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1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

 

The game wasn't always a horde shooter and it's becoming more of a big boss anime fighter at this point.

You're arguing how the game is played which varies heavily. I'm arguing how the game is designed.

Players don't use single target instant kills because AoE instant kills work as enemy opposition never came up to match player performance. If it had, you would see more value in those things and how broken their design truly is. You said "This game doesn't revolve around that level of content " where I propose the level range has no meaning. You're basing comparison on the readily available level range. What I'm saying is we have the tools to deal with the highest level enemies this game can produce.  Roll credits.

DE is just hiding this fact through massive time sinks. If we could jump to lvl 9,999 right away it would be easy to convict them of such poor design. Instead they've resorted to cheating their own rule book with immunity because the game's core mechanics no longer do their job.

I'm aware. 

And not really, the general scope of play isn't hard to make out, and multi hour endless runs aren't a large part of it. It's indicative enough in DE's handling of balance how they view the design of this game, and that they balance very little to the direction of infinite scaling speaks volumes. 

Perhaps, but that isn't the case right now, so it doesn't matter. Hypothetical future balances aren't much more than that, hypothetical, they may or may not come to fruition, they definitely haven't yet. Being able to break something that doesn't really exist doesn't matter is my point. 

I don't think DE needs us to convince them how poor their games balance is, they're well aware of it, and have acknowledged they've been kicking that proverbial can down the road for quite the while now out of concern for how the community would respond the kind of change needed to fix it. It isn't ignorance that has let this game fall apart, it's hesitance. 

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30 minutes ago, Cubewano said:

I'm aware. 

And not really, the general scope of play isn't hard to make out, and multi hour endless runs aren't a large part of it. It's indicative enough in DE's handling of balance how they view the design of this game, and that they balance very little to the direction of infinite scaling speaks volumes. 

Perhaps, but that isn't the case right now, so it doesn't matter. Hypothetical future balances aren't much more than that, hypothetical, they may or may not come to fruition, they definitely haven't yet. Being able to break something that doesn't really exist doesn't matter is my point. 

I don't think DE needs us to convince them how poor their games balance is, they're well aware of it, and have acknowledged they've been kicking that proverbial can down the road for quite the while now out of concern for how the community would respond the kind of change needed to fix it. It isn't ignorance that has let this game fall apart, it's hesitance. 

 

Buildings made with poor foundations are soon to crumble. DE's attempts of immunity are the onset of an inevitable change....  or fall.

I would say it's more neglect than hesitance. DE doesn't fix things until they become a problem instead of preventing them. Gas + Stealth is an example. It was in the game for years yet became a problem once Naramon - Shadow Step was common place. Chroma is another one that DE even admitted avoiding, not because it was coded wrong, not because it was OP but because it had become popular and stood in the way of a new design. Stealth farming, Banshee's Quake augment, the list goes on.

If DE were truly hesitant at backlash from the community they would temper these things before they fly out of control or become popular enough said backlash is self fulfilling. The Core mechanics of the game itself fall under that condition. 5 years ago players told DE something was wrong with enemy scaling. Nothing has changed and as a result we have frames with 5k eHP and ones with 2.2 million. That's a serious problem that spreads through all parts of the game regardless of level range which is the point I've been trying to make. Core flaws in concept and mechanics do the most damage and quickly become the hardest to fix regardless how much you want to ignore them.

Take the AoE version of CL Dagger, aka Octavia and it's not hard to see why X Damage is a bad idea and can easily blow up.

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1 minute ago, Xzorn said:

 

Buildings made with poor foundations are soon to crumble. DE's attempts of immunity are the onset of an inevitable change....  or fall.

I would say it's more neglect than hesitance. DE doesn't fix things until they become a problem instead of preventing them. Gas + Stealth is an example. It was in the game for years yet became a problem once Naramon - Shadow Step was common place. Chroma is another one that DE even admitted avoiding, not because it was coded wrong, not because it was OP but because it had become popular and stood in the way of a new design. Stealth farming, Banshee's Quake augment, the list goes on.

If DE were truly hesitant at backlash from the community they would temper these things before they fly out of control or become popular enough said backlash is self fulfilling. The Core mechanics of the game itself fall under that condition. 5 years ago players told DE something was wrong with enemy scaling. Nothing has changed and as a result we have frames with 5k eHP and ones with 2.2 million. That's a serious problem that spreads through all parts of the game regardless of level range which is the point I've been trying to make. Core flaws in concept and mechanics do the most damage and quickly become the hardest to fix regardless how much you want to ignore them.

Take the AoE version of CL Dagger, aka Octavia and it's not hard to see why X Damage is a bad idea and can easily blow up.

The foundation is fine, they've just been making a big mess of everything they add to it. 

Semantics, problems are inevitable in all things human made, how quick DE addresses them is based on the merits versus losses of said adjustments and in turn if the merit doesn't seem to stack up enough to the losses it causes hesitance. Dip it too far to one side and it can motivate one out of hesitance. DE hesitates to do things until eventually it pours over and forces itself, or a an opportunity opens that can allow them to ease in their solution with less fanfare. It's a problem in its own all the same, and makes it only harder on them going forward, but it is what it is. 

And while yes DE just never letting imbalance happen would be ideal, that's also absurd and not at all realistic, games in far better situations mechanically and fiscally cannot achieve such feats, much less a game with this many systems and competing mechanics/abilities/weapons. 

I'd also label saryn/volt/mesa and the like the aoe version of cl dagger at the moment, as they instantly clear opposition in a high range for near all content we experience. Octavia requires a ramp up, usually one that isn't easily achievable in typical content because of the aforementioned frames killing everything before she has the opportunity. That said I have no idea what you mean when keep bringing up this x damage sentiment, are you saying all damage abilities are a problem? 

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4 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

The first part I agree with, because Ember's 1 is just so terrible, and Frost's 1 and Volt's 1 are only good for telling an enemy to shut up while you finish reloading. The last part, let me let you in on a secret: that's not unique to Khora. Many frame abilities can damage Nullie drones, and many more can pop Nullie bubbles. Propperly spaced, a Valkyr Hysteria slide attack will take Nullie bubbles down nicely. Khora is only unique in that she can aim it better

Exactly! She can aim it better. That matters a lot with neutralisation of those pesky nullies.

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1 hour ago, Cubewano said:

The foundation is fine, they've just been making a big mess of everything they add to it. 

Semantics, problems are inevitable in all things human made, how quick DE addresses them is based on the merits versus losses of said adjustments and in turn if the merit doesn't seem to stack up enough to the losses it causes hesitance. Dip it too far to one side and it can motivate one out of hesitance. DE hesitates to do things until eventually it pours over and forces itself, or a an opportunity opens that can allow them to ease in their solution with less fanfare. It's a problem in its own all the same, and makes it only harder on them going forward, but it is what it is. 

And while yes DE just never letting imbalance happen would be ideal, that's also absurd and not at all realistic, games in far better situations mechanically and fiscally cannot achieve such feats, much less a game with this many systems and competing mechanics/abilities/weapons. 

 

Why are you attempting to distort what I say in order to create an opposing argument?

I never said they had to be perfect at catching imbalanced I said they wait years before addressing an issue they already know about which in turn creates the very problem they supposedly attempted to avoid. Simple flaws are not the same as chasm-like holes in your game's foundation which is obviously not fine when DE completely avoids those game mechanics in order to pretend it's fine. These tactics are what's lead the game to become a face tank DPS mess.

Like I said, 2.2 million eHP Solo. Good luck DE. I'm going to go make a sandwich.

 

1 hour ago, Cubewano said:

I'd also label saryn/volt/mesa and the like the aoe version of cl dagger at the moment, as they instantly clear opposition in a high range for near all content we experience. Octavia requires a ramp up, usually one that isn't easily achievable in typical content because of the aforementioned frames killing everything before she has the opportunity. That said I have no idea what you mean when keep bringing up this x damage sentiment, are you saying all damage abilities are a problem? 

 

You keep saying typical content when no such thing actually exists in Warframe. You have rewarding content which is specific to you, the player and then you have non-rewarding content. Typical is simply what the mass see as rewarding not the sum of content.

Think of it from the perspective of a player who owns everything and two of everything good. What is typical content then? When you have more plat than you could ever spend in years of playing this game. What motivates you? Fun is what motivates me. Not loot. Typical content for me is what's fun.

In X Damage I'm referring to the variable X taking the value of a number required to kill the enemy regardless of level, resistances or attacks. X is the value of the enemy's death at all states of the game. X = Dead. Mesa, Saryn and other frames do not function this way. They might be too powerful of "typical content" but they have limits which allows for growth. Octavia scales fully within the game's level limit. She can cause enemies to kill themselves with potent speed until the enemy level stops scaling. There is no room for progress with such a mechanic and it does not belong in RPG-style game because of this.

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On 2019-04-12 at 10:07 AM, Oreades said:

I'd like to imagine Ivara being useful or more I'd love to imagine people letting Ivara Prowl things but it's really hard to imagine people being patient enough to let her prowl anything with the fast paced nature of Warframe. 

It still perplexes me why they nerfed prowl to a single Ivara and then acted like they where doing Ivara a favor and that now she would be accepted into loot groups.... When the only place people would really put up with prowls slow return rate was when the group was four Ivaras slowcrawling a level. lol

I still don't understand what the change was for. IIRC, they changed prowl to work like that in response to, oddly enough, people 4x prowling vomvalysts. Which feels like the most absurd reason to do it. Not really sure how game-breaking that was because, if you did even one terry run, you'd be rolling around in vomvalyst sentient cores, plenty to get first rank of quills, and realistically, that's all people used Ivara for on that initial farm for quills rep before prowl got fixed. For people who didn't want to just immediately jump right into an eidolon hunt to get sentient cores.

I remember formerly seeing groups actively trying to recruit other Ivaras for this type of farm, it was an already extremely rare unicorn to see people actually want an Ivara for a loot farm before the patch fix to prowl. But now you'll never see people recruit for specialized Ivara-only groups, that unicorn is dead now. 

Ivara's been like this for nearly her entire life now though, she lost the ability to prowl sub-bosses/bosses like 3 months after she was first released back in Dec 2015 (Update 18.5 - Prowl will no longer be able to steal from boss-type enemies). It turns out, that includes practically almost all the meaningful types of enemies you'd want to prowl. Can't prowl silver-grove spectres, can't prowl VIP targets like the PoE Aerial Commander or Orb Vallis VIP targets like Vivisect Director, can't prowl any boss, can't prowl tusk thumpers either (I haven't met the bull or doma variant, but I have no doubt in my mind that Ivara most likely can't prowl those either). I think Nekros, and Hydroid can steal from all of those boss/VIP targets however, at least I'm pretty sure. Someone will have to check on Khora to see if she can do VIP targets or not.

There's like 3 niche situations of which I can see Ivara's prowl loot stealing ability being useful.

1. Survival - getting more life support capsules, not for actual materials, but just to keep life support modules afloat. The main staple item of prowl's looting.

2. War Parts farming from sentients on Lua - one of the few enemies which DE didn't code as a boss. Granted, before her prowl fix, this was practically the only enemy where inviting an Ivara to the group actually made sense. Here she could make a meaningful contribution in this specialized type of group (which usually was 3 other Ivaras anyways). Still, she can at least prowl them for 1 extra drop chance at least currently.

3. Saturn six fugitives - the only thing a bit meaningful they drop is 'Target Acquired'.

(Edit forgot this one)

4. Pigment farming - for dojo colours. At least she can help get those.

In general though, I'm doubtful groups actually want to invite/use Ivara for a material looting farm, simply because Ivara steals far too slowly and is considered too squishy and is a bit hard to manage in a group because the Ivara player needs to have situation awareness. Ivara would have to operate actually slightly away from the group, so as not to get caught in accidental crossfire. The other looting frames are fairly tanky in comparison to Ivara so they don't have to worry as much about going down. Though it can be made easier if you have an actual comp that uses a corner room (which if you have a hydroid in your group, is pretty much the best way to make use of hydroid's tentacles in the mat-loot farm).

Prowl pickpocket builds are kind of annoying, I can never find one which I feel is reasonably balanced that doesn't suffer in one area. I've tried to endlessly cobble together a prowl pickpocket build for ages now and ended up with 2 separate prowl pickpocket builds. One of them which I use purely for solo (it's not fast, just barely adequate) and the other is a theoretical one suited for groups (of which I've never tried):

Spoiler

I still actually dislike this build and I'm not sure if I'll ever use it in a group. And I honestly might prefer exchanging infiltrate out for primed flow. Steal time on this build gets to 0.87 seconds and 5.44m of steal range.

o2EXCi0.jpg

But to be honest, I don't think many Ivara mains themselves would even consider tasking Ivara out for material-loot farming. And I can't blame them, it gets difficult for Ivara to keep up without being a hindrance. I think I've given up on the idea of Ivara actually being a worthwhile pick for material-loot farming groups. Ivara will struggle to carve out meaningful contributions in the material-loot group, usually you have the 2 main looters (Nekros, hydroid and now Khora I suppose assuming it all stacks), possibly utility technical support (disarm Loki, Speed-Nova, Larva-Nidus for CC) and possibly a DPS (Mesa, maybe Octavia for toroid farms). Material looting-groups were already tight in choices, Ivara barely registers as a worthwhile choice to bring to these groups, she may not really even have a place in them. But as long as Ivara's prowl pickpocketing still works on getting life support capsules, that's about the most important thing I care about staying and probably the same for many Ivara players. As long as Ivara can do survivals, that's really more important for her. And the other 3 situations that I mentioned for prowl are nice as well.

 

Edited by BlindStalker
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2 hours ago, Xzorn said:

 

Why are you attempting to distort what I say in order to create an opposing argument?

I never said they had to be perfect at catching imbalanced I said they wait years before addressing an issue they already know about which in turn creates the very problem they supposedly attempted to avoid. Simple flaws are not the same as chasm-like holes in your game's foundation which is obviously not fine when DE completely avoids those game mechanics in order to pretend it's fine. These tactics are what's lead the game to become a face tank DPS mess.

Like I said, 2.2 million eHP Solo. Good luck DE. I'm going to go make a sandwich.

You keep saying typical content when no such thing actually exists in Warframe. You have rewarding content which is specific to you, the player and then you have non-rewarding content. Typical is simply what the mass see as rewarding not the sum of content.

Think of it from the perspective of a player who owns everything and two of everything good. What is typical content then? When you have more plat than you could ever spend in years of playing this game. What motivates you? Fun is what motivates me. Not loot. Typical content for me is what's fun.

In X Damage I'm referring to the variable X taking the value of a number required to kill the enemy regardless of level, resistances or attacks. X is the value of the enemy's death at all states of the game. X = Dead. Mesa, Saryn and other frames do not function this way. They might be too powerful of "typical content" but they have limits which allows for growth. Octavia scales fully within the game's level limit. She can cause enemies to kill themselves with potent speed until the enemy level stops scaling. There is no room for progress with such a mechanic and it does not belong in RPG-style game because of this.

I am making no effort to distort what you are saying, but if you feel I have misinterpreted you feel free to point out where are give clarification of your intent. Starting off with some empty accusation won't move the topic forward. 

As for the period it takes for DE to address imbalances, that isn't some clear cut path, not every balancing issue is apparent the moment it is launched, or even the months following, it can be a chain effect, it can be subtle, and when it happens it can be more complex than a five minute fix. And while again it'd be great to just think about if situation x y or z ever happened, or never progressed to where it did, that stuff does simply happens, DE doesn't have infinite resources or infinite foresight, and when imbalances popup they aren't easy to tuck back in, especially the ones that gradually show their cracks, and to which the community grows accustomed to, and then violently defensive of even to their own detriment. Dealing with balance and a large playerbase is a mess, and while I agree they need to be more bold and clear with their balancing intents for the game, I'm not going to overlook the complex spot they are in. 

And yes typical content does exist in Warframe, it's the content most visited by most players and are most regularly interacted with, and DE likely have numerous metrics on such things. It's why we get Ember style nerfs, but not CL nerfs, because one doesn't affect typical content/gameplay and the other does.  

This is about the community in general, not a person by person basis, no game can be fine tuned to every single person in a game with thousands to millions of regular consumers. 

Thank you for clarity on that. In regards to Saryn, Mesa, and the like having limits which allow growth, as near all intended content in below those limits, I'd agree to disagree about that sentiment, having an upward barrier that is close to nonexistant and you will likely never experience unless you want go out of your way to experience it is no different than having no barriers to begin with. You can say infinite scaling is an issue all you want, but it's only an issue where infinite scaling enemies are put to use, which in 99% of warframe they are not, they haven't been since the void rework. Octavia may be the most powerful scaling frame in the game, but it's also rarely used because that kind of area where that power matters is so miniscule it's a null power set. Likewise with CL. 

Edited by Cubewano
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3 hours ago, Cubewano said:

I am making no effort to distort what you are saying, but if you feel I have misinterpreted you feel free to point out where are give clarification of your intent. Starting off with some empty accusation won't move the topic forward.

 

I did clarify.

3 hours ago, Cubewano said:

As for the period it takes for DE to address imbalances, that isn't some clear cut path, not every balancing issue is apparent the moment it is launched, or even the months following, it can be a chain effect, it can be subtle, and when it happens it can be more complex than a five minute fix. And while again it'd be great to just think about if situation x y or z ever happened, or never progressed to where it did, that stuff does simply happens, DE doesn't have infinite resources or infinite foresight, and when imbalances popup they aren't easy to tuck back in, especially the ones that gradually show their cracks, and to which the community grows accustomed to, and then violently defensive of even to their own detriment. Dealing with balance and a large playerbase is a mess, and while I agree they need to be more bold and clear with their balancing intents for the game, I'm not going to overlook the complex spot they are in.

 

Their neglect / laziness goes even beyond balance problems to straight up bugs they never fix even when they're looking at the subject in question. The Stealth + Gas example I used was a bug. Not a Balance issue. The bug Chroma suffered from was similar and that bug was never actually fixed. It's present in other multiplicative sources like Rhino's Roar and Bane / Expel mods. They straight up don't fix things unless it becomes a game wide problem. There's no need to clarify this any further. Deny if you want.

 

3 hours ago, Cubewano said:

And yes typical content does exist in Warframe, it's the content most visited by most players and are most regularly interacted with, and DE likely have numerous metrics on such things. It's why we get Ember style nerfs, but not CL nerfs, because one doesn't affect typical content/gameplay and the other does.  

This is about the community in general, not a person by person basis, no game can be fine tuned to every single person in a game with thousands to millions of regular consumers.

 

I clarified that typical content is defined by " simply what the mass see as rewarding not the sum of content. " - The content most visited by players is quite simply the rewarding content.  It's an easy conclusion. It's not the most fun or the most engaging. My entire point is once you strip the loot bait away because you have everything there is no "typical content". It's all just content because you never need to farm anything. Ever. - A side note to why Warframe has the player retention of a hear rate monitor.

Typical in this case is no more defined than the reward the player seeks.

Do you think I do Arbitrations, ESO, Eidolons or any of that crap? No. I did one Tridolon ever and one Raid ever because I don't like that content and that's why Warframe until recent has been a good game. Players can play how they want, where they want and sell their goods for what they want. I oppose a mechanically flawed concept. If it's within the masses of typical content or a select few is irrelevant. It's still bad design. X Damage should not be in the game.

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15 hours ago, Xzorn said:

 

I did clarify.

 

Their neglect / laziness goes even beyond balance problems to straight up bugs they never fix even when they're looking at the subject in question. The Stealth + Gas example I used was a bug. Not a Balance issue. The bug Chroma suffered from was similar and that bug was never actually fixed. It's present in other multiplicative sources like Rhino's Roar and Bane / Expel mods. They straight up don't fix things unless it becomes a game wide problem. There's no need to clarify this any further. Deny if you want.

 

 

I clarified that typical content is defined by " simply what the mass see as rewarding not the sum of content. " - The content most visited by players is quite simply the rewarding content.  It's an easy conclusion. It's not the most fun or the most engaging. My entire point is once you strip the loot bait away because you have everything there is no "typical content". It's all just content because you never need to farm anything. Ever. - A side note to why Warframe has the player retention of a hear rate monitor.

Typical in this case is no more defined than the reward the player seeks.

Do you think I do Arbitrations, ESO, Eidolons or any of that crap? No. I did one Tridolon ever and one Raid ever because I don't like that content and that's why Warframe until recent has been a good game. Players can play how they want, where they want and sell their goods for what they want. I oppose a mechanically flawed concept. If it's within the masses of typical content or a select few is irrelevant. It's still bad design. X Damage should not be in the game.

And that's all you should have done, but good job!

Almost like DE has limited resources on an ever changing game with constantly evolving issues and a dozen other areas that need resources dumped into them as well so they can't treat everything always at all moments instantly and instead prioritize, le gasp.

Progress, and what is typically the rewarding content players are playing? It isn't duration runs that's for sure. 

^

Subjective, entirely so. 

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