[DO NOT remove self damage. It is a legitimate drawback and a niche some players welcome.]

52 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

There's nothing wrong with a game where every explosion hurts everyone. It's just a different kind of game. When other explosive weapons and all explosive abilities damage only enemies, you have to ask why the ones that damage the player who uses them (but not others, of course) are special. And that's really its own kind of immersion break. You can't create the sense of the world working realistically with something that's ultimately completely optional. 

It's not actually inconsistent. You're making an over-generous grouping if you think it is.

Radial AOE damage != explosives. Blast damage-type != explosives.

An EMP shockwave, a concussive shockwave, an explosion.. all different sorts of effects with potentially different consequences.

When you look at things that are thematically conventional chemically-reactive explosions:

• Rocket weapons (Ogris, Angstrum, etc)
• Grenade weapons (Tonkor*, Penta, etc)
• Small attached explosive payloads (Talons, Zhuge Prime, Concealed Explosives mod, Thunderbolt mod)

You see that, big and small, these all had self-damage. With the obvious exception at the time of release - the Tonkor. Which was a big mistake, as we all discovered.

Now you look at what's definitely not a conventional explosive:

• Quanta cubes, despite dealing blast damage, are some.. sort of energy shockwave?
• Simulor, with a special mention because mechanically it would hit the player too often to permit self-damaging anyway
• Sonicor (concussive), Staticor (some sort of energy-wave pulse)
• Warframe 'void magic' abilities of various kinds

You find many things doing no self damage.

There are middle-ground cases like the Castanas, which can be explained as more of an indiscriminate tesla-zapping, and the Lenz dealing self-damage with its ill-explained payload.

But the standard style of explosive is absolutely consistent.

 

[DO NOT remove self damage. It is a legitimate drawback and a niche some players welcome.]

@Miyabi-sama we may agree to disagree on Saryn's current oppressiveness level but when it comes to self-damage, you're right.

 

I'm going to throw more numbers out here. Forgive me if I missed something while scanning the list but it's illustrative of the point regardless.

Net gain for removing self damage:
  8 / 242 (~3.3%) completely dumb-firing explosives become no challenge to use.
12 / 242 (~4.9%) triggered / delayed / distance-arming explosives become even more trivial. _{(I think it's 12? Counting things like the Zhuge Prime and from what I vaguely recall, the Corinth alt fire having arm-distance self-damage.)}

Less than 10% of the primary+secondary weapons in the game get any sort of benefit. Less than 4% were 'unforgiving' to begin with.

Net gain for keeping self damage:
8 / 8 (100%) of high-risk weapons keep their high-risk playstyle for players who wish to engage with it.
12 / 12 (100%) of mid-risk, more forgiving weapons keep their middle-ground playstyle for players who like a little spice with a safety net.
222/242 (91.7%) of weapons without associated personal risk stay available for players who DO NOT like putting themselves at risk.

 

Why should greed for <10% of the available weapons remove 100% of the risky player's gameplay?

[DO NOT remove self damage. It is a legitimate drawback and a niche some players welcome.]

24 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

Think of it as an opportunity to push for Self Damage an opt-in mechanic. For instance, 

Reckless Shot: Weapons with Stagger gain +150% damage, +20% explosion radius.  Stagger now causes Self Damage.

While amusing for memes, it'd have to be multiplicative (like Primed Chamber) to be slot-worth. Also that wouldn't resolve the problem with it being improperly balanced regardless the mod.

[DO NOT remove self damage. It is a legitimate drawback and a niche some players welcome.]

2 hours ago, Azamagon said:

Ummm... enemies are dispersed all around you, they are definitely not always just all in the same spot. Being knocked down by a shot means you'll be exposed to gunfire from enemies from other locations. And that is still assuming the enemies you shot at are killed / incapacitated in the first place, which might not alway be the case.

And being to mod away from it is fine by me, as you're sacrificing a valuable modslot for a nice utility, as it should be.

Not much of a 'sacrificed' mod-slot when it's so useful for other knockdown annoyances (and as I understand, IS used by a large proportion of players?). Of course, since Weapon Exilus, neither was Cautious, really. But it's still cutting a heavy portion of an already far too heavily removed balancing drawback.

1 hour ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

This is why we can’t get anything done. Because any major change that’s actually a benefit people crawl out of the woodwork to protect it over redundant niche things.

It's not a benefit to anything but laziness and imbalance. I'm not going to appeal-to-purity and say you can't have an opinion if you didn't see the days of Old Tonkor, but let me assure you, it wasn't good.

It's a mistake of the past that should not be repeated.

[How To Fix Self Damage - SELF DAMAGE REWORK]

1 minute ago, Oreades said:

I will give you there can be some skew, for example back in the day when I only had Loki Prime and I used him for everything, the game still says it's my top frame even tho I haven't used him in probably two to three (or more) years. 

That said when I have to go down a several rows to hit someones first instance of a self damage weapon...... yeah....... 

Lets just say even tho Loki is supposedly my most used frame, the frames I actually use the most are still near the top of my list. 

Not sure what the implication is there since you established with the Kulstar bit that you already don't have problems with self damage weapons so DE removing self damage would have zero effect on you, because you're already a badass........ sooooo........ six of one, half dozen of the other. 

I dunno personally I find the proposed staggering mechanic a lot more interesting than some Boshy style "LOL U DIED" nonsense coupled with their continued attempts at mitigating it through other mechanics that where never going to work and ultimately wasted resources that could have been used elsewhere. I'm looking at you mod that removes 99% of self damage when the remaining 1% was more than enough to just keep oneshotting people anyhow. 

Let's see. If I sort all by used, skip over categories that don't count (melee, sentinel, warframe etc) I see.. my Kulstar coming in at #14. Sancti Castanas at #15. Ogris at #19. Pretty decent to say they're Sometimes weapons.

The risk of putting myself down hard, especially because I play almost always solo, is a thrilling switch from the casual W+M1 play. I have to think, position, act and react so much more. I do kill myself sometimes, but that's because taking the step into dangerous territory is half the fun, hence Frost/Kulstar danger-close fighting. I'm fallible, but I accept that failure (and move beyond its reach). Compared to that, I'll have 'knocked myself over, whatever'. There's no joy in that, the weapon's just going to become a tool the same way I don't take Saryn+Ignis out for fun, I take it out to just clear the mission.

You're right that Cautious doesn't do its job, but I've explained why. It's just moving the goalpost when the problem is that our damage doesn't scale with mods the same way our health does. It can't be a fixed link. Solving that removes the need for Cautious almost entirely, although I suppose it could be kept in to fudge the numbers a bit for someone's taste, but it'd need a nerf down to fit with the scaling of the algorithm used.

[How To Fix Self Damage - SELF DAMAGE REWORK]

2 hours ago, Oreades said:

You know the thing that always amuses me..... is that if you /profile the people who typically use the "git gud" argument..... always seems like the bulk of them don't use explosive weapons to any significance....... but hey, ya'll just git gud~

3 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Saturation plays tricks on usage statistics. You might have a weapon you effectively never use, that happens to be on a loadout you use often, which adds that gameplay time up. Conversely, loadouts you use often versus playing other things in circumstances that don't feed statistics as well. My most-used explosive is going to be the Kulstar, since it's the one I have attached to a loadout I don't frequently alter.

One of my focus lens'd perma-loadouts has Frost with a Kulstar. No overextended. I can use the Kulstar fighting enemies that get inside my bubble without downing myself.

I pretty much stopped using them regularly when A) the Tonkor meta made them irrelevant and B) fixing the Tonkor meta made them weak and they've not particularly recovered.

 

I haven't had enough time to beef up and take my Kuva explosives out enough for them to show on stats. Probably won't bother if they make them lifeless potato cannons though.

[2020’s First Mainline: Review, Revise, Refresh.]

10 minutes ago, Emperrier said:

Maybe what they could do is add a "Reckless Shot" mod that reinstates self-damage for a Primed-Chamber-esque damage buff.

Cuz let me give you a brief preview of how removing self-damage is going to go: Everyone who liked launchers is pissed and stops using them, the meta-wagoners use them for a couple weeks and gradually get tired of the stagger like how Quick Thinking is a mod-non-grata for having the slightest goddamned stumble possible on huge hits, and then in the long term nobody uses launchers and just starts complaining about how "self-stagger has no place in Warframe!".

Accuracy tier: Enemy level 900

Or the meta-wagoners keep using them and we have the old awful-meta Tonkor back in action with only a difference in being bounced down off your feet instead of up into the air when you body-check an enemy with it. Either way, a bad change.

[DO NOT remove self damage. It is a legitimate drawback and a niche some players welcome.]

Just now, SneakyErvin said:

Let me ask you. What was the gain though?

Because with a risk there is usually a reward. What exactly is the current reward with explosive weapons when I can just crashdown into the enemy with my melee and wipe the group out the same way an Ogris does but faster and without a risk?

5 minutes ago, (XB1)Red Dough Boy said:

The most logical thing I've heard against self damage is that it only effects one class of weapons that are already lacking since they have almost no ammo compared with more useful high damage weapons. So weapons with aoe had the downsides of self damage that other weapons don't have, and the weapon itself is only decent in most scenarios. As well as the fact that you can put blast on a weapon and never blow yourself up, in that case why ever use proper explosive weapons? 

Some of this is rooted in what I've already mentioned with the backlash DE risk from the complainer crowd for buffing them to where they ostensibly should be. The "already killed myself, GG" portion who disregard the actual comparison of risk and reward. Maybe DE was looking for the sweet spot where they could make the risk dangerous but not deadly as early.

Radial damage is more reliable to hit groups than trying to line up for solid punch-through. No damage falloff. You could, and of course should be at a safe distance from the target. You could go in for melee, eat a knockdown, and get flattened. 

I've obviously not said the risk/reward ratio was perfectly balanced for numbers, but that doesn't mean it can't be - that the mechanical risk/reward factors don't match up close enough in potential.

 

As a side-note, damage types can be somewhat abstract. Blast damage doesn't have to come from a conventional piece of ordnance. Quanta cubes come to mind. That's some energy shenanigan producing blast damage. I wouldn't call that inconsistent in theme.

1 minute ago, (XB1)Red Dough Boy said:

Wanting damage of Tiberon with a Gorgon's fire rate and magazine would be unreasonable, not blowing yourself up is a fair desire when using a weapon. 

I can use a Kulstar in my Frost's not-Overextended snowglobe, right now, without killing myself if I play well. Sometimes I don't play well enough, but I chose to use it in tight quarters. That risk is still there, I just operated around it instead of needing a Cautious Shot, in much the same way you'd have the choice of putting more damage into your Gorgon's mods instead of using Fast Hands for reload times to get the overall output you want.

4 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

I am extremely excited that they finally went with self-incapacitation instead of self-damage (I, among a few others, have been suggesting this repeatedly). Self-incapacitation works much better in line with the game's high pace and its general "risk-reward" system. The current self-damage system has always felt massively out of place since they went more and more towards making the game a hordeshooter, rather than a tactical-esque shooter.

One of the biggest problems with incapacitating yourself is that, if the damage of the explosive is where it should be, most everything around your impact point is liable to be dead and not shooting you. Maybe knocked down as well, pending Blast proc. So you've.. mildly inconvenienced yourself. Not really risked anything.

That's also ignoring the ability to mod away the negligible-risk even further. Handspring. Primed Sure Footed. Basically no drawback then.

[DO NOT remove self damage. It is a legitimate drawback and a niche some players welcome.]

4 minutes ago, Acersecomic said:

No. I want my Ogris and Penta. I do not want self-damage that comes with them. I like and enjoy those two weapons, but they are tiresome to play when I have to be careful an ally doesn't run in front of me.

Should I say you don't like air because you have to breathe it otherwise you die? Go tell someone else they don't like something. Troll.

I will not chose an alternative. I want their looks, their projectiles, their stats, their sounds.

I see you didn't read the post then, because I agreed allies getting in the way has to go. But that doesn't mean you remove self-damage.

Their stats includes the ability to hit yourself with the explosion. Therefore, you either want that risk or you don't want the weapon.

If I used the Gorgon and I liked its fire rate and mag capacity, but felt it was 'tiresome' to reload, insisting that the reload speed and per-shot damage was brought up to the level of the Latron while keeping the mag capacity and fire rate, do you see how unreasonable this is?

[DO NOT remove self damage. It is a legitimate drawback and a niche some players welcome.]

9 minutes ago, Duality52 said:

Self-damage was suppose to be a "high-risk, high reward". So far, the Kuva Bramma fulfills that, yet people prefer weapons that perform the same job with no self-damage whatsoever:

• Staicor (Hildryn's Balefire Charger)
• Arca Plasmor/Fulmin/Catchmoon
• Amprex, Kuva Nukor, etc.

Removing self-damage in favor of a stagger gives these weapons a new chance to shine. Unlike being punished with death for self-damage, you are given a chance to recover from the stagger.

The trouble is that people complaining about self-damage obstruct the weapons from getting power increases. Remember when Cautious was introduced? When it was improved? "GG I still kill myself". If you're trying to stem that sort of complaint, a power increase is only going to add more work for yourself.

The Arca/Fulmin/Catchmoon are similar to the old Tonkor. They take a weapon class and remove its core limitation, resulting in something busted. No self-damage made a busted 'explosive'. No pellet spread makes for busted 'shotguns'.

Continuous AOEs have different limitations. Ammo economy is rarely good. You have to wait for enemies to die, during which they can shoot you.

 

Now, these are all alternatives. And because they exist, does it really matter if preferences fall that way? Does it really require removing a set of gameplay options entirely? I had fun taking the risk when I was in a mood to do so. When I wasn't, I didn't use an explosive. What's wrong with that approach? Now I'll just have lifeless tools, not niches that shake up my gameplay noticeably.

1 minute ago, Acersecomic said:

If you enjoy dying so much spam radiation missions. A lot of people do not enjoy dying to self damage.

Do not try to defend suicide. STOP TO TROLLING. Self-damage to trolling. Just put it down, back of the yard and boom. Self-damage no more.

I enjoy my Ogris, my Penta, my Lenz. But the problem is self damage on them, and I really enjoy these three. Or I would IF THERE WERE NO SELF DAMAGE. So what forced me to suffer it? SELF-DAMAGE DID! Self-damage is suffery. "oh well if you don't like this or that... don't suffer it", just turn the other cheek on what you like because of a useless mechanic. You like self-damage? Good for you. Not for me. I want it gone and it will be gone. There is nothing you or other trolls like you can do to stop this. Next up, complaining that weapons do damage.

You didn't like the Ogris and Penta, because part and parcel of those weapons is the risk you run for the way they deal damage.

You wanted to have your cake and eat it too. The Staticor is waiting. Leave self-damage weapons alone and choose the alternatives that exist instead of calling everyone who doesn't share your ideals a 'troll'.

[DO NOT remove self damage. It is a legitimate drawback and a niche some players welcome.]

1 minute ago, Acersecomic said:

The sooner it is gone the better. It took a while but we're finally free.

Who forced you to suffer from it? What makes your gain of 10-or-so weapons, out of several hundred, more relevant than removing an entire gameplay niche from players who don't mind, or even enjoy it?

[DO NOT remove self damage. It is a legitimate drawback and a niche some players welcome.]

2 minutes ago, Duality52 said:

Indeed. I can't count the number of times I blew myself up because a Nullifier deflected it back at me or a teammate jumped in front of me.

Teammates, as I said, are a legitimate criticism that affects other things (it's just more of an immediate negative response than just having your shots intercepted from killing enemies all the time).

Nullifiers are a very visible and known factor. You might blow yourself up as a result of them, but they're something you have the capacity to anticipate. It's not self-damage's fault if we as players make a bad judgement call.

[DO NOT remove self damage. It is a legitimate drawback and a niche some players welcome.]

Obligatory seed from the workshop thread:

3 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

DO NOT REMOVE SELF DAMAGE. It CAN and SHOULD exist.

Remember the Tonkor.

 

INCREASED REWARD comes with balancing DRAWBACKS. Personal risk is a legitimate and even enjoyable drawback if you care to master it.

Please. Don't let the whiners make you cave and steal away niche fun from the players who actually liked it and didn't mind putting themselves on their back from time to time because it was their own fault, and they accepted that.

Alternatives exist. Nobody is forced to use self-damage weaponry. Not all weaponry has to work in every situation. 

 

Let us wield a REAL risk if we choose to do so. If you're going to address the self-damage, do it by changing the formula, not the mechanics.

 

That's the long and the short of it, up there. But as can be traced back quite easily in my post history, I've had a long history of preserving and defending the role of self-damage in Warframe.

Who thought this was a good solution?

Oh, that's right. The vocal player minority who don't actually like explosives. Because explosives, naturally, come with the drawback of putting yourself at some risk.

 

What about the players who like that? Who see that they had all the information necessary to not hit themselves when they triggered that explosion? Who accept that they died because of their own judgement?

Why are they not allowed to have their weapon niche when Warframe is all about developing wide variety over tall progression depth?

 

The ONLY problems with self damage lie in three factors:

1. When you do not have the information to predict where the damage event will happen. 
   1. Cyanex homing projectiles could not be properly predicted. Self-damage was appropriately removed for gameplay purposes in this case.
   2. It could be argued that lingering triggered explosives (Penta etc.) exhibit this factor. Supplying small UI marker elements on your (limited number of) lingering explosive payloads could solve this.
2. When your allies' hitboxes get in the way.
   1. Due to Warframe's general pacing, this cannot be allowed. It also interferes with non-self-damage gameplay. Ally collision should simply be removed unless there is a use case for it, e.g. sticking bombs to buddies you can trigger later.
3. A distorted scaling of risk and reward.
   1. This is the BIG one but it is one that can be SOLVED by simply using a formula. The problem is that, for enemy health which scales up rapidly while player health scales finitely, having a linear link between modding output and increasing self-damage cannot adequately keep the risk/reward ratio in line.

 

Resolving self-damage scaling:

We do not use flat damage values, as these become irrelevant depending on your warframe or buffs. Irrelevant (or zero, obviously) cannot be allowed as this breaks the risk/reward connection.

We do not use percentage damage values, as these defy build mitigation. Tank frames (person in bomb-protective suit) should, obviously, be more resilient to their own explosive's damage as compared to a paper frame (person in shorts and t-shirt).

 

We need to apply a diminishing return factor. An elastic bond between output and self-damage that stretches with modding output so that it can scale to fatal levels but doesn't do so until the output (reward) is also as significant.

I am just an armchair mathematician, but some time ago I suggested the equation thus:

D * ( 1 - ( X / ( D ^ ( Y / D ) ) )

Where D = DAMAGE; X = DIMINISHING FACTOR; Y = DIMINISH THRESHOLD.

Tweaking X and Y in that formula can squash and stretch the damage progression drastically.

Example:

Y = 100; X = 1

D(500) = 355 self-damage (appx 71%)

D(5000) = 783 self-damage (appx 15.7%)

D(1000000) = 1380 self-damage (appx 0.14%)

At the maximum diminishing factor of 1, we can see that massive outputs are still 'survivable'.

Y = 100; X = 0.99

D(500) = 357 self-damage (appx 71.4%)

D(5000) = 825 self-damage (appx 16.5%)

D(1000000) = 11366 self-damage (appx 1.14%)

Reducing the rate of diminish allows fatal self-damage to scale down into higher accessible levels.

Y = 30; X = 0.99

D(500) = 159 self-damage (appx 32%)

D(5000) = 296 self-damage (appx 6%)

D(1000000) = 10410 self-damage (appx 1.04%)

Reducing the point of diminishment lowers the floor of reduced damage at small values, while preserving most of the upper-boundary risk (depending on rate) at higher values.

 

I'm not saying that's a perfect formula. But it's a proof of concept.

Self damage can be kept mechanically intact, and at most, only needs formulaic fixing to correct risk-to-reward.

 

Keep self damage.

 

[Now the self damage is removed...]

Gonna just plant this seed everywhere I can find it relevant in the hopes DE sees it and recovers their collective testi common sense.

3 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

DO NOT REMOVE SELF DAMAGE. It CAN and SHOULD exist.

Remember the Tonkor.

 

INCREASED REWARD comes with balancing DRAWBACKS. Personal risk is a legitimate and even enjoyable drawback if you care to master it.

Please. Don't let the whiners make you cave and steal away niche fun from the players who actually liked it and didn't mind putting themselves on their back from time to time because it was their own fault, and they accepted that.

Alternatives exist. Nobody is forced to use self-damage weaponry. Not all weaponry has to work in every situation. 

 

Let us wield a REAL risk if we choose to do so. If you're going to address the self-damage, do it by changing the formula, not the mechanics.

[2020’s First Mainline: Review, Revise, Refresh.]

5 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

2020’s First Mainline: Review, Revise, Refresh. 

Self Damage Changes:
We are getting rid of Self Damage and replacing it with something else: instead of Self Damage, it’s now ‘Stagger’. This change completely removes the chance of killing yourself, and instead now creates scenarios where you will interrupt yourself - or ‘Stagger’ - to varying degrees if you aren’t careful. 
The degrees of Self-Interrupt start with a small stumble all the way to full knockdown depending on how close you are to the center of explosion. Any Mods referring to Self Damage will be converted to acknowledge Stagger.

With this Self-Interrupt system, we have added dozens of new recovery animations that harness a ninja-like recovery experience. 

Here is a Dev-build video of this in action:

In addition to this change, some of the more powerful AOE weapons without Self Damage presently will have the Stagger added, but it should only be noticeable in cases of extreme inaccuracy on the player’s part. 

As a result of this overall systemic change, Weapons with Stagger will be getting approximately a 20% buff in Damage, with any weapons with AOE receiving a 50% Radial Damage Falloff from central impact.
 

Why: Self Damage had a lot of drawbacks for weapons, resulting in flow-disrupting death.This Stagger replacement system favours agility with a less harsh consequence, while allowing some of the most powerful weapons in the game to remain that way due to their unique consequence. Weapons with self-damage will be converted to this new system and as a result, Self Damage is removed from Warframe. 

 

DO NOT REMOVE SELF DAMAGE. It CAN and SHOULD exist.

Remember the Tonkor.

 

INCREASED REWARD comes with balancing DRAWBACKS. Personal risk is a legitimate and even enjoyable drawback if you care to master it.

Please. Don't let the whiners make you cave and steal away niche fun from the players who actually liked it and didn't mind putting themselves on their back from time to time because it was their own fault, and they accepted that.

Alternatives exist. Nobody is forced to use self-damage weaponry. Not all weaponry has to work in every situation. 

 

Let us wield a REAL risk if we choose to do so. If you're going to address the self-damage, do it by changing the formula, not the mechanics.

[How To Fix Self Damage - SELF DAMAGE REWORK]

3 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

You can compare historic figures to historic figures. And yes it is. e.g. kitguns introduced a massive #*!%off powercreep of on average 30% over equivalent no-downside secondaries.

No. Not really. Auto headcrits were.

You weren't comparing historics to historics, though. You compared historic meta to current meta. Provide evidence across the entire game to reach your single numerical conclusion - a single 'power creep' multiplier value that applies in every situation to every mechanic and style of weapon, which can therefore be simply used as a divisor between now and then. (Hint: You can't. You're cherry-picking data points for something that is situational and varies in context.)

If autoheadcrits were the sole performance problem then explain why the Synoid Simulor was also a problem child of the era despite its comparatively unreliable and underwhelming crit rate, Explain also how removing auto-headshots from two overperforming weapons and several underperforming weapons is a balance change that brings both to the middle ground. (Hint: It didn't. The other explosives were ruined by an effective damage halving until the sweeping weapon balance passes much later)

3 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

No.

Yes and that he wouldnt nerf her just because of ESO because other frames not just do the same niche as well but in general gameplay many other frames vastly outpace her.

No, it was because people didnt watch the stream or even clips of him mentioning it and went off word of mouth.

Yes. The ability to scale up indefinitely, the easy transference of that scaling damage over an unseen and wide-reaching radius. ESO is just the awful design it is that makes such things nearly necessary to succeed, but whether it's a defence mission where the Saryn needs to aim at just one target to steadily wipe the entire wave or an Exterminate where you can just carry the spores through the level as you go and everything dies in your wake. Remember how they gutted Ember for something Saryn can do better anyway, with superior-typed, scaling damage output?

I've seen and been Saryn in an elemental enhancement Sortie where she still pulls damage and kill majority. That's purely anecdotal but just consider the possibility. Someone doing (effectively) purely elemental damage in a context that, depending on healthtypes, removes elemental advantages and/or up to quartering their output with that 75% resistance modifier and still leaving their teammates in the dust.

But I digress. How this comes back in to relate to self-damage and past mistakes, is because the largest observable difference is in target acquisition. No line of sight issues and little need to aim. Just wave your magic wand in the general vicinity of enemies and they all fall over, even the ones you didn't know about. The old Mirage/SySim behaviour, especially.

3 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

And your argument is? Because no amount of sophistry can counter the point that instakill self damage isnt good design unless its literally a nuke (aka entire god damn map chunk cleared of enemies).

You got one, not me, proof is in everything from old shooters to the by you used TF2 and even in stuff like MTG-non-mana card cost design (and yugioh and hearthstone overload and lock hp/discard costs and Call of Cthulu and 3rd&5th ed D&D...). Oh and the fact that people will use stuff that isnt optimal en mass, but wont do so if its negatives arent at least vaguely "fair" in feeling instead of actually proportional to the positives.

Point is that you're arguing that being able to completely play around a risk, however large, makes players accept it. Which, since the game gives you 100% of the information needed to not kill yourself if you actually, you know, master that weapon in all its inherent riskiness, defeats the whole argument against having fatal self-damage.

'No u' doesn't work. In TF2 the reward and risk are linked. The Sticky Jumper doesn't hurt the user any more, but as a tradeoff doesn't hurt your enemies any more. Crit rockets kill you just as much more effectively than non-crit rockets as they do to enemies if you don't aim them the hell away from yourself. Besides that and whatever card-game influence you're trying to vaguely reference, this doesn't support the point of discussion at this stage: fatal self-damage can be fair game.

If you're carrying around something with the comparative damage output of getting a Quad Damage powerup and you still point that thing directly at the floor, you have failed to respect your weapon's risks and you should pay the price. As I said, you didn't need the Redeemer's map-nuke to kill yourself in a single trigger pull back in Unreal Tournaments of old. Multi-rockets and the damage powerup added enough risk.

4 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

In my hypothetical, if you had enough shields for them to tank a tiny amount of damage, self damage would be just that (and then blow yourself up if it hits hp). Mostly because of the build making implications and soft effect on ones game loop instead of the burning trash that self damage is right now from a game design point. And its not about me wanting to shoot because melee and movement is the main draw for warframe to me. But much like how im pestering pablo to make Titania use railjack AW instead of old blood AW movement control scheme, the actual point is independent of my feelings and why im just countering your "capped damage = tonkor meta" with the point of 50-150 cap (assuming the damage cap calc most enemies seem to use where dr sources applies first, then the damage cap gets slapped on based on "fire rate"/calculated instances per second) being quite literally around the sweet spot other games demonstrate.

Again, no, no headcits and not even in peak dps.

Again, no, no headcits and not even in peak dps. Tho both cases demonstrate the point that it causes a wider range of general loadout options AND increases the amount of hypothetically immune to self damage frames from realistically 1.5

Sophistry wont get around the fact that in the case of your shields being down is something you can actually regulate far better then ally volt rushing through you causing a instant explosion on all guns without a arming time which functionally dont have self damage at all unless you played via nidus+gauss or pre-navigator fix patch ivara.

Shield gates are for unanticipated enemy cheap-shots, not your own poor judgement. You pulled that trigger. You knew exactly when the damage risk is present, unlike when Ballista units used to noscope you dead before you could even register their existence. Also, other games still 'demonstrate' that whatever the baseline is changes dynamically with the risk and reward continuing to be linked. Less risk? Sacrifice reward. More reward? Increase risk accordingly.

Headcrits are irrelevant. In fact, all actual damage output is completely irrelevant to the hypothetical situation. Which is the problem with any fixed 'solution' - risk and reward are completely unrelated, unlike my suggested resolution which keeps them related, but changes the relationship to one that better befits how our modding capabilities work.

I already said that ally collision is a legitimate problem. We're only discussing the magnitude of failures to execute, as that is a separate factor. I'm glad you observed that arming-time weapons have functionally no self-damage, though - including the Lenz in this case, you have to make two mistakes to risk yourself, which is a luxury and a convenience, not necessary. You still made that first mistake, after all.

4 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

If you cant be expected to stop shooting when your health resource is down, how can i expect that you arent shooting into the wall or tight corridor?
Oh, actually, let me guess, you, much like most people, dont have a singe explosive weapon above lets say 5% usage (spitballing here, if you do, congratulations on finding yourself a nice boom weapon and somehow having fun with it) or so because the current implementation of self damage is badly designed thus people use better options that have the same desired part of performance (aoe) even if they are lower damage (or higher but different aoe type like amprex). Afraid of the tonkor? Well torid does 3/4ths the long term dps but better burst, better instance count AND it cant ever kill you. Or either version of the ignis, easy 50% of the damage but with a better base element in a long line. Oh and fire rate mods actually impact it and influence your loadout and gameplay in a way thats relevant.

Saturation plays tricks on usage statistics. You might have a weapon you effectively never use, that happens to be on a loadout you use often, which adds that gameplay time up. Conversely, loadouts you use often versus playing other things in circumstances that don't feed statistics as well. My most-used explosive is going to be the Kulstar, since it's the one I have attached to a loadout I don't frequently alter.

What you fail to recognise is that you don't need to be able to use every weapon in every situation. Self-damage or not, an explosive isn't going to do a damn thing on location-hit boss encounters like Sargas Ruk. In an Arbitration you would naturally shy away from risky weapons for reliability as the drawback for making your error is a much more pressing issue.

But that's fine because the alternatives exist and nobody's forcing anybody to use a weapon category they don't like. There's no 'self-damage weapon only' Sortie modifier. You're just projecting your opinion because you don't enjoy the genuinely risky self-damage paradigm. That's fine. I'm not here to make you enjoy them. I'm here to say that some people do. I'm here to say that just because it doesn't fit every situation - and usage stats reflect that - doesn't mean it has to be fundamentally changed to fit the circumstances and players that don't befit it.

Explosives still have advantages. It's direct damage. Radial, non-falloff damage. The Torid takes time. The continuous weapons take time. An explosive removes the enemy then and there instead of letting them potentially shoot you while you drain away your target health. Continuous AOE weaponry has a significantly poorer ammo economy (which fire rate modding amplifies), and the Ignis also has falloff. You're much better off comparing things like the Staticor than you are any of the ones you mentioned.

4 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

1) You have the swoosh noise on shield depletion and the red flash on any damage.
2) If you're unable to recognize both, sure, im not against adding a glass crack effect to the screen (with toggle off much like sniper scopes).

Are you talking about the difference between the sound effect of your shield being struck in (1)? Because that tells you you're getting hit. Not the crucial instant it breaks. Same as taking health hits and getting red vignettes which can be missed, or come too late to save yourself, and if you have poor health restore options on hand risks death by sheer attrition.

No, I mean the distinct audio and visual tells that used to exist, that we lost.. I believe it was on the Railjack pre-build update, that told you in no uncertain terms that you're on health now. Without that, shields are far less reliable. Sadly DE seem to ignore their own bug forums a lot.

4 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

No you dont, in fact you have the opposite, you have feelings while even warframe itself proves, people will use weapons whose downsides or risk is worse than the benefits as long as its percieved to be resource managable. Oh and i actually understand the game design and that death should be a failure state caused not by a wrong guess, but a chain of wrong actions. Its why hp bars exist in the first place.

No, that just proves noone did the math in DE as usual when it comes to bandaids. That isnt a indication of anything related to game design, only to DE having a messy design pipeline and middle management probably being given work instead of what middle management is usually supposed to do like in a lot of game companies that was formed from the ground up instead of by corporate order.

Oneshot mechanics exist in many games, so your wrong 'guess' (actual: poor judgement and reactions) is as legitimate a reason to end up on your back here as it is there. You see where terrain is, where enemies are, you (should) understand your weapon's travel time and blast radius. Therefore, you have the information to know where the blast radius should and could be. If you're standing where it could be, you're taking a Known Risk when you pull the trigger. That's your decision. Accept the consequences if you made a bad call.

They didn't have to give us Cautious Shot at all. It's a bandaid, alright, but it's one they're trying to stretch over the vocal whiny players, not the self-damage mechanic. 'Wah, it even reduces our damage' said those who still trip over their gun barrel. Meanwhile, anyone who uses explosives with a genuine enjoyment and acceptance of the risks doesn't care because they don't even slot it. Like I said though, all the mod does is shift the goalposts a little bit. It doesn't solve the linear-link of a finite with a more exponential, so of course it's still going unchecked to scale out of control.

4 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

Which it can with a flat cap which then future proofs them for all releases instead of having to do the extra work of calculating what they didnt with CS that 2k ehp isnt actual HP and thus 1.8-3k self damage post CS will still drop the average frame from 100% to revive Or worse/more realistic, that even the more meh self damage weapons that will hit you for 300-600 hp are Actually even a comfort build that integrates reload speed and maybe fire rate in case of bows or

I suppose I should clarify. DE want relevant self-damage. They want it to be linked with the reward, or Cautious wouldn't have been introduced with a skimming of your damage stat, on top of asking you to give it some capacity/a slot. Flat capping removes this link entirely, with the added problem of inviting Old Tonkor problems. The middle ground is to make the link less of a bar and more elastic so that one number going nuts doesn't bring the other past its sensible boundaries too easily.

4 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

So what, there are people on the forums claiming self damage needs to be related to outgoing damage when almost every game that has it proves thats not the case.

Citation needed. Games clearly prove it to be the case, see earlier examples with UT damage boosts/multirocket and TF2 crit rockets posing additional threat as both reward and risk.

4 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

400-700 hp are the values that should be played with in mind, yes. Modding is a active choice you do with how much power or survivability each slot costs/can give. Its also the values enemies tend to use for their damage output to die after around 2 sec of no movement unless its a mission with a modifier (VT4) or Orb Vallis (and probably Railjack) since enemies lie about their level there (or to be more specific, DE gave enemies with no reason to have outstanding stats for level outstanding stats for their level instead of just making their base level of the level where such stats would be standard for).

Not at all accurate. Seekers and Shield Lancers will casually destroy you at far lower levels. Different regional variants can vary their strength between units too. Jupiter is crazy now. Every time DE makes new enemies or touches shared guns, no matter where they end up placed in active content, the threat is growing.

So, just like how our weapon balance should have been decoupled from enemy firepower (which is basic dev practice - separation of concerns), that enemy firepower should not decide what damage we do shooting ourselves. What we output (and what we're expected to) should decide that.

5 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

And you do understand that damage cap calcs apply after DR in every case in game. Did you ever encounter eidolons, a boss with phases or jugger?

Eidolons have a damage reduction, not a cap, which is why we still oneshot limbs. That's not a capping of damage, that's multi-stage encounter design. Totally different. Juggernaut is also just damage resistance and being a massive pain in the arse.

What you're looking for are examples like Captain Vor, Sargas Ruk and Vay Hek, who actually do have damage gates inside phases that you can hit. Funnily enough, even these aren't actually capped in most cases. With sufficient single-shot damage you can just force through the gate and pop the phase. Sargas' vents can be clouted instantly. Vay Kek's face can be popped without giving it chance to close back up. Jackal can be taken out with a single round after being crippled.

5 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

Proof #*!%ing needed.

Just because you ignore the proof provided does not mean that it no longer exists.

[How To Fix Self Damage - SELF DAMAGE REWORK]

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

Which you cant since meta, at the moment """endgame""" and followup releases are all part of the balance package. Its why Saryn isnt op despite the whine as her power is focused on a very mid game or levelup/rankup farm area.

Not really, you can actually math them out from patchnotes and using a area average of T4 void coverage in farm situations get it was about the same as boltor prime, amprex, soma prime, heks, tigrises, khom, rakta c (and maybe the dread). Worse than some depending on amount of heavy units and probably if you had a zephyr or not in case of bigger rooms, but pretty close.

You cannot take the historic figures and compare them to the current ones as a validating example. Power creep is not a quantified number. The only way to compare appropriately is to eliminate it as a variable from the equation. And since the Old Tonkor hasn't just been introduced (we have a variant NEW Tonkor still using the NEW Tonkor risks), we can't make a balanced equation that contains it, (Meta_A * PowerCreep) [??] (Meta_B * PowerCreep). We have to use the old meta values on both sides. Old_Meta_A [??] Old_Meta_B.

So when we discuss OLD Tonkor reward to its (lack of) risks we compare OLD Tonkor to OLD meta counterparts such as Boltor Prime, Soma Prime as they were.

And I didn't just compare superficial numbers. I calculate the impact of reloading - using mag size, fire rate and reload time - and apply that to the literal average damage per shot, using the mathematical average of criticals. Because the reloading-downtime 'drawback' had to be eliminated from the comparison.

The Tonkor overperformed. Inarguable.

And Saryn is busted. Didn't Pablo himself thought-experiment recently on one of his personal streams that she was too thoughtlessly powerful? I remember a wave of rage passing through from what was just an offhand discussion, not even something with intended action as a developer in any near future.

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

No, its just a sweetspot based on psychology from testing gameplay design^{[citation needed]}. a weapon can have extremely S#&amp;&#036; rewards for a uneeded risk, but as long as the risk is percieved as being able to be countered or played around efficiently, people will use it.

You can counter and play around self-damage. It's called situational awareness and not looking down the end of the rocket launcher. Some of us are already aware of this.

Got your missing 'citation needed' tag too.

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

Again no, it just means that you believing that means you arent thinking about how mechanics can be implemented. Personally im more for the even lower than 50-150 self damage (some 25-75 damage) but only active while shields are up but thats because frames without shields technically have mechanics that could let them on the usual builds survive without issue and would give a niche to shield resto effects in loadout choices. Its still likely S#&amp;&#036; for people that want to play no shield frames or if DE ever implements a way to shift rankup stats again into warframe AND it would probably piss off everyone who would wanna use them at effective enemy level 200+ content due to shields being paper, so i suggested it as its own thing before instead of as a counterpoint to you.

DE has damage caps calcs in game already, 3 different ones in fact so there is no legit argument to it. In fact the opposite, because self damage kills almost the entire roster, there is no reason not to buff the self damage weapons that dont do jack S#&amp;&#036;.

So in this hypothetical solution you want to be able to shoot... just your shields, flat-capped?

By the time you bust through your own shields you've got your sentinel's Guardian mod cooldown refreshed and it refills them to full. You have no drawback. You are Old Tonkor.
You play Hildryn. Good luck getting through that. You are Old Tonkor.
Something else shoots through your shields. You shoot yourself with an explosive and die. You are not Old Tonkor, but you are still complaining about the instantly fatal self-damage. Because apparently, "pay attention to your screen" is not permitted as an argument. Can't be expected to point away from the wall clearly in your way, to see you're in a dangerously tight corridor before shooting, so why would you check your shields are up?

Have you even noticed that the shield-break feedback effects ingame are currently broken and entirely missing? Because I have, I use(d) my shields more than most. With the proper feedback you can actually keep them going much farther than most players (or rather, the 'influencers' telling them otherwise) think.

 

Unlike your random psychology claim before, I have evidence. That being the fact the reduction of Cautious Shot was increased. That being the graphic earlier in the thread mocking people who mention it - and if I cared to go find them, posts around the time of Cautious being buffed saying it's 'still not enough'.

This implies DE want self-damage to exist, are trying to stem the complaints, have not succeeded and indeed gain more for 'unsatisfactory' changes. I'm sure when the balance pass came, there was some response about the explosives being (moderately) buffed that bemoaned their suicide rate. Significant buffs would fare little differently. Ergo, why buff and increase negative feedback when you haven't solved the standing 'problem factor'?

I have to wonder if you've even paid attention to my proposed solution and how that could do the trick without fundamentally changing a mechanic. 

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

And the right numbers are: hard cap self damage to where the average unmodded rank 30 frame has 2-10 shots to kill itself depending on the effective fire rate/possible instance count of self damage per second of the weapon (hell possibly even closer to the "very good" of 6 average).

Unmodded? Okay, now you're just being ridiculous.

You know what EHP modifiers can stack onto that right? Redirection increases a Rank 30 standard shield gain by ~250% (440% additive to rankup 200%). Add your most basic reduction effects - let's say you just have Blessing's 75% - and you've multiplied it by 4.

Already you have to empty 20 of your slow firing Ogris rockets at your feet. to die. Then there's squads' buffs. If we're not just counting shields per earlier, and we're capping on health too, you need to factor for armour. Stronger self-buffs. A 90% DR buff (e.g. Gara) and you've got to find more rockets than you actually hold in order to kill yourself.

And that's just for the average. Not the beefier boys.

And it's not counting easy restoration.

Capping would not work to prevent Old Tonkor Meta behaviour. It'd turn a niche playstyle into playing with water balloons. Keep that for next Dog Days.

[How To Fix Self Damage - SELF DAMAGE REWORK]

32 minutes ago, Andele3025 said:

Good, it means not having to how the catchmoon was (and kinda still is like all the kitguns due to their average dps being for almost all secondaries higher than theoretical max dps AND that they dont have downsides unlike most that can even vaguely compete) is far worse than the tonkor ever even could have been because it has the dps instead of just burst to support it along with difference modern modding setups and frame design makes.

Remove the natural power-creep from the equation and you might actually be surprised to know that the Tonkor's sustained DPS through reloads was still calculably superior than other metas of that day. I know this, again, because I wasn't just in game. I was on the threads too, making those calculations. The Soma Prime isn't the god-king it once was either, but creep since then is an outside factor to the mechanical comparisons of the guns as they were.

32 minutes ago, Andele3025 said:

30~ish damage a nade per 600ish hp is low (especially seeing how the generally percieved good design sweetspot is ability to self damage 5-7 times depending on values before suicide shot), but its not actually removed of risk due to warframes gameloop structure AND FAR FAR better than applying full self damage to a game that only uses pseudo proportional player to enemy stats instead of actually similar values. Make it 50-150 depending on weapon (higher base fire rate/potential instances per second before MS, lower SD).

The 'good design' sweetspot you're suggesting is only a product of the risk/reward balance. Let's take a little jaunt back in time and across games to look at the Redeemer. No, not our gunblade Redeemer. The remote-controllable nuclear superweapon in Unreal Tournament. Now where the regular rocket launcher there would take a couple clean hits to murder an enemy and the self-damage was only a portion of your general health accordingly, the Redeemer would pop out a big sphere of instant death. Including for yourself. The ability to get damage on more people, and to instakill, amplified the misuse to instant suicide. Same applies here. There should be a point where your output is enough to kill yourself instantly. If you got the damage buff in UT, or if you used the multishot feature of the rocket launcher, you could instakill yourself. Conversely, if you stocked up on overhealth you'd be able to take that hit.

So we have a tank (overhealed UT, natural Frame) being able to take more punishment, but still having a point where the reward's associated risk still overcomes them shot-per-shot. Survivability has its relevance. Being weak (in our case, naturally low ehp) presents more of a risk. That's why percentages don't work. But still being able to reach that suicide zone means that the scaling has to be tied in. It can't be flat/capped values either, because we'd never be so dangerous we risk our Inaros - which is part of the fun for risk-agreeable players.They shouldn't have to handicap down to soft frames to put themselves at artificial risk. You handicap down reward to mitigate risk.

32 minutes ago, Andele3025 said:

ONLY if the power is to justify it. The lenz does it (mostly) correctly (mostly since you need to build specifically for the HM proc off it instead raw damage for the statement to be true at any level where non-self damage aoe weapons cant do the same, but w/e), however nothing else has that excuse.

THEN TELL DE TO MAKE THE REWARD WORTHY OF INSTANT DEATH. The moment the kulstar wipes at least 60 enemies in a 30m radius is the moment its allowed to instakill a frame with both full shields and hp. Because the correct judgement right now from both a common sense and design point is "dont use self damage weapons (except the lenz) at all, use the better guns".

I really should make the Morpheus meme template for this, but what if I told you.. that complaining about self-damage prevents the guns from being buffed enough? DE has obviously had headaches trying to make Cautious Shot work. But it's still just moving the linear-linked goalpost. And people are still complaining, so what happens when (if) they get buffed? Most of the vocal anti-selfdamage crowd would bash the change with 'lol it already murdered myself, now we suicide EVEN HARDER, gg!"

Unless they ease off the complaining and accept their own agency in not shooting their feet when it's avoidable (we'll assume the ally collision problem is fixed in this hypothesis), which we can encourage by pushing higher the point where fatal self-damage occurs as in my algorithmic example, then the upper boundary is a risky thing to improve due to backlash.

32 minutes ago, Andele3025 said:

Scaling wont every fix it because if DE does what IT while setting the numbers to what is needed to make the self damage calc well designed, the strongest enemies will at best have 2k hp/be what, level 30 crewmen (which you could do, dividing enemy ehp by around 90-140 depending on the enemy and outgoing damage by circa 110~ish, its just a lot of work for the same #*!%ing results).

I gave an example of numbers that can come out of the algorithm I designed. It's quite flexible beyond that. Where would you want the per-shot damage output to become fatal? I can make it fit. The point is that flexibility both initially and to change as necessary in the future. DE makes enemies softer? Our proportional self-damage can be allowed to get fatal sooner since we don't 'need' it to deal such insane output. We suddenly have to put out 10 times the expected damage? The reverse is true, allowing the fatal-point to be pushed to absurdly high numbers by a simple variable tweak.

With the equation using its strongest clamping I could make the game's integer max damage value (2 147 483 647) being shot out of your gun at enemies deal just 2150 damage to you. Actually, it can go less, but you see how powerful it can be. On the other side I can have the damage reduction not even start until it's dealing 500 (or any higher number) damage to yourself, much less having it downscale slower.

With the right numbers plugged in, the risk/reward band can be squashed and stretched pretty much wherever it needs to be. It is a solved problem, all you (or rather, DE) need to know is what you (they) want to come out of it.

[How To Fix Self Damage - SELF DAMAGE REWORK]

On 2020-02-26 at 7:11 AM, Andele3025 said:

Not really, you can look on youtube for T4/tower survival footage of warframe. At that point in time in warframe the maybe 50k damage (that mostly came from explosions being auto headcrits) might have been impressive for 2 shots per 3.3ish seconds, but that was not just gutted entirely down to sub 20k unless you have extremely good aim (and luck) with explosions not counting as headshots, but a lot of regular sub mr 10 guns now hit at least 20k if not 30k sustained with better status chance and much higher pure S&P headshot chance with a build that includes punchthrough for crowds. Its proper self damage was actually a consequence of DE accidentaly copying another games design philosophy (benefit of extra jump and aoe weapon having downside of hp cost/you being forbidden from spamming it point blank for the entire ammo pool) and actually implementing it well.

I don't need to look at Youtube of those days, I was there on the front-lines. You think ~50% usage of the Catchmoon was bad, I'd wager that the combination Tonkor/SySim at that time was closer on 80% prevalence. Maybe even more.

It was a perfect storm of ill-advised design factors.
Removing risk for a 'grenade jump' that was literally relevant for one month before we could all bullet jump for free - and ignoring the fact that in the majority of the games featuring the mechanic, damage is a relevant risk (or reward is removed as well - see TF2 sticky jumper) albeit not an immediately fatal one as it is in Warframe due to the different player/enemy health scaling and linear damage link.
The widest range of an explosive at the time (notwithstanding the not-an-explosive Simulor combine radial damage) making it superior in reward in its class with a high-end damage output that's more serviceable than finding punch-through opportunities and lacking a strict operating range or damage falloff effects (as compared Ignis).
At-the-time auto-headshot radials combined with this being the first fully reliable crit launcher and the 'headcrit' mechanic further doubling its effective output.

So we had a heavy headcritting radial damage that could be used at long range with its aim-guide, or freely non-aimed by just bodying enemies with it with zero thought or caveat involved. It's an AOE weapon by nature, and a radial generally has a better average multi-target hit rate than punch-through both opportunistically (enemies in an area are more likely than enemies in single-file) and mechanically (projectiles can wander off-centre after punching, and punch is limited - neither affect radials). It was horrendously overpowered.
On the other hand we had the SySim, which asked the player to have multishot or be Mirage, and with its rifle-category ammo, mindlessly jump around spamming the fire button to pop constant even wider-reaching damage radials. Worse, it was three kinds of intrusive. It sounded awful. It looked awful unless the culprit happened to offer the luxury of having black energy. It was gameplay-intrusive because you, using pretty much anything else but the Power Two and requiring aim, could not hope to hit anything before PRANG PRANG PRANG PRANG took them out.

 

Was the Tonkor itself overnerfed? I'd actually say... yes. But it was all collateral damage because of people who couldn't take their self-damage. ALL radials suffered when auto-headshot was patched out, despite it being intended to bring in line those two outliers, and it took a long while before weapon balance passes touched the other resulted-underwhelming explosives again. The abusers' resistance to the idea of self-damage led to the Tonkor also getting stat nerfed by the time DEvs finally caved to sensibilities.

The SySim couldn't be fixed with self-damage due to its mechanics - the range from player at which combinations happened, and the range of the resulting radial damage, overlapped too easily - so the mechanics had to be changed instead.

Even the staunchest defenders of self-damage would call a gun that doesn't give you adequate control over whether it kills you or not a bad design - and that's why the Cyanex's self-damage removal made sense. Homing projectiles coming back at you and murdering you are Not Okay. Bouncing projectile physics you can expect and prepare for, those are fine. The rest is on the wielder. You can use a Kulstar inside a Snowglobe and not drop yourself. It's not wise, but it's possible, and the player makes their judgement. Accept that, move past that, and we get to the proportional risk and reward - which I've pointed out is a problem of linear vs. exponential scaling that needs to (and can) be de-coupled effectively.

[How To Fix Self Damage - SELF DAMAGE REWORK]

Never, ever forget the mistakes of the past. The Tonkor meta was a wasteland of viable variety.

 

1: DO NOT cap self damage to any static percentile or flat amount:

Percentile? - Why would my tank equipped with a ton of effective health be relatively no more resilient to an explosion than my glass papier-mache alternatives? This is what happens if a percentage health cap is applied. It also means that the weapon is fundamentally riskless due to the many easy ways of repeatedly topping up missing health.

Flat? - This was the Tonkor in its disgusting old state. No self-crits. Just a piece of flat and ultimately ignorable damage. The risk, again, becomes literally negligible and you have no real learning curve while mastering a weapon to learn and respect its self-damaging radius. Self-damage is reduced to a passive threshold of modding your survivability and regeneration to surpass.

2: Self-damage is (and was) more consistent than you think.

A 'conventional explosive ordnance' - no energy or void magic shenanigans, just a good old chemically reacting bomb - has always been scaling-self-damaging, with the sole exception of the Tonkor of old.
This includes Rockets, Grenades, Clusterbombs, and even ancillary explosive-tipped payloads such as Thunderbolt arrows and Concealed Explosives.
This doesn't include concussive impacts (Sonicor), the aforementioned energy discharges (Staticor et. al.) and despite the result dealing Blast damage, a Quanta cube is clearly not a conventional explosive and does not deal self-damage.

This doesn't mean that those non-conventional payloads can't be attributed a risk factor in the right circumstances or to taste, but those do not break the consistent correlation.

3: Friendly-fire 'crossing the barrel' is an issue for more than blowing yourself up and should be restricted to triggering only when a significant use case can be argued.

As much as blowing yourself up because your friend decided to show off their fashionframe sucks, don't forget that it's still quite annoying to have your buddies eating up your projectiles and bullets that were actually lined right up on that heavy unit's braincase.

Allied hit detection should be removed as a default, and enabled on a case by case basis for effects including but not limited to Triggered Payloads (natural eg Castana), Adhesive Explosives (via mod), and other beneficial projectile effects such as sticking folks with Ivara's cloak arrows. If there's nothing to gain and no rule-of-cool (because who doesn't like loading up your local tank with bombs and zappy balls then having him hug your enemies) then ally collision is a strictly negative influence unwelcome in such a highly-mobile, fast-paced game experience.

 

Bonus round: It is neither thematically inappropriate nor unwelcome variety to have some risk-based weaponry operate 'safer' than others.

This is for the 'arming time/distance' versus don't shoot your feet equipment. Acceltra and Lenz versus Ogris and Penta.

The Grineer literally strap bombs to the fists of failed genetic clones (Ghoul Expired). Clones are expendable. All but the most elite (and even they, if Kuva-immortal) would be expected to put themselves at potential risk for the Queens - and their technology is pretty haphazard at best. Safety features being an afterthought is very on-brand.

The Corpus are slaves to those sweet, sweet Credits. As such, unless your client is rich enough, paying for it and could tell if you cut those corners, producing gear with inadequate contingencies for safety, again, is very on-brand for the corporate overlords. Cutting corners, cutting costs, maximise profit. We're not even in fantasy-land, it's all too common reality.

The Infested are literally a hive-mind. The individual does not matter, and in fact is encouraged to give up their own well-being as long as it deals with the threat. Having Infested-sourced weaponry come at reckless personal risk to the one using it? Why wouldn't it? They're just a tool for the overall needs of the colony. See also: Volatile Runners, not that they're very good at the job.

Sentient and Tenno sourced weaponry, on the other hand, would be many times more likely to include some sort of basic safety features - while the Sentient cannot reproduce, they must be choosy on giving up any individual, and Tenno-faction, 'frames notwithstanding.. as Nakak would say, they're just folks. Folks who wouldn't want to needlessly put themselves at risk.

Themes aside, some people enjoy the fact they might murder themselves if they don't play well. Who are you to deny these people their pleasure when by your own admission, alternatives already exist without the risk? Nobody's forcing you to use those risky conventional explosives - and not every weapon has to cater to everyone. That's the beauty of the variety.

 

The real issue and solution with self-damage:

Enemy health scales continuously, and exponentially. This is what we mod our damage to contend with. Our health scales generally less, and to a finite end result.

However, Self-Damage is linearly linked as a simple fixed percentage of the outgoing damage. This is where the problem lies. 30% of a baseline 500 might be a manageable 150, but when you've modded that bad boy to deal with million-EHP opposition, that 30% is now 300,000 damage to yourself. Big boy numbers.

To solve self-damage while keeping it mechanically intact it requires the link to be non-linear. For the personal risk to scale at a diminished rate compared to the outgoing damage. Apply an algorithmic reduction and suddenly what starts out at a base of 30% Out to Self, after modding to be appropriately nuclear, could be down to less than 5% Out to Self.

I've even armchair-mathematician'd my own equation before now, with tweakable variables that would let DE effortlessly change the base and/or drop-off rate as necessary for future changes to the game's expectations. To give an example at certain values:

• 500 outgoing == 162.5 self-damage (near that 30% historic baseline)
• 5000 outgoing == 344 self-damage (Already dropped to ~7% and still survivable)
• 1000000 outgoing == 20406 self-damage (Reached a fatal value for almost all users, but proportionally now a mere ~2% of outgoing!)

So you see, the problem of inappropriately scaling, disproportionate risk-reward ratios is one that is very solvable while still protecting the core paradigm of self-damage - you make the Bigger Boom, you start losing more than just a toe if you shoot it too close to yourself. Explosives can be made powerful again. People who enjoy that personal risk can go nuts on max-damage builds without feeling like they're being forcibly babied, while those who are allergic to having their funny 'whoops' moment putting them on their back can keep things down at a respectable but not immediately self-fatal level.

And with the core scaling solved, you can all stop bashing on Cautious Shot, as with the right equation, it's not only unnecessary - unless you really wanted to safeguard yourself while deliberately playing paper-thin - but at the current 99% reduction it actually becomes massive overkill and would need a nerf or removing, lest it simply return us to the Tonkor days where your risk is negligible no matter how much punch you're packing.

[Kuva Lich shotgun weapon falloff vastly exceeding lower-limit cap present on standard weaponry]

The lower-limit cap for damage falloff (most prominently on non-projectile Shotguns) is generally, at worst, ~30% of the weapon's base damage - with the exception of beam and limited-lifespan projectiles which have a natural hard range limitation.

 

However, the Kuva Lich weapons, namely the Brakk from my own testing and Kohm judging by this thread, fall off to a far lower proportion - some 5 to 6% of base damage - which renders the weapon practically nonfunctional beyond its optimum engagement range in comparison.

This could be an under-the-hood tech problem similar to the initial issues of the Explosive-type Lich weapons not accurately calculating their proportional damage (and bonus) until hotfixed accordingly.

 

Reproduction of issue:

1. Use non-Kuva Lich shotgun with damage falloff (especially base variant Kohm or Brakk for comparison)
2. Spawn Nullifiers with paused AI in Simulacrum to provide a static object-health target (prevent damage types and criticals from confusing results)
3. At the spawn console, shoot into the Nullifier bubbles at full range, note maximum-falloff damage value per pellet.
4. Approach Nullifiers and shoot Nullifier bubble at point-blank range, note zero-falloff damage value per pellet.
5. Compare values noted from steps 3 and 4 to ascertain capped falloff damage proportion as compared to base weapon damage.
6. Kill Nullifiers with spawn-console as the paused AI will have removed null-bubble targets.
7. Use Kuva Lich hitscan shotgun (Kuva Kohm, Kuva Brakk) and repeat steps 2-5.
8. Observe excessive disparity between proportion values calculated on step 5 for standard shotgun versus Kuva variant.

Suggested solution:

• Investigate and fix erroneous calculation, bringing falloff cap of Kuva variant shotguns in line with, or superior to, that of their base counterparts (and similar such weaponry).

[Let's Talk Liberations (PoE) - Solutions! (kind of)]

30 minutes ago, (NSW)Quarky said:

Lastly, don't shoot the ships. If you KO the ships before they drop the grineer, you aren't going to get control level restore for the grineer even if they still blow up with the ship, that's a net control level loss. The Bolkor was the only thing remotely damaging on the plains to null star/adaptation slowva and it was just a massive waste of time and control level to try and shoot its turret. Just take cover until it leaves while you continue to slowly (oh so slowly) eliminate the clones.

Bolkors aside, this is incorrect.

1) Each extant unit on a ship AND the ship itself is classed, from initial spawn, as a 'control drain' source. Firbolgs typically have 3 units sat on them (but can range 1-4). Bolkors may not technically have existing units in them until parked and dumping them out.

2) Killing a Firbolg also counts as killing each unit sat on it, as long as it's not yet 'parked' and unit disembarking animations haven't begun to play.

3) Ships as well as the existing units on them will grant control on kill, including retreating ships (10%) and Firbolgs causing collateral damage deaths to units sat on them. This means popping a ship on the way in is usually worth 40%. 

 

Control drains at 0% (no sources), 1%/s (approx. 1-5 sources) and 3%/s (>5 sources). Typically, dropping objective units below 5 will trigger an instant spawn of a new ship or orbital drop squad, so AOE kills aren't completely killing your odds. However, this depends on whether you're capable of picking off ships or their units in the air, as some of the fly-in paths are slow and long (and can even get ships stuck).

Rollers are your worst nightmare because while counting like any other unit, most of the time they ignore you and go on a magical journey where you don't find them until you have to clear up remaining enemies and get a marker on them 500+m away from any action.

[Shedu's Terrible Aquisition]

10 hours ago, IIDMOII said:

Bingo! Everything about this game's trading system has the potential to be abused in favor of the house.

Rivens are especially bad. They can control the acquisition rates, rarities and flip the switch on disposition to alter the platinum economy at will.

Trading wouldn't be necessary if loot was more plentiful. I would even argue that trading is at odds with the core concept of a loot driven game. 

There's no tax on platinum traded. These arguments fall completely to irrelevancy when you recognise that plat remains in the economy for any trade. Only DE purchases cause platinum to leave the economy, whether that's rushing, slots, cosmetics etc.

If you're willing to buy endless stocks of plat yourself to exclusively trade-to-buy things from other players, instead of participating in both sides of the economy, that's not on DE. Otherwise, you're just rotating that lump sum distributed among the community. Doesn't matter what rivens 'cost', what switches are flipped to control 'the economy', the only consistent factor for DE is what avenues they have for plat leaving the economic total.

[Shield Breaking cues have been completely broken for a while now]

As per title, there is currently no strong visual tell or the distinct audio cue that should normally occur whenever your shields are reduced to 0.

Most players probably haven't noticed this because shields are largely ignored in 'meta', but these cues are absolutely vital to actually play a shield-reliant build. You need to know when it breaks so you can switch to cautious play so it has time to refresh - also including Guardian, which has a cooldown you are only aware of when you're clearly cued that shield was broken and Guardian was used.
Shields are also crucial for newer players who do not have access to sufficient health regeneration resources, making any damage beyond the shield a risk of attrition leading to deaths.

I'm not sure exactly when this issue first arrived, but it's definitely been out for several patches now. It was somewhere between Old Blood and Empyrean launches.

[With Ivara Prime on the horizon, here is the comprehensive overview of shortfalls that should be investigated and addressed.]

2 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

It's been the same with almost every single Prime relase though. Only one I can think of where they actually resolved a few things was with Wukong.

Updates are more likely to happen with buyable releases for the sake of promotion. If you count unvaultings and new Deluxe skins as well as straight Prime releases, you'll see a few.
_{(The outlier to that was when they took the axe to Ember right on the eve of one of her unvaults.)}

Besides, after the myriad of direct and indirect nerfs and 'bug fixes' Ivara's suffered, it's about time for a proper review to level the playing field. Like I said, it's just unfortunately timed. Hopefully a dev can poke in to confirm/deny if it's just waiting in the wings.