I think self-damage is a design mistake.

[FrostDragoon]

Specifically, I'm referring to things like Concealed Explosives, launchers, and other weapon-based self-inflicted harm. Let me outline why:

1) This mechanic does not play well with others. It's frustrating enough when people just run down a hallway blocking your firing path with regular weapons, but it's doubly so when they pop in front of you out of nowhere when you're using something that can hurt yourself due to it clipping their hitbox. 

2) The mechanic doesn't play well on its own. Outside of some fringe--arguably abuse cases (like Chroma's Vex Armor or the Rage mod)--it's generally annoying that you can down yourself for any number of reasons that may be your fault, but aren't always (especially with the bugs this game has!), and this game isn't really known for its realism in the first place, so I don't know what logic was used in favor of its inclusion.

3) This mechanic makes otherwise fun weapons into unfun weapons. This hurts their overall usage for the wrong reasons. The Tonkor nerf was probably one of the best examples of this. Before the nerf it was a widely loved weapon that was mechanically fun (grenade bouncing) and packed a nice punch. Now it's an obscure weapon largely regarded as MR fodder. Even with the stats on Tonkor being changed a bit, what killed it was the self-damage. I don't argue for balancing weapons on the basis of popularity, but there are mechanics that are obviously well-liked and wildly disliked in this game. Vacuum was an example of the former, and self-damage of the latter.

4) Even with the addition of a mod that mostly negates this effect, mod space is too limited to honestly expect players to use that option simply because a bad mechanic exists to arbitrarily ruin otherwise fun weapons, and that's not even accounting for gimping the damage of said weapon with the mod itself.

I really would like to see more explosives-based weapons as viable, but not only that, the addition of a new frame that can outrun self-harming projectiles of its own "signature weapons" really highlights the flaws with this kind of design--but hey, at least he has a slightly better chance to survive it, right?

 

[peterc3]

Either there is significant risk in using these weapons or they go away. The self-damage is a soft version of removing them from gameplay until DE figures out how, if at all, to balance their damage output and range of effect.

[FrostDragoon]

Seems like a false choice to me. Tigris with punch-through can achieve similar effect quite easily, while doing significantly more damage.

Edit: I honestly don't care if some of the launchers do a non-negligible amount less in damage--if that's even really a concern, which I doubt--because at least they would be usable then.

Edited September 21, 2019 by FrostDragoon

[peterc3]

6 minutes ago, FrostDragoon said:

Seems like a false choice to me. Tigris with punch-through can achieve similar effect quite easily, while doing significantly more damage.

If you think the Tigris P. is at all similar to what the Tonkor was capable of, you are not actually paying attention.

7 minutes ago, FrostDragoon said:

if that's even really a concern, which I doubt

You don't think the concern is their damage output? You are really not coming to this in good faith.

[FrostDragoon]

You're just saying "no u" here, friendo. You have any points to make?

[ES-Flinter]

Allow me to use magiccard: ,,Copy and pasta"

"I didn't wanted to go like this...

  Am 18.9.2019 um 20:30 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.

  Am 18.9.2019 um 20:30 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 harshpunishments 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....

  Am 18.9.2019 um 20:30 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."

Copied from:

 

[(PSN)IndianChiefJeff]

19 minutes ago, FrostDragoon said:

Seems like a false choice to me. Tigris with punch-through can achieve similar effect quite easily, while doing significantly more damage.

Not wrong there. While launchers have the capacity to do decent damage, there are much safer choices in terms of powerful weapons. Hell, there are weapons that render the launcher category insignificant entirely, shotguns being at the forefront of almost any discussion due to how busted they truly are.

[TheLexiConArtist]

Here I am again to dissect these same old logic-leaping conclusions.

1) This affects every weapon, doubly so for projectiles, doubly-again for (dumb-firing only) explosives. It's a valid issue to raise, but it doesn't mean remove self-damage, it means fix the bad ally collisions so everything is more comfortable. Bows might not be popular, but everyone who does or used to use them can attest that they've had their share of perfectly lined-up shots eaten by an unexpected ally on several occasions.

2) False assessment. It is almost always player error. You have all the information by the time you've mastered the weapon to make judgement calls on when and where you use it. If you try to use it with Infested nearby, and a Charger runs up into your line of fire, that's on you. If you use it in tight quarters or try to shoot narrowly around obstacles, and it clips them to put you in range, that's you that decided to take the shot with a narrow margin of error (on your part, or the hitboxes).
That's not to say the risk-reward ratio is completely perfect as it stands, but it doesn't mean you completely remove the risk, isn't that right, old Tonkor meta? Rebalancing is an acceptable solution, with some sort of diminishing returns to accommodate the fact we need to scale output far more than we scale our own defenses. The real issue is that the damage out is linearly related to self-damage at the moment. I even came up with an equation for an example of this, with variables that could be tweaked according to how the risk needed to scale up.

3) Subjective nonsense. The Tonkor wasn't 'fun', it was overpowered. It had no risks and the best reward. Every other explosive suffered because the Tonkor wasn't simply given self-damage from the start - they all used to auto-headshot, but the Tonkor made DE remove that, and therefore halved other explosive weapons' damage output without compensation.
The Tonkor was statistically nerfed at the same time as its self-damage was rightfully given. That's why it took such a complete nosedive. Just because you don't like self-damage, and many don't want to risk self-damage in their arsenal, doesn't mean the archetype should be removed outright. We have hundreds of weapons - you can just use something else and let those who are more willing to run the risk use the dangerous explosives.

4) Loaded language. You can use explosives without Cautious if you actually put the effort and attention into doing so. You have the option of Cautious if you want to limit the risk of instantaneous suicide when you make a mistake. Especially if the equation is altered to become non-linear - Cautious in its current percentage would be far more reduction than necessary, unless you're running around as an unmodded Loki.

[FrostDragoon]

ES-Flinter, I'm not sure what your argument actually is there or how it's relevant to my post. This is largely due to the broken English, typos, grammatical/punctuation errors, etc., which I don't hold against you because I don't expect it to be everyone's first language, but the points made in that series of copy/pastes seem pretty self-contradictory and incoherent. Or maybe it just seems that way because I'm not sure what your main point actually is.

[FrostDragoon]

2 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Here I am again to dissect these same old logic-leaping conclusions.

None of those are reasons why self-damage should be a thing, and I'm about to leave so I don't have time to go through your post point by point right now. I'll address more of it later if you have a good argument to provide to that why. Just as a head start: Almost no other weapons can inflict self-self harm, so the fact that "explosives" do seems entirely arbitrary.

[TheLexiConArtist]

6 minutes ago, FrostDragoon said:

None of those are reasons why self-damage should be a thing, and I'm about to leave so I don't have time to go through your post point by point right now. I'll address more of it later if you have a good argument to provide to that why. Just as a head start: Almost no other weapons can inflict self-self harm, so the fact that "explosives" do seems entirely arbitrary.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof You're making the claim self-damage should be removed, so onus is on you. Regardless:

It exists, it's consistent (among conventional explosive ordnance), it has basis in real-life analogues, and it's a common balancing factor to radial AOE weaponry. We also saw the negative, overbearing influence that happened when the drawback was absent in the Tonkor/Simulor meta.
Hard logic aside, some people just have a laugh running the risk of murdering themselves through misuse. The weapons don't have to be meta, they don't even have to be commonplace. There's just no real reason to not have the mechanic at all, for the variety and for those types of players.

I've provided actual problem factors - ally hitbox and linear scaling - along with solutions for them, while having to explain that no, the scenery didn't jump out in front of your rocket, you just took a questionable shot that went awry.
Of course, I do it too when I'm being incautious. I just accept that maybe, say, jumping around inside a Snowglobe isn't the best environment to be using risky explosives, so if I clip just outside the Globe enough that the rocket blows up in my face, that's actually my fault.

I'm not the type just saying 'lol git gud'. If you don't enjoy the risk, the effort invested to internalise their safest use, the occasional mishap putting you flat on your back.. You just don't have to put yourself through it. There are alternatives. Doesn't mean you should force that personal disinclination on everyone else.

[Miyabi-sama]

We've seen the thing about Tonkor. Its strength brought it down. DE designed Tonkor to be the "rocket jump gun".

Sadly, the only rocket jumping objects in this game were been enemies' corpses. A pity. Tonkor >MAYBE< was fun, but in the first place it was:

- cheap

- reliable

- low MR

People were used to say bull like "ew, you dont need anything, only Tonkor and you'll beat the game". Rather fun. EVERYONE were using Tonkor. None of the explosive weapons are even close to Tonkor in damage potential, not even close to Ignis W. or Arca Plasmor. This is why people arent using those guns. The reward is not worth the risk of killing yourself.

With all respect. If you cant survive your own shots just don't use it for your own sake. Or just go tether Penta.

[FrostDragoon]

Now that I'm back and have a bit more time to go through this...

23 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

There's just no real reason to not have the mechanic at all, for the variety and for those types of players.

The entire opening post are the reasons, and your "fallacies" actually aren't. Something being subjective isn't a fallacy. Allies diving in front of you isn't a fallacy. Glitches in the terrain aren't a fallacy. Burden of proof doesn't apply in the way you're asking it to here. It's a conversation about "Should this be here?" and not "Can we prove X or Y?" But if you'd like to talk about fallacies, how about starting with self-damage as somehow being a "balancing factor" actually being non-sequitur. You can't balance how much damage X weapon does with a binary Y/N for "Should it inflict self-damage?" There isn't a numerical value that can decide that, because it's entirely arbitrary. That's the whole point here. Self-damage is entirely arbitrary.

27 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Doesn't mean you should force that personal disinclination on everyone else.

Given the extremely low usage of these kinds of weapons, it seems that you're the one trying to force your inclination on everyone else. It's clear that the majority of people dislike it.

With regard to your comments about the Tonkor nerfs, simply adjusting the stats would not have stopped people from using it. It was the addition of self-damage that destroyed that weapon. Let's be clear and honest on that point, at least. If we can't even agree on that, I don't know how I can recognize you in this conversation.

As for it being consistent, I don't know if you're intentionally being disingenuous about it, or if it was merely an oversight due to lack of thought, but there's nothing consistent about how self-damage is applied. [Concealed Explosives] and [Thunderbolt] both inflict self harm, but [Combustion Beam] and [Acid Shells] don't. Pox doesn't inflict self damage, but Castanas do. Launchers can cause it with Blast damage, but Blast elemental procs from other weapons don't. This is a laughable proposition.

 

There's plenty more I could go into here, but I think that's enough for you to chew on for now.

[FrostDragoon]

6 minutes ago, Miyabi-sama said:

We've seen the thing about Tonkor. Its strength brought it down. DE designed Tonkor to be the "rocket jump gun".

Sadly, the only rocket jumping objects in this game were been enemies' corpses. A pity. Tonkor >MAYBE< was fun, but in the first place it was:

- cheap

- reliable

- low MR

People were used to say bull like "ew, you dont need anything, only Tonkor and you'll beat the game". Rather fun. EVERYONE were using Tonkor. None of the explosive weapons are even close to Tonkor in damage potential, not even close to Ignis W. or Arca Plasmor. This is why people arent using those guns. The reward is not worth the risk of killing yourself.

With all respect. If you cant survive your own shots just don't use it for your own sake. Or just go tether Penta.

I think I already addressed this idea earlier...

 

1 hour ago, FrostDragoon said:

I honestly don't care if some of the launchers do a non-negligible amount less in damage--if that's even really a concern, which I doubt--because at least they would be usable then.

 

[Miyabi-sama]

But DE specifically made them self damaging. For the people who like being goofy and throw around grenades, eventually blowing themselves. Or those hardcore dudes who liked being "on edge".

I knew the guy who once told me "I love penta, it reminds me my fav gun from Planetside".

Yet again I barely see people with Bows. Wonder why bows arent popular despite the lack of self damage.

[FrostDragoon]

4 minutes ago, Miyabi-sama said:

Yet again I barely see people with Bows. Wonder why bows arent popular despite the lack of self damage.

Because they have a combination of other unfun mechanics... charge time, slow projectiles, most of them have "bad" base damage types as the primary one, and no secondary effects that make up for it (such as an aoe knockdown that a launcher may provide).

[ES-Flinter]

vor einer Stunde schrieb FrostDragoon:

ES-Flinter, I'm not sure what your argument actually is there or how it's relevant to my post. This is largely due to the broken English, typos, grammatical/punctuation errors, etc., which I don't hold against you because I don't expect it to be everyone's first language, but the points made in that series of copy/pastes seem pretty self-contradictory and incoherent. Or maybe it just seems that way because I'm not sure what your main point actually is.

My main point is, that I'm sick of all the "Nerf/reduce/... selfdamage"-threads. They come all with the same reason (killing themselves with explosive weapons) and nearly everyone give them the same answer, that is always there own fault. (You can see your enemies and your teammates on the map) I can understand, that nobody wants to learn something in a free time activity. But seriously, Warframe isn't a Ratchet& Clank game and looking on the map to prevent suicide isn't harder than driving with a car.

But I have to admit, that just copying something from an other thread into yours wasn't right. Sorry for that.

Oh, I have nothing against, if someone can correct and explain my mistakes.

 

[AndouRaiton]

This video sums up the issues with self damage nicely:

 

[Stormdragon]

5 hours ago, FrostDragoon said:

1) This mechanic does not play well with others. It's frustrating enough when people just run down a hallway blocking your firing path with regular weapons, but it's doubly so when they pop in front of you out of nowhere when you're using something that can hurt yourself due to it clipping their hitbox. 

DE could fix that by letting our weapons punch through allies instead and call it day. There's a precedent for it since in Team Death Match people can used to be able to shoot through a friendly Gara to take down enemies, so the same idea could apply in PvE with no need of removing self damage.

5 hours ago, FrostDragoon said:

The mechanic doesn't play well on its own. Outside of some fringe--arguably abuse cases (like Chroma's Vex Armor or the Rage mod)--it's generally annoying that you can down yourself for any number of reasons that may be your fault, but aren't always (especially with the bugs this game has!), and this game isn't really known for its realism in the first place, so I don't know what logic was used in favor of its inclusion.

Huh, i'm yet to find a bug that makes projectiles explode on my own face and take me down even when i'm being careful. Some sort of proof about something like that would be needed like footage and the line from the ee.log file confirming that you were taken down by yourself, but at that point the post would be better in the bug report section asking for a fix rather than for the removal of self damage.

5 hours ago, FrostDragoon said:

This mechanic makes otherwise fun weapons into unfun weapons. This hurts their overall usage for the wrong reasons. The Tonkor nerf was probably one of the best examples of this. Before the nerf it was a widely loved weapon that was mechanically fun (grenade bouncing) and packed a nice punch. Now it's an obscure weapon largely regarded as MR fodder. Even with the stats on Tonkor being changed a bit, what killed it was the self-damage. I don't argue for balancing weapons on the basis of popularity, but there are mechanics that are obviously well-liked and wildly disliked in this game. Vacuum was an example of the former, and self-damage of the latter.

I'd stay away from the "fun" argument since that's subjective, if you don't like it, that's fine, i personally have more fun when even i can be a risk to myself and make missions demand more awareness since lack of it can make me get downed.

The weird thing about your post using tonkor as an example is that it didn't have self damage because it had the rocket jumping gimmick, which became redundant with the release of parkour 2.0. Without self damage tonkor became a 360° shotgun and there was no lobby without at least one player using it.

The post gets even weirder if you keep in mind that Tonkor doesn't have the other 2 issues listed so far since its grenades won't explode if they hit something before travelling far enough to not blow up its user (6 meters iirc). 

5 hours ago, FrostDragoon said:

Even with the addition of a mod that mostly negates this effect, mod space is too limited to honestly expect players to use that option simply because a bad mechanic exists to arbitrarily ruin otherwise fun weapons, and that's not even accounting for gimping the damage of said weapon with the mod itself.

The whole point of the mod system is to make us choose what upgrades we want in our weapons to make them work as we want, having some mods being obvious choices to the point of being "mandatory", and having enough of these mandatory mods to copy exactly the same build on nearly every single weapon with no room for other mods is a completely different issue that won't get fixed by removing self damage.

Edited September 22, 2019 by Stormdragon

[Miyabi-sama]

8 минут назад, FrostDragoon сказал:

"bad" base damage types as the primary one, and no secondary effects that make up for it

21 минуту назад, FrostDragoon сказал:

 

 

Whaaat? Nonsense!

You do realize that Bows do oneshot ANYTHING aside of sortie eximi and bosses? And frankly there is no such thing as bad damage type since I've used my Paris P. in yesterdays Sortie to inflict maximum damage to Ambulas. Without a Riven? 54% of the 4-people team damage? Bad damage types? Come oooon, bring some better facts?

I tell you with bows you can oneshot any simple enemy you'll ever encounter. Aside of the facts if youre "endurance" fan or if papa Simaris locked you up with lvl 165 corrupted heavy gunners forever!

23 минуты назад, FrostDragoon сказал:

Because they have a combination of other unfun mechanics... charge time, slow projectiles...

Wait, but... but it is actually FUN! It is very sporty and you can even sorta challenge yourself. Like no misses run or headshots only run etc. It is fantastic feeling to turn three guys into a flying kebab with bow, because yourea space ninja darn it!

And bomb launchers of any sort is quite fun while it has this challenging element built in!

What I found unfun is running ahead in Iron Skin or Warding Halo and pop a bomb at point blank range in poor pawns. I could understand that thing if the game had extremely gory stuff like flying gibs on the screen after abovementioned point blank. But no, it just does "ptoom" sound and guys are flying, disappearing in the air.

So here you wrong my friend. Very very wrong. What you propose is unfun and you havent convinced anyone not a single bit.

(Inb4 Sorry for messy cites, typing from my phone.)

[FrostDragoon]

12 minutes ago, Miyabi-sama said:

Bad damage types? Come oooon, bring some better facts?

I put it in quotes because I don't really agree with the notion. I was simply pointing out that the perception is there as a contributing factor to why bows aren't more popular.

14 minutes ago, Miyabi-sama said:

Wait, but... but it is actually FUN!

It's really not. I agree that "fun is subjective" to a point, but what I commonly see among players--even went through it myself when I first started way back when--is that bows are "cool" until you realize that they are slow, cumbersome, and struggle to keep pace (or keep you alive) when there are a lot of enemies around at once. I'm not actually saying they are weak, though. Anyone who has played with Dread for 5 seconds should know better than to claim that. I am saying that the mechanics of how they work are too niche for most players to use as a mainstay, especially when options like the Ignis/Amprex, Hek/Tigris, or any of the countless "standard" rifles/LMGs offer much more fluid and reliable gameplay.

I wasn't saying bows were even bad. I think they're a great choice for stealth missions due to their inherent silence and punch-through (though I still tend to take silenced snipers anyway). The only reason I brought up popularity as a factor in the conversation was because we have historical evidence of what makes launcher weapons either popular or unpopular--self damage. You brought up the popularity (or lack thereof) of bows as if the comparison was somehow similar, but the only real similarity is that it's the bad/awkward mechanics that people dislike which keep those weapons from seeing more use.

[NoSpax]

I think self-damage is a design mistake.

 

 

[FrostDragoon]

49 minutes ago, AndouRaiton said:

This video sums up the issues with self damage nicely

It's just about perfect, lol. Shreds all the pathetic arguments defending self-damage I've seen so far.

[Miyabi-sama]

10 минут назад, FrostDragoon сказал:

but what I commonly see among players-

What I see commonly among players is ineffective playing, lowest level of parkour use, lowest killrate every mission (if it is not an ESO), and the wish to make this game as simple as it can be.

Though I've watched a vid of that "green" guy. And gotta agree the punishment for being reckless in warframe is too harsh. But! Comparing WF to TF2? TF2 soldier was built on rocket jumps! In WF you have frikin bullet jumps, teleports, charges, FLYING frames.

Maybe, just maybe if they will buff the damage for most bombs to the level of being on par with Tonkor and get back bomb headshots... just maybe it will be justified.

But you know... the instakilling self damage was always been here. Melee, parkour, mods, frames... all have changed in some period. But the damn self damage is still here.

Maybe DE trying to give us some clue?

[Autongnosis]

Tbh i would be more for self damage mechanics if the weapons themselves warranted it. 

Most self damage weapons, other than lenz, zarr and glaive, don't have nearly enough stopping power to justify that kind of mechanic.