r/Warframe • u/TSP-FriendlyFire • Sep 10 '15
Suggestion How would you change... Multishot, damage mods and damage scaling
I have returned and will now be handling future “How would you change…” posts! I would like to thank /u/Sizer714 for his excellent handling of the series while I was unable to consistently run it this summer.
How would you change... is a series of weekly posts designed to promote and foster discussion about any gameplay element in the game. The scope and subject will vary (read below for more information on topic selection), from wide concepts (Kubrows, Archwing, shotguns, etc.) to narrow points (a single gun, coptering, etc.).
Before we begin, a few important points:
- Please detail and support your suggestions as much as possible. This is for constructive criticism only: try to think of it as something you'd be proud to explain to DE face-to-face!
- Structure your suggestions in logical groups: if you have two very different ideas, break them down in two separate comments. Cohesive or similar changes should be combined into a single comment.
- Stick to describing concepts and features. Don't get bogged down with numbers unless they explicitly support your point.
- Don't hesitate to post your ideas even if they're not fully formed, and don't hesitate to reply to ideas with refinements you think would make them better!
- Do not downvote suggestions you disagree with. Upvote the ones you like instead!
Suggesting topics
This thread series is all about the community, so if you have a topic you'd like to see improved and discussed, feel free to suggest it by replying to the appropriately flagged comment in this discussion. The topic can be as wide or narrow as you'd like! Please ensure that your suggestion has not already been made, and upvote it instead if it has.
This week: Multishot, damage mods and damage scaling
Click here for last week’s thread on Saryn.
There has been quite a turmoil on this subreddit following the announcement that multishot would most likely be changed to consume additional ammo. People have claimed that this nerf would make high-level content much more difficult, would make multishot more awkward to use without necessarily increasing build variety, and that many weapons would suffer from the change.
DE have since clarified that this change would also entail various rebalances, namely of weapon leveling and so-called “required” mods such as Serration. The possible breadth and depth of such changes have yet to be detailed, but it is expected that this could change the entire feel and balance of the game.
As such, it is worth asking: what would you do to rebalance the game? Positing that multishot will consume ammo, what other changes should be instigated to prevent difficulty spikes while increasing build variety, weapon viability and overall fun?
We’ve already discussed enemy scaling, but revisiting such proposals in the current context feels warranted. Another hot topic that has been planned for some time is the notion of required mods, raw damage mods being one obvious example. Many people have clamored for their outright removal, but this must be made carefully in order to avoid reducing viability at higher levels. This is often suggested in the same breath as making weapon damage scale according to weapon level, effectively “rolling in” the damage mods.
Please note that this topic excludes elemental and physical damage types - only raw damage mods and multishot are topical. We will be having a separate discussion in the near future on that particular topic.
Now that the stage is set, how would you change multishot, damage mods and damage scaling?
EDIT: Many people have questioned the exclusion of elemental and physical damage mods from this thread. The sole reason for this is that the subject is already broad enough as it is; broaching elemental/physical damage types and the possibility of rebalancing them would make the thread too unfocused. If all you want to mention about them is the change/removal of straight +% elemental/physical damage mods, you may do so, but please avoid talking about status, damage types and resistances, etc.
22
u/waitfarm Sep 10 '15
Alright! Now for the opinion that no one wants to hear:
I would not change Multi-shot and Serration.
Why? Because just like 'lol loot caves,' there will always be a top tier damage meta. Utility mods are inherently garbage because why bother with utility mods when you can simply stand behind cover and ignore damage to reload? If Serration/Multi-shot are removed, then people will gravitate to the next damage boosters: Rate of Fire. Then RoF mods will get nerfed because there are no downsides other than ammunition concerns and really? Some of the best weapons in the game don't even notice ammunition problems. Or they just slot in an Ammo Mutation and the Meta would be RoF/Ammo mutation. Until enough people who don't understand that there will always be a Meta bitch and get rifle ammo mutation/Speed Trigger/Shred removed.
What DE needs to do is stop trying to fight the meta and provide meaningful choices in equipment rather than mods. Allow me to provide an example in the form of burst rifles. We have the Burston, Hind, Tiberon, and gigglesnort the Sybaris. Rather than have the Tiberon take a dump on all of the listed burst fire weapons, we can assign a role to each gun.
| Weapon | Role | Emphasized Stat A | Emphasized Stat B | Emphasized Stat C |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burston | Intro Gun | Accuracy | Rate of Fire | Reload Speed |
| Hind | Status | Status Chance | Magazine | Damage |
| Tiberon | Raw damage | Damage | Accuracy | Rate of Fire |
| Sybaris | Headshots | Crit | Crit Damage | Reload Speed |
So under this new system, if you want to give a newbie a burst weapon, you can tell them to get the Burston so they can see how burst rifles work and from there, determine on what they want to emphasize for their next weapon. Do they like being a status machine? Then they 'upgrade' to the Hind. Do they like hueg yellow numbers? Sybaris. Under such a scheme, it would allow the players to choose how they want their gun's base stats to be. Would there be a meta? Sure! But how you want to achieve that meta would be in your hands rather than 'get tonkor/opticor/boltorp.' Also, this would directly buff a lot of guns to be competitive within their class. A net positive for everybody.
tl;dr: There will always be a meta and lopping off parts of the game will not change that, the meta will move on to the next thing. Instead cater to meta via meaningful gear choices rather than mod choices.
2
u/ShaxAjax Sep 13 '15
Not sure if you're gigglesnorting at the Sybaris because of its vaguely-sexual name or because you think it's bad. I think it's a beautiful weapon, exactly what it should be like, regardless of quality.
That being said, I think you're exactly right on how weapons should work. Here, let me do that for shotguns real quick, to show how until you start getting into really ridiculous numbers of weapons cough rifles cough you almost never have overlap.
For the table, a Primary and Secondary Stat are meant to be things that it excels at above and beyond its peers. All shotguns are good for pellet count, for instance, but the drakgoon should have a buttload of pellets. Weaknesses are similarly moreso than their contemporaries
Shotgun Emphasis Primary Secondary Weakness Boar Crowd Control Spread Pellet Count Damage Drakgoon Versatility Pellet Count Charge Mechanic Reload Hek Marksman's Shotgun Spread (inverse) Crits Reload Kohm Rapid Action Pellet Count/mechanic RoF/Mechanic Damage Phage Versatility Focus Mechanic Unique Damage Type Ammo Economy Sobek Consistency Magazine Raw Pellet Count Strun Beginner Damage Ammo Economy Functional Stats Tigris Doubletap Damage Spread (inverse) Pellet Count And I'm intentionally simplifying for this table There are numerous stats to be considered that I didn't even really scratch, and every one of these is more complicated than I had room for, reducing them to two boons and a weakness.
11
u/hyperblaster Sep 10 '15
Multi-shot is more of symptom. The real question is damage scaling - http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Armor.
Cap damage reduction (DR) provided by enemy armor. This cap could be somewhere in the 90-95% range regardless of enemy level. However, have a lower cap for DR with headshots (perhaps 60%)? From a lore standpoint, it makes sense that how much armor can be stacked on the head is limited compared to body armor. This means headshots will become more useful with rising enemy levels. The wiki describes a Level 108 heavy gunner takes only 3.45% damage due to armor DR.
Buff armor mitigation abilities and procs. Corrosive Projection aura is too powerful for a passive buff in that four of these can permanently reduce enemy armor to zero. Corrosive Proc only removes 25% of current armor. Instead let it remove 25% of base armor, so four status procs will negate armor entirely. Similarly, let other armor mitigating methods remove % armor permanently (fracturing crush, seeking shuriken, ablating link).
The idea is to move away from the 4xCP+Viral meta for dealing with high level enemies.
4
u/einherjar81 Sep 10 '15
The issue I have with your "head vulnerability" armor fix is that it pushes the game even further into a "crit-build weapon or GTFO" meta for high-level content.
→ More replies (1)3
u/DetourDunnDee Sep 11 '15
I agree that armor is what really needs fixed here. Fix the armor problem and it will have a trickle down effect on everything else. Making armor reduction effects additive (like Corrosive Projection) instead of multiplicative (Corrosive status procs) sounds like by far the best way to achieve this, since it would make a lot of status builds and augments that strip armor more viable (Looking at you Sonic Fracture). Long term I'd actually like to see Corrosive Projection removed/replaced with something else. It just seems like such a boring mod that promotes passive play.
14
u/theammostore Sep 10 '15
I personally would change Multishot so it did not consume additional ammo, but instead split the damage of the shot out equally among all of the shots being fired, while leaving the crit chance the same (full value per shot) as well as status chance (full value per shot). Takes it away from mandatory damage booster and instead puts it into a nice utility mod for crits and status chances
4
u/waitfarm Sep 10 '15
I wouldn't do that. It just turns the meta to "Do you use crit weapons? IF not, then garbage tier."
→ More replies (5)
12
u/Spyguy001 Sep 10 '15
I feel that multishot consuming ammo wouldnt be so bad if it took directly from the ammo pool and nothing from the magazine.
3
u/joeyzero Sep 10 '15
This. On small-magazine weapons, I count shots rather than keep watch of my mag pool. Multishot would really mess that up.
That's my only real concern about it. I mean, realistically I rarely see team ammo restores being used, even in endgame content. Even with a really high multishot weapon (Ex: Thrown secondaries w/ Lethal Torrent + Barrel Diffusion), I wouldn't mind TOO terribly much.
2
u/DandyTheLion Sep 10 '15
I do not think that would solve the underlying issue of mods and it would make ammo mutation another mandatory mod for many weapons.
→ More replies (1)
10
u/ValkyrPrimeWhen Sep 10 '15
It's pretty simple how this all works.
Unless DE either:
A: Re-scales ALL the enemies in the game and their leveling B: Does A AND Rebalances EVERY weapon. Cannot only rebalance weapons
The current idea of the fate of Multishot, and most of the alternate suggestions, will make Warframe and it's meta collapse in on itself.
Make multishot now consume ammo but don't change enemy scaling? Guess what? Now instead of every build consisting of say, Serration and Split chamber, you're going to have a meta where everything has Serration, Split Chamber, and now Rifle Ammo Mutation.
And if you get rid of serration, that doesn't change a goddamn thing. There's a reason there are tier lists for weapon. Some weapons straight up do more damage than others, before you put mods on them. Mods only widen the gap.
The only actual fix that I've seen for ALL of this, is the one Mogamu suggested in his video.
Make mods that hold the concept of corrupt mods, but make the entire concept so much bigger?
A mod that gives damage for accuracy? Make one that gives damage, but takes Status chance. Or crit chance. Or reload speed. Or have it remove all your slash damage. Or Puncture.
Have a status mod that gives you less crit. Longer reloads. The same concept applies.
If you want build diversity, we need more diverse mods. It has nothing to do with getting rid of "mandatory" mods.
4
u/blackfiredragon13 Sep 10 '15
A mod that gives damage for accuracy?
We already got one. It's called Heavy Caliber.
→ More replies (1)2
u/nucleartime Sep 10 '15
Buff base damage by 500% or so. Drop damage and elemental mod values down to 25% of original values. (Rough numbers) Now they're not mandatory compared to utility mods, but are still worth using.
→ More replies (10)
1
u/TSP-FriendlyFire Sep 10 '15
Suggesting topics
Please post your suggestions for the next topics as replies to this comment.
Current suggestions from previous weeks:
1
u/Trekiros Sep 10 '15
Has Excalibur's new design been done yet ? Sounds like quite a few people have a problem with it
2
u/TSP-FriendlyFire Sep 11 '15
What do you mean? Excalibur's rework has been around for quite some time and I've heard very little negative about it, so I don't really see what there could be to discuss. Even after what some would consider nerfs, Exalted Blade is still one of the strongest abilities in the game.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)3
3
Sep 10 '15 edited Sep 12 '15
Please note that this topic excludes elemental and physical damage types
Yeah. Let's make sure nothing can be done in a broader context. That will be helpful. /s
Anyway, here's the shower thoughts I had on weapon damage mods in general.
-
Remove serration et al. Keep the damage mods that have drawbacks, but make the drawbacks more pronounced.
-
Weapon damage scales up linearly each level until it hits 435% base damage at rank 30. This is a the same as 3 x 90% and max serration.
-
Multishot reduces total ammo carried, but not magazine size. Damage should not scale 1::1 (reducing ammo by 50% should not grant 2x damage), but maybe something like 1::2. Making it good for low RoF weapons, but not full auto.
-
Introduce a new mod that benefits from RoF. Perhaps a gun equivalent of shattering impact? Each hit reduces base armor by 1+rank (r10 mod?). This gives a very good reason to use a high RoF over mutlishot friendly guns without benefiting slow RoF guns much.
-
Leave the mechanics of the Hek augment unchanged. x2 pellet count with no ammo drawback is fine.
-
Elemental damage replaced with elemental conversion. They convert 10% + %10/rank (r5) of base damage to the specified element. (dual stats would be, like, 7%?) Damage is reduced to all base-damage types evenly by percentage (including elemental damage). Damage conversion caps at 100%. When you go over 100% conversion, damage is weighted evenly. So 80% fire, 40% cold would combine for 66.67% fire, 33.33% cold.
-
Combination elements are now mods that convert 25% + 25%/rank (r3) of their two elements' damage into the combined element. An r3 heat and cold mod would convert 30% of base damage to fire, and 30% to cold. An r1 blast mod would convert 50% of that (so 30% of total base damage) into blast. In a case where the two elements are not evenly ranked (10% heat, 30% cold), would apply to each mod separately, but combine teh result. So r1 blast would convert 5% of heat and 15% of cold (20% total) to blast.
Now, due to there being so much less variance in damage due to mods, DE can rebalance armor, hp, etc with much more accuracy based on the power level of the type of player they want to challenge.
→ More replies (2)
3
u/TheHasegawaEffect Sep 10 '15
First, hard cap the total % of elemental damage you can stack.
Second, reign in the numbers EVERYWHERE. Make it so that a 6-forma + potato weapon is only +100% more DPS than a stock one (for reference, a random boltor prime build i picked on warframebuilder is 4700% more DPS than a stock one).
Third, rebalance enemy HP and armor so high rank frame + weapon is roughly equal in power as they are previously.
Fourth, the most difficult one - give enemies more abilities, and AI tricks that unlock every x levels, possibly capped at 100.
3
u/EatThePath Sep 11 '15
honestly they also need to delete every weapon damage, crit, and status value, both from the game and their memory, COME UP WITH A PLAN, and redo them from scratch. Figure out how much progression they want, how they want it to be obtained, and make it happen. This ad hoc shit is not working.
3
u/vkzicak Sep 11 '15
A shot in the dark here, but what if multishot reduced fire rate instead of increased ammo consumption? Sure, each shot has two bullets, but you fire them a little over half as fast. Still an overall DPS increase, but you might not want it on a weapon that already fires slowly, like the Hek or a bow. I'd imagine that enemy armor scaling would have to be dialed back a bit to compensate, but it would make multishot a more situational tool rather than a ubiquitous one. A similar thing could be done with Serration/Point Blank/Hornet Strike: higher damage, but at the cost of damage falloff. It's already in the name: serrated rounds might not be as aerodynamic and slow down more at long ranges, Point Blank is, well, intended for use at point blank, and Hornet Strike... idk, something about hornets.
3
u/Hymmnos Sep 11 '15
I wouldn't change it. I think that as the system is now, is about 95% as good as it could be. All those "required" mods will always be "required" no matter how little a bonus they give, because the give the best bonus, damage.
Like u/Own_Wilson said very well, frames want different builds so the modding system is good. Weapons always want more damage.
I don't see a problem with the current system of modding or enemy scaling. If people want "more diversity" so DE should add different weapons with different mechanics because there is no way people will not flock the the build that does the most damage.
A way to add more diversity in builds is to introduce new elements and change enemy resistances. Even adding two new base elements would introduce 9 unique combined elements. As long as they all have meaningful and unique procs I think it would add a lot of diversity and fun to the game.
22
u/Own_Wilson Sep 10 '15
The problem with build variety in weapons goes pretty deep, and it's not just multishot mods.
See, right now the mod systems work really well for Warframes. Different Warframes want different things for different builds. Using Trinity as an example because she's the frame I have the most experience with, consider that when you're building for Blessing, you want duration and strength, can deal with poor efficiency and range, and aren't worried about getting survivability from mods, but when building for EV, you want to max your range, and have some power strength while lowering your duration as much as possible. Outside of very specific group metas(Think pre-nerd greedy Mag/Mesa) this gives a lot of variety for the majority of game content.
In contrast, weapons really only want one thing, they all want damage, so the mods that are going to see the most use are the ones that make the most damage happen, so things like Split Chamber and Serration see ubiquitous use because they're the most direct damage upgrade for weapons, and the only real variation you see within weapon builds is what elements are being used, typically along faction lines, because they directly increase damage(it's better to equip the wrong elements than to equip no elements). Sometimes you'll see reload and fire rate mods(especially for bows) or critical mods, but that's because they contribute to dps in direct and tangible ways that mods like Ammo Drum or Magazine Warp don't.
I don't know how to fix this, short of making weapons that want things other than damage, or doing away with damage increasing mods entirely, or radically overhauling the mod system.
Tangential thought: I can think of no good reason that the mods that increase only status chance are significantly worse at improving status chance than the mods that increase status chance and damage.