Why is Natural Talent even a thing?

[Teridax68]

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

If your toe is infected, you do not amputate the whole foot. The main issue is general balance, or chaos it embodies.

And when someone gets sick, you don't want to just make them permanently a little less sick, you want to cure them completely. Two can play the analogy game. As already explained, the issue I think is fundamental to animation locks, not merely incidental to particularly long durations.

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

From our last clash on the armor topic, I can see you are in favor of removing troublesome mechanics if they are not working. My stance is the opposite, I would rather not remove alreay established features, at least not without a total overhaul, if there is a possibility they can work.

This presumes there is a possibility the mechanic might work, or otherwise contribute something of value in its current state. How would animation locks as a mechanic fit this bill?

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Why am I against removing? Because:

• you eliminate one option from the get-go

More gameplay =/= more options =/= more valid options. Just because something exists in the game does not mean it is inherently valuable, as was the case for all the mechanics and systems that indeed got removed from Warframe. Parkour 1.0 certainly presented options (and in fact its wall-running may very well have been one to keep), but in the end, overhauling it and removing stamina was for the better.

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

• it will be more difficult to re-intruduced the same feature later on, if necessary

I disagree. The more you let a problematic feature fester within a game, the more it feeds into design debt. The better way to go about things in this respect is to take the problematic thing out, and if need be reapply it with a completely fresh perspective. This is why, for example, it's better in IT to redo a creaky application suite from scratch, rather than simply try to slap on another coat of paint onto your 30-year old system or whatever, and accumulate even more tech/design debt.

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

• it streamlines to much

Define "too much". What does it even mean to streamline too much?

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

• I believe flaws are just as integral as strenghts, and the combination of both help to create a more compelling characteristic

How does this make sense? Why is it good for a game to have bad design? This I find is a particularly wishy-washy argument that ultimately says nothing.

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

• in this particular case, you argue for one-way road to insta abilities. Where is reasonable to stop, if it should not get there? Why should we stop at all? I demand no cast or reload animations, as it will save development costs on animations; greatly increase game flow and speed; remove band-aids or inconveniences; balance is already busted, no damage here.

I mean... why not? Again, I think reload times are a separate matter entirely, as explained above already (and if you want to continue including that, you'd better respond to the point made to you first). When it comes to casting animations, though, the problems with our casting visibly do not stem from our casting animations, they stem from both an antiquated ability design and a busted Energy economy that combine to let us godmode our way through content, regardless of how instant our casts are or not. If we want to balance our abilities, we should perhaps make them less abusive by design, and instead try to inject legitimate gameplay and interaction into them. With that in mind, I think it could certainly be perfectly okay to have abilities without animation locks, or even Energy costs if the design were good enough.

[ShortCat]

4 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

How does this make sense? Why is it good for a game to have bad design? This I find is a particularly wishy-washy argument that ultimately says nothing.

Not even remotely what I said. It is absolutely impossible to continue this discussion, if you do not understand this one line.

 

[Teridax68]

49 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Not even remotely what I said. It is absolutely impossible to continue this discussion, if you do not understand this one line.

Then what is it that you said, then? To be clear, this is the problem argument:

1 hour ago, ShortCat said:

I believe flaws are just as integral as strenghts, and the combination of both help to create a more compelling characteristic

The way I read this was that you believed that a game needed flaws in addition to good design in order to somehow be more fleshed out, a notion I find abhorrent. If, by contrast, what you were trying to say is that it is important for our in-game avatars to have defined weaknesses in addition to strengths, I'd say that's debatable in the context of Warframe, but at least worthy of some discussion.

Edited April 8, 2019 by Teridax68

[Xaxma]

12 hours ago, ShortCat said:

Ability cast time serves as an addition lever in balance, and should be viewed in case by case scenario. In contrary to general stats like power strenght or duration, individual cast times allow more precise tuning of an ability, without affecting the whole kit. As such, NT has a place in the game. Furthermore, cast time is a more abstract metric and is perceived differently by each player. You may find them inconvenient, which is true and intended; others found a way to play with or around it. As such it creates a certain skill ceiling or how a player deals with a cituation. The arguments you are using against NT, show similarities with arguments people use to badmouth utility mods for weapons, like reload speed. Those utility mods exist to eliminate your personal inconveniences and function exactly as intended.

Okay but Titania's 2, Mirage's 4, Nekros' 4, and Limbo's 4 are some of the most horrible offenders and they're not powerful enough to warrant "balancing factor" of long cast animations. I've already went over how DE DOES NOT INTENTIONALLY BALANCE AROUND CAST TIMES about 50 times throughout this thread with specific examples and reasons why for inferring their intent. Can you read stuff before you say dumb things again?

This is not a concept they appropriately use to balance frames.

There are many examples of them defying this principle.

They do not use cast times like other games do to create a "skill ceiling."

It's completely arbitrary.

Stop making this argument, people; it's wrong, it's bad, it's not consistent. None of you sound smart for bringing it up.

Stop it.

Edited April 8, 2019 by Xaxma

[Teridax68]

13 minutes ago, Xaxma said:

DE DOES NOT INTENTIONALLY BALANCE AROUND CAST TIMES 

I second this, and I wish this excuse stopped getting trotted out, because it's a blatant lie that is easily disproven with but a few examples. DE evidently makes cast animations simply based on what looks cool, rather than what feels smooth and functional to play, which is why there are so many warframes with abilities that look cool the first couple times they're used, then become a pain to cast.

More generally, I think there's an issue with a lot of discussions on these forums because a) there's this especially reactionary and uncharacteristically unfriendly climate, perpetuated by a select few individuals who use the space to pick fights and shoot down ideas regardless of value, and b) there is, for lack of a better expression, a culture of bullsh*t, where people feel like they can argue anything and everything under the sun, regardless of whether what they say is true or relevant to the game: this, in turn, is because the forums are filled with so many people who haven't played the game for so long, or seem to forget it the moment they get on here, that it's possible to say outrageous tripe like "DE balances around cast animations" and not get immediately ridiculed by the masses. Simply playing the game for five minutes should be enough to test the near-totality of claims made here, yet on the forums the game itself isn't real, and instead is only a purely subjective, barely perceptible experience that somehow has no supporting media or popular opinion around it. I've seen a lot of discussions sink because of people arguing about some game that has nothing to do with Warframe, all while pretending that Warframe was in fact the game they were talking about. We shouldn't let that sort of rhetoric fly, particularly when it does nothing but stymy potentially valid and interesting discussion or feedback.

[NezuHimeSama]

This thread is about attention seeking tbqh. People just want to start trouble.

[Mach25]

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

...

More generally, I think there's an issue with a lot of discussions on these forums because a) there's this especially reactionary and uncharacteristically unfriendly climate, perpetuated by a select few individuals who use the space to pick fights and shoot down ideas regardless of value, and b) there is, for lack of a better expression, a culture of bullsh*t, where people feel like they can argue anything and everything under the sun, regardless of whether what they say is true or relevant to the game: this, in turn, is because the forums are filled with so many people who haven't played the game for so long, or seem to forget it the moment they get on here, that it's possible to say outrageous tripe like "DE balances around cast animations" and not get immediately ridiculed by the masses. Simply playing the game for five minutes should be enough to test the near-totality of claims made here, yet on the forums the game itself isn't real, and instead is only a purely subjective, barely perceptible experience that somehow has no supporting media or popular opinion around it. I've seen a lot of discussions sink because of people arguing about some game that has nothing to do with Warframe, all while pretending that Warframe was in fact the game they were talking about. We shouldn't let that sort of rhetoric fly, particularly when it does nothing but stymy potentially valid and interesting discussion or feedback.

This is exactly why I do not waste my time with these "forums" posting topics or bothering getting into discussions with its users in general. I say what I have to say on a subject and move on. Because of the folly spoken of here, the "JoeSixxersQuickPack Quoted You" notification is completely ignored and serves no purpose for me (unless I'm quoted by a select few).

Speaking on topic, I agree. There are various mods that should not be mods at all, but should be innate, with natural talent being one of them. Long casting animations and locks can be lethal at higher levels still within the balancing range of 1-100 (provided my information is correct) depending on your suit and the mods you have tacked on. This is a holdover from the Dark Sector days, when you were fighting limited enemies. However, with the redesigning of the game into a horde looter-shooter, long locks and Natural Talent need to be removed.

Whatever feedback I propose, it's because I am fighting in this game at high levels, where the flaws shine ever brighter and are no longer concealed through good fortune but you must make your own.

I think it would do the folks over there, whoever designs and dispatches mods, to sit down, quiet yourself someplace alone and ask yourself these questions, preferably while you're hiking.

1. What is my purpose for making this mod? What is my goal?

2. How will it balance in the upper limits of the game? Why have I chosen these stats?

3. How is this helping me be a ninja? Is this a shortcoming that a mod will make up for? Why is that shortcoming there?

Fourth and finally, after taking all of these things into consideration, ask yourself the most important question of all: The answers to these questions - are they conflicting with my overarching vision for the game?

After you've done this, let your brain digest this information.

What, exactly, is your vision? Define it. Write it down in simple terms defining the essence of your game in big letters on a few different sticky notes on your cubicle walls, if necessary. Keep the concepts simple. Compare what you've gotten from these answers with what your key concepts are.

You might think this a bit silly, but it's not. After you write the information gathered from your questions down, go outside and do something else. Yes, do something else. As the body digests food on its own, so does the mind. You have stuffed your mind with information, now you must let it "digest" what's been given to it and make it part of your intellectual being.

Then, come back and do the process again. I was taught to read a literary work several different times by which I may be able to ascertain the various meanings of each passage and gain a greater picture of the whole. By repetition we humans learn things - by repetition you will gain greater clarity on what your conscious mind picks up and what you may truly be trying to create.

These steps taken may not seem to be tremendous at first, but in time, you will come to understand what I mean.

What we see today, the mind will make more sense of tomorrow.

Edited April 9, 2019 by Mach25

[(PSN)Tomplexthis]

On 2019-04-06 at 2:22 PM, Xaxma said:

It's actually a really pointless concept for a mod; the epitome of "bandaid mods" which exist to accommodate for thoughtless design. 

In theory, it would be a good mod if cast times for certain abilities would directly translate into big gains or huge damage, thereby directly translating into damage or gain boosts effectively, but many abilities don't function around this concept. Many frames seem to suffer from long cast times for what is arguably arbitrary reasons, whose abilities don't seem to offer any of this concept's promises.

I would suggest a removal of the mod and then going back and adjusting some of the problem abilities. 

no. i wish natural talent was an exilus mod that had 4 variants of it, a dual mod

+casting speed and (15% str, 15% eff, 15% range, or 15% duration)

4 natural talent variants, that we could pick and choose and equip as an exilus

i love the mod, and it covers that super slow animation issue a ton of warframe powers have

maybe add 4 new drift rooms to Lua, or the Void to get them

Edited April 9, 2019 by (PS4)Tomplexthis

[Xaxma]

22 hours ago, (PS4)Tomplexthis said:

no. i wish natural talent was an exilus mod that had 4 variants of it, a dual mod

+casting speed and (15% str, 15% eff, 15% range, or 15% duration)

4 natural talent variants, that we could pick and choose and equip as an exilus

i love the mod, and it covers that super slow animation issue a ton of warframe powers have

maybe add 4 new drift rooms to Lua, or the Void to get them

Adding 4 more bandaids won't cover up the fact you have one underneath. 

"Oh, your duct taped car door is starting to hang off the hinge? Just put more duct tape on!" is basically what you're saying. 

I'm not opposed to more drift rooms if it means more content but we can't keep encouraging this design. 

[AugmentedJustice]

Agreed.

I want to get from point a to b in the fastest way possible, and in this context, cast my sh*t as fast as possible, and the fact that I have to waste up a slot for natural talent on harrow etc, to do that, irks me a lot. We don't even have the option to put it in the exilus slot. Natural talent feels like it merely exists in spite of unnecessary slow ability casting times for some frames that could easily be made faster. I'm not against removing some mods from the game at all by the way(sue me). +15% status chance mod.....I mean does anyone use that, come on, let's hear an argument for keeping this mod....

 

I also don't even think 50% is enough sometimes. Don't even get me started with reload speed mods. Yup, i'd remove them to (Sue me again) and make all weapons have a reload speed that doesn't exceed 2.5 seconds. I'm being generous here, and are there really people out there who enjoy spending 3 seconds reloading a weapon? I'm guessing these people were against Uni vac as well? I don't know about those people but I like to spend more time shooting than I do reloading. Notice 99% of games that have guns etc, reload times are SUPER QUICK. Like weapon swapping, which is another thing that should be INSTANT, and not clunky and stuck in 2012.

In a game about killing things as fast as possible, there are still so many aspects about this game, that are still stuck 3-4 years in the past and haven't yet caught up with the current warfame experience. And just because you remove some mods from the game, doesn't automatically mean "oh why not get rid of the mod system completely" no, because a lot of mods work. and when they work they just work. ...but things like natural talent, are a constant reminder of a mod that simply doesn't justify it's existence good enough.

I sometimes feel like DE secretly is proud of their mod collection and how many there are. When in reality over 50% of them are throw away. Quality....not quantity. Once again.....sue me 😉 natural talent....cya later buddy. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.