No more "AI minion" based warframe please?

[ChivalricDeath]

if DE ever makes another warframe that requires the enemies to become allies in ANY WAY, I will most likely ignore that frame to the ends of the earth. It's clear from Nyx, Revenant and Nekros that DE doesn't want your minions to do any damage unless you jump through 8 different hoops to get it. Not to mention that the AI gets thrown out the window when you convert them, for some reason they are GREAT at shooting at you consistently, but when it comes to turning on their brethren suddenly they start going for cover and doing barrel rolls and repositioning nonstop

 

So I'm pretty much done with any warframes that require AI to assist. Unless you guys rework your friendly AI and permanently tweak the damage scaling for enemy to ally combatants then people will continue to flow to insta-murder frames instead and we will be left in the dust to desecrate forever and to use nyxs 4 augments to do anything of worth

 

PS: Nyx is my favorite warframe and also my least used now, since I can't bring her on any missions where she would be a decent join before ANY other warframe

 

 

 

Edited October 14, 2019 by ChivalricDeath

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

I was actually thinking about this the other day. Minion frames will pretty much always be useless because there’s no way  DE is going to let them do anything significant due to their “No more set and forget, press # to win abilities”. Having an unstoppable AI army would basically be that.

[Xzorn]

There's this ground breaking pet AI in Path of Exile where the minion moves in the direction you shoot. Crazy right?
It's so basic I can't even mention this without being sarcastic but yes companion AI is worthless.
Besides prioritizing your target. We should be able to do other basic things like set them aggressive and passive.

...worst part is they can do this. Hunter's Command does it... Mostly. But a mod slot for something so basic? Pfft.

[Plushy]

 

I play Nyx almost exclusively and even I never use mind control for anything other than a short "stop bothering me" stun on particularly bullet spongy enemies or on mini bosses that the stun actually works on. 

[EinheriarJudith]

26 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

There's this ground breaking pet AI in Path of Exile where the minion moves in the direction you shoot. Crazy right?
It's so basic I can't even mention this without being sarcastic but yes companion AI is worthless.
Besides prioritizing your target. We should be able to do other basic things like set them aggressive and passive.

...worst part is they can do this. Hunter's Command does it... Mostly. But a mod slot for something so basic? Pfft.

path of exile is the only recent place i saw great pet AI. with the introduction of the new pet gems that let you set them to defend or aggressive, it really made necro broken. both nekros and revenant need really badly.

[Tiltskillet]

Wukong's twin works pretty well, so there's at least some hope for other minions.

[Xzorn]

1 hour ago, EinheriarJudith said:

path of exile is the only recent place i saw great pet AI. with the introduction of the new pet gems that let you set them to defend or aggressive, it really made necro broken. both nekros and revenant need really badly.

 

Yea the gems give you good control over how you want the pets to act and reinforces that nature with some stat bonuses but the base AI itself is even just better like I mentioned where they simply go in the direction you're shooting. They will do that with no AI changing gems involved. They also disengage with a reasonable leash distance Meanwhile Nekros' pets just stay behind and Nyx's MC Teleports to you. I hadn't played in a while and noticed it on my Cobra Lash Assassin then again with a Golems Elementalist.

I'm not a huge pet type player but it's pretty simple stuff that makes them function much better and most importantly puts them where you want them.

Funny Path also did a melee rework, had it out in no time and it's decent. Warframe be like Melee 3.0  1year+.
Since I've been back playing Path; DE just looks grandma slow by comparison.

[XenMaster]

4 hours ago, ChivalricDeath said:

if DE ever makes another warframe that requires the enemies to become allies in ANY WAY, I will most likely ignore that frame to the ends of the earth. It's clear from Nyx, Revenant and Nekros that DE doesn't want your minions to do any damage unless you jump through 8 different hoops to get it. Not to mention that the AI gets thrown out the window when you convert them, for some reason they are GREAT at shooting at you consistently, but when it comes to turning on their brethren suddenly they start going for cover and doing barrel rolls and repositioning nonstop

 

So I'm pretty much done with any warframes that require AI to assist. Unless you guys rework your friendly AI and permanently tweak the damage scaling for enemy to ally combatants then people will continue to flow to insta-murder frames instead and we will be left in the dust to desecrate forever and to use nyxs 4 augments to do anything of worth

 

 

 

because DE havent overhaul every AI in this game. the only great AI are those warframe specters or any NPC that use that AI. i wish all AI use that since its very simple and powerful.

[XenMaster]

1 hour ago, Tiltskillet said:

Wukong's twin works pretty well, so there's at least some hope for other minions.

cuz its Warframe Specter AI they used, simple, honest, direct. all other minor AI like those enemy factions are basically trash.

[Tiltskillet]

12 minutes ago, XenMaster said:

cuz its Warframe Specter AI they used, simple, honest, direct. all other minor AI like those enemy factions are basically trash.

That seems to be a large part of it.  If DE can't implement some of that into other minions, it's troubling.

[Birdframe_Prime]

I think there's some basic misunderstanding of some facts here... Especially with the people pointing at the AI more than the damage.

It's not the AI. It's genuinely the fact that enemies deal virtually no damage compared to us.

An explanation follows:

Spoiler

 

Okay, for a start. There are now three types of AI in the game, there are the Enemy AI, the Specter AI and the Wu-Clone AI. Wu-Clone is the most recent iteration and the most aggressive, and is the pioneer for improving the AI on everything else.

Enemy AI is actually so basic that it's only dangerous in groups, thus why Warframe is a horde-based shooter. But they're only not dangerous because there is no real way they could account for everything that a Warframe player may or may not do in their game. From the amount of mobility we've been given, to the pathing they have to take around missions, it's actually pretty bewildering to program the many varieties, and so the best course of action for DE was to make it straightforward and simple to execute, with limited responses to prevent the game confusing itself. And even then it still does.

So, if DE is successful and can switch over all AI to the Wu-Clone AI when that unit becomes a Minion through our abilities, then sure, that's an improvement. That is something we can all get behind and we can all support, right? Having any mind-controlled minion, any Specter, any Shadow of the Dead and so on, act as aggressively and precisely as Wukong's Clone for as long as the ability lasts. That's a great improvement.

But here's the kicker, here's the reason why AI minions don't do any damage; It's because they use base, un-modded weapons designed to hurt us.

This came up in the idea of picking up Enemy weapons if ours were proving under-levelled, allowing us to keep going in a mission at the expense of not actually getting all the Affinity for those weapons we took with us (the player wanted to win more than level up the gear).

The point I put forward in return was to point out how crap the enemy weapons actually are.

The specific example I used is that one of the most dangerous common weapons in the game to be used against us is the Gorgon in the hands of a Heavy Gunner, because of the rate of fire and the hit-scan nature meaning that if you aren't using DR or Evasion functions so that they can't hit you, then you die pretty quick to them. That gun, that we do not want to get hit by ourselves... is crap.

At base, the Gorgon deals a total of 25 Damage. When scaled with the Heavy Gunner to level 100, that damage is... hold on...

Current = 25 x ( 1 + ( 100 - 8 )^1.55 x 0.015) = 25 x ( 1 + 1106.295 x 0.015 ) = 25 x 17.594 = 439.86 Damage per shot.

This is actually really high when you compare that to a Warframe. Warframes have, without abilities, an average full-modded Effective Health of under 10,000 Health (Inaros is an outlier at 23,300 and Valkyr Prime can reach 10,300 or so), plus whatever you can get from Shields, so without abilities that's 3-4 shots of the level 100 Gorgon to kill us.

That's pretty devestating if you let it happen. Luckily with Abilities, rolls, melee blocking you can reduce total damage further, by things like 75-95% through buffs, which can stack to give us near 99.5% reduction with multiple abilities and functions working together, and we have frames like Oberon and Trinity which can provide us with massive Healing too, which is why we stay alive.

But here's a little calculation for you. The base Gorgon itself? You put on the most basic of basic builds. Just Serration, Split Chamber, Point Strike, Vital Sense, Vigilante Armaments, Hammer Shot, and two of the 90% Elemental mods, like Stormbringer and Infected Clip. A non-Crit shot deals 465 Damage. A Crit, such as a headshot, deals 1098 damage. In terms of Burst fire rate (how much damage you can pump out per Second without the Reload in the way) you deal over 13,700 DPS, and the only thing pulling that down is the massive Reload of 4.2 Seconds, making the overal DPS only around 8,600 damage. And I know that many of you will point out that there are way better mod setups and that Rivens exist too. Which is brilliant for us.

Modded weapons are stronger than anything the enemy has, and this is because the enemy's Effective Health scales up faster than anything else. We have to pump out more damage than the enemy ever could because they are damage sponges and we aren't.

And this isn't even touching on the fun of Status adding to that effective damage per second. DPS does tend to take a jump up if you proc a Corrosive status or two on an armoured enemy. And health tends to suffer if you hit for a few extra Bleed statuses.

Nyx's Mind Control and the Augment, Mind Freak, is the closest DE has come to really acknowledging this, by letting us scale up the damage the minion deals by shooting it after cast, and then the Augment making them deal an additional 500% damage on top. Without this there is no way that a Heavy Gunner can take out another Heavy Gunner in the mission, let alone a Bombard, and they're going to struggle to take care of the mass trash mobs. (A level 100 Gunner dealing approximately 440 damage per shot will take 22 shots to kill a single Butcher.)

 

So.

Improve the AI all you want. Improve the functions of minion abilities all you want.

Unless you're suggesting that every single minion ability instantly apply a 10-15x multiplier to the damage these minions deal out to their allies, they are never, ever going to be more than a way of turning off problem enemies for a while, or a way of placing aggro CC on the field for the other enemies to shoot at instead of you.

They will never be anything more than convenient decoys. And if you don't like that... well... There's 38 other frames out there for a reason.

[selig_fay]

Wuclone is actually dumb too. I tested it yesterday. All it has more aggressively is a kickback system that allows you to quickly switch between targets and teleport in case the system has stalled. This is what razor fly does when they meet obstacles. They are carried back some time and try another way. But I still see a problem where Wuclone can't make a decision within 5 seconds and doesn't use kickback to reset its state. It's definitely useful, but it's still far from ideal. 

[Test-995]

5 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Improve the AI all you want. Improve the functions of minion abilities all you want.

Unless you're suggesting that every single minion ability instantly apply a 10-15x multiplier to the damage these minions deal out to their allies, they are never, ever going to be more than a way of turning off problem enemies for a while, or a way of placing aggro CC on the field for the other enemies to shoot at instead of you.

They will never be anything more than convenient decoys. And if you don't like that... well... There's 38 other frames out there for a reason.

I hope them to follow some basic order like move there move here and stay there/here, but 99% of them don't have it and even the specters can't be moved properly, it's more like inconvenient decoys.

[George_PPS]

How about you stop playing any frames with such abilities? If you don’t like these frames, just don’t use them. If you want to use them and want AI improved, just say so. 

[nslay]

9 hours ago, XenMaster said:

because DE havent overhaul every AI in this game. the only great AI are those warframe specters or any NPC that use that AI. i wish all AI use that since its very simple and powerful.

That's not good AI either. I want AI that can do something more interesting and effective... like group tactics or frame/ability-specific counter tactics/maneuvers. Specters do not exhibit any of that.

[nslay]

7 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Enemy AI is actually so basic that it's only dangerous in groups, thus why Warframe is a horde-based shooter. But they're only not dangerous because there is no real way they could account for everything that a Warframe player may or may not do in their game. From the amount of mobility we've been given, to the pathing they have to take around missions, it's actually pretty bewildering to program the many varieties, and so the best course of action for DE was to make it straightforward and simple to execute, with limited responses to prevent the game confusing itself. And even then it still does.

There is a way (and an entire field!) to do AI that doesn't require case-by-case programming and can be smart enough to account for anything meaningful a Warframe player could do. The real challenge for DE and other game developers is making challenging but beatable AI. Otherwise, just let DeepMind make some anti-fun AI that always wins (yeah, I am very familiar with the impractical computational challenges with their methods).

Having trouble imagining anti-fun AI that could make weak units beat godly Warframe players? I admit, it's hard to imagine... but such AI could do things like hide, use environmental damage mechanisms (Void Death Rays) and resets (falling off cliffs), be aware of and do things that counter specific Warframe abilities that are active, smart positioning, smart use and timing of Eximus units/abilities, oh... and obviously have better aim!

[XenMaster]

5 hours ago, nslay said:

That's not good AI either. I want AI that can do something more interesting and effective... like group tactics or frame/ability-specific counter tactics/maneuvers. Specters do not exhibit any of that.

The warframe specter in general is overpowered :

 

1. It wont get stagger from getting attacked by enemy weapons (except explosion, hooks from scorpion and ancient)

 

2. Although clunky movement, they wont take cover, which allow them to dps without pause.

 

i get it that AI is S#&$ atm, but atleast Warframe AI is golden S#&$ than those hostile faction AI.

[ChivalricDeath]

I'm glad that a healthy discussion has popped up from this, my other issue ESPECIALLY with Nyx is that her 1 now requires you to use your BEST and highest DPS weapon in the game if you want your mind control target to do even minimal damage, And to top it off, they still duck down making it impossible to hit their head consistently in order to rack up as much damage as possible. You have a "go away" button for an enemy and unless you have your best weapon on 24/7 they won't do anything, and there are plenty of other frames that make enemies "go away" by making them die instantly

 

Edit: Forgot to mention that the mind control AI will regularly get stunlocked by basically anything moving towards it, or stuck in various animations

Edited October 14, 2019 by ChivalricDeath

[Xzorn]

20 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

They will never be anything more than convenient decoys. And if you don't like that... well... There's 38 other frames out there for a reason.

 

I'm personally more on the line of not having a Kavat try to suicide melee a lvl 200 Napalm.
IMO all companions are just stat sticks and utility but Sentinels always win because I have control over them.
Kavat's one good offense is their ability to scratch armor off enemies but would be nice if they tried to do it on your target.

[XenMaster]

6 hours ago, ChivalricDeath said:

I'm glad that a healthy discussion has popped up from this, my other issue ESPECIALLY with Nyx is that her 1 now requires you to use your BEST and highest DPS weapon in the game if you want your mind control target to do even minimal damage, And to top it off, they still duck down making it impossible to hit their head consistently in order to rack up as much damage as possible. You have a "go away" button for an enemy and unless you have your best weapon on 24/7 they won't do anything, and there are plenty of other frames that make enemies "go away" by making them die instantly

 

Edit: Forgot to mention that the mind control AI will regularly get stunlocked by basically anything moving towards it, or stuck in various animations

Weird, back then i thought being immune to damage also mean immune to status effect.

[Birdframe_Prime]

2 hours ago, Xzorn said:

I'm personally more on the line of not having a Kavat try to suicide melee a lvl 200 Napalm.
IMO all companions are just stat sticks and utility but Sentinels always win because I have control over them.
Kavat's one good offense is their ability to scratch armor off enemies but would be nice if they tried to do it on your target.

True, although that's something that they're apparently working on at least.

Companion AI is just the melee unit AI with some funky animation choices, but the same kind of thing applies to them as applies to us; we don't scale, even if we can scale our damage, the enemy scales both damage and effective health. Unless we give our companions actual life-sustaining functions, they're going to die just as easily as we do without our life-sustaining abilities.

[Xzorn]

22 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Companion AI is just the melee unit AI with some funky animation choices, but the same kind of thing applies to them as applies to us; we don't scale, even if we can scale our damage, the enemy scales both damage and effective health. Unless we give our companions actual life-sustaining functions, they're going to die just as easily as we do without our life-sustaining abilities.

 

Which is of course fine. Players should not scale through infinity and I oppose abilities or mods that do this because it leaves no room for additional features, weapons and abilities. The measurements could use some work of course. Not just in pets but in players since we can now survive multiple lvl 9,999 Bombard rockets and kill them in one hit. Levels are just a measurement in the most basic form but there's things that ignore this entirely and that's just bad design.

[AzureTerra]

On 2019-10-13 at 7:34 PM, Tiltskillet said:

Wukong's twin works pretty well, so there's at least some hope for other minions.

Wukongs twin is the poster child for it done right, everything else should be as good as his is.