Improve Safety Functions on Self-Damaging Weapons

[TylerFreeman]

Here's a thing I wanna know.

Why should self damage scale off of weapon mods? If anything, there should at least be a static number like how thunderbolt works (IE, 250 explosive damage when an arrow explodes) to prevent 1 hit risk shots but still show that you're in a bad spot and requires more user positioning.

I get that there are risks, I'm totally fine with that. Let's just try and even things out reasonably.

[MJ12]

23 hours ago, 000l000 said:

Most area damage weapons have a 5m radius only, do you really think that there's an enemy every 5m in the whole map ? I've killed thousand of various enemies in various places with every single explosive weapon in the game and tbh you can die only if you're not careful enough. Maybe infested could be an issue since they're running for you but once again, shooting at short range with such gun is just stupid, blame players here.

Seriously, if you want to run into enemies stop using explosive guns, that's just common sense.

You're acting like "you can die only if you're not careful enough" is a defense when "not careful enough" means literally "oops I screwed up a single shot out of the hundreds or thousands I'm firing every mission and nicked myself with a millimeter of the blast radius, I guess this is such an unforgiving game that this means I deserve to fall over for it." It is absolutely not a consistent implementation to the difficulty curve of the rest of the game, and the idea that it's "just common sense" that you should stop using explosive guns if you want to run into enemies is not a defense. If you want a game where a single mistake means death, go play ArmA, except the joke is that ArmA self-damage is honestly more forgiving than Warframe simply because everyone moves so slowly, engagement ranges are often a dozen times longer, and you fire maybe 1% of the shots in a mission that you do in Warframe.

Literally nothing else in Warframe punishes one wrong move or single careless mistake with instant death, and this means that the fact that self-damaging weapons do in Warframe is a problem because it's an unreasonable difficulty spike. The fact that quarters are so tight and movement is so rapid that it's easy enough to make that mistake just makes it worse.

[000l000]

Il y a 19 heures, MJ12 a dit :

You're acting like "you can die only if you're not careful enough" is a defense when "not careful enough" means literally "oops I screwed up a single shot out of the hundreds or thousands I'm firing every mission and nicked myself with a millimeter of the blast radius, I guess this is such an unforgiving game that this means I deserve to fall over for it." It is absolutely not a consistent implementation to the difficulty curve of the rest of the game, and the idea that it's "just common sense" that you should stop using explosive guns if you want to run into enemies is not a defense. If you want a game where a single mistake means death, go play ArmA, except the joke is that ArmA self-damage is honestly more forgiving than Warframe simply because everyone moves so slowly, engagement ranges are often a dozen times longer, and you fire maybe 1% of the shots in a mission that you do in Warframe.

Literally nothing else in Warframe punishes one wrong move or single careless mistake with instant death, and this means that the fact that self-damaging weapons do in Warframe is a problem because it's an unreasonable difficulty spike. The fact that quarters are so tight and movement is so rapid that it's easy enough to make that mistake just makes it worse.

There's absolutely no difficulty curve. Most people complaining about explosive guns are stupidly running into enemies no matters what as if they're using some kind of Ignis or whatever.

Last time i died using an explosive weapon (Zhuge if i ain't wrong) one of this genius was running everywhere like a rabbit on drugs and was in front of me while i was shooting. I'm not fan of the get gud argument but at this point i'd say we're experimenting a stop being an idiot argument.

Plus you need more than a simple "mistake" to die from a 5m radius perimeter, seriously try ingame to see what 5m is... It's ridiculously small, you basically need to fire at point blank to die from that so you know what, people in real life don't get killed by such weapons cause only an idiot would shot at short range with a rocket launcher...

What's next, people complaining cause they can't kill from afar with a bow, or can't kill enemies through walls with a blade...Even a feedback thread needs some common sense. If one isn't smart enough to use explosive weapons then he can use a lot of other guns or even kill himself and wait for someone to resurrect him. It's always happening when someone is using a Lenz anyway, some players are even laughing at their ridiculous deaths.

Whiners do not have any sense of humor ?

Edited September 10, 2019 by 000l000

[Sharkgoblin]

i say remove safety measures but quadruple the damage of explosive weapons

big damage is all that matters

-cautious shot haters gang 

[ES-Flinter]

Just ignore me.

I'm only thinking about, if I should repeat, that it's always the fault of the user that he blow himself up, or should I come directly to the point that Warframe isn't a child game like Ratchet & Clank.

 

[MJ12]

16 hours ago, 000l000 said:

There's absolutely no difficulty curve. Most people complaining about explosive guns are stupidly running into enemies no matters what as if they're using some kind of Ignis or whatever.

Last time i died using an explosive weapon (Zhuge if i ain't wrong) one of this genius was running everywhere like a rabbit on drugs and was in front of me while i was shooting. I'm not fan of the get gud argument but at this point i'd say we're experimenting a stop being an idiot argument.

Plus you need more than a simple "mistake" to die from a 5m radius perimeter, seriously try ingame to see what 5m is... It's ridiculously small, you basically need to fire at point blank to die from that so you know what, people in real life don't get killed by such weapons cause only an idiot would shot at short range with a rocket launcher...

What's next, people complaining cause they can't kill from afar with a bow, or can't kill enemies through walls with a blade...Even a feedback thread needs some common sense. If one isn't smart enough to use explosive weapons then he can use a lot of other guns or even kill himself and wait for someone to resurrect him. It's always happening when someone is using a Lenz anyway, some players are even laughing at their ridiculous deaths.

Whiners do not have any sense of humor ?

 

Claiming "I'm not a fan of the git gud argument" is pretty dishonest when you then proceed to insist that everyone else is playing the game wrong and the only reason people might complain about the absurd self-damage situation in Warframe is if they're stupid.

Especially when the evidence for them being idiots is that they're aggressively pushing forward when using launchers, as if the rest of the game somehow teaches players to play carefully and keep away from enemies. But Warframe encourages you to run into enemies. Melee weapons give you significant frontal damage reduction... so you can run into enemies. Almost all Warframe AoE powers are centered on their user, so you're encouraged to... run into enemies. Enemy accuracy actually decreases at close range, especially for high-damage enemies like snipers, to encourage you to... run into enemies. Many Warframes have extremely potent defensive powers which allow them to take sustained fire, encouraging you to... run into enemies. The latest Warframe that just got released-with a pair of self-damaging weapons that brought this thread on-is actually built around running into enemies all the time. The very design of the game, where drops need to be farmed, encourages aggressively speedrunning missions, which means moving forward as quickly as possible. The majority of resources are dropped by enemies in Warframe, which means you want to keep pushing towards where the enemies are to get more resources faster. The game doesn't go "you should actually never run into enemies," the game gives you a ton of encouragement to aggressively run into enemies. Players in Warframe pushing forward hyper-aggressively aren't "idiots" they're just responding to the game as designed.

It's not the players' fault that they're trying to reconcile what the rest of Warframe has taught them-push forward aggressively whenever possible-and how to use these self-damaging weapons and get the mix wrong. It's the fault of the badly designed self-damage system that ignores the rest of the game's design and is inexplicably harsh and punishing for no reason whatsoever. The inexplicable and absurd punishment of instant death for the merest nick of self-damage means that players are more likely to get discouraged than get "gud," so a disproportionate number of self-damage weapon users are going to be inexperienced and more likely to misjudge their shots.

But even if they were idiots, that doesn't change that "it's your fault" doesn't automatically justify any possible punishment no matter how harsh. Self-damaging in Warframe is pretty easy in the context of how many shots you're going to be firing in a mission. Your argument that a 5m radius is "ridiculously small" ignores that enemies charge you pretty aggressively in Warframe, enemies spawn very aggressively, rooms and distances in Warframe are small as hell, and everyone moves fast. This makes making a simple mistake-and all it takes is a tiny misjudgment of a blast radius by a few millimeters to suffer instant death, which is absolutely a simple mistake-easy enough when you need to fire your weapon thousands of times per hour of gameplay at close enemies. No, you're not going to end up killing yourself all the time. But the mere threat of being instantly killed every time you fire a shot for the temerity of wanting to use a rocket launcher in a videogame is absurd and makes launchers unfun. 

Your other comparisons make it obvious how much of an absurd and unreasonable difficulty spike self-damage in Warframe is compared to literally every other weapon. If you fire a bow at a distant target, it's hard to do, but if you make a mistake all you lose is time and the arrow you fired. Not only could you kill enemies through walls with a blade for nearly six years, with that feature only finally being patched out very recently, but if you make a mistake and slide-attack into a wall, all you lose is time. If shooting a bow at a distant target instantly killed you, or hitting a wall with a blade instantly killed you, they would be comparable to self-damage. But they don't, and they aren't. The absurdly punishing nature of self-damage is the outlier in Warframe, and this is why people keep bringing it up. Because they're correctly realizing that this thing is 1000x as punishing as other mechanics in Warframe for no good reason. Maybe if Warframe was a game where you were encouraged to stay far away from enemies, there might be some justification for self-damage being super-punishing... but it isn't, as I said. Basically every mechanic in Warframe encourages you to push hyper-aggressively.

So even assuming that you want some sort of punishment system for shooting a launcher too close to yourself, that punishment system should acknowledge that Warframe weapons handling is generally pretty forgiving, and the rest of the game encourages you to push super-hard rather than hang back and take potshots, and therefore the punishment of screwing up because you moved too aggressively should be relatively minor. Which is why I, and @Teridax68, have suggested that minimum arming distances, with no self-damage, would be fine.

If you push forward too aggressively, you get punished for it by your weapon dealing out a fraction of its normal DPS. But the punishment gives you a chance to react-you can see your projectiles fail to detonate, you can then go and move back to fire again or move forward to engage in melee. The punishment in that case wouldn't discourage experimentation-a dud round would be a bad thing, but if a player is comfortably capable of beating the mission anyways, they have the margin of error to experiment until they get a feel for exactly how aggressive you can be with a launcher. The punishment is now also forgiving-if a player is pretty competent with a launcher, but occasionally ends up too close to the target, they don't suffer that much. If a player is the "idiot" you think the game needs to punish, they're going to be pretty harshly punished by getting a weapon which is putting out a minuscule fraction of the damage it could be putting out, and every dud round is a reminder of the mistakes they're making. The proposed idea of arming distances but no self-damage for explosive does the exact same thing that self-damagers claim to want-discouraging people from using launchers as point-blank weapons-but encourages people to use launchers in general.

Edited September 10, 2019 by MJ12

[Teridax68]

14 hours ago, 000l000 said:

Last time i died using an explosive weapon (Zhuge if i ain't wrong) one of this genius was running everywhere like a rabbit on drugs and was in front of me while i was shooting. I'm not fan of the get gud argument but at this point i'd say we're experimenting a stop being an idiot argument.

MJ12 put it much more eloquently already, but when you peel away the bullcrap in the quoted rhetoric, your definition of "being an idiot" equates to "playing the game as it generally encourages you to", that is by emphasizing players moving towards their objective, killing enemies along their path, and generally rushing opponents as their main approach. This is exemplified no better than by Gauss, whose Mach Rush explicitly encourages him to run into enemies at maximum speed, a speed that just so happens to be enough to overtake the arming distance of his "signature weapons" and splat himself more often than any other frame. Moreover, in a game that is notorious for being almost impossible to lose at times, you seem to think it is a sensible idea to have some mechanic around that currently literally one-shots players for "being an idiot", when many more stupid playstyles don't punish players with even a fraction of that magnitude, or even really at all.

In other words, self-damage on explosives in Warframe currently punishes players disproportionately for what can't even be honestly called a misplay, particularly when factoring in the number of enemies that can themselves randomly charge into the player from all sides. Let's humor this nonsense for a brief minute, however, and say we really want to push players to completely reverse their usual style of play and have them constantly try to kite enemies, perhaps through some punishment mechanic. This raises two questions:

• How much punishment would be appropriate?
• What is going to make players going to pick this playstyle over other, more direct ones? What is the positive tradeoff, or put differently, how much reward would be appropriate for playing this new playstyle?

Given sufficiently large radii, explosives could offer a suitable benefit by allowing the player to kill crowds of enemies quicker, which could then compensate for the slowed-down traversal (in theory). However, self-damage on top of arming distances are overkill, and have already turned players off from a bunch of weapons designed to counter their own punishment mechanics, because the counter isn't even well-implemented. Punishing players for using a long-range weapon too close is a fine idea, but that's something already achieved through arming distances alone.

Edited September 10, 2019 by Teridax68

[Aldain]

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

What is going to make players going to pick this playstyle over other, more direct ones? What is the positive tradeoff, or put differently, how much reward would be appropriate for playing this new playstyle?

This is my question exactly, especially when Warframes can pull off similar (if not better) AOE compared to launchers with the only drawback being nullifiers (which are less of a drawback than blowing yourself up from max health to zero).

People cite the Lenz often as being OP for example without the self damage drawback, but would it really be on the same level as a Mesa pressing 4 or an Equinox/Sayrn AOE?

Also if the Lenz would be that OP, why do weapons that are weaker than it have the same drawback that it has despite not having the same AOE power?

I just can't figure it out.

[Gurpgork]

6 minutes ago, Aldain said:

This is my question exactly, especially when Warframes can pull off similar (if not better) AOE compared to launchers with the only drawback being nullifiers (which are less of a drawback than blowing yourself up from max health to zero).

People cite the Lenz often as being OP for example without the self damage drawback, but would it really be on the same level as a Mesa pressing 4 or an Equinox/Sayrn AOE?

Also if the Lenz would be that OP, why do weapons that are weaker than it have the same drawback that it has despite not having the same AOE power?

I just can't figure it out.

^This.

And not just that, but there are other weapons that have equal or greater AoE compared to launchers without self damage. We already have the Arca Plasmor, the Amprex, the Staticor, the Opticor, and not to mention...

16 hours ago, 000l000 said:

some kind of Ignis or whatever.

Just to name a few. 

Furthermore, consider the Ogris. The Ogris has really mediocre stats, but it can still one shot you if you slip up or if a kavat abruptly walks in front of you. Compare this to, say, the Arca Plasmor, which has really good stats and no self damage. Like not only is self damage a terrible restriction, but it's also applied to lots of weapons that are objectively worse in both damage and AoE while still carrying the risk of instant death. The Ogris would have to have immensely powerful stats to compensate for the risk you're shouldering by using it, and well. That 5% crit chance would like a word. 

And also, like. Does anyone remember when they gave the Staticor self damage? That weapon was one of the favorite weapons of the community, and people pretty much ditched it as soon as that change was made. Anyway the point I'm making here is that self damage doesn't deter bad positioning or "idiotic" play, but it actually just deters people from using the weapon at all. 

[Azrael_V]

I've been playing with Gauss and Acceltra for days now and have not died from self damage once. Places like Hydron and Corpus Tilesets. Why? Because I'm not Mach Rushing into the direction I just fired the self-damaging weapon. Cmon guys. Is it really that difficult to alter your playstyle when using a self-damaging weapon. When using my Lenz or Zarr or Castanas in a tight space I jump backwards when firing or switch to my other weapons if the mobs are in my face. I don't do that in my normal gameplay but I welcome the change of pace. You choose how to engage the enemies not DE. You choose the pacing of your games not DE. Self-damage weapons obviously require a more passive and careful approach. If you're killing yourself constantly then maybe you should change it up abit. Just a thought. 

[MJ12]

10 hours ago, Azrael_V said:

I've been playing with Gauss and Acceltra for days now and have not died from self damage once. Places like Hydron and Corpus Tilesets. Why? Because I'm not Mach Rushing into the direction I just fired the self-damaging weapon. Cmon guys. Is it really that difficult to alter your playstyle when using a self-damaging weapon. When using my Lenz or Zarr or Castanas in a tight space I jump backwards when firing or switch to my other weapons if the mobs are in my face. I don't do that in my normal gameplay but I welcome the change of pace. You choose how to engage the enemies not DE. You choose the pacing of your games not DE. Self-damage weapons obviously require a more passive and careful approach. If you're killing yourself constantly then maybe you should change it up abit. Just a thought. 

None of this means that the implementation of self-damage is legitimate. In fact, it's the exact same self-damage defense that I rebutted before, the idea that simply because you can ignore the habits the rest of the game encourages in players that you're allowed to punish the players for behavior that was previously encouraged, and moreover you're allowed to punish them in arbitrarily harsh fashions because technically it's their fault for making the mistake of... playing the game the way the game has encouraged them to play.

On 2019-09-10 at 10:05 AM, MJ12 said:

It's not the players' fault that they're trying to reconcile what the rest of Warframe has taught them-push forward aggressively whenever possible-and how to use these self-damaging weapons and get the mix wrong. It's the fault of the badly designed self-damage system that ignores the rest of the game's design and is inexplicably harsh and punishing for no reason whatsoever. The inexplicable and absurd punishment of instant death for the merest nick of self-damage means that players are more likely to get discouraged than get "gud," so a disproportionate number of self-damage weapon users are going to be inexperienced and more likely to misjudge their shots.

But even if they were idiots, that doesn't change that "it's your fault" doesn't automatically justify any possible punishment no matter how harsh. Self-damaging in Warframe is pretty easy in the context of how many shots you're going to be firing in a mission. Your argument that a 5m radius is "ridiculously small" ignores that enemies charge you pretty aggressively in Warframe, enemies spawn very aggressively, rooms and distances in Warframe are small as hell, and everyone moves fast. This makes making a simple mistake-and all it takes is a tiny misjudgment of a blast radius by a few millimeters to suffer instant death, which is absolutely a simple mistake-easy enough when you need to fire your weapon thousands of times per hour of gameplay at close enemies. No, you're not going to end up killing yourself all the time. But the mere threat of being instantly killed every time you fire a shot for the temerity of wanting to use a rocket launcher in a videogame is absurd and makes launchers unfun. 

Even granting that you can avoid a punishment by changing the way you play to one that the rest of the game does not normally encourage that doesn't mean that any punishment is legitimate. Punishments for mistakes should be proportionate to the actual ease of making the mistake. And if you're forcing players to "change up their playstyle" that works against the idea of harsh punishments being legitimate because you're forcing players out of their comfort zone, which makes them more likely to make mistakes.

Cmon guys, is it really that difficult to acknowledge that even if you think being punished for pushing too aggressively with a splash damage weapon is legitimate, the punishment is disproportionate, unfair, and unfun?

Edited September 18, 2019 by MJ12

[ES-Flinter]

I didn't wanted to go like this...

vor 56 Minuten schrieb MJ12:

None of this means that the implementation of self-damage is legitimate. In fact, it's the exact same self-damage defense that I rebutted before, the idea that simply because you can ignore the habits the rest of the game encourages in players that you're allowed to punish the players for behavior that was previously encouraged, and moreover you're allowed to punish them in arbitrarily harsh fashions because technically it's their fault for making the mistake of... playing the game the way the game has encouraged them to play.

I will just add a few thing the game also forced you to do. (Smartphone, sorry that the arguments aren't in a real list)

1. Spin to win. It's the most effective way to kill a large amount of enemies. A 5m explosion is nothing compared to my 13m long staff weapon.

2. Kill enemies in melee range with melee weapons. Kill enemies outside of melee weapon with your guns.

3. Look where your alias are, that you can split up and do the mission faster. (Best example is the sabotage mission.)

4. Enemy radar. We have about 5 mods which give you the exact position of your enemies. This should be enough, that someone realise, that knowing the position of the enemy is important.

5. Look before you shoot (mostly only in Index and Conclave). You don't have unlimited ammo. And reloading cost time. Don't waste your ammo. Especially if you have only 30 rockets in your pocket. (except you have a weapon with a battery.)

6. Use your Warframe abilities. 13 meter of destruction sound nice. But an good oberon can easy deal around 8k damage in a radius of 30 meter. And he is just a tank supporter. The dd frames do something like this without a good build.

 

You see. The game force you to many things. But not to use a range weapon inside of the melee range.

vor 1 Stunde schrieb MJ12:

Even granting that you can avoid a punishment by changing the way you play to one that the rest of the game does not normally encourage that doesn't mean that any punishment is legitimate. Punishments for mistakes should be proportionate to the actual ease of making the mistake. And if you're forcing players to "change up their playstyle" that works against the idea of harsh punishments being legitimate because you're forcing players out of their comfort zone, which makes them more likely to make mistakes.

About the part with the punishment. If you fail hacking, or even worse you didn't look if your ability will last long enough to protect you, you will die. Or do you expect, that the enemies won't use this chance to hurt a tenno, who looks at the wall and can't protect himself....

vor 1 Stunde schrieb MJ12:

Cmon guys, is it really that difficult to acknowledge that even if you think being punished for pushing too aggressively with a splash damage weapon is legitimate, the punishment is disproportionate, unfair, and unfun?

Yes, because...

All weapons work like acceltra: Nothing is better than a heroic-kamikaze-death. Especially if you are the only one, who survived it, because your allies can revive you. But if you killed just one enemy, the rest are going to kill you. And after that your teammates, because they trusted you, that you can take these 6 lv. 100 corrupted bombadiers down.

All weapons do self damage, but much smaller: No heroic-kamikaze-deaths anymore. And a loki player who survived as the only one the explosion. The enemies around him are all death. Sure that he didn't just fart and the enemies were killed by the smell? Because the squishiest one is the only survivor of this (explosion/) fart.

All weapons don't do any self damage: Only heroes can use an explosiv weapon as a shotgun. And if you do a mission just because the poor people paid you enough to save them you aren't one. Seriously, this isn't Ratchet and Clank game, where explosions are a main part.

 

[Azrael_V]

3 hours ago, MJ12 said:

None of this means that the implementation of self-damage is legitimate. In fact, it's the exact same self-damage defense that I rebutted before, the idea that simply because you can ignore the habits the rest of the game encourages in players that you're allowed to punish the players for behavior that was previously encouraged, and moreover you're allowed to punish them in arbitrarily harsh fashions because technically it's their fault for making the mistake of... playing the game the way the game has encouraged them to play.

Even granting that you can avoid a punishment by changing the way you play to one that the rest of the game does not normally encourage that doesn't mean that any punishment is legitimate. Punishments for mistakes should be proportionate to the actual ease of making the mistake. And if you're forcing players to "change up their playstyle" that works against the idea of harsh punishments being legitimate because you're forcing players out of their comfort zone, which makes them more likely to make mistakes.

Cmon guys, is it really that difficult to acknowledge that even if you think being punished for pushing too aggressively with a splash damage weapon is legitimate, the punishment is disproportionate, unfair, and unfun?

Maybe you're overthinking this and taking it abit too personally. Even if DE was trying to punish aggressive gameplay by adding self-damage it would be silly and entirely pointless. I could easily foil DE's 'evil' plan by not using that weapon and continue to play in an aggressive way with everything else at my disposal (AOE Frames, Melee etc). I will admit that DE's implementation of self-damage is inconsistent across the range of weapons but those are design issues. If a weapon that you enjoy has self-damage and its cramping your style maybe it's better to advocate for the removal of self-damage on that weapon (within its context) instead of removing self-damage from the entire game. Self-damage for me brings a nice change of pace in a game where rushing through missions become tedious. I also find blowing myself up kind of hilarious especially when a Scorpion/Ancient pulls me into the AOE blast radius😂. Others might agree too. 

Edited September 18, 2019 by Azrael_V
Gramma