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


Artekkor
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What if we moved shields as yet another tool that we could mod (like weapons/pets). Then there we could have variety of options how we want our shields to behave (capacity, recharge rate, resists, HP regeneration, short invicibilities, etc, etc)

 

Other than that Well.. Gun mods with lifesteal with value less than 1% when maxed?

 

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TBH, there are too many other ways to heal these days to be permanently reliant on Life Strike like we used to.

Companions get reverse life strike that heals you for their damage, you've got Arcane Grace (and Guardian too, makes you massively tanky), Sentinels have their healing beam, we've got a few frames who can prompt healing/energy orbs to drop, and you can get extra use with Equilibrium. Then you have the New Loka syndicate proc that gives you a lot of healing, you've got Vazarin as well, and there's the Magus (Elevate IIRC) that heals your warframe when you transfer back into it.

At its core, the entire game is broken. It's based too heavily on damage/armour scaling and too reliant on the number of enemies. It's DE's job to make it fun and add in some whimsical features to distract us from that fact right up until the game finally dies.

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16 hours ago, trndr said:

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.

what OP is looking for is a health system that opens up more options in roleplay. one that does not rely on not specifically a certian number of options, BUT A LIMITED NUMBER OF OPTIONS. saying that there are 3 more options is just saying that there are 3 more options or a limited number of options to use in order to receive a reliable amount of health.

so what? OP wants to be a gunslinger and you want his weapon to be the Hema? the Furis? what if he wants to use AKVastos? a sniper?

im lucky that life strike exists and that im a melee fan. other people are lucky to be SMG fans and have the Furis Augment. other people are lucky to be fans of the Mummy and have Inaros's healing abilities. too many people are lucky to be so confident that Adaptation is going to remain an extremely overpowered mod despite it being endgame (yeah, i'm going there).

i support you OP, quote me on this because some people obviously dont get it.

Predictable Comment #4 "But there is also...."

as for my thoughts, personally i just think a universal heal and an improved shield system is needed. i know how you feel about passive healing OP and i get it. but i feel as if the only reason why we cant have it is because the shield system is still flawed and the fact that we have aura mods. i have reason to believe that a passive heal system can work, just when done right.

Edited by MysticDragonMage
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There are tons of healing options available to every frame, and some frames just don't have the problem in the first place.

 

I thought this would be a thread about high level enemies one shotting everything and shield gating, which I would totally be behind.

 

As is, no. Get the medi-pet kit and every sentinel can heal you. Build health restores and bring them along (Expanded gear slots so no excuses there). Get arcanes for your frame, get arcanes from Onkko for your operator, get friends that like to play support, use mods that prevent damage or exchange damage for energy. There are so many ways to avoid being downed as is that I don't see that as being the issue.

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Literally just get an Arcane Elevate or two and all your healing problems are gone forever. You're effectively immune to damage while spamming 5. As soon as your hp is low just spam 5 for a couple seconds and you're good to go again. It's one of the most broken things in this game and makes surviving completely trivial, outside of oneshots. 

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I was thinking about this today and thought about the options we have. While they are many, it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

  • Everyone has pads unlocked more or less at the start(if you consider the stuff from the market).
  • There are mods such as Life Strike, Healing Return, Medi-Ray, Equilibrium, Hunter Whateveritis, and I guess Rejuvenation.
    • If you look at acquisition, Life Strike and Healing Return are both rare drops off of specific enemies. These might not ever be acquired through normal play for most players. Equilibrium drops off of Lephantis. While not a terribly difficult boss, most new players have no idea about the boss or the mod for some time. Medi-Ray is from Kela De Thaym. Literally one of the last bosses in the star chart and locked behind an annoying arena grind. I still don't have that mod! The companion mods are awesome but they require a pretty invested companion to really take advantage of it in most situations. Rejuvenation is the only one of these(non-sidekick mods) that is reasonably acquired through regular gameplay(discounting bad luck on the alerts).
  • There are arcanes such as Arcane Grace, Pulse, and Victory. There are also Operator arcanes that can heal the warframe while moving in and out of it.
    • While these are nice, they aren't really a solution to the problem. Your regular arcanes drop from Eidolons which isn't exactly something people jump into until much later in the game. On top of this, one has to acquire around 6 of any arcane to get a noticeable use out of it due to their additive nature. Arcane Pulse is hot garbage mostly because there are almost never any health orbs to trigger it at all. The Operator arcanes are a lot more reasonable to acquire but still very grindy.
  • There is focus. Vazarin. This takes a lot of grind to get a good healing boost. It's also really annoying to aim. Zenurik gets this idiot-proof dome of energy that persists for long periods of time but not Vazarin.
    • Basically, this isn't unlocked until halfway through the star chart and the focus is usually not substantial until much later.
  • You also have weapons. This includes the Hema, Hirudo, and several syndicate weapons with procs. The Kuva staff from TWW is something I forgot about until someone mentioned it in this thread.
    • The Hirudo and staff are reasonable acquisitions with normal gameplay. The Hema is not. The staff isn't even that great and the Hirudo lacks a lot of melee range.
    • Not everyone likes the syndicate weapons available with the procs that heal. The augments help a bit at least to diversify that pool.

I don't mention warframe abilities here because those are really obvious. Also it's very limiting to stick to those for the sole reason of healing. Oberon is easy to get but not everyone's RNG is great. Not to mention Trinity and Harrow are unlocked much later in the star chart.

This doesn't even touch on shields or other survivability mods. There aren't even any mods that decrease recharge delay outside pvp. The relevant arcanes for shields and armor are also facing the same problem as the ones mentioned above. Quick Thinking is also a rare mod that most people may never see.

I guess most players might not realize what a mess things are because they just get Rhino and ignore the game until much later. The progression is really bizarre since many of these things are unlocked in later content. I guess the solution to this problem in almost every facet is just platinum.

I probably forgot a ton of stuff but my memory has been terrible lately. Feel free to point those out. Also, please correct anything that is wrong.

Edited by ArcKnight9202
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22 hours 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.

I think I get what you want, but I desagree in every aspect:

  • You would welcome readely available healing options, but this game has a different design and philosophy behind it. Just because in CoD your charakter will heal out of combat, doesn't mean this mechanic will work in every game. Just a different approach.
  • Healing is mostly meaningless right now. At high lvls, it is pointless - OHKO; also pointless at lower lvls - low damage, everything in between can be solved with skill or many available "options".
  • Those "options" do not restrict you in any way. All companions can heal you and you usually would run with one. Magus Elevate, does not interfere with any gear choice and is generally a better healing option than Life Strike.

The concept of losing health and healing through gameplay would make sense in Warframe, IF at the highest difficulty neither we, nor our enemies would one shot each other. In this situation, it would make sense to replenish health pool, as it would increase your margin of failure. Right now, in higher lvls, Warframe is a binary game - you either live or die. (With the exception of some tanky Frames, which increase margin of failure with their disproportional EHP)

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8 hours ago, MysticDragonMage said:

what OP is looking for is a health system that opens up more options in roleplay. one that does not rely on not specifically a certian number of options, BUT A LIMITED NUMBER OF OPTIONS. saying that there are 3 more options is just saying that there are 3 more options or a limited number of options to use in order to receive a reliable amount of health.

so what? OP wants to be a gunslinger and you want his weapon to be the Hema? the Furis? what if he wants to use AKVastos? a sniper?

im lucky that life strike exists and that im a melee fan. other people are lucky to be SMG fans and have the Furis Augment. other people are lucky to be fans of the Mummy and have Inaros's healing abilities. too many people are lucky to be so confident that Adaptation is going to remain an extremely overpowered mod despite it being endgame (yeah, i'm going there).

i support you OP, quote me on this because some people obviously dont get it.

Predictable Comment #4 "But there is also...."

as for my thoughts, personally i just think a universal heal and an improved shield system is needed. i know how you feel about passive healing OP and i get it. but i feel as if the only reason why we cant have it is because the shield system is still flawed and the fact that we have aura mods. i have reason to believe that a passive heal system can work, just when done right.

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?

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8 hours ago, MysticDragonMage said:

saying that there are 3 more options is just saying that there are 3 more options or a limited number of options to use in order to receive a reliable amount of health.

Uh.. Hi? Yeah... There are a lot more than just 3 options. The problem is not that the OP is limited by the game, it's that they've decided that only ONE option should/could be used to solve their problem. 

They did it when deciding that Life Strike needed to be on every melee weapon, they did it when deciding that melee was the only way they had to replace lost health, and now they're deciding that it has to be some in-mission option to replace their need for life strike. 

That sort of blinkered thinking makes life very difficult if you want to play Warframe. 

8 hours ago, MysticDragonMage said:

im lucky that life strike exists and that im a melee fan. other people are lucky to be SMG fans and have the Furis Augment. other people are lucky to be fans of the Mummy and have Inaros's healing abilities. too many people are lucky to be so confident that Adaptation is going to remain an extremely overpowered mod despite it being endgame (yeah, i'm going there).

That's not "luck". It's literally "they've built in these things so that they are usable in any situation". 

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. 

Edited by (PS4)guzmantt1977
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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.

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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:
120?cb=20130716194937The 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.

Edited by Artek94
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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.

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1 minute ago, Artek94 said:

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

Then that's fine, you can choose to play low level content. Or in a group where someone can heal you. Or walk with health restores. All are possible. 

 

And if you don't want to do any of those either? Well... Looks like you chose not to play the game at all. 

 

Up to you, Tenno. 

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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.

Mesa is a good example, because while her powers make her very strong and resistant to damage she doesn't have a huge health pool and depends on Rage/Hunter Adrenaline pretty heavily for energy.

Even with 95% damage reduction, the chip damage adds up if you don't have healing options available. While it's true that a lot of options exist, I'm guessing that the average player doesn't necessarily have access to them.

As someone who mostly plays solo or in private groups, I find myself avoiding Frames without quick access to decent healing simply because most of the weapon-based healing options are clunky to use.

I don't want to play a melee Mesa to use Life Strike/Healing Return. I don't want to spend the majority of the mission picking up my dog to keep its healing effect going. I don't want to spend such a long time waiting around a stationary healing pad. I don't have Medi-Ray or any healing arcanes yet (working on those, but they're a long way off). Vazarin is solid, but switching Focus schools is a right pain in the backside at the moment. I didn't keep a Furis. Hema doesn't fit Mesa thematically, IMO. Neither does Hirudo, but I'm making it work for now.

What if a newer player flat-out buys Mesa with plat? They probably have even fewer healing options available. So are they just going to have to deal with the ridiculous attrition throughout most of their progression? That sucks.

Yes, options for healing exist... But it is easily possible to not have access to those options, and dealing with attrition really sucks when that is the case. The point is that shouldn't be possible; all Warframes should have innate options for dealing with attrition (powers, passives, innate health regen, etc.) EVEN IF the conventional options are noticeably more effective. Just give them SOMETHING.

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6 hours ago, BoarWarrior said:

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 warframe has evolved into a fast passed hoard shooter. pizzas are not the solution because it requires the player to stay within its range. health restores are annoying to stockpile because it's build relies on an extremely outdated gathering mechanic.

Edited by MysticDragonMage
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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.

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1 hour ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Even with 95% damage reduction, the chip damage adds up if you don't have healing options available. While it's true that a lot of options exist, I'm guessing that the average player doesn't necessarily have access to them.

That's a huge "if", and I assume the average player has multiple options available, because I'm assuming I'm very average. 

It's also the same if that you keep applying to each new paragraph. 

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Healing

If you can find any options available to restore health, then either you're a really new player and just won't be able to take on the level of enemies they're discussing, or you are really going out your way to act as though that not a single option is available. 

 

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6 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

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.

No problem; it's annoying to have the discussion derail into tangential arguments that misinterpret the core message.

6 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

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.

Why not both? Percentage healing makes much more sense, and healer units as priority targets for guaranteed health drops would be a great gameplay refinement to make orbs less... Random. With % restore they could just drop 1 orb.

9 minutes ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

That's a huge "if", and I assume the average player has multiple options available, because I'm assuming I'm very average. 

It's also the same if that you keep applying to each new paragraph. 

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Healing

If you can find any options available to restore health, then either you're a really new player and just won't be able to take on the level of enemies they're discussing, or you are really going out your way to act as though that not a single option is available. 

Can you stop acting like we're somehow unaware of the options that exist? This isn't a matter of ignorance our my part, so linking examples we're already aware of is redundant.

The point of my argument is that no matter how slim the chances are that a player has no access to healing... The chances are NON-ZERO.

Considering how inevitable attrition is, it should make sense for a basic mechanic for countering attrition to be available AT ALL TIMES to prevent the game from coming across as needlessly punishing or cheap.

This could be accomplished through innate Warframe properties or, as Artek94 suggested above, special enemies that drop guaranteed health.

Stop defending bad design because you want to feel superior. Or is there some reason you feel any of these suggestions are a BAD idea?

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I would agree that small base health regeneration should be present from the start, or that health orbs actually... drop from enemies, without needing to stimulate them by other means, instead of only from containers.

 

However, I would disagree that shields are useless. Even progressing later into the game - with the exception of Sorties with enhancements (especially slash and toxin) which instantly put enemies absurdly out-of-curve for damage output - I am capable of relying primarily on my shields if I use them correctly. A more detailed overview of my assessment is below for anyone interested:

Spoiler

Using shields at a baseline requires:

  1. Modding for the capacity. Obviously.
  2. Modding for (some) health to act as a satisfactory buffer amount until,
  3. Appropriately reacting when shields become depleted or under threat of bypass.

This is the baseline requirement. Early damage doesn't trouble harshly enough to cut through that apt health buffer until the situation can be readdressed.

Point 3 is the contention - besides the knowledges of avoiding Toxin and mitigating status damage with rolling in time with the ticks, the problem is finding ways to continue engaging while allowing that shield to replenish uninterrupted.

This leads onto the extended shield tactics to carry more dangerous fare:

  1. Getting a bulk restoration source, in whole (e.g. Guardian) or part (restoration from abilities)
  2. Having some manner of health replenishment so that the buffer isn't an ever-decreasing time limit on inevitable death.
  3. Operating multiple gameplay styles depending on your shield resources.

Notably, everyone is allowed a Sentinel from early on now, so even newbies get to satisfy point 1. Doubly so thanks to the Taxon being made for this.

Point 3 is a matter of 'learning the game' as with the point 3 for basics. If you're using Guardian, you know there's a cooldown. So your shield pops in the first instance - your reaction doesn't need to be "hide and wait for a recharge" any more, but it does mean that you have to try to be more cautious so that you don't start eating your health buffer rather than it just soaking the small window before Guardian triggers, until the cooldown is up.

Point 2, of course, is the core of the thread here, and is why I say that I agree with OP in terms of health replenishment at the baseline level. Newer players typically have, at best, point 1 OR point 2 covered. Marrying both only comes later - once they reach Sedna and Medi-Ray is acquired, or by using exactly a Raksa Kubrow (to have the Guardian-analogue) and getting hold of Hunter Recovery.

 

 

TL;DR: Access to replenishing health in any reliable capacity requires ability- or (late) mod/arcane-specific options. Otherwise, if fortunate, a newer player might happen to pick up a Rejuvenation aura. Without any of this, as I said above, Shields are only as good as delaying the inevitable from errant procs and crisis moments where they get depleted. So something, even if it's just making a single Rejuvenation's worth of regen baseline is required to smooth shield use out for the early to mid game.

 

Personally, if Raksa Kubrows got a new Precept and Protect was made a general BEAST category mod, I think I would be safe from 95% of potential deaths from regular content. My only current shortfall is being too lazy to switch back to sentinels after I've been using my Smeeta.

Edited by EDYinnit
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I don't agree to this premise. You're basically playing a Warframe not designed for survivability, but rather one designed for damage infliction, and complaining about health attrition on that Warframe, despite the fact that health attrition is supposed to be one of that Warframe's weaknesses. This, on top of that you have already devised your own strategy for dealing with it (ie, using Life Strike on Melee Weapons to make up for Mesa's vulnerability to health attrition).

You basically had to make a sacrifice (ie, not being able to use Mesa's bonus health passive) by equipping a melee weapon with life strike, to make up for a Warframe's inherent weakness (ie, vulnerability to attrition)... why should anything be changed here?

The game should not be convenient for you when using the wrong equipment for certain game-play, in fact it's generous enough that DE has even given you countless options for covering such vulnerabilities with other game mechanics.

...though, seeing the other perspectives of this thread, I imagine this is the unpopular opinion, but I just don't see this as a problem.

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27 minutes ago, Krion112 said:

The game should not be convenient for you when using the wrong equipment for certain game-play, in fact it's generous enough that DE has even given you countless options for covering such vulnerabilities with other game mechanics.

...though, seeing the other perspectives of this thread, I imagine this is the unpopular opinion, but I just don't see this as a problem.

I only see it as a problem in the cases where all the options aren't even available - newer players. From that perspective I can see an argument for a small baseline of regeneration.

I'd argue much the same for energy. Not enough to obsolete the current options for management which range from acceptable to trivialising, but nonzero enough that even new players don't have to live solely from orb to orb (bad RNG uncertainty).

Both are easily circumvented later, agreed - but even as little as a single baked-in Rejuvenation and Energy Siphon amount would make the introductory phase of the game so much better.

Edited by EDYinnit
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On 2018-10-23 at 7:03 AM, Artek94 said:

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 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:


latest?cb=20171007151214

 

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).

Darn good stuff! This is the kind of stuff we need to help bring Warframe out of the old Dark Sector feel and help advance it towards what it's gradually progressing towards. A big problem with this game is its contradictory systems - you can clearly see where the old system was and where it's moving towards. Health/Energy restore pads are a prime example - they're too slow in a ninja game. The word itself "ninja" connotes very fast and decisive action. From the dev side, it seems there are folks still stuck in Dark Sector mode. These slow, methodical mechanics are fine for a game like that, but Warframe itself has moved beyond that - when you put the name "ninja" in there, that meandering tactical approach goes right out the door, especially if you put them in space with access to technology that we don't have at the moment. You just went from wheelchair racing to Sonic the Hedgehog, relatively speaking.

Devteam, I see that at least someone is thinking more Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell-esque mechanics, which is closer to how your game began. However, your game is moving more towards Ninja Gaiden/Dynasty Warriors. Folks, please consider taking a serious look at your current game and seeing the contradictory systems that lie therein. I want to see your product continue to succeed, grow and eventually set a precedent that will weigh heavily towards future game development in the industry as a whole, therefore I speak forthrightly to you because that's what a man does for folks he cares about - he tells them what he believes is in their best interest.

The quoted post is an example of what I mean - life strike or some means of health return is crucial for melee players at higher levels. Yes, I know Steve (or someone, though I'm certain it was Steve) said the idea was to never get hit - however, we all know that's an impossibility when going hand-to-hand with the foe, that's why we have armor, shields, etc. for infantry throughout human history.

Again, this is another reason why I reiterate that base sprint speed needs to be boosted to match bullet jumping. Speed itself is armor, as the old Greek saying goes. Try it there at the studios - grab your chosen melee weapon, frame, set your base sprint speed to 2.0, for instance, then go pure melee against enemies. Tell me you guys definitely don't notice an added smoothness to the combat - the current sprint speed is another relic from the old Dark Sector system that seriously needs looking at. Watching a video on Halo's design, the reason quoted as to why the run was so slow was due to the fact how tightly designed the levels were. Your game is not so - you have very many wide open spaces that need to be traversed very quickly and you do not have access to a Warthog to get you to your destination. Then again, there are many times when you do not need to a bullet jump, but would be better served by higher footspeed in tighter corridors. It's a rather frustrating thing to do all these cool moves, then run like I have a broken leg - the difference is jarring and quite frankly rather off-putting. Jumping around all the time to make up for foot problems just doesn't look or feel as cool, which is definitely what you're going for and detracts from the overall experience. This is another mechanic that conflicts with the desired aesthetic of warframe - fast, fluid movement, in other words, ninja.

It's good to see that you're looking at fixing the run animations, hopefully you will consider implementing an "expert mode" of sorts enabling players to run very quickly once they have adjusted to the game. And again, I call for fixing the air slide attack - maintain momentum, not a sudden stop in midair. This is not a call for the return of coptering, but a call for a bit of realism in our actions and a smoothing and fluidity of combat.

Wrapping up, my calls are for: increased sprint speed for increased fluidity of combat and maintaining momentum when doing an aerial slide attack, thus further increasing smoothness from ground-to-aerial or aerial-to-ground combat and highlighting systems that don't quite jive with one another to effect the desired mechanics of the game as a whole.

Edited by Mach25
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1 hour ago, EDYinnit said:

I only see it as a problem in the cases where all the options aren't even available - newer players. From that perspective I can see an argument for a small baseline of regeneration.

I'd argue much the same for energy. Not enough to obsolete the current options for management which range from acceptable to trivialising, but nonzero enough that even new players don't have to live solely from orb to orb (bad RNG uncertainty).

Both are easily circumvented later, agreed - but even as little as a single baked-in Rejuvenation and Energy Siphon amount would make the introductory phase of the game so much better.

...yeah, while I agree there could be such a concern, I've never actually seen it. I get the feeling it actually balances it out, because:

  • All of the Starter Warframes have abilities that generally negate or reduce damage, on top of having pretty good survival stats
  • Every Time they rank up, they get an instant health and energy restore, and a new player is going to be ranking up for doing pretty much anything
  • Self-Healing restores are dropped on Capture missions, so even new players can get those for instant healing, if they need them
  • Perhaps it's just pseudo-observation, but I feel like health and energy orbs drop more from low rank enemies, so in the early game, it doesn't seem like you'll be short on any of those resources, especially if you're looting everything.
  • Low rank enemies just straight up can't deal a lot of damage, not enough to even warrant being worried about it, even as a new player. The only amount of damage dealing I ever feared from enemies in the early game was what they could do to mission critical targets, and not to me.

I get where you're coming from, but I really think new players have all the mechanics at their disposal to stay alive as well, without convenient mechanics.

Edited by Krion112
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2 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Can you stop acting like we're somehow unaware of the options that exist? This isn't a matter of ignorance our my part, so linking examples we're already aware of is redundant.

I could, but the problem is that you're acting like they don't exist at all

If you want to pretend that they didn't exist, then you have a case. If they didn't exist, then you could legitimately claim that you do not have a way to keep your health up. But they do exist, so whatever scenario you want to come up with, the response "you have other options" applies. Since we have a situation where people seem to think that Life Strike is "mandatory" and the "few" other options are no more useful, I took a moment to link the wiki so that nobody can possibly claim ignorance any more. 

Insisting "but what if we don't want to use any of those options" is tantamount to saying "what if I don't actually want to play the game". In that case there's only one solution that will ever satisfy you. And it's not "fixing" the game. 

 

37 minutes ago, Krion112 said:

..yeah, while I agree there could be such a concern, I've never actually seen it. I get the feeling it actually balances it out, because:

You left out one. Players who can reasonably be expected to not have easy access to any of the methods we're talking about, are newbs. They have access to low level enemies and are not realistically expected to be trying to kill even one level 35+ enemy, let alone survive an entire mission surrounded by them. 

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41 minutes ago, Krion112 said:

...yeah, while I agree there could be such a concern, I've never actually seen it. I get the feeling it actually balances it out, because:

  • All of the Starter Warframes have abilities that generally negate or reduce damage, on top of having pretty good survival stats
  • Every Time they rank up, they get an instant health and energy restore, and a new player is going to be ranking up for doing pretty much anything
  • Self-Healing restores are dropped on Capture missions, so even new players can get those for instant healing, if they need them
  • Perhaps it's just pseudo-observation, but I feel like health and energy orbs drop more from low rank enemies, so in the early game, it doesn't seem like you'll be short on any of those resources, especially if you're looting everything.

I get where you're coming from, but I really think new players have all the mechanics at their disposal to stay alive as well, without convenient mechanics.

Insofar as I've noticed, health orbs exclusively drop from containers except where other mechanics cause them to be generated. That's one possible change that would probably mean the world for newbies (and make Health Conversion usable for 'frames that don't generate the damn things).

Even with the rank-up filling resources, I find energy is pretty noticeably limited in the early stages of a Warframe career - not only because of the lack of non-orb generation but because the effect of each use is also slashed compared to what we later players come to expect. Ranks thin out over time, too, easily long before access to later resources starts to improve.

Lack of ranked mods also applies in every other respect. Less of those buffering shield/health pools (plus lack of the former putting extra strain on the latter), less output (more time to kill) so more time being shot at. I've been through the game afresh alongside actual new players; it's difficult to articulate in words how familiarity and experience makes life inarguably easier, but the limitations are definitely still noticeable to the point where that veterancy wasn't even enough to compensate as reliably as I'd like. Though I suppose some of that could be chalked up to being tricked by muscle memory of later mechanics and mod-for-mod effectiveness, too.

 

Even as a veteran, life before Medi-Ray (as someone who never used Life Strike) and before War Within brought everyone the reliable fallback option of temporary godmode was a very different experience when in nontrivial content and when levelling fresh things - especially since that's before we got to have MR-baseline mod capacity too.

Nothing sucked quite like getting lucky slash-procced by an Eviscerator and seeing fat 100+ health ticks bleed you out when (lifestrike notwithstanding) you had nearly no way to recover for the next one.

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