Honest question. Is self harm really necessary in this game?

[(XBOX)CertainLeader6]

45 minutes ago, dirtysmile said:

😂

Essentially, yeah.

[HAYABU5A]

there was a time when the Kulstar did no self-damage

it was rather good but not game-breakingly overpowered per se, leaning towards lazy gameplay perhaps, but most importantly it was so so much fun 

[birdobash]

This wouldnt be a problem if self damage was limited to a percentage of your health instead of 100% of the damage also hurting yourself, in so many other games with self damaging weapons the explosions deal significantly less damage to the user than towards enemies, because nobody would use explosive weapons otherwise.

It would still be punishing to shoot yourself, but at least it wouldnt be so abnoxiously out of your hands when your teammate accidently flies past in front of you and you fire, killing yourself in a single shot. At least give the player a CHANCE after they make a mistake.

On another issue, how come you can physically shoot teammates, companions (like kavats and kubrows) and mission operatives??? It doesn't make any sense gameplay-wise since they're invincible and makes even less when you factor in self damaging weapons that you can accidently die from before you can even say ZIP.

Edited June 19, 2019 by birdobash

[(XBOX)CertainLeader6]

On 2019-06-18 at 9:21 PM, birdobash said:

On another issue, how come you can physically shoot teammates, companions (like kavats and kubrows) and mission operatives??? It doesn't make any sense gameplay-wise since they're invincible and makes even less when you factor in self damaging weapons that you can accidently die from before you can even say ZIP.

IDK

[TheAdoringYesMan]

On 2019-06-14 at 5:58 PM, TheLexiConArtist said:

Tried, yes. Succeeded? Eh, not much, but you've deliberately opened it up even more in response, to the point where I think you're trying to make an argument by verbosity. Granted, I can be accused of the same, but at least I identified it as an issue and made an attempt to group some things back in.

This is an ignorance response. 'Reality' by your assertion alone.

Yet I who do not use Energy Restores except usually by accident (because I have them on the wheel just in case some exception comes along) seem to have millions of Nano Spores where other people run out.. and when asked how, usually cite restores. There's still an obligation there to address the issue, if it were removed then you'd not need Restores, your Zenurik focus would be unnecessary in favour of some other utility, and you'd get back Arcane slots for other utility. The undesirable outcome exists not removed.

2 points of subjectivity, 1 point of inaccurate subjective judgement, and one complete statement of non-argumentative supposition. Failed. I addressed the first three and the fourth isn't even an argument in support, it's just speculating the claim itself.

There is no proof the fundamental implementation of self damage does not work by virtue of anything but your own opinion, but every argument against is flagrantly ignored/dismissed. It's entirely arguable that the fundamental idea of self-damage - instant risk to self upon failure, scaling with the potential reward - can work if rebalanced statistically.

It adds to the game because it's a distinctive different challenge and playstyle posed to the user. Some people enjoy the risk. Some laugh about blowing themselves up (whether or not they think it's their fault, but especially when they do acknowledge this). Why are those players forced to change to suit you when alternatives to that playstyle exist for your purposes?

Explanation flawed: fallacy remains. 

Let me fix that quote: "Some people are not having a good time while using these weapons." Not all, and those people aren't being disallowed, it's just their opinion and interpretation of the results. As I've said, that's fine, just don't use them then? You're still demanding change to personally suit you where it's unnecessary.

Let me give you the inverse: Ivara's my primarily used frame and I spend a hell of a lot of argument on saying why she's currently a horrible experience in comparison to others. She simply functions in spite of that. I may not have the majority of usage time on explosives, but that doesn't mean I have no experience and doesn't mean I can't assess their use. Have you considered that the stats are padded out by all manner of things including time literally spent holding weapons without even using them? 9000 hours of 0-kill Spy missions would still be 9000 hours of playtime with whatever happened to be equipped at the time, despite 0 kills and affinity earned.

Frankly, if I can use the Kulstar and not blow myself up with even less predictable cluster payloads then what does that say about you who seem incapable of controlling a singular payload?

'Fun' is a finite resource. A player is only playing/enjoying so many things for so much time. 1 hour of gameplay spreads evenly across loadouts used in that time. If sufficient arsenal variety exists, no net 'fun time' is lost by a player opting to use any given weapon over another.

• You have 2 viable choices. Gameplay investment is divided over a diversity of 2 items.
• You have 300 viable choices and 10 inviable choices. Gameplay investment is divided over a diversity of 300 items.

Point B is clearly more healthy than point A.

Simulor effect range was, if memory serves, ~12m radial blast.
Simulor firing range was, due to projectile behaviour, ~10m from point of fire (less due to gravitating of projectiles which could pull back for the initial combination)

You cannot simply put self-damage on that because the basic operation shoots with you in the threat zone.
The Tonkor bouncing back at you is a failure to execute. It shoots projectiles further than the 6m effect radius, you just shot a wall that caused it to reflect back.

1. This aids in creating distance between player and intended target.
2. The player is not forced to use the weapon that does not work well in enclosed spaces (having a complete loadout except by selection) and most of these 'tight spaces' are still greater than the radius of payloads
3. The player does not need to 'thread the needle' and doing so implies a risk that the firing angle may be just off and hit the object. Also, simply place yourself >6m away from dubious-hitbox object.
4. A non-argument as mistake is made by the point of explosion, as explosives are generally fairly similar in size.
5. The parked car ran out and hit me, officer, I swear. You controlled your vector of motion and by extension, any vector of scenery 'approaching'.

Me: I don't blow myself up on scenery by accident.
You: Well most players "can't" achieve that and do blow themselves up by accident.
2+2 = I am performing above average players and cannot be considered a representative sample.

That's not elitism. I don't actually think I am above other players, I think anyone who enjoys the weapons enough to do so could develop equal or greater finesse. You're the one claiming they can't as the basis of your argument.

Will you quit with this waffling ad-hominem? For the fifty thousandth time, players don't have to find self-damage fun for themselves, but that doesn't mean nobody finds it fun. Players don't have to go to the trouble of learning launcher finesse if they do not wish to, as other weapons are available.

Just use the other weapons if you hate self-damage so badly, you are not 'entitled' to have everything changed to suit you.

You say 'backpedaling', I say 'something I was already talking about before you were summoned to this thread'.

I do refuse to acknowledge the remaining "fact", because it's not a fact, it's an opinion from anecdotal experience.

Also can I get your parkour mods that physically warp level geometry? They sound rad af.

You called it a cover shooter. I called it a shooter, with cover that can be used situationally. One of us is making a claim of predominance the other is not (hint: it's you).

You don't have to sit behind that pillar for an hour, you can literally take that cover for half a second to make the rocket discharge, or the Ballista to miss the shot, then move out to deal with them. That's still usage of cover. Since you seem to love NTS, I should probably turn it on you here except more accurately. Are you telling me no true Warframe player takes cover behind scenery?

Funny story: If you're exposed (read: have no cover from line of sight) to a ranged enemy, that enemy is disinclined to move towards your location. You break line of sight, funnelling them through a chokepoint. Stop the presses, this squad utilised a form of cover against opposition(!)

The analogy works because in both cases the object was static and you are the one moving. It's your responsibility. The 'parked car' equivalent just highlights how much you sound like a mind-addled drunkard by saying the scenery is rushing you.

Oh but it was incredibly well liked. We had to go through >50 pages of this exact sort of point-for-point diatribe from the people defending their precious Tonka toy. Along with all those superficial "lol just don't use it" comments - which again, is completely inapplicable in the case of obligation to use few, versus a disinclination to use few.

Just because something is disliked, doesn't mean it ought to be changed to suit the ones who dislike it. See, I can do it too.

Oh look you're ignoring again. DE is disinclined to solely buff damage output because people are complaining about the input. If you gave the Ogris more damage, what would you get? "lol you still kill yourself with cautious even harder now". So unless you either stop complaining (accept fatal risk into your life) in which it doesn't matter how much damage they add, or accept rebalance so that we have a foundation that works better for you and scales better, DE won't be increasing the damage output.

Because removing self-damage means you also don't get 'bombastic' output, because nobody wants the Tonkor meta back.

You say you can't do it, you refuse to believe it possible for players to do it, and that's all you have to counter my assertion - which is argued because you have superior mobility and a set of eyes with a brain. I know it to be possible, because I do it. But that's anecdotal, so instead I say it's generally possible because you have the necessary information fed into your eyeballs (minus the exceptions that prove the rule) to employ that control required.

I'm not dismissing your point. I'm refuting it.

The conveyance of the punishment mechanic is fine. You shoot the boom near you, you get hurt as well. That's all it needs to convey. When you pick up the weapon you don't kill yourself. Getting a couple ranks in it teaches you all the vanishingly small details of 'radius' (it's simply not that big, we aren't nuking tiles wholesale) and there you go. You know what you have and what is expected.

You shot a wall. The wall didn't jump out in front of you. You shot a wall. You made a mistake.

You made a mistake. You failed. You're given the grace to recover from failure. That's a luxury. Because you made the mistake.

Jesus christ, if you're going to accuse me of an ad-hominem, at least go a paragraph afterwards without using one yourself!

I mean, I've already refuted said accusations anyway, but you go right ahead and self-sabotage.

Going from, say, 'pause combo' to 'alternate button combo' is not removing the fundamental mechanic. You just access the variants slightly differently (attack speed messes up pauses but does not impact alt-presses the same way). You might still be hasty and mash buttons, messing the combo up when you should be pressing a particular sequence, you might still whiff the same 'payoff' steps of the chain.

Going from 'instant forfeit, scaling self-damage' to 'no damage' (or capped damage, smart-arming, et al) is fundamentally changing that. Capped damage will never kill you. Smart arming may never hurt you when a mistake is made.

Actually, at best it'd be 'fallacy fallacy'. Which is kind of the point - you don't actually appear to understand them. If you're going to cite them, please get them right.

Please cease wilful ignorance.

You don't understand fallacies. Stop.

Natural stealth or in other words, aided versus unaided. Inaros has huge natural tank, unaided health pool, where Trinity has aided tank through a couple stacking damage resistance buffs.

Assimilate Nyx removes all self-damage from the equation. Your entire problem is therefore 'solved' if you're going to allow specific builds as arguments.

Let me break it down real simple like:

1+1+1+1... and 2+2+2+2... are correlating sequences. They are not absolutely equivalent, but they follow the same general trend (n*X).

Self-damage explosives and Hildryn without shields are both correlating - they result in a greater-than-average risk of death. They are not equivalent, because Shieldless Hildy is a lot more of a burden than Explosives are.

In both cases players can operate skilfully enough to subvert the risks and enjoy fun and satisfaction of doing so.

I am this-close to just memeposting for how dumb this sounds.

Let's call in that old 'git gudness' of Dark Souls, right?

Vanishingly few people become skilled enough (enjoy getting there) to read every tell and execute flawlessly, defeating bosses without taking a single lick of damage consistently, right?

They make mistakes. But those mistakes ARE STILL MISTAKES!

It isn't that "I never blow myself up". I never blow myself up unless I made a mistake.

Here's one of those direct "NO U" quotes you wanted so much.

Fishing is against Warframe's core design. We have it. Some people like it, most likely don't care for it. Get rid, yeah? Oh wait no because it doesn't actually harm you.

Again you employ this "OBVIOUSLY I'M RIGHT" perspective while accusing me of the same. You have still yet to disprove my rebuttals to 1.3 with anything beyond vague waffle and personal opinion.

For the second list entirely, your conclusion is flawed. If the mechanic exists already and if the mechanic does not ACTIVELY work to the detriment of those who do not find it fun, then there is no obligation to change it. You say it 'denies fun' but as previously observed, this is not a founded claim as there is no obligation to engage with the unwanted mechanic. You're not being denied anything in the Primary slot of your loadout for not liking launchers, you just fill it with something else.

1) You attempted to undermine me calling your arguments fallacious by saying I was pulling a fallacy. You also even misattributed the fallacy you chose.

2) Says basic understanding of logic because you can't be appealing to purity when you're observing data. It's hilarious this is the cornerstone of your rebuttal because it's one of the closest times I've been to leaning to your side of an argument, and you're so caught up you're trying to push me back over.

3) See 2). I'm not saying you can't or won't, I'm saying you don't. Claims and observations. Technically my example was limited because, I suppose, you could argue that non-top athletes could enter the Olympics, they'd just fail to meet competition. I should have said "are competing" as that is more clearly observant than claimant.

4) Your feedback is that you don't like self-damage and find it difficult (or in your words 'impossible') to avoid. That is valid. Your subsequent demand is to have it changed to suit you. That is not valid feedback.

You're the one originally claiming majority - I merely state that it is in fact likely due to the subdivisions that you are not in the majority for your specific solution. There's been a few problems over the course of failing to understand boolean logic on non-binary data. "Not positive" includes neutral as well as negative, "Not negative" also includes neutral. "Not neutral" only disincludes neutral and allows the full spectrum either side.

As we have no real statistical data on something as fickle and fleeting as opinions, we can only draw supposition from the groupings in play.

1. Go back to your original summoning portal to the thread. By which I mean where you were quoted. I immediately rebuked.
2. It's not a simple yes/no, and trying to make it one is false dichotomy. There are some tight spaces. There are never exclusively tight spaces that preclude that ~6m radius.
3. No, you're still fundamentally wrong for the working assumption in general, you just had a couple actual exception cases which I knew about and addressed before you even showed up, stop trying to call this a personal victory.
4. It was impossible to access the required extents of Blessing (primarily the DR) when it became relevant due to the flawed design. Self-damage emerged as a way to safely force that without risking one-too-many bullets causing outright death before Trin could finish casting. Self-damage was a treatment to the symptom, the design flaw was the cause which was subsequently treated to obviate the need for self-damage.
5. Let me ask you something: Would Castanas Trin have worked if Castanas couldn't be pure radiation? Would it have worked if resistance to radiation couldn't be additively stacked to >100% for complete immunity? How many Trinities accidentallied themselves to death because they mistimed the manoeuvre?
   • Just because removing self-damage was the selected response does not mean it was the correct response. Self damage, again, was merely a catalyst to the outcome, not the core cause of why it was present. Rectifying additive resistance stacking would have also removed the overwhelming Trinity Link gameplay while also solving issues with situationally-invulnerable enemies, whom unfortunately remain a problem.
   • You can also still charge up damage into Nyx's Absorb with triggering explosives, which is fundamentally the same process - self-damage in and ignored, more damage out to enemies. QED.

 

Aaand the reply box ganked almost the entire rest of the response when I tried to change something.

I guess I have a ton of rewriting to do. Posting this bit to be edited.. god damnit, what a waste of time.

This is why this over-verbose stuff detracts from legitimate conversation. Sorry, I'm going to half-ass this and chunk it in unattributed quotes for celerity's sake. RIP quality.

Accused me of outright abuse. Just saying that I've not been infringed for it yet, so that's fairly baseless.

Well look what just happened. Sucks to lose an hour's detailed rebuttal, and honestly, I had important things to do that limited how much time I could proceed right then. It takes sweet time to actually address things like this.

Your 'verifiability' has mostly been through sheer repetition, unfortunately, calling things 'objective' when they're argued subjective, and 'ignored' when the address has either been overlooked or dismissed arbitrarily.

A player being imprecise or imperfect down not make them 'a lazy scrub', and all I'm saying is that they haven't elected to take the time to advance beyond said imprecision.

 

I think I made some 'witty' comment here but it's gone now. Guess you'll just have to settle for please address my argument and not cast aspersions on my character.

Your "facts and evidence" have almost always been speculative and subjective, and this continued enshrinement of yourself as unassailably objective is kind of the point.

You "pointed out" (actually argued that) it is an unworkable design when I disagree.

The Lenz delay is still a luxury in giving you grace after making a mistake that does not need to be retrofitted to extant weapons.

You have described an error in judgement which is still an error made by the player.

Repeating this 'scenery' and 'unpredictable collision' idea of yours does not make it objective. But it turns out my solution even solves for that because in my rebalance you still have some iteration of Cautious Shot to fall back on if you are not comfortable - it's just less extreme of a reduction and/or more of a detriment to the total damage, in accordance with the risk/reward balance resulting from the formula in play.

The only tiles exhibiting zero 6m+ clearance spaces for entirely safe shots to be made are certain connecting corridors and dead-end 'locker rooms'. In cases where you are currently too cramped you have other weapons in your loadout unless specifically selected not to.

You have the option to backpedal if the situation calls for it. Electing not to do so, and to instead fire explosives in close quarters, is your own responsibility.

I have already observed the inherent limitation on output changes to be related to the current criticisms of self-damage.

You have no real way of knowing which of these people, including even the ones currently demanding no damage, would in fact ultimately become satisfied with a solely statistical (non-mechanical) rebalance. You might even be surprised yourself if it were offered.

Argued above not to be the case, not objective. I argue it broadly is (barring the very specific exception cases).

As a matter of overall balance, yes, that is a risk with changes in general. But with how vehement you are against self-damage in its current form, the buff that would be needed for you to pick it up regardless is, implicatively, the strong-arming we wish to avoid

It's not that poorly designed. And it doesn't hurt you. Now, if friendly-fire were always on them as well, you might have an argument. But it only affects you if you use it. So, you can leave that impact to players who don't mind it nearly as much.

The history went a little like this:

1. TONKOR - PREDOMINANTLY USED - No risks, Incredible Reward
   1. Base launch level. Irrelevant self-damage, crit weapon, automatic headshots
2. TONKOR - PREDOMINANTLY USED - No risks, High Reward
   1. Auto-headshots removed, slashing effectiveness by 75% in most content. Still dominating.
3. TONKOR - Little-used - High Risk, Medium Reward
   1. Added self-damage to Tonkor
   2. Further reduced base stats of Tonkor

So, hitting the reward alone didn't work. Applying the risk and further slashing reward together is why it dropped into outright disuse since.

If it had been left at Stage 2 Reward with Stage 3 (actual) Risks it might have found a niche of players (other than Salty Susans who missed it being outright broken) actually using and enjoying it even with its self-damage in play, but without dominating everything else.

Conjecture yes, but far from impossible.

I've agreed it could stand to be rebalanced. Mechanically it's fine. I'm not the only one who thinks that way, I'm just the one most prepared to engage to this extent.

Again working from an assumption that these players agree with you based on mechanics (above and beyond the identified actual problem cases) and would not be placated with statistical balance improvements. We can't know for certain unless we tried it.

Argued*

If you made a mistake, you made a mistake. That is 1=1 logic. Whether or not you are allowed the grace to recover from that mistake is a separate question - you are not necessarily entitled to recover from it, because you have to admit, you messed up.

Perhaps there's opening for the niche of risky-but-more-gracious explosives as their own archetype expanding with future gear, but that doesn't need to detract from the highest-risk instant-forfeiture archetype (assuming said archetype is conferred appropriate benefits to compensate).

I've never said all future launchers have to use the current model in precision, I just argue against precluding the current model for current or future weapons. Even down to thematic 'realism' as with that other guy.

 

On 2019-06-17 at 3:18 AM, Teridax68 said:

... except I never expressed any problem with the length of these replies, much less promised to shorten them. I have, therefore, been acting consistently with my stated intent, and while it is not my intention to make an argument by verbosity, it is certainly my intent to answer you thoroughly, including on the many tangents you have gone into, e.g. Energy restrictions, Warframe as a cover shooter, the many accusations of fallacies you have cited seemingly at random, or the very nature of reality, which you are apparently questioning in order to push forth your present agenda. You are allowed to complain about it, of course, just as you falsely accused me of avoiding your points even as I had answered every single one, but then when you simply worsen the thing you called a problem, you obviously come across as a tad hypocritical. The fact that you would attempt to excuse yourself by instead trying to displace the fault onto me is in fact the very same "tu quoque" fallacy you have repeatedly (and incorrectly) brought up in this argument.

No, "reality" as in there is this video game that exists, that clearly runs by certain rules, where the playerbase clearly does certain things and not others, majoritarily voices certain opinions and not others, and prefers certain things and not others. This may not be the video game you want to talk about, but it is the one nonetheless being discussed. Thus, trying to pretend that this video game is something completely other than what it actually is, and hiding behind the distance created by these forums to pretend that its very existence is wholly subjective, is delusional at best, and dishonest at worst. Warframe is not a game where explosives are popular, and so directly because of self-damage, as cited by a great many players. If you are unable to even admit this basic fact, then your position is not worthy of consideration, as you are arguing against reality.

And others who do use restores seemingly have few to no problems, and the ever-increasing prevalence of Arcane Energize means there are even fewer constraints for many. The consequences of removing Energy are completely irrelevant to a point that is already irrelevant to the subject matter: Energy is so easy to have past a threshold that it can be argued that Energy as a resource ceases to truly matter at that stage. Thus, going back to the original point, it is plain to see that DE does make an effort to cater to player desires, even when there are problematic long-term consequences, something I believe is the case for Energy, but wouldn't be for explosive self-damage, for reasons stated already.

... which ones? Where? You have this odd habit of claiming that you've already addressed arguments made, but appear utterly incapable of proving it, or even assigning specific criticism to specific arguments, as is the case here (how exactly are you expecting me to guess which of the arguments are "points of subjectivity", "inaccurate subjective judgement", or "one complete statement of non-argumentative supposition"?). Where have you addressed any of these arguments, let alone all of them? Until you actually provide a counter-argument to these points, you don't get to dismiss them out of hand without fatally undermining your credibility.

But this is false, as yet again proven by the above: random weapon spread exists, multishot exists, and it is a known fact that we move fast and that the scenery is complex; therefore, it is equally obvious that we cannot perfectly predict where every single one of our projectiles will land, particularly when you also factor in projectile arcs and the like. Thus, basing a mode of self-damage that presumes all of this in order to enact punishment for failing in one's perfect prediction is fundamentally flawed by design. Dismissing this as "subjective" only further underlines how little relevance your argumentation has to do with basic facts and evidence, along with a fundamental misunderstanding of what subjective topics are.

And there is at least one documented example of a person enjoying sticking their finger between their eye and their eye socket, that does not mean the act can itself be generally described as pleasant or healthy. Similarly, the existence of some hypothetical people who enjoy a piece of bad design does not automatically make that design good, especially because that much can be said for literally anything (some people liked Nervos, for example). There is no "distinctive different challenge and playstyle" to be created by a mode of punishment that punishes the player for factors other than misplays, and as already explained, there are far better alternative designs that generate the exact same gameplay (e.g. the Lenz, the Corinth's minimum range, and so on). Thus, the reality of the matter is that you are advocating for the one mode of design that does not actually present the gameplay you are hiding behind as an excuse to preserve it, and blindly rejecting all provably better alternatives, even in the face of near-universal dislike of your own design. There is thus no reason to force every player in the game to be given the unsavory choice of not using a cool-looking weapon, or suffering its poor design, just because one person on the forums insisted that they liked it (even though you demonstrably do not as much as you claim to).

... but how can that be the case when I explained precisely that there was in fact no fallacy, and that you were just making crap up? You are yourself committing a fallacy by arguing from repetition, without even caring to explain yourself here: how exactly do you expect to convince anyone here that my response somehow didn't address the issue? It's like you're trying to convince yourself more than anyone else at this stage.

But your own stated liking of that design is your own opinion, and an extremely minoritary one at that, so if self-damage on those weapons gets removed or changed, why can't you just deal with it? What makes you more important than anyone else? Because it is you here demanding that the near-totality of players deal with poor weapon design just because you've decided to plant your little imaginary stake on the forums and declare that no-one can change self-damage, simply because you said so.

... but all of this is completely irrelevant to the point: you could still be holding a Kulstar without using it, but even that much you chose not to do. Moreover, you've repeatedly insisted that your enjoyment of explosive weapons is important enough that no-one else should get to touch them, yet even in the worst-case scenario where you'd stop playing explosive weapons if their self-damage got removed, that wouldn't even take up 10% of your total weapon usage. Not only is your stated opinion on explosive weapons heavily biased, it is entirely exaggerated, as you clearly don't use explosives nearly as much as you'd like to convince anyone. In other words, it feels like you're arguing in defense of explosive self-damage more for argument's sake than out of some true attachment or liking for the weapon class, in spite of the fact that your argument heavily relies upon the latter.

Or, alternatively, your self-declared expertise with the Kulstar is itself entirely fabricated, just like your overinflated stated experience with explosives as a weapon class. Moreover, I myself expressed no real comment on my own skill with explosives, so you attempting to lord over your alleged superior skill over me comes across as a tad hollow and desperate: more importantly still, though, it perfectly illustrates the elitism you've been criticized with throughout this thread. You're visibly not here to make a real argument, you're here because you want to act like you're better than someone, anyone, which is also why you force yourself to go through these protracted replies in spite of your stated dislike of them, simply out of a frantic need to save face, which you've irreparably lost long ago on this thread.

Except players don't simply play the entire game for 1 hour and stop, so your argument makes strictly no sense. Fun is not a limited resource, and despite the immense amount of time players put into Warframe, there inevitably comes a time to try something new, which is why variety is emphasized so much in the game's selection of weapons and warframes. Even if fun were indeed finite and constricted, that would still not be a reason to make an entire class of weapons flat-out unfun for the vast majority of players.

... but still not ideal compared to point C, where all 310 choices were to be viable, which is the actual subject of the discussion. You are clearly trying to shift the goalposts here, and for all the spin you're putting on here, it's clear that you are prepared to make an entire class of weapons unviable, simply because you want them for yourself. This is not a reasonable position to take when arguing for something in front of a wider community, by the way, and is all the more hypocritical when you accuse the opposing majority of selfishness simply because most players would like to play explosive weapons without randomly blowing themselves up.

The wiki says the explosion range is 8m and the firing range is 12m, with patch notes indicating no change, so I'm not sure where you pulled those numbers from. Even if the firing range were shorter than the explosion range, that in itself could have been fixed with the implementation of self-damage, yet neither happened, soooo...

But how is it the player's fault when they will be typically firing a spread of multiple projectiles that can all bounce off of anything at unpredictable angles? You are repeatedly blaming the player here for getting punished in ways one simply cannot reliably play around, not even with perfect play.

... except the player does not move backwards through missions, which encourage the player to move towards objectives, and towards places where there are more enemies. One certainly can create distance, but this also requires a layout that enables this (i.e. enough open space), which is not a given in many of Warframe's tilesets.

"If you don't like it, don't use it" is a shoddy excuse that serves to dismiss poor design instead of addressing it. In the end, the fact remains that most of Warframe's spaces don't work well with explosives (and just because spaces are only slightly greater than explosive payloads does not contradict this), and this is one of the many reasons why explosives are typically not picked. Players are already taking your advice, and that is precisely why the weapon class is currently in the gutter.

You are yet again intentionally missing the point: the problem isn't simply with the firing angle, but with the weapon's spread, which has a literal random element and thus cannot be perfectly predicted. Moreover, the very point being made is that level geometry is deceptive, and thus cannot be pre-emptively recognized as "dubious". You are effectively here asking the player to constantly do detective work to recognize which level geometry is "dubious", using some hypothetical ESP spidey sense, and then constantly withhold shooting whenever that sort of geometry is present. Do you not think these demands are all a tad excessive when most guns without self-damage just demand the player point and click to work properly?

Explosives are fairly similar in size... but that size is not well-conveyed, which is the point being made. You are yet again trying to shift the goalposts in an attempt to avoid addressing an uncomfortable point.

But the player's "controlled vector of motion" is not the problem here, the complex scenery and its sometimes-deceptive collision surface is. Even if the scenery's hitbox perfectly matched up to its visuals, it would not stop the fact that the relative scenery around the player changes extremely rapidly, far more than in a game without parkour or any kind of speed to the player's movement. Pretending that the player can thus perfectly predict everything in the game simply because their own motion is not utterly random is thus itself a ridiculous notion, one that only gets made when far, far away from the actual game.

That is, though, because you are ultimately using your self-professed l33t sk177z as the measuring stick by which you are declaring every other player inferior, as noted above when you tried to use that same tactic against me. You are repeatedly saying that players deserve to get punished by explosive self-damage at all times because you're so much better than them, or so you say (and, considering the overall level of honesty in your rhetoric, and the contrary evidence at hand, I'd say that much is dubious as well). Moreover, the "accidents" being mentioned here are specifically being said to be out of the player's own control: thus, claiming to be exceptionally skilled because those random events don't happened to you suggests you misunderstand what skill actually represents, and are more interested in looking for excuses to call yourself exceptionally skilled than you are in actually encouraging more skill expression in-game.

Where did I do so? I never disputed the fact that players can develop mastery of explosive weapons, and blow themselves up less; I am pointing out that even at a high degree of mastery, there is inevitably some risk of incurring self-damage, because perfect skill alone does not cover against all possible instances of self-damage that can occur. Moreover, expecting players to have some hypothetical perfect degree of skill just for a weapon to stop being unfun is not a position I would consider reasonable.

Sputtering out the same debunked straw man over and over again (or, as you put it, "for the fifty thousandth time") is not going to make you any less unconvincing on the matter. I'm not saying literally all players find explosive self-damage unfun, nor does my argument rely on this presumption, I'm just pointing out that the people who do so are obviously a tiny minority in the face of people who dislike it, and many of them seem to be exaggerating their self-professed love significantly for the sake of an internet argument. You are not entitled to blocking out part of a massively multiplayer game from all of these people simply because you personally refuse to have something change.

Nor are you entitled for the game to freeze in its tracks and retain poorly designed features just because you personally say so, against a large majority of players who want change. If you're so attached to self-damage, just play any of the other video games that offer that.

You can call it whatever you so wish, the fact remains that you are presently admitting to a fact that defeats your own position, which I had pointed out already, in spite of your own denial, itself featured in the rest of your arguments here. If you yourself admit that not all self-damage is the result of a misplay, why insist that it is?

I'm sorry, random weapon spread, multishot, and Warframe's actual tilesets are "anecdotal experience" now? Are you sure you're using literally any of the argumentative terms you've cited here correctly?

Um, what? I said the level's topology changes rapidly relative to the player, not that the tile's layout itself morphs. You do know how relative motion works, right?

And here you are arguing on semantics: call it whatever you like; Warframe is not a game that encourages cover shooting, and simply because you get to position vertical bits of scenery between yourself and enemies does not mean it has a cover system, or that doing so is even particularly productive in this game, much less part of its intended design. Once again, you are also trying to move the goalposts on this particular point, as you were originally trying to claim that at least some part of the game encouraged "stationary, cover-based approaches" (your exact words) in an attempt to pretend that Warframe ever pushed the player to be stationary. It patently does not, particularly as even here you've been forced to dilute the meaning of "cover" (and, by extension, "cover-based approaches") so much as to mean nothing, certainly not the stationary gameplay you were pretending exists in Warframe.

... but I'm not? You're literally fabricating a No True Scotsman on the spot then accusing me of it, an approach most would describe as unhinged. As mentioned above, you have backtracked so much on your original statement of "cover-based approaches" that you're apparently using that to describe simply flitting by any vertical piece of scenery while in combat. By your own implicit admission, Warframe isn't a game that encourages the "stationary, cover-based approaches" you once claimed. You are wrong, plain and simple.

... but if there is only one way for the enemy to approach you, they will go through the chokepoint regardless, so you're not using cover against opposition, you're just funnelling enemies into a single path (which would make them inclined to move towards your position, as is the enemy's core behavior in Survival). Not only are you transparently grasping at straws here, you're not even making any sense. 

... but it doesn't, because the inherent presumption with walking into a parked car is that the action is so simple as to be easily avoidable. Parkouring into complex sci-fi scenery isn't so simple, demonstrated by the fact that parkour is itself a skill the game uses to challenge the player. Thus, pointing out that your analogy is crap doesn't make me "a mind-addled drunkard", but you blatantly failing to understand the concept of frames of reference and relative motion certainly indicates just how out of your depth you are in this discussion on parkour and explosives.

This is yet again a transparent bit of grasping at straws, as you are trying to frame the people defending the Tonkor against the addition of self damage as people who genuinely wanted the Tonkor to be the absolute most dominant weapon in the game, which is evidenced... where, exactly? I was absolutely part of that group defending the Tonkor against self-damage, too, but you'd be hard-pressed to find me opposing any request to nerf that weapon whatsoever at the time.

If it is disliked by a majority of players who repeatedly cite why, then it is in fact a good reason. You inventing situations that did not exist doesn't really detract from this.

... but, as I already pointed out in the point you have been ignoring, if it already happens now, the amount of overkill damage is irrelevant. You are the one ignoring arguments here, and so in favor of pushing inane, conjectural claims that fall apart at the slightest inspection.

... which is itself a false dichotomy, as asking to remove self-damage is an equally valid option. Once again, you find yourself announcing the logical fallacy you subsequently commit.

... why not? Again, you keep dragging the specter of the Tonkor meta, in complete and deliberate ignorance of what actually caused it, and what other balancing factors could be used to keep that meta from happening again (e.g. slow firing and reload speeds, which is the main reason why people don't use the Tonkor as much now). The Opticor, for example, is a perfect example of a famously bombastic weapon, with notable damage output per shot, that isn't universally picked simply because it's a slow weapon (which even applies to its faster Vandal variant), not because it deals self-damage.

Actually, I argued that it's because our weapons typically fire a randomly-influenced spread of multiple projectiles in an environment filled with unexpected places for them to collide, responses you acknowledged already above, but let's not let small things like facts and reality get in the way of your argumentation.

But as I proved, you don't, and even perfect information is not enough in itself, as you are implying the human mind is itself perfect, which would itself defeat your entire point on self-damage as a punishment mechanic. You can lie as much as you want about your own personal experience to try to win this argument, it's not really going to convince anyone, particularly when you yourself point out you are trying to argue from anecdotal evidence (in which case, why even mention it in the first place?).

Refuting it where? You literally just lied by trying to pretend I did not make arguments that you yourself acknowledged in the same post. You are blatantly trying to dismiss the point.

But this is clearly false, as the Lenz was explicitly designed to have a more visible explosion radius (among other mechanics designed to "fix" self-damage), and has been praised on that point specifically as well. The conveyance of the punishment mechanic clearly is not fine, and to state as much is to dismiss the feedback of a great deal many players pointing out how self-damage often feels unexpected. Again, you yourself admitted it was not fine by indicating that players could only gather information on its radius indirectly through enemy health bars, so what you're saying here clearly isn't making sense with what you've been saying just before.

You are acting as if this hypothetical player was standing in front of a sheer wall, fired an explosive, and somehow didn't anticipate what would happen. In practice, it typically comes from any of the multiple projectiles bouncing off a railing, or at an angle from some bit of scenery, in a direction the player did not, and could not accurately predict. The fact that you are relying on such an obvious straw man to justify the debunked point you are continuing to repeat I think says everything there needs to be said about the validity of your argument.

You're acting as if the Lenz's delay is some benevolent and merciful gift bequeathed upon the undeserving masses by... someone (hence presumably the usage of the term "luxury"), when in practice it is a method of self-damage players consider acceptable, because unlike normal self-damage it generates actual gameplay. Not only is your central argument here a mere hollow repetition of what you've said before (which got addressed already), the tone with which you are conveying it is unwarrantedly snooty (some might even say elitist).

Tu quoque, mi fili. 

You've refuted... what, exactly? At this point you're not even arguing anything, you're just referring back to things you've claimed to have said... somewhere. Where did you answer the question of your own entitlement? Where did you answer the point on self-damage not being worth keeping in Warframe even if its only instances were incurred by mistakes in play? Use the quote button.

... but it is removing the fundamental mechanic of pausing the combo, as you yourself mentioned, because that very specific feature is known to not work. Nobody argued that comboes are fundamentally bad by design, people simply complained that combo inputs as they currently existed were needlessly fiddly, and that some of them were in fact fundamentally poorly designed in contradiction with the game's movement system (sounds awfully familiar...). DE is reworking comboes as a whole, but is doing so by removing entire input types as part of the process.

... but then by your current logic, capping/nerfing the damage would be equally invalid simply because it would be "fundamentally changing" self-damage as it operates. Are you for or against fundamentally changing self-damage, in the end? If so or not, why? Because up until now you were pushing your thread under the argument that it was only a rebalance, but now you've just accidentally lumped it in as a fundamental design change, even as you use that as an excuse to oppose my own proposed change.

It's an interesting mechanism you're revealing here -- parroting back my criticism at me, without even trying to justify yourself, while continuing to throw out random fallacy names out of all context, and with similarly scant explanation. Who exactly are you trying to convince here? Are you even trying to convince anyone, or can you literally just not stop yourself from doing any of this nonsense?

No, you cease referring to points you've never made. You visibly have become so tired with this argument that you're not even bothering to write anything substantial, despite your need to appear like you're responding, so you just keep pointing somewhere else towards points you've apparently made... wherever, even though you visibly haven't. Either answer the point, or refer to the point you've made, because here you just look like you're giving up.

So first off, Nyx doesn't remove "all self-damage from the equation"; her Absorb drains based on damage absorbed, meaning self-damage does have an impact. Second, you've failed to answer the question: what is it about Nyx and self-damage that disproves what I've said? What is the actual argument you are trying to make? Third: what does "natural stealth" have anything to do with what's been argued? You are yet again speaking utter gibberish, and the very fact that you're trying to establish some silly dichotomy between "natural" and "aided" whatever so that only one counts as valid is a No True Scotsman and false dichotomy rolled into one. You have been proven to not understand fallacies, and I have brought up literal definitions, as well as clear explanations, to this effect, so blankly parroting that criticism back at me is just foolish.

What👏does👏absolutely👏equivalent👏mean👏?

But honestly, though, use your own words, because if in the end the only thing you're trying to say is "they're not the literal same"... why make up some pretentious expression to disguise that? 

But that correlation is far too abstract, as the mechanism and player decision by which they being about a greater-than-average risk of death is completely different. In one case, the player is deliberately choosing to make life more difficult for themselves, in the other the player isn't, or at least not usually, they just want to use that weapon as a weapon (and against enemies, not themselves). The only assumption by which your absurd comparison makes any sense is the equally absurd notion that picking an explosive weapon is a deliberate act of self-sabotage. Moreover, your comparison does not support the conclusion you are making, which is itself a mere repetition of the denial you've been exerting this entire time (no, players cannot completely subvert the risks inherent in self-damage, and most players demonstrably do not in fact enjoy using explosives). Once again, you've gone into a tangent that is as irrational as it is pointless.

... but as explained literally right above your reply with the mention of random spread, multishot, etc., not all factors are within the player's control, so not all instances of player self-damage are mistakes. Moreover, your own reasoning here defeats your own point: if virtually all players are bound to make mistakes, why impose upon everyone the expectation of perfect play, when even those "mistakes" are not seen as justification enough for self damage? Your argumentation is falling apart completely here: not only are you desperately repeating the same point over and over, in blatant ignorance of the points you're pretending to respond to, the few times you say something new to try to justify yourself, you only end up further torpedoing your position.

... because it actually applies. Again, you seem more interested in the letter of the argument than the actual substance: I pointed out that my argument did in fact have something to say, so you were simply flat-out lying in an attempt to avoid answering a point, but on top of that you have this almost comical tendency to throw accusations my way immediately before, during or after you show yourself guilty of those selfsame accusations. It's some of the most blatant projection I've seen to date.

... but DE did, technically, because now Thumpers and Exploiters exist and give players a means of obtaining fishing and mining resources without engaging with the minigames at all. Moreover, the players who dislike fishing and mining didn't do so because they liked the idea of both and got disappointed by the mechanics, they just didn't find the idea itself appealing in the first place (and the mechanic is specifically designed as a side activity, not forced into regular gameplay as if it were a part of its core design). Meanwhile, players who dislike launchers don't do so because they dislike explosives as a design, quite the opposite: most player accounts given are that explosives as a concept are really appealing, but the self-damage is a major turnoff. Thus, it would make sense to remove it, so that people can actually enjoy explosives. Once again, the comparison you have drawn is utterly inane and transparently shallow, to the point where one wonders how you expected anyone else to take your side on the matter through this.

Because I have employed actual propositional logic, whereas you've deliberately tried to muddy any reference to logic or facts in order to substitute your own alternate reality where self-damage is well-designed and universally popular.

Your rebuttals... where? Your own "responses" on the matter have been outright denial and conspicuous ignorance: where exactly have you countered the existence of random spread, or multishot? How exactly does one even go about doing that when those are indisputable facts that directly disprove your central assumption of perfect reliability and control? 

But the mechanic does actively work to the detriment of those who do not find it fun, as evidenced by the myriad of players complaining about it. Moreover, what justification do you even have for your own statement here? I did not here say the mechanic "denies fun" (though it does), I stated it a) is largely considered unfun (which is verifiable via any discussion surrounding self-damage, and the overall usage of explosives), b) does not support any fun mechanic (it doesn't, and you've produced no answer to this), and c) does not contribute to the game's artistic intent (there is nothing about explosive self-damage that furthers Warframe's existence as art). Thus, my claims in proposition 2 are verifiably true, and considering how you haven't expressed any direct disagreement with the first proposition, the conclusion is thus also true. Even when faced with simple propositional logic, you still attempt to resort to denial and slimy rhetorical tactics to try to weasel away from the point. You are visibly not concerned with the truth, or arguing any valid point.

Because you were pulling a fallacy, and it was not the only criticism I made:

This is me criticizing you by citing the fallacy you committed and explaining what was wrong with your argument. I also then justified the fallacy I pointed out, as this:

Is a rather self-evident No True Scotsman. You have thus been caught lying. Notice how I quoted the relevant bit of text to prove my point here, instead of throwing vague reference to some unspecified (and, in your case, nonexistent) prior point.

... precisely, an appeal to purity doesn't work when observing data, which is precisely what you're not doing when talking about "true" enthusiasts or the like. I don't care whether or not you claim to be leaning to my side of the argument, if you're doing it wrong, you should try to do it right, perhaps by realizing that your personal standards for dismissing the opinions of most of Warframe's playerbase are not objective.

But you are ultimately using the argument as part of an attempted justification of why "true enthusiasts" are the only people who get to have a say in whether or not self-damage stays or goes, as noted in your many accusations of the collective entitlement of all other players (and your immediate following point here), so you are not being truthful here either. 

So first off, it is, requesting to have a game change in a way one likes does in fact constitute valid feedback (it in fact constitutes the majority of feedback, including feedback DE takes into consideration), and you don't get to tell others that their feedback is and isn't valid simply because you feel strongly about a particular feature (or claim to, anyway, as you don't seem to care much about explosive weapons in practice). Second, this itself demonstrates that your argument is in fact a No True Scotsman, as you are using that very standard of "true enthusiasts" you invented as an excuse to invalidate everyone else's opinion. It's like you can't stop yourself from sabotaging your own defense.

... due to subdivisions you've arbitrarily invented in an attempt to divide and conquer an overwhelming majority of players who are vocally against self-damage. You are merely restating the tactic I have been criticizing, and so I fail to see how this justifies anything you've done.

Pretentious musings on public perception of boolean logic do nothing to disprove the fact that your own interpretation here is entirely conjectural -- you can't even be sure that there's this majority of people who explicitly want to keep self damage, you're just trying to argue that the omission of an express request to remove self-damage, even in a post harshly criticizing the mechanic, constitutes a tacit request to keep the mechanic. This is perhaps the most evident case of you grasping at straws. 

In effect, you have absolutely no justification or solid evidence whatsoever for your conjecture, making your entire argument here worthless. Glad to hear it!

No. Get the actual quote, as it is evident you are lying. Your only "rebuttal" to my original post was this:

In that post, you dismiss almost everything I say out of hand, without going into any detail. The most substantial thing I can get from that post is that you disagree with me, and therefore you do not consider my points objective. If this is your most damning indictment of my position... then you've failed to ever address my position, plain and simple.

Okay, so the answer is a yes; Warframe does have plenty of tight spaces that are not well-suited for explosive gameplay, and thus I am right in pointing out how Warframe's environments are not generally well-suited for self-damage as currently implemented. Your answer here is a) blatantly weaselly in its attempt to dodge a basic question (what exactly is the "false dichotomy" I am drawing here, pray tell?), b) a straw man, as I patently never claimed that Warframe's tilesets were only made of tight spaces, and c) utterly irrelevant to the point at hand, as the presence of some more open tiles, let alone the existence of tiles of dimensions barely above the radius of explosives, does not discredit the prevalence of cramped tiles, especially in older tilesets, which make the game clash with explosive self-damage. You have lost this point.

But, as pointed out, it's just just the "exception cases" you claimed to have addressed that you've acknowledged, even though you've subsequently apparently denied the very existence of multishot and the accuracy stat in Warframe. Whether or like it or not, even with the web of delusions you've spun in this thread, you couldn't stop yourself from admitting to basic contrary evidence. Thus I absolutely do declare personal victory, though I'd say it's more of a loss on your part. 

Yet another interesting narrative that has strictly no relevance to reality. Again, it's not that complicated: Trinity could use self-damage to make herself and her team invincible via Blessing, and DE recognized it as a problem, so they nerfed Blessing and prevented any interaction with self-damage, as shown in the patch notes you are apparently trying to deny here. The end.

i don't know, but then again... why should I care? None of this prevents the fact that Castanas Trin was treated as an exploit, with DE specifically mentioning self-damage as the problem, as per the link. I find it rather amusing that you would pit your own word against that of Digital Extremes on this matter, though it does illustrate perfectly how little facts seem to have an impact on your rhetoric.

Except that's not what's being discussed here: once again, I could not care less whether or not you consider that response the "correct" one, as you are clearly biased and the response clearly worked (Castanas Trin is no longer a thing in ESO, and additive resistance stacking is generally considered fine). My point was merely that Digital Extremes tends to view synergy between a warframe and self-damage to be exploitative, which is evidenced by the cases I brought up. The fact that I've directly referenced DE on the matter to prove my point, only for you to produce yet more knee-jerk denial, I think says everything about your approach in this argument.

... except the synergy is nowhere near as notable, and continues to create no issues despite the changes to Absorb. It is thus obvious that DE would not feel a need to change anything. Engaging in whataboutism here does not contradict the point being made.

If you consider this a true waste of time... why do any of it? I'm not forcing you to respond, and neither is anyone else. If you want to do something else with your life, you are most welcome to. It is this kind of commentary that makes your replies come across as almost pathological in their need to respond, if only for appearances' sake.

So... no substantial change from the rest of your post, then?

If you have only been accused, and not punished... why even bring it up? Methinks the Tenno doth protest too much...

Indeed, it does take sweet time to actually address things like this... which means you could have just put the thing on pause, and gone back to it later. Again, nobody asked you to try to speedrun your reply, so there was no reason to post half of it and ignore the rest if your actual intent was to reply to me properly. It is painfully obvious you are simply making excuses here, and if conciseness is really your concern, it would be better if you just conceded or dropped the point, and moved on.

But this is simply a lie, though, as I have in fact been the only one of us two pointing to independently verifiable facts (e.g. stats like multishot or accuracy), quoting us as needed, and using actual, literal logic to answer you. It is you who have not only been arguing through repetition, not to mention denying and dismissing arguments you can't answer, but have recently just given up on arguing altogether, preferring instead to claim you've answered a point before, without giving any specific reference or quote to the answer in question, in spite of how easy it would be to do so on these forums (as evidenced by me quoting prior replies in this very response). Ultimately, none of this goes against the fact that you're using your opinions of my character as an excuse to not argue properly yourself, one of several you've produced in this exchange.

But you're clearly not, as evidenced by all of your prior comments on players only making mistakes, not deserving the "luxury" of being able to recover from said "mistakes", of these players being inferior to you in skill, and all of these players' opinions being invalid simply because they're not "the true enthusiasts" of explosives. Your position is transparently elitist.

Pointing out that you are making excuses to not engage in proper discussion (which you are) isn't casting aspersions on your character, no matter how offended you feel at getting called out. I have in fact addressed your arguments, though on top of that I have also pointed out that you've engaged in some pretty dishonest and antagonistic rhetoric on top of that (including casting aspersions on my own character) that gives me no reason to assume good faith on your part in this conversation.

Or, more simply, I've pointed to independently verifiable facts, such as "multishot is a commonly-used stat in Warframe that randomly generates additional projectiles that themselves have a random spread", or "Accuracy is a stat in Warframe that causes most weapons to have some amount of random deviation", but you have repeatedly try to dismiss all of those, as well as the entirety of Warframe, as "subjective", because reality simply does not suit your position. If you want to call those things subjective, then by all means, provide justification for it, but as it stands you have simply been dismissing the facts and evidence I've brought up as "subjective" without a shred of explanation, as noted in your very first "reply" to my original post. In other words: your own denial of objectivity and objective facts is not itself objective.

Putting aside how your disagreement stems from a denial of basic facts, that is not what I'm pointing out here: what I've shown here is that, for all your claims of open-mindedness, your position is by far the most rigid on this thread. The only change you have openly said you were prepared to settle for was for a reduction or capping of self-damage, with alternatives deemed a "luxury" in your own words. You yourself have said on many occasions that you did not want self-damage to change on a fundamental design level, which is why rebalancing it is your One True Solution (though even that much you've called a fundamental redesign above, so at this point I'm not sure if you're even okay with reducing self-damage anymore). Thus, claiming that you accept the need for self-damage to change is to grossly exaggerate your position, when you have categorically opposed all but one extremely conservative form of change.

... assuming that self-damage can only stem from a player mistake, which as shown already, is simply not true. Framing the Lenz's delay as a "luxury" is as nonsensical as it is elitist, and betrays your actual position on self-damage.

... but it's not an error in judgment when the game failed to convey proper information. If the player clips through what was supposed to be a solid wall, it is not the player's fault for making an "error in judgment", as there was clearly a mistake in designing the environment. Similarly, if a projectile collides with thin air simply because that was supposed to be a bit of level geometry, that isn't the player's fault. Once again, you are continuing to blame the player for things they are absolutely not responsible for, which is not how one actually goes about designing anything good.

... why not? There are many documented instances of Warframe's level geometry not being perfectly reliable, so that much is objective fact. You denying reality does not make your denial objective.

... but it doesn't solve for that, because you'd still be incurring whichever amount of self-damage for what isn't a player mistake. This is the fatal flaw I'm pointing out: a punishment mechanic for misplays does not work when it punishes players for something other than misplaying. Reducing self-damage may make the problem less severe, but it does not make the problem disappear completely, hence your solution fails to actually address the problem at hand.

But this is another straw man, as it's not just the rooms with less than 6m clearance that are a problem, as similarly cramped rooms that are not far above 6m clearance are aplenty, and demonstrably not great for explosives either. If the player has to constantly have another weapon around not to kill themselves when shooting normally, there's no reason to have the weapon around in the first place... hence why launchers are so rarely picked.

Backpedalling does not consistently solve the issue if the issue is one of cramped spaces. Moreover, asking the player to constantly backpedal in a mission where everyone else is advancing full speed ahead is ridiculous and pointlessly strict in and of itself.

But you didn't, you simply said players would somehow be upset at getting one-shot when they're already getting one-shot. Your argument makes no sense, and is irrelevant to this specific point.

You're right, I have no real way of knowing... which is why I don't assume anything or try to argue on conjecture, unlike you. What you're telling me is that you have no real way of knowing as well, which only discredits your argument in the fact of plentiful evidence that the majority of people criticizing self-damage would have their issue solved with its removal.

It is an objective fact that projectile paths are not perfectly predictable, as they are influenced by random factors such as multishot and accuracy. You are thus flagrantly denying reality.

This is a rather roundabout way of claiming that removing self-damage would make every weapon that currently has it overpowered, and so apparently because of my personality. Care to explain how any of what you've said even begins to make sense?

It clearly is, though; it's not difficult to see, which is why so many players have pointed it out.

It is a mechanic literally designed to hurt you. Also, this is a pathetic excuse for keeping poor design in the game that does not in any way hold up to the many instances of poor design getting removed even when "it doesn't hurt you", by whichever standard you're setting here.

But that in itself doesn't hold water, because this is a team game, and individual performance can affect the team's. If a player accidentally gibs themselves hundreds of meters away in a mission where players are already at high risk of death, for example, or does so in a Sortie Spy mission and ends up triggering the alarms right down to a mission failure in the process, that self-damage did affect the rest of the team. Again, your arguments visibly don't apply to Warframe.

But it did, though: note how even you couldn't stop yourself from admitting that the reward was downgraded from "high" to "medium", which is ultimately why the Tonkor fell out of favor. Also worth noting is that the "risk" was increased not simply by adding more self-damage, but by making the weapon slower, making the player more vulnerable in-between shots, which also had a large impact on its popularity. Ironically enough, you yourself have given a perfect framework that demonstrates exactly why self-damage is utterly redundant in the balancing of launchers. As an even more ironic side note, your intended argument here also defeats your own proposal to cap self-damage, as the Tonkor's days of dominance occurred precisely when it had capped self-damage. If increasing risk were the only way to balance the weapon, and so only by having high self-damage, your proposal wouldn't satisfy that.

Might it have? Who knows, or cares. What about if the risk were changed to a "medium" by removing the self-damage, and simply keeping the weapon slow and spaced-out?

... but still pure conjecture.

... but the people who agree with you are still part of a tiny and disproportionately vocal minority, though. Meanwhile, the players who have actively expressed dislike of self-damage are legion.

... an assumption that seems to be rather affirmed by the people specifically complaining about self-damage as a feature, and not the finer point of how much self-damage is too much. Yet again, you are arguing on conjecture here. Is this really the best use of your time when you've complained previously about how long these replies were?

Argued using facts and evidence. You seem to be under the impression that arguments are purely subjective, can simply be dismissed out of hand if you don't like them, and that this dismissal somehow makes the argument or the evidence it's based on untrue by default. Not only is this obviously untrue, it makes your entire argumentation here come across as even less of an honest attempt at discussion.

But talking about "entitlement" here is idiotic: it is notably poor design for games to have binary pass-fail states, and games typically make an effort to give the player plenty of opportunities to recover from mistakes, including to the point of being able to cover them up completely. Alarm systems are generally a good example of this, and the Lenz's design is generally recognized as good because the "luxury" of recovering from a mistake is a genuine opportunity for gameplay. Meanwhile, instant self-damage generates no such opportunity: the player just eats the damage, and that's that. By Warframe's standards, where the player is typically given plenty of "luxury" to mess up, the latter model simply does not fit.

But then what "appropriate benefits" would that constitute? They're not going to be the best weapons for single-instance damage, because sniper rifles can already one-shot the toughest bosses in the game and not kill the player in doing so, and most other weapons can clear crowds of high-level enemies in moments without any of the risk. Increasing the damage of these weapons in exchange for instant-kill self-damage therefore wouldn't work, and increasing the radius of these weapons would just increase the self-damage radius as well. There is therefore no valid balance reason to design such binary weapons, when one could simply turn them into weapons capable of killing crowds in a single shot, but that are slow to fire each shot (which already generates the proven fun gameplay of trying to line up the perfect shot into a crowd of enemies).

Realism is itself a stupid argument to make in a patently unrealistic game like Warframe. In the end, your argument simply boils down to not wanting your toys to change. Or, rather, they'd be "your toys" if you actually used them at all, and this weren't a game with many more players you had to share those toys with. If you really do care about self-damage, and aren't just staying here to save face, how about this for a compromise:

1. Remove self-damage as a baseline from all self-damaging weapons.
2. Rework Firestorm, Concealed Explosives, and Thunderbolt to provide some bonkers damage/radius increase to weapons, at the cost of making them inflict self-damage if caught in the blast.
3. See how many people actually use the mods.

And, with that, players who truly love self-damage would be able to use those mods, and those looking to use explosives without dealing with such a crappy mechanic can do so without a problem. How's that sound?

I think you both made excellent points and could not agree more!

Edited June 22, 2019 by TheAdoringYesMan