Tusk Thumper Feedback

[MirageKnight]

First off, the Thumpers are an interesting and odd visual design that suits the Grineer aesthetic. They're ugly as Hek...but that's to be expected for a Grineer unit!

They have reasonable weapons / damage for something their size. Spitting out drones to call in reinforcements is a nice touch and it makes sense. Popping out of the ground is a nice ambush tactic. That they're also affected to some extent by some CC abilities is also a good thing.

That out of the way, Thumpers are arguably NOT difficult / "hard" units to fight. They're not even particularly challenging. However, they do use / employ mechanics that arguably make little sense for the type and size of unit that they are, which in turn makes them arguably annoying and boring to deal with.

Health mechanic:

First...the knees are the ONLY weak-point? We're able to shoot down those big Grineer gunships with some effort and tear up Raknoids, but the Thumper's main body is impervious to even Arch-guns? That strikes me as being arbitrary and inconsistent with other similar size enemies. Also, with all that jumping and running around, shooting out the legs can be really tedious, especially for those players that prefer to run solo.

Speaking of damaging the legs...shouldn't damaging the legs also impair a Thumper's mobility? Especially its ability to jump?

We can only temporarily disable its guns. What, does it have spares inside there somewhere?

Movement:

Honestly something that bulky and with really short legs shouldn't be able to hop around like a flea. Short power / thruster assisted hops? Fine. However, what we have is just silly and annoying. Having to chase it around as it makes massive leaps all over the place makes a Thumper really irritating.

In addition, it should arguably move much more slowly - especially with those stubby legs. There arguably comes a point when suspension of disbelief should be waived and this is one of those instances.

Now with all that being said, I'd like to offer some constructive suggestions for improving Tusk Thumpers so that they make a bit more sense and reward more tactical gameplay while keeping them tough.

Health:

• Allow us to do damage to the main body. Change its Health type from Cloned Flesh (seriously?) to Robotic. Keep Alloy armor. It's an armored vehicle, not a giant bug with guns and armor strapped to it  (FIxed / changed in a recent update). Perhaps add a weak-point to the main body to allow for extra damage to the main body. NOTE: Only depleting the health of the main body will destroy it. I'm not advocating a reduction in its ability to tank damage, only changing how we go about damaging it.
• Keep the leg weak-points and make it so that damaging each leg weak-point reduces movement speed and jumping range / height by 25%: Damaging all four legs effectively cripples / immobilizes the Thumper except maybe for that big drill / disc / plate underneath which it could use to try and bury itself to evade attack.
• Allow us to target and disable the Thumper's disc.
• Allow us to outright destroy its guns. When its guns are destroyed and in addition to its "thump" attack, it should try to squash us with a jump attack if its legs are still functional and jump height permits it.

Movement:

The Thumper looks like a walking tank, so it really should move like one.

• Reduce max jump range and height by 75%.
• Reduce running speed by at least 50%.
• Remove ability to charge at targets.

Miscellaneous:

• Add Salvage and Circuits to the drop table as guaranteed resource drops: This is a mechanical walker. It should leave a decent amount of scrap and salvage behind when it goes boom. The rest of the drop table seems fine and Thumpers drop decent rewards / resources.
• Give Seeker Drones deployed by a Thumper a chance of calling in another Thumper along with other reinforcements.
• When critically damaged, immobilized, and de-weaponed, give the Thumper a chance of spawning two Grineer armed with Vipers, representing the crew bailing out of their stricken machine.
   

Mods, feel free to move this topic to a more suitable location. I only stuck this in General as the Feedback section is arguably missing a section devoted specifically to Enemies.

Edited April 14, 2019 by MirageKnight

[Varzy]

The whole point of the enemy is it's a goofy tank that jumps around. You're suggesting the devs remove the mobility that it was built around. Sorry, but I think that's a bad suggestion.

[taiiat]

i'd be for making the Thumpers have more effective Body Part Multipliers. (Enemies with more complex and interesting Body Parts is better than not)

rather than dealing Object Health Damage to the Weapons to break them temporarily, having Damaging them also deal some actual Damage to the Thumper? but still be an avenue to temporarily disable the Weapons. increase the Health of those Weapons, and give it normal Health Types rather than Object, too.

 

for Mobility i think it's a bit silly how fast they can turn, so that sometimes you can spend most of the time fighting trying to out turn it so you can hit the Leg while it constantly turns the Leg away from you.... but the rest of their Mobility, it's silly but that seems to be the point so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited April 7, 2019 by taiiat

[DiabolusUrsus]

Agreed; I really can't get behind an enemy designed exclusively to be silly.

It's really jarring to have a big heavily-armored enemy vehicle be more agile than the frickin melee shock troops. Fighting Thumpers feels like they charge/hop more often than they shoot, and that's just annoying. If the whole point of them is to be silly, they're doing a bad job of it - not once was I compelled to laugh, nor did I ever feel amused. It's just another enemy with arbitrary hoops to jump through because reasons.

Maybe if you're super-tired or a bit drunk they could elicit a laugh, but it's hard to imagine a situation where I would see them in action and think "this is great."

The drops are convenient, but that's just about the only good thing I have to say about them gameplay-wise.

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

We haven't seen it in action on consoles just yet, but from what I've seen it looks fun..but,...I feel DE is missing a opportunity with their game and monsters inherit to their story lore and especially vets and players in general wanting some sort of challenge...

I love the power fantasy..but, I also love the chase...and seeing the Tusk going aggro and chasing the player all over the map made me sit up a little because it's been awhile since we met an giant enemy that was that aggressive...I've been wanting to run into something that makes even a six year vet go.."We might want to go around this thing."

I've been catching Generation Zero game play..and It needs work..but when a Tank shows up you feel some weight of making a decision in engaging it...So I would say I hope DE puts in more giant monsters..but we need tile sets that allow them to move about and they need that Left 4 Dead dread of hearing the breathing of a tank just around the corner...

Cat and Mouse Game play can be a lot of fun when done right...So more variation on the Tusks please and make some them terrifying...

Edited April 7, 2019 by (PS4)FriendSharkey

[MirageKnight]

48 minutes ago, Varzy said:

The whole point of the enemy is it's a goofy tank that jumps around. You're suggesting the devs remove the mobility that it was built around. Sorry, but I think that's a bad suggestion.

So it's a bad suggestion to offer ideas to make an enemy that's more credible, serious and engaging to players?

If the devs really did intend to have a goofy tank that jumps around, amongst other cringe-worthy things they've been adding in, then I think it's safe to say that we can stop taking them seriously. WF is arguably intended to be a serious game with a serious tone and atmosphere. if DE wants us to take their supposedly serious game seriously, they need to be serious about their game. 

That said, I honestly don't care if the devs designed and intended the Thumper to be "a goofy tank that jumps around" like a damn flea. 

My point is that the devs gave us a bad design that should be reworked into something that makes sense and fits the serious atmosphere of the game.

If a design is shown to be bad or lacking, it should be fixed so that it's good.

Or are you opposed to reworks of outdated Warframes and their abilities as well? 

25 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

If the whole point of them is to be silly, they're doing a bad job of it - not once was I compelled to laugh, nor did I ever feel amused. It's just another enemy with arbitrary hoops to jump through because reasons.

Pretty much.

 

 

 

[Rogunz]

2 hours ago, Varzy said:

The whole point of the enemy is it's a goofy tank that jumps around. You're suggesting the devs remove the mobility that it was built around. Sorry, but I think that's a bad suggestion.

They need to let us do something to stop it from flying all over the place and spinning on the spot.

 

You pretty much have to wait for it to decide to start thumping to hit the last leg that's behind it if you are fighting it solo.

[Tennyshoe]

Yep, I agree. It was amusing the first couple of times I fought it... now I just ignore it because it's more annoying than anything and the drops are not really worth going for when there are other ways of getting everything it drops. It shows up wayyyy too often imo for it to be scary or fun, it's just irritating.

[DiabolusUrsus]

1 hour ago, Tennyshoe said:

Yep, I agree. It was amusing the first couple of times I fought it... now I just ignore it because it's more annoying than anything 

This hits the damn nail on the head. Even if a joke is funny the first time around, no joke stays funny when told too many times.

Then it just gets annoying.

[Steel_Rook]

16 hours ago, Varzy said:

The whole point of the enemy is it's a goofy tank that jumps around. You're suggesting the devs remove the mobility that it was built around. Sorry, but I think that's a bad suggestion.

Then that's a bad design, simple as that. Highly mobile gimmick bosses with small weak points are not fun to fight. One would have thought that trying to nail the Exploiter in the frozen vents with wonky throwing mechanics would have taught DE that much. While Warframe has a decidedly weird art direction, having things make a basic amount of sense is still a good thing.

[roishakalaka]

The only challenging part of the fight is actually finding the Thumper.

The fact that we need to pick up a high rank bounty every time and go fly around the plains in archwing until one spawn, is atrociously boring.

The fight in itself isn't that bad, even on solo play.

The other problem is the Korrudo BP painfully low drop rate, and that the fist Thumper can't drop it. I got 9 rare set mods and still no BP.

 

Edited April 7, 2019 by roishakalaka

[Teridax68]

As far as enemy design goes, Tusk Thumpers I'd say are among the more fun designs, but I agree that their current design gets old fast. I get that it's difficult to make anything in Warframe challenging with just a normal health bar, because normal health bars just get melted with our egregiously high damage, but continually designing enemies with invincibility, damage caps, and the like makes for binary and reductive gameplay. In the case of Thumpers, these weak points are made more annoying by the enemy's constant, rapid movement, which does not feel all that fitting for something so large. In groups it's bearable because there's usually someone on the Thumper's vulnerable side, but in solo play, Bulls and Domas are a slog, as they not only have a ton of health, but constantly move their weak spots out of the player's way (and do so quickly enough that one cannot consistently get much shots in even with our own movement). Making Thumpers just a little less hypermobile would help a lot, and in some ideal future these enemies should be allowed to be more consistently damaged, and just have their knees act as multipliers, rather than be given the immune-to-everything-but-X treatment.

[0_The_F00l]

*sees everyone complaining about it being too fast to aim at weak points, remembers that I used a night Equinox with the pacify augment, no wonder it felt too easy for me, hope they don't make it immune now*

[Reifnir]

On 2019-04-07 at 6:47 AM, MirageKnight said:

Having to chase it around as it makes massive leaps all over the place makes a Thumper really irritating.

Temporal Blast (Zenurik school) is your friend, then. It's like having a pocket Slow Nova, and hardly anything in Warframe is immune to Temporal Blast. 

[MisterYurei]

I’m assuming you’re suggesting making the fight easier, in which case, why would you do that in the first place for a field boss that can give you every resource on the Plains like the Exploiter Orb does. That would not only make the Plains have a meltdown in my opinion, but I don’t want a boss where players can easily obtain Seram Beetle Shells by killing some trash heap of a tank. It’s just simply stupid.

[tychondus]

3 hours ago, Reifnir said:

Temporal Blast (Zenurik school) is your friend, then. It's like having a pocket Slow Nova, and hardly anything in Warframe is immune to Temporal Blast. 

incoming nerf in 3..2..1.

[MirageKnight]

3 hours ago, Reifnir said:

Temporal Blast (Zenurik school) is your friend, then

I don't use Zenurik. Nor do I plan to.

For that matter, nor should I have to to make ONE badly designed enemy bearable.

[MisterYurei]

18 minutes ago, MirageKnight said:

For that matter, nor should I have to to make ONE badly designed enemy bearable.

Three things:

- It’s not an easy fight for a very noticeable reason: Thumpers give resources that would take a long time to farm out, and making it easily accessible to new players is kind of a bad idea, and making the fight easier would mean any player can come along and destroy one with minimal effort.

- Don’t summarize this as DE’s fault by calling it a “badly designed enemy”. Perhaps it’s the complexity of “shoot off shield and blast vent on leg” is too hard for you? If that’s not hard for you to do then I don’t understand the issue, cause Profit Taker is nearly the same way, if not harder. 

- Someone literally just gave you advice on how to make it easier and yet you turn it down? What kind of logic is that? If someone gave me advice I’d sure as hell use it, not turn it down cause I “don’t want to use Zenurik”.

[MisterYurei]

Unless you want to make everything as easy as a one shot pop like Sergeant, but nobody likes and/or wants that. 

[Axres]

These things, like the Wolf of Saturn Six are nothing but bullet sponges, and making an enemy a bullet sponge is always the lazy way to fake difficulty.  Having to try and hit their weak points is bad enough when your playing solo, but 2 archguns worth of ammo, half an opticor vandal and my catchmoon kitgun is way too much ammo spent (only time I actually counted just how much I spent).  A level 40ish mob shouldn't be taking this much ammo to bring down.  I can't even say that a large amount of damage is needed to kill because all they did was give it stupidly high damage reduction/cap, just like the Wolf.  If this is where the devs are going to try to add difficulty then I'll be less interested in anything else they bring to the table as all these fights do is bring a fast-paced looter-shooter to a grinding halt as you slowly chip away at their health waiting for a weak spot.  Also, why can this thing damage limbo when he uses his shift (roll) to go into the void?  I'm not in your plane of reality, I get him not being affected by warframe abilities (not really, but that is a topic for another day), but he shouldn't be able to charge and kill me (his ranged attacks don't do damage).  Not to mention he perfectly tracks Ivara if he detected her once he will constantly face her without attacking.  Dargyns will also track Ivara if they detect her once and will snipe her even if you have moved a considerable distance without firing any weapon or animal call, tested this a bit while getting the new floofs.  As far as people complaining about resources, I mean unless you ignored the plains or are new your going to have probably nothing that you need here and fish bait is easier to deal with now.  Only reason I am even dealing with this abomination is for the mastery fodder weapon (might be good, I haven't used it yet so can't say).  Just like with the second orb mother fight, here have a bunch of resources that you already farmed and have no current use for unless they add more content or you want to remake kitguns/moas.  Maybe if they hadn't changed arcanes the resources would have mattered, but since you don't have to craft them anymore you don't need nearly as much resources as you did before.

Things I would like to see:

1 - Enemy doesn't constantly face you, it has more than enough legs to move in any direction without having a front facing which would then make it possible to shoot the rear weak points more than just when it does the little knock back slam attack, make its guns immune to damage and it fires whatever weapon happens to be facing an enemy, including targeting all tenno near it, not just focusing one.  Make it feel more like a weapon platform.

2 - Either lower the enemies HP or damage reduction, preferable the damage reduction as a lot of guns aren't worth using as I have tried a few.  Another solution is to have a gated HP, make the body take damage at a capped rate (honestly current damage rate would work since you can fire anywhere), at 10% HP the machine overloads and weak points show while the main body goes into lock-down (immunity to all damage), let the players damage the weak point as normal uncapped/reduced damage.  You can either have it as a timed event so that squads can easily kill by each attacking a different weak spot or have it a 1 per phase.  After which the machine resets to 100% and you repeat with the below bullet point being taken into consideration.

3 - Make the guy slowish starting off and as you destroy more and more weak points it moves faster and more sporadic.  Its damage reduction would lessen after a weak spot being destroyed to show that it has sustained damage.  Have electricity discharge off of it at nearby tenno (we are metal after all), coolant leaks being left on the ground slowing frames, bursts of flame erupting from random directions with knock back.  Make it feel like you are actually damaging it and in response it is focusing more on killing you than its own survivability aka ignoring safety limitations on movement and over firing the guns (more lore friendly way to put it).

Maybe this is more than the devs want to deal with, but making a fight difficult and making it take forever are not the same, even though so many game devs fall into this trap. Which is also why most games with a difficulty option are often terrible as they just increase enemy hp/damage.  As much as I love the game, Witcher 3 easily falls into this, the big enemies have large health pools and high damage on the highest difficulty, but I almost fell asleep dealing with their large health pool as the threat they presented was pretty much non-existent since the mechanics were so easy to avoid, swarms were more threatening since you could lose track of a guy or two if you weren't careful.

Edit - easiest way to fight them that I have found outside of the above mentioned Zenurik school, is using an operator amp.  My main amp (the only one I've tested) is a Lega Prism, Certus Brace, Shraksun Scaffold with Virtous Strike arcane.  Much like the above mentioned Wolf, operator seems to be the best way to fight these, not sure if that was intended or not, but if so it would make a lot more sense.

Edited April 8, 2019 by Axres
Added info at bottom

[DiabolusUrsus]

2 hours ago, MisterYurei said:

Three things:

- It’s not an easy fight for a very noticeable reason: Thumpers give resources that would take a long time to farm out, and making it easily accessible to new players is kind of a bad idea, and making the fight easier would mean any player can come along and destroy one with minimal effort.

Bollocks. Fighting Thumpers is not "difficult" by any means. Only artificially drawn-out by DPS caps and frustratingly spastic pathing.

2 hours ago, MisterYurei said:

- Don’t summarize this as DE’s fault by calling it a “badly designed enemy”. Perhaps it’s the complexity of “shoot off shield and blast vent on leg” is too hard for you? If that’s not hard for you to do then I don’t understand the issue, cause Profit Taker is nearly the same way, if not harder. 

Perhaps you should work on your reading comprehension. A badly designed enemy should certainly be labeled as such, and the complaint is NOT that it is "too hard." That narrative is 100% your fabrication.

If anything, the fight is uninspired and boring; having the Thumper hop around in a ridiculous manner simply pushes it over the edge into "ridiculous and annoying" territory. Nobody is saying they are too hard. They just suck.

And that is 100% DE's fault because, well, DE designed them.

2 hours ago, MisterYurei said:

- Someone literally just gave you advice on how to make it easier and yet you turn it down? What kind of logic is that? If someone gave me advice I’d sure as hell use it, not turn it down cause I “don’t want to use Zenurik”.

Again, the issue is not that Thumpers are particularly challenging. The OP explicitly states that they aren't hard.

They're just not fun. Consequently, "just CC it" isn't particularly helpful advice. Transforming Thumpers from fleas into vegetative practice dummies waiting for death isn't exactly "fun" either.

[MirageKnight]

2 hours ago, MisterYurei said:

Unless you want to make everything as easy as a one shot pop like Sergeant, but nobody likes and/or wants that. 

And that concludes your Strawman fallacy. That said, your argument has been automatically invalidated. Your presumptuous attitude and condescending tone didn't help either. On that note...

2 hours ago, MisterYurei said:

Perhaps it’s the complexity of “shoot off shield and blast vent on leg” is too hard for you

I'm an MR 16 with 5+ years of gameplay under my belt. Ditch the attitude. Also...

On 2019-04-06 at 11:47 PM, MirageKnight said:

Thumpers are arguably NOT difficult / "hard" units to fight.

I said that. Argument refuted.

2 hours ago, MisterYurei said:

not turn it down cause I “don’t want to use Zenurik”.

I don't use Zenurik because the bulk of Unairu is far more useful for my overall needs. Argument refuted.

2 hours ago, MisterYurei said:

Don’t summarize this as DE’s fault by calling it a “badly designed enemy”.

Don't tell me what to do or how to think. I see a badly thought out idea, I'm going to call it exactly what it is.

This statement also reeks of white knighting. You don't like people offering criticism to help make a feature of a game better? Then perhaps you shouldn't be hanging out in the Feedback section.

2 hours ago, MisterYurei said:

cause Profit Taker is nearly the same way, if not harder. 

That's also a bad enemy design. Thanks for the reminder.

[MJ12]

On 2019-04-06 at 7:11 PM, MirageKnight said:

So it's a bad suggestion to offer ideas to make an enemy that's more credible, serious and engaging to players?

If the devs really did intend to have a goofy tank that jumps around, amongst other cringe-worthy things they've been adding in, then I think it's safe to say that we can stop taking them seriously. WF is arguably intended to be a serious game with a serious tone and atmosphere. if DE wants us to take their supposedly serious game seriously, they need to be serious about their game. 

That said, I honestly don't care if the devs designed and intended the Thumper to be "a goofy tank that jumps around" like a damn flea. 

My point is that the devs gave us a bad design that should be reworked into something that makes sense and fits the serious atmosphere of the game.

If a design is shown to be bad or lacking, it should be fixed so that it's good.

Or are you opposed to reworks of outdated Warframes and their abilities as well? 

Ghost in the Shell is a serious anime with a serious tone and atmosphere.

It heavily features "a goofy tank that jumps around like a damn flea" in the original movie, and multiple episodes of the original anime.

Incredibly agile armored vehicles are entirely in-theme for a game like Warframe.

[Launcelotko]

There are only two problems with Thumpers, in fact:

1). The logic of spawns.
2). Absolutely irresponsible percentage of the drop a new "to_the_rank" weapon.

Edited April 8, 2019 by Launcelotko

[DiabolusUrsus]

43 minutes ago, MJ12 said:

Ghost in the Shell is a serious anime with a serious tone and atmosphere.

It heavily features "a goofy tank that jumps around like a damn flea" in the original movie, and multiple episodes of the original anime.

Incredibly agile armored vehicles are entirely in-theme for a game like Warframe.

Except, as an anime, it has no need to consider the gameplay implications of said behavior. I'm also going to hazard a guess that the presentation is done at least marginally more convincingly; thumpers just look plain bad while jumping around.

It's like someone moving them like a chess piece.