Buffs for the Infested (Suggestions)

[Halasham]

Don't know if this is the right place for this (first post on the forum) but:

Out of all of the factions the Infested are the least threatening. I'll admit it's been quite a while since I was new to the game but with advanced gear the Infested are the weakest of the enemy factions. So to remedy this my friends and I have come up with a few suggestions that could make them more dangerous.

1) On higher level missions divide the Chargers into two sub-groups Lancer-morphs and Trooper-morphs (so designated because Chargers look like mutated Lancers). Troopers being orange, like base Grineer troopers, and possessing the Spine Strike and Sonic Scream abilities of Phorid while Lancer-morphs would have Juggernaut-like abilities except could only create normal infested units, not ones buffed like I'm describing here.

2) Add a technocyte cloud whenever Volatile Runners die, weather to successfully reaching a Warframe or being shot. The cloud causing Warframes within it to be slowed and Infested within it to be rapidly healed and potentially given mild damage resistance. Potentially also cause the cloud to negate the activation of abilities (though not end already active abilities), for example it wouldn't shunt Ivara out of Prowl but it would prevent her from using her trick arrows or the Artemis Bow.

3) Add a magnetic pulse whenever Ancient Distuptors cast their aura functioning like a Arson Eximus' fireball except causing a magnetic proc instead of knockdown. I would also suggest increasing the likelihood that they stretch out a tentacle and tap a Warframe with a magnetic proc.

4) Give all infested some form of punch-through resistance. Either taking cumulatively less damage from shots that have passed through infested bodies or cause infested bodies to be considered more distance than they actually are for punch-through calculations, half again or double should be enough.

That's what I've got. Opinions?

[(PSN)Lollybomb]

2 minutes ago, Halasham said:

3) Add a magnetic pulse whenever Ancient Distuptors cast their aura functioning like a Arson Eximus' fireball except causing a magnetic proc instead of knockdown. I would also suggest increasing the likelihood that they stretch out a tentacle and tap a Warframe with a magnetic proc. 

No.  No no no no no no no NO!  It's bad enough those stupid leech eximus always draining your energy while hiding in a far off corner of the room.

[Chylli.]

Re. #3:  The range of that pulse should not be anywhere near that of the arson eximus, if these are added.

 

Further suggestion:  NERF THOSE DAMN ENERGY LEECHES.  Line of sight energy drain only and cut their range down to 25% of what it is now.  They are grossly overpowered right now.

Edited April 15, 2019 by Cerlinad

[Halasham]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Lollybomb said:

No.  No no no no no no no NO!  It's bad enough those stupid leech eximus always draining your energy while hiding in a far off corner of the room.

Yeah I should've clarified I didn't mean to suggest the radius of an Arson Eximus, just the radius of the aura.

[Kalvorax]

54 minutes ago, Halasham said:

3) Add a magnetic pulse whenever Ancient Distuptors cast their aura functioning like a Arson Eximus' fireball except causing a magnetic proc instead of knockdown. I would also suggest increasing the likelihood that they stretch out a tentacle and tap a Warframe with a magnetic proc.

no no no....they already are a bane of draining energy and that aura spreads that ability to all other nearby infested....if anything they should be TRUE disruptors as disrupting movement in some way, like slowing us down...and using hook shot while taking the hook away from the others.

[-Krism-]

Magnetic is the worst element in warframe, it doesn't do sh*t to enemies, but it just eat our energy in less than a second, I suggest your drop the idea of the increased magnetic chance

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

Personally I'm not for buffing the current line up of Infested Units...I am though looking for DE to actually give us a monster..We almost had one with the Juggernaut and instead we got a glorified charger and a impossible Halloween chore...I just want a massive monster in a haunted ship chasing after me..I don't want to be able to kill it..

Slow it down..stun it enough to get away..but, I want the sense of the chase...the dread..the need to actually use stealth and slow down..just me and this terror sniffing around for movement...in environment that allows it move and chase while we squeal OH SHOOMBA!!! RUN!!!

 

That's what  I want from the Infested..Basically Alien Isolation and a lot of screaming at other players to stop moving as it starts killing us...between point A to B...

Edited April 16, 2019 by (PS4)FriendSharkey

[Snydrex]

The infested have not aged well, and are in dire need of improvements, moreso design wise, they are in an okay place right now in-game. (Aside from Eleeches.) So my feedback will mostly be design.

I'm up for new variants of infested, ones that are actually *scary*.

Riddle me this: Why does EVERY grineer that mutates wear a mask, and why do they all mutate to the same thing? Why are there no female grineer mutations like heavy gunners/scorps (Aside from Leph). Why does every corpus guy that mutates always does so mid-facepalm? Why do we never see mutation ever happening?

Currently, we face a technicolor horde of vintage assets, that aren't scary or intimidating. There are a lot of reasons for this. Too colorful, they glow like christmas lights, their designs are confusing, some sound like cats, but the primary reason for the lack of horror is that They look almost nothing like the creatures they've mutated from.

One of the most convincing, surefire ways to add an element of horror to 'infected' enemies in general is to put clear resemblance to what they once were. If the chargers had human faces growing out of their chins, or the runners/crawlers had things like human mouths with teeth and human tongues, then their creepy factor would multiply just because we can tell they GREW from someone. Not something. Someone. This philosophy also applies to sound design. If they made more humanoid screams, perhaps gibbering and jabbering nonsense in grineer or corpus language, it would be VERY disturbing.

There are ways to make 'nonsense' designs like ancients more disturbing, too. Add more moving parts, things meant to maim, to hurt, to infect. Writhing tentacles, stingers that come out of the head, eyeballs that move, all would be vastly a better change... in my opinion.

I understand DE has a lot on their plate, and I have no intention of sounding entitled, (Not to mention the sheer cost of time and resource these changes would imply on their part) so I want to make clear that none of these ideas are demands, or requests. Just opinions.

 

[-NightmareMoon-]

how to make them great, do you know dead space? just make them like that >:I

Make then jump on you,grabbing you, staggering you, let them crawl into walls and shoot you from the ceiling and all places, just make then feel like and actual plague god damn it!

[Firetempest]

Any visual design change will not make them scary or intimidating after a week at best.

It's a horde shooter. At best you get units you are just unhappy to see. Aka whatever leech ones would look like. Like left for dead games. You can have all the visual fidelity in the world but the player is really only tracking objects and movement and keeping whatever from getting too close.

Animation reworks alone could bring some new life to the oldest units. The hybrid sentient moa have the creepiest animations so far.

A singular cohesive design change like the other factions just makes a mass close range faction muddier too. As it is you spot a red corpus, brain says boom. A blue one, it jumps. Dog? Don't let it swipe you. Tall inkling? Nuke on sight. They already screwed it up a bit with the mutalist designs. Is it a nanite or a spitter moa? I don't know, they both look like black turkeys to me, they both interact with you at a distance and both their silhouettes are garbage. A bulbus onion unit? Maggots or pods place your bets. But they are both inconsequential in being a threat really, but they exist.

No longer depending on color clues for the color blind it great, but they could have kept the color identifiers on the newer units as well. But they also kept old units the same. 

They could definitely clean up some models and choose a style instead of each update being a new artist. But doing too much just feels like killing their identity as well.

Edited April 16, 2019 by Firetempest

[Halasham]

14 hours ago, -NightmareMoon- said:

let them crawl into walls and shoot you from the ceiling and all places, just make then feel like and actual plague god damn it!

That would be a great way to make them more menacing. Having to worry about them omni-directionally instead of them all being on the floor or flying just above it in the case of the Mutalisk Ospreys would be great.

Infested on the ceiling and maybe trying to attack the Tenno from every direction as opposed to the usual flailing at them from one or two directions at a time would be great. Would make the Infested function better with the tools they do have (though I'd still like to see them get buffs beyond just that). The Grineer have teleporting melee units and every other thing having some type of knockdown/stagger effect, the Corpus have Nullifiers and Comba/Scrambus to screw with us, the Infested having the ability to attack from any direction and trying to swarm from every direction at once would be good... especially if their units remain so frail.

[Halasham]

15 hours ago, Xenox_Ilz-ot said:

Magnetic is the worst element in warframe, it doesn't do sh*t to enemies, but it just eat our energy in less than a second, I suggest your drop the idea of the increased magnetic chance

Magnetic rips into shields and magnetic proc halves the max shields of enemies that have them... but yeah Magnetic is the damage type that hurts tenno most.

[Halasham]

15 hours ago, (PS4)FriendSharkey said:

I am though looking for DE to actually give us a monster..We almost had one with the Juggernaut and instead we got a glorified charger and a impossible Halloween chore...I just want a massive monster in a haunted ship chasing after me..I don't want to be able to kill it..

A monster like that might be interesting... though it would need to just not have an amount of health at all. If it had any quantity of health someone would eventually kill it and then the method of killing it would be refined until it's fairly easy to kill. I remember when you had to use most of the ammo capacity of some of the best guns that'd been released at the time to kill just one Ancient Disruptor... and now between power creep and knowing how to deal with ancients it hardly registers to me that they're suppose to be dangerous.

Some great unkillable monstrosity hunting within Infested locations would also pose a great aggravation to non-stealth players if it were just there and you just had to deal with it or not play Infested missions... and if you can avoid it being part of the mission then for what reason would Tenno induce it to come (honestly asking I'd like to see what you think would be a good reward for dealing with it).

[Aldain]

21 minutes ago, Halasham said:

Magnetic rips into shields

Too bad shields on enemies suck even when the sortie buff is active.

Shields in general are just too weak compared to armor (lol Grineer 1 million eHP) or slapping on natural DR.

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

4 hours ago, Halasham said:

A monster like that might be interesting... though it would need to just not have an amount of health at all. If it had any quantity of health someone would eventually kill it and then the method of killing it would be refined until it's fairly easy to kill. I remember when you had to use most of the ammo capacity of some of the best guns that'd been released at the time to kill just one Ancient Disruptor... and now between power creep and knowing how to deal with ancients it hardly registers to me that they're suppose to be dangerous.

Some great unkillable monstrosity hunting within Infested locations would also pose a great aggravation to non-stealth players if it were just there and you just had to deal with it or not play Infested missions... and if you can avoid it being part of the mission then for what reason would Tenno induce it to come (honestly asking I'd like to see what you think would be a good reward for dealing with it).

I came to the conclusion instead of a health bar, you could have a something of a stun counter where you can slow the creature down enough for you to get some distance or find a hiding spot...Only in order to prevent that from being spammed...you would add something akin to Valkyr going berserk if you do it too many times...like you finally enraged it enough where its on over drive and it's not getting stunned again anytime soon... 

For me this Infested beast would be the Assassin deployed by the death of Phorid, The Jordas Gollum, or Lephantis... Only I wouldn't have it teleport into a mission, but rather you the player are transported to the local meant house said beast...This now becomes a game of "Cat and Mouse" where you have to do some sort of spy or sabotage mission to get out of the tile set alive in order to gain whatever it drops...

Edited April 16, 2019 by (PS4)FriendSharkey

[ExcaliburUmbra]

I’d love to see the infested get a rework if anything. Visually they aren’t that intimidating and lack variety. Currently most of their units are comprised of infested Corpus and their robotics, with the only Grineer-based enemy being the Charger. I’d love to see more Grineer-infested units (infested Ghouls would be great) or even better tileset specific infested, such as Grineer runners or Corpus chargers depending on which planet you are on.

[Lost_Cartographer]

I'd appreciate it if there was a horrifically mutated Grineer unit packing infested guns, like the Embolist, Torid, Synapse, or Phage.  Corpus equivalent might carry the Paracyst.  Mostly, what they need are more direct ranged threats of the quick response variety.  Currently, most of their line up involves the clever strategy of "get over there and slap that guy IN THE FACE!" with some back line support that's lousy at ranged combat.  It's a mass of sameyness that doesn't even need abilities to beat, just hold S (or in my case D) and left click to win.

Edited April 16, 2019 by Lost_Cartographer

[Diavoros]

Consider that when they were introduced, the infested didn't have any ranged unit, they added ranged units later after people would afk farm dark sectors for hours with easy gimmicks. The infested can be rather overwhelming as they have a higher enemy density than any other and the movement of most of their units is rather fast, the difference with the grineer and corpus is, ranged units and unarmored enemies, they have the ancient healers that give damage reduction aura to their allies, ancient disuptors that zap your energy away, toxic eximus with a nasty toxin aura dot, etc. Maybe giving them all armor would make them more challenging.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

On ‎15‎/‎04‎/‎2019 at 11:09 PM, Halasham said:

That's what I've got. Opinions?

1. Chargers, I can sort of get. personally I'd like to see a larger, heavily armoured variation. fighting Alphas Skags in Borderlands reminded me that if something that charges at you can't take damage from the front, you have to flank it and it makes the fight a bit more interesting than just pulling a gun and shooting a Charger dead instantly like we can do now.

2. rather than just popping more clouds everywhere, I'd like a unit (or even a Warframe eventually) that uses Technocyte swarms as weapon, like a badass beekeeper of death and destruction! with a single gesture it sends the swarm! I know we have the Mutalist MOAs, but it's not the same: those are missiles containing swarms, something that is protected by a swarm, maybe acting as a shield that absorbs a set amount of damage, could be interesting. I might have to look more into this...

3. dear god NO. absolutely NO, Nein Non, don't even. Magnetic Damage sucks and we already have plenty of Energy Leeching enemies as it is. nobody likes Magnetic damage, even on our weapons as it does practically nothing to enemies without shields.

4. dunno why you wanna hurt Punchthrough like that, it's not really a stat most people mod for outside of Rivens anyway. Infested also have the least protection (no Shields or Armor), so it makes no sense that they resist penetration. if anything, EVERYTHING should punch through them specifically!

 

[Halasham]

41 minutes ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

4. dunno why you wanna hurt Punchthrough like that, it's not really a stat most people mod for outside of Rivens anyway. Infested also have the least protection (no Shields or Armor), so it makes no sense that they resist penetration. if anything, EVERYTHING should punch through them specifically!

I suggested nerfing punch-through vs Infested because for the most part all they really have is swarm tactics and should they be given more eHP or otherwise made stronger to the point of people actually building for dealing with them at higher levels then punch-through or AoE would again trivialize them unless they were given disgusting amounts of eHP.

So since punch-through can be applied to any weapon but other than Gas and Explosive procs AoE cannot I suggested some form of punch-through resist in conjunction with the other changes to reduce the number of simple changes to build design that would re-trivialize them.

I could, of course, have erred in my thinking somewhere and if you think so please explain where and how.

[SgtHotPepper]

Le 16/04/2019 à 02:09, Halasham a dit :

4) Give all infested some form of punch-through resistance. Either taking cumulatively less damage from shots that have passed through infested bodies or cause infested bodies to be considered more distance than they actually are for punch-through calculations, half again or double should be enough.

That's what I've got. Opinions?

Why ? Just why the only faction made of flesh and dont wearing protective armor will stop armor piercing bullets ?

And for me it's totally opposite of the feeling to fight mindless waves of zombified/infected mobs throwing themself on me.

If anyone of this squishy mobs became a impenetrable wall it will be soooo much fun...

[Argenex]

NOT Threatening?

I take it you aren't soloing beyond level 150 survivals...

On 2019-04-15 at 6:34 PM, Snydrex said:

The infested have not aged well, and are in dire need of improvements, moreso design wise, they are in an okay place right now in-game. (Aside from Eleeches.) So my feedback will mostly be design.

I'm up for new variants of infested, ones that are actually *scary*.

Riddle me this: Why does EVERY grineer that mutates wear a mask, and why do they all mutate to the same thing? Why are there no female grineer mutations like heavy gunners/scorps (Aside from Leph). Why does every corpus guy that mutates always does so mid-facepalm? Why do we never see mutation ever happening?

Currently, we face a technicolor horde of vintage assets, that aren't scary or intimidating. There are a lot of reasons for this. Too colorful, they glow like christmas lights, their designs are confusing, some sound like cats, but the primary reason for the lack of horror is that They look almost nothing like the creatures they've mutated from.

One of the most convincing, surefire ways to add an element of horror to 'infected' enemies in general is to put clear resemblance to what they once were. If the chargers had human faces growing out of their chins, or the runners/crawlers had things like human mouths with teeth and human tongues, then their creepy factor would multiply just because we can tell they GREW from someone. Not something. Someone. This philosophy also applies to sound design. If they made more humanoid screams, perhaps gibbering and jabbering nonsense in grineer or corpus language, it would be VERY disturbing.

There are ways to make 'nonsense' designs like ancients more disturbing, too. Add more moving parts, things meant to maim, to hurt, to infect. Writhing tentacles, stingers that come out of the head, eyeballs that move, all would be vastly a better change... in my opinion.

I understand DE has a lot on their plate, and I have no intention of sounding entitled, (Not to mention the sheer cost of time and resource these changes would imply on their part) so I want to make clear that none of these ideas are demands, or requests. Just opinions.

 

What I would LOVE to see, is some more procedural-ly generated Infested units, I mean they can spawn an arm where a leg should be, a head where an arm might be, and maybe a few more random outgrowths. I agree they could use a more "chaotic" look.

Edited April 17, 2019 by Argenex

[Veridian]

On ‎2019‎-‎04‎-‎16 at 1:09 AM, Halasham said:

3) Add a magnetic pulse whenever Ancient Distuptors cast their aura functioning like a Arson Eximus' fireball except causing a magnetic proc instead of knockdown. I would also suggest increasing the likelihood that they stretch out a tentacle and tap a Warframe with a magnetic proc.

*Nervously rummaging through a backpack*

-Where did I leave those Arcane Nullifiers...

[Test-995]

All the ancient are annoying enough already, toxin cloud of osprey is extremely dangerous, others are meh but works well with healer/disruptor.

I don't think they needs a buff...

[(PSN)JustJoshinEnt]

On 2019-04-15 at 9:13 PM, (PS4)FriendSharkey said:

Personally I'm not for buffing the current line up of Infested Units...I am though looking for DE to actually give us a monster..We almost had one with the Juggernaut and instead we got a glorified charger and a impossible Halloween chore...I just want a massive monster in a haunted ship chasing after me..I don't want to be able to kill it..

Slow it down..stun it enough to get away..but, I want the sense of the chase...the dread..the need to actually use stealth and slow down..just me and this terror sniffing around for movement...in environment that allows it move and chase while we squeal OH SHOOMBA!!! RUN!!!

 

That's what  I want from the Infested..Basically Alien Isolation and a lot of screaming at other players to stop moving as it starts killing us...between point A to B...

Inb4 "Infested Wolf".  I totally would be down for that xD