I prefer the Railjack damage system

[Steel_Rook]

One of the things DE said about Railjack back in the day was that they would use that "mode" to field-test a new take on the game's Damage system. The potential (at least as I read it) was that if this new damage system works out, we could see it retrofitted back into ground combat, replacing the existing damage system. Now that the system has been out for a while and we've had a chance to play around with it... I would honestly be pretty OK with that. There may be issues with the new system I'm not aware of, but at first glance it seems just... Better. Let me explain.

First, we know that Railjack weapons have 7 possible damage types of their own: Particle, Ballistic, Plasma, Incendiary, Ionic, Chem, Frost. I know it gets more complex when you mix in Archguns using traditional damage types, but I'm focusing strictly on Railjack weapons vs. Railjack enemies here. As far as I'm aware, all damage types deal the same amount of damage to all enemy health types. Quite literally the only difference between damage types is their associated Status Effect. Three of the status effects focus around adding DPS - Particle, Plasma and Incendiary adding resistance debuff, armour/shield debuff and DOT, respectively. The other four damage types focus around support and control - Ballistic, Ionic, Chem, Frost adding damage/accuracy debuff, hold, confuse, slow respectively. Honestly, I really like this design, because it addresses two of my main issues with the current damage system

 

Issues with the current damage system

Currently, FAR too much emphasis is placed on picking one specific damage type per faction because that damage type just happens to deal 75% more damage against that faction... Or worse, ALSO reduce their damage resistance by 75% because armour. Especially for weapons with low status, this just means that my damage type is chosen for me by a simple optimisation problem. I'm fighting Grineer, what do I bring with low status. Well, either Radiation or Viral. Because I can freely choose my weapon's damage types, this standardises builds extremely. Because damage type matters so much for how much damage I do, my status effect of choice ends up being "whatever's attached to that damage type." I'd like to use the Heat status effect, but I'm already taking Radiation against the Grineer, so I guess I'll just have to use the Radiation proc. Or, if this is a status-heavy weapon, I'm probably bringing Corrosive instead.

The other issue I have with the current damage system is that there are just too many damage types. We've had many, many discussion about why the Impact and Puncture status effects are garbage, how to make Magnetic more useful, how you're forced into non-compound damage types if you want the damaging status effects and so on. The simple fact of the matter is that we're sitting on 3 + 4 + 12 + 2 = 21 damage types, including Void and True. That's a LOT of damage types - too many for each to have its own unique status effect with its own unique role. It ensures that there's both a lot of overlap and a lot of fairly useless or ignored damage types. And that's before you consider how often damage type is determined by enemy damage vulnerability.

 

How the Railjack damage system solves those

For all of the issues I outlined above, Railjack very straightforward solutions not too dissimilar from things myself and others have suggested in the past. There seems to be no more per-type resistances or weaknesses for damage types. All enemies take the same damage from all damage types. This frees players up to pick their weapons based on intrinsic performance stats rather than based on inherent damage distribution. All weapons are useful against all enemies, as it should be. Additionally, this frees up players to pick the precise status effect they feel would be useful to them without having to worry about losing on a potential damage bonus. At the end of the day, "more damage" is always going to trump everything else in Warframe, so removing that consideration opens up status effect choice considerably.

Finally, there are just fewer damage types - only 7. Because of this, there is simply less redundancy, even if there's still SOME - Ionic and Forst seem to largely overlap, in practice if not in theory. Obviously, we might gain a few more damage types as (well, if) we migrate this system to ground combat. We'll probably want a Void damage type... Although I'm not sure about even that. DE seem to have tried to move away from this with Fortuna Amp arcanes which turn Void damage into an element, and I suspect our Operators might simply move all the way to elemental damage either depending on the Amp, the School or both. We can keep our bonus damage against Sentients without having to use a dedicated damage mode for them the same way the Paracesis does it with physical damage. And you know what else? We can also ditch "true" damage in that case, as well. True only exists to be the one damage type against which no health type has inherent resistance or weakness. Well, that describes ALL of the damage types in Railjack, so we don't need another one.

 

What this means for the future

I firmly believe that the Railjack damage system or some version of it SHOULD be retrofitted over the existing damage system. If that happens, it will mean that we'll select our weapons and our builds based on their inherent performance characteristics, rather than JUST building for specific damage types. We'll be able to pick weapons based on their accuracy, how easy they are to handle, maybe magazine size and such, not based on how much Slash damage the weapon has or how much of its damage is native elemental. Yes, that does mean that Slash cheesing will likely go away since Incendiary is the only damage type which can do DOT and that DOT will itself likely be resisted by armour (because no True would damage exists). Yes, that does mean that Finishers will be less stupidly overpowered against armoured enemies. But it also means that you CAN use the weapons you like even if they don't have the "correct" damage distribution against a particular faction. No longer will new players feel oppressed because they only have access to the mods necessary to make Magnetic damage because that sucks against Grineer, for example.

There will always be statistically optimal solutions and statistically best guns - there's no going around that. My experience with Railjack, however, has shown me that when you remove the damage difference, I'm still more than willing to pick guns based on behaviour than based on stats. Of all the Railjack turrets I've used, I still like the Carcinox the best - not because it deals the most damage or because Grineer are weak to it and not even because it does a Rad-style confuse... But because it shoots quickly, it has fast-travelling projectiles and it just "feels good" to use in ways that Apoc just doesn't.

I find the new damage system incredibly liberating, and sincerely hope we see it migrated over the rest of the game.

[Uhkretor]

31 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

We've had many, many discussion about why the Impact and Puncture status effects are garbage, how to make Magnetic more useful, how you're forced into non-compound damage types if you want the damaging status effects and so on.

I've said it before the only time I mentioned it on a past topic, but I'll leave it here in case DE actually sees it.

 

... If the different statuses did what they're supposed to do in the first place, most of those different physical/elemental effects that are technically meaningless would be used more frequently...

 

Here's an example... Lets pick up on Puncture type, for example... In what world does Puncture reduce incoming damage? That's not what Puncture is supposed to do. Puncture is supposed to deal double damage based on the target's vulnerability/resistance when it procs, not to reduce incoming damage. Seriously, its called "Puncture" for a reason.

There are more examples to consider, but I think Puncture is the most serious example to consider simply because its the one that makes the least sense of all...

...Now, I can see the different physical damage types being fused into "Ballistic", for example, on firearms... It makes more sense, on that weaponry type, than 3 distinct physical damage types. However, such a fusion doesn't make sense on weapons like Bows.

[Steel_Rook]

16 minutes ago, Uhkretor said:

Here's an example... Lets pick up on Puncture type, for example... In what world does Puncture reduce incoming damage? That's not what Puncture is supposed to do. Puncture is supposed to deal double damage based on the target's vulnerability/resistance when it procs, not to reduce incoming damage. Seriously, its called "Puncture" for a reason.

I'm not sure where you're getting this from. Why do you assert that Puncture is "supposed" to deal double damage? I haven't been with Warframe since the start, but I'm going off of what's true in the here and now. And again, my point wasn't that some status effects are terrible - obviously some are, but this isn't the main thrust of my argument. Rather, I argue that there are far too many damage types for all of their status effects to be even roughly comparable without just being redundant with each other. Not without massively overcomplicating the back-end mechanics to a point that's well beyond what an arcadey shooter like Warframe calls for.

But even if I were to agree that all status effects could in some way be made viable, you're still left with a simple issue - our choice of damage type is dictated far more so by the resistances/vulnerabilities of enemy health types than by the actual stats effect. Let's take Electricity, for instance. I'd love to use Electricity against the Grineer for its chain-hold, but Alloy Armour has 50% resistance to it, meaning I'm shooting at 50% damage against 150% enemy armour. No amount of control is worth this. Railjack removes this entirely. Railjack uses existing Machinery/Ferrite/Alloy health types, but they have no inherent resistances or weaknesses against any of the actual Railjack-specific damage types. What this means is you can pick your damage types based on the status effect you're after because they all do the same damage.

 

19 minutes ago, Uhkretor said:

...Now, I can see the different physical damage types being fused into "Ballistic", for example, on firearms... It makes more sense, on that weaponry type, than 3 distinct physical damage types. However, such a fusion doesn't make sense on weapons like Bows.

Why, though? For one thing, Railjack guns make absolutely no distinction between "physical" and "elemental" damage, and this is something I tend to agree with. I don't know why RPGs have historically tried to push this two-tier system of damage types, where physical damage is "lesser" and more resisted while elemental damage is "greater" and less resisted. Maybe it dates back to D&D stuff where you had just weapons, and then "magical" weapons, but it really should not apply to a sci-fi setting. I see no reason why more weapons can't just do elemental damage as their base, such as the Ignis and the Amprex. They ought to be the rule, rather than the exception. I further don't see the point of breaking physical damage into individual parts. That might make sense for a realistic games where most damage is physical, such swords are good at cutting zombies, maces are good at clubbing skeletons and spears are good at penetrating plate armour, but again - Warframe is science fiction fantasy. Realistically, why do we need more than one physical damage type? You can always attach nanomachines or phaser burn or energy damage to any projectile weapon.

For another thing, Railjack makes no distinction between health types at all. All Particle weapons are equally powerful against lightly-armoured fighters, larger corvette minelayers, larger still crew ship frigates and everything in-between. There is, in effect, no "damage type." All weapons deal the same type of damage, which is "just damage." The only difference comes from their status effects. Yes, that does mean that a Space Sword, a Space Mace and a Space Spear would be just as good against armour as each other, and just as good against unarmoured flesh, too, but that's kind of the point. I don't feel Warframe really benefits from that kind of complexity. All Grineer have armour. Whatever the best anti-armour damage type is, that's what you take. If there are two of them, you take both, if need be on two separate weapons. If there's an obviously correct solution, that complexity is wasted.

But to go back to your original point - why would it not make sense for a bow to do "just physical damage?" Realistically speaking, what would be lost in doing so?

[peterc3]

38 minutes ago, Uhkretor said:

what they're supposed to do in the first place

Based on what, your understanding of the word puncture?

[Uhkretor]

35 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Based on what, your understanding of the word puncture?

Nope, based on what makes sense.

44 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Why do you assert that Puncture is "supposed" to deal double damage?

1 hour ago, Uhkretor said:

based on the target's vulnerability/resistance when it procs

I thought the following condition was self-explanatory.

 

This isn't a discussion topic. Its a Feedback topic. I'm adding my feedback, based on what makes sense. You may, or may not, agree to it but that's worth just the same to me. If ground damage types are going to be changed later on based on Railjack's damage model, then I want them to make sense. As it currently stands, 70% of the ground damage types don't make sense. They exist, they have their individual effects, but they don't make sense due to those individual effects.

[Steel_Rook]

36 minutes ago, Uhkretor said:

As it currently stands, 70% of the ground damage types don't make sense. They exist, they have their individual effects, but they don't make sense due to those individual effects.

I'd argue that very little in Warframe "makes sense," and that's a deliberate design choice. From visuals to mechanics to more, DE often err on the side of what looks cool, what saves them time and what works. In this regard, I'd argue that it's more important for the damage system to "work" from a gameplay perspective, even if some aspects of it don't necessarily make sense thematically. That's part of why Warframe tends to select gobbledygook words for simple concepts. If that means calling the damage systems something like "telesthetic," "diamgantic," "peltier," etc., then I'm happy to go that route as long as what we get is a better-functioning damage system - which I feel the Railjack system is.

Simply put, I don't think the issues of the current damage system are solvable by tweaking existing status effects. We have too many damage types and too much of the damage type choice decision comes down to damage resistances and vulnerabilities. Which it does lead to less thematic depth, I feel that abolishing all resistances and vulnerabilities wholesale creates a simpler, more robust damage system which should make more weapons viable across more situations and place less of a restriction on weapon builds themselves. While we lack the tools to test the latter due to Railjack Armaments lacking any inherent modding potential of their own, I've already tested the former. Because all guns are equally good against all types of armour, I've peen picking my Turrets based on their behaviour.

My pilot gun is an Apoc because it's one of the hardest-hitting guns available. It's hard to hit things with, but the pilot has control of the ship and so the ability to force enemy fighters into dead-on attack vectors, thus mitigating projectile travel time. Side gunners don't have this luxury, however, and often need to shoot at fighters on orthogonal attack vectors. For my side guns, I've gone with a Carcinox set, because their higher projectile speed and higher rate of fire make it easier to actually HIT fast-moving targets. I initially field-tested the Pulsar. That worked well as it was instant-hit, but the weapon's overall DPS was too low. I decided to trade a bit of precision for my side gunners in return for a bit more damage. It didn't matter that the Apoc deals Particle and Plasma, the Pulsar deals Plasma and Ionic or that the Carcinox deals Plasma and Chem. All of those damage types hit equally as hard against all targets, so only the intrinsic quality of the guns mattered.

The prospect of having the same system apply to ground combat excites me. It means I can move away from using Corrosive/Radiation on all my guns just because a majority of enemies seem to be weak to those. For critguns, I could quite literally pick "whatever" and for status guns I would have to weigh the pros and cons of individual status effects. Not having to consider damage opens up a lot of additional options.

[Awazx]

Completely according to OP, this would be a great improvement to the complex and unoptimum current damage system for ground combat.

[Ogundiety]

Point of clarification, currently archguns are using the same damage system ( impact becomes plasma, combined types are separated out, etc) while in rj missions and flying around in archwing.  This is trivial to test by playing with archguns mods.

[DrakeWurrum]

I don't completely hate the current damage system (so long as they address the usefulness of certain damage types, and I've made suggestions on this matter before that basically just get ignored).

However, I like the aesthetic of the Railjack damage system. Ionic, Incindiary, Chem, and Frost sounds more "sci-fi" than Electric, Heat, Toxin, and Cold.

It would be less straight-forward, though, and sometimes when it comes to game mechanics blunt is best. So that's a trade-off.

Edited December 22, 2019 by DrakeWurrum

[OvisCaedo]

The current space damage/status system has a worse problem of incentivizing one damage type over others than even the main game does. Only one of the statuses gives an exponential-with-itself damage multiplier per proc. Of course, this was PROBABLY just a horrible programming oversight rather than the intended design choice for what particle status is supposed to do.

This is also only kind of a moot point; it feels like your larger point overall is that you think damage types having innate multipliers may as well go away and leave only status effects as the difference between them? I don't actually think that necessarily solves much of anything, balance-wise, unless they actually manage to succeed on making all status procs balanced against each other. Which, even with only seven statuses, they already seem to have failed at pretty badly! Though part of that is because of archwing guns being forcibly rolled into it; none of the few railjack weapons seem to actually be much good at actually taking advantage of stacking statuses or the massive imbalance between them. In fact, they might truly be on even ground to simply their intrinsic handling as you seem to like, then, since their statuses are largely irrelevant too.

But I think that's only a paradigm that works well FOR a very limited range of arsenal. There's, what, four railjack guns? Five? There is plenty of room there to just make them all completely functionally different. I don't think that can be feasibly backported to the rest of the game, there are just way too many weapons, and many of them are already extremely similar to each other in function and handling. Diminishing the meaning of damage types, though they're not well balanced now to begin with, just means making these weapons even more identical to each other.

Edited December 22, 2019 by OvisCaedo

[Test-995]

Definitely not perfect though, damage buff for plasma stacks infinitely so it's outperforming literally every other element.

[ShortCat]

While I absolutely agree on the bloated amount of damage types, I cannot agree with the following argument...

On 2019-12-18 at 6:30 PM, Steel_Rook said:

[...]FAR too much emphasis is placed on picking one specific damage type per faction[...]

In my opinion, this emphasis is not explored enough in the first place, or does not work at all, since some status procs work universally and simultaneously offer the best solution across all factions. Personally, I find the idea of highly specialized or "jack of all trades" builds more compelling, especially since our loadout consists of 3 weapons + a Frame to complemet each other. Furthermore, I see some issues with universally equal damage:

• Status chance becomes even more important
• There will be a huge problem with weapon variety, if damage type composition loses its meaning. It may work for RJ weapons, because there are only a few of weapons atm; however, how do you diffirentiate hundreds of already existing weapons, if only suplemental stats are left to segregate them?

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, ShortCat said:

Status chance becomes even more important

I'd argue that's a good thing. Mind you, I'd personally like to scrap that entire mechanic and replace it with "status magnitude" such that weapons always proc status just with different strengths, but eh. I'm fine with Warframe putting a greater emphasis on status effect over specific damage type.

 

1 hour ago, ShortCat said:

There will be a huge problem with weapon variety, if damage type composition loses its meaning. It may work for RJ weapons, because there are only a few of weapons atm; however, how do you diffirentiate hundreds of already existing weapons, if only suplemental stats are left to segregate them?

I don't really see how that's an issue which doesn't already exist, though. Elemental damage constitutes the majority of a weapon's DPS anyway, and that you can freely choose with nearly no restrictions. In fact, the only restriction right now is which Primed elemental damage mod exists for which weapon type. The actual IPS doesn't really matter. I mean, MAYBE it does if you want to stack true damage DOT via Slash procs, but that's the other thing - Slash procs also don't exist in the Railjack damage system. All damage is resisted by armour and there's only one DOT type as it is - Incendiary. Personally, I would be perfectly happy to see loopholes like Slash DOT disappear. Mind you, that also means loopholes like Finisher True damage would disappear too, but that's a price I'm willing to pay.

But to address your question: You differentiate weapons based on their gunplay (accuracy, stability, magazine size, reload speed, rate of fire), their unique mechanics (inverse aim spread, alternate fire modes, other gimmicks) and their overall DPS. To be perfectly honest, a majority of weapons in Warframe are all but entirely redundant with each other in practice as it is. Most of them take the same builds, deal the same damage types as determined by elemental damage mods and feel the same to shoot. The only real difference is weapon class, crit vs. status and the weapon's major "archetype."

To make a long story short - I feel the current ground damage system is far more complicated than it really needs to be, leading to variety on paper which never seems to manifest in practice, both because so much of it is redundant and because so many of our builds end up using the same damage types. Railjack's combat system may be simpler, but at least the damage type consideration is based entirely on what status effect you want. Personally, I feel that makes for more player choice over picking damage type based on resistances first, and "whatever status effect is attached to it" second. DPS will always trump everything else, so decoupling Status Effects from it is a good move in my book.

[Lost_Cartographer]

I'm with the OP on this one.  All of my builds regarding Grineer are going to have corrosive, viral, or radiation.  By default.  All of my builds regarding Corpus or Infested are going to have corrosive, viral, or radiation because I can't be bothered to swap for factions that take everything at full damage anyway.  Don't need to reduce and heavily damage shields with magnetic damage, I'll plow through them fast enough as is.  So just end the whole "weakness/strength" dynamic and just let me focus on which horrible type of status I want to inflict upon my enemies.

RJ collapsed the major effects down into as few different elements as they reasonably could, with the "physical" damage types taking up the brunt of the desirable effects, and elements feeling largely supplementary.  You're modding in hellfire for the damage first, the DoT (and now also currently(?) 50% armor reduction) are a secondary consideration.

And while most assaults rifles do feel samey (and would probably end up being "ballistic") the Quellor suggests they're starting to introduce weapons that could realistically adopt the particle or plasma status type as it notably fires beams, not bullets.

Edited December 22, 2019 by Lost_Cartographer

[ShortCat]

20 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'm fine with Warframe putting a greater emphasis on status effect over specific damage type.

This would be horrible, as any weapon with low status chance would perform exactly the same with any damage type. Another example would be: 2 weapons with identical stats as well as high status, but one of those deals fire damage focused on damage, while the other deals cold and is focused on support/CC. Sounds interesting...until you put a cold mod on the heat weapon; or heat mod on the cold weapon.
This system could only work with a small arsenal and inability to freely add addition elements to weapons. Otherwise, it will end in the same situation, where it is most advantageous to go for a weapon with highest DPS and load it with best elements.

23 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

The actual IPS doesn't really matter.

Well yes, I already stated that the current system is not working properly, mainly due to too many damage types and an imbalance within the system. It should be a red flag, when players strive to remove certain elements from a weapon. Another problem is the huge buff elemental mods provide in addition to greater faction bonuses.

16 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

You differentiate weapons based on their gunplay (accuracy, stability, magazine size, reload speed, rate of fire), their unique mechanics (inverse aim spread, alternate fire modes, other gimmicks) and their overall DPS. To be perfectly honest, a majority of weapons in Warframe are all but entirely redundant with each other in practice as it is. Most of them take the same builds, deal the same damage types as determined by elemental damage mods and feel the same to shoot. The only real difference is weapon class, crit vs. status and the weapon's major "archetype."

With this statement you indirectly admited, that discussed damage system in unable to provide any variety on its own. The fact, that weapons should differ based on gunplay is a feature integral to weapons themselves and is initially uncoupled from any damage system. Afterwards, damage types can function as a second layer and can ease the creation of weapons for different tasks, especially in Warframe with its hundreds of weapons.

[Steel_Rook]

12 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

With this statement you indirectly admited, that discussed damage system in unable to provide any variety on its own. The fact, that weapons should differ based on gunplay is a feature integral to weapons themselves and is initially uncoupled from any damage system. Afterwards, damage types can function as a second layer and can ease the creation of weapons for different tasks, especially in Warframe with its hundreds of weapons.

I agree. The Railjack damage system provides no variety of its own, and that's the primary reason I prefer it. I've personally never seen the point of systems like what Warframe's ground combat uses, where you have dozens of damage types and dozens of different enemies either resistant or vulnerable to them. On paper that adds "more variety." In practice, it adds research, busywork and ultimately little variety because your damage type choices are driven entirely by the solution of an optimisation problem: "What damage works best against most common enemies." You can still have specialist weapons based on their overt design, but doing this through damage types just funnels players into copycat builds.

With Railjack, DE seem to have realised this and axed that entire aspect altogether. I don't want to resort to the "other games are doing it," but in this case my experience with games which have all but entirely eschewed damage types shows me that you can still have weapon variety without the busywork. Payday 2 had one damage type for the longest time - bullets. They added explosives and fire, but very few weapons actually use those. Destiny 2 has three elemental damage types, but those only come into play against shielded enemies, which are not common. The Surge used to have a whole "Impact/Slash/Pierce/Elemental" system for weapon damage, but weapons in The Surge 2 just deal "damage" with elements relegated to unique status effect procs. While damage resistance/vulnerability per damage type isn't entirely going away, the dozens upon dozens of damage types that the MMOs of old used to have are on the decline, as is their relevance to builds. Having played with systems which largely de-emphasise this aspect of their RPG elements, I can't say I've missed it to any substantial degree.

Multiple status effect types is fine, as long as each offers distinct gameplay mechanics. Multiple damage types with multiple resistances and vulnerabilities, on the other hand, only offers tweaks to numbers on paper and almost always breaks down along simple optimisation problems. I don't use Viral on all my rifles because I like the Viral proc. I use it because my only Primed elemental damage mod for Rifles is for Cold and that's the only combo damage mod I can make with it that Grineer are weak to. That's not variety if mechanics determine my decision for me, and if that decision then retroactively applies to ALL of my weapons of that class. At that point, damage types might as well mean nothing and save me the bother - which is where Railjack sits.

[Vahenir]

If we could properly build it for status the apoc would be king. It is after all the one that basically has the equivalent of corrosive and viral procs. But since its projectiles are slow and its status chance is crap (max 14%) its not really worth it.

Its why archguns like the cyngas and pheadra even work as they can be built for status and will utterly shred enemy armor to the point where they can basically reduce armor to the level of wet tissue paper on pretty much any enemy. So if they were to just copy the damage system over, it would be exactly like we have now, but probably even more limited. Everything would want to run with plasma and/or particle damage, high status and high crit if possible.All the other damage types are practically irrelevant because their procs are generally useless in comparison. In railjack frost damage can be handy because the enemies move fast, but in the rest of the game that isn't really the case.

So just copying the system wouldn't do much at all for build diversity, it would just replace the current meta of corrosive/viral with whatever replaces those status effects. While also replacing every other damage type at the same time.