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

[Artekkor]

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).

 

Edited October 29, 2018 by Artek94
Added an idea i had on Page 6

[(PSN)OriginalEquinox]

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 😄 )

[(PSN)AbBaNdOn_IGN]

use a pet.......

Sentinels can heal you

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

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

Survival is a tough subject.  Alot of people would love to be almost immune and godlike if they could.   Other people(stupid people) relish the challenge of extremely difficult combat.

I think if they made a casual and hardcore version of all new content and gave both the SAME rewards and same odds and whatnot it would be a landslide what content gets run more.  I think Hardcore players are a minority.  Game Developers think it pushes people to spend money on the game or keep them engaged which might make people spend more money but I would love to see the Data on that.  I dont do any sorties, ESO, Tridolons and im sure as hell not doing elite alerts and I have received alot of platinum from others from me just enjoying the easier content and trading stuff to other people.

So I feel like me playing around in the middle of the game doing easy stuff and people buying things off me has been much more beneficial to the game than end game crap.  

I've been on a long break from Warframe lately to.  Mainly because I dont want to try that hard to play the game so I cant enjoy endgame things.   And the whole Relic/Void Trace thing is a sick joke that doesnt even come close to counting as "fun"   ( I EARNED my chroma prime, rubico prime and gram prime, and I also got that Day of the Dead tactical alert sigil/skin.  But doing it more times just for the fun of it to sell sets to other people for platinum is a no go,  I'd rather go play something else and have been.)   So I am just trying to say the difficulty is actually a turn off.  Once I accomplish whatever the latest new stuff is im DONE and dont want to stick around just for the fun of it.  Because not much in the game is just for fun.

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

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.

[Loza03]

I kind of have to agree with this, at least the sentiment of it. DE seems to want to encourage fast-paced, run and gun gameplay. That's what they show in trailers, that's what they design Warframes around in a lot of cases, but it's just not tenable at high levels, and thus not fun. Yeah, people will always find the most efficient method, but people will also always find the method they find FUN. And right now, it's not just healing systems but damage systems that are a problem. Enemies used to have much lower spawns, and the Damage scaling system was designed around just such a low-spawn system. Once you reach a high enough level, pretty much any common mook can erase you in a matter of seconds. And since there's probably at least five of them at any one time, that leads to most frames having to hide from direct encounters. A lot of 'higher priority' enemies aren't amazingly designed as a result. How can you make something higher priority when literally everything is able to kill you so fast? Result: Bombards, who have great accuracy thanks to homing rockets, even higher damage, a ground slam to deal with Melee and a huge amount of armour. Like... what are we supposed to do to them, other than cheese them? Shooting them from far away doesn't work, you could be in orbit and that rocket would hit you. Melee doesn't work often, because you end up on your back regretting your life choices from the ground slam. Yeah, I'm exaggerating, but you get the picture. Bombards are good at everything. That doesn't make for fun tactics.

To that end, either implement something like this, or adjust enemy scaling so the mooks aren't dealing half your healthbar with one bullet anymore. Then you can redesign higher priority troops a little bit to have tactical weaknesses to exploit, and higher damage (Possibly even more than now).

[Zi-Sui]

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.

Oh yeah for the reply above, you can stun bombards with second rank of Vazarin dash and then have your way with them. Alloy armor they use is weak against radiation so maybe mod one of your weapons for radiation and use Vigorous Swap if they are a problem.

Edited October 23, 2018 by BoarWarrior

[trndr]

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.

[Dhrekr]

32 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

i believe Mesa was actually the first experiment to implement them

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

32 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

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

... 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.

32 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

Having a reliable healing method is MANDATORY once enemies start hitting level 30 and higher.

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.

[Synpai]

I see your life strike and raise you Hirudo. Anytime I'm on a durable frame that has trouble sustaining, they're my go to, a quick melee and you're topped off. Mesa's melee passive among many others are indeed relics, because they were a product of DE wanting passives to be simple with little influence, but this ideal is starting to change.

Three or so weeks ago the shield argument would have upheld, but we're actually starting to see SOME slight progress for shield frames with the [Adaptation] mod, they definitely still need more love but "Shield Gating" (making shields effective like health) has been benched by DE for not really changing gameplay. Now who knows the route they went about trying this, but this is where they stand on the subject thus far.

 

I tend to go full on grasshopper when I want to recharge naturally no need to find cover; Hema? Furis Augment?

As for restores, you tend to only need one pop off a shield or health restore in a panic situation, but due to how fast you can go, you don't need to stand still you can bounce around and just bounce close to the restore if you need to, operator is also a good safety net if you want to stay immobile but safe.

 

Then there are various methods of Arcanes to heal both (for Warframes and Operators), then you have the glory of Hunter Recovery which makes lifestrike even more obsolete, Taxon (sentinels in general and one of the Kubrow I think) for shield and health regen/restores between Medi Ray, Shield charger and Guardian.

Then there's Vazarin dash in general, there's also possibility to pull off some augur set shenanigans with adaptation...

Dunno there are many tools for healing outside of health restores and trinity, even though shields need work. And for level 40 content you can (or at least I can) mange on any frame with practically no threat of death.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Synpai

[Artekkor]

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?

Edited October 23, 2018 by Artek94

[Artekkor]

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.

[Artekkor]

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.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Artek94

[Artekkor]

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.

[Zi-Sui]

1 minute ago, Artek94 said:

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.

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.

[Artekkor]

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.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Artek94

[Synpai]

10 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

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 to heal, when they could just make reliable efficient healing a core-gameplay no matter your weapon or warframe. 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.

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.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Synpai

[kgabor]

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.

[Artekkor]

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.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Artek94

[Artekkor]

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.

[Loza03]

7 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

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.

Ok, then you're playing the wrong game. This is, first and foremost, a looter. So your loot, your equipment, is as much a part of the basic, core gameplay as the combat. So, the ability to heal is a option from loot you receive. Therefore, not bringing a healing source is a sacrifice you make for other abilities and stats. Complaining that you don't want to make that choice is a fundamental misunderstanding of the game as a whole.

Are health orbs too weak? I think so. Should they be the main source of healing? No.

1 minute ago, Artek94 said:

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 / injections animation too.

This is the most reasonable. Have the blueprint be infinitely-reusable, but possibly pricy. At this point, it's loot you have to work to acquire, and a resource sink, as well as a time sink in missions since you have to find cover to actually administer that healing.

[Artekkor]

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.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Artek94

[Synpai]

19 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

That's actually a good point...
Except in all of those games you can still WIN without healing. Or at least NOT DIE.
In warframe - past a certain point of enemy power level - massive, constant damage to health and therefore going down is just inevitable.

That's what confuses me - is going down considered by devs a core mechanic? Left 4 Dead had it too, but in Left 4 Dead it has penalties like reduced health, so you still don't want to go down even if its not exactly lethal.
In warframe its almost feels like devs wanted the players to keep falling and reviving each other constantly in a vicious cycle.

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.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Synpai

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

1 hour ago, Artek94 said:

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. 

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? 

[Artekkor]

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.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Artek94

[Synpai]

7 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

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 is health orbs... And they don't do jack.

And for final question: the one where humans kill zombies so fast and efficient 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.

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.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Synpai

[Artekkor]

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.