Enforced level deltas has been one of the biggest blunders Bungie has embarked on over the last two years. It's been another double-primary situation - A select few players like the changes, where as a much larger bulk of players do not. It's honestly a hard situation for Bungie - They revert, and sure a lot more of the casual audience would likely come back, but then sticking around is another story due to other game issues while the players who want the harder challenge get annoyed at the ease of the game. They do nothing, and the casual playerbase remains away from the game, with sharp player count declines after new content drops remain a thing.
I've given some thought on this issue over the past few months (Getting some perspectives from other games), alongside the whole notion of power level in general across the game, and I think the best solution here would be a new system that fixes existing problems with power, while also giving both groups of players what they want. Here's what I have come up with as a proposed solution:
* Remove pinnacle gear levels, only just a soft cap / hard cap progression of gear power. This power becomes the only factor for fireteam / account power (The below bonus power no longer applies to either)
* Add a new "bonus power" section, "Pinnacle Level" which progresses by completing pinnacle activities (You earn progression to this when you would originally earn a pinnacle drop).
* Pinnacle Level caps at +25, only resets when the hard cap is raised. I would tune the first 10 levels of this to be quick (Akin to how quick most players reach the current pinnacle cap), then have the remaining 15 be a much longer term aspirational pursuit.
* Retune artifact bonus power to be slower due to the new additional bonus power.
* Negative power (Being under) will remain the same in activity scaling, retune over power to be logarithmic (Most gains in being over felt for the first few points, with a rapid change to diminishing returns after).
* Remove "Maximum Effective Power" in all activities that did not have it prior to Lightfall (Only Legend Campaign, GM Nightfalls, and Contest Raids retain it).
* Allow players to toggle off/on their bonus power. This feature can only be done outside of activities.
This is what I feel would solve the most problems and please the most players. People who want the challenge can turn off their bonus power and retain the current -15, -20, etc. feel as they so please, and this can then extend to the rest of the game. For players who want a more casual experience, they can toggle on their bonus power and then get to have a more relaxed experience in the game. You can then make triumphs for doing full team no bonus power runs, etc. to retain the "hard challenges", while also letting players who just want to let loose and have fun enjoy that. This system would also address the long-standing problem of pinnacle RNG drops being repetitive, because now pinnacle levels would just be gained by playing pinnacle activities.
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I like this idea, but technically we can do most of this already by equipping lower power gear and set the limit for ourselves. A lot of those players that want a challenge also refuse to let go of their most powerful builds and run something "off-meta" or lower power to handicap themselves. It would be far better to set the level of challenge we want for ourselves and at the same time decrease or increase the rewards given for completion of those activities. On that note, we're on the same page I believe but of course it is up to Bungie to either implement some sort of course correction as suggested or let the ship sink.
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That's too much micromanaging. The old system had no flaws. The actual issue is that the people who want that "like I just started playing" challenge have been playing the game for 10,000 hours and haven't yet figured out that you simply can't bring that level of challenge back again. We have Master, Grandmaster, and Legend content for challenges. However, I do agree that making sure the only thing you get from removing power scaling is triumph score. The idea of having to always play vanguard ops at -20 to farm for red borders or whatever makes me want to uninstall the game and never come back again. Pinnacle grinds are only a problem for about 3-6 weeks, and then they're not. There was nothing wrong with the pinnacle grind back when light level mattered. It's the fact that light level doesn't matter that makes pinnacle grinds suck. Like, yes, I played extra to get to 2000. I want to feel like a God in activities that were 1950. I earned it, that's why I pinnacle grinded in the first place. Bungie removing that sense of progression is a significant part of why things feel so bad now, and removing the "progression" entirely in favor of a soft cap light level is too far gone from the gameplay loop and would be too far into the "grind all day and get nothing" mentality that's keeping Warframe from being a Destiny killer.
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[quote]Bungie removing that sense of progression is a significant part of why things feel so bad now, and removing the "progression" entirely in favor of a soft cap light level is too far gone from the gameplay loop and would be too far into the "grind all day and get nothing" mentality that's keeping Warframe from being a Destiny killer.[/quote] This is what my proposed solution is aiming to fix. As mentioned, I would want "Maximum Effective Power" completely axed from the game and returned to how things worked prior to Lightfall. Everything but very exclusive cases (GMs, Legend Campaign, Contest Raids) should be both "Power Enabled" and "Power Matters" (Being over/under has an effect, period). How much being over/under affects should be adjusted so things don't get completely obliterated when you hit +15 for example (Logarithmic positive scaling would help), but regardless of the activity, it should play a role. What my proposed system is looking to accomplish however, is giving the player a bit more control over how power affects their gameplay. As mentioned, there are a small group of players who enjoy the under power experience. I don't think it would be fair to them to completely nuke that feeling from the game, just as I don't think its fair to the wider casual audience that had enjoyed being able to use over power as a substitute for lower skill having that lever removed after it had existed for the 8 years of the franchise prior. Is it more to manage? Sure, but it would also be much simpler over time. You hit hard cap (Let's say they bump hard cap to 2000 to make it easy), then you play pinnacle activities. Where you would originally earn a pinnacle drop, you now earn Pinnacle XP which progresses towards a bonus pinnacle level. Let's say you get one, your "player's gear power" remains at 2000, but your effective power would then be 2001 (+1 bonus pinnacle power). A legend activity you would then be -14, a master -19, and so on. Where the aspect of "control" comes in is the idea of being able to toggle this bonus power, so lets say you're a hardcore wanting a bit more spice from your Master run and you have +25 Pinnacle Power (The max) and +10 artifact. Your effective power beforehand would be 2035, or +15 over master, but you could then flip the toggle and reduce your effective back to 2000 (-20 power). Doing this gives the casual audience their in-road back while also retaining the higher difficulty under-power experience for those who want it. Now sure, there would also still be the classic places where forced under-power would exist (Legend Campaign, GM, Contest Raid), but those activities were already built with that experience in mind.