Endless Scaling, Peculiar Difficulty Modifiers, and Internal Progression

[Teridax68]

56 minutes ago, Synpai said:

Yes I am in the sense I mentioned before:

If your "Master Spear (pyrana prime)" is doing 300000000 damage.

 

You should not pick up a basic stick (MK-1 Furis) and do that same damage.

That is different than say picking up or crafting/upgrading(preferably) to a "Diamond Stick" that does 300000000 damage.

Okay sure, but why? Why does the Pyrana Prime have to be the master stick and the MK-1 Furis the trash weapon? Why not just have the Pyrana do one thing, the Furis do another, and have both around as equally viable options with their own skins? What is the value in making one strictly better than the other?

56 minutes ago, Synpai said:

Where base weapons are all in the same power and variants are higher than their original, but at the same level as one another, but then it starts to pose the question why have MR restricted weapons if everything is the same? Why commit to other weapons if you find one you like that gets the job done well?  Fodder still exists in that personal preference is still a factor. Much like in casual pokemon, doesn't matter if magikarp was the strongest pokemon in the game, you won't see me using a derp fish.

I mean, why MR restrictions need to exist is another issue entirely (I don't think they need to exist), but even in a world with they do, I think it would be perfectly okay to impose MR restrictions on more difficult weapons, even if all are at the same overall power level. The Lenz, for example, is capable of killing the player if they use it wrong, so it may not necessarily be the first thing to give to a newer player. If you find one weapon you like more than anything else, you should be able to stick to it for as long as you like, but so long as there are different weapons that each offer a different aesthetic and playstyle, there will always be a reason for most players to try them out (it also doesn't hurt that they all contribute MR). What I'm proposing also avoids the much more pertinent issue of only a small pool of weapons being used by higher-end players, simply because they are better than all others. Unlike the issue being discussed above, this is not a hypothetical problem either; it is a thing that exists right now, and is intrinsic to the feature you are defending.

56 minutes ago, Synpai said:

So again, they don't need to be stats but a weapon should be able to be upgraded in some way, that's all I'm looking for.

And this is what I agree with. Not in the sense that a weapon should be raised to a higher power level, but that everything in the player's arsenal should be customizable, so that the player can take any frame or weapon and tailor them to their exact specifications.

56 minutes ago, Synpai said:

But I feel DE would have a storm on their hands if they just nerfed all base weapons to the same level and removed all variants, or only made variants have different mechanics simply because of how much change one would have to adapt to, it'd be overwhelming. 

It wouldn't be the first controversial decision DE would make, and I don't think it even needs to involve nerfs, so much as just a game-wide power adjustment. We already saw massive weapon rebalances a mere few months ago, and most of them were pure buffs.

[Synpai]

17 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Okay sure, but why? Why does the Pyrana Prime have to be the master stick and the MK-1 Furis the trash weapon? Why not just have the Pyrana do one thing, the Furis do another, and have both around as equally viable options with their own skins? What is the value in making one strictly better than the other?

Because it would be like playing Killing Floor 2 except you only have end game weapons. Games need that feeling of progress and goals otherwise they fail to be games. 

You don't give your players something to chase and they will walk away.

 

Take the leveling and evolutions out of pokemon, make all pokemon pretty much on the same level with each being better in certain stats, and let players pick their team from the start and play through that way. You probably get an hour of play from some (some people will find this fun), but ultimately catching pokemon has no use, battling doesn't really have a use, the exploration is lost because you have everything you want/need. Why even bother with the elite four if they're no harder, no more interesting than what you see at the first gym.

What you propose isn't bad design philosophy (in general). It's closer to what you'd see in games like CoD where there are different environments, skill, maps, missions, and competition (similar to DMC).

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

I mean, why MR restrictions need to exist is another issue entirely (I don't think they need to exist), but even in a world with they do, I think it would be perfectly okay to impose MR restrictions on more difficult weapons, even if all are at the same overall power level. The Lenz, for example, is capable of killing the player if they use it wrong, so it may not necessarily be the first thing to give to a newer player. If you find one weapon you like more than anything else, you should be able to stick to it for as long as you like, but so long as there are different weapons that each offer a different aesthetic and playstyle, there will always be a reason for most players to try them out (it also doesn't hurt that they all contribute MR). What I'm proposing also avoids the much more pertinent issue of only a small pool of weapons being used by higher-end players, simply because they are better than all others. Unlike the issue being discussed above, this is not a hypothetical problem either; it is a thing that exists right now, and is intrinsic to the feature you are defending.

But the other non used weapons are just MR fodder none the less.

You are right some high-end players (if not a majority) do in fact use the strongest weapon they can find, but that is not everyone. There are warframes that are miles better than others, but some tend to use what they enjoy more so than what's good.

 

I'm not refuting that it would be nice to have a level playing field, but the way you want to go about it involves removing a good chunk of player investment. It's one thing to design a game with that in mind, it's another to try to rework warframe into that.

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

It wouldn't be the first controversial decision DE would make, and I don't think it even needs to involve nerfs, so much as just a game-wide power adjustment. We already saw massive weapon rebalances a mere few months ago, and most of them were pure buffs.

Yes, but as you've said there'd be no need for variants if the base weapons are all end game ready. Meaning they are basically removing what players have invested in. This opens them up to players asking (rightfully) for refunds because they technically didn't invest or pay for a skin on top of that you have the copies and extra formas and catalysts they've put into it. There's not enough faith or love in the world for them to survive this kind of decision/controversy.

They can't just dead stop and say "No more variants"  making Gram prime the last variant, because you run into the issue of justifying a non variant weapon being at the same level as one with a variant?

 

Again, I'd have 0 qualms and agree 100000000% IF variants weren't a thing already.

Making Charmander be on on the same playing field as a Blastoise out of the blue is stupefying.  "It's just weird to have the MK-1 Furis be the same as a prime" meaning: it's illogical and non-progressive in this instance. Now to have the Mk-1 Furis be on the same level as the normal Pyranna, less of an issue IMO. 

 

Meta will not vanish even in the instance you described, if every weapon was on the same playing field: The Lenz, Ignis, Amprex, Ogris, Plasmor, [something] could potentially clog the arteries of the game's elite because they affect more than a single target by default, ya know. 

 

 

 

If they're gonna blow up a system, their effort should be more geared toward meaningful damage types and enemies such that it takes multiple people (or weapons since we have 3)/damage types are required to kill more difficult enemies. This WOULD mean making all variants leveled (I.E: tigris not winning because it has a billion damage). I want elemental combinations to be a team based, multi weapon thing. Primary has toxin, secondary has cold. Tactical swapping to proc viral sorta thing.

( Like...we want the same thing, but I don't think variants need to be abolished into skins for it to be accomplished and you do xD it's making me laugh hysterically).

[Teridax68]

2 minutes ago, Synpai said:

Because it would be like playing Killing Floor 2 except you only have end game weapons. Games need that feeling of progress and goals otherwise they fail to be games.

But we have a ton of games with no vertical progression that are endlessly replayable. Look at Team Fortress 2, or Overwatch, among many other examples. Games do not need vertical power to make the player feel like they're progressing. If you want to experience the fantasy of starting out as a weakling and working your way up the hierarchy, there are plenty of other games that cater to this already, Warframe is simply not one of them.

2 minutes ago, Synpai said:

You don't give your players something to chase and they will walk away.

I have played this game for literal hundreds of hours, and never once did I do so to get better weapons. I crafted weapons, hunted mods, and progressed through the game by expanding my options, not by going for the biggest gun. If I was in this game only to get the strongest gear, I would've stopped the moment I got the Tigris Prime and Galatine Prime. The fact that nobody does the same I think is already indicative that players do not play Warframe to get the strongest weapons, particularly since newer players are the least likely to know what the strongest weapons are to begin with.

2 minutes ago, Synpai said:

Take the leveling and evolutions out of pokemon, make all pokemon pretty much on the same level with each being better in certain stats, and let players pick their team from the start and play through that way. You probably get an hour of play from some (some people will find this fun), but ultimately catching pokemon has no use, battling doesn't really have a use, the exploration is lost because you have everything you want/need. Why even bother with the elite four if they're no harder, no more interesting than what you see at the first gym.

Warframes are not Pokémon. There is no Magikarp warframe that is intended to be crap until you level them up a hundred times. Warframes are elite warriors feared across the entire Origin System, and you start out as one from day one. Warframe and Pokémon are two very different games that tell very different stories, and do not resemble each other in any aspect of gameplay. This is about as effective a juxtaposition as asking for immersive dialogue options in Doom, just because those exist in games like Mass Effect.

2 minutes ago, Synpai said:

What you propose isn't bad design philosophy (in general). It's closer to what you'd see in games like CoD where there are different environments, skill, maps, missions, and competition (similar to DMC).

Yes, and CoD is a game designed to be endlessly replayable. Meanwhile, Pokémon is a linear game with a clear-cut start and finish. By your very own arbitrary examples, it would make more sense to take design elements from a multiplayer game that emphasizes balance and replayability, over a largely singleplayer game that has far more limited replay value. 

2 minutes ago, Synpai said:

But the other non used weapons are just MR fodder none the less.

Yes, and that is a reason to buff them, so that they can compete with current good weapons. Why not do this?

2 minutes ago, Synpai said:

You are right some high-end players (if not a majority) do in fact use the strongest weapon they can find, but that is not everyone. There are warframes that are miles better than others, but some tend to use what they enjoy more so than what's good.

Except warframes are tools made with specific niches, so unless a frame is really poorly designed, or simply doesn't fit a desirable niche (e.g. Nyx after the fall of CC), it will always have a purpose. You yourself admitted that MR fodder weapons exist, so why pretend here that weapons are all a simple matter of choice? There are clearly weapons that are picked more than others, and that is due to them being statistically stronger.

2 minutes ago, Synpai said:

I'm not refuting that it would be nice to have a level playing field, but the way you want to go about it involves removing a good chunk of player investment. It's one thing to design a game with that in mind, it's another to try to rework warframe into that.

Where? Please point to the exact part of my suggestion that proposes to remove player investment. On the contrary, I advocated for more options to fine-tune weapons, so that player investment would be met directly with an increased capacity to tailor a weapon to one's desired playstyle. If increasing a weapon's power is the only thing you consider to be "player investment" then yes, I am proposing to remove that, as I don't think it's considered significant player investment for most players.

2 minutes ago, Synpai said:

Yes, but as you've said there'd be no need for variants if the base weapons are all end game ready. Meaning they are basically removing what players have invested in. This opens them up to players asking (rightfully) for refunds because they technically didn't invest or pay for a skin on top of that you have the copies and extra formas and catalysts they've put into it. There's not enough faith or love in the world for them to survive this kind of decision/controversy.

This is pure fearmongering that goes directly against prior examples. We've had Excalibur Umbra offer an Excalibur on par with Prime (better, even), and that caused only minimal complaints. The beta Vandal weapons were released to the public, and only a few people complained on the forums. Several weapons over the years got reworked or nerfed, and players barely complained about having to re-Forma them, or switch to a new weapon. Even now, we're getting a massive rework to melee that will completely upheave the Riven mod economy as we know it, an economy where some mods trade for several thousands of plat apiece, and virtually nobody is complaining about that. You are literally the only person I have ever seen complain about the possibility of weapon variants being combined into a single, more viable and more moddable weapon, with a greater assortment of skins.

2 minutes ago, Synpai said:

They can't just dead stop and say "No more variants"  making Gram prime the last variant, because you run into the issue of justifying a non variant weapon being at the same level as one with a variant?

Has fashion frame suddenly ceased to be important? Already, Primes are meant to be significant visual upgrades to the original frame, and for a time were not even intended to add power, as they instead had altered polarities. Prime frames have only marginally better stat bonuses that aren't the reason why players go for them anyway, and prime weapons themselves are meant to be cooler-looking versions of the originals. Even if Prime Access was purely a matter of cosmetics, players would still buy packs in droves, as they have in the past.

2 minutes ago, Synpai said:

Again, I'd have 0 qualms and agree 100000000% IF variants weren't a thing already.

Variants being sidegrades, rather than straight upgrades to the originals, are "a thing already". Your conclusion here is not a matter of analysis, but one of personal preference.

2 minutes ago, Synpai said:

Making Charmander be on on the same playing field as a Blastoise out of the blue is stupefying.  "It's just weird to have the MK-1 Furis be the same as a prime" meaning: it's illogical and non-progressive in this instance. Now to have the Mk-1 Furis be on the same level as the normal Pyranna, less of an issue IMO. 

Illogical how? Again, this is a sci-fi fantasy game about magic space ninjas and immortal god children. How exactly can you expect to honestly talk about what is "illogical" or "non-progressive" in this kind of setting? Did we even play the same game?

2 minutes ago, Synpai said:

Meta will not vanish even in the instance you described, if every weapon was on the same playing field: The Lenz, Ignis, Amprex, Ogris, Plasmor, [something] could potentially clog the arteries of the game's elite because they affect more than a single target by default, ya know. 

Sure, metas could arise depending on what's being favored, but that's not an excuse not to level the playing field when there are clear differences in relative power. Already, among the weapons that do get picked, there's tremendous variety between shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, beam weapons, and so on, which suggests that if every other weapon were brought to par, they'd also find their place among whichever players who like their feel and aesthetic.

2 minutes ago, Synpai said:

If they're gonna blow up a system, their effort should be more geared toward meaningful damage types and enemies such that it takes multiple people (or weapons since we have 3)/damage types are required to kill more difficult enemies. This WOULD mean making all variants leveled (I.E: tigris not winning because it has a billion damage). I want elemental combinations to be a team based, multi weapon thing. Primary has toxin, secondary has cold. Tactical swapping to proc viral sorta thing.

If you want to suggest a rework to the game's entire combat system, feel free to do so, but I fail to see why you would go to such lengths just to justify a game where certain weapons are intentionally designed not to be played durably. As it stands, the scope of this argument thus far has been purely one of weapons and their stats, and what I'm suggesting covers that without going into damage types or "more difficult enemies" (which enemies do you expect to be difficult? Are they difficult now?).

2 minutes ago, Synpai said:

( Like...we want the same thing, but I don't think variants need to be abolished into skins for it to be accomplished and you do xD it's making me laugh hysterically).

It does not take a genius to realize that when weapon A exists, and weapon B is weapon A with better stats, weapon A will not be worth picking. What you are advocating is to have the pool of viable weapons in the game be less than the pool of weapons offered to the player, and thus to litter the game with that much garbage. You speak of refunds, but what about the players who got tricked into buying a trash weapon that looked cool? Where's their plat refund? Why advocate for such imbalance when improper balancing due to vertical power is the single biggest problem with the current game? You may find my proposals laughable, but what I'm suggesting is something many, many other players have pointed out over the years, pertaining to problems DE themselves have admitted to. It is you who are in the vocal minority in advocating for deliberate power creep.

[Synpai]

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

But we have a ton of games with no vertical progression that are endlessly replayable. Look at Team Fortress 2, or Overwatch, among many other examples. Games do not need vertical power to make the player feel like they're progressing. If you want to experience the fantasy of starting out as a weakling and working your way up the hierarchy, there are plenty of other games that cater to this already, Warframe is simply not one of them.

Do you know a PvE, multiplayer game that does this? I genuinelyam drawing a blank. In the LORE Warframes are extremely powerful, but as are the operators. Heck lore wise Venari should be unstoppable with that processor of a brain,but gameplay tells a different tale.

Now sure you can get taxi'd and trade to victory, but that's circumventing the "progression" of the game. The game starts you off with broken mods (it's attempt at making you "weak") it starts you off with the MK-1 Braton and Paris which are good at low levels, but on their own (no ability influence) at level 80+ pls no.

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I have played this game for literal hundreds of hours, and never once did I do so to get better weapons. I crafted weapons, hunted mods, and progressed through the game by expanding my options, not by going for the biggest gun. If I was in this game only to get the strongest gear, I would've stopped the moment I got the Tigris Prime and Galatine Prime. The fact that nobody does the same I think is already indicative that players do not play Warframe to get the strongest weapons, particularly since newer players are the least likely to know what the strongest weapons are to begin with.

I never said that the game WAS getting the strongest weapon, but you're farming to "expand your options," that IS something to chase. You're exploring an "unknown" space. Not really sure where this is coming from because I'm pretty sure I said this. But I don't think your experience (nor mine) are absolute, literally there was a time when event outcomes were decided purely on reward over the outcome, there are very much people who use the drive of "powerful new thing" to grind forward. Meanwhile SOME people gravitate to things like Meme-strike atterax, it's incredibly powerful yes, but there is a vast majority that don't bother because they'd rather be stylish with the Nami Solo:

10 hours ago, Synpai said:

You are right some high-end players (if not a majority) do in fact use the strongest weapon they can find, but that is not everyone. There are warframes that are miles better than others, but some tend to use what they enjoy more so than what's good.

.

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Warframes are not Pokémon. There is no Magikarp warframe that is intended to be crap until you level them up a hundred times. Warframes are elite warriors feared across the entire Origin System, and you start out as one from day one. Warframe and Pokémon are two very different games that tell very different stories, and do not resemble each other in any aspect of gameplay. This is about as effective a juxtaposition as asking for immersive dialogue options in Doom, just because those exist in games like Mass Effect.

We're talking about progression. They are very different games but this discussion is about progression. I implore you to re-evaluate the analysis.

 

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Quote

But the other non used weapons are just MR fodder none the less.

Yes, and that is a reason to buff them, so that they can compete with current good weapons. Why not do this?

This was in response to your comment that basically if all the weapons were balanced there would be no MR fodder. But if weapons still attribute to MR and a weapon doesn't meet a players personal preference. Even if it's as good as the one they have, to them it is fodder.

I really don't know how to explain it any better.

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Where? Please point to the exact part of my suggestion that proposes to remove player investment. On the contrary, I advocated for more options to fine-tune weapons, so that player investment would be met directly with an increased capacity to tailor a weapon to one's desired playstyle. If increasing a weapon's power is the only thing you consider to be "player investment" then yes, I am proposing to remove that, as I don't think it's considered significant player investment for most players.

 

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Again, I'd have 0 qualms and agree 100000000% IF variants weren't a thing already.

This is extremely, extremely important. If you make variants skins that is taking something that a player has grown to know and invest in and changing it's value. It's like if you won an award that got you a limited edition car but one day you wake up and it's actually your old car inside but the new appearance. Getting a brand new car inside and out is not the same as just getting a new car on the outside.

A new skin does not necessarily have the same value as a new warframe. Someone might shell out for a new warframe, but not value a new skin, so if the variant they bought changes into just a skin then the value of their investment changed (not everyone would feel that way, but some would).

 

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

We've had Excalibur Umbra offer an Excalibur on par with Prime (better, even), and that caused only minimal complaints.

These are both Variants

and some would disagree that it's better, You lose out on death orb energy (less of a bonus with not as much void content) and you're subject to "Awful AI"

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

The beta Vandal weapons were released to the public, and only a few people complained on the forums. Several weapons over the years got reworked or nerfed, and players barely complained about having to re-Forma them, or switch to a new weapon. Even now, we're getting a massive rework to melee that will completely upheave the Riven mod economy as we know it, an economy where some mods trade for several thousands of plat apiece, and virtually nobody is complaining about that.

I can at least speak on rivens. No one's complaining that it's getting changed because it was always "too good to be true" no one in their right mind looks at Sicarus and Galatine Prime with 5/5 dispo and go. "Yes invest 10000+ plat in a god riven that's gonna get changed eventually" in fact there are multiple threads that I've been apart of that criticize the riven economy.

DE have stated multiple times that they dropped the ball and were going to fix it, but even then I have seen people who roll and sell rivens religiously criticize this change, but from my experience they are the minority

 

On the rest of that I just don't think it's fair to say that because you haven't seen it that it's not a qualm people have or had. It's like you likely won't see any Valkyr rework threads since a chunk of people are pushing for Chroma, Titania, and Khora, but that doesn't mean people are happy with the changes Valkyr received (there was a massive megathread about that where people basically said what they had to say and well...that's all there is to do really...sometimes it's like screaming into a void). Doesn't mean people don't have complaints about her kit, but you will seldom see it among the post traffic unless you go looking for it specifically. Even if people agree...even if it's a valid idea or complaint...if it comes at the wrong time it will get buried by a hotter or more controversial topic. 

 

 

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

You are literally the only person I have ever seen complain about the possibility of weapon variants being combined into a single, more viable and more moddable weapon, with a greater assortment of skins.

 

Well yes because in my mind this is what I'm hearing:

I have I have a 6 forma chroma (or Gram)

I have 3 x 6 forma chroma (Gram) primes

Chroma prime becomes a skin....then what...all that time I spent leveling? Do I get the forma back? If I spent the time farming then that was a waste. If I traded for primed sets, then that was basically pointless, just threw away plat?

 

In my Sybaris example I was trying to convey this, where Sybaris is the base of investment you build up to unlock the other variants and they are all side grades of one another.

You get another weapon say the gorgon, and it's a side grade to the sybaris, while it's variants are on the same level as Sybaris'

20 hours ago, Synpai said:

                  Dex Sybaris

Sybaris ->  Sybaris Primed

                   Prisma Sybaris (not real but go with it)

The Primed Sybaris bolsters the more balanced IPS, status and crit, the Dex: higher slash and crit at the cost of lower status a slight increased delay between shots, the prisma: higher puncture and leans more toward status than crit with a slightly decreased delay between shots. Where each of the Sybari share polarities and you're merely selecting which "form/evolution" to use. To counteract the decreased forma usage we could then buy config slots that let us re-polarize.

This is what I was trying to convey What I'm trying to convey is that they are not 4 different weapons they are 1 weapon with 4 different forms (HENCE ALL THE POKEMON REFERENCES) quite literally the same as you except I'm fine with stat changes for different forms:

10 hours ago, Synpai said:

Like...we want the same thing, but I don't think variants need to be abolished into skins for it to be accomplished and you do

Literally. We want the same thing as I've said far too many times.Take the variants out of the equation...I want all the weapons to be on par with one another.

Add variants to the equation: I want all weapon variants to be on par with one another.

Literally it's the same with the exception that you want progression to be modding as opposed to "evolving" (like pokemon), which is what I'm suggesting variants become .

 

For me: You get a sybaris, farm primed parts to unlock Evolution A, Get gifted Evolution B from the anniversary, buy Evolution C from Baro. Sure each evolution is stronger than the original, but they should all be on the same level.

 

All I'm suggesting is that you should be able to work for Evolution B and C for all weapons instead of waiting for DE to make it.

Where ALLLLLL the Evolutions are of the same strength as any other, but different

 

I.e: If I like the Tysis and forma it up then farm up mutations or a variant. It's the same weapon,  but better than it was originally and on the same level as any other side arm variant that another player decides to pursuit, but serves a different purpose. Variants in this game aren't always wholly positive either, some lose ammo, gain reload speed, etc.

I'm not condoning someone going off and making a Lenz vandal with 20% extra crit chance and 20% extra damage and throwing away their old Lenz. No I'm looking at the Lenz Vandal as someone who owns the Lenz, put time into unlocking another form (but it's the same weapon, not two different) for it with possibly more damage and crit, but 1-2 shots. 

 

I'm looking for away for any singular weapon to progress to a stronger point through the players actions.

 

You are right it is not needed. You could delete the existence of all other forms and just do the first part of what I said." [make] all the weapons be on par with one another." This is what you want.

But then you want that modular CoD system where you slap on X and it increases your fire rate, but decreases your mag size or increases your reload speed.

 

These are not mutually exclusive systems you can do both.

You get the crafting and investment oriented side that you can then tweak.

Do one, or the other or both. It doesn't matter, if done correctly it will have the same result.

 

The only difference is your method involves uprooting foundation of the game and hoping players are adaptive enough to want to stay.

 

I do feel that you lose "The Chase" when you do this though. Which is why I'm wondering of a PvE, multiplayer game that doesn't give the player vertical progression, because as I've noted games like TF2, CoD, and Overwatch have a competitive aspect that makes skill and knowledge progression. Some offer mastery skins as a reward for commitment, but the skin is not progression. Getting the skin doesn't have an effect on you getting better at the game, though by that time you SHOULD be. 

That is what I'm trying to figure out, where does progression come into this implementation? You've told me about variation, tweaking the stats, but I'm inquiring about progression.

If they're all at the same level are they all designed to take on level 1 enemies? Level 80 enemies? are mods reworked to allow players to match higher content? 

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Illogical how? Again, this is a sci-fi fantasy game about magic space ninjas and immortal god children. How exactly can you expect to honestly talk about what is "illogical" or "non-progressive" in this kind of setting? Did we even play the same game?

It's possible for something to be illogical and non progressive regardless of setting. It's a game: design or even story can be illogical and have issues with flow of progression. There are many illogical and non progressive decisions that have occured in warframe. (I'm just reiterating myself agian)The fact that the Lenz (a non variant) surpasses weapons WITH variants like the Dex Afuris is not the most progressive design, but they had the problem of MR not mattering for quite some time.

(some) Players were buying Soma Primes at MR 1

(some) Players got what they wanted and stopped at MR 7~10

This was their way to incentivize players to "Catch em all" and climb the ranks; but some people still stop at ~MR16 to where they meet the requirements of everything.

 

But if alllll the weapons are on the same level this goes out the window. As you've said the MR restrictions may not need to exist, so why climb in MR? 

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Even if Prime Access was purely a matter of cosmetics, players would still buy packs in droves, as they have in the past.

Debatable, there's no way to know if they would maintain the same quantity of purchases. Heck there are people that don't want to spend money on the current PA. 

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Variants being sidegrades, rather than straight upgrades to the originals, are "a thing already". Your conclusion here is not a matter of analysis, but one of personal preference.

I don't know what you're referencing as variants being side-grades to the original. Please give me an example so I have a point of reference.

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

t does not take a genius to realize that when weapon A exists, and weapon B is weapon A with better stats, weapon A will not be worth picking. What you are advocating is to have the pool of viable weapons in the game be less than the pool of weapons offered to the player, and thus to litter the game with that much garbage. You speak of refunds, but what about the players who got tricked into buying a trash weapon that looked cool? Where's their plat refund? Why advocate for such imbalance when improper balancing due to vertical power is the single biggest problem with the current game? You may find my proposals laughable, but what I'm suggesting is something many, many other players have pointed out over the years, pertaining to problems DE themselves have admitted to. It is you who are in the vocal minority in advocating for deliberate power creep.

I'm not sure how you got that I was laughing at your proposals, there is some error in communication happening here. I said I find it laughable that we are suggesting the same exact thing, but two different methods. I have given you nothing but respect and value through-out this discussion. I have sad on multiple occasions that I DO NOT DISAGREE with the goal.

 

You don't need variants, correct. This is me in agreement.

HOWEVER, warframe HAS variants, HAS a system for farming parts, etc.

I've been talking about problems I see with the implementation as I understood it.

 

How do you implement this change to make Pyranna prime a skin. Does it lose it's unique effect? Does the Pyranna (normal) gain the effect? Do we lose the mastery since the primes and wraiths technically aren't weapons anymore? Do they undo the codex entries? How do any of these weapons compete with zaws (the intrinsic value that something you make has on top of unique arcanes)? How do you handle weapons like the Euphona Prime (no normal form)? Do relics drop skins instead (meaning a good chunk of the parts need to get removed)? Rivens too would all need to (as they should've been in the first place) be something a player can unlock on any weapon via dedication and convey mechanical changes like proc-ing chain lighting on third strikes (a very welcomed change).

A player has resources at their disposal. You know how many times I see something cool (in real life) and research reviews on it? There are many places for them to get information before buying things. If I had a dime for every time someone posted on the forums or asked directly

Compare that to you ordering a black T-shirt (listed as an actual shirt), but instead end up with a sticker of a shirt.

 

"If X was worth investing in" I'd be rich

On this note, I feel I should stop you before you say "They wouldn't need to do this if all the weapons were worth investing in"

Because as I've said before personal preference plays a factor just as much as slot limitation for players that play purely free, not to mention as you increase the number of weapons you run the risk of decreasing the standard deviation of difference between weapons. For someone like me I have slots to last a life time, so I can try any and everything. Others could still run into the need to ask or research if it's worth investing in a new weapon due to slot or time limitations

Sure every Pokemon in the game is viable in casual content, but who sits there and levels every single pokemon in the game to 100?

Edited October 5, 2018 by Synpai

[Fallen_Echo]

Oh my god, thats a lot if stuff there...

This is gonna take sometime to read, but soo far i like these ideas.

 

[Teridax68]

9 hours ago, Synpai said:

Do you know a PvE, multiplayer game that does this? I genuinelyam drawing a blank. In the LORE Warframes are extremely powerful, but as are the operators. Heck lore wise Venari should be unstoppable with that processor of a brain,but gameplay tells a different tale.

Warframes are not simply powerful in the lore, they're incredibly powerful in-game too. Attempting to shift the goalposts does not prevent the fact that there are plenty of multiplayer games out there that feature progression and replayability without resorting to raw power increases.

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Now sure you can get taxi'd and trade to victory, but that's circumventing the "progression" of the game. The game starts you off with broken mods (it's attempt at making you "weak") it starts you off with the MK-1 Braton and Paris which are good at low levels, but on their own (no ability influence) at level 80+ pls no.

Broken mods exist to give players access to reduced versions of mods that they'd otherwise take a lot of time to obtain. Even so, it is a system many players complain about, because it pushes newer players to sink what precious few resources they have into intentionally inferior items. This is an inevitable consequence of any system that offers deliberately bad, yet upgradeable gear to newcomers.

I also still really don't get the "pls no" behind this: what is wrong with having a starter weapon that you could take all the way to high-level content? Would it not in fact be a cool power fantasy to take the weapon you've had from the very beginning of the game, and be able to successfully carry it to end-game content? Why deny people this fantasy?

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I never said that the game WAS getting the strongest weapon, but you're farming to "expand your options," that IS something to chase. You're exploring an "unknown" space. Not really sure where this is coming from because I'm pretty sure I said this.

Your central argument here is that the only reason people go for newer weapons is because they want more power, an argument that is patently wrong. If people go for newer weapons regardless of power, simply because they're different, then your entire argument here falls apart, as that is an implicit admission that vertical power increases are neither essential nor even important to progression in Warframe.

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But I don't think your experience (nor mine) are absolute, literally there was a time when event outcomes were decided purely on reward over the outcome, there are very much people who use the drive of "powerful new thing" to grind forward.

Neither of our experiences are absolute, but I'm nonetheless proposing a model that allows for everyone to enjoy any weapon they'd like, whereas you are advocating to deliberately make certain weapons weak, because reasons. Under my system, whichever strong weapon you'd like would still be strong; under the system you propose, a newer player could see a cool-looking weapon, buy it, then realize it's crap and burn out from the deception, all because someone decided that that weapon needed or deserved to be bad. This already happens, and many players have criticized the fundamental aspects of what you are suggesting here via criticism of the current game.

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Meanwhile SOME people gravitate to things like Meme-strike atterax, it's incredibly powerful yes, but there is a vast majority that don't bother because they'd rather be stylish with the Nami Solo:

Show me exactly who plays the Nami Solo to any significant degree. You actually picked the perfect counterexample to your own argument, as machetes as an entire class of weapons are so notoriously bad that they hardly see play at all, even by those who may like their aesthetic.

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We're talking about progression. They are very different games but this discussion is about progression. I implore you to re-evaluate the analysis.

I suggest you re-evaluate your own arguments first, as it feels like much of them have been stemming from some visceral, emotional reaction, and a misplaced attachment to trite game features, rather than a proper analysis of Warframe and its problems. Again, different games have different systems precisely because those systems accommodate the fantasy the game is trying to deliver. To go back to my example, Doom is a game about a silent, faceless protagonist who doesn't need to interact in any way other than demon-killing; to suggest dialogue options for the Doom Slayer would therefore be to fundamentally misunderstand the fantasy of playing the character, and the game itself. Similarly, Warframe is a game where the player character is, right from the beginning, a millenia-old demigod warrior, and what follows is a journey of discovery, both from without and from within. It is not a game about a neophyte who ascends in power; right from the start the player has already participated in some of the in-game universe's most destructive wars, and come out victorious. Whichever improvements the player experiences come from them uncovering secrets about themselves, their past and the world, and applying that newfound knowledge. The only lasting consequence of vertical power progression in the game has been power creep, which has had a visible, detrimental impact to the game. The fact that the latter is what you stand for, rather than the former, to me suggests either a critical misunderstanding of the game's core, or a deliberate refusal to understand, all for the sake of a cheap dopamine drip that can be found in virtually every other MMO.

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This was in response to your comment that basically if all the weapons were balanced there would be no MR fodder. But if weapons still attribute to MR and a weapon doesn't meet a players personal preference. Even if it's as good as the one they have, to them it is fodder.

To them, being the critical difference here. Currently, there are many weapons that are universally MR fodder, simply because they are so weak that to earnestly use them would be to intentionally hamstring one's own effectiveness. I am not advocating for a framework in which literally every player finds literally every weapon viable; so long as each weapon has its place and can be used effectively, that much is sufficient.

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I really don't know how to explain it to you in a way that you'll understand.

It's not a question of understanding here, it's one of disagreement. It's not difficult to understand where you're coming from, I just wish you'd look past the surface-level attractiveness of vertical progression and see that, ultimately, it's fundamentally incompatible with a design philosophy intended to maximize replayability and player choice. In fact, to a large degree I feel like it is you who do not understand where I'm coming from, as you cannot seem to even conceive of a world in which the Furis, MK-1 or otherwise, can compete on equal footing with the Pyrana, Prime or otherwise. If there is one thing I do not understand, it is your desire to intentionally weaken weapons you do not play, or at the very least keep them weak: how does this benefit you? How does this benefit anyone? Why push for a system that inevitably leads to imbalance, false choices, and disappointment?

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This is extremely, extremely important. If you make variants skins that is taking something that a player has grown to know and invest in and changing it's value. It's like if you won an award that got you a limited edition car but one day you wake up and it's actually your old car inside but the new appearance. Getting a brand new car inside and out is not the same as just getting a new car on the outside.

But we're not talking about a different car, we're talking about the same car and a new paintjob. Warframe isn't a game about purchasing better cars, it's a game about maximizing one's arsenal. This is why people grind for the Braton or Lato Vandal, despite the fact that the two weapons are awful by today's standards. At the end of the day, if you wanted a status variant of a weapon, or a crit variant, you'd still have it, and you'd have it on a weapon that would be even more customizable than before. Again, you are literally the only person I have seen framing the condensation of weapon variants as catastrophic. If you want to argue that you personally dislike the idea, go right ahead, but as it stands you're trying to generalize your opinion in a situation where there is no evidence of anyone else sharing it.

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A new skin does not necessarily have the same value as a new warframe. Someone might shell out for a new warframe, but not value a new skin, so if the variant they bought changes into just a skin then the value of their investment changed (not everyone would feel that way, but some would).

Which person would that be? Again, you're not buying a new warframe, you're buying the same warframe with cooler looks. That is the entire point of Prime Access, and the community as a whole places immense value upon fashion. At the end of the day, you don't lose anything either: you'd still be able to take that same frame, using the same build, with the same cosmetics you equipped, and play in exactly the same way you did before. The same can be said for weapon variants if they were also condensed. You are lamenting a hypothetical loss that would simply not exist.

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These are both Variants

and some would disagree that it's better, You lose out on death orb energy (less of a bonus with not as much void content) and you're subject to "Awful AI"

They are "variants" with identical stats, and the only real difference in gameplay being that Excal Umbra can move independently. Excal Umbra looks better than Prime, and does slightly more things than Prime, yet ultimately all of these are simply cosmetic upgrades to Excalibur. If Umbra were merely an Excal skin, you'd be able to equip him and have the exact same gameplay as before. It's not a matter of choosing between one and the other to fine-tune one's gameplay, particularly since Umbra was released because Excal Prime is inaccessible to most players.

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I can at least speak on rivens. No one's complaining that it's getting changed because it was always "too good to be true" no one in their right mind looks at Sicarus and Galatine Prime with 5/5 dispo and go. "Yes invest 10000+ plat in a god riven that's gonna get changed eventually" in fact there are multiple threads that I've been apart of that criticize the riven economy.

So why change your tune here? If you and many others can accept that 2k+ plat Rivens may suddenly become worthless overnight, why catastrophize condensing weapon variants, where many of them were never even obtainable by plat in the first place?

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DE have stated multiple times that they dropped the ball and were going to fix it.

But they released Riven mods anyway, with a deliberate intent to stimulate the plat economy, and in spite of how terribly designed they are as a whole. At one point, DE padded the game out with reskined, statted-up versions of the same weapon, because it was an economical way of adding content to a game that needed it desperately. They did the same with reskinned warframes, and only later made them statistical upgrades from their predecessors. Just because DE did something does not mean that thing has to remain the same forever, and the fact that you recognize this for one part of the game, but not another, perplexes me. 

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On the rest of that I just don't think it's fair to say that because you haven't seen it that it's not a qualm people have or had. 

Sure, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but you are attempting to make a general point here based on the notion that players as a whole would react badly to my suggestions, which requires evidence to support. Had you admitted that you personally disliked my ideas, regardless of the opinion of other players, that would've been absolutely fine, as you are entitled to your opinion, but that is not what you are arguing, hence why I think it's perfectly fair to ask you to substantiate your point when you claim that the collective playerbase is on your side here.

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Well yes because in my mind this is what I'm hearing:

I have I have a 6 forma chroma (or Gram)

I have 3 x 6 forma chroma (Gram) primes

Chroma prime becomes a skin....then what...all that time I spent leveling? Do I get the forma back? If I spent the time farming then that was a waste. If I traded for primed sets, then that was basically pointless?

You could either gain the polarities you had on the base frame/weapon, or more simply could have your Forma refunded, yes. In the end, you would still be able to play the exact same frame or weapon, with the exact same visuals and gameplay as before. If the literal only reason you worked towards that Prime was for the marginal stat increases, then yes, your endeavor was pointless, though it would always have been to begin with. If you personally believe 75 more base armor and 50 more base Energy is worth a hundred bucks, or whichever equivalent, that is entirely on you, and that is a bonus you would already have obtained and enjoyed for whichever time that would last.

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In my Sybaris example I was trying to convey this, where Sybaris is the base of investment you build up to unlock the other variants and they are all side grades of one another.

But that's not how it works. The Sybaris is unlocked in one way, the Dex Sybaris is unlocked in another, while also being offered completely for free to the player, despite being an upgrade over the original. There is no "build up" here, you build towards a weapon that is already inferior to another that is given to you. What you picked is, in fact, the perfect counterexample to this "build up" you're suggesting.

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You get another weapon say the gorgon, and it's a side grade to the sybaris, while it's variants are on the same level as Sybaris'

The Gorgon is a Sybaris variant now? 🤔

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Literally. We want the same thing as I've said far too many times.Take the variants out of the equation...I want all the weapons to be on par with one another.

Except you don't, you have deliberately advocated on numerous occasions for some weapons to be weaker than the others, on the grounds that it wouldn't be believable otherwise. Take here, for example:

19 hours ago, Synpai said:

Yes I am in the sense I mentioned before:

If your "Master Spear (pyrana prime)" is doing 300000000 damage.

 

You should not pick up a basic stick (MK-1 Furis) and do that same damage.

That is different than say picking up or crafting/upgrading(preferably) to a "Diamond Stick" that does 300000000 damage.

So tell me, how can you argue in good faith that you want a balanced arsenal? If you don't, then we clearly do not want the same thing.

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Add variants to the equation: I want all weapon variants to be on par with one another.

What, so every weapon now needs a variant to be useful? Does that mean every weapon without a variant needs to be released in a deliberately underpowered state until it inevitably gets its reskin? Again, as per the above, MK-1 is a variant of the Furis, yet you still want it to be weaker than everything else, so what you're saying here isn't even true either.

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Literally it's the same with the exception that you want progression to be modding as opposed to "evolving" (like pokemon), which is what I'm suggesting variants become .

I want progression to be about options, rather than power, because gameplay comes from the former, not the latter. Your proposed model for "evolving" weapons is precisely what has caused so much power creep in this game already, as we can already see with Primes. I do not understand how you fail to see this.

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For me:

You get a sybaris, farm primed parts to unlock Evolution A, Get gifted Evolution B from the anniversary, buy Evolution C from Baro. Sure each evolution is stronger than the original, but they should all be on the same level.

This is what I was trying to convey What I'm trying to convey is that they are not 4 different weapons they are 1 weapon with 4 different forms (HENCE ALL THE POKEMON REFERENCES) quite literally the same as you except I'm fine with stat changes:

All I'm suggesting is that you should be able to work for Evolution B and C for all weapons.

Where ALLLLLL the Evolutions are of the same strength as any other, but different

But in the exact example you chose, you are gifted a superior version of a weapon that you otherwise build towards. How is this representative in any way of earning that increased power or working towards it? If you want to play Pokémon, by all means, play Pokémon, but what you are advocating for here is a model of balancing that deliberately screws over newer players, by tricking them into either crafting or buying weapons that are obsolete by design. Pokémon in most games cannot be bought with real-life money once you own the game, but weapons can. How do you justify this unethical and intentionally deceptive design?

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I.e: If I like the Tysis and forma it up then farm up mutations or a variant. It's the same weapon,  but better than it was originally and on the same level as any other side arm variant that another player decides to pursuit, but serves a different purpose. Variants in this game aren't always wholly positive either, some lose ammo, gain reload speed, etc.7

But why does it have to be stronger? Again, I am the one here advocating for sidegrade-type customization, you are the one pushing for a stratification of power, and for base weapons to be intentionally worse than some separately obtained variant. Again, if your "mutation" system only offered customization that would keep your weapon on the same level of power, and would instead focus on tailoring its playstyle (in which case, what makes it any different from the modding system?), then I'd be all for it, but as it stands you have insisted at length on making weapons explicitly more powerful than each other.

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I'm not condoning someone going off and making a Lenz vandal with 20% extra crit chance and 20% extra damage and that's that. No I'm looking at the Lenz Vandal as possibly more damage and crit, but 1-2 shots. 

Okay, and why have two weapons when you could simply have one weapon, moddable for both crit and status? Why go for the more complicated and opaque system when a much simpler and more effective solution exists?

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You are right it is not needed. You could delete the existence of all other forms and just do the first part of what I said." [make] all the weapons be on par with one another." This is what you want.

But then you want that modular CoD system where you slap on X and it increases your fire rate, but decreases your mag size or increases your reload speed.

And this is bad... why? Again, I'm not advocating for a pure CoD-like system, if you'll look through my posts you'll see that I've proposed an entirely different system in the past that would be much closer to the modding system we have now. In either case, though, you seem to be taking issue with forcing the player to make tradeoffs for the power they want, and the question you have continually avoided answering is why you dislike that notion so much.

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These are not mutually exclusive systems you can do both.

You get the crafting and investment oriented side that you can then tweak.

Do one, or the other or both. It doesn't matter, if done correctly it will have the same result.

Except with the system you're proposing, you end up with an entire underclass of weapons whose purpose from the very beginning is to be redundant. I am proposing to eliminate this flaw, yet for some reason that is a flaw you consider positive, necessary even to the game.

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I do feel that you lose "The Chase" when you do this though. That is what I'm trying to figure out, where does progression come into this implementation? You've told me about variation, tweaking the stats, but I'm inquiring about progression.

The progression I'm talking about is progression we already have. As the player progresses through the game, they unlock more weapons, more frames, and more mods, and that expands their range of gameplay. This is progression in Warframe, and vertical power plays no part in it, which is why the whole notion of "The Chase" being tied to that is bogus.

Just to give a basic idea of the progression I'm suggesting: supppose you unlock a weapon. Right off the bat, that weapon comes with a basic, multi-rank mod that, at its existing rank, takes up all of the weapon's mod capacity, while offering some bonus. As you progress through the game, you'd be able to find more mods for that specific weapon, each of which could provide its own bonus, so that you'd be able to downrank your existing mod(s) in order to rank these ones up. In some cases, some mods could be downranked below 0, presenting a malus to your weapon while giving out extra mod capacity. In this manner, you'd be able to fine-tune your weapon's playstyle, and make it accomplish whatever you'd want out of a variant, without needing to increase its power. Because you'd be able to fine-tune your weapon in increasingly more ways, you would therefore progress with that weapon, and be able to feel like you've mastered it, again without requiring some flat boost in power, or having to abandon it in favor of a new version with a different skin. In fact, being able to equip Prime, Vandal, Wraith, etc. skins on your weapons would simply be a part of this progression, allowing you to customize the weapon you've dedicate yourself to with more cosmetic options than before.

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If they're all at the same level are they all designed to take on level 1 enemies and the mods reworked to allow players to match that content?

With what I'm proposing, you would not even need levels, as an environment in which players remain on the same level of raw power is one where enemies themselves do not need stat increases to present a challenge. All enemies could have non-scaling health and damage, and while newer players would still find themselves more challenged due to their personal lack of experience, a sufficiently skilled player would be able to progress through the Star Chart without running into stat-based barriers. You could still have some progression in the sense of having the starting quests feature a smaller range of simpler enemies, before opening into a world with a much more complete roster, but otherwise this could be the basis of a system where all content across the game could forever avoid the problem of being trivial to veterans, or statistically inaccessible to even skilled newcomers.

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It's possible for something to be illogical and non progressive in this setting. It's a game, design or even story can be illogical and have issues with flow of progression. There are many illogical and non progressive decisions that have occured in warframe. (I'm just reiterating myself agian)The fact that the Lenz (a non variant) surpasses weapons WITH variants like the Dex Afuris is not the most progressive design, but they had the problem of MR not mattering for quite some time.

Sure, some things are illogical; weapons being equally powerful I don't think is one of them. To you, the concept of some weapons being as strong as your tricked-out Pyrana Prime may seem untenable, but to many more people, that is not a serious lore concern by any stretch, particularly since there is strictly nothing in the lore stating that weapon variants necessarily have to be stronger than the originals.

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(some) Players were buying Soma Primes at MR 1

(some) Players got what they wanted and stopped at MR 7~10

This was their way to incentivize players to "Catch em all" and climb the ranks.

When did players not do this? There has never been a time in Warframe's history where there wasn't an incentive to increase one's Mastery Rank, what we've seen in recent times is a reorganization of a weapon roster that up until recently was chaotic and heavily imbalanced. There is still a large degree of imbalance now, but at least there's an emergent methodology by which weapons can be brought up to modern standards of balance.

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But if alllll the weapons are on the same level this goes out the window. As you've said the MR restrictions may not need to exist, so why climb in MR? 

Why not? You are displaying your mastery, and even without weapon restrictions, there are plenty more advantages, namely increased trading ability, standing gain limits, Void Trace capacity, loadout space, and so on. As mentioned above, the simple notion of reaching a higher level of mastery has itself been a part of Warframe since its beginning, and a drive for players to rank up crappy weapons way beyond the stage at which they'd unlock all of the good stuff. The notion that players only started caring about MR when weapon restrictions got tightened is not in any way grounded in reality.

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Debatable, there's no way to know if they would maintain the same quantity of purchases. Heck there are people that don't want to spend money on the current PA.

Again, players have bought Prime Access packs even when they offered no power boosts. This is not a hypothetical, this is something that has already happened. The fact that some players don't buy PA now has exactly zero relevance to this fact.

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I don't know what you're referencing as variants being side-grades to the original. Please give me an example so I have a point of reference.

The Prisma Twin Gremlins are already a sidegrade to the normal Twin Gremlins, as is the Synoid Heliocor compared to the regular version. The original Prime frames did not have stat bonuses, but instead had altered polarities, and were still popular, as mentioned above.

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You really are not reading what I'm saying or maybe I'm just not conveying my point well enough. I said I find it laughable that we are suggesting the same exact thing, but two different methods. I have given you nothing but respect and value through-out this discussion. I have sad on multiple occasions that I do NOT disagree with the goal.

I have been reading exactly what you have been saying, which is why I don't look too kindly upon expressions like "it's making me laugh hysterically", in reference to my difference in opinion from yours, as respectful. In general, there have been several instances here of you claiming one thing, then the other, such as you here claiming that there is no disagreement between us, all while writing paragraph upon paragraph of repetitive argumentation on why you disagree with me. If you hadn't disagreed with me, you would not have chosen to derail your own thread into a debate on the value of vertical power, particularly since my initial reply expressed near-total agreement with your overall proposals, and only expressed a minor personal desire to avoid stat-ups and redundancy, and instead push for sidegrades and more in-depth customization. It is okay if people aren't 100% on board with every single idea you propose, and there shouldn't be a need to debate people over their own opinions. If you genuinely believe we are really in agreement on this, why continue to argue, and argue this much?

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You don't need variants, correct. This is me in agreement.

HOWEVER, warframe HAS variants, HAS a system for farming parts, etc.

I've been talking about problems I see with the implementation as I understood it.

And I am doing the same. I am not pretending Warframe does not have weapon variants, and in fact I am taking the system we have, analyzing it, and questioning why we need multiple versions of the same weapon in the first place, particularly versions that are statistically superior to weapons that can be bought with real-life money. What I am proposing is to start with what we have now, and move towards a system that would offer better customization and balance overall. Perhaps I may not have expressed myself clearly enough on this matter, but it doesn't seem like this is an aspect of my argument that has been fully understood in this exchange.

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How do you implement this change to make Pyranna prime a skin. Does it lose it's unique effect? Does the Pyranna (normal) gain the effect?

The base Pyrana should just gain the effect. There are a ton of weapons completely lacking in unique gameplay, the Pyrana being one of them, so why squander that opportunity?

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Do we lose the mastery since the primes and wraiths technically aren't weapons anymore? Do they undo the codex entries?

Sure, why not? In the end, even if you had every weapon, you'd still be at the top of the mastery rank tiers, so you'd still be at the very top of the recognition the game would have to offer. If players really want to retain their MR levels, an easy fix could just be to adjust mastery point requirements per rank to match the amount of MR lost. In many ways, this could be beneficial, as players wouldn't have to wait for Baro, Prime Vault, or special events to keep advancing in MR, and there would no longer be the tiny MR difference between Founders and non-Founders.

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How do any of these weapons compete with zaws (the intrinsic value that something you make has on top of unique arcanes)?

Weapons should be on par with zaws, I don't see why that would be any different. Arcanes themselves are simply mods under another name, and could simply be rolled into whichever new mod scheme gets proposed, or simply the one we have now.

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Do relics drop skins instead (meaning a good chunk of the parts need to get removed)? 

Yes? First off, there would be no need to remove any parts, since you could still farm and assemble all that you have now to unlock a corresponding skin. Beyond that, though, the relic system has also gained a lot of unpopularity over time due to its multiple layers of RNG. Reworking it would not be necessary to what I'm proposing here, but could certainly help alleviate some frustration, even if that frustration would itself be lessened in a world where Primes would no longer be necessary to advance in MR. In fact, even if Primes became skins purely obtainable through monetary purchases, it would still be acceptable under this new framework, as free-to-play players would no longer feel cheated out of power or additional gameplay. Effectively, what I'm suggesting could in fact boost sales for DE, as Primes would still be immensely desirable for their cosmetic value, yet could be sold even without an alternative grinding scheme to players who'd be encouraged to buy them, without feeling pressured to do so for minor gameplay reasons. It cleanly avoids the problem of paying for power, which current Prime Access does whenever a new weapon it offers is also grossly powercreeped (e.g. the Gram Prime now).

Edited October 5, 2018 by Teridax68

[Synpai]

2 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Warframes are not simply powerful in the lore, they're incredibly powerful in-game too. Attempting to shift the goalposts does not prevent the fact that there are plenty of multiplayer games out there that feature progression and replayability without resorting to raw power increases.

 

2 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Do you know a PvE, multiplayer game that does this? I genuinely am drawing a blank.

You're telling me it exists. I genuinely want to know what PvE games you're referring to. 

 

4 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

I also still really don't get the "pls no" behind this: what is wrong with having a starter weapon that you could take all the way to high-level content? Would it not in fact be a cool power fantasy to take the weapon you've had from the very beginning of the game, and be able to successfully carry it to end-game content? Why deny people this fantasy?

I'm not saying deny people the fantasy. That section wasn't about opinion that was explaining the way the game presents "progression" CURRENTLY. I know broken mods are bad, but in fact you start off weaker at the start of the game than you do later, that's all I'm explaining.

7 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Your central argument here is that the only reason people go for newer weapons is because they want more power, an argument that is patently wrong. If people go for newer weapons regardless of power, simply because they're different, then your entire argument here falls apart, as that is an implicit admission that vertical power increases are neither essential nor even important to progression in Warframe.

Where did I convey that this was my argument?

10 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Show me exactly who plays the Nami Solo to any significant degree. You actually picked the perfect counterexample to your own argument, as machetes as an entire class of weapons are so notoriously bad that they hardly see play at all, even by those who may like their aesthetic.

Someone that runs Pirate Hydroid or someone who plays cosplaying as Jack Sparrow in the relay. It's an example. There are plenty of people that use the Hema @Sakaira  , Furis (Cephalon Shy), Hate, Kunai, Glavies, Machetes. You name it. for no reason OTHER than because they want to or simply want to be anti-meta; because they have a goal that's not using the "best thing in the game" or they have found a value in it that's not necessarily DPS.

@Sakaira literally only uses infested weaponry. 

I'm not gonna go around tagging every YouTuber and player in the game that I run across that loves to use an off meta weapon; the people exist. Even if it's small they exist.

The Dark-Split Sword is far from terrible, but you don't see everyone using it

I absolutely love using it.

 

There are plenty of people that play Atlas just to live up a One Punch Man fantasy. Fun is subjective like that. It's a game, people will find reasons to use and do things I, personally, couldn't fathom. Doesn't invalidate them.

23 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

I really don't know how to explain it to you in a way that you'll understand.

You started replying before the edit. There's more clarity.

 

30 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

What, so every weapon now needs a variant to be useful? Does that mean every weapon without a variant needs to be released in a deliberately underpowered state until it inevitably gets its reskin? Again, as per the above, MK-1 is a variant of the Furis, yet you still want it to be weaker than everything else, so what you're saying here isn't even true either.

 

31 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Okay, and why have two weapons when you could simply have one weapon, moddable for both crit and status? Why go for the more complicated and opaque system when a much simpler and more effective solution exists?

Again you made it before the edit, but these confirm that there is in fact an error in understanding what I'm suggesting.

32 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

I have been reading exactly what you have been saying, which is why I don't look too kindly upon expressions like "it's making me laugh hysterically"

Because it reminds me of a Shakespearean play; the irony of this situation, the fact that we are basically saying the same thing, but you don't see it that way, the fact that I'm as calm as can be, but you interpret me as coming off as not is very funny to me, not the fact that we have differences.

I will have to draw a picture I feel for you to fully understand what I'm saying if the edit doesn't clarify. I'll properly respond to the rest afterwards.

[Teridax68]

37 minutes ago, Synpai said:

You're telling me it exists. I genuinely want to know what PvE games you're referring to. 

I have referred you already to multiplayer games that do not rely on vertical power to generate replayability. As has been pointed out, you are attempting to shift the goalposts to the argument here, as the multiplayer game being PvE-exclusive was not a part of the original argument. As such, insisting on an increasingly specific set of criteria, while ignoring the valid examples that have been presented to you already, all while absolutely not holding your own comparisons to the same standard (namely, by using Pokémon as a model of design Warframe should follow), comes across as disingenuous.

Quote

I'm not saying deny people the fantasy. That section wasn't about opinion that was explaining the way the game presents "progression" CURRENTLY. I know broken mods are bad, but in fact you start off weaker at the start of the game than you do later, that's all I'm explaining.

Except I am aware of this, and in fact I am proposing to change this, because even though this is how things are currently, this is not what I think things should be. I do not understand how you could be making this confusion on your own thread, where the entire purpose of your OP was to suggest changes to the game.

Quote

Where did I convey that this was my argument?

Here:

14 hours ago, Synpai said:

Because it would be like playing Killing Floor 2 except you only have end game weapons. Games need that feeling of progress and goals otherwise they fail to be games. 

You don't give your players something to chase and they will walk away.

So effectively, not even a day ago, you tried to convince me that Warframe, in fact any game out there, needed to give players vertical power progression, or else it would fail as a video game. That is a pretty strong statement to make, which is why it surprises me that you'd all of a sudden pretend you said nothing of the sort.

Quote

Someone that runs Pirate Hydroid or someone who plays cosplaying as Jack Sparrow in the relay. It's an example. There are plenty of people that use the Hema @Sakaira  , Furis (Cephalon Shy), Hate, Kunai, Glavies, Machetes. You name it. for no reason OTHER than because they want to or simply want to be anti-meta; because they have a goal that's not using the "best thing in the game" or they have found a value in it that's not necessarily DPS.

Okay, but these weapons are not purely aesthetic, they are meant to have gameplay uses as well. If the only purpose of an actual weapon is to be used for cosplaying in a Relay, then I see strictly no reason why that weapon shouldn't be buffed to be useful. In either case, the literal one other person you namedropped into this argument does not contradict the fact that there is a plethora of weapons in Warframe that see virtually no play.

Quote

The Dark-Split Sword is far from terrible, but you don't see everyone using it

I absolutely love using it.

How does this relate to anything that's been said? So the Dark Split-Sword has a niche, where it's okay, some people love it, and some don't. What is the takeaway from this?

Quote

There are plenty of people that play Atlas just to live up a One Punch Man fantasy. Fun is subjective like that. It's a game, people will find reasons to use and do things I, personally, couldn't fathom. Doesn't invalidate them.

Okay, but even with this very reasoning, if people enjoy playing Atlas, that is all the more reason to give him some more love through improvements to his stats and kit, since there's plenty of room for it. To start from the premise that some people like weak frames or weapons, and then leap to the conclusion that one must expressly avoid buffing weak frames or weapons, is a complete non-sequitur.

Quote

You started replying before the edit. There's more clarity.

Clarity where? Your edit did not change the meaning of what you've said, and I don't see why you would expect me to anticipate you rewriting your arguments post-scriptum in the first place.

Quote

Again you made it before the edit, but these confirm that there is in fact an error in understanding what I'm suggesting.

I find it rather disingenuous to claim that I "misunderstood" what you were suggesting, when the misunderstanding in question comes from you rewriting the text you posted here. If you feel you conveyed your arguments in such a way that you feel the need to rewrite them, and in such a manner that it changes their meaning, then it is you who are misunderstanding the very contents of your own argument. As it stands, once again I do not see what meaningful differences come from your edits, which you have incidentally utterly failed to mention in your point here.

Quote

Because it reminds me of a Shakespearean play; the irony of this situation, the fact that we are basically saying the same thing, but you don't see it that way, the fact that I'm as calm as can be, but you interpret me as coming off as not is very funny to me, not the fact that we have differences.

Again, I am not making any presumptions as to the nature of your character here, I am simply reading what you are giving me, and drawing conclusions purely from what you have written. As it stands, there is clearly a disagreement here, as you advocate vertical power progression, whereas I do oppose it: this was not in any way a major point in my first reply here, but was nonetheless a minor disagreement you chose to fixate upon, and argue extensively from there. This, coupled with the above, clearly shows that what your claims here are simply incorrect, and that if you truly believe we are in agreement on how to handle the power of weapons, then there has been a fundamental misunderstanding of my position.

Quote

I will have to draw a picture I feel for you to fully understand what I'm saying if the edit doesn't clarify. I'll properly respond to the rest afterwards.

You have already drawn a picture, and my understanding of your proposed model was never the issue here, as I examined and noted the issues with stratifying weapon variants relative to their originals already. To act as if the issue in this argument was my inability to understand a basic system, one that has been explained and discussed at length already, is condescending, and inherently disrespectful.

Edited October 5, 2018 by Teridax68

[DrBorris]

My raw feedback (before reading the comments):

Umbra and Internal Warframe Progression

• I am a bit mixed on the Umbra stuff you propose. What I hope for with future Umbra Warframes (if future "umbra" Warframes would even be called Umbra, in the Sacrifice it seemed like a specific name for that Dax soldier) would for them to be a testing ground to twist a Warframe into something different. Excalibur Umbra has Radial Howl instead of Blind, but I would put that to trying to keep Umbra Excalibur as close to base Excalibur as possible to keep him as a Prime 'replacement'. With Future 'Umbra' I would want to see a whole new take on their kit, or to see them overspecialize into one of the roles they already have. The dumb example is like to give 'umbra' Mag push instead of pull. Basically I would rather see 'umbras' be an expansion of the diversity of your arsenal rather than how powerful your arsenal is.
• However, I do think that Umbral mods should be expanded upon. I made a thread back when The Sacrifice came out proposing for an Umbral Forma to be a 5% drop chance from Lua Sentients, then have it require a Forma, 20k Kuva, 3 Radiant Eidolon Shards, 500 Void Traces, and 1 million Credits. Then have the Umbral polarity be a "universal polarity".
• However, given that Umbra and Umbral polarities are so tied to Tau, it may be best to see what DE has planned with the Sentients and the Tau system.

ESO, Scanning, Vandal Weapons and Simaris Standing

• Meh, as far as scanning and all that jazz, I think it would be best to keep Onslaught as it is. Adding some elite enemies, bosses, or what have you into the mix could be an interesting way to expand, but I think it would be best for ESO to stay as what is effectively a catch-up mechanic.
• I could see Simaris standing could convert from your score at like a 1 to 500 scale.
• As for the Vandal thing, I am going to leave my input on that stuff for the end.

Infested Weapon Progression and Helminth

• While I would love to see Helminth expanded upon, I don't see this as the way to do it. As for the weapon progression, that is going at the end with the Vandal stuff.

Peculiar Mods/ Dragon Keys as Artificial Difficulty Modifiers

• Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
• I really don't like artificial difficulty for the sake of difficulty, especially investing dev time into artificial difficulty. Peculiar mods are alright as they stand, I guess.
• Dragon Keys though, I could see those as being modifiers to new game modes for better loot. The whole Dragon Key, Derelict, Void, Vault shindig could use a big tie-in with a new game type. Something you kind of start brain-storming later on, so I'll finish my rant there.

The Void's New Purpose as a Bi-Weekly Challenge Tower

• It took me a few reads to fully get what you are going for here. Correct me if I am wrong, but you are proposing actually "blowing up the Void" into just these rotation "Challenge Tower"? If so... *strokes chin* that's an interesting idea that I am going to need to sleep on for a few days. I might really like it, or I might rather not have any Void reworks be so drastic.
• I am just going to quick hijack your thread and post my thirty second concept. Sorry in advance.
  • Rework the Void spawns into an inverse Fissure mission, where Corrupted enemies are normal spawn and Fissures form to bring in enemies from the rest of the star chart.
  • Add a "Void Vault" that can only be unlocked using Orokin Ciphers (things you get from Derelict Vaults). Inside the Vault is a Eidolon-esque Raid-style boss that drops some new set of Arcanes (old Arcane helmets?).
  • In endless missions, the Vault will reopen with another boss to kill after ten minutes without consuming any more Orokin Ciphers. Enemies levels increase increase by a flat 50 levels after every boss completion.
  • Using additional Ciphers (up to a max of 50) Increases the "tier" of the boss, giving access to a higher chance at the rarer Arcanes, as well as giving a chance to get multiple Arcanes.
  • The amount of Arcanes dropped is also affected by the average amount of Dragon Keys equipped in the party.
• Or... or, combine the two ideas. Bi-weekly set of missions, gain access by Orokin Ciphers (Four tiers, same as now, higher tiers require more Ciphers), get better rewards by using Dragon Keys. *strokes chin* Very interesting indeed...

Air Support & Arch Weapon Integration

• Well, we're getting Arch-weapons. Thinkin' before your time I see. The weapons will need some sort of balance pass though, as a maxed out Imperator Vandal has around half the DPS of Akstilleto Prime.
• Yes to Air support not being bound to a cosmetic (cough). I would actually be interested in seeing Landing Craft be somewhat moddable. Different Life Support are mods, maybe even team buffs along the lines of auras, cooldown mods for the life supports. Probably only like 4 mod slots though. That all said... Railjack. Knowing what DE's grand end-goal plans are for Railjack, truly customization Landing Craft would seem to be inevitable. 

For that weapon progression thing. I like where you are coming from, weapon Progression would be a way to 'progress' your power level. However, we (unfortunately) kind of already have a system in place that should be taking care of that... Rivens. The reason I hate Rivens is not because of what they are, it is because of what they could be. Rivens could be THE end-game weapon progression system, but DE was straight up lazy. Disposition based on popularity and RNG stats are, bluntly, the lazy way out. DE's lazy approach to Rivens is their greatest failure ever for me, I would rather ave the Viver nerfs and Rivens not be sh!t than where we are now.

What would in my eyes make for a better system would be to have weapon variants all have different characteristics besides better stats. The case study for this is the Latron series. Latron is a beginner weapon with all round stats. Latron Prime slows down the fire rate and increases the recoil. Then Latron Wraith makes it easier to wield and bumps up the fire rate. Each Latron feels different to use, and this is where I would like to see all weapon variants go. And while the variants would not be power balanced at stock, that is where Rivens would come into play (I would like to see disposition be variant specific, equipping a 'Latron' Riven on the different Latrons would give different stats based on their respective dispositions). To this point then, I would keep the introduction and crafting of weapon variants as it is now.

Getting a Riven should be a way to take any weapon and bring it to the same bar as every other weapon with a Riven. And you should do this through straight vertical progression and grind. No RNG, it should be like ranking up a mod but on steroids. I am a proponent of "mod infusion" where your Riven consumes your max ranked mods to add their stats to its own (multiplied by disposition for balance), but I am fair game for pretty much anything that isn't what we have now.

 

Now to read through the discussion...

[DrBorris]

Okay, first thing I am seeing is the talk about weapon balance... which I just so happened to disagree with entirely in my last post.

Because you all tried to show how you visioned a well balanced Warframe, I spent five min in PowerPoint (the superior image editing program) to visually show what I am going for.

Everything is independent, but at the end of the day Rivens bring it all together. Also notice happy balance is not perfect, balance is never going to be perfect, it just has to let everything be viable.

 

One thing I should point out is that this is explicitly weapon progression, not power progression. The main form of power progression is not even weapon progression to begin with, it is the mods. Mods are where balance goes to the toilet, not really the weapons themselves. Once upon a time I wrote a 20k word post about Progression, the center of it being all weapons being 'balanced' as general side grades and where your power came through completing all of the quests (the post was also about refitting all of the past events into a "campaign" of sorts), and I held that thought for years. Lately though I have come to think that perfect balance is not really necessary, that weapon progression is just a glorious imbalance. The crux is, at the end(game) of the day, weapons should be balanced in some form or another to promote gameplay diversity (a great way to stave off content droughts).

If you want to have a talk about power progression, enemy scaling, and all that jazz I am up for it, but this topic does not seem like the best place to spearhead something like that. But I would argue that weapon power progression and overall power progression are separate discussions.

[Talonflight]

Christ, the amount of negativity here in some of these comments makes me want to rip a new one.

Synpai, I like your ideas, and I think they're a good starting point. Yes, there are a few things I would change, but ultimately I think you're on to something here.

I was looking over the forums today and I also bumped into this fellow:

I think you two touch on a few similar topics and should probably contact one another, I think both of what you proposed could work fluidly together as a co-operating system. Keep it up, buddy.

[Synpai]

@Teridax68 I'm going to back track because a lot of that is becoming an out of context mess of responses being lost. i continued because I enjoy discussion. I enjoy gaining knowledge and learning new avenues of thought or perspective.

Today I learned the difference between Horizontal and Vertical progression (which matched my understanding of your suggestion). Yes I could have researched this earlier (if I picked up that they were actual terms), but I feel much like an argumentative essay one should define generic or vague terminology especially with such a wide population like a forum, because even if I have a working definition of the term vertical progression it may not be exactly the same as to how you're using the term (though context led me to the same result). I was at work during my replies so I wasn't able to include diagrams, but I feel this post will be a nice wrap up to the discussion (P.S: You gave me PvP games with no vertical progression, but I wanted to know PvE games and the closest I could find was Guild Wars 2, but this gives both a mix of vertical and horizontal progression which is what I was trying to convey textually, but should be made clear with the diagrams below). The point for a PvE reference and not a PvP is to give everyone a proper point of reference; it helps everyone follow along. If you know of one, this example helps every one look at it for a proper point of comparison and evidence that a game in the same genre as Warframe has done this with succession or failure. Every example you've given are competitive games which are not the same as Warframe. 

EDIT:

This does not refute that it CAN work (On multiple instances I noted that it can), but the whole point of the question was if there was a game that exemplified it DOES.

Just because a PvP game can survive for years on Horizontal progression is a non factor on whether or not a PvE game can. It may or may not, it just depends on how it's made.

The above image as @DrBorris stated is where Warframe currently stands. We are both in agreement that this is bad because once DE release the Latron Wraith, you're throwing away your Latron. If you want your Brakk to be better you're waiting for DE to send down the gift of Brakk wraith, so you can throw away your original Brakk. Again, this is just how the game is. I do not enjoy this state.

In the image above is the Scenario where DE stops making variants, but doesn't collapse them. This is what I was imagining when you were asking "Why not just Buff the MK-1 Furis to the Pyranna Prime?"

There are three weapons total in this picture. The Pyranna, The Pyranna Prime, and the MK-1 Furis. This is what I was referring to as illogical and non progressive: DE suddenly patching all weapons without variants to the level of weapons with variants.

 

This is how I view your argument. Everything is equally viable, but static from the beginning of the game. (Which could be wrong because you're using the word "Skin" which has the connotation to mean mean cosmetic with no stat changes, but it could mean "skin" in a way that Charizard is a skin for a Charmander, but context makes that very unlikely.)

This lead me to question what players are chasing in a design like this (ISSUE #1). I was not insinuating that it HAD to be weapons, I was wondering what the thing players chase in this design was supposed to be, because unlike Overwatch you're not going against another player to provide variation or challenge, etc. You're facing stagnant AI.

In Overwatch you don't need Tracer to change and deal more damage for progression.

A player that practices will gain increased reaction time, character mechanic mastery (I.e: scope juggling with Widow), accuracy, map knowledge, match up knowledge/Decision making that differentiates them from someone that just starts the game. Competitive games have the competition itself as "the chase": the goal, the progression. 

Which was cleared up by:

On 2018-10-05 at 10:46 AM, Teridax68 said:

With what I'm proposing, you would not even need levels, as an environment in which players remain on the same level of raw power is one where enemies themselves do not need stat increases to present a challenge. All enemies could have non-scaling health and damage, and while newer players would still find themselves more challenged due to their personal lack of experience, a sufficiently skilled player would be able to progress through the Star Chart without running into stat-based barriers. You could still have some progression in the sense of having the starting quests feature a smaller range of simpler enemies, before opening into a world with a much more complete roster, but otherwise this could be the basis of a system where all content across the game could forever avoid the problem of being trivial to veterans, or statistically inaccessible to even skilled newcomers.

 

Now we move on, assuming the gameplay progression is impactful.

But there's a problem with this implementation in that: Someone paid for an vertically progressed, separate item that gets condensed into a cosmetic (ISSUE #2).

This means every prime access from the very first founder's is basically asking for a chance at refund (to some degree) or lawsuit (potentially; from what I understand Canada is incredibly strict about terms on trading goods) because a good was sold as one thing (an improved item), but became another (a new skin). Now sure they could pull the EULA, Beta, "Non-refundable" card, but that's poor customer service and people who did have qualms with it would likely withdraw further support, even if in the end the game was better balanced.

Now it's possible, not everyone would have an issue with their chroma prime becoming a skin, it's never safe to speak in absolutes.

 

If a player is fine with the Tennogen skin they have and buy prime access because Chroma prime is better than default Chroma, but DE announce it's going to be a skin instead they wouldn't have bought the primed Access if it meant a new Chroma skin, assuming they were content with the Tennogen one that they already paid (significantly less) for and didn't intend to buy newer weapons since the ones they have work for them.

Okay, but let's assume DE finds a way to alter the cost of Prime Access to reflect the primes as deluxe skins and people were okay with their purchases.

 

Now you run into players that farmed for hours on end or spent 200-400 platinum (anywhere from 12~25$) per set (and some people build multiple) for something that is now in competition with fan made, Tennogen skins that could be purchased for ~8$ at max.

Basically like working a job that promotes 14$/h pay, but once you've finished getting a check that shows 7$/h worth of pay.

 

This is the biggest hurdle, the biggest risk involved with this CHANGING Warframe into this: The player's perception and acceptance of the change.

 

This is the core of my idea: it's a mix between linked vertical and horizontal progression (as Guild War 2 does). If you take out the variants, you have the basis of your argument, the basis for both of our arguments: any weapon should be a valuable choice.

You should not be able to obtain a variant for a weapon without owning and investing in the original. The Variant is not an entirely separate weapon, it is the same gun that players should be able to upgrade to be stronger. The Dex Sybaris and Primed Sybaris should be like a Day and Night form Equinox, same frame with different forms for different uses both forms tied to owning Equinox. If you invest in Equnox you're investing in both forms, if you chose one form for one mission, you're not locked out of the other for the next mission.

 I'm saying even if DE came out with a new weapon tomorrow under this system:If a player wanted to improve that weapon they merely need to reach the point where they can find the parts for enhancement to make the weapon they have stronger in one of many ways through a form of gilding.

Once players obtain a variant for a weapon they should be able to select any one of them. If DE wasn't creating variants one at a time but instead took the time to level the field for them all, players could commit to any weapon to achieve a variant as good as any other. Doesn't matter which weapon you start with, you can build it up to the same level as another player's weapon. 

This is why it felt like I wasn't being understood; I'm not advocating power creep.

 

 

 

Vertical progression is not required to make a game good, as I said before you CAN make your implementation work, but a mix of vertical AND horizontal achieves the same goal of "making any player weapon choice at an instance equal to any other" with less intrusion on what's familiar to your player base.

It's not the only way to achieve this either. @DrBorris (check the spoiler, I do like that idea of mod infusion for Rivens) has shown that you can also achieve the outcome with rivens (/ mods) instead. You could also just use rivens for fine tuning.

 

Spoiler

On 2018-06-26 at 8:40 AM, Synpai said:

This is a passionate topic for me because I absolutely hate Rivens as a design system)

Haves vs HaveNots is very much a thing, that is driving riven economy through the roof and not "effort" because rather than "Hey I need to go farm until I get serration." It's "Hey I need to go farm until I get lucky enough to roll serration from a pure RNG list." It's a system of luck where someone can get a GOD roll for a strong weapon from unveiling, whilst another spends 200+ rolls to get nothing. Because of this reason alone, prices are absurd.

You can opt out just as easily, but your riven-less weapon is factually not the same as a weapon with any "appropriate" riven (Getting -damage is obviously a hindrance). This problem exists and the only counter is to get lucky or buy it, but the issue is that you may never get lucky. Pure RNG means you could theoretically roll hundreds of times and get garbage (or not at all and get perfection).

Weapons and their stats change, mods change, variants happen. Meaning your 300+ rolled riven has less value than a riven that has the same stats but one roll (because it has the chance to change or improve if needed). This means that when it comes to Riven's there's no progression and that effort is not being rewarded.

 

To say "you'd get god power at MR 8" isn't too far from possible without Rivens. The more primed frames that become available, eventually new players will be able to pick up Equinox or Mesa prime or [insert some MR appropriate prime that's powerful] before even getting the normal version because Warframe as a whole lacks progression. MR is more of a count of what you've had access to than skill or capability. You have some MR 25s that don't build or play optimally much like you have MR 10s that know the game inside and out, but just don't bother worrying about mastery.

This isn't on the shoulder's of Rivens or Warframes or Weapons, but the developers. Think about Pokemon: how likely is it that you just get a level 100 Charizard in your first day of play.  Not very, and even if you trade for it, it won't listen to you 100% until a certain point. The Riven system could have scaled stats based on the MR of the person using it (instead of arbitrarily coming with a MR lock value).

 

The purpose of rivens was to "balance out" the weapons, or at least give lesser used/powered weapons a chance. Which is why I believe all weapons should just have a "Riven Imprint" (could still take up a mod slot) that is unlocked by doing challenges (maybe doing x headshots or kills using the weapon). Such that players could trade their "Riven imprints" with others so long as they both had them unlocked. 

 Anyone with a bar chart can tell you what happens when you give rivens to a select few weapons (because it's random and has a cap you CANNOT get a riven for every weapon). Only SOME weapons grow in strength, and the cap only ensures that players have to be selective (Other than a few rivens I'm saving for variants I don't bother with garbage weapons I.e: Embolist).

These last points are debatable, but I really wish normal rolls cost a higher, more appropriate value in credits and holding stats cost Kuva just as much as I wish Riven's had interesting effects (like chain lightnings on third hits, or slowing enemies on crits, etc) and not percentage gains. We have a whole currency that we really can't use up thorough normal play (not to mention it would allow people to PLAY the game in any fashion and still be able to get rolls without necessarily having to hardcore farm for days on end, but still allowing the option). Rivens don't really accomplish their goal, but could have rewarded dedication to weapons, had intersting effects and used the more common currency to allow experimentation or allow people to streamline rolling as opposed to bottle-necking with pure RNG.

 

I thank you for the discussion! 

Change is hard to adapt to, and i do not think that Warframe would survive something so drastic, even if it did...there's no telling for how long because that's one of the drawbacks of games that rely on Horizontal progression.

 

EDIT:

If I wasn't clear enough, both Horizontal and Vertical progression have their up and down sides:

• Horizontal progression offers intellectual challenge to players at all stages, but suffers the issue of players having nothing "to chase"/ losing captivation.
• Vertical progression tends to hold the attention of players longer, but eventually loses it's charm in bloat.

NOTE: These are not absolutes, considering Warframe has held people for 4,000+ hours. These are just design challenges each method of progression face.

 

Making a game that relies on Horizontal progression: You design around the challenges. Doesn't matter if it is PvE or PvP it CAN work. A game with horizontal progression does work for long periods, but no game that I've found has been shown to do so while hinging on PvE alone, which is the foundation for most of the Warframe players.

Changing Warframe, a game that's designed and built on Vertical progression, into a game with ONLY Horizontal Progression (@Teridax68's suggestion): Has the issues explained above. If  those issues are taken care of, as I've explained, the game should be fine. Having to go through those problems in the first place is a risk, ultimately forcing the Devs to make a brand new game and possibly lose a lot of money in the process.

In my opinion, using both is the better median between watching the game go nuclear and watching the game continue as is, but even this approach is not with out it's issues, just far less than a complete change in direction.

Edited October 8, 2018 by Synpai
There was a typo with their lol

[Synpai]

12 hours ago, DrBorris said:

• I am a bit mixed on the Umbra stuff you propose. What I hope for with future Umbra Warframes (if future "umbra" Warframes would even be called Umbra, in the Sacrifice it seemed like a specific name for that Dax soldier) would for them to be a testing ground to twist a Warframe into something different. Excalibur Umbra has Radial Howl instead of Blind, but I would put that to trying to keep Umbra Excalibur as close to base Excalibur as possible to keep him as a Prime 'replacement'. With Future 'Umbra' I would want to see a whole new take on their kit, or to see them overspecialize into one of the roles they already have. The dumb example is like to give 'umbra' Mag push instead of pull. Basically I would rather see 'umbras' be an expansion of the diversity of your arsenal rather than how powerful your arsenal is.
• However, I do think that Umbral mods should be expanded upon. I made a thread back when The Sacrifice came out proposing for an Umbral Forma to be a 5% drop chance from Lua Sentients, then have it require a Forma, 20k Kuva, 3 Radiant Eidolon Shards, 500 Void Traces, and 1 million Credits. Then have the Umbral polarity be a "universal polarity".
• However, given that Umbra and Umbral polarities are so tied to Tau, it may be best to see what DE has planned with the Sentients and the Tau system.

While I don't want to have to wait for the "Next Sacrifice" every time to get a new umbra I think "Umbra Forma" may be the other extreme. I'd prefer a method between those two to achieve "Umbrafication"

Interesting thought on the Umbra Mag thing 🤔 that's gonna be on my mind all night.

12 hours ago, DrBorris said:

Adding some elite enemies, bosses, or what have you into the mix could be an interesting way to expand, but I think it would be best for ESO to stay as what is effectively a catch-up mechanic.

I mean if the enemies exist in ESO, then players can at least bring Helios and get them that way, but then you have to race against the nukes.

12 hours ago, DrBorris said:

• Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
• I really don't like artificial difficulty for the sake of difficulty, especially investing dev time into artificial difficulty. Peculiar mods are alright as they stand, I guess.
• Dragon Keys though, I could see those as being modifiers to new game modes for better loot. The whole Dragon Key, Derelict, Void, Vault shindig could use a big tie-in with a new game type. Something you kind of start brain-storming later on, so I'll finish my rant there.

I think that if the system is done correctly it'd allow devs to add variable toggles that could provide for some varying gameplay even if it's artificial.

22 hours ago, Synpai said:

Peculiar Nesting Doll Simulation:  Enemies have a chance to spawn more enemies when killed by a player with this active.

Peculiar Orbital Simulation:  The player is occasionally targeted by Orbital Strikes (only damages people with it active).

Peculiar Blind-Fight Simulation:  The player is periodically (at random) surrounded by darkness.

On 2018-08-19 at 5:04 AM, Synpai said:

Peculiar Speed Simulation: Player sprint speed increased (don't worry it's not a max strength speed); Enemies have a chance to receive the effect of shocking speed.

Peculiar Fire Walking Simulation: Player takes fire damage per second while touching the floor; increases aim glide duration and bullet jump velocity.

 

I don't have an issue with Peculiars as a concept; I have an issue with Peculiars as mods. This artificial difficulty isn't intended to be the end all to the damage and enemy revamp that Warframe needs. It's meant to repurpose goofy mods into goofy (and potentially double edged) sortie-esc modifiers for any mission.

I.e: A way that streamers could revitalize a Level 13 Lith excavation mission

 

13 hours ago, DrBorris said:

The Void's New Purpose as a Bi-Weekly Challenge Tower

• It took me a few reads to fully get what you are going for here. Correct me if I am wrong, but you are proposing actually "blowing up the Void" into just these rotation "Challenge Tower"? If so... *strokes chin* that's an interesting idea that I am going to need to sleep on for a few days. I might really like it, or I might rather not have any Void reworks be so drastic.
• I am just going to quick hijack your thread and post my thirty second concept. Sorry in advance.
  • Rework the Void spawns into an inverse Fissure mission, where Corrupted enemies are normal spawn and Fissures form to bring in enemies from the rest of the star chart.
  • Add a "Void Vault" that can only be unlocked using Orokin Ciphers (things you get from Derelict Vaults). Inside the Vault is a Eidolon-esque Raid-style boss that drops some new set of Arcanes (old Arcane helmets?).
  • In endless missions, the Vault will reopen with another boss to kill after ten minutes without consuming any more Orokin Ciphers. Enemies levels increase increase by a flat 50 levels after every boss completion.
  • Using additional Ciphers (up to a max of 50) Increases the "tier" of the boss, giving access to a higher chance at the rarer Arcanes, as well as giving a chance to get multiple Arcanes.
  • The amount of Arcanes dropped is also affected by the average amount of Dragon Keys equipped in the party.
• Or... or, combine the two ideas. Bi-weekly set of missions, gain access by Orokin Ciphers (Four tiers, same as now, higher tiers require more Ciphers), get better rewards by using Dragon Keys. *strokes chin* Very interesting indeed...

I mean I think they'd need to keep some normal tilesets so players could get argon crystals without having to commit to challenge mode. No need to be sorry, I accept this happily.

Speaking of "Void Vault/boss" something I added to my Focus 3.0 posts Mastery section, basically players spending excess sentient cores to buy:

On 2017-11-10 at 6:53 AM, Synpai said:

Janus Key (meme's aside, check it out) - Unlocks special Boss, "The Destroyer,"  (A golden maw on steroids) in the Void; Defeating this bi-

weekly boss drops a component that can be paired with a primed weapon to enhance it's unique effect (I.e: longer ghosts on the Ballistica Prime & increased multiplier on the Venka)

Maybe I should add it here as well.

 

13 hours ago, DrBorris said:

Air Support & Arch Weapon Integration

• Well, we're getting Arch-weapons. Thinkin' before your time I see. The weapons will need some sort of balance pass though, as a maxed out Imperator Vandal has around half the DPS of Akstilleto Prime.
• Yes to Air support not being bound to a cosmetic (cough). I would actually be interested in seeing Landing Craft be somewhat moddable. Different Life Support are mods, maybe even team buffs along the lines of auras, cooldown mods for the life supports. Probably only like 4 mod slots though. That all said... Railjack. Knowing what DE's grand end-goal plans are for Railjack, truly customization Landing Craft would seem to be inevitable. 

Man it's been so long it brought tears to my eyes when I saw it. Iv'e been wanting to use big boi, dual edged scythe for so long.

oooo! Modding Air support!  That sounds interesting 🤔

13 hours ago, DrBorris said:

For that weapon progression thing. I like where you are coming from, weapon Progression would be a way to 'progress' your power level. However, we (unfortunately) kind of already have a system in place that should be taking care of that... Rivens.

True if they weren't what they where I think they could convey a feeling of internal progression.

[Synpai]

9 hours ago, Talonflight said:

I think you two touch on a few similar topics and should probably contact one another, I think both of what you proposed could work fluidly together as a co-operating system. Keep it up, buddy.

Hmm I'll have to give that a read after some shut eye, thanks!

[Teridax68]

6 hours ago, Synpai said:

Today I learned the difference between Horizontal and Vertical progression.

The topic of vertical versus horizontal progression has been at the core of this debate since the very beginning, and is my central point. Good on you for finally doing the research on this, but this is something on which you should have informed yourself from the beginning, or at least asked for clarification. Again, considering how I've spent so much time proposing that we should aim to eliminate vertical progression in favor of horizontal progression, I feel I've been wasting my time if that much has not been understood.

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(P.S: You gave me PvP games with no vertical progression, but I wanted to know PvE games and the closest I could find was Guild Wars 2, but this gives both a mix of vertical and horizontal progression which is what I was trying to convey textually, but should be made clear with the diagrams below).

I gave you examples of games that had progression systems without resorting to vertical progression. Again, CoD has a famous progression system in its multiplayer, despite also being balanced much more stringently than any PvE game. This should have been a sufficient counter to the notion that PvE games always need vertical progression, which is also why you suddenly asking for one such example, when it was not a part of your original argument, is a case of shifting the goalposts to the argument.

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This lead me to question what players are chasing in a design like this (ISSUE #1). I was not insinuating that it HAD to be weapons, I was wondering what the thing players chase in this design was supposed to be, because unlike Overwatch you're not going against another player to provide variation or challenge, etc. You're facing stagnant AI.

You've answered this question for yourself already, but the problem with your diagram lies with the direction of your arrows. Right from the start, you presume that there is this other goal to shift towards, while also assuming that all weapons, which are side-by-side in terms of power, are also all unlocked simultaneously. This is the core problem to your conceptualization of my model, because had you simply drawn arrows from one weapon to the next, it would have been crystal clear how the progression system I'm proposing would work. Considering how Warframe is already a game where you have to either grind or pay to unlock weapons, and where players are pushed to unlock more weapons regardless of their strength, my suggested model would rely on a tried and tested method of progressing through the game, despite its lack of vertical power.

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But there's a problem with this implementation in that: Someone paid for an vertically progressed, separate item that gets condensed into a cosmetic (ISSUE #2).

This means every prime access from the very first founder's is basically asking for a chance at refund (to some degree) or lawsuit (potentially; from what I understand Canada is incredibly strict about terms on trading goods) because a good was sold as one thing (an improved item), but became another (a new skin). Now sure they could pull the EULA, Beta, "Non-refundable" card, but that's poor customer service and people who did have qualms with it would likely withdraw further support, even if in the end the game was better balanced.

Now it's possible, not everyone would have an issue with their chroma prime becoming a skin, it's never safe to speak in absolutes.

There is no legal precedent for a company getting sued simply because they nerfed a game item that could be bought with money. Moreover, if that were the case, DE would have gotten sued multiple times already, as would have many other games, for doing simple balance work, as virtually all weapons in the game (though, ironically, not Wraith or Vandal variants) can be bought with real-world money. At the end of the day, there is a fundamental contradiction here: you are asking to honor the wishes of players who have supposedly paid for power, in a game environment where everyone is placed on the same power level. That simply will not happen, and moreover, those same players would have already had their purchase honored by having obtained greater power for whichever span of time. This is why I consider your concerns that DE would get sued over balancing their own game to be unfounded and hyperbolic.

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If a player is fine with the Tennogen skin they have and buy prime access because Chroma prime is better than default Chroma, but DE announce it's going to be a skin instead they wouldn't have bought the primed Access if it meant a new Chroma skin, assuming they were content with the Tennogen one that they already paid (significantly less) for and didn't intend to buy newer weapons since the ones they have work for them.

Okay, but let's assume DE finds a way to alter the cost of Prime Access to reflect the primes as deluxe skins and people were okay with their purchases.

This is presuming that an in-game item, whose price is set by DE, has some sort of separate, objective value, one that would decrease despite those same items remaining in the game. Again, players who paid for a marginal increase in power would find themselves with the same gameplay as before, both on their frames and their weapons, particularly if the base weapons were buffed: if that slight power increase was the only reason to sink money into PA, then sure, those people would be disappointed, but at the end of the day, they'd still have what they bought, so they wouldn't have an item taken away from them.

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Now you run into players that farmed for hours on end or spent 200-400 platinum (anywhere from 12~25$) per set (and some people build multiple) for something that is now in competition with fan made, Tennogen skins that could be purchased for ~8$ at max.

Basically like working a job that promotes 14$/h pay, but once you've finished getting a check that shows 7$/h worth of pay.

This is a terrible analogy, because the hypothetical reduction being discussed here is one of product, not income. You'd still have made the same amount of currency, you'd just end up with a slightly different product, which is common in software that is in constant development. The fact that you wouldn't actually lose the item in question, and would experience no real alteration in gameplay, or at least, no alteration anywhere near on the level of a rework, which is much more disruptive and happens to primed frames anyway. The fact that frames like Saryn, Ember, Mag, and Volt have all received major reworks, sometimes severe nerfs, long after their primes got released, without anyone ever pulling the lawsuit card, I think is itself further evidence that the changes I'm suggesting, which would be even less disruptive to gameplay, would not elicit the disproportionate reaction you've brought up.

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This is the core of my idea: it's a mix between linked vertical and horizontal progression (as Guild War 2 does). If you take out the variants, you have the basis of your argument, the basis for both of our arguments: any weapon should be a valuable choice.

Except, under your system, there is an entire underclass of weapons that are obsolete by design, as indicated in your diagram where all the weapons on the left are indicated to be strictly inferior to the ones on the right. Again, you yourself have stated that you do not enjoy a game state in which one has to wait for a base weapon to receive a variant in order for it to be worth the dedication, yet this is exactly the model that you are proposing. This was never a matter of confusion, and for all the different ways you have repeated yourself, you have consistently avoided addressing the inconsistency between what you're proposing and the forced redundancy of weapons inherent to your model.

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You should not be able to obtain a variant for a weapon without owning and investing in the original. The Variant is not an entirely separate weapon, it is the same gun that players should be able to upgrade to be stronger. The Dex Sybaris and Primed Sybaris should be like a Day and Night form Equinox, same frame with different forms for different uses both forms tied to owning Equinox. If you invest in Equnox you're investing in both forms, if you chose one form for one mission, you're not locked out of the other for the next mission.

This does not in any way address the concerns voiced prior in this thread. In the end, you still have a base weapon that's not worth investing in, and a bunch of clones of that same weapon that are deliberately designed to be stronger. It is a deceptive model that contributes to the current problems with the new player experience, where newcomers will spend far too many of their precious few resources, sometimes even plat, on a weapon they thought was cool, but that turned out to be deliberately inferior to other, identical versions of that weapon in the game.

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 I'm saying even if DE came out with a new weapon tomorrow under this system:If a player wanted to improve that weapon they merely need to reach the point where they can find the parts for enhancement to make the weapon they have stronger in one of many ways through a form of gilding.

And, in turn, rendering all of the Forma they put into that weapon, plus a catalyst, null and void, as that progress would not carry onto the variant. This is a fundamental problem with your proposal, and a major reason why I am against it.

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Once players obtain a variant for a weapon they should be able to select any one of them. If DE wasn't creating variants one at a time but instead took the time to level the field for them all, players could commit to any weapon to achieve a variant as good as any other. Doesn't matter which weapon you start with, you can build it up to the same level as another player's weapon. 

This is why it felt like I wasn't being understood; I'm not advocating power creep.

Except you are: no matter which way you spin it, and even with just two power states, you are advocating for a game in which weapons are intentionally balanced around being power-creeped by some better version of them farther down the line. Think about what happens when DE releases a new, non-variant weapon or frame; either:

• Option A: this item is balanced to be viable, and so is put on the same level of power as variants. Because of this, any variant of it that follows would need to be stronger, and thus stronger than current variants. Power creep ensues.
• Option B: this item is balanced around other non-variants, and so is made intentionally weaker than an entire subset of weapons right off the bat. As a result, there is no reason to sink any real time or effort into this item beyond MR gains, since a better version is bound to come out anyway.

So far, DE has been following option A, which is why we've been getting a steady treadmill of power creep through stats: newer frames have been given stats to compete with older Primes, which in turn causes their Primes to have even higher stats, which in turn push newer frames to up the ante, and so on. Even with only marginal stat increases, we've already seen this with Inaros, one of the tankiest frames in the game, Ivara, who has more Energy than some Primes, and so on. This is even more apparent with weapons, where weapons such as the Tigris and Galatine, both strong in their own right, got massively power creeped by their Primes, which both became BiS, and pushed newer weapons to output even more damage, leaving older weapons behind, including older Primes until they receive major buffs.

It is also this power creep that is the reason why I don't put Forma into non-Prime frames: the moment they are released, I know that they're going to receive what is essentially a deluxe skin with a few extra stats, but packaged in such a way that all of the progress on my current frame would be wasted. I'd have to start over from scratch, so might as well save up my Forma for Primes, assuming Umbra doesn't get expanded to blow those out of the water as well. It is this exact kind of system that you are basing your entire model of balance upon: yours is a system that has an entire category for weapons that are inferior to others, leading to a system that is doomed to either power creep itself, or to hamstring its own monetization by releasing item everyone knows to be inferior by design. It is because of this that I think we need to condense your two-category system to just one, and have all weapons be on par with each other, and all variants be reimplemented as skins. Considering how the only variants that can be directly purchased with money are Primes, this would not be as bad as you'd think.

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Vertical progression is not required to make a game good, as I said before you CAN make your implementation work, but this achieves the same goal of "making any player weapon choice at an instance equal to any other" with less intrusion.

Again, that is simply not true in your system, as a distinct difference in power is at the very core of your proposal (it is, in fact, the only distinction truly separating your proposed model from mine). Considering how your model only presumes a difference in variants in that they push more for crit or status builds, my proposal would solve this neatly by building that variation directly into every weapon, and thereby eliminate the need for variants. It is not particularly difficult to balance a weapon to be viable for crit, status or both, and DE have shown this with their recent weapon rebalances. With a very standard set of changes to every weapon's base damage, crit chance, crit damage, and status chance, literally every weapon in the game could be made viable for crit and status, thereby adding significantly more build diversity overall while rendering variants redundant.

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It's not the only way to achieve this either. @DrBorris (check the spoiler, I do like that idea of mod infusion for Rivens) has shown that you can also achieve the outcome with rivens instead. You could also use rivens for fine tuning

Rivens are a notorious band-aid that were never intended to rebalance weapons. Already, we've seen some fundamental problems emerge, namely with Rivens being used mainly to make strong weapons even stronger, and with Riven dispositions ceasing to make sense when a weapon turns out to have a variant with the same disposition, but significantly better stats (i.e. the Gram Prime, which would already be the best melee weapon in the game without its maximum Riven disposition). DE themselves have also shown that the best way to rebalance weapons is to, well, rebalance them, and so via direct, targeted changes. A half-baked mod system with layers upon layers of RNG is in no way an effective way of bringing weapons on par with each other, and the Riven mod system so far has not contributed positively in any way to game balance (in fact, it's only added some extra power creep at the very high end of the playerbase). If you wanted to use Rivens to balance the game, you'd have to change their functionality to such a degree that you might as well rename the whole system, which begs the question as to why one such system needs to exist in the first place.

Edited October 6, 2018 by Teridax68

[Sakaira]

On 2018-10-06 at 7:48 AM, Synpai said:

EDIT:

If I wasn't clear enough, both Horizontal and Vertical progression have their up and down sides:

• Horizontal progression offers intellectual challenge to players at all stages, but suffers the issue of players having nothing "to chase"/ losing captivation.
• Vertical progression tends to hold the attention of players longer, but eventually loses it's charm in bloat.

NOTE: These are not absolutes, considering Warframe has held people for 4,000+ hours. These are just design challenges each method of progression face.

 

Making a game that relies on Horizontal progression: You design around the challenges. Doesn't matter if it is PvE or PvP it CAN work. A game with horizontal progression does work for long periods, but no game that I've found has been shown to do so while hinging on PvE alone, which is the foundation for most of the Warframe players.

Changing Warframe, a game that's designed and built on Vertical progression, into a game with ONLY Horizontal Progression (@Teridax68's suggestion😞 Has the issues explained above. If  those issues are taken care of, as I've explained, the game should be fine. Having to go through those problems in the first place is a risk, ultimately forcing the Devs to make a brand new game and possibly lose a lot of money in the process.

In my opinion, using both is the better median between watching the game go nuclear and watching the game continue as is, but even this approach is not with out it's issues, just far less than a complete change in direction.

@Teridax68

 

Bois I ain't reading all that, but that was some good summary 10/10.

Make infested bestest!

 

The peculiar stuff sounds pretty neato too! 

[Nerf_SupYo]

TLDR 

[Synpai]

Bump!

[Nerf_SupYo]

49 minutes ago, Synpai said:

Bump!

Bump that bump de bump bump.

Badum tsss.

[Synpai]

On 2018-10-22 at 12:43 PM, ghandibots said:

Bump that bump de bump bump.

Badum tsss.

Lol! I really want these peculiar mods to do something x.x nothing like seeing spawns die in Fortuna because solo

[Nerf_SupYo]

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On 2018-11-23 at 12:29 PM, Synpai said:

Lol! I really want these peculiar mods to do something x.x nothing like seeing spawns die in Fortuna because solo

 

Peculiar Acolyte , headshots spawn a shadow the dead clone kinda thing maybe?

[Synpai]

On 2018-11-25 at 8:39 AM, ghandibots said:

Peculiar Acolyte , headshots spawn a shadow the dead clone kinda thing maybe?

On 2018-08-19 at 5:04 AM, Synpai said:

Peculiar Nesting Doll Simulation:  Enemies have a chance to spawn more enemies when killed by a player with this active.

This was on the list, but it could just as easily use shadow forms. Or have something like Peculiar Eclipse where everyone is susceptible to a mirage-like effect (Even enemies) and they become shadow form in darkness.

[Nerf_SupYo]

2 hours ago, Synpai said:

This was on the list, but it could just as easily use shadow forms. Or have something like Peculiar Eclipse where everyone is susceptible to a mirage-like effect (Even enemies) and they become shadow form in darkness.

The idea of the same mod (peculiar _whatever_ ) having different effects depending on which frame/weapon it was equipped on seemed like a good option too.  Maybe it could be related to the frame's passive, equinox could drop more health or energy orbs after 5 headshots, saryn could increase the status chance/duration of the weapon, etc etc. 

Make the peculiar cool And* useful.

[Synpai]

On 2018-11-26 at 1:39 PM, ghandibots said:

The idea of the same mod (peculiar _whatever_ ) having different effects depending on which frame/weapon it was equipped on seemed like a good option too.  Maybe it could be related to the frame's passive, equinox could drop more health or energy orbs after 5 headshots, saryn could increase the status chance/duration of the weapon, etc etc. 

Make the peculiar cool And* useful.

OOOOOO another interesting one.

I was thinking about a Peculiar Arbiration Simulation. Basically no revives, but endo rewards/drop chance from enemies are doubled && players have a chance at essence on mission complete.

Edited December 10, 2018 by Synpai

[Synpai]

Added using the simulacrum as a beta testing environment.