Self-stagger unfair mechanic.

[Scar.brother.help.me]

Self-stagger instead of a self-damage is a good change. But..

Though it is unfair from weapon to weapon. In case of self damage it was a one-shot suicide for powerful weps and possible to ignore in some cases. 

I wish self-stagger/knockdown was somehow better calculated. My main point here is a total damage of the explosion virtually taken by the player to be converted into a stagger strength. In that case Kuva Bramma with critting explosions should stagger much more than any other explosive weapon that doesn't deal as much damage like non-critting Ogris. Though it will be fair if I use Adarza/Harrow/Avenger to boost crit chance, apply crit damage to it and be launced into space by some Ogris crits.

This kind of system should take into account this fall off mechanic as well.

 

And cautious shot could be inside that formula to lower the virtual self damage, lower the knock back effect and be useful.

 

And the lowest stagger effect shouldn't do any interruptions, just a push back like a strong wind, may be lose some momentum, not more.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Scar.brother.help.me

[Althaline]

4 hours ago, Scar.brother.help.me said:

And the lowest stagger effect shouldn't do any interruptions, just a push back like a strong wind, may be lose some momentum, not more.

This is the most important part of this feedback. That tiny twitch is enough to half my Operator's DPS.

[Anthraxicus]

Self stagger was a good idea originally, but then, DE decided to #*!% it up and add stagger to weapons that didn't have self damage to begin with. Cyanex is a nightmare to use now. Staticor is suffering the same problem. 

It is dumb decisions like this that make people dislike certain changes that had been asked by many before

[LascarCapable]

Thread cleaned from unconstructive posts.

If some of you may wonder why their post was deleted, it was very likely because it was directly quoting a post I had to remove, hence the massive amount of deletions in that thread. Sorry for that.

[(NSW)Greybones]

 

8 minutes ago, LascarCapable said:

Thread cleaned from unconstructive posts.

If some of you may wonder why their post was deleted, it was very likely because it was directly quoting a post I had to remove, hence the massive amount of deletions in that thread. Sorry for that.

No worries. Thanks for the cleanup

Edited March 18, 2020 by (NSW)Greybones

[(NSW)Greybones]

54 minutes ago, Anthraxicus said:

Self stagger was a good idea originally, but then, DE decided to #*!% it up and add stagger to weapons that didn't have self damage to begin with. Cyanex is a nightmare to use now. Staticor is suffering the same problem. 

I’ve heard that Staticor’s self-stagger is a problem.

I haven’t used the weapon before (now I really want to), but it looks like it’s always had explosions? I’m surprised to hear that it didn’t self-damage, which is why I’m surprised to hear that the self-stagger is a problem. Is there something else going on?

[Teridax68]

To reiterate, since apparently the baby was thrown out with the bathwater:

I think it may be more difficult in practice than in theory to scale self-staggers to the damage dealt by explosive weapons, because damage is highly variable, and at constant risk of creeping up. If there were some solid benchmark of damage to work with, it would be a different matter, but we've never really had that. Iirc stagger intensity is also already affected by falloff, even though its minimum effect is still a full interrupt. In this respect, I can agree with the OP that self-staggering could be diminished even further to have a smaller lockout period, or none at all. Personally, though, I still dislike the idea of a punishment system given how inconsistent they still are (Eidolon hunting is painful now that the combination of short range and self-stagger on some amp attacks essentially force Operators to constantly stagger themselves in combat): if there is truly a need to balance explosives, it may be better to remove self-staggers entirely (and damage falloff too while we're at it, since those weapons are meant to be good against crowds), and instead balance them around slow rates of attack.

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

Overall, I've enjoyed the removal of self-damage. Self-Stagger as its replacement needs some refinement.

Some weapons that got stagger added to them... don't make much sense. I mean, apparently, they universally added stagger to any AoE (essentially), which comes across as very sloppy/lazy. I mean, the Pox? really? (I don't use it, but a poofing gas cloud has stagger now?) And Operator stagger is staggeringly stupid IMO... not all AoE needs to stagger us. That's just taking it too far.

Also, the recovery window either needs to be longer, or maybe the visual effect needs to line up with the window better, not sure which, at the moment. I only really have the Lenz to experiment with, and I'm still aiming at enemies far away, anyway... so very little experience with the cool ninja-recovery thing.

 

[Scar.brother.help.me]

10 minutes ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

Overall, I've enjoyed the removal of self-damage. Self-Stagger as its replacement needs some refinement.

Some weapons that got stagger added to them... don't make much sense. I mean, apparently, they universally added stagger to any AoE (essentially), which comes across as very sloppy/lazy. I mean, the Pox? really? (I don't use it, but a poofing gas cloud has stagger now?) And Operator stagger is staggeringly stupid IMO... not all AoE needs to stagger us. That's just taking it too far.

Also, the recovery window either needs to be longer, or maybe the visual effect needs to line up with the window better, not sure which, at the moment. I only really have the Lenz to experiment with, and I'm still aiming at enemies far away, anyway... so very little experience with the cool ninja-recovery thing.

 

I would also be glad to not only jump out of stagger but roll out of it as well. Just a little detail, I just feel like I gotta do the roll, not a jump.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Scar.brother.help.me

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

I think it may be more difficult in practice than in theory to scale self-staggers to the damage dealt by explosive weapons, because damage is highly variable, and at constant risk of creeping up.

Actually, I did some theoretical work on the technical side of it. Check out my damage falloff and self stagger math suggestion. Generally speaking, you don't need to tie stagger to damage. You can tie it purely to range. The math I proposed for self-stagger falloff with range is front-loaded, quadratic and features a hard cutoff before max range in the function itself. The example I gave was for self-stagger to end at 80% of max range, so at 4.8 meters of a 6-meter range, for instance. By tweaking weapon range and self-stagger cutoff, you can help avoid players eating minor stagger at extreme distances from their AoE, and this can be tuned per-weapon.

I'm usually the first to extol the virtues of linear progressions, but I feel that quadratic progressions are a better fit for radial effects. I deliberately chose a front-loaded falloff function for self-stagger and a back-loaded falloff function for damage falloff, since quadratic progressions allow me to do that even within the same interval.

 

7 hours ago, Scar.brother.help.me said:

And the lowest stagger effect shouldn't do any interruptions, just a push back like a strong wind, may be lose some momentum, not more.

This is also not a bad idea, though that too can be implemented via the formulae I proposed above. The way I set the function for self-stagger falloff, anything above the cutoff range (relative to the weapon's maximum AoE range) would do NO stagger whatsoever. If this is considered too lenient, simple pushback can occur between the cutoff and max range, instead, scaled to relative distance from the centre. Essentially, you'd be pushed back but not affected by any rooting animation, like what Negation Swarm Inaros experiences when knocked back.

[Teridax68]

7 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Actually, I did some theoretical work on the technical side of it. Check out my damage falloff and self stagger math suggestion. Generally speaking, you don't need to tie stagger to damage. You can tie it purely to range. The math I proposed for self-stagger falloff with range is front-loaded, quadratic and features a hard cutoff before max range in the function itself. The example I gave was for self-stagger to end at 80% of max range, so at 4.8 meters of a 6-meter range, for instance. By tweaking weapon range and self-stagger cutoff, you can help avoid players eating minor stagger at extreme distances from their AoE, and this can be tuned per-weapon.

I'm usually the first to extol the virtues of linear progressions, but I feel that quadratic progressions are a better fit for radial effects. I deliberately chose a front-loaded falloff function for self-stagger and a back-loaded falloff function for damage falloff, since quadratic progressions allow me to do that even within the same interval.

In other words, having self-stagger be affected by falloff, as already mentioned. Not disagreeing here, but then again, you're not disagreeing with me either, given that the model you are proposing doesn't base itself at all on absolute damage values, and bases itself instead on falloff.

[Steel_Rook]

11 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

In other words, having self-stagger be affected by falloff, as already mentioned. Not disagreeing here, but then again, you're not disagreeing with me either, given that the model you are proposing doesn't base itself at all on absolute damage values, and bases itself instead on falloff.

I'm not disagreeing with you 🙂 Just saying that while this isn't a straightforward issue, I did do some work on it and figured that could be a putative solution and wanted your opinion on it. I'm in agreement that trying to base falloff on damage is not practical since damage values vary so drastically both between weapons and between builds of the same weapon (and could further vary with buffs and critical procs). That's why I figured scaling dropoff with distance from centre relative to maximum AoE range was a more reliable metric, with the cutoff used to further tweak behaviour. I also suspect there may be additional considerations, such as self-stagger not ALWAYS starting at 100% "knock you on your ass" value at dead centre, which I haven't accounted for in my formulae.

I personally feel that the issue of damage/stagger falloff is much more rooted in mathematics and specific implementation than it is in game design. The decision whether to have it is a game design decision. How much and under what circumstances comes down to the math chosen and the variables reserved, so answers to those questions tend to be highly technical.

[Scar.brother.help.me]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Actually, I did some theoretical work on the technical side of it. Check out my damage falloff and self stagger math suggestion. Generally speaking, you don't need to tie stagger to damage. You can tie it purely to range. The math I proposed for self-stagger falloff with range is front-loaded, quadratic and features a hard cutoff before max range in the function itself. The example I gave was for self-stagger to end at 80% of max range, so at 4.8 meters of a 6-meter range, for instance. By tweaking weapon range and self-stagger cutoff, you can help avoid players eating minor stagger at extreme distances from their AoE, and this can be tuned per-weapon.

I'm usually the first to extol the virtues of linear progressions, but I feel that quadratic progressions are a better fit for radial effects. I deliberately chose a front-loaded falloff function for self-stagger and a back-loaded falloff function for damage falloff, since quadratic progressions allow me to do that even within the same interval.

 

This is also not a bad idea, though that too can be implemented via the formulae I proposed above. The way I set the function for self-stagger falloff, anything above the cutoff range (relative to the weapon's maximum AoE range) would do NO stagger whatsoever. If this is considered too lenient, simple pushback can occur between the cutoff and max range, instead, scaled to relative distance from the centre. Essentially, you'd be pushed back but not affected by any rooting animation, like what Negation Swarm Inaros experiences when knocked back.

Nice work with range and fall off but my main point is exactly final explosion damage. I wish that knock back strength was calculated from it so more powerful weapons with more powerful builds would have the most powerful draw back while less powerful wouldn't.

P.S."Imo fall off and knock back are not needed at all, explosives are not that strong and already have low ammo, low fire rate, low magazines, etc. Except for the recent Kuva Bramma and may be Acceltra."

[Steel_Rook]

23 minutes ago, Scar.brother.help.me said:

Nice work with range and fall off but my main point is exactly final explosion damage. I wish that knock back strength was calculated from it so more powerful weapons with more powerful builds would have the most powerful draw back while less powerful wouldn't.

My point is that you can still achieve that by basing self-stagger off of AoE range. Weapons like the Bramma, the Ogris, the Tonkor and such already have some of the largest AoE ranges in the game. By setting the self-stagger cutoff to 0 (i.e. they stagger all the way to their max range) you ensure that players will be staggering themselves quite often with a range that large. By contrast, you could take something with a smaller range like the Chakkhurr, set the self-stagger cutoff to 40% (so no stagger past 60% of max range) and that already gives you a weapon which only staggers you if you fire into your own face. Now granted, this process is not automatic and has to be manually set per weapon, but that's where weapon design comes in.

Trying to based stagger off of damage - even if you go with just base damage - is going to produce inconsistent results. There's no set standard for what "a lot of damage" is, and the Kuva Bramma complicates this matter further by splitting damage into clusters with its design. While my proposal may not automatically account for "high-damage AoE weapons," it gives DE the tools to designate "high-damage AoE weapons" themselves and fix the settings manually. They kind of already did that by capping damage dropoff differently for different weapons, rather than all of them to 10% damage at max range.

[Anthraxicus]

3 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

I’ve heard that Staticor’s self-stagger is a problem.

I haven’t used the weapon before (now I really want to), but it looks like it’s always had explosions? I’m surprised to hear that it didn’t self-damage, which is why I’m surprised to hear that the self-stagger is a problem. Is there something else going on?

Iirc, it didn't have self damage, then DE added self damage to the charged shot and removed it again at a later patch.

But several other weapons that didn't have self damage can now stagger the player. Even Ferrox can do that now.

 

Kuva Chakkurr
Opticor
Opticor Vandal
Battacor
Simulor
Synoid Simulor
Ferrox
Astilla
Shedu
Kuva Seer
Cyanex
Staticor
Pox
Tombfinger
Granmu Prism
Exard Scaffold

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

Pox really? I haven't notice anything significant while spamming it.

[AperoBeltaTwo]

Punishing players for just playing the game is never a good idea. Unless your goal is to make them stop.

Edited March 18, 2020 by AperoBeltaTwo

[(NSW)Greybones]

6 hours ago, Anthraxicus said:

Kuva Chakkurr
Opticor
Opticor Vandal
Battacor
Simulor
Synoid Simulor
Ferrox
Astilla
Shedu
Kuva Seer
Cyanex
Staticor
Pox
Tombfinger
Granmu Prism
Exard Scaffold

I haven’t checked out the wiki pages for all of these since I’m maintaining the sense of discovery in Warframe, but from what I have seen all of these do some sort of AoE damage effect (some very small, some large) that would be prime candidates for self-damage, but for some oversight or (more likely) reason DE didn’t give them the same treatment as rockets?

I guess what I’m trying to get at is it doesn’t seem surprising that they have self-stagger now. Are they completely unusable now that their explosive nature is manifesting not as damage, but as stagger? My mind keeps going to “...so people have gotten used to running up to an enemy and shooting them in the face with an explosive weapon...?”, but I feel that’s assumptive thinking so I’m wondering if there’s something else at play that I’m not seeing that prevents players from treating the weapons differently-but-effectively, and your perspective would be great to have

Edited March 18, 2020 by (NSW)Greybones

[Anthraxicus]

1 hour ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

I haven’t checked out the wiki pages for all of these since I’m maintaining the sense of discovery in Warframe, but from what I have seen all of these do some sort of AoE damage effect (some very small, some large) that would be prime candidates for self-damage, but for some oversight or (more likely) reason DE didn’t give them the same treatment as rockets?

I guess what I’m trying to get at is it doesn’t seem surprising that they have self-stagger now. Are they completely unusable now that their explosive nature is manifesting not as damage, but as stagger? My mind keeps going to “...so people have gotten used to running up to an enemy and shooting them in the face with an explosive weapon...?”, but I feel that’s assumptive thinking so I’m wondering if there’s something else at play that I’m not seeing that prevents players from treating the weapons differently-but-effectively, and your perspective would be great to have

For example, I used to fire my Cyanex from inside Magnetize, because it is not attracted by the bubble. I also equip Magnum Force, which makes it spread its projectiles in a wider area. So now the projectiles can hit a wall near me or the enemies inside the bubble and the stagger effect greatly affects the rate of fire of the weapon.

The Ferrox, which is hitscan and extremely accurate, could be used at any distance. To be honest, I didn't even know it had AoE damage before because its AoE was not the reason I used that weapon. Now it staggers me.

[(NSW)Greybones]

On 2020-03-19 at 10:55 AM, Anthraxicus said:

For example, I used to fire my Cyanex from inside Magnetize, because it is not attracted by the bubble. I also equip Magnum Force, which makes it spread its projectiles in a wider area. So now the projectiles can hit a wall near me or the enemies inside the bubble and the stagger effect greatly affects the rate of fire of the weapon.

The Ferrox, which is hitscan and extremely accurate, could be used at any distance. To be honest, I didn't even know it had AoE damage before because its AoE was not the reason I used that weapon. Now it staggers me.

Cool, I can see where you’re coming from now. Thanks for your perspective.

Gonna have to figure out a different way to use my Simulor, which’ll be interesting. Might mean I use my secondary and/or abilities differently too, hmmm....dunno? gotta test

edit: Apparently, for me it’s barely noticeable on the Simulor

Edited March 20, 2020 by (NSW)Greybones

[(PSN)Spider_Enigma]

every single DOOM game has self damage, even 2016.... and not a single player complains about it.... but when a game like warframe is 1000x easyer, all the baby players bich about it being too hard, or too unfun because they cant play around drawbacks of guns or heaven forbid, change fking guns?

what is this? tumbler? 

hell lets make all guns 1 shot.... lets make all guns have inf ammo.... lets make all items require no materials to build because too much grind...

players will complain about everything.... not even joking

shield changes were needed tho... getting 1 shot as loki in level 50s was kinda silly

[(NSW)isoTONER]

Astilla stagger is particularly bad, full flip and blow back even at medium range. It's practically unusable as a shotgun.

[Althaline]

4 hours ago, (PS4)Spider_Enigma said:

every single DOOM game has self damage, even 2016.... and not a single player complains about it....

Self-damage is not the same as self-instagib. Remember that next time you try to bring up this fallacy.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

It's better than self damage (which only hindered non-tank frames).

Just like the overhaul to health/shield/armor/damage systems, it is in the right direction but needs refinement to be in the right place. Just be patient, give meaningful feedback and wait for adjustments. DE will get around to it...sometime in the next 7 years or so.