Lephantis' Dps Cap

[kgb_cyborg]

I've experienced occasional frustration battling Lephantis, I believe due to the DPS cap (damage dealt is sporadic, my end of mission accuracy is extremely low). I know the DPS cap was introduced/lowered (not 100% sure which, though phrasing of the patch notes would suggest it was always there, and was simply lowered) in a hotfix a few days after U10's release.

 

Question is, does anyone have solid details on how it works? Is it actually a hard DPS cap, as the patch notes seem to imply, or is it a damage limit per bullet, as it were?

 

It's an otherwise great boss battle, but this ruins it for me, makes the whole sequence feel very unresponsive (and I'm more than a little miffed about its potential impact on my accuracy stats, which I take pride in trying to improve).

[SquirmyBurrito]

You guys complain too much you can't kill an enourmous boss in a matter of seconds with Acrid that dps cap is pretty good way to make you play longer

 

Its actually a pretty terrible way of making us play longer. I'd rather them just give him crazy resistances or turn him into a scaling meatwall. As it stands there isn't a reason for me to take any of my good gear. 

[Xymos]

If you're a minmaxer as I hear it's called then that's your problem. I'm not so I'll potato anything I like no matter what. I sold the gremlins and acrid because I thought the dual vastos were better (in the sense that they are more fun).

 

Also do you know how hard it is to have as many weapons as warframe does be side grades? Sure a lot of this stuff can be considered much and it's mainly up to preference but it's difficult to have a bunch of side grades for guns without them feeling more or less the same.

I'm not a "min-maxer", I use Braton (1 Forma and Catalyst) and Aklato (Catalyst) and lots of other weapons, not because they are OP, just because I found them fun, good looking, etc. The problem it's that if you use the weapons I use, in high-level content you are practically useless and everyone blames you because you are not using all the stupid high-tier weapons. I don't have that much money to "potato" anything I like, so it's hard to keep up with the new high-level content without either using a Catalyst or building high-tier weapons.

Try to use Dread in 50+ LVL and see how fun it's to use that type of weapons.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Xymos

[SquirmyBurrito]

I'm not a "min-maxer", I use Braton (1 Forma and Catalyst) and Aklato (Catalyst) and lots of other weapons, not because they are OP, just because I found them fun, good looking, etc. The problem it's that if you use the guns I use, in high-level content you are practically useless and everyone blames you because you are not using all the stupid high-tier weapons. I don't have that much money to "potato" anything I like, so it's hard to keep up with the new high-level content without either using a Catalyst or building high-tier weapons.

 

You know you could drastically improve your performance by simply upgrading to a 'middle-tier' weapon... Using a Braton and expecting to be anything more than meh in end game content isn't really reasonable. Reminds me of that person complaining about their 5+ forma'd grakata not being amazing.

[Xymos]

You know you could drastically improve your performance by simply upgrading to a 'middle-tier' weapon... Using a Braton and expecting to be anything more than meh in end game content isn't really reasonable. Reminds me of that person complaining about their 5+ forma'd grakata not being amazing.

It's not about upgrading, it's about using the weapon you like, not only for the damage, but the sound, aspect, etc. It's not so hard to understand what I'm saying. Basically, what are you saying it's: The solution to your problem it's to use forced a weapon to improve your performance, yeah cool now I can kill enemies faster, but now I am using a weapon that's horribly looking.

If DE could implement at least, a crafting system, where you can choose the model,sound,bullet-type,etc. then it would be completely acceptable.

[kgb_cyborg]

They also break the rules of a game setting for the sake of artificially extending an encounter.

...

They're examples of a developer breaking their own game to try and fix something else they've broken.

You've hit the nail on the head... one element of good game design generally is applying the rules of the game universe consistently, and I don't think DE has enough of a case not to do that here. If your superboss is dying too fast without a DPS cap then you may have bigger problems than can be solved by DPS capping your boss and making the fight feel unresponsive for a squad wielding anything more potent than pea-shooters.

[SquirmyBurrito]

It's not about upgrading, it's about using the weapon you like, not only for the damage, but the sound, aspect, etc. It's not so hard to understand what I'm saying. Basically, what are you saying it's: The solution to your problem it's to use forced a weapon to improve your performance, yeah cool now I can kill enemies faster, but now I am using a weapon that's horribly looking.

If DE could implement at least, a crafting system, where you can choose the model,sound,bullet-type,etc. then it would be completely acceptable.

 

If you like those low-tier weapons so much so that you're willing to give up effectiveness for them that's your choice. Don't expect a tier'd weapon system to ensure the viability of every weapon in high-end content.

[TemetNosce]

To be entirely honest, yes I would rather have bulletsponge boss than DPS cap. That way it at least feels like having good weapons makes a difference.

 

 

Actually, I'm going to go a bit farther here and state that Warframe needs, desperately, some bullet sponges. Right now there aren't any bosses that would qualify. When you strip out the horrible damage capping and health gating mechanics in the last couple bosses, the actual HP totals of the bosses are all so low that they're sub 10s kills. At present, even on bosses that don't suffer the absurdity of a damage cap or health gate there's minimal absolute benefit to having the best gear/setup. On a practical scale, whether a boss dies in less than one second, or a full thirty, it'll still take you longer to run the rest of the mission than kill the boss.

 

Anyways, as far as Lephantis, the more I've looked at the damage cap, the worse the design seems. The cap is so low that you can use unpotato'd unforma'd early game gear and still hit it. It renders all offensive skills and loadouts completely irrelevant, making player choice a complete nonelement.

 

At the end of the day however, I'm more unnerved by what this says about the design philosophy behind their 'bosses', and that we have yet to have it addressed by DE, even in an indirect way. This isn't something DE has no way of knowing - both because player action is an integral section of boss design, and because it was covered by other threads in depth back during the Kril/Vor redesigns. Yet rather than saying anything about it, or designing bosses that function for their traditional purpose (being skill/gear checks), they've put yet another 'boss' in the game which is essentially a waiting period.

[kgb_cyborg]

Anyways, as far as Lephantis, the more I've looked at the damage cap, the worse the design seems. The cap is so low that you can use unpotato'd unforma'd early game gear and still hit it. It renders all offensive skills and loadouts completely irrelevant, making player choice a complete nonelement.

You raise a lot of good points but this one brought to mind one useful definition of a game - that is, "a series of interesting choices".

 

When we fight Lephantis, are we even playing a game any more?

 

Game design philosophy for the ages, haha.

 

(P.S. the answer is yes, because your choice of loadout is not the only interesting choice you make. but the battle certainly feels less than, nonetheless.)

[Harazard]

Its actually a pretty terrible way of making us play longer. I'd rather them just give him crazy resistances or turn him into a scaling meatwall. As it stands there isn't a reason for me to take any of my good gear. 

But still need a way to fight Lephantis longer time you can't just kill him in a matter of seconds with the most op weapons in the game think a bit Burrito Lephantis would be a boring boss if he was killed in a matter of seconds

[Lachryphage]

The presence of a DPS cap is an admission of both bad game design and too much laziness to do anything about it. If a fight is too easy you make the fight harder. You don't just go and arbitrarily turn off the player's gun.

[kgb_cyborg]

But still need a way to fight Lephantis longer time you can't just kill him in a matter of seconds with the most op weapons in the game think a bit Burrito Lephantis would be a boring boss if he was killed in a matter of seconds

So we have OP weapons that can kill the biggest boss in the game in seconds, do you:

 

1) Balance weapons and mods

2) Increase boss' health

3) Give boss some interesting abilities of its own to counteract Tenno weapons and abilities

4) Implement a DPS cap

 

^ feel free to add to list, this is just off the top of my head

[Lachryphage]

So we have OP weapons that can kill the biggest boss in the game in seconds, do you:

 

1) Balance weapons and mods

2) Increase boss' health

3) Give boss some interesting abilities of its own to counteract Tenno weapons and abilities

4) Implement a DPS cap

 

^ feel free to add to list, this is just off the top of my head

Any of the others would be far better than 4. 4 is a lazy, short-sighted solution that fixes the symptom while ignoring the cause and does so in a very unfun way. 3 is the best in my opinion.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Lachryphage

[Darzk]

I'd much prefer if the DPS cap was infact a Damage/Phase cap - etc the weakpoint deactivates after a certain amount of damage done, rather than you can only deal a certain amount of damage per second. Would make much more sense and make high dps weapons equally effective to low-dps high-efficiency weapons.

[JukeBoxx831]

The only thing I don't like about the hard DPS cap:

 

If you use a rapid fire weapon like Soma, and continue to shoot.. You're essentially just wasting ammo that could be spent in other ways like killing off the small infested that pop from those spawn pods or start shooting the other heads. I really wish they would just force the head to close after a set amount of damage, so you don't continue to fire in there with hopes of "oh it'll take damage again any second!"

[Darzk]

.., so you don't continue to fire in there with hopes of "oh it'll take damage again any second!"

 

Except it will.

 

I actually built a fire-macro for my Soma which clicks twice per second, just so I dont waste ammo. Figure 1 crit (or 3-4 non crits) shot hits the dps cap per sec, and 2 trigger pulls prettymuch garuntees a crit (or at least 3 bullets).

Edited October 10, 2013 by Darzk

[JukeBoxx831]

Yes, it will take damage again any second, but if you just hold down the trigger even for just 1sec you waste ammo. The Soma consumes 15 rounds per second, if 3 bullets deal the damage cap then that's a waste of 12 ammo. Also, it takes how many of these 700 damages before each head goes down? At least 10..? That's a total waste of 120 ammo per head x6 heads which is 720 wasted ammo.

 

Of course you're not going to literally hold your finger down for 1 second every time a weak point opens, but in the end you'll waste a lot of ammo that's dealing 0 damage and not being used on other things that can be taking damage in the meantime. We also don't know the exact time before it takes damage again because there's on indicator, so we've got to wing it at times which is where you might be holding down the mouse button for 1sec and wasting all of that ammo.

[SquirmyBurrito]

But still need a way to fight Lephantis longer time you can't just kill him in a matter of seconds with the most op weapons in the game think a bit Burrito Lephantis would be a boring boss if he was killed in a matter of seconds

 

I think its more boring to fight a boss that makes player weapon choice irrelevant. I'd rather fight high level grineer with a non-armor ignore (or Soma) weapon.