Removal of player control and why this leads to frustration

[RetroNomad]

"LOL WALL OF TEXT NOT GUNNA READ" TL:DR at the bottom.

To preface this: I've had to think on how exactly to express this in a (hopefully) constructive manner for some time now and why this can be an important subject for game feel and game flow.
Of course I'm no Dev, have never put together a game or offered critique professionally but, only an avid player going on some 3 decades of personal experience with games. With that in mind, please take everything I say as that of an outside perspective and as someone who has no authority on the subject of game design. I'm just some schmuck barking in the dark here, but I hope to start a healthy conversation on the subject. 

What do I mean by "Removing player control"?
By personal definition; I find it to be any instance where direct character manipulation is removed from the player. I.E. Cut scene, interrupting mechanics like juggle, stunning, pulling of player character etc. 
The former; Cut scenes, are completely contextual but generally anything that could be done in game is better done through doing and not showing *cough* QTEs *cough*. But regardless, not the real subject here. It's the latter, taking momentary control away from the player through mechanics and game play.

With that in mind, I love you DE and these criticisms come from a place of passion, but you have a serious issue when it comes to this and game play.
There seems to be an almost macabre obsession with manipulative enemy types within Warframe often stun locking, juggling, pulling or throwing the player suddenly. So much so that you've even included the mods Sure Footed and Primed Sure footed among many others
These are, point blank, horrid mechanics. They do not present any sort of challenge to the player but rather simply break the flow of combat and game play momentarily. When these moments stack, it can often lead to frustration and really take away from the games overall feel. They do not encourage thoughtful game play and a dynamic, natural difficulty, but just serve to disrupt, annoy and pester the player over and over and over again. Taking control from you, leaving you to just stare and wait while being dragged across the floor for 30 feet is not engaging but just frustrated sigh inducing. You cannot shoot, you cannot respond, you simply wait. Granted, it's only for a moment, but yet again, these little things add up when certain enemy types are present.

I may be reading things wrong here but it always seemed as though this was presented as a sort of difficulty mechanic or a way to supplement the lack of a true difficulty curve outside of damage resistance and larger health pools.  Difficulty does not come from manipulating the player into unfavorable situations, but rather from challenging the player with a situation and tasking them with overcoming it. We cannot overcome being grappled, tossed or stunned if locked into an animation with no responses of our own outside of relying on an ability like Iron skin to just nullify it outright.

But, these mechanics are here and clearly can't be reverted without some serious revision of a 5+ year old , ever evolving game.


Moving from the problem to the answers, we can see how it's handled in other genres to a great degree of success.
Take Fighting games or Hack and slash titles for example: When juggled or knocked down, there's often a window of opportunity where a player can respond by rebounding just as they hit the ground or within certain frames while mid air, quickly correcting themselves upright and getting back into combat  without losing game flow and even working these mechanics into it. 
See: Animation canceling/ground and mid air recovery

Spoiler

Spoiler

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With such a fast paced game like Warframe, I'm surprised we don't have mechanics like this baked into the game play. Moa knocks you back/down? Interrupt the stun animation with a correction. This would give the player at least an option mechanically and something to do for those moments rather than being locked into an animation, sitting idle for a second waiting for a chance to respond.  We're in control of crazy future organic robot space ninjas with super powers. You'd think we'd know how to back handspring and correct a bad landing or stagger.

The same goes for being pulled by Grineer or Ancients. We literally have guns, how is it that we can't shoot back while being pulled or even use our melee to break said pull? Rather than working these options into game play mechanics for the player to be better engaged, we just.. kinda lay down and let it happen until it's done. Giving no option but to just wait, respond, and have it happen inevitably once more a few moments later.

I FIRMLY believe there's an opportunity here to better engage a player and help the feel of this fast and furious game with the introduction of a few minor new mechanics without having to reinvent the wheel so to say.


I know this seemed like a huge wall of text but, the TL;DR would have to be something like..
Taking control away without presenting a real game play option is annoying and kinda a sin that can lead to frustration and poor game flow. If you plan to take control away, make sure that mechanic has an answer that is engaging and better tightens game flow and feel.

Edited May 27, 2019 by RetroNomad
Added more gifs to better illustrate point with fighting games. Added clearer terms for mechanics in other games.

[RetroNomad]

After thought:
The funny thing about introducing simple mechanics like this is... It wouldn't even really change anything but psychologically would make the game feel more responsive and give the player a sense of control. It may actually take a moment LONGER for the player to back handspring out of a knockdown and respond but it would at the very least make them FEEL as though they were doing something other than waiting for the chance to respond.

Fundamentally, it wouldn't even change game play but would feel a lot more engaging in the end.

Edited May 26, 2019 by RetroNomad

[MagPrime]

I came close to doing that thing that annoys me regarding my own topics, upvote and move along, but this raises valid points.

While it was enjoyable to have the sudden yanks, pulls, pushes, etc. when I first started playing because it wasn't something I experienced often, but with the frequency and complete lack of options to do anything about it without hindering your builds?  Pure frustration and it actually changed my approach to builds.  I focus on wiping things out as fast as possible so that they don't get the chance to lock me out of playing.

 

[Cephalycion]

Oh boy. I think you need to go play For Honor. And experience the ungodly Cent wall splat combo. You basically let go of your keyboard while half your health disappears. That is what I would call removing player control.

[(NSW)Hatemachine]

Id say its fine, its a sneaky underhanded way of undermining an otherwise overpowering opponent, you cant shoot it to bring it down before it gets to you, poison doesnt work & power disabling doesnt stop that slaughter monster coming your way.

Its the best means to overpower a superior foe, Bolas, nets, tranq darts be it blowgun or air rifle, this is how you trap, subdue or disable an opponent, its annoying as hell & happens WAY to often when every single moa can ping pong you around with a flurry of stomping that puts country line dancers to shame, mpre so than the fact that they ARE line dancers, jk folks, im not allowed to dance the Atomic energy commission said so.

But otherwise its no worse than hit & run tactics against a superior army, you do what ya gotta do to try to fight & win or at least buy time to run or make an opening for your team to damage the enemy.

Edited May 27, 2019 by (NSW)Hatemachine
Cursed small keyboards & typos!

[RetroNomad]

2 hours ago, Cephalycion said:

Oh boy. I think you need to go play For Honor. And experience the ungodly Cent wall splat combo. You basically let go of your keyboard while half your health disappears. That is what I would call removing player control.

I'm good there, thanks. I like to play a game and not make a cup of tea while I get ticked to death lol.

 

 

1 hour ago, (NSW)Hatemachine said:

Id say its fine, its a sneaky underhanded way of undermining an otherwise overpowering opponent, you cant shoot it to bring it down before it gets to you, poison doesnt work & power disabling doesnt stop that slaughter monster coming your way.

Its the best means to overpower a superior foe, Bolas, nets, tranq darts be it blowgun or air rifle, this is how you trap, subdue or disable an opponent, its annoying as hell & happens WAY to often when every single moa can ping pong you around with a flurry of stomping that puts country line dancers to shame, mpre so than the fact that they ARE line dancers, jk folks, im not allowed to dance the Atomic energy commission said so.

But otherwise its no worse than hit & run tactics against a superior army, you do what ya gotta do to try to fight & win or at least buy time to run or make an opening for your team to damage the enemy.

While it's "Fine" in an applicable real world setting, we're talking about something that genuinely breaks the flow of the game IMO. These staggers and grabs could still happen, yes, however, I'm proposing something that would allow the player to participate and retaliate in a timely manner rather that just be simply locked out of playing for sometimes seconds at a time. Don't remove the mechanic, but make it an active part of play.

 

3 hours ago, MagPrime said:

I came close to doing that thing that annoys me regarding my own topics, upvote and move along, but this raises valid points.

While it was enjoyable to have the sudden yanks, pulls, pushes, etc. when I first started playing because it wasn't something I experienced often, but with the frequency and complete lack of options to do anything about it without hindering your builds?  Pure frustration and it actually changed my approach to builds.  I focus on wiping things out as fast as possible so that they don't get the chance to lock me out of playing.

 

And yeah, it's something that after all of these years I figured would get better but now that we've reached a point in game design where these issues are often not seen it's become strikingly apparent these staggers and down times are there. It's a design from yesteryear and the mechanics haven't caught up in an engaging/rewarding way unfortunately.

[Femuru]

my initial thoughts when everyone complained about cc is that ppl arent learning to dodge or atleast utilize some warframe abilities like map nuking, map cc, or something like oberon who can just straight ignore them but tbh i think the problem with enemy cc is probly the same as the game hit scan guns. there are gonna be ppl who just go so far on the scaling game that every bullet should be a single shot death yet dodging every single one but most ppl wont be able to go through that hurdle bcuz well nothing is easily noticeable as hit scan ppl arent going to be able to see these bullet storms coming, ppl cant really figure out the position or angle enemy cc abilities are coming from either. they dont put indicators, no red markers, no real easy way for ppl to see where theyre making their mistakes so ppl just have this frustrated mess of either cc predicament or even when they wanna put their hand at tough lvl they have the one shot predicament. the idea of breaking out of a cc chain via skilled timing press sounds fun but i still think to some degree ppl should atleast learn to watch their surrounding more while devs if making something to oppose us in whatever kind of difficulty (if they give us some actual tough content) should make it alittle more clear for ppl to understand where theyre making their mistakes at.

[RetroNomad]

10 minutes ago, SutomuDrgn said:

snip..

Fair points and very true. But aside from either A: Staying in the air or B: Shooting the thing before it can CC or stun lock you.. What options are there when these melees begin? Even as a seasoned player of nearing 3K hours, there's nothing to stop a string of moas or exploding infected from stun locking us once it starts said chain. Just a simple tap on the space bar + a direction wouldn't remove this effect from happening, but rather give someone the option of doing something. Anything other than just being idle as a player waiting to shoot the thing in the face once the animations are done. 

I can for sure see what you're saying though and Warframe has a history of not telegraphing where a certain issue is coming from like.. Idk... Fking Energy leaches?!

Edited May 27, 2019 by RetroNomad

[(PSN)CodyXSavageX]

getting knocked down once is a coin flip in higher levels

if you jump on the moment your character hits the floor you should have an increased knockdown recovery speed this is something I've seen in non-fighting games that could be implemented in warframe

[(PSN)sister-hawk]

Yeah this stuff really gets on my nerves. DA: Inquisition multiplayer really taught me that getting knocked down and having no control over your recovery is about the most annoying thing in any game ever (those Qunari amirite?). And the number of enemies who possess a knockdown mechanic in Warframe is quite excessive.

Some people will say, “just avoid it.” Dodge the hook, don’t get close to the heavy gunner, jump over the shock wave, yada yada. That argument doesn’t work for me because Warframe is a horde shooter. You are constantly surrounded by enemies who are doing crap loads of dps. I don’t have the time to engage in a 1v1 battle of wit every 3 seconds with specialized enemies. The game just isn’t designed for that.

And the worst of all has got to be the Isolator Bursa who for some reason has a special knockdown that leaves you lying flat on your back for literally like 5 seconds while it pumps several shotgun blasts directly into your groin.

It’s just like Steve himself said about the new Gas City a few devstreams ago. Reward success, rather than punishing failure. I should be rewarded with a quick recovery for successfully passing a skill check, not punished for failing to avoid the knockdown. If not that, then just cut back on the annoying crap.

[Darth_Predator]

1 час назад, RetroNomad сказал:

Staying in the air

Not really a possibility, since you can be knocked down/pulled while airborn. Otherwise things like Motus set bonus would not be a thing. I also talk from personal experience: I was grappled by ancients/scorpions while midair countless times, not to mention occasional rockets flying by. And if you are on high end of scaling, as @SutomuDrgn mentioned, you are screwed. Lost momentum, dropped on the floor, got stuffed with bullets by 500 grineer/corpus standing nearby with very low chances to survive that, unless you rock 2 mitigation abilities and/or being tanky as hell.

4 минуты назад, (PS4)sister-hawk сказал:

That argument doesn’t work for me because Warframe is a horde shooter. You are constantly surrounded by enemies who are doing crap loads of dps.

So much this. I once found myself surrounded by like 50 ancients, I wished I was playing Inaros at that point. Jumping over moas is another thing, you can still be unlucky to land near the corner and be hit by a shockwave from a moa standing around that corner, which you wouldn't be able to see... then you get ragdolled all the way to the nearby planet... while people are still shooting at ya.

I love me some tough enemies to fight that can't be deleted with 2-3 shots of my weapons, I hate that at this point those are nothing but cc mobs everywhere.

[RetroNomad]

3 minutes ago, Darth_Predator said:

Not really a possibility...

That was the point I was making though maybe the dry sarcasm was a little too thick. It's not a viable option and you WILL get either yanked out of the air or have to come down at some point lol.

Edited May 27, 2019 by RetroNomad

[VanFanel1980mx]

11 hours ago, RetroNomad said:

"LOL WALL OF TEXT NOT GUNNA READ" TL:DR at the bottom.

To preface this: I've had to think on how exactly to express this in a (hopefully) constructive manner for some time now and why this can be an important subject for game feel and game flow.
Of course I'm no Dev, have never put together a game or offered critique professionally but, only an avid player going on some 3 decades of personal experience with games. With that in mind, please take everything I say as that of an outside perspective and as someone who has no authority on the subject of game design. I'm just some schmuck barking in the dark here, but I hope to start a healthy conversation on the subject. 

What do I mean by "Removing player control"?
By personal definition; I find it to be any instance where direct character manipulation is removed from the player. I.E. Cut scene, interrupting mechanics like juggle, stunning, pulling of player character etc. 
The former; Cut scenes, are completely contextual but generally anything that could be done in game is better done through doing and not showing *cough* QTEs *cough*. But regardless, not the real subject here. It's the latter, taking momentary control away from the player through mechanics and game play.

With that in mind, I love you DE and these criticisms come from a place of passion, but you have a serious issue when it comes to this and game play.
There seems to be an almost macabre obsession with manipulative enemy types within Warframe often stun locking, juggling, pulling or throwing the player suddenly. So much so that you've even included the mods Sure Footed and Primed Sure footed among many others
These are, point blank, horrid mechanics. They do not present any sort of challenge to the player but rather simply break the flow of combat and game play momentarily. When these moments stack, it can often lead to frustration and really take away from the games overall feel. They do not encourage thoughtful game play and a dynamic, natural difficulty, but just serve to disrupt, annoy and pester the player over and over and over again. Taking control from you, leaving you to just stare and wait while being dragged across the floor for 30 feet is not engaging but just frustrated sigh inducing. You cannot shoot, you cannot respond, you simply wait. Granted, it's only for a moment, but yet again, these little things add up when certain enemy types are present.

I may be reading things wrong here but it always seemed as though this was presented as a sort of difficulty mechanic or a way to supplement the lack of a true difficulty curve outside of damage resistance and larger health pools.  Difficulty does not come from manipulating the player into unfavorable situations, but rather from challenging the player with a situation and tasking them with overcoming it. We cannot overcome being grappled, tossed or stunned if locked into an animation with no responses of our own outside of relying on an ability like Iron skin to just nullify it outright.

But, these mechanics are here and clearly can't be reverted without some serious revision of a 5+ year old , ever evolving game.

Moving from the problem to the answers, we can see how it's handled in other genres to a great degree of success.
Take Fighting games or Hack and slash titles for example: When juggled or knocked down, there's often a window of opportunity where a player can respond by rebounding just as they hit the ground or within certain frames while mid air, quickly correcting themselves upright and getting back into combat  without losing game flow and even working these mechanics into it. 
 

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With such a fast paced game like Warframe, I'm surprised we don't have mechanics like this baked into the game play. Moa knocks you back/down? Interrupt the stun animation with a correction. This would give the player at least an option mechanically and something to do for those moments rather than being locked into an animation, sitting idle for a second waiting for a chance to respond.  We're in control of crazy future organic robot space ninjas with super powers. You'd think we'd know how to back handspring and correct a bad landing or stagger.

The same goes for being pulled by Grineer or Ancients. We literally have guns, how is it that we can't shoot back while being pulled or even use our melee to break said pull? Rather than working these options into game play mechanics for the player to be better engaged, we just.. kinda lay down and let it happen until it's done. Giving no option but to just wait, respond, and have it happen inevitably once more a few moments later.

I FIRMLY believe there's an opportunity here to better engage a player and help the feel of this fast and furious game with the introduction of a few minor new mechanics without having to reinvent the wheel so to say.


I know this seemed like a huge wall of text but, the TL;DR would have to be something like..
Taking control away without presenting a real game play option is annoying and kinda a sin that can lead to frustration and poor game flow. If you plan to take control away, make sure that mechanic has an answer that is engaging and better tightens game flow and feel.

Adding to your topic, the recently added boss takes control away from you and proceeds to fire their death lasers at you, normally they charge up a little, they still don't have a clear AoE visual aid but when you regain control in certain situations you have no time to react and get cheesed, this is less of a problem for Exploiter Orb but still annoying since it can also put you in the middle of a firefight if there are enemies around and throw you off the loop if you have certain amount of timing with your abilities (the ones that you can actually use because lately these bosses are just immune to everything else.)

[Steel_Rook]

I'm personally of the opinion that we need manual recovery for a bunch of different situations, like we had back in the days of Marvel vs. Capcom. Say you get knocked back - hit Jump while you're in the air to perform a mid-air recovery and land on your feet. Get knocked to the ground - hit Jump to stand up near-instantly. Land from a great height and do your slow-posing super hero landing - hit jump to recover immediately. It doesn't have to rely on precise timing, just some player input would be fine, as far as I'm concerned.

[(PSN)Schobii564]

Removal of manual block = removal of player control = BAD

[RetroNomad]

6 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'm personally of the opinion that we need manual recovery for a bunch of different situations, like we had back in the days of Marvel vs. Capcom. Say you get knocked back - hit Jump while you're in the air to perform a mid-air recovery and land on your feet. Get knocked to the ground - hit Jump to stand up near-instantly. Land from a great height and do your slow-posing super hero landing - hit jump to recover immediately. It doesn't have to rely on precise timing, just some player input would be fine, as far as I'm concerned.

Literally THIS. It's a VERY simple thing but a thing of controlled, flowing beauty.  Everything would be snappy, and player input would mean something. No need to make it flashy, it's just a jump, flip or dodge roll cancel. The animations for which we already have in game.
Hell, if DE would like to be cheeky, they could change the mechanics of mods like Handspring and rather than giving the player "X% faster recovery"  it would allow for this mechanic so it's not thrown to the side and never used. Now the mod goes from a kinda clunky passive thing that speeds up animations, to something involving the player and game play.
Though I'd just like to see the mechanic in general, I think tweaking mods may be a happy medium, giving them greater value than they already have.

Edited May 27, 2019 by RetroNomad

[3rdpig]

There's almost nothing in gaming that pisses me off as much as having the controls taken out of my hands by cheap mechanics like stunning and knockdowns. Which is why I play almost exclusively either Nehza, Atlas or Rhino, with Nehza being my most played warframe.

Stunning, knockdowns (and the even more moronic dragging) needs to have some kind of cap put on it. Just the other night as I'm leveling up Harrow, I come around a corner and face a hit squad of ancients. All I could do is wait while I'm being constantly knocked down, drug, knocked down again, drug some more, until my character was killed and I could get away. Put a cap on it, only one knockdown every 30 seconds, even a lazy programmer out to be able to figure that out.

It's cheap, it's lazy, it's incredibly infuriating and all too many games have it. Other than Waframe one of the worst of the bunch has been Mass Effect. The Geth Bombers in ME3 and the absolutely idiotic dogs in MEA. In ME I'm a playing as a Krogan, an 800 pound battle lizard in powered armor and I'm being held captive by a dog? A friggin dog? WTF! How come I'm not just throwing the dog into the next county and getting back to killing things?

In Warframe I'm the most advanced battle technology ever created and I'm knocked down by a small female Grineer with a rope and hook? WTF DE, either you or the friggin Orokin need to go back to the drawing board because that's as absurd as Skywalker and his buddies tripping an Imperial AT-AT with ropes.

That's my rant and contribution to this thread. Thanks for reading!  😉

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, RetroNomad said:

Literally THIS. It's a VERY simple thing but a thing of controlled, flowing beauty.  Everything would be snappy, and player input would mean something. No need to make it flashy, it's just a jump, flip or dodge roll cancel. The animations for which we already have in game.

Yup. Again, Marvel vs. Capcom handled this by simple animation cancelling. Hit your jump after being kocked up and your character snaps to their jumping sprite with a brief flash. Same as the landing roll. Do it right and your character snaps to a roll sprite instead of a prone sprite. The same can be done in Warframe, snapping the character model between keyframes and hiding the transition behind a brief flash. The same already happens when swapping between melee and guns, hidden behind the weapon teleportation effects. We are space ninja, after all. Snapping into a short roll from a prone position wouldn't look that out of place.

And best of all, it keeps the player constantly in control. No matter what happens to you, you always have a button to press to get out of it. As long as you have the muscle memory to do it in time, you can avoid most of a knockback or a knockdown.

 

1 hour ago, 3rdpig said:

There's almost nothing in gaming that pisses me off as much as having the controls taken out of my hands by cheap mechanics like stunning and knockdowns. Which is why I play almost exclusively either Nehza, Atlas or Rhino, with Nehza being my most played warframe.

I'm the same way, though I play predominantly Inaros with his Negation Swar, Trinity with her Link or - as well - Atlas and Rhino. Playing a Warframe without status protection ala Harrow or Frost is immediately frustrating to me the first time I get knocked over three times in a row.

 

7 hours ago, (XB1)Cubic Clem said:

The biggest issue for me is fortuna bouncing (which often made me bounce literal minutes before I could do anything) and the awful pin point never missing grappling hooks from ancients.. it's awful .. 

To a large extent, that's an issue with the Terra Corpus themselves. I still find them to be by far the worst-designed faction in the entire game, simply because they're lazy. Yeah, let's just give a single faction all of the things and call it "challenge." The result is an enemy who swarms you with high-value targets and no cannon fodder, and who has mobility, shields, armour, status resistance, control effects, anti-ability fields and boss summons, just off the top of my head. I'm very happy that the Vapos Corpus faction didn't go the same way. They have some amount of cheese, but fighting them still feels like fighting the Corpus rather than "everything at once."

[RetroNomad]

11 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Yup. Again, Marvel vs. Capcom handled this by simple animation cancelling....

 

Exactly. To a further extent this is a common feature in most hack and slash games like DMC, Nier, MGRR, Boynetta etc etc etc etc...  You described the mechanic I was struggling to get at but couldn't pin down naming wise due to having trash brain. It's such a common feature in other genres and even shared genres of Warframe that we often forget they're even there at all, at least until they're not these days like in WF.

Edited May 27, 2019 by RetroNomad

[Viges]

DE: We will make melee 3.0 simple and responsive!

Also DE: Removes quick melee, forcing combo mechanics

Players: