Nullifiers, Damage Caps, Cc Immunity And Crazy Grineer Vat-Cat Ladies. Unmitigatible Hard Counters Are Not Cool.

[Chroia]

I may not make 50 threads about this every other week, but this has neither been forgotten nor accepted.

 

I get it. It's much easier to just go 'okay, so this doesn't affect that. Job done.'

Maybe it's even intended as a stop-gap solution - but if that's the case, it needs to be A) presented as such, and B) Subsequently completed.

 

But Warframe isn't a MOBA where you've always got teammates that you can plan out your counters with.

 

Games happen within the structure of the rules and mechanics.

This is good. This is necessary.

But once you've set up your rules, respect them.

 

You give players tool to use.

If the tools prove to be too potent, either remove them or retune them.

Arbitrarily saying 'nope, it doesn't work now because I said so' feels bad as a player (perhaps you're familiar with the concept of 'DM/GM fiat' - and how it is received?), damages your audience's immersion/suspension of disbelief and indicates that you're inconsistent, unprepared or unreliable.

 

Disclaimer:

The following are merely illustrative examples, 'k?

 

 

Player damage is too high? Sure, you can add invulnerable enemies, slap damage caps on things, etc.

But the better solution, for the game's health, is to reign in the damage mods.

* Multishot is being addressed.

 

* There exists code that'll allow Elemental damage mods to convert as opposed to add damage, with work.

(Use the 3 I/P/S specific +damage modifiers. They don't scale with base damage.

-100% I & -100% P & -100% S & +100% fire -> All damage converted to fire.

This will however require looking at, vis-a-vis non-IPS weapons, 90% elementals + dualstats.)

 

* Alternatively, as has been talked about, slap conditions on the straight damage mods.

 

* There are also mechanical options, such as the Ancient Healer's aura, or the Grineer support drones.

This increases the player's choices and game interactions, by implementing damage mitigating mechanics on the one hand while letting the player do something about them on the other, as opposed to just arbitrarily capping the damage a unit can take.

The Blunts are a step in this direction, but generally aren't deployed and utilized faster than (well-modded) players (who are those these changes are aimed at) kill them.

Another mechanical option is to directly dampen player damage, as with Puncture procs.

 

 

Player CC too effective? Sure, you can just give units a damage-capped invulnerability bubble and an increasing duration reduction across the board.

But better would be to skip the bubble and put the countering- ability on a unit.

* Ancient Disruptors do this already.

* Ancient Healers protect allies from procs by siphoning them to themselves.

* Stalker and Zanuka can dispel. This could be given to Commanders, for example. Instead of the TP Switch, perhaps.

 * Grineer could get a medic unit, for instance.

* Corpus could have this property added to Shield Drones, if their stacking were removed anyway. Or an unarmed 'mech repair' drone. etc.

 

 

Invisibility OP? Sure, you could make units with True Seeing.

But better would be to simply prioritize 'Stealth 2.0'.

 

 

It's a question of implementation.

This will take time and effort to do, certainly. I'm not discounting that.

But implementing it in this type of manner makes it something the player can react to and act on, as opposed to being an arbitrary dictatorial NOPE.

 

P.S.

And, (proverbially,) for God's sake, regardless of whether you do this, make projected auras respect walls.

Edit:

And, since I forgot to state - for these mechanics to be conducive to player choice, they need to be transparent:

This is happening because that unit is doing this.

 

* Shield Drones are a good example of this: Limited range, AI seeks to huddle and blatantly obvious due to its hovering above its allies - always in clear line of sight - and with visible 'energy tethers' allowing the player to track it, if needed.

 

Compare and contrast with Ancients:

Its aura ignores geometry, and while it's head-and-shoulders taller than the skirmishers, it only limitedly stands out.

Combined with the lack of visual aids (e.g. the Drone's tether), fairly long radius (Easily twice the Drone's - or so I guesstimate; having nothing visual and concrete to go by) combined with no grouping AI can make finding it opaque, which is counterproductive when the point is to encourage counterplay in the players - which requires transparency-of-mechanics.

 

Which is the point of the above 'P.S.'.

 

(And all this is before touching on pre-nerf Mag-proc Eximii, Toxic-proc Eximii or Energy-leech Eximii.)

Edited September 9, 2015 by Chroia

[Odik]

I like this wall :O

[Bizzaro21]

good ideas, and, anyways, it is better than what DE have in mind, removing MS is nothing towards balance, a straight downgrade to OUR weapons, supports power spam even more, and solves nothing

however, invisibility is not OP, as ash`s stealth won`t get you near 30 secs, and all guns are loud, Loki, on the other hand, is squishy as hell, so the least AoE will wreck him, so I`d expect it to last long and have an augment to shut weapons up

the damage converter mods, yea, I don`t really like this, but it could be like adding half its percentage to overall damage, and rest is converted (Example: 50 slash and 50 impact gun, adding a mod with 100% heat damage will result is total damage: 25 slash, 25 impact, 100 heat (added 50% more damage, and converted 50%), this would be a better implementation IMO

 

EDIT: these will be new mods, current elemental ones will stay, and the percentages I gave are just to make math easy, so don`t press on it

 

Also, our damage is nothing near too high, at void, beyond 40 minutes, Boltor p (the OMG OP weapon, as people claim) would need like a clip for bombards, and slightly more for gunners, and you get the idea, on a level 85 bombard, with radiation and viral, it dealt 60/shot, I think he has plenty of 60s in his health, and that is nothing like 100 minutes or so, they hit 80 around minute 50, at minute 60 (which is where the fall off should start to get serious, right now, all weapons that can`t be boosted with powers (in other words melee) are pointless, and with our current ammo supplies, I will be out of ammo after killing 3 heavies or like 8 light units or so

again, DE`s solution, make us eat more ammo, and give us more to eat is no way near a solution, will just make clip size a joke on auto guns, especially dual secondaries, as their mechanic is 2 shots per trigger pull

Edited September 8, 2015 by Bizzaro21

[Cephalon_Ordis]

i only read small individual parts of this wall. but i liked what i saw.

[[DE]Grzegorz]

We might need to focus on weapon balance as well, to make a proper base for mods.

As I've suggested a few times, I personally opt for hand crafted difficulty tiers, with set stats instead of leaving most of the game to RNG (and most of the community doesn't really like RNG in its current form).

 

As I suggested before, this would result in completely arbitrary number of tiers, like 5 tiers of difficulty for example.

Each of them would have set enemy composition, enemy stats and their behaviour.

Arbitrarily, it would result in fodder tier units having e.g. 80HP, medium enemies having 100HP and heavies sitting at 150HP in Tier1.

Tier2 enemies would have stats increased by e.g. 25% on top of being smarter (as, trying to utilize more programmed behaviours).

 

Of course, we could add some smooth transitions between tiers as endless modes progress and whatnot.

 

These tiers should get coupled with proper weapon tiering systems and major rebalance of armaments available in Warframe.

 

This could result in 5 tiers in this case. Split over 20 mastery ranks as of now, up to 30 as the game progresses (so basically, a tier could occupy 6 ranks, though I believe that compressing craptier and godtier to 3 ranks each, while expanding remaining 3 tiers to 8 ranks could be better, or even composition such as 3-7-10-7-3)

 

As basically, in terms of statistical performance, e.g. Tier 3 weapons would roflstomp and steamroll Tier1 to Tier 2 enemies, offer rather balanced challenge against Tier3 and struggle against Tier4 and being nigh useless against Tier5.

 

 

And obviously, the most important thing, the risk to reward ratio of weapons. Basically, weapons from same tier that are harder to use and/or acquired later, would have somewhat higher statistical performance when compared to easier to use and acquire peers.

 

This, in theory, should create a wave, where player begins with easy to use but objectively bad weapons, acquires harder to use yet more effective weapons and then jumps into next tier to get weapons of nearly equal performance while being somewhat easier to use.

 

Just my 2 cents.

Edited September 8, 2015 by Mofixil

[taiiat]

these Enemies will always exist as long as Players are incredibly Overpowered.

they go hand in hand.

it's as simple as IF Players are highly Overpowered, THEN Enemies which entirely negate that power will exist.

[TheBrsrkr]

these Enemies will always exist as long as Players are incredibly Overpowered.

they go hand in hand.

it's as simple as IF Players are highly Overpowered, THEN Enemies which entirely negate that power will exist.

Pretty much this. Interesting mechanics can't stand up to cheese. Only anti-cheese can.

[Archistopheles]

To Piggy-back on this, Ancient Healer's buff in the void is bad design. There is no visual or audible feedback that your weapons fire is being mitigated by these enemies. The first time I encountered it, it felt more like a bug rather than an enemy ability.

[Chroia]

Right, thanks. Was going to comment on that (which the 'projected aura' thing was part of) and lost track.

Adding to OP.

 

 

these Enemies will always exist as long as Players are incredibly Overpowered.

they go hand in hand.
it's as simple as IF Players are highly Overpowered, THEN Enemies which entirely negate that power will exist.

I'd say it depends on design intent.

If players are supposed to be highly overpowered, then hard counter enemies have no reason for existing.

If they're aren't supposed to be highly overpowered, but are - find the tools that are causing it and 'either remove them or retune them'.

There are - imo, as always - better (for the game) ways to address this than DM fiat.

[taiiat]

-snip-

i don't believe it to be the most practical means to an end, but it does work as a stopgap until a better solution can be procured.

that being said, these types of Enemies can be interesting, and can exist even if Players aren't so incredibly Overpowered. you scale back their effects ofcourse, but the ideas that they bring to the table are certainly quite different.

[Chroia]

<snip>

Agreed and agreed.

My only issue, in this regard, is that if these are intended as a stopgap - rather than permanent - solutions, "[they] need to be A) presented as such, and B) subsequently completed."

Edited September 9, 2015 by Chroia

[Phatose]

The effectiveness of any particular a tool a player may have varies entirely too much for simple retuning to be effective.  It should vary very much - this is a game about progress, and that means that a tool in the hands of a kitted out player should be far far more effective then the same tool in the hands of a newbie.

 

Which is why hard counters are preferable to simply nerfing and buffing.  Hard counters can effect players at any point in the power curve equally, without side effects for players at other points in the curve.  Reducing the power of an ability because it's too powerful in the hands of  long term players, and you make that power worthless for the newer players.   Hard counters don't do that.

[Ronyn]

I'm of the mind that overall balance needs to be heavily tuned. Well..obviously.

And certainly things like enemies auras should respect walls.

But that said......

 

Special enemies and hard counters aren't bad because we have the tools and the ability to recognize and counter them already. That only falls apart when the games core balance does. What we really need is a more consistent type of balance across all of our capabilities. Regardless of whether DE insists on having levels with endless scaling or not, until we get all of the player tools to a similar level of effectiveness there won't be any real balance. 

 

Conceptually speaking, I actually like nullifyers and the grineer cat wranglers with true seeing theoretically.

While they are technically hard counters they hardly require any specific team compositions to deal with. To imply they do is a huge exaggeration.

If you look at other games from Zelda to Devil May Cry we learn that unique enemies push players to change up our approach. 

It's generally a matter of knowing which of your many player options are wisest to use. Most times we are each well equipped to deal with whatever comes our way. We, the players, have the required tools to deal with these enemy hard counters. The same can be said for the players in warframe. We each have the tools to deal with these enemies. We can see and react to the bubble just fine. (though not the auras through walls, they should respect walls)

 

I know that a lot of folks rally around the idea that these enemies are "bad" but think about it. Do you have any issues with level 40 nullifiers?

Not really. These unique enemies are only a problem when the game scales to the point where basic balance has fallen apart.  

Which is the REAL problem that needs to be addressed.

 

But how and where is balance falling apart? How do we pin point it? It's in the lack of consistency. 

Weapons do far more damage than powers, Stealth and CC powers generally scale far longer than damage and Defense powers. Yes, the larger issue with balance is that some things scale far better than others. Which means trying to balance the hardest point of the game at any one point is basically impossible. 

 

Alternatively-

If weapon damage fell off at the same time as damage powers then that would be something DE could balance around.

But they don't because power mods can only make powers about two and a half time stronger than base where weapon mods can bring weapon damage up by something like ten times base.

Simplest solution: DE should rework the mods so that both weapon and power mods ended up amplifying things to the same amount. 

The whole damage conversion system used in pvp would be a good start to bringing weapon damage down to closer to how powers scale.

Though we will obviously need some enemy re-tuning to go alongside it.

 

If CC and stealth powers fell off at the same time as damage and defense powers that would be something DE could balance around.

But they don't because while enemies have a stat that raises up the damage they dish out and the damage they can withstand...

directly effecting how much damage the player needs to dish out or withstand to compete with the enemies.

yet enemies have no inherent CC resilience stat or stealth vision stat that directly effects the players ability to do those things.

meaning those types of powers will work the same regardless of enemy level.

Damage and defense powers tend to fall off, stealth and CC powers tend to stay viable regardless of enemy level.

Regardless of whether there are nullifuers or enemies with true seeing the basic idea that some types of powers scale better than others will continue to skew balance.

Simplest Solution: DE should give enemies stats to resist CC and see through stealth. So that trying to CC a level 200 enemy is far less effective than trying to CC a level 50 enemy. I know a lot of folks hate the idea of their precious CC and stealth having to face the same limitations as damage defense.....but that is what balance is all about!

[taiiat]

-snip-

there's only one problem there, and it isn't for being afraid of losing our precious things.

if i cast an Ability designed to CC an Enemy for N seconds, and it does not that.... it's now unreliable. you can't know what the Ability is actually going to do anymore. it cannot be relied upon in Combat to do what it's supposed to do. as Enemy Levels go up, which they do constantly - your Abilities will become less and less reliable to use for their purpose.

and that doesn't work. what's the point of casting blah blah if it doesn't do what it's supposed to do? this means as Enemy Levels go up, the chance for you to get Killed just increases, with nothing you can do about it.

basically, if i can no longer rely on non-Damage things to be effective whatsoever - i might as well just shoot more bullets and call it a day.

so there's the rock and a hard place we're stuck to. if non-Damage things aren't reliable, as Levels go up, they fairly quickly become pointless.

but i guess that would achieve some goal. once Players stop being able to mapwipe Enemies to keep them from instantly Killing you, they'll all be forced to leave because Enemies are literally invulnerable to the Players.

but that doesn't sound particularly fun to me. because on the way there, my non-Damage Abilities will already have become extremely hazardous to even Cast, because the CC might last less than the Casting Time(or until just slightly after, that's no better). but i wouldn't know it until i'm already dead.

Edit:

hell, that would mean that Warframe Gameplay would effectively become Running with Rifles.

in that game, Players don't have Health. Weapons don't deal Damage. all forms of Attacking have a %Chance to Kill. so an Assault Rifle probably has a 9% Chance to Kill on every shot. while a Sniper Rifle 50 or 75%.

that's what Warframe would turn into. you have no real idea if you can deal with the Enemy in front of you. you just start spamming and see if you die or not.

Edited September 9, 2015 by taiiat

[Ronyn]

Why the specific concern that CC would become "unreliable" as it tapers off when everything else already becomes "unreliable" as it tapers off? Is it fun when some things taper off but not fun when other things taper off?

<if i cast an Ability designed to CC an Enemy for N seconds, and it does not that.... it's now unreliable. you can't know what the Ability is actually going to do anymore.>

<but i guess that would achieve some goal. once Players stop being able to mapwipe Enemies to keep them from instantly Killing you, they'll all be forced to leave because Enemies are literally invulnerable to the Players.>

I must say, you seem to have take the general suggestion to an over simplified extreme. lol

There are ways to make sure that there is some base consistency and enough transparency that things remain useful as they taper off.

At the same time, yes, it's true that at some point it will get out scaled to a large degree....

But that is my whole point. Either we are going to make everything scale forever or nothing should scale forever.

-----------

Ok Let's take a closer look at your concern.

 

I'll break it into two parts.

1: Realiablibility. How things change over time.

2: Readability. How a player could recognize how effective something would be.

 

First I'll apply those two concerns to player damage output.

Damage slowly becomes less and less effective. We know this because it takes more and more hits to kill enemies. This happens gradually.

Players comprehend this just fine. Eventually it takes so damage output to kill an enemy it just takes too long to be a viable option.

Simplistic Example: Early on Rhino charge will kill an enemy. Later on it no longer kills then it just hurts them.

 

Second I'll apply those two concerns to defense.

Defense slowly becomes less and less effective. We know this because it takes less and less hits for enemies to kill us.This happens gradually.

Players comprehend this just fine. Eventually enemies can kill us in so few hits that getting hit all is no longer a viable option.

Simplistic Example: Early on iron Skin will block lots of fire. Later on enemy fire will break through it quickly.

 

Now I'll apply those two concerns to CC.

CC slowly becomes less and less effective. We know this because enemies break out of CC effects faster or are only staggered instead of knocked down. This happens gradually. Wouldn't players comprehend that just fine as well?

Example: Rhino Stomp last 8 seconds at base.

An enemy with some sort of CC resistance would still be knocked into the air, still enter that state of stasis....

but would break out of it sooner. So a level 30 enemy would be effected for full 8 seconds, a level 60 enemy would break out in 4.

A level 90 enemy would break it in 2. But that would be the lowest cap so that no matter how high the enemy level is they would still be knocked into the air and enter a state of stasis for at least that initial moment.

 

Additionally, things like knockdown. Enemies would still be knocked down but would start to get up faster. All things that players could easily learn to expect and account for. 

 

Note: Those are simplified examples used as an illustration. Obviously there is more to it.

 

Edit:
hell, that would mean that Warframe Gameplay would effectively become Running with Rifles.
in that game, Players don't have Health. Weapons don't deal Damage. all forms of Attacking have a %Chance to Kill. so an Assault Rifle probably has a 9% Chance to Kill on every shot. while a Sniper Rifle 50 or 75%.

that's what Warframe would turn into. you have no real idea if you can deal with the Enemy in front of you. you just start spamming and see if you die or not.

Wait.....What are you talking about? I didn't suggest any RNG style chance-to-CC or anything impossible to count on like that.  

You could still rely on it in the same way you can rely on everything else. It still works, just less so. In a way that is readable and predicable. yet ultimately out scalable..like everything else.

Edited September 9, 2015 by Ronyn

[taiiat]

-snip-

yes, theoretically it's okay.

it's asking for trouble though. the 'RNG' is that Enemy Levels increase constantly.

while it would 'work', i'd rather go the other route so that everything feels capable.

[Ronyn]

yes, theoretically it's okay.

I know a similar system has been used elsewhere but my memory fails me. 

The only place I can recall is in some table top games where they use a similar out scaling mechanic for all aspects.

 

it's asking for trouble though. the 'RNG' is that Enemy Levels increase constantly.

while it would 'work', i'd rather go the other route so that everything feels capable.

What trouble is it asking for? people eventually having to leave endless missions because the shooting gallery tactic no longer works?

Enemy levels increasing constantly is not at all like RNG. As long as the CC limitation has a low end cap it can never drop below a certain threshold of usefulness. and If by the other route, you mean make everything scale forever, that has it's own can of worms.

From the eventual static interaction effect that infinite scaling brings to the destruction of the void key economy.

[Chroia]

Reducing the power of an ability because it's too powerful in the hands of long term players, and you make that power worthless for the newer players.

So don't reduce the base ability's power, reduce its scaling from mods.

By, for instance, making power-affecting mods mutually exclusive.

But that's a whole different discussion.

-----

 

What we really need is a more consistent type of balance level of power across all of our capabilities.

I think that's what you're getting at?

If so, I agree. If not, I'm not sure what you mean.

 

Conceptually speaking, I actually like nullifyers and the grineer cat wranglers with true seeing theoretically.

While they are technically hard counters they hardly require any specific team compositions to deal with. To imply they do is a huge exaggeration.

You're right. That was an overstatement.

And no, no individual hard counter requires the entire composition to counter it.

But I don't think it does in a MOBA either.

Pick, counter-pick, counter-counter pick -if needed.

Further, this assumes that A) the mechanical hard counters will remain on separate units, B) that this isn't an expanding trend which will be introducing ever more hard counters.

(Cue 'inb4 Roller Manic Nullifers' or however that short-lived meme went.)

 

If you look at other games from Zelda to Devil May Cry we learn that unique enemies push players to change up our approach.

Not familiar with Zelda, peripherally familiar with DMC.

So let me examine how I've adapted to the title hard counters:

Nullifiers:

> Always equipped with either an explosive weapon (usually a Power Throw Glaive) or invis with a silenced rapidfire weapon.

i.e. 1 weapon slot is dedicated to anti-Null duty. (Depending on frame-and-melee-weapon that may even not be needed, if you can gib or KD the radius with a slide/air attack.) No other change (before level 80+ bombards start sheltering in the bubble, anyway).

Damage Caps:

> Unit-specific, so modding for less damage is counter-productive against anything else in the mission.

In other words: No change.

CC Immunity:

Were you around for the False Profit event?

Make sure that 1 person can keep the Bursa stuclocked (i.e. recast <ability> nonstop every 2-4 seconds for 4-10 minutes) and at least 1 person can keep the adds in check.

(The fact that Brusa (and adds) could oneshot anything that didn't have 99% damage reduction didn't help things.)

This isn't interesting. It's repetitive, tedious, and - possibly worst - mechanical.

Giving this property to more than one unit at a time simply means that the only way you can CC anything effectively is trade-off: I'll disable myself by standing here and spamming so I can disable you, too.

It then becomes a race between my team's TTK (assuming I have a team) against my energy reserves (assuming I don't have 50kk energy restores).

How is this anything other than a (whole set of) stat-gate(s)? And even if that's a non-issue, how is this fun the 4th, 5th, 80th time it happens?

 

 

So, tl;dr - They're:

* Reduced gear-choice,

* no change,

* tedious and unengaging, and

* (I anticipate, when Vat-Cat ladies are added) first one to die - no change aside from potentially ruining stealth-sprees.

Maybe it's just me, but how have these hard counters 'changed up' my gameplay?

What positive impact have they had?

 

 

I know that a lot of folks rally around the idea that these enemies are "bad" but think about it. Do you have any issues with level 40 nullifiers?

Not really. These unique enemies are only a problem when the game scales to the point where basic balance has fallen apart.

Which is the REAL problem that needs to be addressed.

I'm of the opinion that Nullifiers are three balanced enemies but one unbalanced one.

The higher-scaling simply makes the issue more blatant.

ofc, it helps that the accuracy changes mean that they don't instagib you on sight at any range, anymore.

 

But how and where is balance falling apart? How do we pin point it? It's in the lack of consistency.

I'd say it's the mismatch between player power and enemy power. (As evidenced by any of the Assassins, for example.)

Also endless game-modes shouldn't be open-ended. There should be a clear cutoff: "Any trouble you run into past this point is your own problem."

Edited September 10, 2015 by Chroia

[MumblesMcphatty]

To Piggy-back on this, Ancient Healer's buff in the void is bad design. There is no visual or audible feedback that your weapons fire is being mitigated by these enemies. The first time I encountered it, it felt more like a bug rather than an enemy ability.

 

Is not the fact that your target isn't dying in one shot like everything usually does not evidence enough?

 

Does the cry of the Healer not give you due warning that maybe its time to look for him and take him out first?