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Please consider swapping Magnetic with Void damage bonusses and status effects


Jarriaga
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Magnetic damage is often avoided because it has no utility or purpose beyond fighting the Corpus considering neither Grineer (Outside special arena nodes) nor Infested have shields. It has a very high +75% damage modifier for attacking shields, and its status effect (Disrupt) further decreases enemy shields by 75%, which is an over-specialized overkill against the Corpus considering that:

1) There are 2 status effects in the game that bypass shields completely by damaging health directly (Slash and Gas). Why damage their Shields when I can damage their health?

2) Corpus don't have insane amount of shields even at level 200, which further makes that level of anti-shield damage overkill.

The over-specialization against the Corpus that Magnetic currently has would make sense if Slash and Gas didn't bypass shields, and if Shield levels were so absurdly high as to be equivalent to level 165 Bombards levels of damage absorption. That is not the case, making it a very inefficient damage type vs. what is available.

Void damage on the other hand -despite being very situational considering you first need to pop out your Operator in order to use it- has a rather useful status effect that happens to be underused because of the Void Damage requirement (Bullet Attractor). Additionally, Void shares a key similarity with "Magnetic" damage in function as it is the only damage type in the game that is effective against Sentient enemy shields.

So why not make Void damage the anti-shield damage type instead while increasing Magnetic utility by giving it the Bullet Attactor effect and its damage resistances?

By swapping what Magnetic and Void do, Void's anti-Sentient shield mechanics would make more sense without eating into what Magnetic does because Magnetic would then be doing something else as it would no longer be tied to shield damage (Which is very situational in nature). In order to balance the +75% shield damage bonus against Sentient bosses that swapped Void damage would have, this bonus can be reworked so it only applies to normal enemies. This way, the effective tide and feel of the battle against the Ropalolyst (For example) remains the same.

Magnetic on the other hand would get the benefit of Void's current damage bonuses (No longer reduced by Allow Armor) and on top of that it would get a status effect that can be used against the Grineer. Bullet Attactor could turn enemy fire on itself while also increasing your own accuracy on your weapon.

And it would still remain distinct from the Radiation status effect because:

1) It would not affect melee units in any way,

2) It could effectively work as an "accuracy buff" for your guns, which is something I don't think anything other than mods give in the game,

3) It would not disrupt enemy synergies like Ancient Healers because the enemies would still be fighting on the same side even though their bullets would be killing each other.

Edited by Jarriaga
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6 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

So if we walk through Grineer doorways, enemies will have super accuracy against us?

This is strictly for what we do. They don't have to have the same effect on us for the same reason enemies can shoot you in a melee-only sortie.

But yes, I'd be OK with that as well considering no Grineer weapon can cause Magnetic procs and you rushing through a door with a sensor is on you since it is easily avoided by shooting the sensor. Seems like an appropriate punishment for being careless.

Edited by Jarriaga
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I like part of this. On one hand, yeah, Magnetic should get Bullet Attractor and keep its damage bonus to shields, making it more attractive as a damage type overall. However I feel Void damage needs a sufficient status effect replacement and the Shield Debuff isn't that. A lot of Sentients do not have shields and the ones that do (the Amalgams) do not have the adaptation effect that makes Sentients harder to kill. Here's some of my ideas I've had for Void Damage.

1) No longer ineffective against Cloned Flesh, Machinery, and Fossilized. Make it a true neutral damage.

2) Status Effect should be something universal. Perhaps status effects will sap energy from enemies to our warframes (or operator!) as a small fraction of the damage dealt. This could also just be added to Magnetic's status effect to make it an attractive damage type without swapping it with Bullet Attractor.

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3 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

So if we walk through Grineer doorways, enemies will have super accuracy against us?

That seems fair honestly...

Though It's not just slash and gas procs that bypass shields. Toxin DAMAGE as in the raw damage ITSELF ignores shields AND it's proc does as well...So that's a total of THREE elements that say "haha, you don't exist" to shields.

IMO the problem is not the statuses themselves, it's shields. Shields by themselves should prevent *most* status effects...except gas.

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5 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

This is strictly for what we do. They don't have to have the same effect on us for the same reason enemies can shoot you in a melee-only sortie.

But yes, I'd be OK with that as well considering no Grineer weapon can cause Magnetic procs and you rushing through a door with a sensor is on you since it is easily avoided by shooting the sensor.

The melee-only Sorties are challenges for you, the player. This reasoning is nonsensical.

The point of things in the game with the same name and doing the same thing should be rather self-evident. I do Fire damage in X mission and it does the thing and now this new piece of content has enemies doing Fire damage, so I know what to expect.

This makes Corpus much more deadly for no apparent reason other than just because.

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13 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

The melee-only Sorties are challenges for you, the player. This reasoning is nonsensical.

It's a point of reference on how things don't have to be always symmetrical. Corrosive procs don't remove our armor for the entire duration of the mission.

13 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

The point of things in the game with the same name and doing the same thing should be rather self-evident. I do Fire damage in X mission and it does the thing and now this new piece of content has enemies doing Fire damage, so I know what to expect.

That doesn't have to change. Hence why I'm fine either or.

13 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

This makes Corpus much more deadly for no apparent reason other than just because.

How? Show me an example in which current Magnetic is more useful against the Corpus than either Slash or Gas. Why on earth would you want to damage their shields instead of their life?

Are you referring to Corpus weapons that deal Magnetic damage? I'm fine with Corpus working as glass cannons with high anti-Warframe abilities but dying almost instantly because of their low HP. But still, it doesn't have to be symmetrical. The current Magnetic effect on Warframes can remain as it is even if its effect on enemies is reworked considering Corrosive procs don't remove our armor permanently, so there is already status effect asymmetry in the game.

Edited by Jarriaga
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Just now, Jarriaga said:

Are you referring to Corpus weapons that deal Magnetic damage? I'm fine with Corpus working as glass cannons with high anti-Warframe abilities but dying almost instantly because of their low HP.

We have guns. Glass cannons only are a threat if they can fire. We, the players, are exceptionally good at making sure they don't just not fire, the factory the glass cannons are built in is nuked from orbit.

If this change came with a look at the entire damage system, ala Damage 3.0, sure. As a one off, just because people can't separate real magnetism from magic Magnetic damage in a game, no. There's infinite things higher on the list of priorities.

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2 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

There's infinite things higher on the list of priorities.

That's not for you to decide though. So please make your own threads about things that should be worked on prior to this instead of bombing every single feedback thread with "No, period" as you tend to do. Your infamy precedes you.

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1 hour ago, Teksorbkyva said:

I like part of this. On one hand, yeah, Magnetic should get Bullet Attractor and keep its damage bonus to shields, making it more attractive as a damage type overall. However I feel Void damage needs a sufficient status effect replacement and the Shield Debuff isn't that. A lot of Sentients do not have shields and the ones that do (the Amalgams) do not have the adaptation effect that makes Sentients harder to kill. Here's some of my ideas I've had for Void Damage.

1) No longer ineffective against Cloned Flesh, Machinery, and Fossilized. Make it a true neutral damage.

2) Status Effect should be something universal. Perhaps status effects will sap energy from enemies to our warframes (or operator!) as a small fraction of the damage dealt. This could also just be added to Magnetic's status effect to make it an attractive damage type without swapping it with Bullet Attractor.

I've always been disappointed that the void damage we do isn't nearly as scary as it's implied to be by the lore. I kind of feel like it's status should play off the whole "tearing reality apart" theme. Maybe have it randomly apply 2-3 different statuses at once for example. From the way it's described as being something you can't defend against just having it flat out ignore armor and shields would make sense, but that would probably be too powerful from a game play perspective. But 2-3 statuses, randomly selected? Here's some void space scum, hope you like being poisoned and on fire at the same time while your armor melts, etc.

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I like the idea.  The Corpus may use magnetic weapons but do not have high status weapons so the occasional mag proc on Warframe would be interesting. We would definately need to find cover!  

The void proc could be some type of time continuum warping effect (like the enlarged / shrunken body parts from the fun mods) with DOT effect like toxin or slash.  Some type of cc as well, like a slow effect. 

I like the idea and think it would make some status magnetic builds viable.  Not sure what would happen to a room full of magnetic proc enemies....

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Regarding Magnetic procs being extremely overpowered against players: there are multiple procs that have altered behaviours with players, ranging from Corrosive being time-limited to Electric and Heat having no CC. It's not impossible for new Magnetic procs to have a different behaviour, or even just keeping the energy drain in lieu of a bullet attractor.

Regarding Void procs: one potential is to have them scale an enemy's stats (damage, health, and speed) downward, as if they're decreasing in level.

Overall, though, I do think the damage system as a whole needs another look at. Some of the procs are a bit too niche—Magnetic is the posterboy, but even Corrosive is only effective because of the prevalence of armour—and others, like Puncture and Impact and probably Blast (the knockdown is a pain for shooting and its effective against pretty much nothing damage wise), just aren't that desired compared to other damage types. And the primary elements often seem like a pain in the arse to mod for, especially when dropping just one 60/60 mod in a status build can tank status chance.

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Magnetic is currently mostly useless as a damage type for players against NPC, but is a tremendous damage for NPCs against players. It's basically the death of any caster frame. So far it's mostly used in boss fights / spy to prevent player from using their frame power carelessly.

Magnetic effect on shields should be toned down (+50% to shields, +75% to proto shields), remove the shield debuff on proc', keep the warframe energy drain (or replace it with disabling power and preventing to cast during 4s I dunno), but make it also a "tool" against NPCs with "powers" (Eximus, Scrambus, Ancient, Raknoids, Liches...), and prevent them from using their powers during 4s.

This won't "break" boss fights, will add incentive to play magnetic as debuff, and will make player shields slightly less bad

Edited by MonsterOfMyOwn
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19 hours ago, peterc3 said:

So if we walk through Grineer doorways, enemies will have super accuracy against us?

I fought the Stalker Acolyte with a Mag Bubble once. Never has my Inaros died so fast than by my own weapons looping back into my own head... Yikes!

On topic:
Honestly, I don't think this would be enough to make Magnetic worth using. It's utterly useless against armour due to being heavily resisted and it's... Not actually all that good against Corpus, either. It's good against shields, sure, but most Corpus units are only 50% shield, with many having only 10%-20% of their health bar as shields. Magnetic is not good against Health or Robotic AND quite a few Corpus units sport armour of their own. Granted, they're armoured with Robotic health rather than Alloy/Ferrite (they shouldn't be armoured at all, but I digress) so anti-armour and anti-robotic weapons are generally more useful. Hell, I find Radiation to be better against the Coprus because it's only lightly resisted by only the weaker shields, decently effective against robotics and - best of all - also pretty damn good against the Grineer so I don't have to swap around.

The problem with Magnetic isn't its status effect. The problem is the game's damage system, combined with the Corpus factions' rainbow of health types. I'm of the opinion that the game's damage system can use a major pruning and a drastic reduction in damage types and status effects. Rather than trying to make 14-15 damage types and their associated status effects both unique and useful, I'd go with one Physical type, maybe four Elemental types and maybe one for Void, maybe not. "Keep it simple," because feature creep is just as damaging to a product's long-term viability as power creep. The current damage system is feature creep if ever I saw it.

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20 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Rather than trying to make 14-15 damage types and their associated status effects both unique and useful

I don't consider it problematic that some damage types are less useful; it puts the onus on players to pay attention to their builds and avoid the red herrings, rather than just dumping on elemental mods willy-nilly 'cos "hey, it's all extra damage".

The complexity of the damage system is interesting to me, and from my perspective the biggest issue is that the heavy Infested, which are unarmoured, happen to be weak to the damage types which, on a status weapon, are also broadly the best against factoins with armoured enemies (Grineer and Corrupted), meaning the only faction we really have to change our damage types for is Corpus.

The recent armour-halving change to Heat status only reinforces that situation, as Heat is buffed against the light Infested and (unlike Gas damage) is not affected by the presence of Toxic Ancients.

Whether the information needed to properly organise your damage types is sufficiently accessible to the player in-game is a different question.

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5 minutes ago, OmegaVoid said:

I don't consider it problematic that some damage types are less useful; it puts the onus on players to pay attention to their builds and avoid the red herrings, rather than just dumping on elemental mods willy-nilly 'cos "hey, it's all extra damage".

That's not good system design, though. At best this is a sucker trap which exists solely to mislead newer players and give them a worse impression of what the game actually is. It's what it did to me, because I tried using Magnetic vs. the Grineer early on since those were the only elemental damage mods I had. At worst, it's an optimisation problem with an obvious analytical solution. "Use X damage against Y enemy, or use U damage against V and W enemies." A gear check doesn't make for a compelling build system, because there's nothing to reason out or figure out. You go to the Wiki, you track the most optimal solution that someone's already figured out and you go with that. There's already next to no gameplay attached to damage types since they all play broadly the same, but now there's also no meta-game to them either, since the solutions to damage type problems are universally applicable.

The only way having 15 damage types could be in any way useful is if their utility were broadly comparable such that "best" damage type came down to personal preference. Think the distinction between accuracy and recoil. Some people prefer pinpoint accuracy with heavy weapons, some prefer volume of fire from lighter weapons and for the most part this works out to the same general efficiency. However, that's because different people are adept to different type of shooting in video games and need to minimise their exposure to other types. Since there's no gameplay related to damage types, its only significance is in meta-game build creation... Except the solutions there have already been found so the effect might as well not be there.

Throwing more options onto a system doesn't add more complexity to it. More often than not, it adds redundancy and leaves the majority of options non-viable. I'd personally rather have two broadly equivalent options to choose from, than have 10 options where one is the obvious answer after a token bit of research. Warframe already leans too heavily on iys build meta-game to the detriment of the actual moment-to-moment combat experience as it is. That's why most people use Gas and Corrosive.

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21 hours ago, RedDirtTrooper said:

I've always been disappointed that the void damage we do isn't nearly as scary as it's implied to be by the lore.

I know of nothing in the lore which implies Void energy to be more inherently damaging than any other energy type.

As an analogy, IRL a laser is simply light, with the waves synchronised to be coherent. A low-powered laser might simply produce a visible dot on your chest; a high-powered laser could burn a hole right through you. It's simply a matter of magnitude and efficiency of transferal to the target. Light is not inherenty dangerous.

There are examples in the lore of Void energy being associated with completely innocuous things, e.g. the memory imprints in the Hidden Messages quest.

21 hours ago, RedDirtTrooper said:

From the way it's described as being something you can't defend against

To prevent them from returning to the Origin System, the Sentients were specifically engineered to be damaged by exposure to Void energy, even at the low concentrations experienced during travel through the Void (functionally, hyperspace). That's the only reason it removes their damage adaptations.

Edited by OmegaVoid
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2 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I tried using Magnetic vs. the Grineer early on since those were the only elemental damage mods I had.

I had a similar-but-different experience with my first attempt to upgrade from the mk-1 Braton, the Boltor.

Much more effective kill-time against the Grineer on Earth. Great! A more powerful weapon! But when I took it to Venus, it was if anything worse against the Corpus.

Googling to understand how this could be led me to learning about the relative effectiveness of different damage types vs different targets, and by thereby to selecting different weapons for different fights. It felt good to learn something and apply the knowledge to my observable advantage.

The knock-on of learning this while IPS was still dominant in my damage pool was that I took care to understand the elemental damage types also.

New player experience would certainly benefit from something like a brief in-game lecture early on (perhaps from Teshin) drawing the player's attention to the matter, and pointing to the Codex as a source for more detailed info. (At that point any player with half a brain could skip the Codex-scanning and go straight to Google for info, if they so chose.) 

2 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Since there's no gameplay related to damage types, its only significance is in meta-game build creation

That's only true if you don't consider the related status effects, though.

Some players hate Impact procs because it makes landing headshots more difficult. I've always considered the knockback helpful in minimising return fire.

Similarly, Rad-proccing enemies for cc instead of just mowing them down, or using Blast AoE for hilarious ragdolling is a viable and fun alternative to simply minimsing TtK for a lot of mission types.

2 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

10 options where one is the obvious answer after a token bit of research.

And then there's the edge cases where the particular stats of a weapon mean the rule-of-thumb, while still perfectly viable, is less effective than an alternative.

Case in point: I tested a few of my preferred weapons in the Simulacrum against lvl.100 Grineer Heavy Gunners and Bombards, to fine-tune my builds. Corrosive beat Viral in most cases, even when a lot of Bleed was procced.

But with a Vigilante Armaments + Hunter Munitions build (the most effective non-conditional mods I could slot), the Quartakk killed HGs just as fast with Viral as Corrosive. But while the Bombards took noticably longer than HGs with Corrosive, Viral killed 'em almost as fast as the HGs.

It felt good to have increased the effectiveness of one of my weapons-of-choice through investigation. That couldn't have happened with a minimalist damage system.

Edited by OmegaVoid
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1 hour ago, OmegaVoid said:

That's only true if you don't consider the related status effects, though. Some players hate Impact procs because it makes landing headshots more difficult. I've always considered the knockback helpful in minimising return fire. Similarly, Rad-proccing enemies for cc instead of just mowing them down, or using Blast AoE for hilarious ragdolling is a viable and fun alternative to simply minimsing TtK for a lot of mission types.

Fair enough, I shouldn't have said "no gameplay." However, I maintain that the actual gameplay difference is academic in most situations. I can maybe make an exception for Gas and to a lesser extent Electricity since they offer AoE damage to otherwise single-target weapons, but even then we have multiple damage types which offer this when one would have sufficed. For most other effects - including Radiation - the effect is predominantly on the stats-side. Yes, radiation does cause enemies to shoot at each other, though the damage they do isn't significant and the effect is closer to Cold's slow and Electric's taser shock. Again - multiple theoretically different but largely redundant means of applying status effect in order to reduce incoming damage.

I'll agree that there is SOME gameplay complexity in status effects, but I'd argue there's enough of it to justify four, maybe five damage types. I'd personally go with a single Physical damage type, one Elemental damage type for AoE damage, one for control, one for magnetise and one for something else - perhaps a combined debuff of some sort. More than that is just redundant since you're repeating the same mechanics in a different colour with minor tweaks, but their effect in moment-to-moment gameplay is functionally identical. And yes, ragdolls can be fun, but are unfortunately disruptive in almost every MMO I've seen them in. Eventually, people get tired of the knockback and start looking for ways to root the enemies, pull them together or immunise them in some way to keep them from scattering. As funny as knockback is, it's detrimental to AoE damage, which ultimately makes it a double-edged sword. You can still have it, but I'd put it per-gun, rather than across an entire damage type.

 

1 hour ago, OmegaVoid said:

And then there's the edge cases where the particular stats of a weapon mean the rule-of-thumb, while still perfectly viable, is less effective than an alternative.

Right, but by your own admission these are edge cases, and I'd argue of interest to a small section of the playerbase. The general rule of thumb will work for most people in most content most of the time, which renders any potential edge case complexity meaningless. Yes, it's there for enthusiasts, but I'd argue that exception alone simply isn't worth the maintenance cost of a large, complex, interconnected system comprised of redundant subsystems. That's a lot of work for the development team, a lot of moving parts for something to go wrong balance wise, and all of it for highly situational, infrequent benefit.

There's also the issue of needless complexity. The more complex a game's systems appear, the less likely people are to try and understand them and the more likely they are to just stick to whatever rules of thumb they're aware of. There will always be code divers and enthusiasts (those of us with mathematics degrees) pushing to understand the fundamental statistical relationship behind the game's core implementations, but the majority of the community will just grab the cliff notes of what's being said and just apply it as-is. For instance - most people know that when it comes to shotguns, it's 100% Status or GTFO, in terms of status builds. How many people do you think know why, or care about the string of design decisions which led to that? Judging by the next to no traffic I got when I made a thread on the subject - not very many.

Point being, needless complexity costs more than it's worth and can potentially turn off players on a desire to understand or experiment entirely. A simple system which can be explained briefly and boiled down to a few general rules (even if not exhaustive) and which crucially can be figured out through basic trial and error rather than research tends to work better in the long run, at least in my personal experience.

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