[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

 

 

1 hour ago, Cleesus said:

Alright friends lets stop arguing 😁

We're trying. Can't quiet reach the consensus yet. Which was expected really - we are talking about a core gameplay mechanic after all.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

18 минут назад, DiabolusUrsus сказал:

To simplify what OP is (I think) trying to say:

All Warframes should at baseline have the tools they need to counteract gradual health attrition.

Thanks you for TL:DR-ing the thing. Yes - that's what i meant. Baseline barely good enough healing method that is independant of player's choice of gear.

Health orbs are the closest we have to that, but they are way too weak. So either they need a buff or there must be something else.
Like a special medic-like unit that drops like 10-15 of them when killed.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

3 часа назад, (PS4)guzmantt1977 сказал:

Wanna heal yourself using a gun? You can. Wanna heal yourself using a blade? You can. Wanna heal yourself using your abilities? You can. Wanna heal yourself using your Operator? You can. Wanna heal yourself with an arcane? You can. Wanna focus on the objective and ignore most of the enemies? You can. Wanna not have to worry about healing yourself? You can. 

Each comes with a trade off. None is an absolute requirement. This is not a bad thing. 

What if i don't want (nor like) to use ANY of these options? Well, that's it. I'm a premature corpse already...

Its the same story with classic full-auto Assault Rifles all over again. All these options and i don't like NOT A SINGLE ONE.
Either it has wrong fashion, or gives me bad vibes or just performs like garbage and is a mastery fodder (rivens have capacity to solve that, although i refuse to pay for them and possibility that i would just get one for a gun i like is miniscule, not to mention the RNG of stats themselves).

How the hell Warframe keeps, somehow, to not cover the needs of old little me is a mystery to me. The only axis of the game where i managed to find my sweet comfortable spot is Rhino in the axis of warframes.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

4 часа назад, BoarWarrior сказал:

Pizzas. Squad health restores. With them you can use any gun any frame any mods, skip all health mods and just pop more pizza. Easy to farm and use. And it doesn't involve shutting out anything else, unlike focus school or guns or mods.

Why is that not enough?

Because they are annoying to use.

Back in the far-back days of Warframe - warframes had a cooldown system on their abilities. That system was removed because it would slow down the gameplay because players would just nuke everything in room > wait until CD is back > enter next room > nuke it too > repeat.

I don't see how restores are any different in the way they interupt the highly-paced gameplay of warframe where standing in place feels like a wrong thing to do.
How long does it takes for them to fullfill their purpose and do all the restoration waves? 15 seconds? 20? (i looked it up - they need 30 seconds to finish their job, with waves happening every 7,5 seconds which feels like FOREVER!) Of course i could just spam 5 of them and then just leave them behind to heal AIR, but that still feels like a wrong to do. I hate restores with passion and only use them when i just can't be bothered to put effort.

Why did they had to be team restores? How about user-only restores? Like personal healing injectors? Actually there is one like that in-game:
The Health Restore (restores health to full to the user)

HOWEVER! Creating this thing is surprisingly tedious. For its building it requires plants that grow exclusively on earth.
Which means that to build it i need to dedicate an entire day to going to earth to scan plants in order to build a healthly supply of them (i must also add that you can only build one at a time).
I actually do have 66 of them... Because i got them as a pre-build reward from some earth missions, but i refuse to use them because i just know i'm going to burn through them in like a week and never have that supply again. Their value is just way too goddamn high and i can't bring myself to use them, because its like injecting myself with liquid platinum.

Currently i can't build even ONE because i lack a dozen of Sunlight Threshcones and after the first build i'll start to lack Moonlight Threshcones.
Meanwhile i can calmly build literal THOUSANDS of Squad Health Restores (Large) out of resources i got naturally. EXCEPT I HATE THEM and would rather have them be removed from the game forever.

So, there's that.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

17 часов назад, Darkuhn сказал:

have you tried Arcane Aegis? I use it on my Mesa and I have no problems surviving any Content from Sorties to ESO. I haven't used melee with Mesa in years and I don't use life strike on any melee weapon in my arsenal, as I don't need it to stay alive. Even Healing return is only on one Weapon and that is my exalted umbra blade with a CO build.

In my Opinion Life Strike is one of the more overrated mods in the game. Yes it can heal you to max Health with one hit, but that takes the last bit of danger out of fighting enemies that don't one-shot you.

Also Life Strike takes up a Mod slot that I can put to better use on every weapon.

And then there are Team Restores which cost nearly nothing and are spammable.  

Arcane Aegis and Arcane Victory are 2 best arcanes in my honest opinion.
Unfortunately, i havent farmed enough of them to even reach level 2, so they are kinda doing nothing. Still nice to have them though.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

3 часа назад, (PS4)guzmantt1977 сказал:

Do you do anything to reduce the incoming damage? 

Its as if you are implying i just run head first into enemies with famous W+M1 tactics.

Of course i try to avoid damage. I try to use skills (although i never spam, finding it a bad taste), i roll a lot - courtesy of Dark Souls experience, sometimes i try to act like Warframe is one of those hide behind cover games (although it gets boring very quickly and doesnt do much since enemies just spawn behind you very often). But after a certain point even being flanked by a grineer squad for 2 seconds is enough to chew through shields like they are nothing. Not to mention occassional events, when you just get randomly destroyed by a single enemy unit like a Bombard or Corpus Tech who got a good ambush on you.
Or when a fire eximus (or any heavy unit for that matter) knock you down and the entire grineer squad has you as their target practice, because you forgot Handspring (the best exilus mod in the game), so you get up with already no shields and a big  chunk of health missing.

Stuff happens, simple as that. No matter how hard you try sooner or later you either get overwhelmed or ambushed by a lucky enemy formation that just rips you apart.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

2 минуты назад, ArcKnight9202 сказал:

I always found the scaling in this game to be bonkers. It often goes from "no problem" to "wow I died really fast". The scaling is especially noticed on damage-modified sorties.

There are so many ways for us to increase our killing abilities but we have to jump through hoops to have any kind of defensive edge. Shields have a bit of use against Corpus since their largely puncture-based weapons have a penalty to them. On low armor frames, this is actually the superior protection. It's still virtually trash when a Tech sees you, though.

Also this. Like, jesus christ... Especially with eidolons. Perhaps its just my fault for not going to wiki and memorising every single one of their attacks, but they really do go from " 1000 shields was enough to keep me alive" to "1000 shields and 700 health with 700 armor was just oneshoted by barely telegraphed attack that covers 1 kilometer radius in every direction".

Unfortunately, getting casually oneshoted when you dont expect is a topic for another day and another thread. Here i just wanted to find (or rather suggest because there's NOT ANY) a way to cope with taking damage without having to go assemble and fine-tune a "LifeSaver9000" button on my keyboard.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

By the way, sorry if im starting to sound more upset, stupid or insane as thread goes on - genuine thought-provoking discussions and debates with arguments take a fatique on me after some point and my thought process gets less refined than it was in the OP.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

7 минут назад, (PS4)guzmantt1977 сказал:

Unlocked mid-game. And once unlocked always there by default. 

Rhino is literally the second one frame you can get. And if you want to use squishy frames you have two options, kill everything before it gets to you, or expect to need healing. 

MR 5, isn't a huge requirement, is it? And both of them show that there is choice. Every choice has a trade off, but it's available to you. 

Everything is. That's why nothing is truly mandatory. 

So again you can see that none of them is mandatory. Not even your life strike. 

You expect new, low MR players with only the starter frame to encounter level 35+ enemies? I don't. By that point, they have options. 

If you want to forsake every single option available to you, that's your call. But acting like giving up your favourite one means that none of the others exist isn't productive in any way. Not in the least. 

That's the problem. None of this is MANDATORY because you can just pick to NOT DO IT because the game never tells you "hey maybe you actually should do that".

Except for taking damage. Its going to happen. That damage is coming, and that health will go down.
But healing is NOT coming. You must find it and you must make it. This desynchronisation is what bothering me.

Like, i would be absolutely fine if the game would just grab me, give me a bag of healing syringes (no matter what my setup / build is) that have a separate button and play one-second animation every time i use them and send me out like.
Except it didn't. If i want those syringes i have to make them. And they are the most boring S#&$ in history of ever (i'm talking about health restores of course).

So instead i settled for mandatory life strike in every single one of my melees, even if its unranked and unpotatoed. Although it starts to get really annoying that about every 10-15 seconds into somewhat higher-level mission i have to slooowly switch to melee (due to slightly unresponsive controls), make sure that channeling button didn't bug out and go heal myself. And then switch back to the gun in the same barely responsive way.

Hopefully melee 3.0 will make switching to melee and life striking things less tedious, but it'll probably won't.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

3 минуты назад, Synpai сказал:

1) Well this thread has brought light to the many non-melee options. But to be fair Mesa is SLIGHTLY better without a melee. Really, it's not that much more health and if you're having trouble healing and don't want to use any other method then the answer is simple...keep the melee equipped.

2) As for your definition of "core" it is extremely skewed. Just because the game is not giving you a healing tower on every mission you play does not mean that it's not there. Using air support in survival drops health orbs for example. It does exist without preplanning, but the planning and modification is CORE to the gameplay. Like why doesn't the game just have weapons lying around for you to pick up when you don't feel like modding, leveling or building your guns to match content?

3) Even BL2 makes you make the choice of how you're going to heal. You can rely on the skill tree, grenades, weapon passive, or just run to a shop and buy it since the drop of health items isnt always allowed in places like challenge arenas and such. 

4) Also forgot to mention there's the Kuva Sceptor for more health orbs, just one method that's really impractical for most situations, but it's there.

5) Again, health orbs could definitely use improvement, but I don't think you'll ever not need the intent and preparation for consistent healing. Like they'd likely make it regenerate up to 100 extra health over time.

6) Warframe is closer to games like God Eater and traditional RPGs, where you have to buy into the potions. Although you are given restores and potions early, you will need more to sustain.

1) Yeah, except they're all something that i still have to actively seek out and bring with me. I can't just unequip melee and go out there. And yeah, that bonus is NOT worth it. Like, at all. SO WHY IS IT EVEN THERE?!

2) Yes, i agree. My definition is probably way too vague and stupid, but that's how i meant it. Maybe there's a better word for it, i don't know.

3) Borderlands had actually useful SHIELDS that actually did their job pretty good. And through the game you would find healing syringes that were actually good no matter how much health you had because they worked in percentages.

4) Well, quiet frankly i sold it because i hated it. In both fashion, performance and worthless "passive".

5) AT least we agree on that. I say - make them percentage based. That would be the simpliest solution i can think of.

6) I dont mind that. I played the games like that before. I wouild just prefer for it to be more... Engaging? Like a giant stack of health syringes that you keep stabing yourself with (with animation) would absolutely be fine by me. Health restores server same purpose but they are just not.... Fun... I hate them, alright?

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

17 минут назад, Syasob сказал:

Even if you're doomed health orbs have nothing to do with it. Bad set up does.

Predicted comments - comment #2 - "Embrace your healing overlords".

I did. I'm just not happy that they are there. I would prefer for them to not be there and rather  actually me in the combat itself, not in the orbiter.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

19 минут назад, (PS4)guzmantt1977 сказал:

What? You mean my operator hoping in and out of my frame is 3rd party? I thought that he was the actual first party. 

Or using a tanky frame when I expect it to tank is a bad thing? Please don't tell my Rhino. 

Or using my actual health as a source of power for my abilities, and never noticing a significant problem isn't possible? Yeah my Nekros and Inaros will be going on strike if they find out. 

Or having my puppy along, or even one of the floating whatchamacallems to boost me as needed isn't a winning strategy either. 

And hey, I'm on a console so you know that I'm a couple of weeks behind you guys, but I suppose that staying airborne or rolling to avoid the majority of the predictable damage got taken out of the game by the last update. 😔

 

The fact is, Tenno, you can heal yourself. You can heal yourself in a lot of ways. But just like in real life, don't expect to get a limb chopped off and have it regrow instantly passively. 

Operator - yes it is because its introduced mid-game and is not there by default.

So is a tanky warframe. Is Mag a tank? Don't think so.

Nekros spawns additional health orbs in ammounts so high they actually matter and Inaros actually has a build-in Life Strike into his ability kit.
Neither of them are starting frames also.

Pets are optional alltogether.

 

Yes i can heal myself. But by doing something outside of actual mission / combat. By doing something in the orbiter. If the game just picks me up and throws me into a battle without letting me prepare - that's it. Those health orbs are not gonna save me.
That's why i keep reffering to "core gameplay" and i should clarify that i call "core gameplay" something that's just THERE. Wether you want it or not - its THERE. Hence why its a "core".
The problem is: healing is not THERE. You must BRING IT THERE. Through outside sources which you must first unlock.

And ALL of the healing methods mentioned thus far are exactly that: outside progression-locked sources. Very definition of Optional too, because warframes are optional, so are guns, so are mods, so is building 9000 consumables with your credits and resources.

The only one that isn't is Health Orbs and they are worthless when you reach 35+ enemies and every single one of your warframes have 740 health or more.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

18 минут назад, Synpai сказал:

I mean you could argue that good movement in WF/ killing ability is the same as your pure fighting skills. Experience and Options. Level 40 content I could sleep through on any frame. Level 80 content I watch shows through, but playing a game 5+ years will do that.

 

To be fair. L4D is not in the same genre. Warframe does in fact give you access to free restores and specters early on, but ultimately it's a looter where L4D is not. You could also choose the route of the Xiphos Med Tower Air Support and bring whatever you want, I did that for a while.

Just isn't 1-1. In Warframe if you want more healing and such, they entice you (although they tell you none of this, because WF is a very 'handsfree' game instruction-ally; which I hate) to go looking into caches and crates. I mean you're fighting literal hundreds of enemies, if a decent percentage dropped everything you needed, you'd have no need to slow down and explore/retreat.

Well i can sleep through level 40. Because i'm already part of the system. My health goes down - get melee out, do channeling, start slashing until there's no more enemies (because you keep taking damage through all that because shields are dead until all enemies are dead so nobody could shoot them anymore).

Rage is in 99% of all my warframes (except for couple of my so called "experimental" builds) and so is either Life Strike or Healing Return on all of my melees. And i NEVER go out without a melee. Health restores are on me at all times too, but i HATE to use them because they are obnoxious with their "waves" of healing. Just NO.

Its just then i go to Mesa and she's like "hey, i'm not supposed to have a melee you know" and i was like "wait, how do i heal myself then?" and then i turned into
  for 3 hours and that's how this thread was born.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

6 минут назад, (PS4)guzmantt1977 сказал:

Meh. I tried it once or twice. Didn't like it. I don't seem to be having any problems. Other people responding are saying that there are other options. You even listed quite a few of them. 

Maybe we're all just doing something wrong? 

Well yes. We are. We have to find 3rd party healing sources.

There's just a point you realize: "oh crap, i'm actually taking damage to health for once - and quiet frankly a lot of it - and 25 health orbs are just not cutting it".
Im simply upset that you CAN'T heal yourself in actual mission / combat by using something INSIDE the mission / combat.
You have to go home and bring something with you to fix that exact issue. Wether its a warframe, weapon, consumable, mod, focus school...

Its nice that we actually do have a way to heal ourselves at all - so many of them even.

But if i just... Don't? I picked another warframe, another weapon, didn't bring the consumable, mod or picked different focus school.

Well, quiet frankly - i'm #$%^ doomed to die, because health orbs are useless.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

7 минут назад, Synpai сказал:

You can in Warframe as well. It's called [Quick Thinking] + [Flow] or Steel Maridian/New Loka Syndicate weapon (better than nothing). But the choices exist if you absolutely feel the need to die instead of use any method of healing, [Sacrifice] and [Primed Regen] or a TEAMMATE.

There are many methods to deal with, heal counteract and avoid this aforementioned damage that make going down something that happens less when you have more choices, experience and survivability. Like sure there's not THAT much you can do if you have no energy on Titania and you're surrounded by flamthrowers and bombard far from pressing 5 and spamming energy restores when you're safe, but going down isn't the end of the world in Warframe either. You've got 4-6 more revives which only matter if you can't or choose not to play with a teammate (Another choice although for some computers it may not be an option, but like...what can we do about that, there are many options for Solo-ability that bar the edge of one man army to some extent) to support lack of survivability.

Left for dead also had health packs and pills, which are as much a "core mechanic" as Health Restores and Shield restores in Warframe. In L4D you're making the choice between healing and one of the many other CC, AoE, etc options. You will NOT survive without healing or skill. And most times skill isnt even enough, but you don't pick up healing? You will eventually die.

 

The games are providing two different feelings. L4D provides the reduced health penalty to enforce the importance of health kits; without it, you're A-ok without ever picking one up because worst case you kill yourself and get picked up to full.

WF doesn't need that. The incentive to stay alive is the loots, experience, and mission completion. 

 

Also what LFD are you playing where SOMEONE doesn't need to be saved in a vicious cycle XD.

Well that's the thing - in L4D healing items were actually PROVIDED to you by the core in-combat gameplay. You would just find them.

And you ALWAYS have a designanted inventory slot of medkits, so not looting one up is a bad choice all around. And even then - you still DONT want to use them unless its absolutely necessery.

In WF all we have similiar to that is health orbs... And they don't do jack.

And for final question: the one where humans kill zombies so fast and efficiently that they dont have the chance to get close and deal damage. Because that's an actual possibility in L4D through pure fighting skill.
In WF you are surrounded with gun-weilding maniacs from all sides, so you DO take damage all the time. Shields are there, thankfully, but at some point they just don't work anymore.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

26 минут назад, Synpai сказал:

I mean they could put it into base gameplay, but it could just about devaluate all methods of healing. 

LIke....is it a bad thing to have healing or no healing as a choice? Like if you go into Overwatch or League without a healer....you don't get free healing, you don't buy into life steal or pick up the keystone to heal...you don't have it.

You don't bring a cleric, potion, or vampiric weapon in Fire Emblem (unless the character can do so passively)...you don't heal.

 

LIke you're invalidating a crap ton of meaningful choice if all you're doing is just bringing whatever deals the most damage. Having healers starts to become obsolete, having unique mods and weapons start to become obsolete, like...the whole point of systems like this is to give you this sort of choice.

I don't think that means they can't up the value of health orbs, since they drop so seldom, but then you have the argument that Nekros and Nezha in a squad solve the problem. Like it is designed to be cooperative, so there is argument that you wouldn't be able to be a one man army without enlisting tools to pick up slack.

That's actually a good point...
Except in all of those games you can still WIN without healing. Or at least not die (at the very least - the spawning medkits - same as Team Fortress 2 - do not go against the pacing and nature of the game and you can actually reliably keep yourself alive with them).
In warframe - past a certain point of enemy power level - massive, constant damage to health and therefore going down is just inevitable and there's no natural way of getting it back.

That's what confuses me - is going down considered by devs a core mechanic? With introduction of arbitrations with no revival im starting to think they dont.

Left 4 Dead had it too, but in Left 4 Dead due to specifics of gun-to-zombie combat going down was a result of some kind of fighting-skill failure or a particularly unlucky situation. Going down also had long-term penalties, like unstable low health that you either had to heal via medkit or keep yourself alive with pills, so going down was still undesirable and - ultimately - actually avoidable.

In warframe its almost feels like devs wanted the players to keep falling and reviving each other constantly in some sort of vicious cycle. And i'm surely not a fan of that.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

5 минут назад, kgabor сказал:

I have a feeling the devs just put the shield system to help new players get through the Starchart.

It has no use other than that, even Harrow's 3k+ shields are barely enough to tank a bullet past MoT and sorties.

Precisely. Why do we even have them? Might as well just remove them, seeing how healing is mandatory anyway.
Having more shields simply makes pauses between acts of healing slightly longer, that's the only thing they do really.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

9 минут назад, BoarWarrior сказал:

And? Do those things make it somehow unusable?

You know what, there's squad health restores, not for newbies who don't have access to Saturn and Derelict, but it's easy enough for anyone to get there so that shouldn't be an issue. And since we have now so much space in our gear wheel, you don't have to make a dreadful horrible evil choise but can just put it there anywhere. Even better, but also worse since it involves choise, you can put it in one of the first slots in your gear wheel and keybind it (I use F1-4), so you can use it easily. And there's not anything more important to put keybinds to in your gear wheel so it's not much of a choise.

I covered that in the OP - health restores are just as bad for warframe's fast-paced game design as ability cooldowns once were.
Stop fighting, press button, get health back, resume the fight. Isn't that loop why cooldowns were removed?

Sure, you can just spam 20 of them a second... And then you leave them behind, healing air. Something's not connecting here.

There is that one user-only full-health restore consumable, but for some reasons you only get its' BP as one-time use reward after doing some missions on earth.
If we are going after healing potions solutions - might as well allow players just create 1000 of them, put them on a hotwhell and use whenever they feel like it.
The only change to be made is to change 100% health restore to like 25%, so that you had to chugg them constantly like Dark Souls  character. Maybe with a unique chugging / injection animation too.

Hell, i'm actually down for that, why not.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

14 минут назад, Dhrekr сказал:

Certainly not. Zephyr's Lightweight passive was a thing that existed even before I started playing (roughly the Mesozoic Age).

... I do, and I haven't been a newcomer for a couple of geological ages. If I'm dying because they're murdering me, then I'll actually get out of fire and take five seconds to replenish my shields. If I need to.

It is, I think, the textbook definition of not being suicidal.

Well, it is fortunate that we have a lot of them.

For instance: use a Kubrow/Kavat with that mod that heals you. Infinite, very strong healing, forever, as long as your pet is alive.

Or: put a healing Magus arcane on your Operator.

Or: a healing Arcane on your Warframe.

Or: one of the many weapons with innate or moddable ways of healing.

 

By the way, I find it strange that you start having this problem with Mesa and enemies at level 30. Mesa's Shatter Shield ability is possibly the strongest damage reduction ability in the game (up to 95%), and enemies of level 30 shouldn't be able to even scratch you. It sounds a little bit like you build for the glassiest of glass cannon builds, and then expect DE to fix this decision for you.

I tried to find covers too, but its hard because enemies are everywhere and the only safe "cover" is a dead end, because at least you can't get surrounded there.

Yes, Mesa doesn't have particular issues with survival thanks to her 3rd, but she STILL will lose health at some point, somehow. Its the fact that she won't be able to get it back without dedicated weapon, mod slot or a consumable that concerns me.
Health Orbs are there, but 25 health means nothing when you have 900 and they are surprisingly rare for THE ONLY core-gameplay mechanic of getting health back.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

9 минут назад, trndr сказал:

Your operator can heal. Furis has heal augment, Hema heals on headshot.

Thats 3 options, only 2 of which you have disqualified.

It's at least 1 year since I could fit lifestrike on any melee.

Inaros dosn't have a healing problem, he gets 20% of his max from finisher and would be completely unkillable if he also got 2k hp per orb.

Mesa has 80-95% damage reduction, how much healing do you need?

Since adaptation and rolling guard got released, there is no frame that can't happily go up against lvl 100s.

More options, more options, more options...
Options that you just have to pick. Again and again. Just because there's a lot of them doesn't make it better. I just don't want to have ability to HEAL as an OPTION.
I want to be able to do it no matter what through basic gameplay of murdering my opponents NO MATTER my warframe or weapon choice.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

6 минут назад, Synpai сказал:

I see your life strike and raise you Hirudo.

A weapon that has Life Strike in it by nature is still a Life Strike.
Its another health restore, its another Trinity, its another Vazarin. Still same issue.

Frankly i'm getting upset that DE keeps inventing new ways for us to heal, when they could just make reliable semi-efficient healing a core-gameplay mechanic no matter your weapon or warframe choice. That's ultimately what i see as an issue.
You gotta pick your (life-saving) poison, you just gotta or down to 0 health you go.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

3 минуты назад, BoarWarrior сказал:

I solo the hardest Cetus bounties with my Mesa with Vitality and Hunter's Adrenaline and Vazarin dash for healing. Never needed pets or Life Strike because Vazarin, and Hunter Adrenaline has kept me from using the popular choise Zenurik. I can do Hunter Adrenaline on any frame and make good use of it because of Vitality, Arcane Guardian and Vazarin.

Each to their own though. But saying you have one option for this is just not right.

Vazarin is but another solution that is outside of core gameplay, so its exactly the same thing as Life Strike and others.
1) You must actually obtain it first (complete The Second Dream).
2) You must pick it over all others focus schools. So again - another limitation of choice, if you didn't yet obtained (or liked) all other methods.

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

28 минут назад, (PS4)Equinox21697 сказал:

Well it's a good thing I use Limbo and Equinox often so being low on health is a rare occurrence. 

As for your problem, wouldn't giving frames and companions slow HP regeneration when not taking fire a easy solution? Shields are meh, even on frames like Harrow, Trinity or Mag I never use redirection and instead focus on as much HP as possible (8k Inaros 😄 )

Slow basic HP regeneration would be nice indeed but:
1) It would make shields even more outdated than they are. Which is not something i want. Unless we are just going to abandon them completely.
2) Giving too much of it would make it overpowered. Giving too few make it late-game worthless. Hard to balance out, really.
3) Rejuvenation aura exists. And frankly its my most used aura, even if there are objectively better options.

 

23 минуты назад, (PS4)AbBaNdOn_IGN сказал:

use a pet.......

Sentinels can heal you

Cats and Dogs can heal you even better(if they have stuff to attack)

------------------------

On the topic of healing...  why not vampire bullets??  Arcanes can heal us,  Focus Schools can heal us, Pets can heal us,  melee can heal us,  some frames have abilities to heal but no way for primary/secondary to heal us??  Mod slot seems like a very fair sacrifice.

Frankly it annoys me that DE keep giving me more ways to heal myself... Without actually giving me choice. I just generally don't want to be dependant on a specific Warframe, weapon, pet, mod or consumable. Just purely on the game's core-gameplay mechanics.
Because eventually you DO want to find a way to keep yourself alive, and when it comes to that - you just have to pick one, weather you like it or not.

Healing through dealing damage is something a lot of games do and i actually consider it a good mechanic because it encourages the fight. However its hard to balance out.
Making it too good would make it overpowered. Making it too weak... Well, any constant healing is still better than no / random healing. Could be an answer to all of this.

Like harrow's healing headshots, only passive to everyone. Wouldn't that undermine Harrow's role?... Or would it make him like a booster to a mechanic?

[The core gameplay flaw: healing, health, shields and general "staying alive" gameplay]

Its one of those days. I decided to switch my warframes a bit.
Decided to pick Mesa. That's when i remembered that Mesa has one of the weirdest passives in the game.
Now, she does have all kinds of bonuses to secondary weapons... But she also has this passive that's been with her even before passives were a thing (i believe Mesa was actually the first experiment to implement them).
Mesa gets bonus health... If you have no melee weapon.

That's when i thought: WHAT A BAD GODDAMN DEAL.
No, seriously. That is SUCH A BAD TRADE.

Now, one would say "well, Mesa is a gun-focused warframe to begin with, she doesn't need to fight in melee". And you'll be right.
But that's NOT what makes melee desirable. What makes melee desirable is existence of this little gem:

 

This mod. This mod right there is the sole reason why i just CANNOT give up melee. I literally have it in ALL of my melee weapons, and the ones that don't are status weapons with the other healing mod instead.
But its not the mod's fault... But of the system behind it.

 

Currently we have a two-gate survival system. We have shields and health hidden behind it.
The idea is that you take damage to shields to prevent damage to health. Because damage to health is (almost) permanent while shields regenerate. Health does not (unless forced to by outside sources).

Here's the problem: DAMAGE TO HEALTH IS INEVITABLE.
And i'm not even talking about occassional slash proc or toxic damage. I'm talking about the fact that shields are WORTHLESS at doing their job. They do not protect your health. They simply slow down the inevitable.

Now, the concept of shields in warframe is pretty standart. It takes damage, it goes down, you wait a little bit - it starts regenerating.
You've seen it everywhere: Mass Effect, Borderlands, Crysis, Titanfall (1) and probably many others.

So what's the problem? The problem is that Warframe is way too different to those games.
Warframe is fast-paced, even extremely so. That's not even an assumption - the game (developers) aknowledges it, a lot of mechanics and design decisions were made with the idea of bullet-fast reactionary gameplay in mind (like refusal to make abilities cooldown based, and such).
But shields... Are just not a part of that. They are a relic of the old. Of the times when Warframe was slower, more methodical. Of times when you didn't bullet-jump in the middle of enemy-infested room to make a stand against dozens of enemies shooting at you from all directions.

Nobody in warframe (aside from newcomers) would find time to find a (working) cover, wait good 2-3 seconds for shields to start regenerating and wait another 2-3 seconds for them to actually fill-up. So not only shields take what feels like FOREVER to start recharging - they actually also take FOREVER to recharge.

What ends up happening a lot of the time is that the players are overwhelmed with constant enemy fire from all directions. Shields never get a window to recharge, and even if they do - they do not recharge much before another rogue bullet disrupts the process. The players end up surviving on health alone.

Having a reliable healing method is MANDATORY once enemies start hitting level 30 and higher.
Be it Life Strike, a health restore or playing a warframe capable of either healing or stoping damage from happening alltogether - if you don't have at least 1 of those then going down is but a question of time.
And don't you forget - restores go against warframe's high paced gameplay too, forcing you stop and stay in place while they heal you in waves with pauses that feel like forever. How is this any different from when abilities had cooldowns and players just stood there before entering the next room only to nuke everything in it?

I find all of this... frankly quiet obnoxious.
What if i DON'T want to have a healing melee on me - for example to have bonus health on Mesa? Trading a small bonus health for ability to RESTORE health - health that the player loses CONSTANTLY - which is particularly important in case of Mesa, who has lowered shields and not a lot of armor... This trade simply does NOT worth it.
But i also don't want to use restores that hold me back and don't want to play a healing frame - i've already picked Mesa, who was - in fact - a catalyst for this entire train of thought.
And there's no way to guarantee one of the public players will be a healer too, so that's out of the window.

To me - this is a rather concerning loophole in game design in a game that i generally like.
Health is way too much of core gameplay element, while shields (that are supposed to protect it) are just... There...
Playing any squishy warframe incapable of healing / preventing damage to itself is a rather painful experience since you just keep going down again, again, and again.
Or you have to go full melee with Rage equiped and just keep berzerking it through hoping to not just get oneshoted.

 

Now, to be fair - there is a in-game way of healing yourself: the Health Orbs. They are available to anyone anywhere.
But they are also a whole other issue on their own:

1. They are completely RNG based, therefore not reliable. You might get a 100 of them when you dont need them and not get a single one when you do. One i know for certain - the drop rates are not good enough.
2. They restore 25 flat health. That is NOT a lot of health. It might be to a new player on earth, who has 100-150 health total, but to late game warframes with 700+ health who constatly lose hundreds in seconds - that is just not acceptable.

 

I wish to propose a couple of ways to improve general warframe experience by not making healing mods, weapons and warframes mandatory (in all possible combinations).

Proposal #1 - the quiet old one - improve shields.
Shields MUST be better than they are now. Or rather - i believe they must be FASTER.
I think that shields' recharge delay must be MUCH shorter and the recharge speed must be WAY faster. Considering that even Fast Deflection does not quiet get make it right... 50% increase would be a good place to start.

Proposal #2 - make Health Orbs heal not a flat ammount, but rather a percentage.
Lets say 15% or 20% or maybe even 25%. That would make health orbs equally valuable through out the whole game, even to 5.000 health Inaros.
Actually that makes it quiet overpowered in that particular case... Forbid inaros from eating health orbs then?... That's a whole other issue for another day...

See, this is what i find annoying. All these issues go for so long and go so deep into game's design, that by pulling 1 string you start pulling some others and now you have to untangle them too. Goddammit. Anyway...

Proposal #3 - make ability to heal yourself (both shields and health) universally proactive.
And i don't mean healing guns, restores, or abilities. I've already established that i find this " specialized proactivity" obnoxious and limiting.
I talk about making core gameplay - even more COREdified..
* Higher drop rate from both enemies and lockers.
* Headshot kills might give higher health drop rates.
* As for shields: make energy orbs also boost shields. Not straight up restore them, but maybe force them to recharge in short bursts even under fire.

These are some that i could come up with, but i'm sure there's more ideas to be had here. This is just a general idea.

Hell, we could actually create whole new enemy types specifically dedicated to this - special units, enemy combat medics that drop healing items all over the place when killed.
More specialy placed restore stations, like those ammo dispensers on the plains. You get the idea...

 

Sorry if this is TL:DR, but since its something i - personally - find of big concern and interest for the game's general quaility gameplay going into the future, i just can't lay it out in a shorter form.

Some comment predictions and predetermined answers (i'll also be coming around to read all the responses (if there will be any) and have a discussion with them if possible):

• "Well its not an issue to me"
  - not an argument.
   
• "Stop whining and embrace your healing overlords"
  - well, first of all, i already did. Because that's how you stay alive in this game. Second of all - that's precicely why i made this topic to begin with. I want to be a strong independant no-melee Mesa (or any warframe) who doesn't need no health restores or Trinities when fighting level 40 enemies.
   
• "Git gud"
  - thank you, i already did. It didn't made the game better (from my subjective experience).

 

 

 

 

Something i came up with on Page 6 of this thread:

Цитата

So here's something i came up with while strolling:

 

HEALTH ORBS REWORK

Instead of having a singular health orb, instead make 3 different kinds of it:

• Small Health Orb - restores 5% of health on pick up.
• Medium Health Orb - restores 10% of health on pick up.
• Large Health Orb - restores 25% of health on pick up.

 

The type and drop chance of the orb is dictated by the enemy killed:

• Weak enemies (such as butchers, common lancers, common crewmen, common MOAs, shield ospreys, infested walkers and crawlers, etc.) will have 10% chance to drop Small Health Orb (approximately every 10th enemy killed).
   
• Moderate enemies (such as ballistas, crewmen snipers, oxium osprey, fusion MOAs, mutalist MOAs, etc.) will have 15% chance to drop Medium Health Orb (approximately every 7th enemy killed).
   
• Heavy units (gunners, bombards, napalms, corpus tech, nulifiers, ancients, etc.) will have 25% chance to drop a Large Health Orb (approximately every 4th enemy killed).
   
• Eximus Enemies always drop a Large Health Orb.

 

As for drops from crates / lockers:

• The chance of crate / locker droping any Health Orb is 50% which is then divided into 85% to get a Small Health Orb, 10% to get a Medium One and 5% to get a Large One.

(i'm not sure if there is some hidden in-game difference between crates and lockers and what they drop, otherwise i would think of separate drop rates for crates and lockers)

 

There. I'm now both encouraged and rewarded (by being allowed a chance to stay alive without calling for help on the side) for both killing my enemies and seeking out loot containers, including the secret rooms and stashes. You know... The usual core-gameplay stuff i do.

All numbers (healed amount and drop chance) are up to debate, obviously.
I changed them at least 5 times while i was writing this (mostly nerfs).

 

[Buzzlok PBR update - when?]

Buzzlok needs a visual improvement, in my honest opinion.

Default skin looks disgusting compared to current new textures and DotD skin while compensates partially - still cant quiet make it look good.