Play OUR way.

[(PSN)Krikenemp]

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

In fact, I could go one further and argue that the whole "defence objective" design itself needs to be axed and severely redesigned where it doesn't more or less REQUIRE a Limbo or a Frost or a Garaa or some other way of physically shielding the defence objective.

Maybe it's because I've been enjoying Doom Eternal lately, but I think the design philosophy of the chainsaw/glory kill mechanic could help with this. That is, make action translate to sustain: killing enemies heals the objective by a certain amount (could be a %, could be flat, could be based on the max health of the unit, etc). Then you could equalize all healing abilities to only work on Tenno. Depending on how strong the healing is, you might even be able to get away from abilities that protect the objective from damage by out-healing the damage doing what you're supposed to, ie. killing the enemies. This would shift the focus of the game more toward action (I know some people like the defensive/supportive play-style though, so reducing the appeal to them would be a downside) while dealing with the issue of defensive frames being required for certain content because there's just no other way to keep objectives alive.

Edited April 3, 2020 by (PS4)Krikenemp

[Steel_Rook]

29 minutes ago, (PS4)Krikenemp said:

Maybe it's because I've been enjoying Doom Eternal lately, but I think the design philosophy of the chainsaw/glory kill mechanic could help with this. That is, make action translate to sustain: killing enemies heals the objective by a certain amount (could be a %, could be flat, could be based on the max health of the unit, etc). Then you could equalize all healing abilities to only work on Tenno. Depending on how strong the healing is, you might even be able to get away from abilities that protect the objective from damage by out-healing the damage doing what you're supposed to, ie. killing the enemies. This would shift the focus of the game more toward action (I know some people like the defensive/supportive play-style though, so reducing the appeal to them would be a downside) while dealing with the issue of defensive frames being required for certain content because there's just no other way to keep objectives alive.

I'm generally leery of making "just kill stuff" the objective, but I'd still take that over the current Defence implementation. I was personally thinking more along the lines of forcing enemies to interact with the objective in order to disable it, or else interact with one of several consoles which disable the objective, etc. Look at Jupiter Sabotage, for instance. You need to defend two consoles, but not from being shot. Enemies need to approach the consoles and manually hack them, then start a countdown. Only after that countdown fails do you actually fail. That should still accomplish the same goal, as killing people quickly would still keep them off of the consoles, but spacing them out a little means you can't just wall them off with Gaara or some such.

A Limbo with a large enough Cataclysm could still probably cover all consoles, though. We actually had that issue fighting Condrix, where our Limbo had built for SO much range that he was routinely making the Condrix untargetable and had to walk off to a neighbouring room just to use his signature ability 🙂

[(PSN)Krikenemp]

16 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I was personally thinking more along the lines of forcing enemies to interact with the objective in order to disable it, or else interact with one of several consoles which disable the objective, etc.

This is how Interception works and I like it a lot in that case, but that's because you don't instantly lose if an enemy gets to a console. If that's how it was in Defense/Mobile Defense, it would feel very cheap, like the objective getting one-shot if you make a single mistake under current mechanics (especially against a faction designed to adapt to your damage so you can't just burst them down in a nanosecond like every other enemy type). IMO they would need to add another layer there where a single enemy getting through doesn't mean mission failure or have the mission fail only if three consoles are reached; otherwise, we're right back to mandatory frames, just ones that can deal/help deal the most burst damage, or CC long enough to do that.

16 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'm generally leery of making "just kill stuff" the objective

Meh, 90% of content is already this anyway. Most of the missions that seem to have other goals as objectives are really just spicy "kill all enemies as fast as you can" missions. And it seems to work. That's what I think Doom does so well with the mechanics I mentioned - it knows you want to be running around killing stuff more than anything, so it built healing and ammo into the act of doing what you're playing the game for (but then they kinda did the opposite by making half the game platforming instead of demon-killing...)

Edited April 3, 2020 by (PS4)Krikenemp

[DrakeWurrum]

18 hours ago, Moraiel said:

which seems to be play Inaros

It sounds to me like you need to git gud.

I don't mean to be rude about it, but I haven't touched Inaros in a long time. Hell, I've even been using "tank" frames less, thanks to the recent shield changes!

51 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

We actually had that issue fighting Condrix, where our Limbo had built for SO much range that he was routinely making the Condrix untargetable and had to walk off to a neighbouring room just to use his signature ability 🙂

I've noticed in my actual pre-made grind groups (rather than just running Public and hoping for the best) to aim for 3 perfect runs (getting over 5k being the real goal), Limbo usually holds off on the Stasis until the Condrix is actually down.

With Mesa pewpewing everything dead almost-instantly (which even I can do, despite lacking the right Corrupted mods), you only really use Stasis to protect the OpLinks while you run off to the next objective. (literally, you don't even defend them, you just let the Rift do the work)
Limbo specifically builds for having his 2 and 4 last long enough to do the job, and that's... all he's actually needed for. (the rest of the group is about boosting Mesa's damage, so Chroma and Volt/Rhino - maybe a Harrow 4 would work, for protecting the team against Sentients and providing Crit buff? Usually somebody brings Redeemer P for the Condrix)

Even the diminishing returns "nerf" recently put out doesn't affect this, because at that point only Grineer are active, not Sentients. (in other words, DE has no idea how people are using Limbo, and just put out a random "nerf" based on an assumption about why Limbo is popular)

Edited April 3, 2020 by DrakeWurrum

[TaigenRaine]

2 hours ago, Patacakes said:

I don't get why re balancing a warframe's abilities to not make a 2 year long development, that devs have poured countless hours into making be a bad thing. 

Limbo as DE has stated, made the event trivial and exploited the way they intended the event to be experienced. 

They changed that so the event could be experienced correctly and not have every team running limbo and mesa, or nova and mesa, or any other CC frame and a mesa to complete the event.  

whineframers indeed.  

Limbo did not make their event trivial.  The way they designed the event made their event trivial.  Limbo has been just fine in every other aspect of warframe, and undesirable in most.  The reason in this particular circumstance he is necessary is because they designed the event to have 4 critical defense targets that can't be healed, don't regenerate over time, and are pathetically easy to damage.  So you need Mesas and Limbos and other CC/room wiping frames to do anything.  They made the event this way, and players brought the frames that could keep the fragile little glass scanners alive.  They don't need to nerf the frames, they need to make an event that is better suited to a wider variety of frames.

[Aldain]

The irony of the thread title is that Limbo Saryn and Mesa (among others) actually enforce the title when they show up to any public matches.

You wanted to have to dodge shoot and protect a defense target? Too bad, a random Limbo just turned the A.I. off for the entire mission.

Want to actually kill things with a weapon? Nope, Saryn just blew up the whole tileset with a few keystrokes.

"Play OUR way" is just as often enforced by players when they show up to random groups because of the overwhelming power that several frames have, yet when DE stops the rampant power train from making 1 player able to shut the game off for 3 other players suddenly DE is forcing a meta.

[TaigenRaine]

7 minutes ago, Aldain said:

The irony of the thread title is that Limbo Saryn and Mesa (among others) actually enforce the title when they show up to any public matches.

You wanted to have to dodge shoot and protect a defense target? Too bad, a random Limbo just turned the A.I. off for the entire mission.

Want to actually kill things with a weapon? Nope, Saryn just blew up the whole tileset with a few keystrokes.

"Play OUR way" is just as often enforced by players when they show up to random groups because of the overwhelming power that several frames have, yet when DE stops the rampant power train from making 1 player able to shut the game off for 3 other players suddenly DE is forcing a meta.

DE is forcing a meta by putting an oplink healing station in so people can spend credits to heal oplinks, and then shutting down every ability that can heal or shield those oplinks.  If you want to shoot everything with a Braton, you are gonna have to get rid of Saryn... and Ember and Mesa and Grendal and Nova and Nezha and Ash and ... well there are a lot of frames that are going to kill things faster then a gun.  Thing is someone already made a game where you can just shoot things with guns, it's called Call of Duty.  Also, if other frames using powers to kill things bothers you, there is always solo.  The problem with nerfs - especially for a single event that has niche conditions that make a certain frame's powers ideal - is that people who like how that frame plays can't just switch game modes to experience it again.

In a month this event will be over... and Limbo will still remain nerfed against sentients, and Khora's kitty still won't be able to heal defense objectives...  all because of the very specific way this event was set up.  I don't think most people are adverse to some nerfs... especially if they are the only frame/weapon/whatever people are using, but it irks people when it's because DE wants people to use some stupid console to help other squads out, and those squads don't want to rely on that and bring frames necessary to reliably go 17 rounds or 5 murex without needing to rely on someone playing with the console in the lobby.

[Patacakes]

25 minutes ago, TaigenRaine said:

Limbo did not make their event trivial.  The way they designed the event made their event trivial.  Limbo has been just fine in every other aspect of warframe, and undesirable in most.  The reason in this particular circumstance he is necessary is because they designed the event to have 4 critical defense targets that can't be healed, don't regenerate over time, and are pathetically easy to damage.  So you need Mesas and Limbos and other CC/room wiping frames to do anything.  They made the event this way, and players brought the frames that could keep the fragile little glass scanners alive.  They don't need to nerf the frames, they need to make an event that is better suited to a wider variety of frames.

and thats just what they did.  i may agree with you on the no healing aspect,  they should give some other way, other than randoms paying 75k to give you a boost of health,  some times now my oplink gets destroyed by half way through code 5-6 on the 5th run,  but by limiting the frames abilities,  not just Limbos, all of the frames, 

i've seen the sentients adapt to pretty much everything by the 5th wave,  that includes frosts bubble, khoras dome, novas slow and other CC abilities. but I played with a well organised team, where we took turns.  used out abilities less on the first two runs, and this made the others easier.  leaving your big abilities for the harder levels makes the event easier to run.  but without a balanced team, and having folk that just spam mesa's 4th and wait for the timer, everyone needs to engage the sentients, on all sides. 

making the event more demanding to attention than going full range full duration limbo, and walking away to make a sandwich and grab a coffee (which i've done a couple of times during the first week)  

[Steel_Rook]

14 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

I've noticed in my actual pre-made grind groups (rather than just running Public and hoping for the best) to aim for 3 perfect runs (getting over 5k being the real goal), Limbo usually holds off on the Stasis until the Condrix is actually down.

I think the Limbo in question was deploying his Cataclysm because we were having issues killing the actual Condrix quickly and people were dying. Our Mesa was good at clearing up the Sentients, but I don't think the Regulators can target the Condrix, so it was up to me using a corrosive-built Corinth. Eventually we asked the Limbo to please stop phasing the Condrix and he did the best he could. So yes, you're right... But you make do with what you have on pubbie teams.

 

14 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

Even the diminishing returns "nerf" recently put out doesn't affect this, because at that point only Grineer are active, not Sentients. (in other words, DE has no idea how people are using Limbo, and just put out a random "nerf" based on an assumption about why Limbo is popular)

I don't think the Limbo change was aimed at the ground mission. While Limbo CAN make the ground mission a lot easier, you yourself have pointed out that most of the time he doesn't. The ground mission is also substantially more complex and less sleep-inducing than the Railjack mission, as well. I suspect it was the Railjack mission that DE were targeting with that change, because THAT one Limbo can really break pretty badly. That's the mission I've complained about being reduced to a "watch-checking exercise." See, unlike the ground mission, the Railjack mission doesn't have a combat phase before the OpLinks come out. It's JUST OpLinks. As a result, none of us who aren't Limbo have anything to actually do. We show up, drop a Link and... Then what? Tap our feet waiting for the timer to count down? Go back to the ship and fight boarders that never arrive if you hide it well?

At least this way, SOME combat happens in the Railjack mission and there's still SOMETHING for the rest of the team to do.

 

16 hours ago, (PS4)Krikenemp said:

This is how Interception works and I like it a lot in that case, but that's because you don't instantly lose if an enemy gets to a console. If that's how it was in Defense/Mobile Defense, it would feel very cheap, like the objective getting one-shot if you make a single mistake under current mechanics (especially against a faction designed to adapt to your damage so you can't just burst them down in a nanosecond like every other enemy type). IMO they would need to add another layer there where a single enemy getting through doesn't mean mission failure or have the mission fail only if three consoles are reached; otherwise, we're right back to mandatory frames, just ones that can deal/help deal the most burst damage, or CC long enough to do that.

Oh, I agree - hence why I cited Jupiter Sabotage. That mission neatly solves the issue by starting a permanent timer any time an enemy is allowed to hack a console. The timer stops when you kill the enemy, but retains its percentages permanently. This gives you time to respond while also retaining an element of attrition. Now granted - Defence objectives currently regenerate passively. However, the regeneration is so slow that relying on it (say, by keeping an enemy stuck while the objective recovers) takes FOREVER! In the Jupiter Sabotage design, on the other hand, I'm confident in saying that no "healing" of the objective is necessary. Because the enemies can't "damage" the objective at range, the only time you can accrue attrition damage is if you actively fail at defending the consoles. It means that a decent team shouldn't BE accruing attrition damage, thus recovery from it isn't necessary.

And yes, this IS how Interception works, as well. The more I play Warframe, the more I'm starting to appreciate the Interception game mode. It's not GREAT, mind you - it's clearly designed for a team - but it does a lot of things right that most other missions don't even attempt to do at all. You get a visual and audio alert when a point is being captured, you're given time to react before anything negative happens, points can only be captured from two fixed locations that you can learn, captured points aren't lost forever and can be retaken, etc., etc., etc. It's a REALLY well-designed game mode as compared to your average Defence or Mobile Defence or Excavation, not to mention some of the simpler ones. It DOES help to bring Specters, obviously (Oh no! I use for an otherwise useless item!) but you don't really NEED a specific Warframe to do it, not even solo. I used to hate Interception, but my opinion has softened on it quite a bit over time.

 

16 hours ago, (PS4)Krikenemp said:

Meh, 90% of content is already this anyway. Most of the missions that seem to have other goals as objectives are really just spicy "kill all enemies as fast as you can" missions. And it seems to work. That's what I think Doom does so well with the mechanics I mentioned - it knows you want to be running around killing stuff more than anything, so it built healing and ammo into the act of doing what you're playing the game for (but then they kinda did the opposite by making half the game platforming instead of demon-killing...)

I've not played Doom Eternal so I can't comment on that, but I personally found Doom 4 to be honestly really boring. I get that it was going for "push forward gameplay" forcing players out of cover and into close-quarters scraps. It did a good enough job of that by making all enemy attacks into projectiles... But it also utterly failed in my opinion by not giving the player any real mobility options for over half the game. Doom Eternal seems to have addressed this to a large extent, seemingly offering a double jump, an air dash and a number of other mobility options to the player. Doom 4 also lacked pretty much anything in the way of melee capability, while Doom Eternal appears to have an infinite-use Chainsaw and that dentist's tool strapped to the guy's arm. So who knows? Maybe the sequel can succeed where I personally felt the original failed. I mean, just imagine Doom but with Warframe's mobility 🙂

With that said, I personally tend to find games which come down to just killing all the enemies the game throws at you as fast as possible to be very reductive, especially in a game like Warframe where "trading damage" is often much more efficient than trying for anything fancy. My reason for disliking Doom 4 is along the same lines. While its core combat IS solid, it eventually devolved into very obvious monster arenas full of slow-moving bullet sponge enemies firing highly-damaging attacks. It very often felt that the best way to go WAS to play it like a traditional shooter - grab the biggest gun I have ammo for, mag-dump into the biggest demon I have line of sight on and try to keep covered from the other dozen or so big demons spamming shots into me. It works when enemies are weak and many, not so much when they're all bosses.

Right now, Warframe is kind of in the latter situation. While there ARE Warframes and weapons which can instakill level 200 Grineer, that's not the majority of my Arsenal. Most of the time, I find myself mag-dumping into tanky enemies and killing them about as fast as they respawn. After a while, it all starts blending together if I don't have any other considerations to keep in mind. That's why I like missions such as Disruption, Defection, Infested Salvage, Interception (specifically for Endless ones) more than Survival or Defence. I don't consider Warframe's combat to be strong enough to carry the whole game by itself, so when experience is reduced to JUST combat and no other considerations is when I start checking out mentally.

[TheLexiConArtist]

30 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Oh, I agree - hence why I cited Jupiter Sabotage. That mission neatly solves the issue by starting a permanent timer any time an enemy is allowed to hack a console. The timer stops when you kill the enemy, but retains its percentages permanently. This gives you time to respond while also retaining an element of attrition. Now granted - Defence objectives currently regenerate passively. However, the regeneration is so slow that relying on it (say, by keeping an enemy stuck while the objective recovers) takes FOREVER! In the Jupiter Sabotage design, on the other hand, I'm confident in saying that no "healing" of the objective is necessary. Because the enemies can't "damage" the objective at range, the only time you can accrue attrition damage is if you actively fail at defending the consoles. It means that a decent team shouldn't BE accruing attrition damage, thus recovery from it isn't necessary.

The biggest problem with Jupiter Sabotage is that the units are nullifiers. Every time. Nullifiers are awful, binary gameplay elements that wear far too many hats, and because there's more than one console it could very easily become a problem by that very attrition you encourage. For a squad, maybe it's fine. But solo is a legitimate playstyle, and unless you're blender-ing the entire room because you're at your OP comfort level, they're going to keep touching the console a bit at a time.

Jupiter Sab gets away with it because it doesn't last long enough for unavoidable attrition to become too much of a problem. Extend that to an indefinite non-resetting endless style though, and it would be unfair. Interceptions squeeze past that issue because there's a delay before recaptures (not so in JupSab, one touch is all it takes) and it resets every round. In some maps it's still somewhat oppressive to the lone Tenno who physically cannot be defending two places at once (in the rare AI lightbulb moments where they don't just funnel onto a single point) and cannot navigate from A to D in the time between 'console under attack' and 'point lost' due to the level design.

[Hexsing]

I have done all of the missions featuring Sentients with Nyx.

My theory, is that if you are used to not having powers that work, then you can never we disappointed.  

You can only just be surprised when they do.

 

[Aesthier]

23 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

In fact, I was recently thinking of proposing a change to his Cataclysm which would pull enemies caught in the Cataclysm boundary in as it shrinks, so they don't go through this state of flip-flopping between being in and out of the the bubble. I would further have proposed that the Cataclysm phaseshift our Operators so they aren't entirely useless with a Limbo, and also phaseshift the Condrix so a Limbo with a large bubble doesn't make it undamageable.

^ That would be awesome!

Thank you for recognizing that my chief complaint was with the fact DE pulled the nerf mid event. If it was something like nightwave I wouldn't have cared as much because nightwave isn't limited by any true means. Scarlet spear however seems to fall in the category of those limited events that DE suggests they might bring it back later which means 7 years from now or quite possibly "when they get around to it" (never.)

 

The following is just me blowing off steam feel free to ignore.

The secondary issue is that DE designed a good portion of the warframes to go hand in hand with specific missions types which support their original intent that players should swap out frames to match the missions. (right tool for the job and all that). Over the years the power creep has given those who have played longer or more a massive advantage in completing any content thrown at them; thus missions are now trivial in respects to the maximization these players are capable of.  This isn't the fault of the players its just that when you have nothing else to do but tweak your warframe for years on end where is the challenging content?

But DE can't create challenging content at a rate experienced players can chew through it leading DE into the bad habit of nerfing the very functions that made specific frames good at certain mission types without nerfing those missions themselves. While this lowers the frustration levels of those who have pretty much maxed everything it creates an additional boundary to those who haven't yet been able to or are just starting out.

I love this game but the constant whiplash the devs provide through the create/nerf process is giving me a headache. I wish they would stop nerfing the core abilities and begin nerfing the mods that generated the power creep in the first place. I mean really DE; claiming Venari's ability to heal defense points was changed because it was unintentional until a player showed you the tool tip stating she could do that! WTH is going on in their minds?

Please! For the love of all that is Tenno, share with us the overall objective, and don't just say balance then continue to make reactionary knee-jerk changes.

 

Edited April 4, 2020 by Aesthier

[supernils]

You don't understand it. If you give players the possibility to trivialize game play they *will* use it, although it kills the fun for them. That's why developers seem to infantilize players.

If Limbo always had diminishing returns for sentients on his 4 noone would have ever complained. In fact players would have been less bored.

Edited April 4, 2020 by supernils

[Aesthier]

18 hours ago, Aldain said:

The irony of the thread title is that Limbo Saryn and Mesa (among others) actually enforce the title when they show up to any public matches.

You wanted to have to dodge shoot and protect a defense target? Too bad, a random Limbo just turned the A.I. off for the entire mission.

Want to actually kill things with a weapon? Nope, Saryn just blew up the whole tileset with a few keystrokes.

"Play OUR way" is just as often enforced by players when they show up to random groups because of the overwhelming power that several frames have, yet when DE stops the rampant power train from making 1 player able to shut the game off for 3 other players suddenly DE is forcing a meta.

Another irony is that the same thing happens when players complain about a frame they actually have the tools to avoid but would rather DE nerf it into the ground instead.

You wanted to use the abilities on that warframe you just got that DE designed specifically for these types of mission your headed into but...

Want to use that Saryn you just leveled to help your buddy level his weapons efficiently in an invite only ESO by sporing things so your buddy can kiil them?

Sorry some longtime player who already leveled all their weapons and frames (using the exact same same method you wanted to try) is now mad because he crossed paths with another maxed out player who tweaked his Saryn to the hilt and didn't allow the first player to solo the zone with their melee weapon.

 

Want to run that badass Mesa build you just finished to complete that nasty solo mission you have been having troubles with?

Too bad another maxed out player got bored with running his maxed out mesa and claimed she needed a hard fix to add challenge instead of swapping to a lesser frame.

 

While the examples above haven't happened yet at this rate they will happen soon. All because players who have completed the content are upset because they refuse to use the tools provided, to reduce their chances of running into or swap away from, these frames that trivialize content for them. Instead they demand that "Everyone play THEIR way" by requesting nerfs that change the abilities of warframes across the board, no mater if you play privately in preformed groups or even solo.

In public groups I will gladly try to adapt my play-style to those in the group.  But I don't read minds so if you don't tell me what you want me to do, because what I am currently doing ticks you off, then that's on you not my frame.  My first time playing ground in Spear I didn't know what I was doing so I took limbo because I knew he was the one frame I had with the highest chance of survival.  I even asked my random team to let me know if they wanted me to change something. First thing they wanted me to do was stop dropping cata the moment the condrix hit the ground and wait until the codrix was dead. So I did! Why? Because they asked!

The second thing they wanted was for me to start dropping cata the instant the condrix hit the ground from wave 10 on. So I did!

Why? Because they asked!

 

Just because you come across a player who doesn't  play the way you like in a random public group is not justification to eliminate that style of play for all existing players regardless of the group mode they play in.

Honestly the audacity of people who refuse to recognize the fact that not all players have their resources and that they themselves weren't always tweaked out living gods.

When most (not all) of these people scream for nerfs all I hear is "No one else should experience the fun I once had now that I am bored with it!" Under that premise warframe should just end the entire game now.

/rant.

 

No wonder warframe loses most of its new players.

Edited April 4, 2020 by Aesthier

[Steel_Rook]

3 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Jupiter Sab gets away with it because it doesn't last long enough for unavoidable attrition to become too much of a problem. Extend that to an indefinite non-resetting endless style though, and it would be unfair. Interceptions squeeze past that issue because there's a delay before recaptures (not so in JupSab, one touch is all it takes) and it resets every round. In some maps it's still somewhat oppressive to the lone Tenno who physically cannot be defending two places at once (in the rare AI lightbulb moments where they don't just funnel onto a single point) and cannot navigate from A to D in the time between 'console under attack' and 'point lost' due to the level design.

Keep in mind that I'm throwing out ideas somewhat half-cocked. There are always going to be issues, but a lot of them could be addressed via tweaks to the original design. You are correct that a single touch to start an attrition timer is a bad idea. This could be addressed by requiring a full Interception-style interaction, with an audio-visual alarm alerting players that a console is being messed with. Alternately, the timer itself could recover between rotations, either partially or fully. Defence objectives have always been capable of self-healing, but implementation made this both scale terribly with level and require some really ass-backwards gameplay to exploit. Plus, there's this whole workshop on healing defence targets that DE are going through right now. Point being, partially or fully resetting a defence target every five "Waves" is a distinct possibility.

With all of that said, DE seem to have gone a different way. Rather than trying to keep us from healing Defence objectives for arcane reasons, essentially forcing us to bring Limbo or Gaara or Frost, they seem to be opening up the ability to heal the objective to a while host of other Warframes - including Inaros of all things. I'd have to play around with the numbers, but if the heal caps are high enough, I might stop feeling compelled to bring Frost all of the time. I have a Trinity, I have a Hyldrin, I even have an Oberon kicking about somewhere. It's not the direction I would have gone for a variety of reasons, but that's a legitimately good choice. I'm not going to STOP using Frost just because he's my bestie, but having options is always better than not having options in this case.

 

3 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

The biggest problem with Jupiter Sabotage is that the units are nullifiers. Every time. Nullifiers are awful, binary gameplay elements that wear far too many hats, and because there's more than one console it could very easily become a problem by that very attrition you encourage. For a squad, maybe it's fine. But solo is a legitimate playstyle, and unless you're blender-ing the entire room because you're at your OP comfort level, they're going to keep touching the console a bit at a time.

I don't want to start a conversation about Nullifiers for fear of going off-topic, but I do want to say this much: I personally like their design. Yes, the Nullifier bubble can be tough to deal with for slow-firing weapons and impenetrable to abilities, but I personally find it easy to pop with pretty much any rapid-firing gun. I carry an Imperator Vandal in my Heavy Weapon most of the time (because "Heavy Machinegun!!!"), but most other weapons will do. Recently I've fought a lot of Nullifiers with the the new Corinth Prime, and have found that weapon pretty reliable at popping their little drones. I understand the frustration, but I still feel that Nullifiers add a much needed level of complexity to Warframe combat, which can otherwise end up feeling very reductive and formulaic. I think I mentioned this earlier, but I'm really hoping for more complex enemies, like the various Sentients with destructible limbs, the Nox with its breakable glass shield, etc. We may end up disagreeing on this point and I'm not going to push it - promise. That's just where I stand.

 

1 hour ago, Aesthier said:

The secondary issue is that DE designed a good portion of the warframes to go hand in hand with specific missions types which support their original intent that players should swap out frames to match the missions. (right tool for the job and all that). Over the years the power creep has given those who have played longer or more a massive advantage in completing any content thrown at them; thus missions are now trivial in respects to the maximization these players are capable of.  This isn't the fault of the players its just that when you have nothing else to do but tweak your warframe for years on end where is the challenging content?

Personally, I tend to dislike missions which very heavily favour specific Warframes because they tend to have a very reductive effect. Either you take those Warframes or you GTFO. This is made worse when only a small handful of options are really viable, and especially when their viability is SO drastically more potent than any alternative. I've long had an issue with just HOW heavily defence missions favour three Warframes - Limbo, Frost and Gaara. I don't think nerfing any of those would really have helped, however, as there are no real mechanics for us to fall back on if our primary tools ARE nerfed. That's the issue with the Murex mission, as well. OK, you nerfed Limbo and that did give people something to do... But it didn't fix the S#&$ core design of the mission.

Before I linked to DE's workshop on healing defence objectives, which I honestly thought was a good approach. Well, from the perspective of changing as little as possible, anyway - I'd still prefer a Jupiter Sabotage / Interception approach to Defence. Rather than nerfing existing Warframes which do really well, DE seem to have gone the opposite way and instead tried making MORE Warframes worth bringing to these missions. The heal caps on those seem... Kind of low so we'll see how much that matters, but being able to bring more than just that one ideal Warframe to those mission types would be nice. Bringing the right tool for the right job is not inherently bad design, as long as we aren't locked into just a few tools out of a much larger toolkit, and I think these new changes at least have the potential to open up our options. I'd like to see that, personally.

I understand your frustration with DE yanking a powerful tool out of your arsenal in the middle of an event, especially when by all indication you were using it EXACTLY as it's intended to be used. You're right to blame DE for letting the situation get to this point in the first place, because Limbo's effect on that mission design should really have been obvious. With that said, it happened and I don't think there were a lot of other ways to handle this - certainly not any good ones. I fully expect DE to revisit Sentient resistance to Stasis, either as a broader Sentient faction approach to ability resistance, or by just scrapping it because it was a rush-job to try and fix THAT particular event. The Sentient faction itself doesn't seem to have any overall game design behind it, with enemies being added ad-hoc. Once they become a regular faction with their own Star Chart nodes (which I expect will happen eventually), we may be due for a faction-wide balance pass for abilities, health/armour/shield types, special units, ability resistance, etc. The old Sentients were designed as bosses, some of the new Sentients as minions and who got what health type seems to have come down to when they were made. There's more work to do.

I talked about challenge and reductive combat elsewhere on the forums and don't want to derail every thread into that discussion. To put it simply, though - I personally feel that Warframe could still have challenge, but not necessarily through just giving us harder enemies. Rather, I believe the game could do a better job of engaging us with its existing wealth of mechanics without breaking down into just a straight DPS trade, or worse - straight up ignoring entire sets of mechanics. Sometimes that can mean tougher enemies, sometimes that can mean taking away or modifying some of the things we're capable of, sometimes that can mean fundamentally altering the structure of our missions. I'm personally happy to move away from a design where individual Warframes work as "hard counters" to entire mission types, and would rather see more Warframes be made viable - even if not to the same extent. In short, I'd be willing to give up my Frost Snowglobe, my Gaara Vitrify and my Limbo Cataclysm's complete encapsulation of defence objectives if more Warframes became directly useful on Defence.

[DrakeWurrum]

4 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I don't think the Limbo change was aimed at the ground mission. While Limbo CAN make the ground mission a lot easier, you yourself have pointed out that most of the time he doesn't. The ground mission is also substantially more complex and less sleep-inducing than the Railjack mission, as well. I suspect it was the Railjack mission that DE were targeting with that change, because THAT one Limbo can really break pretty badly.

Well... I disagree. It's easy enough to do that I'd never even thought I needed a Limbo for it. I was able to solo it with Revenant + Paracesis. IMO it's Paracesis that really trivializes Murex raids. The first three times I did Murex raids successfully to the 5k+, I didn't have Limbo in the group, because the meta hadn't been decided upon yet, and... it was really easy to do. Most people were just using the same loadout they use for Sentient Anomalies.

[TheLexiConArtist]

37 minutes ago, Aesthier said:

Want to use that Saryn you just leveled to help your buddy level his weapons efficiently in an invite only ESO by sporing things so your buddy can kiil them?

Sorry some longtime player who already leveled all their weapons and frames (using the exact same same method you wanted to try) is now mad because he crossed paths with another maxed out player who tweaked his Saryn to the hilt and didn't allow the first player to solo the zone with their melee weapon.

 

Want to run that badass Mesa build you just finished to complete that nasty solo mission you have been having troubles with?

Too bad another maxed out player got bored with running his maxed out mesa and claimed she needed a hard fix to add challenge instead of swapping to a lesser frame.

This is a strawman and an appeal to emotion. There's nothing to do with "I've done it so you can't" when it comes to these two Warframes.

Saryn removes gameplay from others. Whether it's necessary for ESO, or especially effective in ESO, does not change this fact - those are problems with that badly designed mode. Correlation, not causation. Saryn is too wide-reaching, minimally interactive, and scales up too effectively to allow those around her to operate when built 'properly'. She is an overriding influence while being completely fire and forget because any target with a spore on it is dead for all intents and purposes, unless it happens to cross a Nullification effect.

Mesa's damage output starts ludicrous and only scales higher, comes with an aimbot that means anyone in the same vicinity as her has zero chance to actually fire on any target they'd have to use their dumb meat brain to acquire. Can literally be played by holding the fire button and swinging the mouse around wildly, it barely requires any actual input more than her original aimbot did. At the same time, she gets the strongest damage resistance ability at 95% and another damage buff and crowd control to sweeten the deal. All that even with one of her ability slots being a dud! Mesa is massively overpowered. But DE love her. This isn't me being bored of using her. I barely ever have used her, because she's so boringly broken. When the response to anything being overly difficult is "just use Mesa, lol" then maybe there's a fair chance that a problem exists.

 

Warframe is, for the most part, not truly 'co-op'. It's parallel playing. One player's overpowered warframe gets the mission complete, but just like people complaining about Limbo leaving them nothing to do but pick their nose in 'time defense' objectives, these mass, easy-clear frames that scale effortlessly to high levels just don't leave much for anyone else. And there's nothing they can do about that in public matchmaking but abort, so it's a problem.

10 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

 Plus, there's this whole workshop on healing defence targets that DE are going through right now. Point being, partially or fully resetting a defence target every five "Waves" is a distinct possibility.

With all of that said, DE seem to have gone a different way. Rather than trying to keep us from healing Defence objectives for arcane reasons, essentially forcing us to bring Limbo or Gaara or Frost, they seem to be opening up the ability to heal the objective to a while host of other Warframes - including Inaros of all things. I'd have to play around with the numbers, but if the heal caps are high enough, I might stop feeling compelled to bring Frost all of the time. I have a Trinity, I have a Hyldrin, I even have an Oberon kicking about somewhere. It's not the direction I would have gone for a variety of reasons, but that's a legitimately good choice. I'm not going to STOP using Frost just because he's my bestie, but having options is always better than not having options in this case.

It's nice that they're allowing more things to apply. But the numbers are way off, and we're all tired of seeing "subject to change" with either no changes or even worse results, and having feedback threads which get ignored wholesale. Absolute-Capped 100 hps is nonviable. Capping DR effects to 50% is not relevant. For those who didn't work at all, it's lipservice to an improvement in viability. However, to the few that functioned effectively, it's a colossal kick in the gentleman's regions. Or lady's regions, in Gara's case. Losing the hard protection of Vazarin Dash is just going to make any 'challenging' defensive content more pigeonholed to the frames/abilities that are permitted to employ the mantra "The only winning move is not to play" - to remove any chance of opposition like Cata-Stasis. It doesn't matter if your target has twice the health and you heal 100 per second, if you're being expected to fight 20 enemies dealing 2000 damage per strike.

Vaz Dash was the perfect backup plan, it provided a challenging timing game if you were also trying to kill things - to refresh the dash every 5 seconds, requiring Transfer-Aim-Crouch-Jump-Transfer each time - but that's far more engaging than turning off enemies entirely. Maybe you mistime. Maybe your Operator gets an unlucky death or knockdown.

10 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I don't want to start a conversation about Nullifiers for fear of going off-topic, but I do want to say this much: I personally like their design. Yes, the Nullifier bubble can be tough to deal with for slow-firing weapons and impenetrable to abilities, but I personally find it easy to pop with pretty much any rapid-firing gun. I carry an Imperator Vandal in my Heavy Weapon most of the time (because "Heavy Machinegun!!!"), but most other weapons will do. Recently I've fought a lot of Nullifiers with the the new Corinth Prime, and have found that weapon pretty reliable at popping their little drones. I understand the frustration, but I still feel that Nullifiers add a much needed level of complexity to Warframe combat, which can otherwise end up feeling very reductive and formulaic. I think I mentioned this earlier, but I'm really hoping for more complex enemies, like the various Sentients with destructible limbs, the Nox with its breakable glass shield, etc. We may end up disagreeing on this point and I'm not going to push it - promise. That's just where I stand.

My problem with Nullifiers is that they are strictly binary, and that makes them bad design because they're an 'off switch' to everything at once.

If the several 'hats' of Nullifiers were spread among several distinguishable unit types, the same absolute result against abilities could be achieved by not dealing with anything. But which you go and deal with, your priorities, change depending on the situation and the abilities you have or need most.

Take, for example, Unit A which destroys placed entities. Frost, Limbo and Gara want that bad boy gone immediately. Ash, or any number of other frames without placed entities, wouldn't care. That's dynamic.

Now mix in Unit B which purely prevents ability damage in its effect area. Just within the frames mentioned themselves, we have a heavy build-based dynamic difference here. Is Frost worried about protection and CC? Doesn't care about the ability damage output, so that unit is non-priority. Is Ash relying on invisibility, maybe Teleport finishers? Again, not ability damage. But if Frost wanted to wave clear with Avalanche, or if Ash wanted to fight with Blade Storm, then this anti-ability-damage unit is suddenly higher priority.

Compare the above to Nullifiers. It doesn't matter what your build is, what your abilities are. It's just "Nullifier = no". Dealing with the threat isn't a priority list of which effects you want back, it's "Killed Nullifier = yes". Hence, a binary gameplay influence. It's not dynamic or engaging, it's just a static, bland obstacle.

[Steel_Rook]

30 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

It's nice that they're allowing more things to apply. But the numbers are way off, and we're all tired of seeing "subject to change" with either no changes or even worse results, and having feedback threads which get ignored wholesale.

That's fair, and I don't blame you for that kind of scepticism. Hell, I'm usually the one to throw cold water on initiatives like this. For whatever reason, though, I'm personally cautiously optimistic in this case. Maybe it's due to Warframe Revised, maybe something else, but I'm willing to cut DE some slack and err on the side of "they're trying" vs. erring on the side of "they're just lying to us." The numbers ARE off, this is true. With the numbers provided now, I don't think it's going to be terribly viable. However, I don't have enough experience with most of those abilities to know in the abstract, hence why I'd need to try it out for myself. I've already proposed alternative approaches to healing caps (basically, flat amount OR % of objective health, whichever is more) in the feedback thread. We'll see if anything comes of it.

For me, it's encouraging to see DE readdress old decisions with an eye towards how well they reflect modern-day Warframe. Even if not a lot comes of it, that's still a positive action.

 

34 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Compare the above to Nullifiers. It doesn't matter what your build is, what your abilities are. It's just "Nullifier = no". Dealing with the threat isn't a priority list of which effects you want back, it's "Killed Nullifier = yes". Hence, a binary gameplay influence. It's not dynamic or engaging, it's just a static, bland obstacle.

As I said - we may have to simply disagree here. I'm personally not a fan of excessive enemy variety and would rather prefer less of it at the same time. I'm not that bothered by Nullifiers being a "one size fits all" enemy of all kinds of abilities because that makes them simple. If I see a Nullifier, I kill that Nullifier without bothering to try and figure out exactly what kind of Nullifier I'm dealing with. Compare this with something like a Comba or a Scrambus. For one thing, I don't know what the difference between them is. Is it just the space roller skates? More to the point, though - I can never tell if the Scrambus I'm fighting is the kind that'll void my Scarab Armour, or the kind which will just scramble my map for 5 seconds. In general, I prefer to have fewer units with a more distinct, broad design over having a large number of similar-looking, partially redundant units. That very well may just be personal preference, but I tend to prefer the L4D approach to enemy design.

[TheLexiConArtist]

5 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

As I said - we may have to simply disagree here. I'm personally not a fan of excessive enemy variety and would rather prefer less of it at the same time. I'm not that bothered by Nullifiers being a "one size fits all" enemy of all kinds of abilities because that makes them simple. If I see a Nullifier, I kill that Nullifier without bothering to try and figure out exactly what kind of Nullifier I'm dealing with. Compare this with something like a Comba or a Scrambus. For one thing, I don't know what the difference between them is. Is it just the space roller skates? More to the point, though - I can never tell if the Scrambus I'm fighting is the kind that'll void my Scarab Armour, or the kind which will just scramble my map for 5 seconds. In general, I prefer to have fewer units with a more distinct, broad design over having a large number of similar-looking, partially redundant units. That very well may just be personal preference, but I tend to prefer the L4D approach to enemy design.

That's why I said distinguishable - making them convey their purpose so you can identify _{inhale, exhale and tranq} which ones you're invested into killing. Comba/Scrambos aren't as visually distinct from one another as a Nullifier is to a Comba, although the funny thing is that they literally embody the analogy of 'wearing different hats' when it comes to having a spread of different possible effects - imagine Nullifiers just wearing them all stacked on top of each other and you have a visual representation of the problem.

Maybe one of the distinct 'countermeasure units' could be a big, colourfully bright, chunky Moa type. Maybe one's a Tech with a big tesla coil backpack, or something. Then there's Combas with their brand of denial, and the current Nullifier design with an appropriately limited niche. Visual distinction, enabling dynamic priority decisions.
But you let them all group together, and your options are going to get limited to the down-and-dirty, hands-on approach until you pick some off.
Some could be tankier than others based on whether they should operate at range (protecting enemies) or assault the player's position (anti-buff, anti-object). Or they might be vulnerable in some different way based on what they don't deny - like ability-damage protection unit that might take double bullet damage, for example.

Lot of potential for diversity, I think.

As you've said there yourself - you just kill that nullifier. You know it's there, it's one unit that removes the game features, so you just poke it.