SHIELD GATING mechanic explanation (making shields useful on higher leveled content)

[IfritKajiTora]

On higher leveled content, most of the Warframes can survive because if not abilities then the health don't go to 0 quickly enough because of armor reducing damage done to health.
But shields have nothing to protect, 2400 shields on higher leveled content can be removed instantly by just one shot. Making Shield based Warframes with low armor, weak on higher leveled content, they can be only saved by their abilities. Shields need shield gating mechanic that provide true protection, and making it worth to go for shield builds but at the same time don't make shield builds better than health+armor builds, just make both builds useful.
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Shield gating as a non additional mods mechanic (there is no enough space for more mods to put into warframes, and this mechanic isn't powerful enough to make it worth applying any mods to warframe to make it work):
1200 shields guarantee 1 second of having shield no matter how much damage you get. How does it works?
When you get hit by damage of 600 it remembers that you've been damaged for 600 damage. Your shield will shrink by 600 points in 0.5 second. While shield is shrinking the more damage can be applied to you and it will apply to remembered damage. So if you are in constant damage and your shield was 2400 then you are immune to almost all damage type for 2 seconds because your shield will shrink in 2 seconds. You won't get damage to health until your shield shrinks to 0, remembered damage don't affect health, but while having shields, you can still get damaged by toxin, slash, gas statuses etc just like it works on health at the moment.
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This new shield mechanic doesn't affect any of the enemies:
Because we can have only a maximum of 3000 shields?
While enemies can have more than 20k shields.
How it can be explained in game? Warframe shields works differently.
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So basically the shields works like nullifier bubbles but it remembers the total damage it got and it shrinks in time depending on the damage you totally got. Making a good shield gating mechanic. The more shield you have, the more time you have to hide, parkour or use an ability to CC enemies.
Armor grants damage reduction to health.
Shield grants damage immunity to almost all damage for a short duration.

Edited December 30, 2018 by IfritKajiTora

[GnarlsDarkley]

Oh I like the idea of almost invincible Sortie 3 enhanced Shield Corpus 

Sounds fun and balanced /s

That's why DE scrapped the idea of Shield Gating 

[(PSN)negativ21]

22 minutes ago, GnarlsDarkley said:

Oh I like the idea of almost invincible Sortie 3 enhanced Shield Corpus

 

28 minutes ago, IfritKajiTora said:

This new shield mechanic doesn't affect any of the enemies:
Because we can have only a maximum of 3000 shields?
While enemies can have more than 20k shields.
How it can be explained in game? Warframe shields works differently.

 

[GnarlsDarkley]

Just now, (PS4)negativ21 said:

snip

OP did edit exactly this after my post (or because of my post).

And enemies use the same Shield like we do (like all stuff, IPS, Armor etc etc) so it is not possible to exclude enemies from Shield Gating with the current code.

Look at Trials. DE tried to keep them alive by fixing and fixing but eventually came to the conclusion it was time to recode them entirely. But you can't do this with Shields...

[IfritKajiTora]

2 minutes ago, GnarlsDarkley said:

OP did edit exactly this after my post (or because of my post).

And enemies use the same Shield like we do (like all stuff, IPS, Armor etc etc) so it is not possible to exclude enemies from Shield Gating with the current code.

Look at Trials. DE tried to keep them alive by fixing and fixing but eventually came to the conclusion it was time to recode them entirely. But you can't do this with Shields...

Yes, I though that it is clear that it's only a mechanic to warframes.
But I saw your comment, so added those extra lines just in case.

[(PSN)negativ21]

Just now, GnarlsDarkley said:

And enemies use the same Shield like we do (like all stuff, IPS, Armor etc etc) so it is not possible to exclude enemies from Shield Gating with the current code

Yup. I was just humoring the OP's idea that shield gating could be a thing (I do like the idea) and that somehow the coding could be changed to make the WF and Corpus shields different (don't ask me about the feasibility of this).

 

[IfritKajiTora]

33 minutes ago, GnarlsDarkley said:

And enemies use the same Shield like we do (like all stuff, IPS, Armor etc etc) so it is not possible to exclude enemies from Shield Gating with the current code.

Look at Trials. DE tried to keep them alive by fixing and fixing but eventually came to the conclusion it was time to recode them entirely. But you can't do this with Shields...

Well DE showed on one the devstream that they already done shield gating, but it doesn't help in anything, they showed the gameplay: still dying really fast in high leveled missions so they decided to not add it into the game. And they didn't told anything about affecting enemies.

So not be able to make exceptions to warframe, is just an opportunity to not add anything.
The same as people had problems with First person camera mode and all the 360 no scope tricks vomit. People just see the problem and not thinking about how to fix that problem (player have control over camera not Warframe head, LOL FIXED)

[Steel_Rook]

In my experience, shield gating is a terrible system. Yes, it can work, but it's excessively meta-gamey and vastly over-rewards minor but frequent shield recovery over major but rarer such. Basically, it means any Warframe with shields HAS to have an Augur mod somewhere in the build, but not more than one because gaining more than the minimum amount of shields doesn't matter. It's exploitable, it disregards shield capacity and shield recharge, and it's hard to balance around.

[Tyreaus]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

In my experience, shield gating is a terrible system. Yes, it can work, but it's excessively meta-gamey and vastly over-rewards minor but frequent shield recovery over major but rarer such. Basically, it means any Warframe with shields HAS to have an Augur mod somewhere in the build, but not more than one because gaining more than the minimum amount of shields doesn't matter. It's exploitable, it disregards shield capacity and shield recharge, and it's hard to balance around.

Based on the OP's system, the gate time is directly proportional to the amount of shields the player has. A quick boost of 25 shields will provide a fraction of a second of protection (which works against Bombard rockets well enough but is worthless against machine gun fire), but max overshields gives 2 seconds of protection if they're dumped all at once. I don't know about balance, but it does seem to take capacity and recharge into account via that mechanic.

[DrBorris]

Personally I am a bigger fan of "Shield Hardening".

Conceptually Shield Hardening increases the amount of damage reduction your shields have relative to the amount of shields you currently have. So at 1000 shields you will have a higher damage reduction than at 200 shields.

 

Even just applying the armor damage reduction formula would work fine, maybe change the '300' to another value.

(Shield)/(Shield + 300) = Damage Reduction

 

This way you are encouraged to have high shields without arbitrary limitations or funky limits, it is just one equation.

Edited December 30, 2018 by DrBorris

[Steel_Rook]

56 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

Based on the OP's system, the gate time is directly proportional to the amount of shields the player has. A quick boost of 25 shields will provide a fraction of a second of protection (which works against Bombard rockets well enough but is worthless against machine gun fire), but max overshields gives 2 seconds of protection if they're dumped all at once. I don't know about balance, but it does seem to take capacity and recharge into account via that mechanic.

While that's true, you still end up blocking entire attacks during that "grace period," seemingly regardless of damage. Payday 2 has pretty much the same mechanic, where no attack can deal damage to health and shield at the same time, and the same sort of shield (or rather "armour" there) gating is fairly prevalent for squishier builds. That's typically mixed up with dodge-centric builds (which we have here) and that game's general damage grace mechanic to create a system where ANY shield is usually better than "some shield."

Essentially, what the OP is proposing is Payday 2's Stoic Perk Deck, where damage taken is converted to DPS, instead. I wouldn't be opposed to seeing this as a Warframe ability, but as a system-wide ability for all shields in the game, it tilts the system too far in favour of shield-recovery abilities and makes passive shield recover (what's supposed to Shields' primary selling point) even more meaningless due to the shield recovery cooldown.

I've said it before in other threads. If you want shields to matter, remove shield recharge delay altogether and either scale shield recharge speed to shield capacity or else let Fast Deflection go to Rank 10 / 440% like Vitality and Redirection. Health + Armour seems intended to be a "hard" health pool which takes longer to chew through and more effort to regenerate, while Shields appear to be a "soft" health pool that's intended to drain quickly and recover just as quickly.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

8 hours ago, IfritKajiTora said:

need shield gating mechanic that provide true protection, and making it worth to go for shield builds but at the same time don't make shield builds better than health+armor builds, just make both builds useful.

The problem with any gating mechanic is that it just becomes meta shield points - instead of however many HP the shield has it just becomes about how many gates.

The big problem with shields is not their strength (which is on a par with health/armour), it's that health regen is instant even mid fight, but once shield is gone it's gone until you get a lull, which isn't often. You just don't get 3s + recharge without getting shot at all, which immediately resets the delay.

I think a better mechanic would be to make shields smaller, but with no recharge delay at all (unless knocked right down to zero, and even then <1s). Some enemy shields already behave like this, so it isn't too much of a change for the Tennos' shields to too. 

It would also make rapid recharge mods a worthwhile choice, as rapid recharge could be more EHP than pure strength, so long as you can keep the shield from being broken.

With that change the shields don't become about tanking high level content any more than they are now, but it would make them balanced with health and armour for protection in sustained firefights. A Bombard hitcs still going to smash them, but a bunch of regular Grineer hitscan hits are going to be absorbed by the recharge, so long as you can evade and keep the rate of hits down.

The problem would be that with decent (not amazing) mods you could get high shield frames unkillable in low level content - a level 15 lancer couldn't output enough DPS to beat your recharge. I don't really see how that's any different from what Inaros, Rhino, Nidus or just about any decent health frame with Adaptation could do already.

[(PSN)teacup775]

8 hours ago, GnarlsDarkley said:

That's why DE scrapped the idea of Shield Gating 

Then they added rolling guard. LoL.

[Xzorn]

I don't feel Shield Gating was ever the right answer.

The method I would take is to simply make the health type better as a whole.

Add natural mitigation to shields that falters the lower they get. As an example with full shields you will have 90% DR but at 50% shield value you will have 0% DR. Of course the mitigation values would need to be tweaked and the scaling method of Current-to-Max Shields but the concept is pretty much a reverse Adaptation.

They could even make a Reverse Adaptation effect for shield frames. Start at 90% DR. Each time you're hit lose a 10% stack. Gain a stack every 20 seconds when at full shields. Either one of these options will severely limit one-shots and make shields a more valued health type on it's own.

We just have to be mindful of frames who already make good use of Shields but this allows caster frames to make a mistake once in a while.

[(XBOX)I semideum]

we need no shield gating but we do need a scaling system. 

[Steel_Rook]

7 hours ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

The problem would be that with decent (not amazing) mods you could get high shield frames unkillable in low level content - a level 15 lancer couldn't output enough DPS to beat your recharge. I don't really see how that's any different from what Inaros, Rhino, Nidus or just about any decent health frame with Adaptation could do already.

That's already the case, though. Even without accounting for Adaptation, a Rhino Prime built for armour or even a dirt-simple Inaros can basically go to the restroom and come back still alive and none the worse for wear. I've Alt-Tabbed out of level 20 missions to look stuff up on the Wiki and come back to full health. I'd argue the bigger issue is mitigation scaling. A build which relies on constant regeneration tends to be very binary. Either you have enough regeneration to never drop below max health, or you don't and you just die. The Regeneration Power Set in City of Heroes had the same issue, where it was stupidly overpowered right up to a point, past which performance crashed substantially. The balance point of recover vs. damage is a lot finer there.

I'd argue that how severe the problem is sort of depends on what specific values we're looking at. I can't find any consistent numbers on enemy damage, but I'd propose setting a baseline for incoming damage to aim for and see where shields would stack with no recovery delay.

[Tyreaus]

10 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I've said it before in other threads. If you want shields to matter, remove shield recharge delay altogether and either scale shield recharge speed to shield capacity or else let Fast Deflection go to Rank 10 / 440% like Vitality and Redirection. Health + Armour seems intended to be a "hard" health pool which takes longer to chew through and more effort to regenerate, while Shields appear to be a "soft" health pool that's intended to drain quickly and recover just as quickly.

Agreed that instant or much shorter recharge delays are, at least, the better option, not just for efficacy but for effort (i.e. it should be just a few number tweaks, not entirely new mechanics). I just had to play devil's advocate a bit.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

8 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

A build which relies on constant regeneration tends to be very binary. Either you have enough regeneration to never drop below max health, or you don't and you just die

Yeah, if you're standing still. Lots of the shield frames have things like evasion bonuses (Mirage, Titania, etc) that are currently fairly useless because they just reduce the number of shots that get through. With a constant recharge shield this becomes consistent and something you can build for.

8 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'd argue that how severe the problem is sort of depends on what specific values we're looking at

Yeah, this would be interesting to balance.

However, I particularly like the idea that some frames would be situationally tanky. For instance Mag would become strong against Grineer but remain fragile against Corpus.

 

[Fallen_Echo]

Okay heres a quick copy-paste from the thread i posted in the wrong time:

 

Hello there guys!

 

I was looking around the current armor and ehp suggestions what were posted and decided to put in my idea on how to fix the endlessly scaling ehp.

 

In short, all im going to do is to remove all DR, manipulate the damage system and make all armor work as additional health.

 

Lets start with the armor:

From now on the armor we have grants ZERO damage reduction, instead it act as a secondary healthbar what stops almost all damage going throught it, same goes for enemies.

An enemy with 200 hp and 300 armor will have in total 500 hp and as long as the said enemy has armor almost nothing can attack its hp directly.

Armor decreases all dot status effects damage to 5points regardless of level and armor, the only status what can bypass armor is toxin thought its max damage is capped at 20 point when armor is on.

Damage what hit any amount of armor can only damage armor and never the health effectively creating an armor gate.

Every damage the enemy/player takes chips away the armor, corrosive damage removes it as a dot while puncture procs remove it i small amounts. Every other damage source directly hits armor.

Armor can only be regained by picking up health orbs while at full health. The enemies who currently dont take damage can regain 100/sec armor if they were safe for 5 seconds.

Corrosive projection now creates a visual aura what slowly chips away enemy armor when they enter it.

Bleed proc cannot be applied while the enemy has armor.

Puncture procs on armorless enemies cause bleeding while impact on armorless enemies cause stun.

An electric proc what destroys the last portion of armor creates a magnetic anomaly what draws in nearby enemies for 2 sec.

 

Shields:

Just as for armor shields are now regenerating secondary health bars.

Everything with a shield has the ability to regenerate it once its out of combat and doesnt take damage. Shield regen rate is 100/sec after 5 sec of peace.

As long as any damage hits a portion of the shields it cannot deal damage to the health of players/enemies.

Having shields decreases all dot damage to 5 and only heat damage can bypass shields thought its damage is capped at 20 while shields are up.

Shield disruption is now a visible aura what slowly chips away enemy shield in its range.

Bleed proc cannot be applied to enemies with shields.

Puncture proc on shieldless enemies cause a bleed proc while impact causes stun.

An electric proc what destroys the last portion of shields creates an electric shockwave dealing low damage.

 

Flesh:

Flesh takes half damage from all sources but dots are not affected.

 

All unique ehp stats are removed and replaced by flesh, armor and shield. Enemies having unique resistances are depend on the enemy and not on the health type.

Damage type effectiveness:

Slash, +25% against flesh -25% against shield and armor.

Puncture, +25% against armor, -25% against shield.

Impact, +25% against shield, -25% against armor.

Toxin, +25% against armor, -25% to shield.

Electricity, neutral to all.

Heat, +25% against shield, -25% against armor.

Cold, +25% against flesh, -25% against shield and armor.

Corrosive +50% against armor, -50% against shield.

Viral, +25% against flesh.

Radiation, + 25 against armor.

Blast, neutral to all.

Gas, +25% against shield.

Magnetic +50% against shield, -50% against flesh.

 

Lastly to not make the game too easy i suggest that everything below lv25 should have the current hp stats they have but above the with an incoming alert saying "the enemy faction has deployed the elites" all enemies should have the starting hp stat of lv 100 guys.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

49 minutes ago, Fallen_Echo said:

Okay heres a quick copy-paste from the thread i posted in the wrong time:...

I think that kind of entire redesign of the damage system is much touch to happen at once. Just look at the pain with melee 3 - I think we need to have a change to shields that works with everything else pretty much as it is currently.

[Neightrix]

I appreciate the thread on shield gates, but this seems like a bit much. It baffles me the Rolling Guard mod exists in the game but the same concept wasn't applied to shield gates in internal testing - just lower to invincibility to 1 second and keep the cooldown timer. Shield gates cannot be overpowered if they have a cooldown.

Edited December 31, 2018 by Neightrix

[zuldar]

22 hours ago, Xzorn said:

I don't feel Shield Gating was ever the right answer.

The method I would take is to simply make the health type better as a whole.

Add natural mitigation to shields that falters the lower they get. As an example with full shields you will have 90% DR but at 50% shield value you will have 0% DR. Of course the mitigation values would need to be tweaked and the scaling method of Current-to-Max Shields but the concept is pretty much a reverse Adaptation.

They could even make a Reverse Adaptation effect for shield frames. Start at 90% DR. Each time you're hit lose a 10% stack. Gain a stack every 20 seconds when at full shields. Either one of these options will severely limit one-shots and make shields a more valued health type on it's own.

We just have to be mindful of frames who already make good use of Shields but this allows caster frames to make a mistake once in a while.

What about using the frames energy as armor for shields.  Using abilities would reduce the available shield armor while taking flow or other mods would increase the maximum.  Might be interesting to look into that.

[Fallen_Echo]

2 hours ago, (XB1)KayAitch said:

I think that kind of entire redesign of the damage system is much touch to happen at once. Just look at the pain with melee 3 - I think we need to have a change to shields that works with everything else pretty much as it is currently.

Thats the source of the problem.

Melee 3.0 takes soo much time because they try to make it work with the current systems various flaws, if they would try to fix up the whole system it would move much smoother.