Armor 3.0 With Mathematical Solutions Included (Idea Dump Series)

[GruntBlender]

6 minutes ago, Grey_Star_Rival_Defender said:

Couldn't we just make each enemy's armor value static and give them each a set amount of damage resistance, rather than scaling amounts of it?

Could do. A big thing with that is compressing both the enemy eHP range and our own damage range. Off the cuff, a fully modded gun should be doing only a few times the damage of an unmodded one. the 60-120x we get with a basic mod set is ridiculous. Basic enemies on starchart missions where we do a lot of farming are unnoticeable in most cases, and that's just wrong.

[(PSN)VagueWisdom]

27 minutes ago, GruntBlender said:

Nobody cars about Mot. How will it affect 1hr+ Arbitration runs?

You presented 4 ways to kill one, and forgot about viral+slash combo. But that's not enough, you want to nerf them so you don't have to use the right tools. You want to reduce their eHP significantly to make them easier to kill. At least that's what we can deduce from your post since you DIDN'T OUTLINE THE PROBLEM YOU'RE TRYING TO SOLVE!

Your strawman is insulting. I want the game to be more challenging. I don't want that challenge to come from nerfing player armor and eHP. Effectively, your "challenge" is equivalent to throwing harder hitting but less durable enemies at us. That's asinine.

Not when your suggestions are so unreasonable and you refuse to listen to explanations as to why.

Nope, that doesn't solve anything. In fact, that makes things much worse. The bigger number menas there's less resistance, but that's irrelevant since that wouldn't really change the eHP under your system, just alter how fast the armor is ablated away. At that point, the actual armor effect is IRRELEVANT because the eHP will always be health+armor unless armor is significantly higher than health.

As opposed to your suggestion of making high level content objectively easier by adding huge armor stripping to all damage? What exactly is your problem with current armor scaling again? That you have to specialise instead of using the same tools against everything?

It's not too hard, it's stupid. It invalidates armor as a concept and significantly undermines survivability of most frames. What is your purpose with this? To make corrupted heavy gunners easier to kill when you haven't bothered bringing an anti-armor setup?

I do. A stupid move like this would make a lot of people quit or at least take a break until it's reverted.

1. Arbitrations will have enemies that are easier to kill, but can also kill you easier. The trade-off.

2. I never suggested to nerf the previous methods. For someone accusing me of a strawman (thanks & sorry btw), you quite quickly resorted to the same. The problem of armor as I see it, is that I want diversity in the methods of killing enemies. Where we have ~5-7 ways to kill them, I want to be able to imagine 50 or >more<, that don't involve focusing sustained damage on a single tank enemy for over 1m as a cheesed up Inaros. It's not difficult. It's not fun. It's tedious & boring. Unless that enemy qualifies as a field boss, spending over 1m on a single enemy "is asinine". Literally any current Starchart boss could qualify as a field boss & even they STILL manage to be too easy because of the current design.

3. How is making enemies easier to kill, with the trade-off of them killing the player more easily, unreasonable? Like I said, the purpose is to increase the number of viable kill methods, the number of viable builds/layouts/loadouts, & consequently, the replayability of practically the >entire game<. It would blur the idea of a "Meta", increase the possibility that alternative squad setups are considered by the playerbase, & best of all, reduce the toxic elitism associated with all of those things. & you're worried that "end-game", which we'll define as all content that unlocks upon completing the Starchart, Second Dream, & War Within, will be "harder". Keeping in mind that all content below that, essentially Sortie level & below, will be barely affected, with only the last 4-6 planets & moons being where the changes >begin to become noticeable<. >Begin<.

4. You wanted sustainable armor. I suggested changing the denominator constant, along with multiplying armor values to reflect that, the latter part which you apparently forgot. The difference between A/(A+300) & A/(A+600) is 2x. All armor values would require being doubled in order to keep the same DR. Sounds like an easy fix to me. Just multiply all armor by 2. Your acting as if the raw armor value isn't changing to reflect the larger constant in the denominator. It has to increase, yes. I didn't say that current armor values can remain the same & have this still work. It won't. So as for your suggestion that the armor value has to be higher than health to remain valid, yes, this is true. That was my solution to keep armor sustainable as a defensive mechanic. That said, it makes sense for smaller grunt enemies to die before their armor is completely destroyed. Again, not going to deny that. Field bosses on the other hand, the large ones such as Vay Hek, Lephantis, & possibly even Juggernauts, I find it conceivable that their armor could be destroyed before dying simply because their health pool is so large, with an armor fall-off effect that, maybe, also increases their speed, because they became lighter.

5. Again, you're assuming that current armor stripping builds are being nerfed. They're not. They will, actually, remain more effective than regular damage, specifically against particularly fortified tank enemies.

6. See 5. Anti-armor setups will still be better, just not as >>>mandatory<<<.

[(PSN)VagueWisdom]

2 hours ago, Grey_Star_Rival_Defender said:

Couldn't we just make each enemy's armor value static and give them each a set amount of damage resistance, rather than scaling amounts of it?

2 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

Could do. A big thing with that is compressing both the enemy eHP range and our own damage range. Off the cuff, a fully modded gun should be doing only a few times the damage of an unmodded one. the 60-120x we get with a basic mod set is ridiculous. Basic enemies on starchart missions where we do a lot of farming are unnoticeable in most cases, and that's just wrong.

In a level scaling rpg, steamrolling low level enemies is usually accounted for by creating a universal damage cap against below level content, but I have no idea how that would work in Warframe since level isn't exactly defined outside MR & AR/GR (AR/GR is affinity/gear rank, applied to individual equipment). The best I can think of is re-implementing Conclave score & then creating a handicap specifically against the high Conclave player, & that would scale with the score for the other players.

You mean making armor & DR static with only health scaling with level? Would shields continue to scale as well?

Edited December 6, 2019 by (PS4)VagueWisdom

[Grey_Star_Rival_Defender]

1 minute ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

In a level scaling rpg, steamrolling low level enemies is usually accounted for by creating a universal damage cap against below level content, but I have no idea how that would work in Warframe since level isn't exactly defined outside MR & AR/GR (AR is affinity/gear rank, applied to individual equipment). The best I can think of is re-implementing Conclave score & then creating a handicap specifically against the high Conclave player, & that would scale with the score for the other players.

You mean making armor & DR static with only health scaling with level? Would shields continue to scale as well?

Yes. Make every armor value static, non-scaling, thus making every enemy have a set amount of DR. Say a Butcher might have 10%, a Lancer 20%, Heavy Gunner 50%, and a Bombard 90%. From Earth to high level Sorties, same amount of damage resist. I don't see why shields wouldn't scale, they don't cause as much of an issue as armor scaling does, if at all.

[(PSN)VagueWisdom]

2 minutes ago, Grey_Star_Rival_Defender said:

Yes. Make every armor value static, non-scaling, thus making every enemy have a set amount of DR. Say a Butcher might have 10%, a Lancer 20%, Heavy Gunner 50%, and a Bombard 90%. From Earth to high level Sorties, same amount of damage resist. I don't see why shields wouldn't scale, they don't cause as much of an issue as armor scaling does, if at all.

If this is to be the case, the formula for health scaling would need a change in constants such that health scales faster. So that it makes up for the loss of tedium on high level content.

Even though I disagree with tedium as a proxy of difficulty, the current, & historical, state of the game kinda requires it.

[Grey_Star_Rival_Defender]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

If this is to be the case, the formula for health scaling would need a change in constants such that health scales faster. So that it makes up for the loss of tedium on high level content.

Even though I disagree with tedium as a proxy of difficulty, the current, & historical, state of the game kinda requires it.

The health scaling would need to be upped, yes, but ideally high level enemies would become kill able without relying on armor stripping because 90% damage reduction is a lot different than 99% damage reduction. There crosses a certain point where simple high damage can't force through damage reduction and armor stripping becomes ideal.

[(PSN)VagueWisdom]

2 hours ago, Grey_Star_Rival_Defender said:

The health scaling would need to be upped, yes, but ideally high level enemies would become kill able without relying on armor stripping because 90% damage reduction is a lot different than 99% damage reduction. There crosses a certain point where simple high damage can't force through damage reduction and armor stripping becomes ideal.

Exactly what I was trying to solve. I extremely dislike the idea of the meta. The forcing of players into specific builds because they're the only proper ways of dispatching enemies. But I was trying to build on the idea that armor can change because as a mechanic, it creates more depth, but as it currently is, it's too static & not complex enough to create the level of depth that a player would find intriguing in the way that they can study it with critical thinking to master & overcome. A static value wouldn't be able to achieve that. Shields & the various damage types have the same problem.

I have to clear up the idea behind my initial proposition.

Basically, degradable armor is just one part in a multi-faceted plan to make Warframe challenging & create that coveted depth, while maintaining new player & casual player experience, marrying it all to the lore such that the lore explains why certain things work certain ways. Like why Kuva exists & why nullifying/dispelling warframe abilities is possible. While buffing & nerfing certain aspects & equipment in what appears to be mental acrobatics attempting to maintain parity on a balance scale that has over 20 different plates.

I'm geeking hard basically. Trying to take aspects from every single game that I have ever played, watched, or both.

TL;DR. I believe *personally* that the sustainable end-state for Warframe is a skill based, MOBA & hardcore inspired, almost, if not fully MMO. Where level scaling is minimal bordering on nonexistent, & difficulty is achieved by altered mechanics that make enemies appear to be more intelligent/intuitive, allowing them to be progressively adaptive to player builds, becoming subjectively difficult without being objectively stronger, because they've fashioned a loadout designed to counter a specific build or synergy, in a game of elemental rock paper scissors (I'm sure there's a better name but can't remember; found it, David Lovelace's RPS permutations).

Edited December 6, 2019 by (PS4)VagueWisdom

[Asawari]

Le 13/11/2019 à 05:29, (PS4)VagueWisdom a dit :

300R/(1-R)=A        This is raw armor value. This is the value we see in game.

Coincidentally, this is also how level scaling affects health, armor, & shields. Exponentially.

Just because I love to nitpick.

This isn't exponential. This is logarithmic.

 

But please go on. The rest of the post was interesting.

Edited December 6, 2019 by Isokaze_BestKaze

[(PSN)VagueWisdom]

10 hours ago, Isokaze_BestKaze said:

Just because I love to nitpick.

This isn't exponential. This is logarithmic.

But please go on. The rest of the post was interesting.

Lol, I get it. Though, when I said exponential, it was on the understanding that logs are just the inverse of exponents. As in the armor value is increasing exponentially.

As for the other aspects of the plan, I'm probably going to do separate topics & create a table of contents.

Edited December 6, 2019 by (PS4)VagueWisdom

[GruntBlender]

On 2019-12-06 at 7:34 PM, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

1. Arbitrations will have enemies that are easier to kill, but can also kill you easier. The trade-off.

2. I never suggested to nerf the previous methods. For someone accusing me of a strawman (thanks & sorry btw), you quite quickly resorted to the same. The problem of armor as I see it, is that I want diversity in the methods of killing enemies. Where we have ~5-7 ways to kill them, I want to be able to imagine 50 or >more<, that don't involve focusing sustained damage on a single tank enemy for over 1m as a cheesed up Inaros. It's not difficult. It's not fun. It's tedious & boring. Unless that enemy qualifies as a field boss, spending over 1m on a single enemy "is asinine". Literally any current Starchart boss could qualify as a field boss & even they STILL manage to be too easy because of the current design.

3. How is making enemies easier to kill, with the trade-off of them killing the player more easily, unreasonable? Like I said, the purpose is to increase the number of viable kill methods, the number of viable builds/layouts/loadouts, & consequently, the replayability of practically the >entire game<. It would blur the idea of a "Meta", increase the possibility that alternative squad setups are considered by the playerbase, & best of all, reduce the toxic elitism associated with all of those things. & you're worried that "end-game", which we'll define as all content that unlocks upon completing the Starchart, Second Dream, & War Within, will be "harder". Keeping in mind that all content below that, essentially Sortie level & below, will be barely affected, with only the last 4-6 planets & moons being where the changes >begin to become noticeable<. >Begin<.

4. You wanted sustainable armor. I suggested changing the denominator constant, along with multiplying armor values to reflect that, the latter part which you apparently forgot. The difference between A/(A+300) & A/(A+600) is 2x. All armor values would require being doubled in order to keep the same DR. Sounds like an easy fix to me. Just multiply all armor by 2. Your acting as if the raw armor value isn't changing to reflect the larger constant in the denominator. It has to increase, yes. I didn't say that current armor values can remain the same & have this still work. It won't. So as for your suggestion that the armor value has to be higher than health to remain valid, yes, this is true. That was my solution to keep armor sustainable as a defensive mechanic. That said, it makes sense for smaller grunt enemies to die before their armor is completely destroyed. Again, not going to deny that. Field bosses on the other hand, the large ones such as Vay Hek, Lephantis, & possibly even Juggernauts, I find it conceivable that their armor could be destroyed before dying simply because their health pool is so large, with an armor fall-off effect that, maybe, also increases their speed, because they became lighter.

5. Again, you're assuming that current armor stripping builds are being nerfed. They're not. They will, actually, remain more effective than regular damage, specifically against particularly fortified tank enemies.

6. See 5. Anti-armor setups will still be better, just not as >>>mandatory<<<.

1. Your suggestion wouldn't affect Corpus, Infested, and half the Corrupted. And, again, we need some way to survive sustained damage.

2. By "them" I meant the gunners. you want 50 ways to kill them? Name some that aren't just "shoot or stab them with various damege types". If you want warframe abilities to do it, most of them will still be far too weak in terms of damage to do anything.

3. We'd lose a ton of survivability to kill things that we have the tools to kill already. "the purpose is to increase the number of viable kill methods, the number of viable builds/layouts/loadouts" but all you're doing is shifting the meta to only use frames with tons of inbuilt damage mitigation or invulnerability like Valkyr's hysteria or Rhino's Iron Skin.

4. You don't seem to understand what sustainable means. While being shot, an Oberon with something like 70% damage reduction due to armor and 40 health regen from Renewal is sustainably mitigating about 130 dps on health. Much more with a proper build and recasting it. If armor is stripped, doesn't matter how much you started with, that mitigation will be reduced to 40 dps, same as the heal rate. Initial armor doesn't matter if it gets stripped off in seconds. You might as well buff shields and get rid of warframe armor altogether, since that's the effect you're going to have. FYI, Lephantis doesn't have armor.

5&6. Irrelevant.

[(PSN)VagueWisdom]

17 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

1. Your suggestion wouldn't affect Corpus, Infested, and half the Corrupted. And, again, we need some way to survive sustained damage.

2. By "them" I meant the gunners. you want 50 ways to kill them? Name some that aren't just "shoot or stab them with various damege types". If you want warframe abilities to do it, most of them will still be far too weak in terms of damage to do anything.

3. We'd lose a ton of survivability to kill things that we have the tools to kill already. "the purpose is to increase the number of viable kill methods, the number of viable builds/layouts/loadouts" but all you're doing is shifting the meta to only use frames with tons of inbuilt damage mitigation or invulnerability like Valkyr's hysteria or Rhino's Iron Skin.

4. You don't seem to understand what sustainable means. While being shot, an Oberon with something like 70% damage reduction due to armor and 40 health regen from Renewal is sustainably mitigating about 130 dps on health. Much more with a proper build and recasting it. If armor is stripped, doesn't matter how much you started with, that mitigation will be reduced to 40 dps, same as the heal rate. Initial armor doesn't matter if it gets stripped off in seconds. You might as well buff shields and get rid of warframe armor altogether, since that's the effect you're going to have. FYI, Lephantis doesn't have armor.

5&6. Irrelevant.

1. Both those factions do still have armor units, just not as many as the Grineer. The Corpus will still need an overall shield rework, & it wouldn't hurt the Infested to have a modest base health regen.

2. Shooting them in their life support & power units (Grineer wear those a lot for the artificial limbs... & to breath). Reworking elemental damage such that cold damage can freeze enemies solid, which would bestow a significant damage boost that can shatter the victim. Reworking magnetic damage so that it isn't so cheesy, & instead affects enemy awareness & accuracy, effectively working as partial CC, long enough to more safely dispatch high DPS units while out in the open.

3. So you like mandatory builds? Shifting the meta to "ONLY" using high DPS builds? Armor stripping builds ARE NOT GETTING NERFED & will still be better than raw damage. I stated that already, now I want to know why you keep ignoring it.

4. You've yet to define what you mean by sustainable. Do you mean armor lasting long enough for the defensive mechanic to still be meaningful? Do you mean how low the armor value can be while still being meaningful? I'm just going to assume A/(A+600) isn't large enough for you (even though it was just an example of how changing the constant would work).

I'm going to apply my proposed change to two versions. Our current version A/(A+300), & the changed version A/(A+1200). I stated already that the armor values will have to be increased to reflect any change in the constant so that all the current DR can remain consistent, so we'll assume the example A/(A+1200) is from a version of the game where all armor values are 4x the ones from the version of A/(A+300). In both cases, DR would be >exactly the same<. Now to do some damage calculations with respect to my initial proposition.

Let's use an easy value. 50%, or .5 DR. 300 armor for A/(A+300). 1200 armor for A/(A+1200). Damage instances with a value of 100. Using DR=d to determine the damage that affects the armor value.

With A/(A+300). 300-50=250. In this case. 50% DR has decreased to 45.45%.

With A/(A+1200). 1200-50=1150. In this case. 50% DR has decreased to 48.93%.

In the example of 300, the DR decreased by a little over 4x the value when compared to the example of 1200. >Over<. So that means that DR will decrease a little over 4x slower were the constant in the denominator to change to 1200, & all armor values being updated to 4x their normal values to reflect that change.

That's sustainable armor. Allowing it to stay meaningful for a longer period of time.

Edited December 8, 2019 by (PS4)VagueWisdom

[kapn655321]

I wish my eyes didn't gloss over every time I try to understand these systems.

Been working within these systems, playing them by feel for ages.
It would be excellent to be able to add my input, but sadly I can't.

I trust you guys to have some fresh, comfortable, and serviceable suggestions.
It's absolutely appreciated that someone out there can address these matters from the player perspective.
I'd be doing the same thing if I could.

Edited December 8, 2019 by kapn655321

[(PSN)VagueWisdom]

6 minutes ago, kapn655321 said:

I wish my eyes didn't gloss over every time I try to understand these systems.

Been working within these systems, playing them by feel for ages.
It would be excellent to be able to add my input, but sadly I can't.

I trust you guys to have some fresh, comfortable, and serviceable suggestions.
It's absolutely appreciated that someone out there can address these matters from the player perspective.
I'd be doing the same thing if I could.

Well, I'd be happy to answer any questions about it, if you have any. 😊

The overarching problem that I'm trying to solve with this topic is that *I believe* that there are too few ways to reduce armor, & because of that the game forces certain builds upon players as otherwise they'd be contending with a singular tedious tank enemy that they'd be spending minutes on end to kill, with no workable solutions outside the meta builds.

Edited December 8, 2019 by (PS4)VagueWisdom

[GruntBlender]

4 minutes ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

2. Shooting them in their life support & power units (Grineer wear those a lot for the artificial limbs... & to breath). Reworking elemental damage such that cold damage can freeze enemies solid, which would bestow a significant damage boost that can shatter the victim. Reworking magnetic damage so that it isn't so cheesy, & instead affects enemy awareness & accuracy, effectively working as partial CC, long enough to more safely dispatch high DPS units while out in the open.

So, a bunch of things not connected to the armor thing you suggested...

5 minutes ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

3. So you like mandatory builds? Shifting the meta to "ONLY" using high DPS builds? Armor stripping builds ARE NOT GETTING NERFED & will still be better than raw damage. I stated that already, now I want to know why you keep ignoring it.

I'm not ignoring it, what makes you say that? You ignored everything I said in this paragraph. You don't like the 'right tool for the right job' philosophy and want everything to be good against everything, but then everything will just be the same. It's boring.

8 minutes ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

4. You've yet to define what you mean by sustainable. Do you mean armor lasting long enough for the defensive mechanic to still be meaningful? Do you mean how low the armor value can be while still being meaningful? I'm just going to assume A/(A+600) isn't large enough for you (even though it was just an example of how changing the constant would work).

I mean being able to take fire for ten minutes straight without needing to hide. That's the 'sustainable' part of survivability. The 'burst' part is being able to take a ton of damage at once, but having to hide to regain that ability. I even gave an example.

12 minutes ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

Let's use an easy value. 50%, or .5 DR. 300 armor for A/(A+300). 1200 armor for A/(A+1200). Damage instances with a value of 100. Using DR=d to determine the damage that affects the armor value.

Ok, let's. Assuming average enemy dps of 100, and starting health is 740 (100+200%@rank30+440%Vitality). Let's throw on Oberon's base heal rate of 40 health per second, easily sustained with Hunter Adrenaline or Rage.

• Currently, with 300 armor, it takes 74 seconds to down the player. Considering health orbs, recasting, or buffing to 50 heal rate, this means indefinite life.
• Ablating armor with current values, in 5 seconds your armor is gone, and in 16 you're dead despite the healing. You now have to outheal the full 100 to stay alive.
• Ablating armor with 1200 values, the armor lasts 19 seconds and you're dead in 23.
• Buffing heal rate to 50, current is sustained life, ablating 300 is extended to 23s till death, and 1200 is at 28s till death.
• BONUS: A/(A+1200) with 2400 armor and 50 heal rate: 0 armor after 49 seconds, death after 58 seconds.
• BONUS 2: Oberon Prime with just umbral mods (H:1338, A:658, Heal:66):
  • Current: Can tank 210 dps with no other heal sources (340 with one Arcane Guardian, 620 with Guardian and Grace).
  • A+300, 100 dps: Armor gone in 15s, dead in 54.
  • A+1200 with 4x armor, 100 dps: Armor gone in 56s, dead in 93.
  • A+300, 210 dps: Armor gone in 8s, dead in 16.
  • A+1200 with 4x A, 210 dps: Armor gone in 27s, dead in 31.
  • A+1200 with 5032 initial armor and Arcane Grace, 620 dps: dead in 24 seconds, before even losing all the armor. (28s if extra armor from AG doesn't degrade)

That's what I mean by non sustainable, no matter what armor you start out with, no matter what the DR is, you'll wind up with 0 armor. Then, health acts a lot more like shield, trying to guard against burst damage only. You HAVE to hide to replenish your health and armor. Again, at that point, just remove armor mechanic and buff shields instead.

[(PSN)VagueWisdom]

3 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

So, a bunch of things not connected to the armor thing you suggested...

Depends on how my damage 3.0 suggestion works (yet to be posted). Like I stated, multi-faceted plan. But I'll play.

Let's say the armor type an enemy is wearing is synthetic fiber (Kevlar), dealing a heat proc would decrease the armor value based on the damage ticks & duration of the fire. This is because fine fibers burn, a weakness of fiber based armor, at least when compared to more solid types of armor (don't actually know how flammable Kevlar is, but you get the idea).

Let's give another example. Let's say the armor being worn contains "shear thickening" gel. Freezing the armor with cold damage would cause the armor to become more vulnerable to shattering (bonus damage) because the gel was made more solid by lower temperatures

Again, these are just examples. We can totally play with this idea & switch around weaknesses.

3 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

I mean being able to take fire for ten minutes straight without needing to hide. That's the 'sustainable' part of survivability. The 'burst' part is being able to take a ton of damage at once, but having to hide to regain that ability. I even gave an example.

10 minutes of armor value not changing from sustained gunfire? What warped reality are you living in? 

"Consequences for being shot? WHAT IS THIS???"

3 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

Ok, let's. Assuming average enemy dps of 100, and starting health is 740 (100+200%@rank30+440%Vitality). Let's throw on Oberon's base heal rate of 40 health per second, easily sustained with Hunter Adrenaline or Rage.

• Currently, with 300 armor, it takes 74 seconds to down the player. Considering health orbs, recasting, or buffing to 50 heal rate, this means indefinite life.
• Ablating armor with current values, in 5 seconds your armor is gone, and in 16 you're dead despite the healing. You now have to outheal the full 100 to stay alive.
• Ablating armor with 1200 values, the armor lasts 19 seconds and you're dead in 23.
• Buffing heal rate to 50, current is sustained life, ablating 300 is extended to 23s till death, and 1200 is at 28s till death.
• BONUS: A/(A+1200) with 2400 armor and 50 heal rate: 0 armor after 49 seconds, death after 58 seconds.
• BONUS 2: Oberon Prime with just umbral mods (H:1338, A:658, Heal:66):
  • Current: Can tank 210 dps with no other heal sources (340 with one Arcane Guardian, 620 with Guardian and Grace).
  • A+300, 100 dps: Armor gone in 15s, dead in 54.
  • A+1200 with 4x armor, 100 dps: Armor gone in 56s, dead in 93.
  • A+300, 210 dps: Armor gone in 8s, dead in 16.
  • A+1200 with 4x A, 210 dps: Armor gone in 27s, dead in 31.
  • A+1200 with 5032 initial armor and Arcane Grace, 620 dps: dead in 24 seconds, before even losing all the armor. (28s if extra armor from AG doesn't degrade)

That's what I mean by non sustainable, no matter what armor you start out with, no matter what the DR is, you'll wind up with 0 armor. Then, health acts a lot more like shield, trying to guard against burst damage only. You HAVE to hide to replenish your health and armor. Again, at that point, just remove armor mechanic and buff shields instead.

Let's just take a second to point out that 100dps from enemy mobs isn't achieved until ~lvl25-30 (approximating from a mob of lancers since most enemies are fodder), which doesn't start until Saturn, & that the level range of Sedna is 30-40, the final Void levels are 40-45, & Kuva Fortress is 28-40.

In order to die as fast as your examples at the 100dps range, you'd need around 10 enemies shooting you simultaneously, while standing like a statue. With that in mind, standing out in the open like that, for 10 seconds or more, is pretty long considering that a battle is supposed to be an active & hectic activity, & that while moving & bounding around, the chances of being hit are significantly reduced.

Furthermore, we've yet to include enemy damage scaling as part of the solution, as well as the armor regeneration factor that I mentioned before, & perhaps even a baseline buff to the armor values. Because warframes are nanite constructs, it makes sense for the armored portion of the nanites to make an active effort to repair. Health doesn't regenerate as easily because fuel, lubricant, & other biologically important fluids leak, & the more virulent parts of the Infested that would have normally transferred to the warframes, allowing such health regeneration, were usually gutted from the Infested biology (exception Nidus).

This is not even to mention that the constant in the denominator of the DR formula for armor is being actively played with by the both of us for the purpose of fulfilling both of our sensibilities. I want more ways to destroy armor than what we have currently, & you want to stay survivable.

If we include enemy damage scaling, armor regen, & further changes to the armor DR constant, I believe there's an active solution to make both of our desires attainable.

(I believe in the last bullet point you meant Arcane Guardian.)

3 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

I'm not ignoring it, what makes you say that? You ignored everything I said in this paragraph. You don't like the 'right tool for the right job' philosophy and want everything to be good against everything, but then everything will just be the same. It's boring.

The difference lies in "how good". For the 3rd time, dedicated armor stripping will >still be better than raw damage<. I believe you're ignoring it because you are not taking the time to recognize that distinction. I didn't ignore anything in that paragraph. My answer just didn't require being long because I believed that it accounted for everything just fine.

3 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

That's what I mean by non sustainable, no matter what armor you start out with, no matter what the DR is, you'll wind up with 0 armor. Then, health acts a lot more like shield, trying to guard against burst damage only. You HAVE to hide to replenish your health and armor. Again, at that point, just remove armor mechanic and buff shields instead.

You are viewing this in very black & white terms. You believe that there are only two possibilities. 1. Static armor that only changes with specific tools that the player is forced to use, or die, or cheese with CC (crowd control). 2. No armor at all.

Everything in between those two possibilities is apparently retarded, & the only reason you believe that is because you dislike having consequences for being shot at by enemies.

The armor value is as sustainable as your propensity to >not get shot in the first place<, &/or utilize equipment & abilities to offset that.

Edited December 8, 2019 by (PS4)VagueWisdom

[GruntBlender]

2 hours ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

The armor value is as sustainable as your propensity to >not get shot in the first place<, &/or utilize equipment & abilities to offset that.

For the umpteenth time, there are two modes of survivability. Burst, where you tank a ton of damage but have to hide to tecuperate, and sustained, where you're constantly receiving damage and healing while being shot. For players, currently shields cover the former and fail at it, and health+armor covers the latter.

2 hours ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

Let's just take a second to point out that 100dps from enemy mobs isn't achieved until ~lvl25-30

And we'll have to face lvl100 enemies at some point. What then?

2 hours ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

For the 3rd time, dedicated armor stripping will >still be better than raw damage<. I believe you're ignoring it because you are not taking the time to recognize that distinction.

The distinction is meaningless because "~lvl25-30" enemies still die from one shot whatever damage you shoot them with.

2 hours ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

You believe that there are only two possibilities. 1. Static armor that only changes with specific tools that the player is forced to use, or die, or cheese with CC (crowd control). 2. No armor at all.

Because adding armor degradation, even with regen, means that you either inevitably drop to 0 armor with sustained damage, or it's basically a second health bar that you heal differently. So, again, why? You presented a part of a solution and you're surprised I view it in the context of existing systems? Why add the extra complexity of even more armor types? If anything, we need to reduce the complexity by reducing it to 'flesh', 'armor', and 'shield', then streamline the damage types with non-transitive rock-paper-scissors style effectiveness. Compress damage range and significantly reduce enemy health and armor scaling.

 

[(PSN)VagueWisdom]

15 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

For the umpteenth time, there are two modes of survivability. Burst, where you tank a ton of damage but have to hide to tecuperate, and sustained, where you're constantly receiving damage and healing while being shot. For players, currently shields cover the former and fail at it, and health+armor covers the latter.

23 hours ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

1. Both those factions do still have armor units, just not as many as the Grineer. The Corpus will still need an overall shield rework, & it wouldn't hurt the Infested to have a modest base health regen.

This shield rework includes warframes. A topic I've yet to post for inclusion in the table of contents within the OP.

15 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

And we'll have to face lvl100 enemies at some point. What then?

18 hours ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

Furthermore, we've yet to include enemy damage scaling as part of the solution, as well as the armor regeneration factor that I mentioned before, & perhaps even a baseline buff to the armor values. Because warframes are nanite constructs, it makes sense for the armored portion of the nanites to make an active effort to repair. Health doesn't regenerate as easily because fuel, lubricant, & other biologically important fluids leak, & the more virulent parts of the Infested that would have normally transferred to the warframes, allowing such health regeneration, were usually gutted from the Infested biology (exception Nidus).

This is not even to mention that the constant in the denominator of the DR formula for armor is being actively played with by the both of us for the purpose of fulfilling both of our sensibilities. I want more ways to destroy armor than what we have currently, & you want to stay survivable.

If we include enemy damage scaling, armor regen, & further changes to the armor DR constant, I believe there's an active solution to make both of our desires attainable.

I tried to compromise, & you completely skipped over that compromise.

15 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

The distinction is meaningless because "~lvl25-30" enemies still die from one shot whatever damage you shoot them with.

Yet, you pointed out something that would have been relevant for low to mid-level content, so I thought it proper to bring it up. Refer back to the compromise for potential solutions on that. Since this change is supposed to affect end-game more so than anything below it, it would have been disingenuous for me to ignore the ramifications that you brought up.

15 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

Because adding armor degradation, even with regen, means that you either inevitably drop to 0 armor with sustained damage, or it's basically a second health bar that you heal differently. So, again, why? You presented a part of a solution and you're surprised I view it in the context of existing systems? Why add the extra complexity of even more armor types? If anything, we need to reduce the complexity by reducing it to 'flesh', 'armor', and 'shield', then streamline the damage types with non-transitive rock-paper-scissors style effectiveness. Compress damage range and significantly reduce enemy health and armor scaling.

So you want a game that's challenging while still remaining simple? You're going to have to start laying out your own personal solution if you believe mine is too complex. As if the extra complexity of an idea, that's supposed to, again, affect end-game more than anything below it, won't provide a decent challenge to our end-game & vet players. Are you saying that my idea is complex to the point that we're playing chess instead of checkers, & that it would be too extraordinarily difficult in game play?

One other thing. If armor becomes degradable, how long would it have to last in order for you to be satisfied with your survivability? If you were dropped into a randomly composed mob of lvl 150-200 goons of any faction, how long would you want your armor, or life for that matter, to last after they broke through your energy shielding? This would be as your Oberon on renewal, or heck, even Inaros, & you'd have to be standing like a statue taking >all the punishment<.

Edited December 9, 2019 by (PS4)VagueWisdom

[GruntBlender]

29 minutes ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

If armor becomes degradable, how long would it have to last in order for you to be satisfied with your survivability?

Forever. Because you ignored the part where this would remove sustainable survivability and move it all into burst. This removes a large portion of playstyles from the game.

31 minutes ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

So you want a game that's challenging while still remaining simple?

Complicated and challenging aren't synonyms.

32 minutes ago, (PS4)VagueWisdom said:

You're going to have to start laying out your own personal solution if you believe mine is too complex.

I was working on one before deciding to take a break from the game. In short:

• Compress our damage range by reducing the numbers on most mods, leaving something like 5x difference between unmodded and modded at most.
• Drop the exponential enemy scaling so they have 10-20x eHP between level 1 and 100.
• Change warframe survivability mods and change base values to give them similar eHP as enemies around level 20 unmodded, 2-5x boost with mods, aided by various abilities and synergies. Improve shields too, and make it more of a choice between armored health and shields for survivability based on players' playstyle.
• Drop enemy damage scaling to have a 5-10x difference between level 1 and 100.

[TheFranss]

I've been wondering about the armor scaling myself as well. The thing is I don't see scaling changed as the only solution to this issue. Another good addition that comes to mind is certain level of armor differences between each part of a body.

Like looking at Grineer Lancer, You'd expect the most armored parts being upper torso, shoulders and the buldge behind the head. 

And another is corrosive damage and other means of reducing enemy armor - it should only affect said armor plates on the point of impact