CrownOfShadows

It won't softlock, even if both exalted members left. You can still damage any health bar, just not as fast. Creating a system of counters, as I said, is a big undertaking for sure, but one that I think is very worthwhile for the health of the game. Without counterplay, we will always be (and feel) overpowered, without challenge. We NEED counterplay to have engaging content. Since we have no PvP this must be fulfilled by the AI, and the AI needs tools to use instead of being slabs of meat - they currently have no such tools (the only exceptions perhaps being demolysts and acolytes). Give them the tools they need to fight us, and then we can fight. Now it's just meaningless slaughter, or in the case of bosses, time-gated slaughter.

Yeah, I've been advocating for targeted counterplay, especially with bosses

Here's an update on what happens when I log in to WF: (disclaimer for those still climbing, I'm LR3 and have everything, this is another end-game thread) Archon Hunts: I still play. Tauforged remain attractive for the time being even though I am starting to stockpile them, and the difficulty is decent. I foresee that I may begin to disengage with this game mode as I run out of frames to use shards on (oh there's still plenty of frames that are empty or partial or running standard shards, I just have no reason to invest tauforged into them; all my heavy hitting frames are more or less complete, and the only use for shards now is to sink them into frames that are sub-standard or that I don't enjoy) The Circuit & Lone Story: I now no longer play. I have all the incarnons and all the arcanes I want/care to farm. I also don't check Acrithis even though her store is better than most because I don't want to farm Pathos Clamps because it's a huge time commitment for a single resource with only one way to spend it. There are many positive things about the circuit, also some negatives, but I feel like some good end-game ideas were in play. Unfortunately we all knew it was on a timer, and this is my second week skipping most or all of it. Yes, another infusion of incarnons will bring me back (unless I can buy them for plat) but that's just prolonging the inevitable. Sorties: do not play. Used to for a chance at a booster, don't anymore. This is partially due to competition with Archon Hunts and partially due to the general erosion of sortie rewards from other game sources as well as a massive erosion of its allure of difficulty due to more challenging content becoming available. While boosters are still attractive, they are only worth chasing if a) I don't have the plat to burn on a market version b) actively playing rather than just stopping by NW: this NW round featured many repeat rewards and only a few unique ones, and as a result I did not engage with it as much as previous ones, only occasionally intentionally chasing a few here or there, but for the most part letting it naturally accrue slowly over time, typically leaving many if not the majority untouched each week. My NW is now complete, I mostly ignore it. Fissures: don't play anymore unless I see a disruption or if a prime release is happening. SP Relic Disruption remains intrinsically fun enough for me to engage with it regardless of rewards. Unfortunately they are quite rare and if I don't see one - well, what else should I do? - I log off. Arbitrations: do not play. Levels are too low, spawns too low, rewards all earned - I have enough ambient endo gain to sustain me (Teshin, etc) Nightmares, Kuva Missions, Invasions, Clem, Ayatan Treasure Hunts & Syndicates: do not play. Levels too low, missions too grindy (invasions), rewards completely meaningless to me Some General Thoughts: Games are about journeys. When we're on a journey, we're having fun. Sometimes that takes the form of building, conquering, traveling, surviving or experiencing a story. What it never involves is sitting doing nothing. Content releases are fantastic - they take us on a journey. Unfortunately, content releases have short lifespans, and thus here I am posting instead of playing - because after sitting in the navigation screen watching chat for a while I decided there was nothing there for me here. I know, I know - just go play other games yea yea - I'm on my way to do that right now, just posting first, because I want to play WF, there's just nothing in WF. I know I know, it's DE's business model, and it's worked forever, and it will keep working. That doesn't help me right now though. I know I know, just entertain myself by tinkering with builds, fashion frame, etc... there's some value in that. Not enough to keep me logged in though. Sigh. You CAN fix this, DE. OFC, the main (and real) response is always: how do you accomplish this is in a live-service mmo-style game for players who reach the 'end'? For your consideration: Replayable, Dynamic, Rewarding quests. Yes, we can replay a lot of quests in WF. No, they were not designed to be replayed, plus their rewards are atrocious. I strongly suggest developing solo quests that are specifically designed to be played at any time, ideally that are somewhat dynamic, ideally that are not part of a content release story but rather act as supporting story to the main WF universe. They should be challenging (based on the player) and they should have a shower of rewards at the end. The longer the quest, the better the reward should be. If such quests existed, I'd go on one right now. Raids. Raids are co-op quests, simple as that (although typically a little lighter on story and they're time-gated). I'd add that making 2-player raids (or quests for that matter) could be a fantastic option, just you and your partner. Adding 6 or 8 players raids would be great fun too, but making those challenging would be harder (and more problematic for host migrations, but still fun). PvP. It's not happening, we know. It's complicated, we know. Yet it remains the most reliable long-term form of content, and I'm still out here recommending it. I'm off to play a PvP game right now, and I don't have anything left to farm in that game either. Just saying. Public Events. Especially in open world contexts, have a lot of potential. You might think of these like impromptu concerts. A sort of found-event, especially if it feels public with more than 4 players, can be very attractive simply because it's a social event and people will show up to share in the fun. Difficulty is less of a massive requirement in this sort of setting. In case you're not sure what I mean when I say public events, it's like you get a notification that an event is happening, you run down and join a crowd of Tenno, and you all fight together, win, get the rewards and then the party slowly breaks up. You don't want these to be too frequent or repetitive or grindy, because people will burn out on them, but if you're logged in and you see something fun's happening, idk I'd jump in on it. I think more than any of the other suggestions here these would be the easiest to burn out on, so making them dynamic and ever-changing would almost be a requirement. Clan Events have tremendous potential, and the reason is because if you give them the power and the tools they can create the dynamic material all on their own and you (DE) don't have to do anything more. Give a kid a lego brick and he'll play for an hour, give him a lego set and he'll play for a million. What kind of tools? Event kits. The ability to create an event, notifications to the clan of the event, the ability to craft the event - the more control the better, the more options the better. You could even provide tools for working with wide MR ranges. Imagine if your clan had 1-4 events going right now that were a ton of fun, because the clan leaders poured as much passion and creativity into them as they do their dojos? Imagine if they had a beginner's event, an everyone-event and a veteran's event happening right now. The main question mark here is the rewards, avoiding abuse while still being meaningful might be balanced out by giving clans an event or reward allotment - here are the rewards you can offer and you don't get more until the next cycle. Imagine if you gave a night-wave's worth of rewards to clans and had them build their own events to earn them. Those could be going on at any time, all the time. You could even reward clans for being active in this regard, opening up access to more things. Imagine if clans could build their own raids. You could even have alliance events and clan events. Old Events: you can repurpose suitable old events to re-occur regularly. Not my favorite solution, but still a solid option and better than nothing. Upgrading ancient things like invasions, nightmares, clem, syndicates to have end-game versions might help a little, idk - but they're weekly options that aren't options at all, and instead of being nothing they could be something. Lastly let me comment on rewards Value in a game is all completely artificial. If rewards don't feel valuable, that is only a design failure. You can create new value at the snap of your fingers. Rare supply + strong demand = motivation. Create endless demand in end-game players, make the supply somewhat rare. Do that 4 or 5 times in different ways, spice that up with occasional other rewards like cosmetics and you have a winning combination that could be applied to any of the above game modes and would last forever. Forma, Catalysts, Reactors, Boosters, Rivens, Kuva - these are all endlessly good and yet they mean very little to end-game players because the demand is very low and the supply is enormous (because they can all be bought for plat which many end-game players have great stockpiles of, or in the case of kuva for SE etc, or in the case of rivens just an overabundance of slivers). Archon shards are valuable but because archon shards aren't ever destroyed they are on a downward farm curve.

IDK personally my list is more like Inaros->Chroma->Limbo->Atlas->Vauban Caliban has serious problems tho that's for sure. Sure wish they'd prioritize this stuff more, feels like getting a frame the help it needs takes 2-3 years

Could also increase the eccentricity of the orbits, so they swing down low by the feet and then up behind the shoulders.

Counter-meme: "I'm a cave-man wandering into a physics seminar"

+1.... for the hundredth time lol. Co-op is what will keep Kahl gameplay alive, otherwise it's dead. Just send 4-6 grunts on an extermination. Add a mini arsenal and I'd play it weekly no problem purely for the variety.

Yeah this has been suggested in various forms a bunch, and I believe it was sorta the original goal with the solar rails to begin with. Clans have needed good clan activities since forever, it would be nice to have a clan-focused update one day, and RJ surely deserves love too. Two birds with one stone? The idea of forming a flotilla and going on a raid seems pretty great. There are a lot of technical problems but we could surely work around them. Getting 12 tenno together for anything other than Baro is pretty much an event in and of itself.

Well 3 points: First, if you have a specific squad/warframe/setup you have in mind, I can comment on that, but you didn't specify you were going to have Xata's Whisper, so i just threw together a random squad. We can re-run this scenario with a different squad setup if you want. Secondly, without even considering a custom Xata's Whisper counter, you will certainly melt one hp bar with weapons and Xata's Whisper, just like in this example the Protea would melt it simply by using Laetum. However, the entire setup is designed to prevent one-shots and such brute force attempts and instead encourages a multi-pronged attack. So your xata/weapon combo will work for one hp bar, what will you do for the others? Thirdly, don't forget that the Sergeant is now adaptive, so it scales based off of your EHP and DPS etc, (and ideally take into account your individual history), so if you in this scenario are running in solo expecting to just bulldoze with Xata's Whisper you will find yourself in for quite a surprise, because the Sergeant is going to be laser focused on you and can scale all the way up to level cap. As for cleanse, that is definitely something that would be in the boss arsenal - and is likely one of the easiest ways to combat hard CC because it still lets it work but just not for very long. Adding such a total map-wide cleanse for both boss and warframes is ... more what I'd consider an environmental hazard, I guess it could be a feature, but it might end up being pretty annoying too, because it inadvertantly knee-caps the warframes by invalidating their abilities/attacks to some extent, which is rather the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish with the countering system. If it could be triggered only through some environmental interaction, I could probably get behind that more. As for future-proofing, yes any time a new warframe is released, such a system would require a suite of counters to be developed in tandem. So it requires some maintenance, but the beautiful thing about it is that if they're just being added to a huge pool of tools then we don't have to individually update every boss/miniboss/enemy in the game, don't have to redesign whole encounters or any of that - they automatically have access to abilities to deal with this new warframe.

I've been using it here and there in the circuit, definitely a weapon in need of some help. Agree with everything you said, but especially about some kind of Nekros synergy - seems like that should be a thing. Even if the ghosts were permanent I doubt I'd ever have more than like a dozen before the level changed.

Hmmm, i actually hope they go full enchantment with it and use it as an extra ability rather than as a physical weapon. You could build up a library of enchantments and mod your grimoire with them, like a mini-modular-helminth. Hm, maybe too fantasy heavy, but it could be full of mini-spells like here's a splash of fire, or splash of ice, or a splash of necromancy.

Well, these suggested mini-bosses are more like acolytes than bosses, they just show up, so yeah 'encounter.' I took a crack at The Sergeant: ------------------- Well, I agree with all of this 100%. Enemies actually coordinating to take you down would be scary af. But this is a harder sell. While I can envision a special parkour-focused boss, which sounds like more of a chase than a fight, I wouldn't want it as a default difficulty mechanism. I say this because.... Conclave has taught us very well how much to dislike parkour-focused enemies Teleporting Lichs are extremely annoying to fight While I do agree that bosses are far too stationary in general, I don't want them sprinting around either. If a boss has special weakpoints that need to be hit, then this is true even more. I'd happily compromise for some bosses that occasionally move quickly, or regularly move slowly, both of which sound healthy.

[Because this is like a whole THING, I'm going to dedicate a new thread to it, but the original discussion that spawned this was regarding end-game content and how to counter Tenno rather than invalidate them, if anyone wants the context:] And the progenitor comment/request: So... sure I'll take on The Sergeant, he could use a redesign anyway. Prepare for some depth, I guess. *cracks knuckles* *a scream in the distance...* "MORTAL KOMBAT!!!!!.... FIGHT!" A Random Tenno Squad Appears: Protea, MR28, helminth'd Pillage, emphasis on ability range & duration. Weapons are Kuva Karak (5forma), Laetum (5f), Dual Keres Prime (3f) Mag, MR24, no helminth, ability power. Weapons are Tenet Arca Plasmor (5f), Lex Prime Incarnon (3f), Prisma Ohma (2f) Ivara Prime, MR16, no helminth. Weapons are Rubico Prime (1f), Nukor (0), Paracesis (0) Baruuk, MR30, helminth'd Tharros, ability power. Weapons are Nataruk (2f), Despair Incarnon (3f), Venka Prime (4f) First and foremost, we give him his own arena. I have some things to say about boss arena design, but shan't get into that here, except to say that he now has one and it takes place in a moa factory setting (we can steal assets from the RJ ships) and there are continuous - but not substantial - numbers of moas spawned from the perimeter. The illustrious Sergeant gains 5 hp bars. These hp bars are unique in that they are mildly networked and all except two can be damaged at any time. Weapon Bar: The first takes weapon damage (all other damage is heavily reduced but still has an effect, though minor). If the weapon bar is at max (undamaged), all the other bars start recharging. Wildcard / Exalted Bar: Because we detect two exalted weapons in this squad, the second hp bar primarily takes exalted weapon dmg (if we only detected one or none, this bar would instead only take damage from melee or perhaps only certain elements or something else altogether, depending entirely on the squad. Optionally, if one Tenno is clearly better equipped than the rest, we can actually tune this bar to only take damage from that Tenno, which creates an interesting dynamic to this whole process - or the complete inverse too, tuning it only to the weakest player). Ability Bar: The third takes primarily ability dmg (note that exalted do not count as ability dmg here). The ability bar is unique in that it naturally slowly recharges, the others can only be recharged through active heals or if the weapon bar is maxed. Survival Bar #1: this bar cannot be damaged directly unless all 3 of the other bars are completely down. Instead, it take indirect damage filtered from the others. As long as the other bars are up, this filtered damage is heavily mitigated. Once they're down, it takes full damage. Once this bar is eliminated, it cannot be recharged. Survival Bar #2: this bar sits underneath the first survival bar and cannot be damaged in any way until the first is completely removed. Once the first is removed, this one still acts in the same way - that is, if one of the other bars recharges it will only take indirect damage, and all the other bars must be down for it to take any direct damage. Note that there is a 1 or 2 second invulnerability window (aka a hp gate) between these hp bars - they don't act as one bar. The point of this is to create a 2-phase boss. We could put in a some words of denunciation from the Sergeant and some animation or whatnot. Detecting that this squad is (as per the usual) weighted for viral and heat, the Sergeant decides that shields are his best friend. (If it was instead say corrosive he would lean towards hp buffing, or magnetize he would lean towards hp & armor, etc, etc - he's an adaptive boy now). So on top of these hp bars is a shield; it's not especially big but it is synced with some other things... The illustrious Sergeant now also has a rage bar, and his own energy pool as well as ability duration, strength, range & efficiency. These are all set based on an initial analysis of the squad. The rage bar increases efficiency (well, technically decreases it.... well it makes his abilities more efficient) and also increases his ability strength and his base DR - in this case it also supercharges his shield recharge, making it a bit of a monster. The rage bar increases when suffering above-expected damage, when suffering multiple rapid consecutive melee hits, when losing a health bar, and probably a few other scenarios as well. We could optionally tie moa spawns to rage bar increments - the angrier the more frequently mobs spawn. The Sergeant has DR (and not just armor but also his own built in version of Adaptation - except his isn't lame *cough*), but no attenuation or invulnerability, and he is not immune to any ability - but he does have counters. The sergeant has his own set of unique attacks and defenses, but additionally gains several anti-warframe abilities based on the detected squad: Protea: there's a lot to worry about from Protea but for now let's prioritize her turrets and grenades. The Sergeant gains the ability to erect a physical shield barrier that absorbs all turret (and gun) damage from one side, and he tries to stay behind it while turrets are active. He has perhaps 2 available at a time, but they operate off of cooldowns, so they aren't always available. To help us deal with grenade spam, we gain an ability that grants the Sergeant matching overshields to any received by the Tenno (by picking up and stealing one of the shield orbs on the ground). Mag: the biggest threat from Mag is Magnetize. When Magnetize is cast on him, he suffers it, but as soon as it ends it is replaced with a mimic bubble that envelops him, forces all Tenno outside of the bubble on instantiation (like Frost's globe does, but they can re-enter to melee after it's up), and heals his 1st hp bar for all gun damage absorbed. (note the Sergeant's version should be noticeably differently colored). Ivara: is a weapons platform, she provides almost no ability damage output, and we also detect that this player is not a substantial threat via weaponry compared to the others, and that her Artemis Bow is not a threat either. For now, we just completely ignore Ivara, she's currently invisible anyway. Baruuk: is a two-fold problem and we need two counters. One to get through his DR, and one to deal with Serene Storm, which on this Baruuk let's say is potent. When hit with Serene Storm, the Sergeant will steal 1 (possibly 2) daggers from Desolate Hands and use them himself. However, Baruuk is going to have a hard time charging Serene Storm unless we attack him relentlessly, so we also gain a secret mandate to not attack Baruuk very much, which should force him to eventually either rely on weapons or focus on the mobs, which suits us fine. Armor Strip: we also detect two armor stripping abilities in this squad. To help us survive, we choose an armor-reinforcement passive. This passive incrementally rebuilds our armor every time an element procs on any of our health bars, helping our base defenses remain in place as much as possible. The Sergeant's Attacks: The Prodman Special: the Sergeant uses an electric & magnetic melee attack that stuns and damages any non-shielded Tenno for a second or two, or deals strong damage (str) to the shields of any shielded or overshielded Tenno, as well as afflicting them with a debuff we shall call shield cancer (a continuous drain on shields and a debuff on shield recharging, duration based on the Sergeant's ability duration). The Slam: the Sergeant slams a melee-ing Tenno away several meters, dealing strong physical damage (str) and stealing some health (str) which goes to his weapon bar. Occasionally, he may immediately leap into the air after the Tenno and perform a slam attack on them (something that may be influenced by his rage meter). The Scalpel: the Sergeant fires volleys of adaptive shots at the Tenno. If the Tenno are shielded, these are toxin or magnetic based. If they are not, these are heat based. Additionally they all have base IPS values (str). The Storm: The Sergeant charges a potent attack over a second or two (str). This attack will kill most un-shielded Tenno, but it has a build-up, is well-telegraphed and can be dodged without too much difficulty. The Sergeant's Defense: Rage Transfer: the Sergeant empties his rage meter to heal (str), this heal prioritizes the most damaged hp bar. Moa Moa: The Sergeant activates 12 armored super-moas to assist him in battle (dur). These do damage (str) and attack the Tenno, but their primary purpose is that damage done to the Sergeant is transferred to them, Shield-of-Shadows style. The cool-down on this ability is fairly long and will be a more rare occurance, saved mostly for emergency use. Because the Sergeant might heal while this is in effect, it's important for the Tenno to prioritize the elimination of these moas. Re-Retribution: The Sergeant activates a powerful electro-armor that severely shocks Tenno that come into direct contact (str), discouraging melee attacks while it is active. The Sergeant Thinks About Life: After the first survival bar is depleted, the Sergeant re-evaluates his strategy based on how the fight has gone so far before phase 2 begins. We recalculate the value of the 2nd survival bar based on the average DPS and the peak DPS coming out of the Tenno. We also adjust his base stats if needed. We further take this moment to shuffle our loadout slightly, because we have a much clearer idea of who to worry about. We now know we have a serious Mag problem, Mag-related damage is through the roof compared to the others, and so we prioritize that. Also, we've noticed that the Ivara is being very annoying lately by spamming cloak arrows and hiding the team a lot for some reason, which we don't like. We decide to activate our dormant anti-Ivara ability, and we decide to sacrifice our anti-Baruuk Serene Storm ability for an extra anti-Mag ability: All Seeing Eye: The Sergeant gains an ability that launches a specialized drone (sentinel) into the air and it periodically sweeps the battlefield revealing any cloaked units, and they remain visible for several seconds after the beam has passed. The range of the beam is based on the Sergeant's ability range. The drone can be killed by the Tenno if targeted, but it is fairly sturdy. If killed, the Sergeant can replace it up to 4x, but after that he dons a visor instead which gives him a permanent sweeping vision cone of anti-cloak. Re-Polarize: when hit with polarize, the Sergeant will wait a few seconds and then re-emit his own polarize (range), except his completely strips any Tenno shields it encounters (pushing Tenno into shield-gate window) and also applies shield cancer. Once again, this is a distinct color from Mag's. Thus reinforced, we re-engage the Tenno. Alas we are forced to lose, plot armor op plz nerf. Note that if we wanted to we could even get more sophisticated - we could detect that almost all of this Mag damage is because of her Magnetize ability, and instead of adopting an anti-polarize we could instead adopt a secondary anti-magnetize. The Sergeant's Rage: Perhaps, during the last 10-20% of the final health bar, the Sergeant might enter a sort of berzerk mode, where he gains extra defenses and perhaps some special attacks, but I'll just leave this as a possibility without exploring it too deeply. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Summary and Thoughts: I haven't thrown out any figures regarding the hp values because that's something I would have to leave to the professionals, and it would also vary based on the squad. Suffice it to say that we know what weapons are present, as well as what arcanes and abilities, and we can come up with a maximum damage peak for the Tenno as well as an average expected squad DPS. It might not be exact (a LOT of multipliers exist in warframe, for example focus schools also play a part) but we should be able to get within the ballpark pretty well. If I was DE, this would be a pretty refined science by now - they sure have no shortage of data if they want it. Anyways, we have a good idea how much potential damage this team can generally put out, and that's a good starting value. I don't think we should dynamically change values mid-fight (If they're really struggling, because we were dramatically overestimating their output, there might be a case to dynamically update I suppose, but that leads into exploit territory), but the beauty of a two-phase boss is that we can use the intermission to update things based on the actual average DPS coming out of the team rather than the theoretical. As for the hp bar structure, it's designed to provide a bit of a balancing act for the Tenno to navigate. With a DR ability, multiple ways of healing, one bar with native recharge, and also a fast recharging shield, this should be a tough boss to take down. The rage bar acts as an important mitigator for when all our number crunching doesn't quite get us where we need to go. It is also a fantastic tool for ramping up the energy/momentum of a fight. Note that the main purpose of this exercise is to show how to create boss/enemy mechanics that don't rely on invulnerability, ability denial, cutscenes, straight up leaving the fight, or attenuation (some DR is however necessary, or if you prefer hp bars in the high hundred-millions / billions - they're the same thing basically). We accomplish this here by creating a net system that reacts differently and requires multiple inputs to take down, but notably we are not canceling or denying or being immune to any warframe ability here. They all work. The only exception to this rule would be hard CC abilities, but there are none present in this squad so I didn't cover that - Mag's Crush would work as normal - it's brief enough that it doesn't matter. Ivara's sleep and noise arrows would work but likely with drastically reduced timers or something, and probably while asleep (a handful of seconds or so) the Sergeant would gain some extra DR to compensate for being helpless - or we might include a smarter counter ability specifically for this, especially if the Baruuk also had lull available instead of helminthing it over. Also note I've fairly limited the Sergeant here in his counters. We could adopt counters to every single warframe ability present, but we don't actually want or need to do that, we just need to prioritize the heavy hitting abilities. I made it so that he needs to sacrifice an ability to gain a new one, which I think is a good balancing mechanic, though not strictly necessary. Instead of invalidating abilities, we're being creative in our way of dealing with them by making each prominent ability have a down side, yes, by countering it. For example, when you cast Polarize or Magnetize or... any ability... anywhere in the game, is there ever a single down-side to it? Nothing more than the mere consumption of energy. Creating counters is how to create engaging gameplay - it makes you think twice about doing things, when to do them, on what to do them, and this is true more with bosses than with anything else imo. Note that while the multiple networked hp bars is a nice touch, it is but one of many possibilities, and for other bosses I would mix it up. The individual bars are also not immune - they still take damage even if it's not the appropriate type, so you can work harder and not smarter if you want to, which I think should be a crucial design axiom. For example the Exalted Bar in particular - people may not initially be wise to how to deal with this bar, but they can still slowly burn through it. Let me note here that all of this extremely theoretical, how this would work in reality is hard to predict and would have to go through several test-and-design cycles, I'm just spitting concepts here. Admittedly, this is a high investment boss build, and the main argument against this is that you have to create counter abilities for all 50+ warframes. And that's true, that is definitely an undertaking. But you would then have a pool of counters and debuffs that any boss could have access to, or for that matter, any enemy, or for that matter, even the environment. This allows you to create smart enemies and smart bosses without knee-capping warframes. It's tactical combat instead of blunt force combat. Ideally, each boss would have it's own flavor. Another danger with such a system is that every boss might start to feel the same, because they're using the same tactics against you. It's this area where I think that unique mechanics like special weak points, phases, boss-specific attacks and defenses (separate from anti-warframe abilities) really are important, which is the main reason I took a little time to dream up some attacks and defenses, even though they really aren't important in regards to the larger point about countering warframes. The anti-warframe techniques are designed to be part of the boss arsenal, not to overtake their personalities. Again, this requires a pretty serious commitment to making a fun and engaging boss, but as long as you're in there making them, might as well do it right imo. Any boss, any squad, this style will work. Hard CC is the only exception, and in some cases could even be allowed. If you read and understood all this let me know if you think this isn't a great solution and why, because it's definitely how I'd go about developing a game's harder enemies.

Ooo I'm interested too. Here's mine: Some I specifically colored the WF before I sacrificed them, others I just took in default.

Ah I'm sorry I don't have an answer for you, I don't play conclave

Honestly, the nitty gritty details don't matter to me, I leave that for the devs, they get paid for it. I don't think we need any lore reason to play as either - we didn't with any of the other times, and honestly I hate simulation-style modes like ESO/Index/Circuit; give me the real thing. Just create a game mode where a bunch of grineer duke it out vs a bunch of corpus, or grineer vs grineer, or corpus vs corpus, and I'm on board. It's not very deep PvP, but it's something. Throw in a mini-arsenal and a little customization and it'll last a lot longer. I do like your ideas for multiple classes and multiple objectives - things many others have also suggested but which would be very healthy IMO the main reasons DE is reluctant to make PvP is: Servers (you need dedicated PvP servers, not peer hosting) Balance (DE sucks at balance) Post-release love (abandoning it after launch is DE's MO, and for PvP that tends to be especially bad) General direction (DE just isn't that interested in diving into PvP, they're interested in making content islands) Lack of support (too much of the playerbase just isn't that interested in PvP either, alas) Content islands seem to placate everyone, so unfortunately I don't see any kind of shift on the horizon.

Right but the point I'm making is that when you have a squad of 4 people you can very accurately identify the tools they have, and instead of limiting the player you counter them.

Hm, well I agree and disagree. I think the Thrax are well rounded, and the only thing I'd really change about them is to make them even tankier in the Circuit, they're too easy to evaporate (if your team has an armor strip or any kind of strong dmg multiplier), and to some degree also in the Zariman but not as much. I'm okay with your suggestion to make them just have DR instead of invulnerability; it should be a basic rule that nothing should ever be completely invulnerable, but the magnetic attacks feel fine to me, they're fun to try and dodge. As for their burst - it sure can hurt, no denying that, but if you take that away they'll instantly be a trash mob that's just bigger than the rest... and we don't need more of that. I like that they're an actual threat - they're pretty much the only thing that is, unless you want to count acolytes. However I'm also okay with your suggestion to make them not do as much dmg to defense objectives... but... this kinda gets into larger problems with the defense and excavation modes in general. It definitely sucks to have one of them come up and insta-kill your excavator, had that happen plenty. And it's a serious problem with trying to solo Circuit defense when you have like 5 or 6 of them all coming in at once, but again, these game modes need more help than just fixing Thrax imo, although that might be a good start.

Lol, all of these concepts were more or less poking fun at BiancaRoughfin taking irl whip combat waaaay too seriously. I'm really just here for better whip play. I do feel like this one has potential though. Hmm yeah they could even collapse for portability, so that it looks like a single blade and then unfolds into a full saw, or perhaps it could 'evolve' into saw form via incarnon or via combo multiplier or heavy attack. Awww that's one thing I forgot to mention in my original post - it's so incredibly bad trying to build combo with whips. But yeah I kinda like this variant - it definitely feels and looks like a scary weapon that would do significant damage.

I didn't mind it, I was curious to see what soulframe was actually finally about (and personally I have zero interest in soulframe, now more than ever). It's whatever, and I think it was smart to have them go first. Otherwise it would've ended on soulframe instead of WF99, which woulda been way worse - you want to end on a high note, and they did. I don't mind giving them their spotlight; after all, we wouldn't have WF without them, they earned it. Have some human kindness y'know? Not everything has to be ruthless. They didn't steal the show, and they only made me more excited for the main WF presentation.

SMH

Ah yeah fair point, that's more of a blade & whip possibility, or even a straight-up gunblade variant I suppose, hm... depends on how important the whip part is I guess. Something more like this: (sorry for my art, MidJourney failed me) As for the warfan whips (again, art apologies): The whips trail behind at extended range, so that you use the warfans as blades to attack anyone close and whips to attack anyone further away, at least that's the general concept.

HA! If this some kind of real-world argument pffffft bruh, whips have no place in any serious combat period, once someone closes the distance or catches the whip you're done. In addendum, dual whips are perfectly efficient compared to a single whip if you know what you're doing, check out youtube videos of people using two bull whips - queensland crossover etc, and in theory even better, because if someone catches one whip you can hit them with the other one instead of being helpless, plus just in general twice the amount of strikes. Also, other games have done some cool things with dual whips like have elements imbued into each. Like you could have a corrosive whip and a viral whip, or a heat whip and a toxin whip, etc, if you really wanted to push the whips-as-status-monsters style, which could be pretty awesome looking in addition (i.e. Teshin New War). If you think that's impractical... wait til you hear my other whip ideas: Whip gunblades - gunblades with whips attached, that's right, so you can entangle someone with your whip, shoot them, then drag them toward you and stab them. Whip saws - whips with spinning saw blades at their tips or even all along their length (although this might be more of a kyoketsu-shoge type weapon) Quadruple whips - long handles with whips attached to both ends, one in each hand, constant whirlwind of death Finger whips - a retractable razor whip attached to each finger, acting as super long shredder claws Warfan whips - warfans with whips attached to each fan section, basically creating an outer zone of delayed fan damage Tentacle whips - half tentacle, half whip, these multi-whips always wrap around victims in range, capturing a new one with each attack, damaging all captured enemies with each attack, and don't let go until you heavy attack which deals heavy damage to all captured enemies before releasing them, or until you switch weapons.

You forgot whips existed did you? Haha! No primes, no kuva, no sister, no incarnons, zilch for whips - which is fine I guess because they need a lot more help in general than that. I went to find and bump my previous whip article but it's archived, alas! Such is the longevity of this crusade. Well here's a fresh and more condensed version: Whip stances SUCK, (not so much for multipliers but for basic animation movement) please overhaul / patch / fix / help Faster - they're way too slow (even with all 3 speed mods, which is ridiculous). IMO whips should be faster and have better range than all other melee at some dmg cost. Wider - they should have wide swinging arcs, less focus on single targets straight ahead, more on swaths of enemies on all sides. Attacking a single target is so rare that it's better to make the animations service the usual. Movement - don't step through the target, its godawful. Don't force a dead stop, it's godawful. Smooth continuous efficient sweeping attacks is what we need. Glide attacks - impossible to see Heavy attacks - lackluster Bring us Sister / Kuva / Prime / Incarnon whips? Bring us Dual Whips? Pleeeeeaaaaaseeeee 🥹 Flagrum / Cat-o-Nine-Tails style whips and Dual Cats (multi-tailed whips) Whip visuals should be improved (they are very thin and nearly invisible against crushes of enemies, elementals could be shown more clearly as an option, i.e. where are my glowing fire whips?) Whip sounds should be improved (hissing, cracking, wuthering, slithering, screeching, howling - in more dynamic fashion, it sounds very repetitive and basic currently, whips really make some awesome sounds) Whip physics could be improved (specifically the way whips naturally move in long trailing, beautiful, serpentine patterns after themselves, something that would be much appreciated in coordination with better visuals) Chain whips / razor whips / blade whips (segmented articulating weapons basically like whips with blades attached to them) can also find nice homes here with little effort. Suggest giving whips a more unique niche if possible. This could be done for example by making their heavy attacks grab susceptible victims and either bind them, bring them back to you, bring you to them, or fling them. Glide attacks or wall-dash attacks could be used to latch to the environment at extended range like Valkyr, thus providing a unique utility to set them apart, or whatever else you dream up, just something to give them their own flavor would be good.

OR, better yet, buff his passive so that it's just as good or better than last gasp. For starters, make the passive shadow the same as the regular shadow -_-