What Is Perfection?
At the start of the weekend a new frame was released in Warframe. The Vauban is a tactical frame with very interesting abilities, ranging from a static proximity attack to a black hole. The frame its self has fairly favorable Polarities, low shields and standard health, a fair amount of armor, and good sprint speed. As a caster-support frame, it has a good base power to work with.
It is also perfect in the eyes of players.
Perfection in a game such as Warframe is bad. Single-frame self-sufficiency greatly impacts the balance of other frames and enemies encountered in missions. No single frame should be able to handle every situation as favorably or more favorably than another frame, and certainly no frame should be mechanically and numerically better than another. Outside of the line of Prime Warframes.
What is the point of an Ash or a Loki stealthing ahead and dealing favorable damage on targets when a line of Tesla mines can be planted in a choke-point? Why bother crowd-controlling a group with the Frost's Freeze or the Excalibur's Radial Blind when you can lock them down in Bastille and fire at your leisure?
Don't misinterpret this as a complaint about the Vauban Warframe. Creative use of a frame should allow the player to do amazing and fun things on their own or in a group setting. Being able to one-shot threatening foes such as the Stalker with Tesla cheapens the experience though, which helps us identify the original question at the top of the page. In this case, what is perfection? Perfection is a lack of challenge. And Warframe should be all about challenge.
Risk, Reward, and Rhino
The Rhino changes which came in the same patch as the Vauban help to illustrate the issues of Risk vs. Reward and shine a bright spotlight on the problem with challenge in Warframe. Immunity and invulnerability in a game with such a focus on team-play and movement (remember, this isn't a cover-base shooter!) cheapens the experience. This is what the Rhino suffered from.
Iron Skin originally granted complete immunity to damage, knock-back abilities, energy-drain abilities, movement-impairing effects, and the cold vacuum of space. It was an "I Win" button for boss encounters, a hard counter to Toxic and Disruptor Ancients, and one of the few ways to safely hack a Terminal without risk of being moved or interrupted.
Iron Skin was imbalanced.
The Rhino took out any risk in playing Warframe. Short of a hostage dying or a Mobile Defense overwhelming you with more foes than you can fire on at a single time, a Rhino could do any mission by themselves with almost no risk of failure. As long as you Iron Skinned early and often, you could withstand any punishment thrown your way. There was no risk in playing the frame, as none of the disadvantages inherit to the standard gaming definition of a "tank" were applied to the Rhino:
- Slower Speed
- Less Offensive Capability
- Less Utility
- Limited Usage*
*The standard build for a Rhino which undoubtedly lead to the nerf in the first place was to apply Continuity, Flow, and Streamline. This negated the issue of limited usage in practice.
None of these things were applied, if you simply built your Rhino like any other frame in Warframe. A player could cycle between Iron Skin and taking damage through their shields, allowing the Iron Skin to give them time to regenerate to full.
The removal of risk serves to lessen the reward. In a game with overwhelming challenges and boss encounters which typically require at least another player to safely defeat, the ability to fight something alone and not risk death made for a lessened reward. There is no sense of accomplishment, and without a sense of accomplishment there is no true reward for your actions beyond a moment of superiority. To adhere to the theme of the Bushido, there is no Honor in such a system. And without Honor, players will become bored and move on to another game.
Imba?
Warframe doesn't balance abilities in a vacuum against one-another. The Frost vs. Rhino debate has gone on since I started playing Warframe, and I suspect will always be something of a hot topic for tanks in the game. As more Warframes are released, more opportunity for imbalanced play shows up; and no one likes having their own accomplishments cheapened through the use of "imba" mechanics. So what is the solution?
Digital Extremes is doing a good job thus-far with balance. But that is in-part because they do not release abilities until they get the chance to play with them, and do not have a problem with new uses for existing abilities. If a damage coefficient needs to be adjusted or range needs to be toned down they do so, but they don't radically change the way abilities work unless it is absolutely required.
The Rhino could ignore mechanics, and that was a dangerous precedent to set for future abilities. I welcome the change to Iron Skin, as I welcome the new Vauban Warframe. I can only hope the Vauban sees a limiting to the effect some of its abilities have on the still-growing "metagame" of Warframe.
And maybe make it so Tesla doesn't attach to players, or multiple Tesla don't fire at once in an area. Giving a Rhino a shimmering coat of stars that fire death at the Stalker the moment he engages is just silly.
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