Self-Damage: How to Keep it Scaling, Effective, and Relevant but NOT Overwhelming

[DeadVoid118]

4 minutes ago, (PS4)chibitonka said:

Hildryn's passive is shield gating actually. If her 3 is used on others in group they get shield gating too.

Ah, I thought it was an 'in general' scenario. My bad.

3 minutes ago, 5p33dy_01 said:

i didnt miss the point.
 OP wants the self-damage formula changed to be only lethal as a mission progresses.
or removed entirely

the formula modification may look simple to implement, but nobody can guarantee that there will not be problems that require fixes for the formula to work as intended.
and because of this, DE will most likely use the easier option, remove self-damage, leave it as is or just nerf the stats on explosive weapons.

to round it up, there will be more disappointment from the modifications that happen, and ends up being almost a complete waste of time that could have been put into something a bit more constructive, like sorting out other problems in the game (like those hit-boxes mentioned below).

 

you can have 20 shield and 80 hp on hildryn and still not die from accidental 10,000 self dmg (as long as your passive is up)
(Hildryn becomes invulnerable to all damage for 3 seconds upon her shields being depleted.)
 

It's not as the mission progresses, but as the weapon's damage increases due to modding.

Assuming DE will just use the easier option has little to do with the suggestion. We're asking for DE to listen to us, not the other way around. Besides, if DE used the easy option they wouldn't have made their own lighting system and wouldn't have reworked so many things so many times. They would've just placed band-aids on everything. I admit Warframe has a lot of band-aids, but DE is by no means attempting to always use the easy solution.

Your disappointment is contingent on DE only partially following the suggestion, which is... not the point of the suggestion. The suggestion wants all of it to be followed. We should be assuming it is followed, all of it, and not that only part of it is followed because that's how the suggestion is supposed to work, with all of it.

As I said above, I thought you meant in a general scenario so I apologize for the miscommunication.

[5p33dy_01]

 

3 minutes ago, Keylan118 said:

Ah, I thought it was an 'in general' scenario. My bad.

It's not as the mission progresses, but as the weapon's damage increases due to modding.

Assuming DE will just use the easier option has little to do with the suggestion. We're asking for DE to listen to us, not the other way around. Besides, if DE used the easy option they wouldn't have made their own lighting system and wouldn't have reworked so many things so many times. They would've just placed band-aids on everything. I admit Warframe has a lot of band-aids, but DE is by no means attempting to always use the easy solution.

Your disappointment is contingent on DE only partially following the suggestion, which is... not the point of the suggestion. The suggestion wants all of it to be followed. We should be assuming it is followed, all of it, and not that only part of it is followed because that's how the suggestion is supposed to work, with all of it.

ok, i didnt get that from how it was explained.

i still dont see why it should take precedence over other modifications.

game modes and events need to be looked at before random things like this, when it is something you already have ways to avoid.
i am also sure that DE dont need people adding to their plate at the moment. they are not sitting thinking (we have nothing to do)
 

11 minutes ago, Keylan118 said:

As I said above, I thought you meant in a general scenario so I apologize for the miscommunication.

no problem... i guess i could have indicated that it was to do with her passive.

[TheLexiConArtist]

12 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

Flat self-damage doesn't destroy the concept of risk-reward scaling, it changes it. First of all, numbers can be changed. The 50 self-damage on the Tonkor was far too little, of course. However, 500 self-damage? 5000? We can pick any number we want. Secondly, the idea of flat self-damage is that it is based on the base damage of a weapon, so it does scale in a way. Mods can only increase damage so much. Besides, isn't the point of your scaling self-damage to not immediately be obliterated if you're 0.01 meters too close? I don't see why mods need to play into self-damage (except maybe cautious shot). If you mod a weapon improperly so that it doesn't murder an enemy when the weapon can easily do so, that's on you and not the weapon.
Percentile self-damage can 100% take health regen and other things into account, I don't see why you're dismissing that idea and saying it's impossible. People already calculate EHP. Does it need to be 100% accurate? No. Why would it need to be? Does it even need to work off of EHP? It could just do damage to HP and shields, or maybe just HP. Besides, how is your method any better? Against Inaros, it'll attempt to do X amount of damage and may or may not be enough damage. The percentage numbers merely need to be tweaked to be enough just as yours do.

Why the risk/reward should be linked to modding stems from its role as a balancing factor - still not the only one, mind you - and as such, consider the shotgun: Your archetypal risk is lost damage from wayward pellets; you don't miss out flat damage from where the weapon started when you mod that into a beast, your risk is proportional to the total reward. Likewise, the personal risk drawback of an explosive cannot be static or it doesn't work as a balancing factor for an increasing power curve.
Additionally, you have to consider how any remotely-relevant 'static' damage is affected by multishot, as I had to for mine. You can't really tie it to the damage event because they might reasonably occur on different update frames. You could ameliorate the total damage across simultaneous projectiles on shooting, but then you still die by catching yourself on a stack of Penta/Castanas (although my recommendation of in-world markers for explosives puts the onus back entirely on the player triggering those).

I really can't imagine a good way to account for the various impermanent health regen sources in order to act as a balancing lever. Where do you peg the triggered heals, the lifesteals, the on-operator and operator-triggered arcane heals, all together? Is it possible, maybe. Is it practical, not in my opinion. Similarly for the overarching percent being a poor representation of the player's choices. A decaying/bleeding key pair on an unmodded base Loki and they can survive point-blank nuclear-tier explosions? We must avoid mixing up questions of inter-warframe balance with inter-weapon balance. Broadly, you imagine 'bombproof suit' Person A to be able to shrug off a misfire much more than 'shorts and t-shirt' Person B - with immediate effect. Loki, paper, generally dead. Inaros, brick outhouse, generally lives.

13 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

That's not a fallacy, it's a valid concern. Glitches exist (and are common), and we must acknowledge them. Hitboxes exist, and they are not perfect. You want this implemented, you fix those problems first. Also, you seriously expect people to memorize every nook, cranny, and outcropping of any and all hitboxes? Really? Even if people could, they still have to fail once. Once on every single bad hitbox, and there are a lot of bad hitboxes, if not multiple times on every hitbox to discover their full form. It's not about my capability. The average player certainly isn't capable of doing all that, and not everyone is an elite veteran ready to beat down everything. Plenty of noobs already complain about how the game is hard and that's because they don't know and can't be expected to know how to make things easy. The game is already terrible for new players. Expecting them to know hitboxes only makes it harder, not easier.
And, as to your idea of fixing them, go ahead. Be my guest. However, I will avidly point out this flaw in your plan until that flaw is fixed because it is a flaw, regardless of the reasons behind it.

The tighter the quarters nearby yourself in which you are using an explosive, including how narrowly you're trying to place them just beyond the hitbox of scenery.. the more that burden is on your choice to do so. The more absolutely certain you must be. If you're not, use another weapon or reposition for a better shot. Yes, it feels good to thread the needle and land a precision shot between (and possibly against) debris in order to perfectly slam that grenade/rocket/etc right into the midst of your enemies (or singular enemy's face). But you know you're doing that at risk of being imperfect, you could almost certainly have played safer. That's your chosen risk to take, veteran or newbie alike. You wouldn't demand perfectly flat and open playing fields to eliminate the risk, you simply take in the information and conclude if that's a risk you're willing to take. That probably covers 99.99% of 'bad hitbox cases', leaving the few outrageously absurd collisions that shouldn't exist. Which, clue being in the description... just shouldn't exist, with or without self-damage being a thing. 

So, it might not be directly your fault a hitbox was a little off, but it's a risk you invited.

13 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

As to your personal anecdote, it's simply that, a personal anecdote. 

--

At least I have the courtesy to identify it as an anecdote up front. Most people don't! 

As an anecdote, I'm not expecting you to take it as objective fact and an accusation you've never gotten legitimately tripped up, it's just weighing in that, in the manner I use mine, I've only had myself to blame - as a matter of perspective to discussing hitboxes etc.

[DeadVoid118]

16 hours ago, 5p33dy_01 said:

i still dont see why it should take precedence over other modifications.

game modes and events need to be looked at before random things like this, when it is something you already have ways to avoid.
i am also sure that DE dont need people adding to their plate at the moment. they are not sitting thinking (we have nothing to do)

I think whether or not other modifications take precedence is irrelevant to a degree. Sure, other things could be more important than this, but this is still a problem. Bringing it up means keeping it in DE's mind, which can be helpful so it isn't left by the wayside for 'bigger problems'. After all, if all that was fixed were big problems, we'd never have any QoL updates which can be just as important (looking at you, new UI).

7 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Why the risk/reward should be linked to modding stems from its role as a balancing factor - still not the only one, mind you - and as such, consider the shotgun: Your archetypal risk is lost damage from wayward pellets; you don't miss out flat damage from where the weapon started when you mod that into a beast, your risk is proportional to the total reward. Likewise, the personal risk drawback of an explosive cannot be static or it doesn't work as a balancing factor for an increasing power curve.
Additionally, you have to consider how any remotely-relevant 'static' damage is affected by multishot, as I had to for mine. You can't really tie it to the damage event because they might reasonably occur on different update frames. You could ameliorate the total damage across simultaneous projectiles on shooting, but then you still die by catching yourself on a stack of Penta/Castanas (although my recommendation of in-world markers for explosives puts the onus back entirely on the player triggering those).

Your analogy to shotguns works until we bring up the problems with health and different frames again. Weapons should be balanced against each other, just as frames should be balanced against each other. Ideally, all frames should be equal in potential fun/capability, and all weapons should be equal in potential fun/capability. Making the frames and weapons interact with each other makes it a lot harder to balance these things. Again, your self-damage isn't any better than the other self-damage methods in this case, merely an alternative.
Additionally, ideally, the power curve of a game remains somewhat the same. You want to expand player capability without expanding numbers. Furthermore, if the weapon somehow increases in power then that would most likely be do to mods/arcanes/frame abilities, meaning any other weapon also has that potential increase in power, meaning the risk/reward for the added explosion/damage remains the same.
For multishot, you merely make all projectiles/explosions from a single firing have a specific ID. The explosion with the most damage to the player does the actual damage, while all others are cancelled since they have the same ID.
For weapons like the Penta, you simply make every projectile fired have the same ID until you set them off.

8 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

I really can't imagine a good way to account for the various impermanent health regen sources in order to act as a balancing lever. Where do you peg the triggered heals, the lifesteals, the on-operator and operator-triggered arcane heals, all together? Is it possible, maybe. Is it practical, not in my opinion. Similarly for the overarching percent being a poor representation of the player's choices. A decaying/bleeding key pair on an unmodded base Loki and they can survive point-blank nuclear-tier explosions? We must avoid mixing up questions of inter-warframe balance with inter-weapon balance. Broadly, you imagine 'bombproof suit' Person A to be able to shrug off a misfire much more than 'shorts and t-shirt' Person B - with immediate effect. Loki, paper, generally dead. Inaros, brick outhouse, generally lives.

It's actually rather 'simple' (relatively) for things like arcanes since they have a percentage chance of firing off that you can average over time possibly based on how often the specific player triggers it or how often players in general trigger it depending on what you want. Besides, the benefit of health regen from arcanes and such is somewhat different from base warframe ability. All frames have a specific amount of HP when unmodded. You are free to apply whatever mods you wish, but this unmodded HP remains the same. Thus, making the percentage based on unmodded HP means changing the mod dynamic rather than the frame dynamic. Say, 200% of unmodded HP as self-damage as a possibility or something of the sort (and you could easy take Nidus' innate HP regen into account, or not depending on what you want). Additionally, again, it's not about what makes sense. It's about what's fun. Gameplay is more important. Furthermore, you could combine flat damage and percentage. Your method still doesn't seem any better than alternatives.

8 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

The tighter the quarters nearby yourself in which you are using an explosive, including how narrowly you're trying to place them just beyond the hitbox of scenery.. the more that burden is on your choice to do so. The more absolutely certain you must be. If you're not, use another weapon or reposition for a better shot. Yes, it feels good to thread the needle and land a precision shot between (and possibly against) debris in order to perfectly slam that grenade/rocket/etc right into the midst of your enemies (or singular enemy's face). But you know you're doing that at risk of being imperfect, you could almost certainly have played safer. That's your chosen risk to take, veteran or newbie alike. You wouldn't demand perfectly flat and open playing fields to eliminate the risk, you simply take in the information and conclude if that's a risk you're willing to take. That probably covers 99.99% of 'bad hitbox cases', leaving the few outrageously absurd collisions that shouldn't exist. Which, clue being in the description... just shouldn't exist, with or without self-damage being a thing. 

Well, no, Warframe is a fast-paced game with a lot of tight windows in terms of movement, timing, and so on. You don't always have time to re-position, you don't always have the ability to know what is and isn't a bad hitbox, and you don't always have another weapon (Sorties) or time to switch to that weapon or ammo for that weapon. In a game where using melee can be a death-sentence (Nullifiers), your only option is sometimes to shoot. Inevitably, the onus of hitboxes is on the game creators and not the players. You cannot expect players to take bad hitboxes into account since bad hitboxes are not a feature, they're a problem. Sure, you now know there are bad hitboxes and must take that into account. Every player has to learn that, though, and it won't be fun learning that at all (and thus self-damage weapons would remain by the wayside). So, no, it does not cover bad hitbox collisions at all. If I shoot a projectile with my sights on an enemy, I expect to hit that enemy. The game is telling me I will hit the enemy, not taking accuracy into account. If the game lies to me, it's the game's fault. I shouldn't have to be told about a dozen issues beforehand and be expected to know how likely I am to encounter one. That's bad design and poor gameplay.

8 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

At least I have the courtesy to identify it as an anecdote up front. Most people don't! 

As an anecdote, I'm not expecting you to take it as objective fact and an accusation you've never gotten legitimately tripped up, it's just weighing in that, in the manner I use mine, I've only had myself to blame - as a matter of perspective to discussing hitboxes etc.

Well, yes, that was my point. Since you disagree, you seem likely to blame yourself based on how you speak of bad hitboxes even if you do encounter what I would consider a bad hitbox. You are used to the problem, so you understand the risk and know it is a possible threat. The problem is that must be learned and/or taught, which is not fun, and is merely a self-creating band-aid for the problem of hitboxes and self-damage, not a solution.

[Azamagon]

While I applaud you for your interesting formulas to try and reign it in (seriously, well done), I still don't agreed that selfdamage is the best way to punish players with these kind of weapons. I think selfincapacitation is the way to go.

To quote myself from a similar thread:

On 2019-06-03 at 3:39 PM, Azamagon said:

I'll say the same thing I've been saying for years:

Self-damage? No, it doesn't need to exist in Warframe. The game (i.e. yourself, allies and enemies) is generally too fastpaced for selfdamage to work well. Not to mention how certain frames can "abuse" self-damage mechanics to their benefits.

Self-incapacitation though? Sure, that could work. If you, say, got staggered or knocked down by being in your Ogris' blast, there's still a risk involved, but a risk that doesn't mean immediate death. You'd still have to be careful (especially when fighting higher level enemies), so it's still not like you'll be spamming them point blank. They'd just have a more REASONABLE drawback. And modding to become immune or more resistant to these drawbacks (with mods like Fortitude, or Handspring etc) is a more organic way of modding against it, in contrast to the straight up bandaid modding of the Cautious Shot mod.

 

[(PSN)theMycon]

For high-level play, I genuinely like how one poorly placed/planned shot can kill you. I believe that 99% of "bad hitbox" errors come from people ignoring the accuracy stat; whether or not this is true it can easily be dealt with by better placement or planning*. If you're killing multiple enemies with one shot, and some of them can kill you in one shot, it's fine if you can kill yourself in one shot.

Dying from allies is terrible. Play either type of radiation sortie (without a self-damagint weapon) and you'll notice how trivial it is to avoid getting in other players' line of fire, how massively that improves group effectiveness, and how rarely players  do it. 

What we need it a way to punch through allies/ally abilities. I'd love for it to be the default & sticky grenades work as they do (default on talons/castanas, delayed explosion mod for others); but if that's not possible replacing cautious shot with ally punch through would still be better than nothing.

 

*Yes, you can design a hypothetical where this isn't true. I'm under no obligation to stay polite if your argument is based on a fantasy.

[TheLexiConArtist]

5 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

Your analogy to shotguns works until we bring up the problems with health and different frames again. Weapons should be balanced against each other, just as frames should be balanced against each other. Ideally, all frames should be equal in potential fun/capability, and all weapons should be equal in potential fun/capability. Making the frames and weapons interact with each other makes it a lot harder to balance these things. Again, your self-damage isn't any better than the other self-damage methods in this case, merely an alternative.
Additionally, ideally, the power curve of a game remains somewhat the same. You want to expand player capability without expanding numbers. Furthermore, if the weapon somehow increases in power then that would most likely be do to mods/arcanes/frame abilities, meaning any other weapon also has that potential increase in power, meaning the risk/reward for the added explosion/damage remains the same.
For multishot, you merely make all projectiles/explosions from a single firing have a specific ID. The explosion with the most damage to the player does the actual damage, while all others are cancelled since they have the same ID.
For weapons like the Penta, you simply make every projectile fired have the same ID until you set them off.

Zephyr benefits projectiles but hitscan weapons don't care. Volt benefits crit guns and melee only. Frames can have direct or indirect specialisations this way, a tank indirectly has the benefit of being able to withstand the self-damage more than softer frames, theoretically because the softer frames have utility/buffs/debuffs/etc that make them worthwhile. Is that always the case? No, Chroma exists, but that's why I said it's important to not get mixed up addressing inter-weapon and inter-frame balance. An outlier frame doesn't mean you hit the gear, it means you hit the outlying frame, right?
Going back to shotguns, the player's risks are increasing as that individual weapon is modded. A 5000 damage / 10 pellet shotgun with 265% damage courtesy of Serration doesn't still lose 500 damage per pellet that misses, they lose 500*265%. Greater rewards for hitting everything, proportional but nevertheless greater risks for what misses. That can be linear-linked because it's all contextualised on the same basis - damaging an enemy. Self-damage can scale to modding, but since the risk and reward are in different contexts (limited player health versus scaling enemy health), to remain proportional we need to decouple that linear relationship. Increase player-health risk as the enemy-health reward goes up, but grow slower.

I don't think your ID solution for multishot/triggered selfdamage holds up when it comes to the code that would be required to support it, but I respect the efforts to ideate on resolving the problem. Also, flipping the theoretical perspective from discussing 'scaling up', wouldn't you reasonably expect to take less damage from one stray Kulstar or Zarr cluster than what you get for blowing the whole thing right at your feet?

5 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

It's actually rather 'simple' (relatively) for things like arcanes since they have a percentage chance of firing off that you can average over time possibly based on how often the specific player triggers it or how often players in general trigger it depending on what you want. Besides, the benefit of health regen from arcanes and such is somewhat different from base warframe ability. All frames have a specific amount of HP when unmodded. You are free to apply whatever mods you wish, but this unmodded HP remains the same. Thus, making the percentage based on unmodded HP means changing the mod dynamic rather than the frame dynamic. Say, 200% of unmodded HP as self-damage as a possibility or something of the sort (and you could easy take Nidus' innate HP regen into account, or not depending on what you want). Additionally, again, it's not about what makes sense. It's about what's fun. Gameplay is more important. Furthermore, you could combine flat damage and percentage. Your method still doesn't seem any better than alternatives.

Fun isn't the eternal answer to everything. Even in Warframe, gameplay is about more than wanton power fantasy. There have to be rules, limitations and reasons all the same. Hyperscaling Chroma was 'fun' but wasn't fair in gameplay. Yet, he's still most often picked for the mix of tank and power even after losing that ludicrous stacking multiplier.

As for the percentage health thing, well, if everything's only adding percentages then you've still got the same thing where the paper frame and the tank frame have no visceral difference when it comes to blowing themselves up. Unless you introduced an objective 'self damage resist' statistic on all frames that would differ, then you quite bizarrely turn the squishy frames into the best 'risky weapon' users, because they equally don't care about the results but come with all their other "I'm squishy so I get benefits elsewhere" mechanics.

Additionally, is this armour-piercing? What about manipulation through dragon keys? What about flat health restores for low-base-health frames? Your suggestion requires heuristic analysis to divine a result which would at best have players stuck esoterically building based on what limited information they get from experience (considering your comments on hitboxes, you wouldn't want that burden of knowledge), and at worst simply.. fail to correctly interpret the potential inputs and inaccurately punish or not punish players for seemingly-arbitrary reasons.

5 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

Well, no, Warframe is a fast-paced game with a lot of tight windows in terms of movement, timing, and so on. You don't always have time to re-position, you don't always have the ability to know what is and isn't a bad hitbox, and you don't always have another weapon (Sorties) or time to switch to that weapon or ammo for that weapon. In a game where using melee can be a death-sentence (Nullifiers), your only option is sometimes to shoot. Inevitably, the onus of hitboxes is on the game creators and not the players. You cannot expect players to take bad hitboxes into account since bad hitboxes are not a feature, they're a problem. Sure, you now know there are bad hitboxes and must take that into account. Every player has to learn that, though, and it won't be fun learning that at all (and thus self-damage weapons would remain by the wayside). So, no, it does not cover bad hitbox collisions at all. If I shoot a projectile with my sights on an enemy, I expect to hit that enemy. The game is telling me I will hit the enemy, not taking accuracy into account. If the game lies to me, it's the game's fault. I shouldn't have to be told about a dozen issues beforehand and be expected to know how likely I am to encounter one. That's bad design and poor gameplay.

Anecdoting aside, the point I was making is that you don't need to know what is and isn't a bad hitbox if you don't willingly make a questionable shot. How about all those non-explosive projectiles that whiff targets because of the way projectiles are generated in third-person to travel at an angle that approaches the reticle instead of being pinpoint right down the screen? Heck, I'd say that's probably a greater risk of missing and suiciding than a bad hitbox itself. It's a game and while we can't brace our launcher's barrel 'over' our cover, it'd be just as weird and immersion-breaking to have a classic Doom-like 'everything just happens in the centre of the screen', where a rocket never actually appears to leave our weapon at all. _{Hitscan weapons are jarring for that reason sometimes.}

Setting aside nullifiers which are absolutely horrible game design; let's be real, Sortie modifiers exist, but there's Sniper, Bow, Rifle, Pistol, and Melee.. No 'self-damage explosive only' modifier. You chose to come in with only that and no backup weapon instead of a more general-use firearm. It might not be the right tool for the job, is all; like taking Hildryn to a No Shield Nightmare and being upset you can't use abilities or survive much.

5 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

Well, yes, that was my point. Since you disagree, you seem likely to blame yourself based on how you speak of bad hitboxes even if you do encounter what I would consider a bad hitbox. You are used to the problem, so you understand the risk and know it is a possible threat. The problem is that must be learned and/or taught, which is not fun, and is merely a self-creating band-aid for the problem of hitboxes and self-damage, not a solution.

Actually, like I said, it's because I wasn't paying attention to my current weapon most of the time. I don't generally shoot near obstacles, and I generally back-dodge immediately after pulling the trigger if it's a danger-close situation. Especially with the Kulstar.
None of that matters when I'm two inches away from an enemy and try to hipfire my gun at them only to realise I had my explosives out and not a rifle/pistol. But that's my fault.

2 hours ago, Azamagon said:

While I applaud you for your interesting formulas to try and reign it in (seriously, well done), I still don't agreed that selfdamage is the best way to punish players with these kind of weapons. I think selfincapacitation is the way to go.

To quote myself from a similar thread:

Quote

I'll say the same thing I've been saying for years:

Self-damage? No, it doesn't need to exist in Warframe. The game (i.e. yourself, allies and enemies) is generally too fastpaced for selfdamage to work well. Not to mention how certain frames can "abuse" self-damage mechanics to their benefits.

Self-incapacitation though? Sure, that could work. If you, say, got staggered or knocked down by being in your Ogris' blast, there's still a risk involved, but a risk that doesn't mean immediate death. You'd still have to be careful (especially when fighting higher level enemies), so it's still not like you'll be spamming them point blank. They'd just have a more REASONABLE drawback. And modding to become immune or more resistant to these drawbacks (with mods like Fortitude, or Handspring etc) is a more organic way of modding against it, in contrast to the straight up bandaid modding of the Cautious Shot mod.

I'm not going to say heavy landings are completely without risk in a high level or density scenario, but there's still a big difference between that and shooting an explosive three inches from your face.

I don't think the onus should be on the enemies to capitalise on that. You've already made the critical error, the effect should be immediate, whereas a stagger/knockdown is merely a catalyst to getting (possibly) shot at. Also, you have to consider the nature of the weapon. Current balance point aside, it should have vaporised everything around the impact zone, so you're reducing the potential risk that way already as well.

Thought experiment: Take anyone with a Limbo, Frost, Gara etc on the team. Functionally, they can just shotgun enemies with explosives inside the protected close quarters with impunity, because by the time more have passed the threshold where they are capable of posing a threat, the player has recovered from the incapacitation.

Unless it's Isolator Bursa levels of knockdown duration and can't be modded away at all.

[DeadVoid118]

16 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Zephyr benefits projectiles but hitscan weapons don't care. Volt benefits crit guns and melee only. Frames can have direct or indirect specialisations this way, a tank indirectly has the benefit of being able to withstand the self-damage more than softer frames, theoretically because the softer frames have utility/buffs/debuffs/etc that make them worthwhile. Is that always the case? No, Chroma exists, but that's why I said it's important to not get mixed up addressing inter-weapon and inter-frame balance. An outlier frame doesn't mean you hit the gear, it means you hit the outlying frame, right?
Going back to shotguns, the player's risks are increasing as that individual weapon is modded. A 5000 damage / 10 pellet shotgun with 265% damage courtesy of Serration doesn't still lose 500 damage per pellet that misses, they lose 500*265%. Greater rewards for hitting everything, proportional but nevertheless greater risks for what misses. That can be linear-linked because it's all contextualised on the same basis - damaging an enemy. Self-damage can scale to modding, but since the risk and reward are in different contexts (limited player health versus scaling enemy health), to remain proportional we need to decouple that linear relationship. Increase player-health risk as the enemy-health reward goes up, but grow slower.

This is true. Certain frames can synergize with certain weapons better. However, why add more to the mix? Each frame synergizes with a specific weapon/certain types of weapons, but now you're making classifications of frames synergize with classifications of weapons. All self-damage weapons synergize more with all tanks. Volt synergizes with crit guns, but a crit self-damage? That seems harder to balance, and might enforce even more of a nuke (due to lack of AOE weapons)/tank (due to access to AOE weapons) meta.
Also, no, hitting the outlier on a power curve isn't always the best option and there may be other factors at play. A frame can be above the power curve if it's difficult to execute correctily (risk/reward).
Sure, self-damage can scale to modding. But what reason is there? The reasons in your original post have been refuted. Why should the risk increase as the reward increases? The risk doesn't increase for any other weapon. A sniper still does the same damage, an smg still shoots just as fast, and a shotgun still fires the same number of pellets with the same chance of losing X pellets (disregarding adding multishot). Sure, you can lose more damage, but that's not quite the same as having damage done to you. Shotguns still have the same chance of hitting or missing no matter what, the only thing that changes is the amount of damage in each pellet. The main risk/reward for a shotgun is the chance of missing. The main risk/reward for an explosive is self-damage. The shotgun's chance doesn't increase/decrease (outside mods geared towards that) just as the explosive's shouldn't.

16 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

I don't think your ID solution for multishot/triggered selfdamage holds up when it comes to the code that would be required to support it, but I respect the efforts to ideate on resolving the problem. Also, flipping the theoretical perspective from discussing 'scaling up', wouldn't you reasonably expect to take less damage from one stray Kulstar or Zarr cluster than what you get for blowing the whole thing right at your feet?

Actually, this ID system is how you can disable/enable friendly-fire. It's not hard at all to do, most games already ID each and every bullet, this just adds a few specific tags/extensions to that ID. And, again, it's just an option about fun and not logic. If games were logical, everything would be a gritty CoD or something of the sort.

16 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Fun isn't the eternal answer to everything. Even in Warframe, gameplay is about more than wanton power fantasy. There have to be rules, limitations and reasons all the same. Hyperscaling Chroma was 'fun' but wasn't fair in gameplay. Yet, he's still most often picked for the mix of tank and power even after losing that ludicrous stacking multiplier.

Power fantasy doesn't equal fun. No challenge doesn't equal fun. Fun is the point of a game. What people enjoy can differ, and trying to balance that is the problem of a game's design. Some people enjoy a challenge. Some people enjoy no challenge. Some people like variety. So on and so forth. Hyperscaling Chroma wasn't fun to some because it was so overpowered, nullifying challenges, while also invalidating other frame choices of which people can have an attachment to.

16 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

As for the percentage health thing, well, if everything's only adding percentages then you've still got the same thing where the paper frame and the tank frame have no visceral difference when it comes to blowing themselves up. Unless you introduced an objective 'self damage resist' statistic on all frames that would differ, then you quite bizarrely turn the squishy frames into the best 'risky weapon' users, because they equally don't care about the results but come with all their other "I'm squishy so I get benefits elsewhere" mechanics.

Should they have a difference? Is there a reason?
Well, actually, no. If you make squishies unfairly powerful, sure. However, one can balance for self-damage weapons with frames in mind just as one can balance without. It makes no difference, the benefit for tanks of surviving longer still exists and you can balance against that.

16 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Additionally, is this armour-piercing? What about manipulation through dragon keys? What about flat health restores for low-base-health frames? Your suggestion requires heuristic analysis to divine a result which would at best have players stuck esoterically building based on what limited information they get from experience (considering your comments on hitboxes, you wouldn't want that burden of knowledge), and at worst simply.. fail to correctly interpret the potential inputs and inaccurately punish or not punish players for seemingly-arbitrary reasons.

Or they could just release the formula for self-damage and have it somewhere in-game. That's far better than hitboxes, which you would have to datamine or watch thousands of videos to know beforehand. Problem solved easily. Also, does this matter? I could ask the same questions for your method, or any method. Whatever your answer is I could apply to the other methods, or say no and do the opposite. Whether any method does or does not armor-pierce or react to keys isn't the point. The point is your method remains no better than others. I see no reason to pick it. I'm not offering a solution, I'm asking why I should accept the one offered above the others I can see.

16 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Anecdoting aside, the point I was making is that you don't need to know what is and isn't a bad hitbox if you don't willingly make a questionable shot. How about all those non-explosive projectiles that whiff targets because of the way projectiles are generated in third-person to travel at an angle that approaches the reticle instead of being pinpoint right down the screen? Heck, I'd say that's probably a greater risk of missing and suiciding than a bad hitbox itself. It's a game and while we can't brace our launcher's barrel 'over' our cover, it'd be just as weird and immersion-breaking to have a classic Doom-like 'everything just happens in the centre of the screen', where a rocket never actually appears to leave our weapon at all. _{Hitscan weapons are jarring for that reason sometimes.}

There are certainly many hitboxes you can hit that aren't 'questionable shots', visually speaking. Any infested tileset is a nightmare. Hitscan weapons are perfectly fine in player hands, I don't know what you mean by jarring unless you're talking about in the hands of enemies, which is valid.
The problem you bring up seems... irrelevant to the previous one? That's a visual problem, sure, but ultimately the gameplay is provided for over visual experience. (The way it works in Warframe is that invisible damage projectiles come from your camera, while visible fake projectiles emerge from your gun. The game then attempts to detect whether there was actually LOS from your frame, I believe.) You inevitably shoot towards the reticle and not where your character is pointing (and they can point really weirdly). Anyway, whether or not this is a problem with your system is another matter, one important to discuss, but one that is not relevant to the previous problem.

16 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Setting aside nullifiers which are absolutely horrible game design; let's be real, Sortie modifiers exist, but there's Sniper, Bow, Rifle, Pistol, and Melee.. No 'self-damage explosive only' modifier. You chose to come in with only that and no backup weapon instead of a more general-use firearm. It might not be the right tool for the job, is all; like taking Hildryn to a No Shield Nightmare and being upset you can't use abilities or survive much.

So you want to exclude self-damage weapons from any and all sortie parts with those modifiers? That's a lot of non-usage for an entire category of possible weapons.

17 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Actually, like I said, it's because I wasn't paying attention to my current weapon most of the time. I don't generally shoot near obstacles, and I generally back-dodge immediately after pulling the trigger if it's a danger-close situation. Especially with the Kulstar.
None of that matters when I'm two inches away from an enemy and try to hipfire my gun at them only to realise I had my explosives out and not a rifle/pistol. But that's my fault.

Well, not always. Infested tilesets are, as I said, a nightmare with many tight corners yet wide spaces all spaced out like a madman decided level design was not needed (but then, I guess that's the point of the infested). Furthermore, the game doesn't always switch weapons properly (pressing the switch button too fast while doing other things sometimes ignores the button, sometimes acknowledges it).

17 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

I'm not going to say heavy landings are completely without risk in a high level or density scenario, but there's still a big difference between that and shooting an explosive three inches from your face.

I don't think the onus should be on the enemies to capitalise on that. You've already made the critical error, the effect should be immediate, whereas a stagger/knockdown is merely a catalyst to getting (possibly) shot at. Also, you have to consider the nature of the weapon. Current balance point aside, it should have vaporised everything around the impact zone, so you're reducing the potential risk that way already as well.

Thought experiment: Take anyone with a Limbo, Frost, Gara etc on the team. Functionally, they can just shotgun enemies with explosives inside the protected close quarters with impunity, because by the time more have passed the threshold where they are capable of posing a threat, the player has recovered from the incapacitation.

Unless it's Isolator Bursa levels of knockdown duration and can't be modded away at all.

Actually I like that idea of knockdown, since it's proportional to the actual risk/reward. If you're mowing down enemies and could potentially do so with anything because they're level 1's, I don't like the idea that my self-damage weapon is the biggest threat there. The only problem I see with this solution is it isn't proportional to distance from the explosion, unless you make the knockdown take time based on how close you were.

That'd just be a benefit to said frames. As you say, tanks and squishies can synergize/not synergize with said weapons, why can't these specific frames? See, this is just another alternative that your method is no better than.

[TheLexiConArtist]

18 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

This is true. Certain frames can synergize with certain weapons better. However, why add more to the mix? Each frame synergizes with a specific weapon/certain types of weapons, but now you're making classifications of frames synergize with classifications of weapons. All self-damage weapons synergize more with all tanks. Volt synergizes with crit guns, but a crit self-damage? That seems harder to balance, and might enforce even more of a nuke (due to lack of AOE weapons)/tank (due to access to AOE weapons) meta.
Also, no, hitting the outlier on a power curve isn't always the best option and there may be other factors at play. A frame can be above the power curve if it's difficult to execute correctily (risk/reward).
Sure, self-damage can scale to modding. But what reason is there? The reasons in your original post have been refuted. Why should the risk increase as the reward increases? The risk doesn't increase for any other weapon. A sniper still does the same damage, an smg still shoots just as fast, and a shotgun still fires the same number of pellets with the same chance of losing X pellets (disregarding adding multishot). Sure, you can lose more damage, but that's not quite the same as having damage done to you. Shotguns still have the same chance of hitting or missing no matter what, the only thing that changes is the amount of damage in each pellet. The main risk/reward for a shotgun is the chance of missing. The main risk/reward for an explosive is self-damage. The shotgun's chance doesn't increase/decrease (outside mods geared towards that) just as the explosive's shouldn't.

It's not adding more to the mix. We're not ideating on a new system, we're tweaking an existing one. Tanks already survive better than non-tanks (in theory, the curve just grows too high in the end for both). Instead you're arguing to remove or invert that implicit synergy.

My points have yet to be refuted by anything with a greater foundation than "I disagree". Does a sniper miss still deal (modded damage - base damage) to the intended target, or zero? Does a shotgun missing half its pellets still do the entirety of modded damage on the remaining ones, or does it deal half the total damage? The risks have scaled up with the reward. Their proportion has not changed (100% loss on a miss, 50% loss for half pellets, etc) but as I have already stated, this linearity is permissible when the risk is based on the same scale as the reward - they're both enemy health. In a spectacular display of defeating your own point, you're arguing that the value of the risk should not change whatsoever, which means the proportional risk is completely dissociated from the reward - the equivalent of changing the chance directly. Damage mods do not tighten a shotgun's spread or add homing to snipers, so they shouldn't be decoupled from the risk for launchers either.

18 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

Actually, this ID system is how you can disable/enable friendly-fire. It's not hard at all to do, most games already ID each and every bullet, this just adds a few specific tags/extensions to that ID. And, again, it's just an option about fun and not logic. If games were logical, everything would be a gritty CoD or something of the sort.

It's a simple theory, but practice can bring up caveats to the approach. Yes, fun versus logic, but 'fun' at the expense of logic can also lead to weird abuse cases. What's fun for one might be "why does that work, that's dumb" to the next person.
Plus, you know, Warframe and its spaghetti. Trying to ID self-damage projectiles would blow something else up, or stop projectile weapons from dealing damage, or something misadventurous like that.

18 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

Should they have a difference? Is there a reason?
Well, actually, no. If you make squishies unfairly powerful, sure. However, one can balance for self-damage weapons with frames in mind just as one can balance without. It makes no difference, the benefit for tanks of surviving longer still exists and you can balance against that.

See previous observation about changing existing dynamics.

Players who like tanks feel like they should be able to shrug off their own explosives, after all. Making it irrelevant to the paper Loki next to him (who doesn't stand to gain enjoyment from it themselves, they just remain outright ambivalent to the self-damaging process at best) just detracts from their enjoyment.

18 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

Or they could just release the formula for self-damage and have it somewhere in-game. That's far better than hitboxes, which you would have to datamine or watch thousands of videos to know beforehand. Problem solved easily. Also, does this matter? I could ask the same questions for your method, or any method. Whatever your answer is I could apply to the other methods, or say no and do the opposite. Whether any method does or does not armor-pierce or react to keys isn't the point. The point is your method remains no better than others. I see no reason to pick it. I'm not offering a solution, I'm asking why I should accept the one offered above the others I can see.

Well, the armour-piercing, key manipulation and all that matters for the 'percentage based' solutions because that completely alters the efficacy of that pre-ordained damage where my resolution doesn't care about your stats to determine what it deals. Only the damage it's equipped for alters what risk it poses. The simple question of "can I survive this" is different to "how do my Warframe stats manipulate the self-damage equation", and is far less prone to potential exploit cases. Recent related: Hildryn shield-gate grace period being exploited by reducing the shield capacity with Dragon Key.

18 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

There are certainly many hitboxes you can hit that aren't 'questionable shots', visually speaking. Any infested tileset is a nightmare. Hitscan weapons are perfectly fine in player hands, I don't know what you mean by jarring unless you're talking about in the hands of enemies, which is valid.
The problem you bring up seems... irrelevant to the previous one? That's a visual problem, sure, but ultimately the gameplay is provided for over visual experience. (The way it works in Warframe is that invisible damage projectiles come from your camera, while visible fake projectiles emerge from your gun. The game then attempts to detect whether there was actually LOS from your frame, I believe.) You inevitably shoot towards the reticle and not where your character is pointing (and they can point really weirdly). Anyway, whether or not this is a problem with your system is another matter, one important to discuss, but one that is not relevant to the previous problem.

By 'questionable shot', I mean any situation where you aren't given a wide and clear berth from even potential obstructions. Whether you appear to be pointing so you don't run afoul of them is another question - you're in a risky spot there. Consider getting physically nudged by some outside force just before a trigger pull. Your shots made near an obstacle? Probably harm you. Clear and open shots? Still probably safe, if perhaps less effectively placed for their eventual impact.

The projectiles travelling from your weapon are not fakes, by the way. Anyone who's played with a bow will tell you about horizontal-firing arrows when shooting too close to enemies, and they certainly are the source of damage (or not damage, since it buggered off elsewhere). That means your projectile is not guaranteed to reach the reticle when the reticle is in clear space / on an enemy, depending on the character position. Maybe this is partly responsible for some of your many 'inaccurate' hitboxes?

18 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

So you want to exclude self-damage weapons from any and all sortie parts with those modifiers? That's a lot of non-usage for an entire category of possible weapons.

Not exclude them. But if you go in with one, you've gone in knowing you might get put into a bad spot. It's perhaps not the most prudent thing, much the same as taking Hildryn to those no-shield Nightmares. It can be successful, but it's just not the best idea to cover all your bases with minimal weaknesses. Each tool with its own purpose, right?

18 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

Well, not always. Infested tilesets are, as I said, a nightmare with many tight corners yet wide spaces all spaced out like a madman decided level design was not needed (but then, I guess that's the point of the infested). Furthermore, the game doesn't always switch weapons properly (pressing the switch button too fast while doing other things sometimes ignores the button, sometimes acknowledges it).

Hitbox gore of Infested tilesets falls under the 'not shooting near obstructions' part, I wouldn't be taking explosives into Infested missions (or would simply choose to only use them in the more open areas with a quick back-dodge to add resistance/distance).

Bad or forgetful weapon switching is exactly what I was talking about for my own self-inflicted fatalities, though. Not checking I had the right weapon out, or switched - the name's right there in the screen even if you can't spot the model - or, heck, even sometimes having a hilarious brainfart and picking up a datamass only to walk two feet and obliterate myself because oh yes, that means it switched to your Kulstar, you idiot. I call that a lack of due diligence on my part.

18 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

Actually I like that idea of knockdown, since it's proportional to the actual risk/reward. If you're mowing down enemies and could potentially do so with anything because they're level 1's, I don't like the idea that my self-damage weapon is the biggest threat there. The only problem I see with this solution is it isn't proportional to distance from the explosion, unless you make the knockdown take time based on how close you were.

That'd just be a benefit to said frames. As you say, tanks and squishies can synergize/not synergize with said weapons, why can't these specific frames? See, this is just another alternative that your method is no better than.

"I don't like" is probably the crux of the issue we have here. I feel you've made your conclusion long before now; if you're asking me to deconstruct every subjective view you have with the Sheer Force of Logic, then it isn't going to happen and I think we both know that. People are illogical, the more I try to convince you, the less effective I'd be even if everything was outright objective. Which it isn't, by the way. I just provide heavy background explanations for why I see it as a thing.

As for the 'synergy of those frames', not quite. That's not the same sort of synergy. It's a complete absence of drawback instead of synergistic mitigation of the drawback.
For an analogy, look back at 99%-Blessing Trinity: It wasn't changed because a self-damage synergy existed to facilitate it, it was changed because it was the only reliable way to reach that - avoiding the drawback of standard play where the damage reduction buff couldn't be guaranteed at any value.
QT alone mitigated the risk of dying from damage received before getting a good damage reduction, where corner-hiding self-damaging QT completely avoided the mechanic. Different concepts. Trinity players who didn't abuse self-damaging QT could not function on the same level at all.

Additionally, and forgive the heavy emphasis here but it needs to be clear:

The goal is to maintain as many properties of the current mechanical implementation as possible while solving for the core issue of disproportioned risk/reward.

Why? Because people like what they have already. Because alternatives for people who don't like it already exist. Arguing "I would like to use this weapon" means you cannot desire to fundamentally change the weapon when those alternatives already provide the same AOE experience you 'like' without the risks you find problematic.
Allow people their risky explosive fantasy because they like it already. It's not objectively detrimental like the overpowered and riskless Tonkor was, players can cite 'fun' for something here; without those external factors to refute 'fun' because it's at the expense of others, you should respect that.
Therefore, if you must have some changes to pander to vocal complainants - Cautious Shot means DE is prepared to offer something - you should preserve as much of the current playstyle as possible.

[DeadVoid118]

On 2019-06-08 at 5:04 AM, TheLexiConArtist said:

It's not adding more to the mix. We're not ideating on a new system, we're tweaking an existing one. Tanks already survive better than non-tanks (in theory, the curve just grows too high in the end for both). Instead you're arguing to remove or invert that implicit synergy.

It is adding more. The current system is a practical all-or-nothing. You either kill yourself with self-damage or you don't. The chance of actually surviving is minimal event for the tankiest of tanks. That's the entire reason why self-damage needs to be re-done. Sure, technically the synergy currently exists. That synergy need not be taken into account, though, and really doesn't from any practical viewpoint.

On 2019-06-08 at 5:04 AM, TheLexiConArtist said:

My points have yet to be refuted by anything with a greater foundation than "I disagree". Does a sniper miss still deal (modded damage - base damage) to the intended target, or zero? Does a shotgun missing half its pellets still do the entirety of modded damage on the remaining ones, or does it deal half the total damage? The risks have scaled up with the reward. Their proportion has not changed (100% loss on a miss, 50% loss for half pellets, etc) but as I have already stated, this linearity is permissible when the risk is based on the same scale as the reward - they're both enemy health. In a spectacular display of defeating your own point, you're arguing that the value of the risk should not change whatsoever, which means the proportional risk is completely dissociated from the reward - the equivalent of changing the chance directly. Damage mods do not tighten a shotgun's spread or add homing to snipers, so they shouldn't be decoupled from the risk for launchers either.

The dynamic, however, is fundamentally different since the proportion should not change for player health. The chance of missing with a shotgun as its punishment is much the same as the damage done to a player as an AOE weapon's punishment. They should both be percentages. The drawback of a shotgun isn't the damage you don't do, it's the chance of missing. The drawback of an AOE weapon is the self-damage. If you want to equate them, it should then make sense that both be percentages. The fact that the shotgun's limited range/accuracy has a secondary effect of scaling with the weapon's modded damage is irrelevant since the AOE weapon has no equivalent secondary drawback value since the primary drawback value is the self-damage.

I need no greater foundation other than 'I disagree' because there is no presented logical reason to agree. Again, the point is this method is no better than other methods.

On 2019-06-08 at 5:04 AM, TheLexiConArtist said:

It's a simple theory, but practice can bring up caveats to the approach. Yes, fun versus logic, but 'fun' at the expense of logic can also lead to weird abuse cases. What's fun for one might be "why does that work, that's dumb" to the next person.
Plus, you know, Warframe and its spaghetti. Trying to ID self-damage projectiles would blow something else up, or stop projectile weapons from dealing damage, or something misadventurous like that.

You are welcome to explain such caveats. However, until some are presented, there are none.
Ditto for possible abuse cases.
Nobody is asking how the Staticor works and doesn't kill you. Nobody is asking why your frame abilities don't tenderize your allies. The argument of some people saying 'why does that work, that's dumb' isn't a good one because Warframe is clearly a game not geared towards those people. You're a freaking space-ninja and the entire story is about your dysfunctional space family. Salad V is practically a recurring villain-of-the-week, and he somehow survivors being sawed-in-half (probably with the use of Sentient-Flex-Tape).
Arguing about potential bugs that may or may not happen is irrelevant to the argument. One could point out your system could do much the same, or any suggestion. The point of the suggestion is the hopes that it is followed fully and there are no bugs. We want things to work as intended. Pointing out they might not for this specific thing is only relevant if you have an actual specific thing that breaks and needs fixing. The possibility of such an occurrence is a vastly different thing, and could be argued for any change to the game.

On 2019-06-08 at 5:04 AM, TheLexiConArtist said:

See previous observation about changing existing dynamics.

Players who like tanks feel like they should be able to shrug off their own explosives, after all. Making it irrelevant to the paper Loki next to him (who doesn't stand to gain enjoyment from it themselves, they just remain outright ambivalent to the self-damaging process at best) just detracts from their enjoyment.

See previous point that it's not changing existing dynamics since the dynamic, while technically existing, is practically dead and the entire reason self-damage needs a change.

If you're the type of person who loses enjoyment because your squadmates are doing good, a co-op game is the wrong game for you. I like playing as tanks. I generally switch between tanks and stealth (which are kind of still tanks in Warframe). If I'm a tank and I see that Loki blasting away with the latest self-damage weapon, good for him. Who the frick cares he can survive his own blasts? The only person who's going to gain or lose enjoyment from a weapon like that is the user. It's about how the weapon plays, feels, and functions. The only time I have ever cared about what weapons my squad carries is when they bring explosives to a freaking spy mission.

On 2019-06-08 at 5:04 AM, TheLexiConArtist said:

Well, the armour-piercing, key manipulation and all that matters for the 'percentage based' solutions because that completely alters the efficacy of that pre-ordained damage where my resolution doesn't care about your stats to determine what it deals. Only the damage it's equipped for alters what risk it poses. The simple question of "can I survive this" is different to "how do my Warframe stats manipulate the self-damage equation", and is far less prone to potential exploit cases. Recent related: Hildryn shield-gate grace period being exploited by reducing the shield capacity with Dragon Key.

Yeah, it matters, but I'm saying for the purposes of comparison it doesn't. We can add whatever we want. We can patch potential exploits. It's not an arguing point because my argument is that the other methods aren't worse than this method, meaning you can shift around the minutia of the other methods however you prefer and find a similarly-satisfying one that isn't this method.

On 2019-06-08 at 5:04 AM, TheLexiConArtist said:

By 'questionable shot', I mean any situation where you aren't given a wide and clear berth from even potential obstructions. Whether you appear to be pointing so you don't run afoul of them is another question - you're in a risky spot there. Consider getting physically nudged by some outside force just before a trigger pull. Your shots made near an obstacle? Probably harm you. Clear and open shots? Still probably safe, if perhaps less effectively placed for their eventual impact.

The projectiles travelling from your weapon are not fakes, by the way. Anyone who's played with a bow will tell you about horizontal-firing arrows when shooting too close to enemies, and they certainly are the source of damage (or not damage, since it buggered off elsewhere). That means your projectile is not guaranteed to reach the reticle when the reticle is in clear space / on an enemy, depending on the character position. Maybe this is partly responsible for some of your many 'inaccurate' hitboxes?

That would be every situation in a game like Warframe. PoE is the closest you will get, and most of the enemies are still bunched up in places with tons of obstructions littered everywhere.

Actually, they are, even for bows. You can test this with an Ignis by wall-aiming above a doorway and pointing directly down. The Ignis will shoot off to the side while you will damage things beneath you. For the bows, the invisible projectile is simply shooting through the enemy that is too close and will still hit enemies further back. As I use a bow on occasion, this isn't a rare occurrence.

On 2019-06-08 at 5:04 AM, TheLexiConArtist said:

Not exclude them. But if you go in with one, you've gone in knowing you might get put into a bad spot. It's perhaps not the most prudent thing, much the same as taking Hildryn to those no-shield Nightmares. It can be successful, but it's just not the best idea to cover all your bases with minimal weaknesses. Each tool with its own purpose, right?

A practical exclusion is an exclusion nonetheless, just as practically nobody takes Hildryn into no-shield Nightmares.

On 2019-06-08 at 5:04 AM, TheLexiConArtist said:

Hitbox gore of Infested tilesets falls under the 'not shooting near obstructions' part, I wouldn't be taking explosives into Infested missions (or would simply choose to only use them in the more open areas with a quick back-dodge to add resistance/distance).

Bad or forgetful weapon switching is exactly what I was talking about for my own self-inflicted fatalities, though. Not checking I had the right weapon out, or switched - the name's right there in the screen even if you can't spot the model - or, heck, even sometimes having a hilarious brainfart and picking up a datamass only to walk two feet and obliterate myself because oh yes, that means it switched to your Kulstar, you idiot. I call that a lack of due diligence on my part.

So, you would give a practical exclusion for explosives to Infested missions. You know, the faction that is expressly for hordes which AOE is supposed to deal with.

The problem isn't that it's forgetful weapon-switching. It's bad weapon-switching. It's inconsistent. It sometimes ignores button presses and sometimes doesn't with no clear indication of when that ignoring will occur. And, additionally, the name doesn't even appear in the bottom right if you use melee, but still allows you to fire to kill yourself (and melee often just adds to the inconsistent switching).

On 2019-06-08 at 5:04 AM, TheLexiConArtist said:

"I don't like" is probably the crux of the issue we have here. I feel you've made your conclusion long before now; if you're asking me to deconstruct every subjective view you have with the Sheer Force of Logic, then it isn't going to happen and I think we both know that. People are illogical, the more I try to convince you, the less effective I'd be even if everything was outright objective. Which it isn't, by the way. I just provide heavy background explanations for why I see it as a thing.

Well, yes, that is the point. I want you to present why your method is better than others. Currently, I have provided reasons why anything you have presented is not enough enough to make your method better than others. If your method is not better than others, I will pick that which I most favor, and I favor other methods. I have concluded nothing so long as I continue a conversation, and generally my conclusions afterwards are little to do with the argument. Sure, I have opinions swimming in my head, but they are by no means permanent nor restraining upon your ability to convince me.

What you're doing is not taking my perspective into account. You imply you have deconstructed my subjective view with the 'Sheer Force of Logic', or at least deconstructed much of my argument with logic, but this is simply not the case. Your every post refutes just as much as I refute. The only points you have are the ones I haven't responded to yet. You imply you have somehow deconstructed my argument, but that only works taking into account your latest post which I haven't responded to yet with or without my own refutation, as I have refuted previous arguments. I could say the exact same for you, that you are illogical and not willing to be convinced. However, it's not ultimately about convincing me or convincing you. It's about convincing the audience (DE). I have presented my argument, and you have presented yours. Whether the audience listens to either is entirely up to them.

On 2019-06-08 at 5:04 AM, TheLexiConArtist said:

As for the 'synergy of those frames', not quite. That's not the same sort of synergy. It's a complete absence of drawback instead of synergistic mitigation of the drawback.
For an analogy, look back at 99%-Blessing Trinity: It wasn't changed because a self-damage synergy existed to facilitate it, it was changed because it was the only reliable way to reach that - avoiding the drawback of standard play where the damage reduction buff couldn't be guaranteed at any value.
QT alone mitigated the risk of dying from damage received before getting a good damage reduction, where corner-hiding self-damaging QT completely avoided the mechanic. Different concepts. Trinity players who didn't abuse self-damaging QT could not function on the same level at all.

It's not quite the same since it is a natural synergy that doesn't quite nullify the potential. You could still die as Frost or Gara. It could happen at a bad time for Limbo and kill you. There's no avoidance or nullification. It's mitigation. Sure, heavy mitigation, but mitigation nonetheless. Besides, outright nullification isn't necessarily a bad thing (though often is). Nullification, in fact, is often used for the player. Shield-gating, for example. It entirely nullifies damage. Valkyr's invulnerability. So on and so forth. Nullification is almost certainly a bad thing when it comes to enemies, but it's often used for players with great effect (rolling, invincibility frames (as in Frames-Per-Second, not Warframes), etc.). Sure, the duration of these specific frame abilities are far longer than most of other mentioned cases except maybe Valkyr's invulnerability, but the nullified risk is also less. It's merely nullifying a drawback of an explosive, and is no different from an ability that creates homing projectiles or reduces spread for shotguns or other such things. It's not pure invincibility.

On 2019-06-08 at 5:04 AM, TheLexiConArtist said:

Additionally, and forgive the heavy emphasis here but it needs to be clear:

The goal is to maintain as many properties of the current mechanical implementation as possible while solving for the core issue of disproportioned risk/reward.

You say that's the goal, but is it really? The goal of your original post, sure, but my argument has little to do with that goal. Sure, if you say the goal is X and say this is the best method to achieve X and it fundamentally is, and I'm arguing that method to that goal, then I have no leg to stand on. However, I'm not arguing that. I'm saying the goal is really Y, to solve the problem of self-damage, and that there are other methods that I prefer. X includes Y, but X is ultimately simply more specific and framing the problem in a specific light, when the problem is really Y.

On 2019-06-08 at 5:04 AM, TheLexiConArtist said:

Why? Because people like what they have already. Because alternatives for people who don't like it already exist. Arguing "I would like to use this weapon" means you cannot desire to fundamentally change the weapon when those alternatives already provide the same AOE experience you 'like' without the risks you find problematic.
Allow people their risky explosive fantasy because they like it already. It's not objectively detrimental like the overpowered and riskless Tonkor was, players can cite 'fun' for something here; without those external factors to refute 'fun' because it's at the expense of others, you should respect that.
Therefore, if you must have some changes to pander to vocal complainants - Cautious Shot means DE is prepared to offer something - you should preserve as much of the current playstyle as possible.

1. Well, no, if people liked what they had we wouldn't have the problem in the first place. People don't like self-damage, and satisfying that minority that do like it when they might be happier with the change (and, even if not, are still the minority) is not worth it. Any decision in the game pushes aside a group of some sort. Your method pushes aside the group that dislikes self-damage altogether.

2. Well, no, I would like to use the Tonkor. I don't right now. It needs a fundamental change for me to use it. It's not exactly the same as other weapons that 'already provide the same AOE experience' because there are other factors about a weapon than the AOE (like the Tonkor's grenade gimmick that isn't much of a gimmick anymore due to self-damage and the grenades exploding on contact). Your point doesn't make any sense because it ignores other factors about weapons besides AOE, in which case we should only have one AOE weapon or two, a primary and secondary.

3. Well, yes, that was my point. I don't see why we can't just use all the methods for different weapons and balance their base damage accordingly. However, you frame it as if you want only this method (or a single method), and I object to that (specifically, using only your method). It's not an objectively superior method, and therefore shouldn't be the only method used.

4. People like to frame things they disagree with as complaints from a vocal minority. However, the truth of the matter is that we don't actually know this to be true or not. You would need to take a cross-platform survey that petitioned every Warframe player upon login and then somehow account for alts to get a pretty accurate description of things, and you'd probably piss off a lot of the fanbase with a mandatory survey. So, in conclusion, framing your opponent as that loud, annoying minority that isn't actually right is disingenuous without evidence to back it up. Furthermore, the Warframe playerbase has no majority, so what do you even mean minority? We're all simply groups here.