Grand Bosses Are Too Restricted

[Hecking_Birb]

Right away going to say I don't mean accessibility, I mean in the way you have to approach the fight.

I like the grand bosses, I really do. Eidolons are a good challenge that effectively always have room for the team's improvement, the orbs are rewarding and unique, and the thumpers are a good challenge, although with how new they are, they've had hardly any time to be refined.

The problem I'm putting forth is that I don't like how restricted the fights feel. Eidolon hunting, when you care about efficiency, demands the same team of Chroma/Trinity/Volt/Harrow, because that's the only stuff that can actually help in the fight. With Profit-Taker, Chroma proves to be the king of it through and through, with good tanking and great weapon damage. Same with thumpers, which, while not technically grand bosses, are definitely big boys. Exploiter asks for Gara and then whatever can survive, since the fight's done with almost entirely canisters. The pattern I see is that none of these bosses are affected by much. It's always just "use guns to kill this thing, good luck nerd". I want the option to freeze limbs, overheat systems, slow down the enemy, distract it, make it turn on its allies, make it weaker or more vulnerable, maybe even have some unique weapon and frame interactions with the bosses based on what they are. Something spicy, that allows for more creativity in teams, and more variety in fights.

Of course, restrictions breed creativity, like how old video game developers had to be creative to work within the restrictions of old systems, so I still feel that restrictions should exist, but to allow people to get creative with how they fight, that would bring new life to the old bosses.

This idea works with the original planet bosses, too. Lephantis, Lech Kril, Ambulas, having things affect bosses in unique ways is cool as hell.

I don't need this, the game isn't terrible or incredibly flawed without it, I just want to offer an idea to DE, for the expansion of their existing content. Feedback appreciated.

(unrelated note: i don't like how thumpers move. not their agility, but rather how unpredictably jittery their legs get, making their knees a tough target. they rotate a lot, too. not liking the korrudo farm.)

[(PSN)BenHeisennberg]

Same as always, bosses in Warframe all have the same issues.

Because frames are different, there will always be a best frame or best squad to bring for any given situation.

Mesa's existence necessitates either different rules for Mesa, or restrictions on all Warframe abilities.

Any fight where damage is being thrown around, there's a health pool to chew through, and only self buff abilities work, Chroma will probably always be the best option.

If you remove the damage or the health pool, no Warframe you bring actually matters, because you don't use the Warframe for anything.  See: Exploiter Orb.

If you remove the ability restriction, the best frame becomes Mesa, and the fight becomes stupid easy.

So basically, my response to all of these:  open bosses up to abilities and nerf Mesa.

[Nash]

the problem with grand bosses is that 
1. Time Restriction, Culprit Eidolons.
2. Weapon damage difference is too high.
- Snipers out perform almost all rifles. The only way to fix is to have Snipers do reduced damage but only do a full amount of damage when they hit a sonar like spot on the boss that appears from time to time.
- But also give weapons like Rifles, Bows, Melee ways to attack using attacks like hand to hand combat or utilizing warframe energy.
   - For Example, take DMC5's Coyote-A, a basic semi auto shotgun. It shoots. Thats all, its just a gun right thats what its suppose to do. BUT DMC5 takes it further by allowing you to do extra things with that gun, such as rushing foward with a charge and then shooting, or an AoE Mob clear/Knockbar, or a simple powered up shot.
Example

Spoiler

 

 

But imagine these moves with like mabye a 2-3x Damage multiplier with a short cooldown, so that they can compete with snipers. Giving players more choice on weapons rather than just using a sniper, but more along the lines of preference.

- Add Critical Resist and a Damage Cap. Think Vigilante set but works only for grand bosses, meaning that the boss will have a 10-30% chance to reduce your critical 1 or 2 tiers. This will help control the damage output. Damage Cap for Example 300,000 Damage. Meaning a player can NOT go past 300,000 damage. No matter what they do, this will prevent [DE]'s hard work going to waste and only lasting 30 seconds, its a shame but this is why they try so hard to stop people from speed running Profit-Taker (Knockdown animation change) and Exploiter Orb (1 shot all vents)
- Let the bosses have actual abilities and penalties to players if they ignore them meaning they can NOT spank and tank. 
For an example

The very first boss has area denial as abilities (Lays spike traps out on the map that if you step on them you take a serious amount of damage, damage you cannot tank), along with attacks to go with that ability (in the 8-man Raid version these spikes will appear around the map usually in 1/4 or 2/4's of the map periodically meaning that if your team isn't careful you could lose someone), another ability it has a Wipe mechanic that if you don't clear out the enemies that spawn they will explode killing you in one hit, Along with a damage buff that boosts its already absurd damage and an attack that tracks you as a player and follows you around in an enclosed area, this is deadly in an 8 man scenario because of how close people are together.
- If I had to convert this into Warframe terms, Hydrolyst would be a better boss, for example "the Hydrolysts Acid Rain but instead of random patches it would act more like a hurricane, with the Hydrolyst being the epicenter and the ring being its storm, with lightning and acid rain all that jazz. Getting hit by stomp would mean getting knocked into the storm which would then do heavy damage." Not killing the Vombalysts that spawn in would mean death the next time the Hydrolyst Roars they would release EMP waves.
I would remove the seeking bullets and lightning strikes that appear during the fight and push them into the Hydrolysts storm. So if you get hit a stomp or its arm sweep you would get knocked back into the storm, The storm the Hydrolyst brings is an area denial meaning that the area outside of the Hydrolyst is a dangerous place to be in lightning strikes, acid rain, energy projectiles, etc. It starts out large at first but everytime you destroy a limb the storm starts to enclose on the eidolon forcing players into the hydrolysts range, for ground slams, stomps, arm cannon shots etc. Of course I would buff its HP so it doesn't get one shot but double the rewards. *personally I thought this is how the hydrolyst was going to be but I was wrong.
 

And finally Stop adding homing bullets from both eidolons and orb mothers, and let them have attack patterns and mechanics to avoid. Having a Turret that looks on to a player like a regular grineer unit eliminates majority of the WARFRAME roster. THAT ALONE. Not even the damage.

Example

Most of the damage I took from that was from Profit-Takers Turret, and I barely notice the bullets, only because I do profit-taker with frames that aren't chroma so much that I notice this. I would make the turret have an noticeable animated attack that tracks you so you would have to use mobility to get away. DE takes the cheap way out to form some sort of challenge through automatically hitting you with you having absolutely no choice. I haven't seen something so primitive since maplestory's touch damage. Thats why people use tank frames so that they don't have to deal with that nonsense, precisely why you see nothing but inaros's and chromas.

Most of what you said is spot on but thats not going to happen until status effects have a proper way of entering a boss fight. If it was me I would say make status procs available but allow the boss to reduce the amount of times you can proc, 8-10 procs will produce a status effect that gimps the boss in some sort of way like you said. But when it does gimp the boss you can't proc again for mabye another 60-80 seconds so that the boss isn't constantly getting knocked down or frozen.

This couldn't work for our bosses because our bosses are treated as FARMS and not an Experience (aka Exploiter orb) if more bosses was like exploiter orb in delivery with the boss mechanics of Profit-Taker minus the turret, but a little more well thought out attacks. You would have what you are looking for.

Edited May 10, 2019 by _Behemot