nightwave zealot invasions making the game hostile towards newer players

[Uhkretor]

Not exactly sure, it may have some physical damage component to complement its natural Toxin effect... Unless its a "physical version" of Torid, which only deals physical damage, and it only damages with Toxin if it procs.

[TheSixOfDiamonds]

3 hours ago, Uhkretor said:

Not exactly sure, it may have some physical damage component to complement its natural Toxin effect... Unless its a "physical version" of Torid, which only deals physical damage, and it only damages with Toxin if it procs.

Which still leaves my original point. If they scale to level range, they're punching much higher than that. If with 95% damage reduction they can delete over half of my MesaP's 1150-ish health in one burst, at lvl12-17, when the only enemies coming close to that are Bombards (and even they aren't hitting that hard). And this is compounded by the fact they just show up. If you are aiming when they spawn you can just miss them coming in. 

And with the OP specifically addressing newer players, while I can (with most of my frames) still recover and either stun, nuke, or heal (or some combination of), a newer player may just be nuked seemingly out of the blue. And you can't really avoid them and still play the game. They show up in literally any node, bosses and syndicates included. The only way to avoid them is to not play.

[Uhkretor]

Well, they are there to introduce that "dangerous element" to the mix...

... Something that wouldn't be necessary if full spawns were active for every non-full squad... New players, like I mentioned before, need to adapt and be agile.

 

Will the new players get killed in the process? plenty of times.

Are the Zealots so hard to kill that the only choice is to run away from them? hardly, especially if they're running in a squad.

[Test-995]

20 minutes ago, Uhkretor said:

Are the Zealots so hard to kill that the only choice is to run away from them? hardly, especially if they're running in a squad.

Impossible to find full squad in 80% of starchart node.

[Uhkretor]

47 minutes ago, Test-995 said:

Impossible to find full squad in 80% of starchart node.

... by "running in a squad" does not imply that it has to be a full squad... Even a 2-man squad can do the thing if they want to.

 

Edit: The matchmaking, however, only fills up the empty slots of an already created squad.

Edited September 23, 2019 by Uhkretor

[Steel_Rook]

20 hours ago, TheSixOfDiamonds said:

Then why doesn't it bypass Frost's shields? It isn't Gas, that's for sure, because it leaves Toxin procs (at least I'm fairly sure it does). Or am I completely misremembering?

Far as I'm aware, the Gas Status Effect deals Toxic damage for some reason.

On topic: The issue with the Emissary enemies is the same as with the fugitives and with Wolf - they're a substantially more powerful enemy than what's found in the rest of the mission and can often mean game over for unprepared, newer players. I already lost one friend over Nightwave Season 1, because he kept getting Fugitives he couldn't kill in his missions, so he stopped playing altogether. You can blame the player if you want, but I personally feel that random for-no-reason difficulty spikes are not conducive to a fun experience for most people. Sure, the Emissaries aren't NEARLY as bad as Wolf, the sandbag with a gun. His appearance basically turned into a "quit and restart" event for my own group of friends. Emissaries are still killable, at least if they don't spawn 300 meters apart.

[TheSixOfDiamonds]

14 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Far as I'm aware, the Gas Status Effect deals Toxic damage for some reason.

Gas is... complicated. I dunno how used it is, but the wiki shows why I use it for direct damage procs.

15 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

On topic: The issue with the Emissary enemies is the same as with the fugitives and with Wolf - they're a substantially more powerful enemy than what's found in the rest of the mission and can often mean game over for unprepared, newer players. I already lost one friend over Nightwave Season 1, because he kept getting Fugitives he couldn't kill in his missions, so he stopped playing altogether. You can blame the player if you want, but I personally feel that random for-no-reason difficulty spikes are not conducive to a fun experience for most people. Sure, the Emissaries aren't NEARLY as bad as Wolf, the sandbag with a gun. His appearance basically turned into a "quit and restart" event for my own group of friends. Emissaries are still killable, at least if they don't spawn 300 meters apart.

Also, all of this. Just all of it. The precedent set by Season 1, that is continuing is not great. They "de-tankified" Wolf, what 3 times and he's still spongy as heck? The fire procs from the Fugitives and the Zealot damage are not fun. At best, they're irritating, at worse... well, what happened to your friend. Hope your friend is having fun elsewhere.

[Steel_Rook]

Yeah, I'd argue that Zealots are even more annoying than Fugitives. Not only are they tanky, not only do they have the same irritating AoE spam, but you also have to kill all three of them at the same time now. And again - the game likes to spawn them 300+ meters apart, so either you end up rushing through a map full of enemies or just killing them repeatedly until the straggler catches up. And by the time you're done, your Sentinel is dead because of all the Toxic damage. And if you're REALLY lucky, the game then IMMEDIATELY spawns another group of them.

In theory, random non-boss "assassins" are not a bad idea. I enjoy having random encounters to shake up the monotony of grinding out kills. The problem is that DE for some reason keep trying to be fancy and designing supremely annoying enemies to put those encounters. Even ignoring Wolf's utterly atrocious design, even the regular event critters are made of gimmicks. Some days I dream of Sentinel Hit Squads, because at least those are made up of preexisting, largely balanced enemies. Even New Loka's throng of self-stacking Ancients isn't this annoying.

[Sumona]

I hated Wolf when I was new, over 50% of my aborts are because of him. 

[(PSN)thegarada]

While locking it for 4 players is not a good idea, at all. I do agree with the OP sentiment.

Wither it Zealots, Stalker or Syndicate assassination teams, they scale very poorly. The other time, I have them show up while on a level 0 frame with a level 10 mediocre weapon. I died twice and lost a ton of experience. And there was not way around it. Just yesterday they popped-up while I am at min 45 in Mot, and I was like lol? I was basically a cannon killing a mosquito. And there lies the problem. They either negligible or seriously over powered. 

I think a better solution is that they only show up if your average weapons and frame level is above 20. This way we ensure they are not a hassle when you are leveling. And possibly, scale them-up (and also scale up the rewards) when the show up at level 100 content.

[Bansheedragon75]

I recently returned to the game with a friend of mine after a break and arrived in the middle of this.

At first we could not understand what these things were and how they were killing us so fast, much less how we could kill them since they seemed to be invincible.

We are both MR 9 so we are not inexperienced, now I can't speak for my friend, but had I been new to this game now I would have quit long ago because of this stupidity.

Instead we took some time to research this and found we have to kill them quickly or they will revive, but as others have said that's sometimes difficult at best when they spawn hundreds of meters apart.

Then there is the issue of a new group appearing right after you killed one group, I just encountered such a situation in a mission where I have barely had time to kill one group and less than a minute after that a new group appeared and it's not the first time it happens.

Due to the relatively low rank warframe(rank 12) and it being more of a CC style frame(Nyx) it cost me 2 revives at over 7000 affinity to kill the first group, when the second group came one of them spawned right on top of me and killed me instantly as I was low on health fro the previous fight and being down a revive from an accident earlier in the level meant that it was game over for me as one of them spawned in a different part of the level.

I dont mind a strong opponent that requires requires thinking and tactics to defeat, but what we have with these are nothing of the sort¨.

They are way too strong for their level, they are invincible and able to self revive unless you can take  them down quickly and they appear randomly in any mission making it difficult to impossible to defeat them unless you have a strong warframe with either strong attack, defence and/or healing abilities.

[TaleTeller]

This is the way the game has always been. With Stalker, the G3, the Zanuka Hunter, and now the zealots. They come at you on their own terms, and you kill them or die

[DLOArceus]

1 hour ago, TaleTeller said:

This is the way the game has always been. With Stalker, the G3, the Zanuka Hunter, and now the zealots. They come at you on their own terms, and you kill them or die

People seem to not understand this for some reason. They also don't seem to understand that if you fight someone you can't defeat, you get the hell outta there. The game doesn't prevent you doing so except if you're in a Defense mission, and the Zealots nor their weapons are any match for a frame's bullet jumps. Comparatively, a Nox or hell, a Nox Eximus with his Grineer troops are a much harder challenge for a player, considering his armor, speed and status effects.

For more experienced players, back when there was the Wolf somehow everyone had to level up their frames and weapons, but that's normal i guess. What isn't normal is that 90% of those people couldn't use one of their 3 weapons slots to save themselves. It's not that the Wolf was unique either, without proper weapons even the Stalker takes a while to go down. I lost to the G3 while using Loki because i didn't bring anything to kill them, but i'm not complaining. Another thing that wasn't normal is that people forgot that the weapon slots are 5 and not 3. Amps and archguns exist. "Amps do nothing", sure, but if you're solo they were perfectly capable of defeating the Wolf even if the battle was (safe)long. I'm not saying "bring Ash+Hammer or a Valkyr every mission until the season is over", but that there were ways to prepare.

The Zealots aren't even as bad as the Stalker, which has more HP, voids abilities, and can teleport either itself to you or you to HIM. Sure, the Zealots persist after you die, but you can run away. You can't escape from the Stalker.

[(NSW)ToadBlue]

1 hour ago, TaleTeller said:

This is the way the game has always been. With Stalker, the G3, the Zanuka Hunter, and now the zealots. They come at you on their own terms, and you kill them or die

The difference between those guys and the Zealots is, when the Zealots kill you, they don't leave.

[Bansheedragon75]

13 hours ago, TaleTeller said:

This is the way the game has always been. With Stalker, the G3, the Zanuka Hunter, and now the zealots. They come at you on their own terms, and you kill them or die

Well then maybe it's time it changed.

Enemies that are invincible and able to self revive unless some very exacting conditions apply is a terrible way to create a challenge, and if you ask me is just lazy development work.

12 hours ago, DLOArceus said:

People seem to not understand this for some reason. They also don't seem to understand that if you fight someone you can't defeat, you get the hell outta there. The game doesn't prevent you doing so except if you're in a Defense mission, and the Zealots nor their weapons are any match for a frame's bullet jumps. Comparatively, a Nox or hell, a Nox Eximus with his Grineer troops are a much harder challenge for a player, considering his armor, speed and status effects.

For more experienced players, back when there was the Wolf somehow everyone had to level up their frames and weapons, but that's normal i guess. What isn't normal is that 90% of those people couldn't use one of their 3 weapons slots to save themselves. It's not that the Wolf was unique either, without proper weapons even the Stalker takes a while to go down. I lost to the G3 while using Loki because i didn't bring anything to kill them, but i'm not complaining. Another thing that wasn't normal is that people forgot that the weapon slots are 5 and not 3. Amps and archguns exist. "Amps do nothing", sure, but if you're solo they were perfectly capable of defeating the Wolf even if the battle was (safe)long. I'm not saying "bring Ash+Hammer or a Valkyr every mission until the season is over", but that there were ways to prepare.

The Zealots aren't even as bad as the Stalker, which has more HP, voids abilities, and can teleport either itself to you or you to HIM. Sure, the Zealots persist after you die, but you can run away. You can't escape from the Stalker.

So what you are saying is that if we can't defeat them we should stop playing, because that's pretty much the choice we are left with here .

As an experienced player now at MR 10 I have the knowledge, skill and Warframes at my disposal to easily defeat them, however this is not the case for a new player.

As I said in my previous post, I don't have a problem with a strong enemy that requires me to think and use tactics to defeat, I consider that a challenge to overcome.

But these Zealots are nothing of the sort, they will spawn randomly in any mission multiple times and sometimes mere moments after you just defeated them and on top of that are invincible and self revives unless you kill them in a specific order and quickly, which is impossible when they spawn several hundred meters apart, not to mention they are several times stronger than anything else in the node, including those that the syndicates send after you.

Comparing them to the Stalker is a poor comparison at best if you ask me.

• The Stalker has a small chance of appearing ONCE during a mission and then only if the player(if solo) or one of the players(If in a group) has been marked, where as the Zealots will appear in practically every single mission and multiple times at that regardless of any considerations or conditions(possibly with the exception of a very few), sometimes even mere moments after you already defeated them before you had time to even get your wits about you, much less recover.
• The Stalker at least leaves once he has defeated you once and you can continue your mission to the end, the Zealots on the other hand will hang around your corpse and wait until you revive and go at you again and unless you defeat them you will fail the mission.
• The Stalker is a single enemy which is not invincible or self revive once defeated, where as the Zealots are 3 enemies which has to be killed in a specific order otherwise they are invincible and will self revive if they are not all defeated together.

How would you suggest a new player who are just learning the game prepare for an enemy like these Zealots?

Some might see it as a challenge to overcome, but for most they would just leave the game and go play something else.

And some of them will in turn tell their friends, write a bad review or both because of their bad experience which will in turn affect the games longevity in a negative way.

Had I been a new player experiencing this, that is certainly how I would think and react to this kind of gameplay.

[DLOArceus]

As first thing i would suggest to stop pretending the multiple spawns thing is a common occurance or that they spawn almost every mission at all.

In the week that just passed i fought the Zealots 2 times. Meanwhile i got invaded by Stalker(5) and the G3(1) 6 times, with 2 of them being back-to-back missions. 

The Stalker leaves? Alright. What if a new player is really bad and has lost all of his retries, THEN gets invaded by him? Guaranteed mission failure. Zealots? "I can't beat them for now. I'll finish the mission and get back at them later on". And he can do that because you're lightning in comparison to their speed. And you can do that at any level of skill or time invested in the game. But not with the Stalker. Even the Wolf wasn't as able as the Stalker in following you, i had missions where he just gave up at a certain point. Let's not forget that new players's Stalker is actually stronger than Shadow Stalker by virtue of not having War. Let's not forget that he can lock rooms and again TELEPORT YOU into locked rooms. And let's not underestimate the G3 either. They have like triple the HP of the Zealots AND stronger weapons AND can inflict semi-permanent  debuff if you get killed by them once which ALSO prompts immediate mission failure. Zanuka isn't as strong and gives you no debuff but is three times as fast as anything else in the game and  ALSO prompts immediate failure and steals your frame. I don't see how escaping from a couple enemies is comparable to INSTANT FAILURE and forcing a new player that can barely hold is own to play a mission WITH NO WEAPONS AT ALL? Both of these two can also lock doors like the Stalker, while the Zealots do not.

Again the Nox are just as bad as the Zealots except worse because if they start shooting at you YOU CAN'T ESCAPE EITHER. And unlike the Zealots they can't be melee'd(by newer players) either. AND they're still there if you die. AND the mission can spawn however many it wants. And they can dash at you. And can shrug off non-headshots by super-riven'd endgame weapons too, and they take waaaaaaaaay reduced damage from finisher which usually instakill every other non-Sentient enemy in the game.

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How would you suggest a new player who are just learning the game prepare for an enemy like these Zealots?

First thing to not play a multiplayer game in solo. Last month i made a new account on my big cousin's Xbox, met them during an obligatory Grineer mission and they killed me. What did i do? I ran away and completed the mission. The next time i met them, which i don't even remember unlocking Exalted Blade yet, they were met with a mix of slam attack spam, Strun and died. And i couldn't even ask for help since his account has no online play available. Which the new players do. They are hundreds of meters apart? Good. That means they can't lock me down with their attacks and i can escape without fear. Let's not forget that the common Fractures event gives players of any MR strong weapons and mods as long as they ask for help.

There's no shame in running away, as with everything in the game, you make them eat their own dirt later on, and how. A JRPG player understands that walking in a lv15 zone killing lv15 enemies but avoiding the colossal lv81 orange monkey until he can fight it, surely a Warframe player can learn to use their agility to escape? Let's not forget that unlike the Wolf Pack, the Zealots can be defeated and have no big boy with them, nor do they have any resistance or special defense like the Wolf. If the Zealoid Prelate was with them it would be another argument entirely.

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Some might see it as a challenge to overcome, but for most they would just leave the game and go play something else.

I don't know where you get this "most". Because most new players certainly aren't babies that can't take a loss. At most they get rightfully angry and complain when they get tricked by The Glast Gambit.

I have more than 2000h in the game and i have no shame in admitting i once lost to the G3 despite having endgame equipment. A thing i can say, though, is that it's dumb that they were programmed as friendly to every other enemy, i distinctly remember the Wolf Pack attacking Grineer and Corpus at least in earlier episodes. Since the Infested are enemies of all it would have made sense.

Edited October 14, 2019 by DLOArceus

[Uhkretor]

On 2019-09-23 at 4:15 PM, TheSixOfDiamonds said:

Then why doesn't it bypass Frost's shields?

Nightwave's Emissary episode ended yesterday, so its a little late. However, I equipped Adaptation and saw the damage type their Torid is dealing.

 

Apparently, it deals Viral Damage.

[Bansheedragon75]

2 hours ago, DLOArceus said:

As first thing i would suggest to stop pretending the multiple spawns thing is a common occurance or that they spawn almost every mission at all.

In the week that just passed i fought the Zealots 2 times. Meanwhile i got invaded by Stalker(5) and the G3(1) 6 times, with 2 of them being back-to-back missions. 

I'm not pretending anything, in the past week I had a single mission where they did NOT spawn, in every other mission I did they spawned at least once, some missions as much as 3 times and in a few of them a new group spawned less than a minute after I cleared the first group.

In a single mission I was assaulted by the G3, the stalker has not made an appearance for me in the last 3 weeks and Zaunka I never encountered at all

2 hours ago, DLOArceus said:

The Stalker leaves? Alright. What if a new player is really bad and has lost all of his retries, THEN gets invaded by him? Guaranteed mission failure. Zealots? "I can't beat them for now. I'll finish the mission and get back at them later on". And he can do that because you're lightning in comparison to their speed.

I dont see how this is relevant, if the player had that bad a mission it would not matter who invaded their mission it would be game over no matter what if they were defeated and I would consider it unlikely that they would have been able to complete the mission even if none of them showed up unless they were close to the end already.

2 hours ago, DLOArceus said:

Let's not forget that he can lock rooms and again TELEPORT YOU into locked rooms. And let's not underestimate the G3 either. They have like triple the HP of the Zealots AND stronger weapons AND can inflict semi-permanent  debuff if you get killed by them once which ALSO prompts immediate mission failure. Zanuka isn't as strong and gives you no debuff but is three times as fast as anything else in the game and  ALSO prompts immediate failure and steals your frame. I don't see how escaping from a couple enemies is comparable to INSTANT FAILURE and forcing a new player that can barely hold is own to play a mission WITH NO WEAPONS AT ALL? Both of these two can also lock doors like the Stalker, while the Zealots do not.

I have encountered the Stalker and G3 in some of my missions, but I have never experienced any of the things you mention here.
The Zanuka I have never encountered so I can't speak for that.

However after doing some research I see that it's noted on their respective wiki pages for the G3 and Zanuka what you mention about them.
I didn't know they had these abilities as I have never had any problems defeating them.

The Stalker on the other hand locking a room and teleporting the player into it?
I have never heard of that much less encountered it and the wiki page only mentions that the Stalker himself are able to teleport, nothing about him locking rooms and teleporting players into them.

But as I said in my previous post, all 3 of these enemies only appear after certain conditions are met.
That is you have to have completed certain missions or goals before you even get the mark.
The Zealots on the other hand have no prerequisite conditions and will spawn anywhere, at any time and even multiple times during a mission.
Also the Zealots are invincible and able to self revive unless you can take them down fast in a specific order, none of the others you compare them to have such "abilities" making them much easier to defeat.

3 hours ago, DLOArceus said:

First thing to not play a multiplayer game in solo. Last month i made a new account on my big cousin's Xbox, met them during an obligatory Grineer mission and they killed me. What did i do? I ran away and completed the mission. The next time i met them, which i don't even remember unlocking Exalted Blade yet, they were met with a mix of slam attack spam, Strun and died. And i couldn't even ask for help since his account has no online play available. Which the new players do.

While it's true its a multiplayer game it's very possible to play solo as well, and while I usually play with a friend I certainly rarely had much in the way of problems going solo.

Yes you were able to defeat them which really should not come as a surprise.
You see the different between you and a new player is experience, you have experience a new player dont have.
So where you can use your experience to defeat these enemies, a new player would likely be overwhelmed.

3 hours ago, DLOArceus said:

There's no shame in running away, as with everything in the game, you make them eat their own dirt later on, and how. A JRPG player understands that walking in a lv15 zone killing lv15 enemies but avoiding the colossal lv81 orange monkey until he can fight it, surely a Warframe player can learn to use their agility to escape?

While you may be able to run away, though I had a few times where they were actually able to keep up for some reason, you may not be able to complete the mission depending on where and when they spawn.
If they spawn near mission objectives then the only option you really have are to either try to defeat them or abort the mission.

And using your example here, why would you put an enemy in an that are multiple times the level of the the area?

3 hours ago, DLOArceus said:

I don't know where you get this "most". Because most new players certainly aren't babies that can't take a loss. At most they get rightfully angry and complain when they get tricked by The Glast Gambit.

Now that you mention it I'll admit that not the right word to use, and I'll amend it to say many.

I never meant to imply that new players are babies that can't take a loss.
The problem comes when the losses happen repeatedly due to conditions in the game that you can do nothing about, such as enemies that are invincible and able to self revive unless you kill them quickly in a specific order.

I for one are principally against enemies that are invincible and/or can self revive.

3 hours ago, DLOArceus said:

I have more than 2000h in the game and i have no shame in admitting i once lost to the G3 despite having endgame equipment. A thing i can say, though, is that it's dumb that they were programmed as friendly to every other enemy, i distinctly remember the Wolf Pack attacking Grineer and Corpus at least in earlier episodes. Since the Infested are enemies of all it would have made sense.

I only have around 500 hours myself, but can't say I had much trouble with the G3.
The Wolf Pack I have never encountered and I have never done the Quest for Saturn six, so I cant speak for that.