Self damage and why I enjoy it

[Shatter_The_Sun]

I have seen a few people who enjoy self damage, me included. I can understand why people dont like it and I see the flaws in it but I still believe it should be in the game. It adds a whole new dynamic to playing for anyone who has ran a full self damage kit. My usual kit consists of

phantasma/zarr

Kulstar

Falcor modded for explosion

The frame im using honestly doesnt matter cause if I miss im dead. For me, having to watch my distance and make sure no enemies sneak up behind me and that I dont fire my weapons immediately is one of my joys with the gameplay. Having to use bullet jump to actually evade damage, even if it is my own is fun for me and I take pride getting through a mission with a squishy frame with a full self damage kit cause I know how random self damage can be at sometimes. If anything I would somehow find a way to improve the consistency of self damage and how its done and for those who really hate it, add a weapon specific mod that negates ALL self damage from that weapon or a warframe mod. Cautious shot isnt worth it.

[Neightrix]

The problem with a mod is you're already losing up to half of your damage by losing a mod slot. Weapon drawbacks really should not include being more dangerous than the enemies you're fighting. If you received 1% of weapon damage, or if self-damage was capped at 300 or something it would be a lot better.

[Fallen_Echo]

The main reason why people dont like self damage is the broken risk vs reward.

Take a look at the ogris, over its many drawbacks including SD its also weak as hell. You effectively have a weapon whats the equilovent of melee hitting a tank with an antipersonel landmine strapped to to your hand. Guaranteed suicide with no gains.

The Lenz, phantasma, zarr and maybe the staticor are the only weapons what more or less fit the reward part but even these have too much risk due to warframes enviroment.

[NinjaZeku]

3 hours ago, Fallen_Echo said:

The main reason why people dont like self damage is the broken risk vs reward.

Take a look at the ogris, over its many drawbacks including SD its also weak as hell.

This, a million times this.

If a weapon can easily one-shot even the tougher Frames (barring god mode hax),
make the effect on the enemy side accordingly huge, the current stats / mechanics don't cut it.

3 hours ago, Fallen_Echo said:

staticor [...] risk

FYI, Staticor's self-damage got removed.

[Fallen_Echo]

1 hour ago, NinjaZeku said:

FYI, Staticor's self-damage got removed.

Ohh, good to know.

[Andele3025]

13 hours ago, Neightrix said:

The problem with a mod is you're already losing up to half of your damage by losing a mod slot. Weapon drawbacks really should not include being more dangerous than the enemies you're fighting. If you received 1% of weapon damage, or if self-damage was capped at 300 or something it would be a lot better.

1% of 74k is still 740 (aka most frames shields+hp, nice chunk more if you built corrosive or toxin, 25% less if blast), so instead if a mod caused self damage weapons to have a 2-4m bigger radius (what firestorm and fulmination should do) AND capped self damage to something like 100/50/25 if you have/had shields before the damage hit you, now that might be worth a mod slot.

[Shatter_The_Sun]

15 hours ago, Neightrix said:

The problem with a mod is you're already losing up to half of your damage by losing a mod slot. Weapon drawbacks really should not include being more dangerous than the enemies you're fighting. If you received 1% of weapon damage, or if self-damage was capped at 300 or something it would be a lot better.

To this I agree. I think they should completely remove the damage penalty from caution shot but make the damage reduction 99%.

7 hours ago, Fallen_Echo said:

The main reason why people dont like self damage is the broken risk vs reward.

Take a look at the ogris, over its many drawbacks including SD its also weak as hell. You effectively have a weapon whats the equilovent of melee hitting a tank with an antipersonel landmine strapped to to your hand. Guaranteed suicide with no gains.

The Lenz, phantasma, zarr and maybe the staticor are the only weapons what more or less fit the reward part but even these have too much risk due to warframes enviroment.

Makes me wonder if launchers will ever get a rework and if they did, would it be bad to give them much higher base damage compared to other weapons besides snipers since they all have self damage. Something should be added to give a reason to use launcher weapons besides MUH AOE cause there are weapons that have great AOE with no self damage cough Staticor cough.

If I were to balance launchers it would be:

• Increase mag size
• Increase base damage by a good amount
• Give all launchers the ability to charge shots. Charging increase base damage by X value for every shot.
• Give every launcher inate blast if they dont all have it already
• The max charged shot deals self damage but non charged shots deal deal 0% stacking up by 10% for every charge

Every other self damage weapon that isnt a launcher should have the self damage either reduced to have their damage buffed to compensate for it. Cause if you are going to blow yourself up with the Zarr as it is now, it wont matter how much more damage you pack on after that.

[Fallen_Echo]

34 minutes ago, divineheralder said:

Makes me wonder if launchers will ever get a rework and if they did, would it be bad to give them much higher base damage compared to other weapons besides snipers since they all have self damage. Something should be added to give a reason to use launcher weapons besides MUH AOE cause there are weapons that have great AOE with no self damage cough Staticor cough.

If I were to balance launchers it would be:

• Increase mag size
• Increase base damage by a good amount
• Give all launchers the ability to charge shots. Charging increase base damage by X value for every shot.
• Give every launcher inate blast if they dont all have it already
• The max charged shot deals self damage but non charged shots deal deal 0% stacking up by 10% for every charge

Every other self damage weapon that isnt a launcher should have the self damage either reduced to have their damage buffed to compensate for it. Cause if you are going to blow yourself up with the Zarr as it is now, it wont matter how much more damage you pack on after that.

I think i have a pretty fair solution for self-damage.

Make each self-damaging weapon deal health percentage based damage to their users based on the maximum percentage of damage they can deal to the current level of enemies.

Pretty simple as if you are in low levels and annihillate all enemies en masse the SD weapons will kill you but if you can only deal 1% hp damage to the high level grunt coming for you that means you gonna take max 1% health damage from the shooting your leg.

[NinjaZeku]

39 minutes ago, Fallen_Echo said:

if you can only deal 1% hp damage to the high level grunt

Then I don't wanna use that terrible weapon 😛

If a clunky, big-single-hit weapon can't kill stuff in one or at most two shots, what's even the point.

Also, dunno 'bout this part ...

42 minutes ago, Fallen_Echo said:

based on the maximum percentage of damage they can deal to the current level of enemies

... because that will still vary greatly, e.g. a Bombard Eximus and a simple Butcher may spawn alongside each other.

[Fallen_Echo]

28 minutes ago, NinjaZeku said:

because that will still vary greatly, e.g. a Bombard Eximus and a simple Butcher may spawn alongside each other.

Lets say that a bombard eximus spawns with 1000 hp and a butcher with 100 hp.

The avarage hp in this case is 550 points.

Based on this if your gun deals 200 damage total that means you can deal total 36% life damage to the targets so when you miss a shot with your 4K hp inaros with the said gun you will lose 1440 hp aka the 36% based on your maximum damage dealt.

[NinjaZeku]

10 minutes ago, Fallen_Echo said:

if your gun deals 200 damage

But it's not as easy as going by enemy Health, you're forgetting about (often massive) differences in Armor values,
as well as differing damage resistances / weaknesses (also on Shields), and then some enemies might be affected by (de)buffs, ...

Having the game keep a constant check on all the enemies to re-calculate this "average damage" who knows how many times per second,
for possibly a full Squad's worth of weapons, seems, not least on the bug potential side, to be way more trouble than it's worth, sorry.

(Plus would there be any logical, in-game reason for my weapons dealing less damage to me as missions get harder?)

[Shatter_The_Sun]

1 hour ago, Fallen_Echo said:

I think i have a pretty fair solution for self-damage.

Make each self-damaging weapon deal health percentage based damage to their users based on the maximum percentage of damage they can deal to the current level of enemies.

Pretty simple as if you are in low levels and annihillate all enemies en masse the SD weapons will kill you but if you can only deal 1% hp damage to the high level grunt coming for you that means you gonna take max 1% health damage from the shooting your leg.

Honestly sounds like a coding nightmare when in a room filled with enemies. All that extra calculations for each individual enemy along with the different debuffs and buffs and what not sounds like power donation all over again.

[Shatter_The_Sun]

Literally just said the exact thing. So im not crazy for thinking that is the case but then again maybe DE has master coders that could do such a thing. My only concern would be optimization. Imagine everyone on the team with a tonkor in a X faction vs infested, the differences would be a nightmare.

Edited December 21, 2018 by divineheralder

[kgabor]

Your thread title is a Jojo reference or if not, it should be.

[Tiltskillet]

How about decoupling self-damage  from weapon damage entirely, and derive it instead from some combination of total and current health?  Something like [ (total * .25 + current *.25) / 2 ]  just as example.  In any case making it truly dangerous to oneself only when  mixed with careless spamming and/or incoming damage.  Cautious Shot could be boosted to 98-100% mitigation for people who still don't want to think about self damage at all.  And the damage penalty taken away, since you're already giving up a lot by using the slot.

Then, for people like the OP who enjoy the danger of the current system,  we could have a Reckless Shot mod which would  change it back to weapon damage and--this is important-- add a substantial  bonus to more than make up for the lost slot.  (Depending on how Cautious works, they might need to be mutually exclusive.)

[Fallen_Echo]

2 hours ago, NinjaZeku said:

But it's not as easy as going by enemy Health, you're forgetting about (often massive) differences in Armor values,
as well as differing damage resistances / weaknesses (also on Shields), and then some enemies might be affected by (de)buffs, ...

Having the game keep a constant check on all the enemies to re-calculate this "average damage" who knows how many times per second,
for possibly a full Squad's worth of weapons, seems, not least on the bug potential side, to be way more trouble than it's worth, sorry.

(Plus would there be any logical, in-game reason for my weapons dealing less damage to me as missions get harder?)

2 hours ago, divineheralder said:

Honestly sounds like a coding nightmare when in a room filled with enemies. All that extra calculations for each individual enemy along with the different debuffs and buffs and what not sounds like power donation all over again.

Guys you are overdoing this, think simple.

First of all we dont take into account damage types, resistances, armor. The only thing in the calculation is hp and your total damage with the said weapon.

Every mission has a set amount of enemy types. The enemy has melee, tank, heavy and other classes. You dont take individual clusters of enemies into account at all, you only care about all types present and their level.

Lets say you fight against the sentients.

You have these enemies possibly spawning in a sceniario:

1. Battalyst: 7400hp at lv 20
2. Conculyst: 8400hp at lv 20

The avarage hp of these units is 7900 hp.

If your gun deals more than 7900 damage you die from shooting at your feet, if not you take decreased damage based on the percentage. If your gun deals 790 damage that means you can only deal 10% damage to the enemy so you can only take 10% total hp damage from SD.

Now since almost all sceniarios in warframe are time based, all they need now is to apply in the level scaling hp numbers every 5 min to fix the risk vs reward.

In total we need:

1. A tileset note what has the avarage hp already calculated at the starting level.
2. A tileset code what increases the above number based on the scaling.
3. A code on the weapon what takes in the first code's number and calculates percentage out of it.

 

 

[MJ12]

5 hours ago, divineheralder said:

To this I agree. I think they should completely remove the damage penalty from caution shot but make the damage reduction 99%.

Makes me wonder if launchers will ever get a rework and if they did, would it be bad to give them much higher base damage compared to other weapons besides snipers since they all have self damage. Something should be added to give a reason to use launcher weapons besides MUH AOE cause there are weapons that have great AOE with no self damage cough Staticor cough.

If I were to balance launchers it would be:

• Increase mag size
• Increase base damage by a good amount
• Give all launchers the ability to charge shots. Charging increase base damage by X value for every shot.
• Give every launcher inate blast if they dont all have it already
• The max charged shot deals self damage but non charged shots deal deal 0% stacking up by 10% for every charge

Every other self damage weapon that isnt a launcher should have the self damage either reduced to have their damage buffed to compensate for it. Cause if you are going to blow yourself up with the Zarr as it is now, it wont matter how much more damage you pack on after that.

And then the meta becomes 'crate camping launchers.' What people don't understand is that inconvenience, like self-damage, is not a balancing point for power. What it means is just that players are now overpowered, but they're frustrated about your game, and you might as well take the inconvenience out because sure, then all your weapons and gear are broken, but at least your players aren't as frustrated. What you're suggesting is basically turning launchers into ludicrously overpowered weapons, but then making it so that people just use strategies to avoid self-damage, like crate camping, so they never have to ever deal with the inconvenience of self-damage. This doesn't make weapons fun or balanced-it just makes for a frustrating, imbalanced meta.

Pretty much all launchers nowadays wouldn't be meta even without self-damage. So what should be done is a removal of self-damage and buffing the underperforming launchers so they can actually compete with comparable non-launcher weapons. This is the simplest, easiest solution.

Self-damage has no point in Warframe. Warframe isn't a competitive game with rocket jumping where the ability to gain speed via explosive impulse is so ridiculously good the developers had to nerf a rocket launcher that did no damage simply because it was dominating the game over rocket launchers which did damage, solely because rocket jumping was that powerful. Warframe isn't a hyper-realistic tactical shooter where engagement distances are long, movement speeds are slow, and self-damage is included for realism. Warframe isn't a game with fast-regenerating health that means that the consequences for self-damage are basically nonexistent because you fire a bit too close, and all that means is that you spend a few seconds catching your breath, disrupting your flow.

People should stop acting like Warframe is one of those things, and therefore people should stop acting like self-damage should exist in Warframe.

[MJ12]

I'm going to quote myself from a prior thread on this. It's important to remember that if left alone, players will basically optimize themselves out of having any fun at all. The suggested changes to buff launchers so they're actually overpowered, then 'balance' them with self-damage is basically encouraging players to optimize themselves away from having fun, by making them stand on crates or behind cover while plinking away with rockets and grenades so they will never risk being killed by self-damage while getting to annihilate people with overpowered weapons.

On 2018-12-19 at 10:08 AM, MJ12 said:

Self-damage doesn't really have a place in a game where attacks that easily wipe multiple enemies for very high damage are easily available through abilities, melee weapons, and shotguns/more powerful automatics. Additionally, in more arcadey games that have self-damage, like Quake, TF2, or Doom, there's a good reason for it-the self-damage and impulse from self-damaging weapons lets you trade health for speed and agility via rocket jumping. In TF2 in particular, this ability to gain speed via self-damage was so ludicrously good that when they introduced a rocket launcher for practicing rocket jumping (it did no damage to anyone whatsoever, it only had physics impulse) they had to nerf it by making it drastically increase how much damage you took when equipped simply because the extra speed for no damage was so powerful it wasn't just worth giving up your main weapon, it broke the game.

People talk about 'risk/reward' balancing but people do not understand 'risk/reward' balancing. Risk/reward balancing is about rewarding players for taking risks. It's about preventing players from doing the most boring, safest possible actions to beat challenges by giving them rewards for deliberately exposing themselves to risk. A good example of risk/reward balancing is how in Destiny 2 Titans have plenty of tools to regain health and ability energy and/or get buffs through melee kills-this rewards players (regaining health and ability energy, getting buffs) for exposing them to risk (charging in instead of hiding behind cover and plinking at enemies from long range). This is because risk-taking is fun, but people don't like failure. If you don't reward people for risky actions, they're going to play the game as safely as possible.

Giving launchers self-damage isn't actually 'risk/reward' balancing. It's the opposite. It doesn't reward players for taking risks (moving around aggressively, getting in close to enemies). In fact, it does the opposite-it punishes players for playing the game in a risky fashion and rewards players for standing still, at long range, close to cover.

[(XBOX)xBLADEPANTHERx]

On 2018-12-20 at 9:55 PM, Neightrix said:

If you received 1% of weapon damage

The funny part is that with the overall damage number of self-damage weapons, it would probably still kill you.

[(PSN)DBR87]

That's a lot of words just to say "I'm a masochist" OP.

But really, I don't think self damage should completely go away, but I do think there should be a cap. Honestly, self damage really isn't worth it. There are weapons, like the Ignis Wraith, that put out far more DPS then something like Orgris. About the only explosive weapons really worth the danger are Lenz and Zarr.

[NeopetsMaster4432]

I too, think that self damage makes some weapons more enjoyable to use. Having to jump or move around before shooting to void blowing myself up is neat. It sucks knowing that there is really no reward for the addition risk, and that I could be contributing/accomplishing more if I were to use a generic assault rifle, but I guess it's one of those fun vs effectiveness things for me. It adds a certain spice to weapons, making them not as boring to use~

I'd be content if weapons like the [Zarr], [Tonkor], [Ogris], [Lenz], ect were given some sort of buff or strengths to compensate for their riskiness. 
Nothing too huge, just maybe buff them up to the [Kulstar]'s level of greatness so that there's reasonable reward for their higher skill-floor. 

Ooh! I think it could also be a potentially ideal situation if they were to remove self-damage from explosive weapons completely, but then implement a mod that adds self damage whilst providing a large damage and/or radius boost that actually makes up for the risk.

On a side note: it's pretty fun to use [Rolling Guard] with explosive weapons. :3

Edited January 1, 2019 by NeopetsMaster4432

[Peter]

Oh yeah, I love dying because an ally jumped in front of me and blew my bullet.

Best feeling in the world! 😄

[Xzorn]

Self-Damage is needed for explosive weapons. It's like a rule but some weapons like Kulstar could use tweaks. I don't believe the bomblets should cause self damage given their random natural. There's also the debate if other players should cause Self-damage when they walk in front of you.

Most of all, self-damage is just a little too punishing. In normal shooters the player can take one or two self damage hits. In Warframe that's not true unless you're playing a massively tanky frame. It's because of the eHP gap between frames that self-damage is hard to deal with.

I would say self-damage should do +%True Damage to the player instead of being set on the weapon's stats or the player's mitigation. It doesn't exactly make sense but it's the most fair option I've thought of. The amount of True damage is still subject to radial damage fall-off like normal explosives so it will do between 10-50% of your combined Shields / Health / QT in damage no matter what. I feel dodge mitigation is the only one that should still be considered as that's a skill twitch ability and should always be rewarded.

[NinjaZeku]

8 hours ago, Xzorn said:

Self-Damage is needed for explosive weapons.

Why, though?

We have a good number of AoE weapons (and of course abilities) that don't suffer from such a drawback,
why do Launchers need that in addition to all the other Launcher-typical clunkyness?

Let's take good ol' Ogris. Small magazine, small ammo reserve, rare ammo type, long reload time, needs to be charged, travel time on shots.
(And as a not-insignificant bonus, damage output is hampered by Heavy Caliber basically not being an option.)

Yeah, all of that is just way too good to not desperately require the weapon to be taken down a notch by adding self-damage.

[Inb4 referencing good ol' Tonkor Stronkor times, don't forget that the biggest problem back then was
not really the lack of self-damage but that explosions caused automatic headshots and thus, being a Crit weapon,
Tonkor gained stupid high damage multipliers from those Crit headshots and so beat pretty much everything.
Fixing that bug would've probably been enough, but no, Tonkor got nerf-stomped into the ground.]

8 hours ago, Xzorn said:

self-damage is just a little too punishing

True dat.

But, if it's to stay, I think I might actually prefer to tip the scales the other way, instead of tuning down the damage to ourselves,
tune up the damage Launchers deal to enemies, make them lethal on both ends, scaling to (very) high enemy levels.

Make Launchers a slow, clunky mess if you must, but also a one-shot guarantee for most content. That could be fun and unique.

Edited January 1, 2019 by NinjaZeku

[Xzorn]

7 minutes ago, NinjaZeku said:

Why, though?

We have a good number of AoE weapons (and of course abilities) that don't suffer from such a drawback,
why do Launchers need that in addition to all the other Launcher-typical clunkyness?

 

Well traditionally it's because explosives both do more damage and hit multiple enemies.

This holds pretty similar in Warframe except there's the addition of ammo economy. Majority of launchers are very economical. That and we're not rewarded very well for good aim in Warframe. Esp against Armored enemies.

Outside some Pistols, Beam weapons and Snipers our single target damage options by comparison is pretty bad. If we got rid of self damage then AoE DPS would have to be considered against single target. Of course myself. I would say buff single target. Assault Rifles suck bad. They could go far as not allowing head-armor to scale, I always felt Snipers should ignore armor on head-shots. Currently in Warframe there's not much trade off other than instantly killing yourself.

Put stuff like Soma Prime closer to Synapse then getting rid of Self-damage is a lot more realistic. Though one change I feel they could make right now is to prevent Self-Damage from hitting teammates. They already showed they can do this with Lenz and it's a bit unfair given how manic group play can be.