Lots of gameplay problems In the Exploiter Orb Fight

[SilentMobius]

Lets go through these:

• Condensed Thermia switch not highlighted, you can wander deck 12 for an age without seeing it, while still getting Zuud's dialogue talking about the thing. Given the type of thing it is maybe make it glow if you really don't want to put a way point on it (but please, put a waypoint on it)
• The Thermia expulsion port is over the opposite side of the deck and again, isn't labeled, you just have to be lucky to notice where it is while all hell breaks loose elsewhere. 
• The "timer" on the thermia expulsion port is again, just something you need to notice, assuming you're stood right their waiting for it.
• The canisters can be destroyed by Chroma's aura without any indication of what's wrong, no FX, it just disappears when you get close.
• I completed the deck 12 section and I'm still not clear what I was supposed to do. Shoot them in mid air? were they supposed to stick to the vents, then you shoot them? Did I have to do it more than once per vent? There was minimal feedback of success vs failure, assuming you could see anything with the screen shake, movement and FX.
• Deck 12 doors periodically just failed to open, making me wonder what I was supposed to be doing.
• Outside, there was minimal correspondence between the temp gauge and actions from the coolant raknoids, sometimes one would get through and throw coolant and the gauge did nothing, sometimes the gauge would drop right down with no visible reason.
• The Coolant raknoids are very, very difficult to see at range, blue and black against blue and black.
• The raknoids would get stuck on terrain, probably cooling the Exploiter but I couldn't see how as there was no connection between gobs of coolant and cooling.

All in all, that was interminable and not something I have any interest in trying again, I gave up after 38 mins of no visible achievement.

Suggestions:

• Waypoint markers (Thermia switch, Thermia ejector), wait until we get close of you have to but please don't make use guess what you're thinking
• Improve the throw mechanics, tell us more if we're supposed to throw and shoot mid-air say so "Shoot the canister midair, near the vent" Also, if that is what you're supposed to do then "hitting" the vent with the canister (which we are told to do) isn't actually needed. Give feedback if the canister isn't shot, or if we shoot if too far away.
• Make the shootable vents more visible! Given all the shake and motion the usual "shimmer of interactivity" was barely visible and given the lighting, the underside of the Exploiter was pretty much black-on-black
• The vents are arranged such that you need to be virtually underneath the Exploiter, right against the lift to see them, maybe have the Exploiter more in the middle and turn around more to give a vantage on them? Also, have more still moments given the lazy throw arc and the cold procs slowing the process even more.
• Make the Coolant raknoid visible and make the "cooling" action obviously connected to the movement of the heat gauge. EG: Give the raknoids a distantly visible... say, purple (Not more blue or white!) light on them, when they are about to throw coolant switch it to cyan and pulse it, growing in intensity until the coolant is thrown (AKA telegraph the problematic action). When the coolant has a effect on the Exploiter have a directional contact flash fx on it so we can see where our mistake came from and have the cooling level delta highlight in the heat bar then fade out, tying the failure to the penalty.
• Let us be able to do something to increase the rate of heating when there are no visible raknoids, waiting for blue on blue blobs is not fun.

I'd say that the cooling drop is too high but really I have no real idea how much was getting through, it didn't look like much but, as I said, without a solid connection of action to effect it just looked random.

Edited March 15, 2019 by SilentMobius

[BenaBean]

yeah the map is incredibly poorly layed out. The game barely gives you any directions. The first time I did it I ended up dying halfway through. Got to the last stage on my next try but could not figure out what to do. It needs some work done that is for sure.

[LSG501]

I'll just add in:

really weird physics when throwing the canisters, sometimes they'll just 'go into orbit' for no obvious reason even with a 'curve' that is going to hit the exploiter orb.

[NekroArts]

5 minutes ago, SilentMobius said:

Lets go through these:

• Condensed Thermia switch not highlighted, you can wander deck 12 for an age without seeing it, while still getting Zuud's dialogue talking about the thing, given the type of thing it is maybe make it glow if you really don't want to put a way point on it (but please, put a waypoint on it)
• The Thermia expulsion port is over the opposite side of the deck and again, isn't labeled, you just have to be lucky to notice where it is while all hell breaks loose elsewhere
• The "timer" on the thermia expulsion port is again, just something you need to notice, assuming you're stood right their waiting for it.
• I completed the deck 12 section and I'm still not clear what I was supposed to do. Shoot them in mid air? were they supposed to stick to the vents, then you shoot them? There was minimal feedback of success vs failure, assuming you could see anything with the screen shake and FX.

All in all, that was interminable and not something I have any interest in trying again, I gave up after 38 mins of no visible achievement.

Honestly these problems felt more like "since it's your first time running it, it's guarantee you'll have problems with it because of not knowing than it is poorly explained", but after running a few more times it becomes more obvious that we're given clear information. My first time experience with this I was wondering around on where to start the first, after triggering Zuud's dialogue about the Thermia, it was clear that what I needed to do was in that small area.

A lot of the feedback were mostly either "still need to do this" and "on to the next thing" through visual changes, such as the melting of the ice on the vents and new behaviors, and triggered-dialogue after a successful action.

I expected the run to be long since this was new, which means understanding the mechanics and experimenting what needs to be done, but after a few runs these problems just fades away.

[NezuHimeSama]

This entire fight is exactly the same problem as every other big boss in warframe, and it shows DE has no intention of actually learning anything from or even admitting to their mistakes. There is no feedback, no explanation, no mechanical consistency given to the player. You just have a big thing, some random jargon barking in your ear, and nothing makes any sense.

I don't think I've seen any developer struggle so hard to make a simple boss battle, and it's increasingly clear that DE either needs to hire people who know what they're doing, even temporarily, so they can learn how to do it right, or just quit and move on. Every new boss in WF has these problems. This is not a problem for other games. 

 

I seriously don't think I've ever played a game with bosses as bad as the Eidolons or Exploiter Orb. Maybe the original Unreal, but that's about it. And you know what? There hasn't been a single scrap of effort put into making the Eidolon fights not suck. There won't be any put into Exploiter Orb or any other big boss. There's no drive to make bosses not be S#&$e, obviously. So, instead of S#&$e bosses no one likes, howabout don't do that thing anymore pls

 

No one should have to read a wiki just to kill one enemy

Edited March 15, 2019 by NezuHimeSama

[NezuHimeSama]

I've beaten this boss and I still don't know how damaging it works in the final section. Despite being at it for over a half hour, apparently.

This is not good design. This is not fun. It's just a collosal mess.

[Test-995]

1 hour ago, NekroArts said:

Honestly these problems felt more like "since it's your first time running it, it's guarantee you'll have problems with it because of not knowing than it is poorly explained", but after running a few more times it becomes more obvious that we're given clear information. My first time experience with this I was wondering around on where to start the first, after triggering Zuud's dialogue about the Thermia, it was clear that what I needed to do was in that small area.

A lot of the feedback were mostly either "still need to do this" and "on to the next thing" through visual changes, such as the melting of the ice on the vents and new behaviors, and triggered-dialogue after a successful action.

I expected the run to be long since this was new, which means understanding the mechanics and experimenting what needs to be done, but after a few runs these problems just fades away.

But eidolons are changed to much much more "first time friendly" now, so exploiter should explain those things as well.

[NekroArts]

1 hour ago, Test-995 said:

But eidolons are changed to much much more "first time friendly" now, so exploiter should explain those things as well.

And they did, dialogues and visual changes in the fight gave clear indications of making progress or not. The only 2 thing that was vague was finding the spot to start it the fight and where to locate the canister deployers. With how condense the space is it wasn't that hard to find where they are and since those spots are static all you need is to remember the spots. I would agree to add markers to the canisters locations if the spot they spawn on was always random like Raptors of Europa, where the power cells can drop on any spot.

[bluejello]

a bit more explanation of why I would want to shoot the canisters and more feedback when you hit the orb with a canister on the final phase is needed, as it does not seem to change anything.  Otherwise the fight itself felt good to me.  I picked up what I needed to do the first time well enough, besides needing to be told how to trigger the fight.  no mark, and no indicator that there was a intractable there.(If there was a glowing screen, or something to draw the eye to it would help)

[Fishyflakes]

Needed to do it about 3 times to completely get the flow of the battle. With friends of course!

[Lost_Cartographer]

My beef is primarily with the first phase.  Second phase is set up that you have to let it beat you.  First phase is a nightmare of ridiculous damage from a weapon that has homing rounds but you're required to throw slowly lobbed canisters that seem to need a direct hit to do anything to something that does a fair bit of moving around, and then piling in enough shots to destroy the exposed vent before it ices back over.  Phase one is conceptually awesome, but executed horribly.  It's so much harder than phase two that it very much feels like two different people tuned these fights.

Edited March 16, 2019 by Lost_Cartographer