Instead of band-aid fixing abilities like spectorage with ability augments, can we actually FIX the ability??

[birdobash]

Title says it all, DE has a habit of adding augments to useless abilities to try and fix them, when they should just fix them outright. The most recent example is garas spectrosiphon augment, but another one I can remember is equinoxes 3 augment, since nobody used his 3 in night form due to the sad values on enemy debuff and hellish drain it has if not modded for insane efficiency. Without the augments slow, the ability in night form is not viable.

Can we actually get fixes for abilities instead of random 1 off ability augments that seem like they shouldve been part of the ability in the first place?

[Alcatraz]

3 minutes ago, birdobash said:

Instead of band-aid fixing abilities like spectorage with ability augments

That augment isn't fixing anything... Or really a bandaid either. Just another aug I wouldn't ever see myself using.

[birdobash]

12 minutes ago, Alcatraz said:

That augment isn't fixing anything... Or really a bandaid either. Just another aug I wouldn't ever see myself using.

Whether it actually fixed anything or not, it seems to have been intended to cover holes in Garas design, here's my reasoning.

So Gara is a frame who relies on damage reduction and chain casting 3 abilities to create a zone of death around her to become a tanky frame that also has decent small area DPS, this is her most effective build but of course there are other ways to use her like being better frost with her 4. The holes in her design were:

A. She has no source of healing at all to take advantage of the fact she has 90% DR, meaning eventually she WILL die without outside healing from teammates, companions, or weapons/mods, especially because her DR only effects health and not shields.

B. She doesn't have very good energy efficiency if you use her splinters of death build, since you will have to cast 2-3 abilities to keep resetting her 2 on an interval depending on your duration (usually around 40 seconds). Without a stable source of energy in the form of arcane energize, zenurik, or energy pads, most of the time she won't be able to upkeep and keep resetting the duration on her 2.

And what do we have here? We got mending splinter last time which gives her very small amounts of healing, which only works because she has so much DR that even that little 3/s heal is more than enough to sustain her, and now we have spectrosiphon, which supposedly seems to cover up her energy problem, except there is one big problem. 

ZENURIK EXISTS.

With zenurik in the equation, this mod is absolutely worthless because you would basically be wasting a mod slot to do something that your focus school can do for you 10 times better, and I know for a fact the majority, if not ALL players have and use the zenurik focus school because the earliest 2 nodes are the most useful out of all the schools and all other focus school nodes in general.

[Alcatraz]

3 minutes ago, birdobash said:

ZENURIK EXISTS.

With zenurik in the equation, this mod is absolutely worthless because you would basically be wasting a mod slot to do something that your focus school can do for you 10 times better, and I know for a fact the majority, if not ALL players have and use the zenurik focus school because the earliest 2 nodes are the most useful out of all the schools and all other focus school nodes in general.

That's the finer point of why the mod is fixing nothing. I looked at that and I just...  I'm highly disappointed in what this augment could of been, and what we actually ended up with.

[MasterBurik]

@birdobash

What if recent boosts to energy production methods (Nezha's Blazing Chakram rework, Gara's new Spectrosiphon augment, Harrow's Thurible buff) are part of a series of subtle buffs to offset an eventual Zenurik nerf?

[eurotransient]

22 minutes ago, birdobash said:

She has no source of healing at all to take advantage of the fact she has 90% DR, meaning eventually she WILL die without outside healing from teammates, companions, or weapons/mods, especially because her DR only effects health and not shields.

I honestly don’t see this as a big issue — that DR comes with a massive damage boost if you play it right. 

 

24 minutes ago, birdobash said:

She doesn't have very good energy efficiency if you use her splinters of death build, since you will have to cast 2-3 abilities to keep resetting her 2 on an interval depending on your duration (usually around 40 seconds). Without a stable source of energy in the form of arcane energize, zenurik, or energy pads, most of the time she won't be able to upkeep and keep resetting the duration on her 2.

Her energy efficiency does suck but I think that’s a fair trade off for infinitely scaling damage. 

This does lead me into my biggest issue with the new augment, which is that given the cost of casting Spectrorage it’s not actually super efficient to rely on a 50% drop chance for energy orbs. Spectrorage should be cheaper to cast or they should boost that drop chance up. 

[CyberPrimate]

Spawned some lvl 125 Heavy Gunners to mess around with the augment. A single slam attack destroys all of the mirrors.

Me :

 

 

Her 3 is in such contrast to the rest of her abilities which can scale nicely. It is worthless in higher levels where you would ACTUALLY NEED IT.

Dear DE, she has 90% DR, we dont need a CC ability that will only work on low levels due to its poor health and poor reflect damage due to armor scaling. We need it to work on high level enemies, because then its actually useful since Gara has 90% DR and not an invulnerability so some damage gets through at high leves AND how incredibly energy hungry she is. 

 

Nerf its duration, whilst making it duration based instead of it having a health pool. Thats when people will start using it. Now - who need it? 

You get 90% DR and you can wipe out entire rooms of lower levels, we dont need a CC ability that works only on those low levels, we just dont. But when we do need it, its unusable due to how poorly it scales.

[Birdframe_Prime]

This is the biggest issue with Augments as they stand now; the abilities need to stand on their own first.

Spectrorage does not stand on its own because the base function of the ability, the distracting mirrors, have no minimum duration to actually attract and CC enemies. Minimum duration can be achieved by a few things, such as literally giving it a minimum duration (like they did with Volt's 4 for a while), or giving it the Molt/Iron Skin/Snowglobe/Warding Halo treatment of having a charge period (so enemies will have to deal as much damage to the mirrors as they did in those first few seconds, plus your base ability, before the mirrors get destroyed).

Also, as a side note, that Range on it... eesh, that's pretty terrible, we do need a larger carousel to actually CC enemies into...

This Augment would be, should be, a direct buff to the ability. It isn't because of the way the ability works. It suffers from the same problem that Loki's Decoy does and Saryn's Molt used to; no effective health means higher level enemies will shred it nearly instantly.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

8 hours ago, MasterBurik said:

@birdobash

What if recent boosts to energy production methods (Nezha's Blazing Chakram rework, Gara's new Spectrosiphon augment, Harrow's Thurible buff) are part of a series of subtle buffs to offset an eventual Zenurik nerf?

I realllly hope that is the case. School usage is more diverse than it used to be before Focus 2.0 (and I love being able to save them to my loadouts now!) but Zenurik is still the go-to for most because it's so effective. Why choose Madurai to increase damage by 25%, for example, when you can just use Zenurik to spam your abilities with infinite energy and do 300% more damage by nuking 3 times in the same time period?

[Fallen_Echo]

Not just spectro but novas augments for null star are both look like poorly thought out ideas to make it work.

[Shelusine]

10 hours ago, birdobash said:

She has no source of healing at all to take advantage of the fact she has 90% DR, meaning eventually she WILL die without outside healing from teammates, companions, or weapons/mods, especially because her DR only effects health and not shields.

Or arcanes, or magus, or items or,...There's like over 9000 ways to heal your frames at any moment from one press of a button. Saying that not having access to healing  from her abilities is a hole in her design sounds like a very irrelevant argument. Also according to the wiki it does affect shield.

 

10 hours ago, birdobash said:

With zenurik in the equation, this mod is absolutely worthless because you would basically be wasting a mod slot to do something that your focus school can do for you 10 times better

That is not true. Slot arcane energize and her augment is far more efficient for you and your team and allows you to use Naramon for a better spin to win. Zenurik is usually the option people with no max arcane energize use. 

Don't get me wrong tho, her 3rd ability is useless and using augment to patch it is dumb but your reasoning doesn't add up. Her augment is bad because her 3rd ability is bad and shouldn't have to gain value through augment, period.

[Teridax68]

Designing augments as a means of fixing underperforming abilities or weapons I think is the very reason why augments are widely looked down upon in Warframe. When you ask players what they'd like out of an augment, typically they'll tell you that they want something that alters their gameplay, and provides them with a genuinely new take on the weapon or warframe they're affixing that augment to. In practice, though, augments only rarely alter the way players play their frames or weapons, and in some cases they add functionality that should've been part of the base effect in the first place (e.g. Conductor, Energy Transfer, Iron Shrapnel).

Additionally, because these augments need to act as buffs, as they're taking up a mod slot and 9 mod drain, this restricts their design further: some augments are so good that they become mandatory on their frame (e.g. Despoil, Iron Skin, Negation Swarm), but most aren't considered worth the slot and/or Forma, even if they genuinely could provide interesting gameplay. It also doesn't help that some augments, like Spectrosiphon, don't even meet truly add more gameplay, so much as more power in the hopes of making said ability useful in some form.

Because of this, I fully agree that we need to start doing a pass on augments and abilities: some augments could be better with a buff (e.g. Mending Splinters, one of the weakest augments ever released, and another disappointing Gara augment), some are unlikely to ever become desirable and thus need a rework (e.g. Spectrosiphon), and some just need to have their effects, or part of their effects, added to the base ability. If an ability is considered in need of an augment, it should simply be buffed or reworked to be made fit for purpose for everyone, without players being expected to wait until they've gotten rep with the right Syndicate to see any use to it. After that, augments should be designed with the intent to modify gameplay that is good to begin with, not just add power. There's probably more stuff that could be done to enable more build diversity with respect to augments (I feel it may be better to remove slot limitations entirely, make mod drain the only limiter, make the drain on some particularly strong and commonly picked mods harsher, and allow us to de-rank our mods at will), but the above could at least be a start.

[Wet_Tenties]

if the abiliity didnt instanty dissapear above level 50 i would use the augment. It would be nice to be able to just put up an energy kill zone not just for myself but team mates as well. So if DE just added an iron skin style health scale, or just having the mirrors have a short .5 second invuln period per mirror so the ability stays up long enough for me to get value out of the augments effect i would enjoy it alot.

[MirageKnight]

On 2019-01-11 at 12:24 AM, CyberPrimate said:

It is worthless in higher levels where I want it to overcome enemies that are intended to slow and ultimately stop me from progressing.

FTFY

If it had severe problems killing anything at or under level 60 when properly modded for, I'd call a given ability or augment weak. If not, it's working as it should be.

On 2019-01-11 at 12:24 AM, CyberPrimate said:

But when we do need it, its unusable due to how poorly it scales.

You're confusing need with want and it scales fine vs normal enemies (Level 60 and under) You know why enemies scale the way they do...right? After level 45 or so, enemy damage and ehp starts to scale exponentially to act as an intentional roadblock to further player progression. 

Honestly, you kids whine incessantly about the lack of challenge...yet when DE makes enemies harder and deadlier to give you that false sense of "challenge"...you whine about how weak you feel and how you need even more power creep to trivialize and overcome the very enemies you wanted to begin with.

There's no pleasing you lot and I think it's about time that DE put their collective feet down and stopped trying.

[MJ12]

On 2019-01-11 at 5:40 AM, Teridax68 said:

Designing augments as a means of fixing underperforming abilities or weapons I think is the very reason why augments are widely looked down upon in Warframe. When you ask players what they'd like out of an augment, typically they'll tell you that they want something that alters their gameplay, and provides them with a genuinely new take on the weapon or warframe they're affixing that augment to. In practice, though, augments only rarely alter the way players play their frames or weapons, and in some cases they add functionality that should've been part of the base effect in the first place (e.g. Conductor, Energy Transfer, Iron Shrapnel).

Additionally, because these augments need to act as buffs, as they're taking up a mod slot and 9 mod drain, this restricts their design further: some augments are so good that they become mandatory on their frame (e.g. Despoil, Iron Skin, Negation Swarm), but most aren't considered worth the slot and/or Forma, even if they genuinely could provide interesting gameplay. It also doesn't help that some augments, like Spectrosiphon, don't even meet truly add more gameplay, so much as more power in the hopes of making said ability useful in some form.

Because of this, I fully agree that we need to start doing a pass on augments and abilities: some augments could be better with a buff (e.g. Mending Splinters, one of the weakest augments ever released, and another disappointing Gara augment), some are unlikely to ever become desirable and thus need a rework (e.g. Spectrosiphon), and some just need to have their effects, or part of their effects, added to the base ability. If an ability is considered in need of an augment, it should simply be buffed or reworked to be made fit for purpose for everyone, without players being expected to wait until they've gotten rep with the right Syndicate to see any use to it. After that, augments should be designed with the intent to modify gameplay that is good to begin with, not just add power. There's probably more stuff that could be done to enable more build diversity with respect to augments (I feel it may be better to remove slot limitations entirely, make mod drain the only limiter, make the drain on some particularly strong and commonly picked mods harsher, and allow us to de-rank our mods at will), but the above could at least be a start.

The only truly good Augment IMO is Assimilate, because it literally changes Nyx's Absorb into an entirely different (and overall more potent) ability that does an entirely different thing. Regenerative Molt gets sort of close as well, since it turns Saryn's Molt from a decoy into a source of rapid self healing.

There are some Augments which are okay as pure power boosts (Mirage's Hall of Mirrors one, Chromatic Blade for Excal, Inaros's CC-resistance on Scarab Armor one) but they're still kind of eh compared to Assimilate.

A lot of Augments just need to be directly integrated into their current powers, particularly the ones for underperforming powers, and Augments in general should be rarer but a lot more powerful, and they should generally change the power entirely.

For example, a Mag 'pull' augment could be something like a Force Choke ability, a one-handed ability where you drag an enemy to you and magnetize them so they absorb incoming gunfire from the front for the duration of the power while you can fire back freely. That's a complete change from Pull's current role (instead of being group CC/damage in a cone AoE, it's single-target CC and defense). A Null Star augment might change it to a fully defensive power, where Null Stars basically act like tiny absorb spheres and each can absorb X amount of damage before flying off to seek and explode a nearby enemy-basically turning it into a tiny Iron Skin. Mesa might get a Peacemaker augment which turns Peacemakers into a true Exalted weapon, a pair of machine pistols which cost energy to fire (like 1/shot) and have very mild aim-assist but otherwise behave like a pair of regular guns.

That's what augments should be-instead of buffs to powers, they should be radical transformations.

[birdobash]

26 minutes ago, MJ12 said:

The only truly good Augment IMO is Assimilate, because it literally changes Nyx's Absorb into an entirely different (and overall more potent) ability that does an entirely different thing. Regenerative Molt gets sort of close as well, since it turns Saryn's Molt from a decoy into a source of rapid self healing.

There are some Augments which are okay as pure power boosts (Mirage's Hall of Mirrors one, Chromatic Blade for Excal, Inaros's CC-resistance on Scarab Armor one) but they're still kind of eh compared to Assimilate.

A lot of Augments just need to be directly integrated into their current powers, particularly the ones for underperforming powers, and Augments in general should be rarer but a lot more powerful, and they should generally change the power entirely.

For example, a Mag 'pull' augment could be something like a Force Choke ability, a one-handed ability where you drag an enemy to you and magnetize them so they absorb incoming gunfire from the front for the duration of the power while you can fire back freely. That's a complete change from Pull's current role (instead of being group CC/damage in a cone AoE, it's single-target CC and defense). A Null Star augment might change it to a fully defensive power, where Null Stars basically act like tiny absorb spheres and each can absorb X amount of damage before flying off to seek and explode a nearby enemy-basically turning it into a tiny Iron Skin. Mesa might get a Peacemaker augment which turns Peacemakers into a true Exalted weapon, a pair of machine pistols which cost energy to fire (like 1/shot) and have very mild aim-assist but otherwise behave like a pair of regular guns.

That's what augments should be-instead of buffs to powers, they should be radical transformations.

Agreed, although DE would probably need a huge few months period to rework all the augments kind of like how they took a long time for primary, secondary, and melee 2.0s and rèworks

[Teridax68]

3 hours ago, MJ12 said:

For example, a Mag 'pull' augment could be something like a Force Choke ability, a one-handed ability where you drag an enemy to you and magnetize them so they absorb incoming gunfire from the front for the duration of the power while you can fire back freely. That's a complete change from Pull's current role (instead of being group CC/damage in a cone AoE, it's single-target CC and defense). A Null Star augment might change it to a fully defensive power, where Null Stars basically act like tiny absorb spheres and each can absorb X amount of damage before flying off to seek and explode a nearby enemy-basically turning it into a tiny Iron Skin. Mesa might get a Peacemaker augment which turns Peacemakers into a true Exalted weapon, a pair of machine pistols which cost energy to fire (like 1/shot) and have very mild aim-assist but otherwise behave like a pair of regular guns.

These I think are good examples of what an augment should be like. I would very much like to modify my warframe's abilities, perhaps in some cases use an entirely different ability instead, because each frame represents a theme, and there are many more possible interpretations of that theme than just the base kit. As it stands, though, few augments even come close to modifying the player's gameplay like that, and far too many act as band-aids or power without gameplay.

On 2019-01-12 at 7:13 PM, MirageKnight said:

Honestly, you kids whine incessantly about the lack of challenge...yet when DE makes enemies harder and deadlier to give you that false sense of "challenge"...you whine about how weak you feel and how you need even more power creep to trivialize and overcome the very enemies you wanted to begin with.

I agree very much that there's a double standard at hand (players get bored because the game is easy, but also complain when the game gets harder), though to some extent I also think there's a kernel of justification to what they're saying: many players want a challenge, but many of those players also don't want to feel disempowered, because Warframe offers a power fantasy and expressly tries to make the player feel ultra-powerful and special. In this respect, enemies that take more hits and deal more damage end up making the player feel weaker by comparison, hence the disempowerment. While ramping up enemy stats is certainly a way of scaling the game's difficulty, it's not necessarily the only way of increasing difficulty in a game, and there are likely other ways of ramping up the challenge in a way that could clash less (or not at all) with the player's power fantasy. 

If Survival scaled its difficulty not by increasing enemy stats, but by making Life Support drain increasingly faster, for example, just like SO, you could scale the mode's difficulty all the way up to a point where it would become impossible to go on any longer, even with a player character far more powerful than everything around them. By scaling mission conditions, rather than enemies, to increase the game's challenge, it'd be possible to make the game more difficult while still making players stronger than their opponents at all times, and avoiding issues of bullet sponges and one-shots we experience now (it could even make for more consistent difficulty, since most mission conditions can't be cheesed with something as basic as an aura mod virtually everyone picks).

Edited January 14, 2019 by Teridax68

[Andele3025]

2 hours ago, MJ12 said:

That's what augments should be-instead of buffs to powers, they should be radical transformations.

Either wrong (like your mag example) or semantics (like assimilate which its technically just a good version to bandaid a outdated skill), most augments change enough of the game loop or skill usage while not making it something entirely different/not that frames skill (thus in fact, reducing the power curve of the frame due to the slot cap, which may be good on some frames like rhino and inaros, but can be bad on others where the augment makes the skill better for allies but doesnt change much for the player experience); and from the 20 or so that are bad, a nice chunk are bad due to not being touched up in ages as the game progressed. Note that i am not counting augments that on their own mechanics work ok, but the base skill #*!%s them over like Chroma breath afterburner.

[Misgenesis]

Could be worse. Could be Scott saying they want Equinox players to keep form changing and adapting to the situation but not actually allowing form changes without losing buffs and then releasing an augment to allow keeping your buffs but only on her 4th. 

 

 

 

Edited January 14, 2019 by Misgenesis

[birdobash]

1 hour ago, Misgenesis said:

Could be worse. Could be Scott saying they want Equinox players to keep form changing and adapting to the situation but not actually allowing form changes without losing buffs and then releasing an augment to allow keeping your buffs but only on her 4th. 

 

 

 

👏

[MJ12]

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

Either wrong (like your mag example) or semantics (like assimilate which its technically just a good version to bandaid a outdated skill), most augments change enough of the game loop or skill usage while not making it something entirely different/not that frames skill (thus in fact, reducing the power curve of the frame due to the slot cap, which may be good on some frames like rhino and inaros, but can be bad on others where the augment makes the skill better for allies but doesnt change much for the player experience); and from the 20 or so that are bad, a nice chunk are bad due to not being touched up in ages as the game progressed. Note that i am not counting augments that on their own mechanics work ok, but the base skill #*!%s them over like Chroma breath afterburner.

I can't parse what you're trying to say. How am I 'wrong'? How is an augment changing how a skill works "reducing the power curve of the frame"? What are you even trying to say?

Calm down instead of reflexively attacking people and make your point in a fashion that actually allows for constructive discussion.

Edited January 15, 2019 by MJ12

[Andele3025]

48 minutes ago, MJ12 said:

I can't parse what you're trying to say. How am I 'wrong'? How is an augment changing how a skill works "reducing the power curve of the frame"? What are you even trying to say?

Calm down instead of reflexively attacking people and make your point in a fashion that actually allows for constructive discussion.

Just because you dont understand whats said doesnt mean its a attack.

You are wrong in the sense of in every case that isnt a bandaid for nerf/afk playstyle the augments have no precedent in changing the fundamental effect of a skill. the few that do (Banshee & Nyx 4 for example) are there due to the base skill not gelling with the game loop of warframe and/or being a afk button that got nerfed at some point.

And all frames are limited to 8 mod slots, every slot filled with a augment is 1 less filled with raw stats (which as said is good most of the time, but not on the few augments that dont benefit the users playstyle due to merely make the augmented skill less annoying for teammates).

[MJ12]

Just now, Andele3025 said:

Just because you dont understand whats said doesnt mean its a attack.

You are wrong in the sense of in every case that isnt a bandaid for nerf/afk playstyle the augments have no precedent in changing the fundamental effect of a skill. the few that do (Banshee & Nyx 4 for example) are there due to the base skill not gelling with the game loop of warframe and/or being a afk button that got nerfed at some point.

And all frames are limited to 8 mod slots, every slot filled with a augment is 1 less filled with raw stats (which as said is good most of the time, but not on the few augments that dont benefit the users playstyle due to merely make the augmented skill less annoying for teammates).

I see what's happened. You're confusing 'is' and 'ought,' and decided that my statements, which were entirely an 'ought' statement (DE should design augments this way) was actually an 'is' statement somehow.

I said that an augment should generally significantly change a power, rather than just band-aiding it into usability. If you're going to sacrifice a mod slot, that sacrifice better do something cool and interesting.

The whole talk about 'all frames are limited to 8 mod slots' is a non sequitur-that's why I said that an augment should be a pretty significant change in a power, that is also generally speaking more powerful than the power it alters (e.g. by significantly mitigating a Warframe's weaknesses, by synergizing with other powers, or something else entirely). My point was, and still is, that augment design in Warframe right now is bad because a lot of augments are just band-aids for weak powers that have little inherent benefit, and most of the rest of the augments are just straightforward power boosts that aren't particularly interesting.

[(PSN)RenovaKunumaru]

If love for DE to fix abilities rather than band aid them but parts of the community don't know the difference.

This example with spectronage however doesn't seem to band aid or fix the problem with the skill. It just attempts to try to give players a reason to use it in the first place, and it's not a good enough reason.

[Teridax68]

On 2019-01-15 at 6:44 PM, (PS4)RenovaKunumaru said:

If love for DE to fix abilities rather than band aid them but parts of the community don't know the difference.

This example with spectronage however doesn't seem to band aid or fix the problem with the skill. It just attempts to try to give players a reason to use it in the first place, and it's not a good enough reason.

Agreed, making players press an ability button is not the same as making players actually engage with that ability or see it as useful. Nekros I think has multiple examples of this: Shadows of the Dead by itself is an ability he has no real reason to use, because minions made out enemies are weak and their AI is crap, but the augment makes the ability useful by turning it into a 90% damage reduction steroid, even if this has nothing to really do with SotD's gameplay (in fact, the ability is less consistent than if Nekros simply pressed a button for just that damage reduction over a fixed duration). Similarly, Soul Survivor doesn't make the base effect useful, it just gives Nekros an instant rez button, which used to be desirable before Operator mode was a thing.

In fact, even Nekros himself is a victim of this design: by all rights, his base kit is garbage, as most of his abilities are useless, uninteresting, or both, yet he's picked purely because of his 3, which increases loot drops. Effectively, Nekros provides little benefit inside of a mission, besides maybe some health and Energy orb drops, has largely passive gameplay (his 1 and 2 aren't worth using, he has little control over his minions and his 3, which is now just a toggle, used to be even worse, as it forced him to stand stock still and press the same button over and over again), yet is relevant solely because he automatically generates more loot, in a game about gaining more loot. As such, while he is a useful frame, he is not necessarily a fun or truly functional frame, which is why he's known as the game's loot frame, rather than the true fulfilment of a necromancer playstyle. The same can be said for Hydroid, and overall there's often too much of a focus on results, i.e. what a frame can do that's ridiculously strong and can contribute to the success of a mission, over what's fun to play: pressing 3 for a passive loot generation aura isn't inherently fun, nor is changing the resource consumed by that ability when the only meaningful consequence is that it removes some small amount of busywork tied to its upkeep.

Edited February 20, 2019 by Teridax68