sunderthefirmament

It might be worth mentioning that mission types where CC is traditionally king are the same mission types that the community has complained about when DE adds new versions of them. For example, how many times did we loudly complain about yet another iteration of mobile defense being added to the game? Yet mobile defense, where kills don’t even matter, is a mission type where CC is more important than killing. The community seems to crave engaging content where kills are king. It shouldn’t be surprising that CC has been devalued, based on player feedback alone.

When you play a F2P game, you are willingly engaging with a certain degree of player-hostile systems, like low drop rates, long crafting times, etc.. The goal is to get you to spend both time and money The random loadouts are one of these systems. DE isn’t going to just incentivize owned weapons because the purpose is to encourage you to engage with all the grinds for all the weapons and frames, and then the various grinds needed to max those weapons and frames out. What you seem to be suggesting might build player good will, but it would come at a severe cost to DE. Here they’ve designed richly rewarding endgame content that rewards players for spending a ton of time and/or money on the game. Shifting that focus to only items that are owned would actively disincentivize engaging with the many grinds this game offers. I would take comfort in the fact that you can bring at least one carry slot and still get all the meaningful rewards. I would also suggest trading carries with a friend (one player plays with all challenges, one brings a carry and ignores all challenges, then swap)… until DE changes this.

This would be incredibly frustrating and likely lead to more people ragequitting when they encounter a Limbo. Dodge rolls are an important part of maintaining velocity in the parkour movement system, to say nothing of Rolling Guard. Forcing players into or out of the rift whenever they dodge while a Limbo is in the same mission would mean that even considerate, Narrow Minded Limbos are more of a hindrance than a help in most content. You do a good job of acknowledging Limbo’s many flaws, but this suggestion is one I hope DE never enacts. The whole “putting enemies and allies in separate dimensions” thing needs to go. It has never been executed convincingly or in a satisfying way. It also leads to stale gameplay that can’t be balanced. Limbo needs a complete redo. One of the reasons DE is hesitant to rework frames is that they don’t want to alienate players who currently use and enjoy the frame. With a frame as simultaneously griefy and unpopular as Limbo, I don’t think alienating his current players matters. They’re not the ones who have to deal with the grief of his kit.

When Sisters released, Liches got some improvements. And Sisters are generally faster to grind. So maybe there’s hope for system wide improvements when infested adversaries arrive. I just hope DE is smart about animations. The reason we got the awful holokey grind (and only one Kuva melee) is that they weren’t satisfied with melee (and speargun) animations for liches and sisters. So I hope that DE plans ahead for infested liches so they can include a lot of melee and ranged weapons regardless of animation limitations. Maybe the infested adversary will have a few body types possible (ancient, zealoid, juggernaut, etc.), and the “weapon” we get will really be like a horn or limb or something.

You acknowledge this, yet your ideas for changes do nothing to address it. The most significant change you seem to be proposing is to allow Limbo's gamebreaking CC to work through overguard again. This is a bad idea, as it is impossible to balance. Most of your changes aren't really changes. You basically say "the same thing" for almost every part of his kit. With respect, I don't think there's anything worth salvaging in Limbo's kit. It's a shambles that leads to stale gameplay (if it even can be called that) when it works. And when it doesn't work, it doesn't work, and you'd be better off bringing literally any other frame. If it were up to me, he'd get a floor to ceiling rework that throws the rift away in everything but name. He'd be more generic, with powers and a passive that beg and borrow from existing abilities on other frames, but he'd also be more useful and balanced. Most importantly, he'd lose the ability to grief his teammates.

That's just a byproduct of the spawn system that exterminates use. You're giving DE too much credit if you think it's deliberate misdirection.

Have you maxed the three melee weapons you can get from Narmer bounties? Nepheri, Korumm, and Verdilac.

I'd really like a basic scythe (Hate, Reaper Prime, etc.) to transform into a heavy scythe (Hespar) when going into its incarnon mode, but at this point I'd also welcome an incarnon Hespar. The weapon is so beautiful, and I like the way its stance feels, but it's really underpowered. I could use the Corufell I suppose, but that's not really what I'm going for. In general, I want more incarnon melees before primaries or secondaries. I feel like we have enough primaries and secondaries that go from single target to AOE mode, and it's kind of played out. Give me more funky melee ones.

Ivara is my favorite frame, but I'm not going to pretend she's perfect. Artemis Bow is extremely clunky, and could definitely do with some QOL or other improvements. I hope DE gives us an update that is focused on exalteds and pseudo-exalteds, eliminating statsticks while also bringing exalted weapons up to parity (at least) with current popular and effective weapons. Perhaps then Artemis Bow could receive some love. I just tried out a new, faster firing build on my Artemis Bow to see if I could make it work effectively in Steel Path. And yeah, energy became a massive problem, even with maxed Arcane Energize and Zenurik. Not worth it, honestly. Mod slots are already tight on Ivara, so I would rather any potential improvements to Artemis Bow be done to the core ability.

I've also recently noticed it happening with energy pickups.

I agree completely. It’s a tedious chore. I never had any intention of returning to it after buying the mods that drop here, but then EDA rolled in and has forced my hand.

...which are another buff that some players may not want, if they're using the original incarnons and Devouring Attrition that is. Just put it on the pile of ways players can accidentally compromise each other's builds.

It's interesting that you bring up Garuda with Dante, a frame who got criticism on launch for shutting down aspects of other frames' builds. Garuda's initial passive was completely at the mercy of team healing. If someone was an Oberon or spammy Trinity, your passive basically didn't exist. Although her new passive is decidedly less interesting, it at least plays more nicely with other frames' kits and isn't as vulnerable to being completely deactivated by an overzealous healer. I'm still waiting to see how the dust settles on Dante before finalizing my opinions (and builds), but I will say that I'm pleased DE is looking at LoS and how OG interacts with certain mods/effects. Even if his 3, 3, 4 nuke ends up in an undesirable state, I think Dante will still have relevance due to OG generation on kill, if nothing else.

I hope you're correct here, but I'm not especially optimistic. History has shown that DE has a lot of trouble coding LoS checks that feel predictable and good to players. I'm really hoping the renewed focus on it forces DE to go back and make changes to abilities that essentially feel like rolling the dice right now. Whipclaw and Fire Blast are the two biggest offenders. I used to get frustrated with other Khoras for not clearing their domes, but once DE added a LoS check on it, I can't even blame them. It's just whiff after whiff after whiff for no discernable reason. Is the LoS check somehow getting blocked by invisible level geometry? An ally? Khora herself? The ability feels terrible to use. Fire Blast is similar, though not as obvious as it isn't the crux of Ember's entire kit.

I doubt it, but this is something I would happily spend plat on, along with walk-styles like Wisp, Titania, and Dante. I just really want Gyre's dodge on other frames.

I would argue another reason why they just knee-jerked a massive range nerf was that it was easy to program. It strikes me as poorly tested and low effort, honestly.

I posted some other ideas in another thread: increase energy cost of ability decrease damage of spread statuses make statuses only spread to speared & haloed targets (hit by the 2) add a lengthier casting animation and make it charge to spread farther (unlikely, as this would take art resources). The conditional status spread on haloed targets would likely achieve something similar to a LoS restriction.

This is the real reason I'm so sad about the Nezha augment getting nerfed. That terrible deadlock protocol Corpus ship defense tile... it would have been perfect for it. Nothing nukes well there. Nezha could have been the first.

On paper. In practice, it's tiny, and there's no reason to sink so much into range on Nezha when you're better off building for other things. I've seen people saying that this nerf "killed Nezha," which I disagree with, as I think he's an amazing frame, even without the augment in its release state. The nerf did kill the augment though. It might have some niche uses, but if you're really spearing that many enemies in a tiny area, they'd be dead by cheaper and less complicated effects anyway. If you're still enjoying the augment, cool. I hope it gets some improvements though.

Not to the degree that it got nerfed. It's basically only usable in tightly packed areas now, or with a grouping ability... at which point you'd be better off just using an AOE status weapon or melee influence. There has to be a middle ground, but I worry that with all the focus on Dante, this augment is just going to be dead.

Wukong Prime was the second most used frame in 2023. The Kuva Nukor was the most used secondary weapon in 2023. 2/10 of the top primary weapons are classic AOE weapons (Envoy and Bramma). My point is that as much as players might want to complain about DE's nerf philosophy in general, they haven't actually been that brutal in recent years. Most nerfs have been gentle enough to avoid outright dumpstering the frame/weapon/ability in question. Not so for Divine Retribution. And though I don't think Dante has been dumpstered, LoS really messes with his playstyle of moving around to mark targets with his 3 and then detonating them from a central location with his 4. If the goal was to make him less spammy, it achieved the opposite effect.

Fair enough, but I can remember plenty of nerfs that were much more evenhanded than the LoS skewering that Dante received... to say nothing of the outright dumpstering of Nezha's new augment. Wukong is still very useful and powerful. The Kuva Nukor is still an amazing secondary weapon. AOE weapons are still completely viable in a wide range of content.

It might have been a "tweak" if it were from a different studio... as in a studio that doesn't have a history of coding awful LoS checks. DE just can't get LoS checks down. It has been a problem for years and years at this point. Why they thought this would work, I have no idea. And how they couldn't have seen this coming, I also have no idea.

The only one I can even remotely see for Dante was "overly dominant," but there's no way DE had enough data at the time to justify the nerf. And to be quite honest, Dante was never going to be overly dominant from a damage standpoint, at least not in the level of content they're pushing us to lately. His nuking falls off significantly against armored foes, particularly in steel path. Yeah, he dominated base star chart fissures... but even axis are nowhere near what "endgame level" has become these days. That's not a good metric for judging whether a frame needs a nerf. As for his dominance from a support standpoint, I'm not as certain. If the concern is how he outclasses older support frames, I think that ship sailed long ago.

I think their philosophies have shifted massively over time as well. I don't think they'd ever release a frame like Limbo now, for example.