatch of her before his untimely death, and the special abilities of the index's foes makes this a challenge indeed! With his trusty lesion doing an adjusted 160 damage per hit (pre stacking CO) he takes her out in time, a friendly nova's molecular prime slowing them down just enough for him to weave around her attacks. (Nova's can only reach 70% slowdown with literal max power). This makes Super high level content more tactical

 

Edited April 8, 2018 by Gandergear
enemies scale against enemies

[Rawbeard]

28 minutes ago, Gandergear said:

Enemies do not scale appropriately with enemies

hey dawg, I heard you like enemies, so I scaled enemies with enemies so you can enemies while you enemies

[Oblitum]

depowering the game doesn't fix anything at all. you talk about how minor improvements would now become significant but most of what this would do is suck the fun out of warframe. Yes you need to have high level mods and need to have min-maxed a fair bit to kill the absurd level content, and yes you do absolutely blow through any low level content with most frames, but that is exactly what warframe's identity is, it's a game where you're a deific small child piloting around a minor demi-god known as a warframe destroying any and everything in your path, the rare "hard" content in this game is what would benefit more from change, that being making it so that it requires alternate strategy to do rather than just the walls of health that you reference, but killing the power fantasy by lowering both the player and the enemies to a gimped state would just kill the game. 

 

Tldr: warframe + high power players/gear = fun,  warframe+ gimped no power anything = something almost as boring as destiny 2.

[(PSN)Croewe]

This is a massive amount of work but if they ever want the game to be an actual challenge (read as dark souls type difficulty where it's hard but fair and not reliant on cheese) then this is just the ABSOLUTE basics. They made A HUGE step forward rebalancing almost every gun though so we can hope.

[artemisfortune]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)Chris_Robet said:

This is a massive amount of work but if they ever want the game to be an actual challenge (read as dark souls type difficulty where it's hard but fair and not reliant on cheese) then this is just the ABSOLUTE basics. They made A HUGE step forward rebalancing almost every gun though so we can hope.

Dark Souls isn't hard. Dark Souls' design is compiled around trial and error, that's why you get a free death without any real consequence. Warframe has no game design philosophy anymore. It's rooted in being a jack of all trades and it's too late to change that now. DE has made it very apparent they aren't willing to take any risks in changing any of the core aspects outside of "hey now melee is gonna be more like Devil May Cry! Too bad you'll shred everything in one hit."

[Gandergear]

10 minutes ago, Rawbeard said:

hey dawg, I heard you like enemies, so I scaled enemies with enemies so you can enemies while you enemies

nice catch! Although... enemies don't scale very well against enemies, use chaos in a group of level 150s and you find that they fight but no one dies!

[Oblitum]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)Chris_Robet said:

This is a massive amount of work but if they ever want the game to be an actual challenge (read as dark souls type difficulty where it's hard but fair and not reliant on cheese) then this is just the ABSOLUTE basics. They made A HUGE step forward rebalancing almost every gun though so we can hope.

Warframe has not ever, and should not ever attempt to mimic a dark-souls style difficulty or balance state, the warframes and the tenno are not in lore designed to be weak and struggle desperately at every obstacle, it is the wrong type of game for that entirely.  the player is effectively a deity in lore and in game play, this is why the game is fun. they are not and should not be played as weak.

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

30 minutes ago, Gandergear said:

-snip-

I have 3 major issues with this:

• First, the developers themselves have noted that this game is more of a demi-god vs. hordes game. What you are proposing is more of a tactical co-op situation.
• Second, your proposed system could only work if Rivens were removed/rework as a whole, because even small numerical buffs to a single weapon would have a major impact on balance.
• Third, many Warframe powers are balanced around current mod setups, with low base damage, duration, and/or range to try to force players to build for those things, and prevent them from making some powers overpowered. This means that your suggestion would also require a full rework of many abilities, especially support/tank abilities. Blessing, EV, Renewal, Splinter Storm, Vex Armor/Elemental Ward, Shatter Shield, and Metronome all come to mind.

[Gandergear]

26 minutes ago, Oblitum said:

depowering the game doesn't fix anything at all. you talk about how minor improvements would now become significant but most of what this would do is suck the fun out of warframe. Yes you need to have high level mods and need to have min-maxed a fair bit to kill the absurd level content, and yes you do absolutely blow through any low level content with most frames, but that is exactly what warframe's identity is, it's a game where you're a deific small child piloting around a minor demi-god known as a warframe destroying any and everything in your path, the rare "hard" content in this game is what would benefit more from change, that being making it so that it requires alternate strategy to do rather than just the walls of health that you reference, but killing the power fantasy by lowering both the player and the enemies to a gimped state would just kill the game. 

 

Tldr: warframe + high power players/gear = fun,  warframe+ gimped no power anything = something almost as boring as destiny 2.

You're right, the power fantasy would take a hit, but I think we get back some power fantasy with enemies not being able to one hit us anymore. It's a give or take situation, and I think my solution removes more aspects that take you out of the fun than it removes situations that put you into fun. Also feel free to compare my max EHP of 6000 to any warframe damage ability currently in the game, you'll see most damage is in the 800-1200 range for an ult, certainly significant damage to do to a level 500 baddy!

23 minutes ago, (PS4)Chris_Robet said:

his is a massive amount of work but if they ever want the game to be an actual challenge (read as dark souls type difficulty where it's hard but fair and not reliant on cheese) then this is just the ABSOLUTE basics. They made A HUGE step forward rebalancing almost every gun though so we can hope.

Dark Souls relies on a large damage increase through the titanite system however so I don't think the weapon balance I suggested (which was based slightly more on PAYDAY 2) is similar. Oh and yes, it is a massive amount of work, that's why it's DExtreme™!!

16 minutes ago, Pent_ said:

Dark Souls isn't hard. Dark Souls' design is compiled around trial and error, that's why you get a free death without any real consequence. Warframe has no game design philosophy anymore. It's rooted in being a jack of all trades and it's too late to change that now. DE has made it very apparent they aren't willing to take any risks in changing any of the core aspects outside of "hey now melee is gonna be more like Devil May Cry! Too bad you'll shred everything in one hit."

A bit pessimistic which is usually my view towards DE so i can sympathize. DE needs to find a vision for how they want the game to play.

15 minutes ago, Oblitum said:

Warframe has not ever, and should not ever attempt to mimic a dark-souls style difficulty or balance state, the warframes and the tenno are not in lore designed to be weak and struggle desperately at every obstacle, it is the wrong type of game for that entirely.  the player is effectively a deity in lore and in game play, this is why the game is fun. they are not and should not be played as weak.

In an indirect way you're describing that old RQ banshee was just the most hecking fun thing in the game because it just oozed power fantasy of killing enemies without a second thought. Please note that if you were to play chroma your guns will still tear through the entire star chart, my 6000 EHP value was for the literal maximum level for the game (john prodman level enemies and after that it just plateaus out), most enemies will melt from a tigris prime shot still, and ember even gets buffed because her WOF damage is still 400 (to 800 with just her base stats!), granted this gets halved at max armor but it still makes her viable well into the late game, with the limitations being the lowered energy pool, lowered duration, lower range, and lower efficiency.

I just kinda find the power fantasy boring as presented by DE, you get taken out of it in high level missions where enemies casually one shot you and when you're in low level missions you KNOW that the enemies are weak to begin with.

Edited April 7, 2018 by Gandergear

[Gandergear]

12 minutes ago, -AoN-CanoLathra- said:

I have 3 major issues with this:

• First, the developers themselves have noted that this game is more of a demi-god vs. hordes game. What you are proposing is more of a tactical co-op situation.
• Second, your proposed system could only work if Rivens were removed/rework as a whole, because even small numerical buffs to a single weapon would have a major impact on balance.
• Third, many Warframe powers are balanced around current mod setups, with low base damage, duration, and/or range to try to force players to build for those things, and prevent them from making some powers overpowered. This means that your suggestion would also require a full rework of many abilities, especially support/tank abilities. Blessing, EV, Renewal, Splinter Storm, Vex Armor/Elemental Ward, Shatter Shield, and Metronome all come to mind.

1. You right, but that's the only way to balance the game

2. They could be nerfed the same way i proposed other mods, 360% damage buff goes down to 36%. It's VERY significant but when a weapon's as weak as the furis (20 damage a shot) you're still not going to get very far!

3. You're right, that's why it's DExtreme™!!!

[Naqel]

9 minutes ago, Oblitum said:

Warframe has not ever, and should not ever attempt to mimic a dark-souls style difficulty or balance state, the warframes and the tenno are not in lore designed to be weak and struggle desperately at every obstacle, it is the wrong type of game for that entirely.  the player is effectively a deity in lore and in game play, this is why the game is fun. they are not and should not be played as weak.

On the contrary, there is a multitude of cases where we are being warned of the danger posed by the vast quantities and elite forces that we face.
We aren't gods, we are at best their champions, and ones that are generally portrayed to lack the experience to operate at their full power.

More to the point however, if you are still doing enough damage to mow down hordes of enemies, it doesn't really matter if it's 100 DPS or 100000 DPS, but it would be healthier for the game if only one of those numbers was part of the progression. A range should be set for the numbers we want to see that doesn't involve appending several 0's at the end of it as we go on.

[PrivateRiem]

Or they could have dynamic difficulty scaling based on how well the squad is doing (How much damage players are taking/dealing, how fast enemies are dying)

[Naqel]

1 minute ago, PrivateRiem said:

Or they could have dynamic difficulty scaling based on how well the squad is doing (How much damage players are taking/dealing, how fast enemies are dying)

1. Easy to cheese.

2. Does not resolve the infinite armor scaling issue.

[(PSN)Croewe]

10 minutes ago, Gandergear said:

Dark Souls relies on a large damage increase through the titanite system however so I don't think the weapon balance I suggested (which was based slightly more on PAYDAY 2) is similar. Oh and yes, it is a massive amount of work, that's why it's DExtreme™!!

I was using it as an example of the type of difficulty I want. Can't say I've put more than an hour into payday 2 (I got for 5 bucks on Steam and have yet to get into it) but everyone says it's fun. And yeah it is a little extreme but so is going through and rebalancing hundreds of weapons which they are in the process of right now so I'm sure they are up to the task. I'd say wait a year and try to release more content which people are going to beg for soon (I love the changes they're making though but they are losing profit so let's be reasonable).

Edited April 7, 2018 by (PS4)Chris_Robet

[Gandergear]

1 minute ago, PrivateRiem said:

Or they could have dynamic difficulty scaling based on how well the squad is doing (How much damage players are taking/dealing, how fast enemies are dying)

That system was used for the LFD series so good effect, but I don't believe a game that gives you the numbers should be changing them without us being able to correlate it

 

[Hellfire_Maximus]

1 hour ago, Gandergear said:

Enemies are weaker as a group, the more enemies firing at you, the less damage they'll do.

this defies common combat logic.

1 hour ago, Gandergear said:

Step 4: Bosses

Now this is the juicy part, since everything has been brought down to a consistant baseline, bosses hp and damages can be readjusted to be fair for players of all skill levels. No longer will the sergeant be one shot since his EHP can be set to 10000 (for a boss this would take about 6 opticor shots or 370 rounds of mk1 braton).

this defies the enemy scaling and the planet progression system.The sergeant is a lvl-13-15 type enemy ofc u can one shot him.

 

1 hour ago, Gandergear said:

The awful invulnerability phases of bosses can be down right removed in most cases since players can no longer just skip them, Lephantis can finally be killed by a group of normal players!

the phases that u are talking about test a players skill and the experience gathered by a player while playing the game,the tactics to survive when the enemy is at its strongest and to cull the enemy at the smallest window when its weakest.what u are suggesting is to make it so that any player can just "W O O O S S S S SH H H H H H  H H H ~" thru ODA or Merrow like it was a simple exterminate mission.

1 hour ago, Gandergear said:

Obviously I didn't cover everything, arcanes, pets, operators, there's just too much to talk about!

lastly u say "there's just too much to talk about" about the topics that are the main concerns right now.

1 hour ago, Gandergear said:

Depowering everything down to base stats and working on slight improvments rather than massive number shifts allows for DE to balance the game more easily, reduces the gap between high and low level players, decreases the perceived grind from this gap, and weakens meta gaps that focus towards CC. Mods such as maiming strike and condition overload no longer become as significant and natural crits and status procs will feel more rewarding rather than expected.

In a nutshell u are suggesting to nerf the enemy scaling system to allow players who joined 4 days ago be equally empowered as players with 700 day experience. Depowering everything down to base stats? you want DE to take out the challenging parts of the game?,  reduces the gap between high and low level players? you want DE to make missions easier so that new players feel no thrill to become better and experienced when they encounter a hurdle in front of them and make "rushing" more easier? this is absurd.

To make a game successful you need to have challenges in it,challenges that make u want to push harder and become stronger, if there's no challenge while playing a game and new comers can just breeze thru it then players lose interest and ultimately the player base falls.

Did u really think this over before posting?

 

[MickThejaguar]

I'm seeing more and more of these "nerf everything" posts. Hope DE continues to ignore them.

[Gandergear]

23 minutes ago, MickThejaguar said:

I'm seeing more and more of these "nerf everything" posts. Hope DE continues to ignore them.

if you read the post you'd find out that your ember does 800 damage against a max level enemy with 6000 EHP so I don't know where your critical thinking went

[Gandergear]

1 hour ago, -Bv-HellfireMaximus said:

this defies common combat logic.

this defies the enemy scaling and the planet progression system.The sergeant is a lvl-13-15 type enemy ofc u can one shot him.

 

the phases that u are talking about test a players skill and the experience gathered by a player while playing the game,the tactics to survive when the enemy is at its strongest and to cull the enemy at the smallest window when its weakest.what u are suggesting is to make it so that any player can just "W O O O S S S S SH H H H H H  H H H ~" thru ODA or Merrow like it was a simple exterminate mission.

lastly u say "there's just too much to talk about" about the topics that are the main concerns right now.

In a nutshell u are suggesting to nerf the enemy scaling system to allow players who joined 4 days ago be equally empowered as players with 700 day experience. Depowering everything down to base stats? you want DE to take out the challenging parts of the game?,  reduces the gap between high and low level players? you want DE to make missions easier so that new players feel no thrill to become better and experienced when they encounter a hurdle in front of them and make "rushing" more easier? this is absurd.

To make a game successful you need to have challenges in it,challenges that make u want to push harder and become stronger, if there's no challenge while playing a game and new comers can just breeze thru it then players lose interest and ultimately the player base falls.

Did u really think this over before posting?

 

it's called balance

it's called balance

did you even read?

so?

so you didn't read, i see.

so you didn't read still, i see.

so you didn't even read this before posting? 

[xXDeadsinxX]

3 hours ago, Pent_ said:

Dark Souls isn't hard.

If that’s the case, then you haven’t seen me play Dark Souls III with a PS4 controller, it was rough. 

[Oblitum]

5 hours ago, Gandergear said:

You're right, the power fantasy would take a hit, but I think we get back some power fantasy with enemies not being able to one hit us anymore. It's a give or take situation, and I think my solution removes more aspects that take you out of the fun than it removes situations that put you into fun. Also feel free to compare my max EHP of 6000 to any warframe damage ability currently in the game, you'll see most damage is in the 800-1200 range for an ult, certainly significant damage to do to a level 500 baddy!

except that you suggested a 10x nerf to all mods, meaning that i get a whooping 7.5% max efficiency  and what  + 55% max energy, so most of us wont be casting powers but once every few years from the sounds of it, and as a saryn main where i will often cast powers in the literal thousands of times( i think my record was like 3600ish) in a longer mission i can't think of anything that sounds less fun than your idea. your idea is not good for the game, it doesn't fix anything, it changes the numbers to lower numbers but the blanket ruining of the power fantasy isn't made up for by making every enemy more samey, which is all the hard cap does really.

 

5 hours ago, Gandergear said:

banshee was just the most hecking fun thing in the game because it just oozed power fantasy of killing enemies without a second thought. Please note that if you were to play chroma your guns will still tear through the entire star chart, my 6000 EHP value was for the literal maximum level for the game (john prodman level enemies and after that it just plateaus out), most enemies will melt from a tigris prime shot still, and ember even gets buffed because her WOF damage is still 400 (to 800 with just her base stats!), granted this gets halved at max armor but it still makes her viable well into the late game, with the limitations being the lowered energy pool, lowered duration, lower range, and lower efficiency.

I just kinda find the power fantasy boring as presented by DE, you get taken out of it in high level missions where enemies casually one shot you and when you're in low level missions you KNOW that the enemies are weak to begin with.

or instead, we make ember better rather than ruining the rest of the game to make her relevant for high level content. and again, your solution to not liking that low level is easy and high level is where you have to try is that it's better to make everyone weak and bland at all times? and while enemies can one shot certain frames at the absurd end i would question why you're letting them hit you, it isn't hard to be mobile in this game, that mobility will often keep you out of harms way, not saying always, but you know that is what the other members of the squad are for.

Since you mentioned it though i actually am not a chroma player for the most part, i play saryn most of the time, with a strong second going to equinox or nidus maybe? regardless making the arguments that " chroma your guns will still tear through the entire star chart" and "most enemies will melt from a tigris prime shot still" kinda shoots your argument in the foot, because you're saying that it won't change the meta, or fix bad guns, or fix anything, just change the numbers to low numbers and make the warframes way less fun. 

 

5 hours ago, Naqel said:

On the contrary, there is a multitude of cases where we are being warned of the danger posed by the vast quantities and elite forces that we face.
We aren't gods, we are at best their champions, and ones that are generally portrayed to lack the experience to operate at their full power.

More to the point however, if you are still doing enough damage to mow down hordes of enemies, it doesn't really matter if it's 100 DPS or 100000 DPS, but it would be healthier for the game if only one of those numbers was part of the progression. A range should be set for the numbers we want to see that doesn't involve appending several 0's at the end of it as we go on.

The lore talks about the tenno killing an entire civilization on a drum beat, sure it was a surprise attack but you don't murder an entire multi-planet empire between two drum beats and not be kind of monstrous, side note gara killed one of the full size sentient alone. Beyond that the children are as far as lore can tell are legitimately immortal, even rell seemed to just allow himself to dissipate because he was "tired". immortal usually falls into deific categories, also warned of danger yes, but 1-4 tenno are still expected to routinely decimate those same vast elite forces.

[NoLazyShadow]

So basicly your idea is "Nerf everything!1 Let everything be useless! just like our operator" . That wont fix the problems. What we need is:

1)Better armor/health scale

2) Damage 3.0

3) Remove basic damage mods and include them in the progression of weapon ranks. So on rank 30 our gun have +165% damage(+ optinal multishot mod to deal more damage at cost of more ammo per shot) + overhaul mods to give us more freedom with our builds

4) Oherhaul rivens reroll.  Cus  lets face it. Its plat free slot machine

[venon23]

8 hours ago, Gandergear said:

TLDR GUIDE: Read the stuff in bold: I get it, we're all busy. I won't take it personally.

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I'm MR25 and have done basically everything in the game, from raids to trios i've sped run them, analyzed them, and dissected them. Please don't make the assumption I want things easier or harder, I want things to be more balanced and more engaging.

Problem Statement: Enemies do not scale appropriately with level, weapons have to brute force through insane armor leading to CC (CheeseyCheeto) effects to allow players to more easily dispatch enemies. The gameplay loop is as follows.

Low Level Enemies: Die to AOE auras or ez nukes (ember, rhino, etc) (0-30)

Mid Level Enemies: Die to AOE auras or ez nukes (30-50)

High Level Enemies: Die to melee cheese, buffs (memes/ CO / saryn / Rhino, etc) (60-80)

Super Duper High Level Enemies: Die to melee cheese, buffs (Rhino) (80+)

Insane Mode XXL Level Enemies: Die to melee cheese (John Prodman index with Rhino/Nova/Ash or EV) (Level 250+)

The following is a scorched earth leave no survivors, all chips in fix that guarantees the game to be in a highly balanced state.

Step 1: Depower Mods

For this to work the first step is to reduce the power of warframes significantly. Nearly all mods (except notable awful ones and QOL ones) will need to have their effects reduced on average by a factor of 10.

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Hornet Strike goes from 220% -> 22%, Vital Sense goes from 120% to 12%, Point strike goes from 150% to 15%, Intensify goes from 30% to a measly 3%

Metal Auger, sinister reach, primed fast hands etc remain untouched. Each mod however would have to be a case by case basis.

"But my 100% status or 250% crit!"

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Reducing the power allows for weapon progression to follow more closely to the weapons rank rather than the mods rank. Mods are still very important for imparting improved status and the like, but their effects will no longer be as required. 398% super maximum power strength won't be attainable and will instead be 140% power strength which is a GOOD THING!

Step 2: Basic is Beautiful

Now that mods have a limited effect on the actual effect on the weapons true stats (22% increase from hornet strike is still impactful i promise), since the range of possible damages is severely limited the balance of the game can actually be controlled meaningfully without turning enemies into massive walls of meat that needs to be cheesed through with our boy chroma or rhino.

Step 3: Depower Enemies

Armor: No enemy should ever have more than 300 armor. Just, no. 300 armor is 50% reduction in incoming damage. This will devalue the importance of corrosive projection (i think CP will be fine staying at 30% reduction)

Health/Shields: the tigris primes base damage is right around 1560 damage and the opticors is 1000. with this in mind I think the most HP+Shields any enemy should have at 'maximum level' is 3000*.

This allows enemies at max level to be killed in 4 shots with the opticor with body shots (headshot is likely going to still be 1 shotting that) if the enemy has 3000 hp and 50% DR**, i.e. 6000 EHP. To use a less strong weapon as an example a MK1-Braton has a base damage of 18, with this system the braton still fails to kill a max level enemy but shouldn't have trouble killing de-leveled enemies in the lower tiers (say a grineer lancer with 100hp, 100 armor). Add in elemental modifiers and players will be able to kill enemies consistently rather than the weird situation we have where a level 30 bombard is completely immune to a newer players weapons. With the HP balanced as well the large buffs and minus (in some cases 75%) to elemental bonuses will also become more significant since it's no longer possible to 'out power the negatives'.

*(weapons should be about 50% stronger rather than 5300% stronger with max power decks, this is the power increase from my opticor build)

**(27 with a full damage build, not likely anyone would commit to it but hey, braton prime's upgraded damage would be 63)

Damage: Minding that the maximum HP of any warframe (inaros) with my 'nerfs' in place will still be inaros at a whopping unmodded 2200 hp (3423 hp if you try REALLY hard with mods) and the minimum hp being frames like with a paltry 225 (351 if you try really hard again), you have to balanced to make it so the ivara doesn't get destroyed instantly and the inaros doesn't feel invulnerable.

Furthering this line of thinking it should be clear that there is no way to make this work except by one major, new feature. Aggro. Guardian Derision just can't cut it anymore, allies with higher hp need to be prioritized by enemies as targets over squishier frames. A recommended way to do this is by replacing many frames CC effects with aggro manipulating abilities instead. For example, inaros' sandstorm can be changed from... what it is now... to a protective ability that redirects damage your allies take to you.

Next with this system in mind we can determine the damage that'd be appropriate in terms of DPS. I believe firmly it's reasonable to assume that a frame shouldn't be able to live for longer than 5 seconds of sustained enemy dps (i.e. you're sitting there taking it) and none should die before 2 seconds (let us have reaction time). With these bounds an enemy would have to do almost 800 damage per second to kill a super inaros yet would have to do 250 dps to not kill a basseline ivara (525 shield+health). Please note i'm ignoring armor effects for the moment. However since inaros is very clearly a tank frame we can assume for fairness and consistency that 250 dps is the maximum fair amount for an enemy to do without worrying about instant killing players. But now how do we implement this so that enemies do the same?

Enemies are weaker as a group, the more enemies firing at you, the less damage they'll do. Obviously one lancer should have about 50 dps at maximum level, two would have each doing 50, and so on until the 250dps cap is reached, but once you add that 6th lancer they all instead do 42 damage, a 7th brings this down to 36, and so on. Eventually even though you may have 30 grineer all firing at you they will still only do 250dps to you. This is good because even though you may kill 5 of them, they're still equally as threatening as they were when there was 30. This lowers the requirment for CC even more since players don't have to worry about being one shot. Mind that this damage can be weighted differently. An eximus present may increase the cap to 275 dps, requiring players to have slightly faster reactions to stay alive when they show up.

Step 4: Bosses

Now this is the juicy part, since everything has been brought down to a consistant baseline, bosses hp and damages can be readjusted to be fair for players of all skill levels. No longer will the sergeant be one shot since his EHP can be set to 10000 (for a boss this would take about 6 opticor shots or 370 rounds of mk1 braton). The awful invulnerability phases of bosses can be down right removed in most cases since players can no longer just skip them, Lephantis can finally be killed by a group of normal players!

Step 5: What I didn't talk about

Obviously I didn't cover everything, arcanes, pets, operators, there's just too much to talk about! The broad concept towards each of these is to follow a baseline of power for the game and to not exceed a certain threshold.

Conclusions

Depowering everything down to base stats and working on slight improvments rather than massive number shifts allows for DE to balance the game more easily, reduces the gap between high and low level players, decreases the perceived grind from this gap, and weakens meta gaps that focus towards CC. Mods such as maiming strike and condition overload no longer become as significant and natural crits and status procs will feel more rewarding rather than expected.

Examples

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Excalibro is a rank 0 excalibur, with his starting stats of 100 shields he's attacked by 6 grineer lancers who each have a DPS of 6. This means that our brave hero has almost 3 seconds to deal with them before he begins taking health damage. With his trusty MK1-Braton (27 damage per shot) he quickly dispatches the grineer in mere moments (Each grineer only has an EHP of 50 at his level, and a headshot is an instant kill). Basically the new player experience hasn't changed.

Excalbro is now a rank 30 excalibur and has upgraded to a Burston (30 damage * 3 = 90 per trigger pull), he's now having to fight some tougher enemies down the road of the star chart and has mostly invested his endo into upgrading his warframe stats (He now has 432 shields), he's in Regor's labs when he's now fighting 7 lancers along with an eximus backing them up. With a total DPS of 275 and an individual DPS of 32dps (eximus has a dps of 57) our hero must now take out the enemies before they get him as he only has 3 seconds before they take him out. He's able to dispatch of the eximus with some work since its adjust EHP is about 500, taking 6 trigger pulls of his trust weapon to take it out. With the threat gone he's able to take his time to use headshots to eliminate the rest with one burst each (headshot mult of 2x = 180 damage per trigger pull). The midgame has become more balanced

A current meta eidolon hunting party is taking out a trio. The chroma is now limited to only buffing damage by 3.75 if he invests into literal maximum power, with his trusty lanka (~750 damage a shot with full mods) he's capable of hitting the monster for  2900 damage, barring a critical hit. Since this was the maximum he was able to do DE can adjust the health on each synova to 10000x (x is number of players), to make sure each player in the squad hitting the synova around 4 times in quick unison would break the limb, the health of the eidolon itself is likely just a static 50k. This makes the late game requirments lower while making it harder.

RhinoMcMadSmash is finally doing his John Prodman Run, he's beaming with enthusiasm but we're 55 minutes in and the man of the hours going to show soon! However our hero still needs to keep the index points flowing so he chooses his new target. Our good friend Jen Dro is level 250 now and as such has 1200 S, 1800 HP, and 300 armor. Her EHP is 6000 and her DPS is 400 (adjusted since she's an index miniboss). Our hero is currently carrying many index points and his current EHP is 100 and will basically die instantly if they break through his iron skin (silly him forgot iron shrapnel). As such he onyl has 5 seconds to dispatch of her before his untimely death, and the special abilities of the index's foes makes this a challenge indeed! With his trusty lesion doing an adjusted 160 damage per hit (pre stacking CO) he takes her out in time, a friendly nova's molecular prime slowing them down just enough for him to weave around her attacks. (Nova's can only reach 70% slowdown with literal max power). This makes Super high level content more tactical

 

so u play with a zombie robotic space ninja with god power level  and a small girl inside of them ...

and u want too put the not giving dmg because that will fix the game ??? if u want too fix something remove the rivens or made them more balanced

and u want a enemy max  


dude u make no sense at all first nerf weapons the nerf warframes then nerf enemys where theres no point staying longer then 5 minutos and u want too fix the game like that
or u want too kill him at all

 

[DrBorris]

I am sorry OP, people really don't like to think about nerfs. The see nerf and just assume you want the game to be Dark Souls.

 

I have thought about the concept of "simply nerf everything" as it does, mathematically, actually relieve a lot of the stress of imbalance between enemies and players. As I have said meany, many times, you can't balance enemies around 12045% more damage. However, you may have generalized a bit too much and swung the nerf hammer a bit too wide. One such area is power strength, the only part of Warframe modding that is questionable to me is efficiency and that would be a simple fix by making it be calculated like reload time vs reload speed. If you "nerf everything" it would be best to just nerf the base ability damages and leave the mod scaling intact as the mod system does do its job for the most part with Warframes. It gives a smooth progression climb and does have a lot of customization.

 

And then some fo your power alteration idea are also a bit on the heavy handed side, we don't want to change Warframe at its best, we want to change Warframe at its worst.

 

Not like any of this matters, people are just going to automatically discredit you for the premise of the OP, which is the same reason DE never went through with a damage 3.0, DE is afraid to move forward.

[Hellfire_Maximus]

5 hours ago, Gandergear said:

it's called balance

it's called balance

did you even read?

so?

so you didn't read, i see.

so you didn't read still, i see.

so you didn't even read this before posting?

i did...but u clearly didnt and u dont know what balance is coz making a game as easy as ur suggesting makes it dull, boring and bland.

Edited April 7, 2018 by -Bv-HellfireMaximus