On "challenge" and "reductive combat"

[keikogi]

9 minutes ago, (XB1)TehChubbyDugan said:

It pains me that in the complaint threads (which I myself have also started and participated in.) there might be dozens of people all screaming at each other.  

In one of the only actual discussion threads I've seen on here lately, there's only a handful of people and it will probably go unnoticed by the devs.

Properly defining terms before engaging into a discussion prevents missunderstandings. So people are discussing the idea not the terms. 

Also the wall of text nature of the post and replies prevents someone with short fuse to engage on the conversation. So even on a fundamental disagreement people won´t start na unecessary fight. 

[LuckyCharm]

Seems like a well thought out thread and i agree with most of your points, the point I would like to raise though is that for ai changes to make them smater and more engaging they have to survive at least to be able to seek cover and return fire. However with the current game system it is pretty much an aoe check, ie "can we kill the enemies before they even see us" and most times the answer is yes, since we have weapons that can chain, aoe explode, shoot through walls, and abilities that can aoe maps with no line of sight. Ive had entire defense missions where ive sat for an hour and not been touched or even shot at because enemies werent even on screen when theyd died. 

At that point while youre slaughtering enemies by the thousands it almost feels like any possibility of improvement to enemy ai actually is negated by tge fact they cant see what theyre being hit by so cant react, even if theyre not being instantly killed by our sheer overpowering damage

[Wakata]

That's a well-made summary of combat in warframe. Its one of the main features of the game so it has a great impact on the players experience.

Let's say that DE will never do anything with combat specifically coz:

 - It's to much work and it would need a revision of enemies, movement, abilities, level design...

 - Half of the player base would go bananas

 

Do you think that eventual displeasure with game flow thanks to the state of combat might be solved by focusing on enhancing the rest of the game? I mean more intriguing mission design, more coop elements, more need for exploration.

 

I am asking about this coz I think that DE MIGHT be (wishful thinking) aware of that issue but they already decided to tackle it by expanding other systems in the game. Adding RJ, Squad link, those features are opening possibilities to make future mission content more engaging. Yes, I am aware that right now they are not doing much with those and that there is a possibility for those features to be forgotten like PvP, Open worlds, etc.

[Steel_Rook]

On 2020-04-08 at 6:08 PM, Teridax68 said:

When I played the Grendel missions, I was expecting the lack of mods to open up at least some more interesting gameplay, in spite of frustrations -- yet that wasn't the case. Most of my weapons were anemic, which wasn't fun or interesting, but at the end of the day, despite the lack of mods, despite the overstretched length of the missions, they weren't difficult to complete, just tedious. At the end of the day, there was still a way of cheesing the missions, and even without the cheese, the core combat wasn't especially challenging -- enemies mostly fought and died the same way, and there wasn't anything especially skilful one had to do to survive or defend the objectives.

That was my impression, as well. People talked up the Grendel mission to me as the first time they'd felt challenged, but my experience of it was predominantly dull. The game played exactly as it always had, except all my weapons were crap and miserable to use, and my Warframe died more often. That's it. I muscled my way through most of them by brute force. Needed help on the Defence mission, and the result was just using Frost + Trinity for constant bubble and energy. Same tactic as I'd use in any other Defence mission, except with the addition of Trinity to supply the energy for it. As I suspected, the Grendel missions turned out to be a gear check... Just for slightly different gear. In fact, thank you for bringing them up, because they're a perfect example of what I was concerned about. When our power is taken away and our stats debuffed, the only thing that changes is the game gets less fun. Everything plays the exact same way, but now everything is also harder. I know full well that I'm cheesing the Warframe every time I play, but taking away my cheese accomplishes nothing when the game's base combat design doesn't really offer any complexity to fall back on, and what complexity there is isn't really worth bothering with even then.

 

On 2020-04-08 at 6:08 PM, Teridax68 said:

Enemy design. There are only so many variations of "mook with a gun" one can have before combat starts to feel repetitive. Also worth bringing up in relation to parkour, but there is also virtually nothing to most enemies that typically encourages us to use our mobility, no weak points to target other than the head, or blind spots to run into. When DE does try to make an enemy more difficult, though, the results are often less than impressive, because the developers keep forgetting to make that difficulty interactive -- Bursas, Shield Lancers, and Thumpers do have specific defenses or weak spots that require the player to outmaneuver them, but can also turn on a dime, invalidating that gameplay. Nullifiers just flat-out remove our agency, and most bosses are a confused mess of invincibility mechanics that turn fights into more of a waiting game than anything else.

While I agree with the rest of your points, I feel this is one of the most important. Warframe's combat has a lot of systems complexity, but the existing enemy designs almost never make use of any of it. Even when they do use complexity, it's all too often mishandled. Grineer Thumpers are an objective lesson on how NOT to design a boss enemy, to the point that I feel like DE are deliberately trolling us. Designing a boss with a small weak point then making that boss jump around and move really quickly is already bad design right there. Putting the weak point on the boss' back AND making that boss spin in place so fast as to out-turn most players' ability to circle around it is just a $&*^ move, as far as I'm concerned. And it's not like they learned from that mistake. The Aerolyst boss has the exact same issue - a series of small weak points on a fast-moving flying enemy and next to zero window of opportunity to damage it before the weak points regrow. Both of those enemies are prime examples of how a misguided search for difficulty directly undermines that enemy's sense of challenge.

Thumpers aren't challenging. Aerolysts aren't challenging. They're cheap, and the best way to fight both of them is to find the special-case exception gear check which entirely circumvents their mechanics. At least the Aerolyst seems to have been improved in the latest Live patch, enforcing 10 seconds of downtime where it can be damaged before its cannisters regrow. It really was that simple - reward the players who play by the rules and engage with the gimmick with a vulnerable enemy. Make me feel smart for targeting my enemy's weakness and I'll do it again next time. Current enemy design almost overwhelmingly makes me feel dumb for bothering with the gimmick when it seems to waste my time more than it helps.

I personally feel that enemy design needs more than just to HAVE gimmicks if individual enemies are going to be challenging. More than that, their design needs to convince me that engaging with their gimmicks isn't just better but also more fun than trying to brute-force them. While exploiting a gimmick should obviously be more difficult than simply aiming for centre-mass and trading damage, it should still be within reason. The more difficult a gimmick is to play along with, the less inclined people will be to bother and thus the more reductive combat will become. There's nothing wrong with giving us obvious, easily-exploited weaknesses on our enemies. It doesn't make the game easier that the Nox has a large weak point on his front. On the contrary - it makes the game harder because I'm almost always going to want to aim for that weak point, which is harder to pull off than hitting him with Dessication and executing him 15 times in a row. Giving enemies easily exploited weak points makes them harder because we're more inclined to play along and actually go for the skill shots.

And weak points are just one way to go. There are so many other mechanics that can be exploited. For instance, some enemies might have a minimum range to their guns. Get up close and their have to switch to weak melee. Some enemies, like you said, may have blind spots and a slow turning radius, such that players can circle around behind them where they can't be shot. Some enemies might have pre-aimed telegraphed attacks that players can get out of the way of, both in the "AoE marker on the ground" variety and in the "cone of death" variety. Some enemies could have slow-moving projectiles which can be shot out of the air or redirected back at them (as another posted pointed out). Some enemies could maybe be staggered or have their abilities denied by shooting their weapons or ammo. Hell, even something as simple as enabling friendly fire between enemies of the same faction would go a long way. They might not damage each other much, but at least they'll knock each other around some.

While I fully agree that balance is important, more complex enemy designs with clear telegraphs and lenient tolerances is absolutely essential for any sense of challenge, I think. Even if we can't easily overpower our enemies, being able to outsmart them and still kill them just as easily retains the power fantasy perfectly fine.

 

On 2020-04-08 at 6:08 PM, Teridax68 said:

As for mobility, I don't quite agree with the core criticism: yes, choosing to parkour vs. stay put isn't an incredibly deep choice, but that's fine, because I don't think parkour in general should be about presenting the player with deliberative problems, so much as it should be about making the player react and spontaneously use parkour and the environment to their advantage. As such, parkouring at the right moment to dodge could be fine... if it worked. It doesn't, because enemy hitscan weapons and RNG aim means they can still hit and damage us when we do try to use our parkour for evasion.

I may have phrased my original post a bit poorly, because I think we agree here. My thoughts are certainly along the same lines. I do believe that parkour in combat should have a strategic use, specifically in taking advantage of terrain where applicable. However, I'd be perfectly fine with using it predominantly to dodge enemy fire and manoeuvre around larger enemies. As you point out and as I outlined above, however - that rarely seems to be the case. Most enemies are hitscan or close enough to it, most AoEs aren't really telegraphed and the game has a tendency to spam too many "priority attacks" at us to really react to. I would love it if we got to use our superior mobility to consistently dodge the enemy's heavy weapons and rip them up from behind while they reload. I'd love for all enemies to be slow to turn around, so they lose sight of us for a brief moment if we happen to jump over their heads or run past them. We are space ninja wizards, at the end of the day. We should win fights by superior mobility at least to equal extent as by superior firepower, I think.

And for the record - I'm not necessarily asking for 90s Quake style of constant bullet jumping and firing rockets at the ground. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with standing in place and aiming a sniper shot, or bracing yourself before unleashing heavy machinegun fire. I don't necessarily want to enforce fighting WHILE bullet jumping. In my view, it's perfectly fine to allow players to alternate. Make us jump out of the way of big attacks, but give us a few moments on the ground where we can fire before jumping again. If people want to fire while tumbling or gliding through the air then let them, but there are plenty of designs which can still allow us to land and fight a bit in-between manoeuvres. I think DE can do better here.

 

On 2020-04-08 at 6:08 PM, Teridax68 said:

Where I do agree mobility is reductive, however, is in the way it lets us ignore all of gameplay when going to a mission objective: for missions like Capture, Spy, Sabotage, and the like that require us to go to an objective to make the mission advance, regardless of enemies, parkour basically enables us to bypass every enemy we encounter. [...] As a result, missions are reduced to one big sequence of salmon-jumping from spawn to extraction, punctuated by the occasional mission objective. There are a lot of factors that play into this, but the core problem I think is that currently there is no incentive to engage in combat when one doesn't care for their loot or Affinity, and no real consequences for barrelling down a tileset while ignoring the enemy and their actions.

You are absolutely correct. It seems that Warframe was originally designed a slow military shooter within a dungeon crawler setting, which people have subsequently almost entirely short-circuited predominantly due to reductive design. However, I want to take this opportunity to back up a little bit and draw a distinction that's been on my mind all throughout this thread: "Endless vs. Non-endless." By and large, Warframe is actually two games in one. I don't know how much of this was part of the original design and how much of it is the game adapting to fit its players, but there are two discrete genres of games here:

Non-endless missions almost always take the form of procedurally-generated dungeon crawler maps in the vein of Diablo, the Division, even City of Heroes. These missions seem designed with an eye towards exploration, slowly clearing the map of enemies, shutting down alarms when they're triggered and basically taking your time. Endless missions, by contrast, take the form of a modern horde shooter with a focus on killing infinitely respawning enemies within a single large, open-ended location while optionally doing other objectives at the same time. This is more in the vein of games like Payday 2, L4D2 or Space Marine Exterminatus. Non-endless missions are designed around method, Endless missions are designed around action.

These two genres of games sharing the same roof in Warframe are, in my experience at least, fundamentally NOT the same game in anything but superficial resemblance. They don't benefit from the same builds, the same playstyles or even the same mentality. Nidus, Atlas, Rhino, Hyldrin - these all work OK in non-endless missions, but REALLY come into their own in Endless ones where enemies come out of the woodwork in massive numbers. By contrast, the likes of Inaros, Trinity, the new Ember, maybe even Mesa - they work just fine with the smaller scale and sparser encounters because. They don't need lots of enemies to build meter off of, they don't have meters which constantly drain unless refilled. Sure, maybe you disagree on the specifics, but I feel it's this dichotomy which lies at the heart of the "speedrunning issue" you outlined above.

Simply put, most people play non-endless missions as though they were endless and Warframe does absolutely nothing to change that, or even suggest a different intent. It makes sense to rush through endless missions because they player is constantly harassed by respawning enemies in large numbers and ever-increasing levels. That's the nature of their design. It doesn't make as much sense to rush through non-endless missions because... Well, you're kind of rushing past all the actual content. Now, that might be content an individual speed-runner doesn't care for, which is fair enough. However, I'd argue that the game shouldn't be pushing players who don't enjoy exploration into exploration-heavy missions, and should do a better job of actually rewarding players who do enjoy exploration for playing along.

I don't think you're ever going to stop players from salmon-flopping their way through non-endless missions if that's what they want to do. However, I feel DE could do a better job of steering those people away from those missions while simultaneously shifting more of those missions' rewards into exploration rather than lumping it all in the end-of-mission reward. There's this idea that all Warframe players want to run is 5-minute missions over and over again. I'd argue there's a marker for a slower, more deliberate, less intense experience in the game, however - a market which is currently severely underserved. The content for it exists, but it's SO badly tied into the progression system that even diehard exploration fans like myself eventually give up out of frustration.

In short, I believe that treating non-endless missions as though they were endless missions limited to one wave is a mistake. Warframe has enough content to go around for everybody. I think it has enough room for a few mission types which spread their rewards across lockers and containers and collectables and bonus objectives and side objectives and so on. There should be enough endless missions for those who want the rush of flying from fight to fight to end without having to sacrifice the slower, more methodical missions for those of us who enjoy turning over all the boxes and looking in all the dead ends. We just need a reward and progression system which fits that design.

 

19 hours ago, keikogi said:

A few minor changes to mobility

• Roll is replaced with a short dash , the dash has a few properties
• Dashing into melee attacks parries them (parry stun the enemy them a after image of your frame strikes them )
• Dashing into a explosive projectile ( any missile or ball of energy ) deflects it.
• Dashing backwards has increased range
• Melee striking during the dash increase it´s range and striking enemies on its path (no longer can parry ).
• Slide attacks no longer exist ( the dash attack replaces it )
• If no melee weapon was equipped the Warframe will use their fists.
• Blocking works as is

Bit off-topic, but I wanted to comment on it anyway. While I dearly love Warframe's Parkour system, I feel it's still substantially more complex than it needs to be, largely due to the presence of a lot of redundant mechanics. For instance, why do we have both a slide and a dodge-roll? While they might work differently mechanically, they do essentially the same thing. As such, I'm in full agreement with getting rid of both the slide and the roll and replacing both of them with a single anime slide-dash. Dash-jump to bullet jump, or just dash to dodge. If you want to be really fancy, hold dash to continuously slide standing up. The same goes for Sprint, actually. The difference in run speed is so minor it might as well not even exist. Why not just up everyone's run speed a little (since run has generally better animations than sprint) and then replace sprint with a slower version of Gauss' Mag Rush? That way, sprinting can be used to travel long distances (hopefully in place of the absolutely silly salmon-flopping we currently do) but be awkward for small-scale navigation while running can be used in combat. This actually ties into what I said about Railjack in my previous post, as well - its mobility system is just far too overly-complicated for what gets used the majority of the time.

Cutting Parkour complexity down a bit would both free up a button or two on console controllers and generally simplify the system a little bit, possibly making it more accessible to newer or less dexterous players.

 

22 hours ago, UnderRevision said:

Strong agreement on the enemy design issues.  I would love to see those ground markings from the Corpus mortars ported over to the Grineer mortars, and removing bombard homing might help.  Even if you could just break the lock by bullet jumping it'd be more interesting.  Add in a visual cue that you're been locked onto, perhaps, like with Ballistas. 

Generally speaking, I prefer to avoid homing attacks against players. Being able to break the lock certainly helps and you're right - it would make for more challenging gameplay. However, I tend to find that systems like that end up with a abstract sort of complexity. You're not reacting to an enemy in the map firing a missile at you, you're reacting to a UI indicator and hitting a button to make it go away. Personally, I find that dumbfire weapons have a bit more "physicality" to them, since you're reacting to something in game space - even if it's just a coloured circle. Circles on the ground, cones in the air, large glowing projectiles and so on are still objects which exist outside your UI and in the "real world" of the game. When it comes to Bombards, for instance, I would like for them to have a wind-up with some associated audio and visual indicator alerting you that they're about to fire, followed by them shooting one or more slow-moving rockets with a bright exhaust visible at a glance. You hear the sound, you turn around to spot the Bombard, you either shoot him or get out of the way. Or you panic and jump "somewhere, anywhere but here." Bonus points if the Bombard will track you WHILE aiming, but the rockets themselves are still dumbfire.

And yes, this can get chaotic. The Division 2 has such indicators and it does sometimes get overwhelming with two guys lobbing grenades, two ladies constantly spawning explosive drones and a Boston Dynamics Big Dog firing a triple-shot grenade launcher all at the same time while an off-site mortar drops every so often. It's like an 80s disco of death. In those cases, though, you disengage, you gain some distance, you break sight and try another angle. However, an approach to design like that means you're not likely to get AoEd to death before you realise you're even being fired upon.

 

22 hours ago, UnderRevision said:

Avionics are a particular gripe of mine.  I've seen comparisons to starter warframes, but I don't think that comparison holds water.

I don't want to get too far into Railjack design since that's a massive topic on its own, but I did want to comment on this. Broadly speaking, I agree. Railjacks are not like Starter Warframes. Low-level Warframe is DESIGNED for starter frames and S#&$ weapons. In fact, the game is predominantly easy. Even low-level Railjack missions are designed for strong Railjacks AND strong Warframes. If you wanted a comparison, the starter Sigma Railjack is about equivalent to your Operator just after The War Within. That is to say, it sucks ass, it barely functions and it's going to need a lot of grind and progression to get something even remotely passable out of it. Sure, it might be massively powerful at the end of its progression path, but it's absolutely abominable at the start.

 

16 hours ago, (XB1)TehChubbyDugan said:

It pains me that in the complaint threads (which I myself have also started and participated in.) there might be dozens of people all screaming at each other. In one of the only actual discussion threads I've seen on here lately, there's only a handful of people and it will probably go unnoticed by the devs.

Well, we do what we can. I don't really post on these forums with the expectation of changing DE's minds, so much as in the hope of starting or participating in meaningful discussions. If we can hammer out an idea here or there or put words to our feelings, then it was worth the work. These sorts of discussions do have at least some impact, since the ideas we throw around do crop up in other threads every so often. Even if nothing comes out of this particular thread, the conversation itself gives me a bit more clarity in how to approach future discussions. Discourse is still worth having as long as we can build on it eventually 🙂

[Steel_Rook]

Oh! I missed a few posts which got put on the next page 🙂

 

15 hours ago, LuckyCharm said:

Seems like a well thought out thread and i agree with most of your points, the point I would like to raise though is that for ai changes to make them smater and more engaging they have to survive at least to be able to seek cover and return fire. However with the current game system it is pretty much an aoe check, ie "can we kill the enemies before they even see us" and most times the answer is yes, since we have weapons that can chain, aoe explode, shoot through walls, and abilities that can aoe maps with no line of sight. Ive had entire defense missions where ive sat for an hour and not been touched or even shot at because enemies werent even on screen when theyd died. 

This is true. @Teridax68 covered this earlier in the thread, and it's a fair point to make. While simply tweaking numbers isn't likely to make the game more challenging, it is still necessary in order for challenge to even exist. As long as we can one-shot enemies without even being fully aware that they even exist, then it kind of doesn't matter how complex their design is. I'd go one further and say the same applies in reverse. I'm never going to care about how many AoE indicators are under me if no amount of enemy AoE can so much as budge my health. At this point, I feel like we as players need to eat some nerfs across the board, but NOT BEFORE some amount of complexity is added to the game that we can fall back on in place of our high stats.

And mind you, all of the above doesn't necessarily need to apply to ALL enemies. I personally feel that we can get away with most enemies being just as squishy as they are now, if not more so, with only a small handful of enemies being individually strong and worth our full attention. A majority of enemies can remain the dumb, helpless cannon fodder they are now. They're still going to serve a role in adding noise and distracting us from the real threats, kind of like a speed bump that can still trip us up if we're not watching our feet.

 

4 hours ago, Wakata said:

I am asking about this coz I think that DE MIGHT be (wishful thinking) aware of that issue but they already decided to tackle it by expanding other systems in the game. Adding RJ, Squad link, those features are opening possibilities to make future mission content more engaging. Yes, I am aware that right now they are not doing much with those and that there is a possibility for those features to be forgotten like PvP, Open worlds, etc.

Hmm... Yes and no, leaning towards no. I'm generally fairly optimistic about Railjack (sometimes to the extent of naivete), but I don't think it'll fix everything. Even if Railjack eventually develops into something amazing, content-rich and well-integrated into the rest of the game, we're going to have to address the game's fundamental underlying issues of reductive combat. Because honestly, even Railjack's own combat system and mission objectives are themselves somewhat reductive. I mostly skimmed @UnderRevision's post on the matter in my previous reply, but Railjack already has similar issues to ground combat. While a lot of complexity exists there in theory, most of it is kind of superfluous - or worse, actual busywork.

With all of that said, though - I don't think it's all doom and gloom. Warframe Revised more than any other recent update gives me hope. I like to think that DE faced a reality check in 2019 - an understanding that they can't subsist on promises, high-concept undeliverables and recycled Primed content. While not everyone's happy about it, Warframe Revised was a MASSIVE step in the right direction, tackling very old and very far-reaching issues. They basically scrapped their old Status system and replaced it with an almost brand new one. That alone is a MASSIVE change with broad implications, on a scale I didn't think Warframe still had in it. While I don't expect all of what I'm proposing to actually happen, I do hope we'll see a major enemy faction redesign at some point. Warframe already has most if not all of the systems needed for the extra complexity that myself and others are proposing. A lot of it can happen without the need for core systems changes, as well. The major stumbling block, however, is the sheer amount of legacy content which would need to be re-touched. That's a massive amount of work, to be sure, but Digital Extremes is a large studio.

They're already well on the way to redesigning all the cramped old tilesets into newer, more Parkour-friendly ones, and that in itself is significant. We need a similar approach to enemies, even if it's one faction or even one subfaction at a time. For as much as I dislike the final design of the Terra Corpus in principle, it still goes to show what can be done to existing factions with enough time and enough perseverance. I might be a bit overly-optimistic here, but I still think that DE can do right by Warframe, even now.

[keikogi]

45 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

While I agree with the rest of your points, I feel this is one of the most important. Warframe's combat has a lot of systems complexity, but the existing enemy designs almost never make use of any of it. Even when they do use complexity, it's all too often mishandled. Grineer Thumpers are an objective lesson on how NOT to design a boss enemy, to the point that I feel like DE are deliberately trolling us. Designing a boss with a small weak point then making that boss jump around and move really quickly is already bad design right there. Putting the weak point on the boss' back AND making that boss spin in place so fast as to out-turn most players' ability to circle around it is just a $&*^ move, as far as I'm concerned. And it's not like they learned from that mistake. The Aerolyst boss has the exact same issue - a series of small weak points on a fast-moving flying enemy and next to zero window of opportunity to damage it before the weak points regrow. Both of those enemies are prime examples of how a misguided search for difficulty directly undermines that enemy's sense of challenge.

Thumpers aren't challenging. Aerolysts aren't challenging. They're cheap, and the best way to fight both of them is to find the special-case exception gear check which entirely circumvents their mechanics. At least the Aerolyst seems to have been improved in the latest Live patch, enforcing 10 seconds of downtime where it can be damaged before its cannisters regrow. It really was that simple - reward the players who play by the rules and engage with the gimmick with a vulnerable enemy. Make me feel smart for targeting my enemy's weakness and I'll do it again next time. Current enemy design almost overwhelmingly makes me feel dumb for bothering with the gimmick when it seems to waste my time more than it helps.

Might be just a miss use of data. If DE measures the time to kill of na enemy , the highest ttk would be of the obnoxious time gated higly mobility small weak spots are the higest time to kill, giving the ilusion they are challeging. It is more of case of they take long to kill because they dont have a proper window of vunreablity and have way to much EHP for a wakspot based enemy, 

Also DE is yet to experimente with enemies with a mechanic , like you have to parry to get a fast kill , or if you dodge their combo you get a window to do a lot of damage or even na enemy with destruble parts ( a good one not the armless sentoents stading around , something like you destroy their weapon they charge you ). 

52 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I may have phrased my original post a bit poorly, because I think we agree here. My thoughts are certainly along the same lines. I do believe that parkour in combat should have a strategic use, specifically in taking advantage of terrain where applicable. However, I'd be perfectly fine with using it predominantly to dodge enemy fire and manoeuvre around larger enemies. As you point out and as I outlined above, however - that rarely seems to be the case. Most enemies are hitscan or close enough to it, most AoEs aren't really telegraphed and the game has a tendency to spam too many "priority attacks" at us to really react to. I would love it if we got to use our superior mobility to consistently dodge the enemy's heavy weapons and rip them up from behind while they reload. I'd love for all enemies to be slow to turn around, so they lose sight of us for a brief moment if we happen to jump over their heads or run past them. We are space ninja wizards, at the end of the day. We should win fights by superior mobility at least to equal extent as by superior firepower, I think.

kinda of what I was trying to achive with the mobility changes. A lot of enemy redesing would be necessary but I think the parry , dodge , block triade should be the warframe´s way of avoiding damage. 

54 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Bit off-topic, but I wanted to comment on it anyway. While I dearly love Warframe's Parkour system, I feel it's still substantially more complex than it needs to be, largely due to the presence of a lot of redundant mechanics. For instance, why do we have both a slide and a dodge-roll? While they might work differently mechanically, they do essentially the same thing. As such, I'm in full agreement with getting rid of both the slide and the roll and replacing both of them with a single anime slide-dash. Dash-jump to bullet jump, or just dash to dodge. If you want to be really fancy, hold dash to continuously slide standing up. The same goes for Sprint, actually. The difference in run speed is so minor it might as well not even exist. Why not just up everyone's run speed a little (since run has generally better animations than sprint) and then replace sprint with a slower version of Gauss' Mag Rush? That way, sprinting can be used to travel long distances (hopefully in place of the absolutely silly salmon-flopping we currently do) but be awkward for small-scale navigation while running can be used in combat. This actually ties into what I said about Railjack in my previous post, as well - its mobility system is just far too overly-complicated for what gets used the majority of the time.

I would guess that if we had "super Sprint " people would just allow people to realize how much "empy space " there is on the mission. I think that that shift control space reapetively distacts people from notcing how effectively empy the map is. Did not even touch on the Sprint because it not just a combat thing it also a transversal thing. Yes faster Sprint would be good for both combat and mobility. Kind of touched on the side topic because mobility and its interction with enemi should be a huge part of warframe combat desing 

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Cutting Parkour complexity down a bit would both free up a button or two on console controllers and generally simplify the system a little bit, possibly making it more accessible to newer or less dexterous players.

also reduces the chance of damage to tendons due to repetive imput  

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

on't want to get too far into Railjack design since that's a massive topic on its own, but I did want to comment on this. Broadly speaking, I agree. Railjacks are not like Starter Warframes. Low-level Warframe is DESIGNED for starter frames and S#&$ weapons. In fact, the game is predominantly easy. Even low-level Railjack missions are designed for strong Railjacks AND strong Warframes. If you wanted a comparison, the starter Sigma Railjack is about equivalent to your Operator just after The War Within. That is to say, it sucks ass, it barely functions and it's going to need a lot of grind and progression to get something even remotely passable out of it. Sure, it might be massively powerful at the end of its progression path, but it's absolutely abominable at the star

Also the reward struture of railjack makes the best way ot engage with the system is to piggyback on other people Railjack until you reach veil próxima, farm tier 3 parts and them go from basic railjack to a fully upgraded one avoiding like the plage engaging with half of the progression ( the part of where you build parts to slowly ) 

[MysteryPig]

I think something that could help this reductivity a lot is an eximus redesign. The only ones I find meaningful are the infested ancient eximi, because they have a little more staying power than the others. Grineer and corpus eximi, though, die too fast, and as a whole they're not dangerous enough. I don't think they should be super high-health minibosses, though; that would go against the current feel of combat, which I like.

Instead, give eximi some attacks which:

• present a serious threat to any player, maybe by doing straight health damage, or disabling abilities, or some other effect which is difficult to tank
• are easily visible and slow moving, like the flame eximus wave
• are dodgable
• high cooldown, but trigger early, so they can be relevant before getting annihilated by plasmor fire.

Also, bump their size scaling up another notch, they aren't quite b i g enough.

I think in the end they should be more like nulliifiers, the only enemy in Warframe that I feel really requires the player to change pace to deal with. They should still be vulnerable to high damage weapons though, as every other enemy in the game seems to be drawing players towards lots of bullets or AoE damage, and that adds to the reduction. The best performing weapons in the game are more often just those that hit multiple targets, not those that would be statistically better.

Also, other "high ranking muckity-mucks" still feel too fragile and undifferentiated from other enemies. There are some enemies which feel distinguished from combat, mostly nullifiers, heavy gunners, bursas, and noxes, all of which I really enjoy. Others I can tell apart visually, like scrambuses, infested enemies, and ghouls, but in the end are just another bowling pin for whatever plasma ball I'm throwing. Bombards and napalms and such sometimes catch my attention by blasting me with a missile but usually aren't that interesting. In the end, I think Warframe just needs more important targets, ones that are worth paying attention to and taking out before the others. Once again, I don't think this means giving them higher EHP, because that's just not the way this game feels. Instead, give them visual distinction and slow moving, dodgable attacks that can stand out among all the bright energy colors, so that we can easily notice and direct attention to them for a split second.

[UnderRevision]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

I don't want to get too far into Railjack design since that's a massive topic on its own

Fair enough.  I'd say your comparison to operators is pretty on point, with the exception that while the focus grind is long and arduous, it's at least not based on getting RNG drops.

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Generally speaking, I prefer to avoid homing attacks against players. Being able to break the lock certainly helps and you're right - it would make for more challenging gameplay. However, I tend to find that systems like that end up with a abstract sort of complexity. You're not reacting to an enemy in the map firing a missile at you, you're reacting to a UI indicator and hitting a button to make it go away. Personally, I find that dumbfire weapons have a bit more "physicality" to them, since you're reacting to something in game space - even if it's just a coloured circle. Circles on the ground, cones in the air, large glowing projectiles and so on are still objects which exist outside your UI and in the "real world" of the game. When it comes to Bombards, for instance, I would like for them to have a wind-up with some associated audio and visual indicator alerting you that they're about to fire, followed by them shooting one or more slow-moving rockets with a bright exhaust visible at a glance. You hear the sound, you turn around to spot the Bombard, you either shoot him or get out of the way. Or you panic and jump "somewhere, anywhere but here." Bonus points if the Bombard will track you WHILE aiming, but the rockets themselves are still dumbfire.

You raise a very good point there about the "reacting to a UI indicator" vs physicality.  Now that I think about it, I generally just see a Ballista laser sight and move rather than picking them out of the crowd.  For snipers I still think that's a fair trade off because they lack any of the fireworks that a rocket launcher has.  Trying to scan the horizon for a three-pixel-tall figure shooting a bullet you can't see to track back isn't particularly fun.

You know, the Ogris we get to use is actually more like what you describe for Bombards than the version they use.  We get a brief charge, then launch a single dumbfire rocket.  Amp up the charge sound for the enemy version and maybe put a little more flame into their exhaust trail, give it a little more speed to make up for the loss of homing, and I think that'd pretty much do it.  Maybe put a little more oomph into the explosion sound to make it a little more punchy and pop out of the general chaos of combat for that extra audio cue, but that might be nitpicky on my part.

1 minute ago, MysteryPig said:

I think something that could help this reductivity a lot is an eximus redesign. The only ones I find meaningful are the infested ancient eximi, because they have a little more staying power than the others. Grineer and corpus eximi, though, die too fast, and as a whole they're not dangerous enough. I don't think they should be super high-health minibosses, though; that would go against the current feel of combat, which I like.

I agree that making them just bigger bags of health would not be the way to go on that, especially any that drain energy.  A lot of my deaths are down to having all my energy drained and being unable to kill the source of the drain without my abilities before I get overwhelmed, which feels a little like a cheap shot from the game.

 

8 minutes ago, MysteryPig said:

Instead, give eximi some attacks which:

• present a serious threat to any player, maybe by doing straight health damage, or disabling abilities, or some other effect which is difficult to tank
• are easily visible and slow moving, like the flame eximus wave
• are dodgable
• high cooldown, but trigger early, so they can be relevant before getting annihilated by plasmor fire.

Also, bump their size scaling up another notch, they aren't quite b i g enough.

Another avenue might be to give them access to some of their faction weapons that we don't see the enemy use too often.  Some of them are pretty flashy and dangerous.  I don't think any Corpus use the Opticor outside of the Index.  They might require some tuning to give them the desired telegraphing, though.

[MysteryPig]

2 minutes ago, UnderRevision said:

Amp up the charge sound for the enemy version and maybe put a little more flame into their exhaust trail, give it a little more speed to make up for the loss of homing, and I think that'd pretty much do it.  Maybe put a little more oomph into the explosion sound to make it a little more punchy and pop out of the general chaos of combat for that extra audio cue, but that might be nitpicky on my part.

I think there's a little bit of a problem in this game with Warframe abilities being so bright, loud, and overwhelmingly present that it reduces enemy attacks to background noise. Even some of the Lich abilities were difficult to notice or react to. This is magnified by the fact that enemies usually die before attacking, don't attack because you're invisible, or don't matter when they atttack because you have 200k iron skin or 95% damage reduction. It's either that, or they hit you during a weak moment and you melt under the continuous fire from other areas. I think there need to be more attacks that present a specific danger, like status effects or nullification, because things that Hit Hard or are Big and Bright are the only things that will still catch the player's attention.

[UnderRevision]

6 minutes ago, MysteryPig said:

I think there's a little bit of a problem in this game with Warframe abilities being so bright, loud, and overwhelmingly present that it reduces enemy attacks to background noise. Even some of the Lich abilities were difficult to notice or react to. This is magnified by the fact that enemies usually die before attacking, don't attack because you're invisible, or don't matter when they atttack because you have 200k iron skin or 95% damage reduction. It's either that, or they hit you during a weak moment and you melt under the continuous fire from other areas. I think there need to be more attacks that present a specific danger, like status effects or nullification, because things that Hit Hard or are Big and Bright are the only things that will still catch the player's attention.

This can vary pretty widely on which frame the player is using at any given moment.  Some frames are a lot flashier than others.  The problem with things like status effects is that they have to rise above the noise as well, or else you can pick one up and not realize it until it gets you killed.  Consider, for example, all the calls for enemies to have visible cues that they're draining your energy away.

[Steel_Rook]

21 hours ago, UnderRevision said:

You raise a very good point there about the "reacting to a UI indicator" vs physicality.  Now that I think about it, I generally just see a Ballista laser sight and move rather than picking them out of the crowd.  For snipers I still think that's a fair trade off because they lack any of the fireworks that a rocket launcher has.  Trying to scan the horizon for a three-pixel-tall figure shooting a bullet you can't see to track back isn't particularly fun.

Honestly, I'd say that reacting to a Ballista's laser sight still has physicality to it. Even if you don't spot the Ballista in general (if just because they look like Heavy Gunners), you're still reacting to an object in the world, not an icon in your UI. Similarly, a Bombard could charge up their rocket launcher for a second or two, play a loud sound and draw either a line or a cylinder of where the rocket will go once fired. A Napalm could, instead, draw a circle on the ground for where they plan to shoot a Burn Cloud, charge up their shot with a loud hiss building up air pressure, then set that area on fire. In fact, you can probably make their flame AoE substantially larger at the cost of making them shoot fewer of those with more of a reload. Heavy Gunners could, for instance, brace themselves and spool up their guns while displaying a cone on the ground, then unleash devastating sweeping fire across it. Again - I'm speaking off the top of my head, but that's the direction I'd go with.

Basically, do three things: Give the player an audio-visual warning than an attack is coming and tell the player where it's going to hit. Wind the attack up for 1-2 seconds, fire the attack, then go into a short reload and maybe a cooldown. Of course, you could potentially still give each individual enemy a more "regular" attack that they could do in the meantime. A Heavy Gunner could fire in shorter bursts, a Bombard can fire micromissiles while their big shot is recharging, Napalms could fire short-range flame jets, etc. Sure, give them something to do while their abilities are recharging, just ensure that they don't hit that much harder than a Common enemy outside of their big hits. That way, you encourage players to scan the crowd for important enemies who will stand out due to their windup, to watch their actual character for indicators for an incoming AoE, and to NOT just stare at their own health/energy bars or the health bar of whatever enemy they happen to be shooting at.

To go back to The Division 2, I spend most of my time scanning the battlefield for enemies and trying to spot what they're doing. If someone yells "Drones out!" I immediately look around trying to shoot them out of the air. Save myself, maybe even damage their owner. If someone yells "Deploying airburst!" I just run. Don't even need to know who shot it or where it's coming from, I need to not be there. If an enemy yells "I'm flanking around the side!" I immediately start looking around, because it usually means I'm in the S#&$, or just about to be. Yes, I do spend some amount of time checking out icons, but they're usually the icons over enemies' heads telling me what I'm shooting at and what that enemy is actually doing right now. And even then, you have the likes of the Boston Dynamics big dogs with sniper rifles. They shine a red light while aiming, then briefly shine a white light before firing their .50 cal sniper rifle. I know that I can shoot them when the red light is on, but I need to break sight as soon as the white light pops up.

Obviously, this design isn't directly applicable to Warframe due to this game's Horde Shooter design, but the fundamental underpinning principles still apply. You can hit players with super-cheesy overpowered attacks as long as you give them enough warning to dodge, block or interrupt them. You can throw ridiculous bullet sponges at enemies as long as there are clever or at least special ways to circumvent most of their health. You throw excessively complex enemies at players as long as you budget those and pad the fight with less complex, less difficult enemies. The primary issue with Warframe's combat right now is that it feels like a shooting gallery. I see silhouettes, I shoot at them and rarely do I ever stop to think what it is that I just shot, nor do any kind of target priority. There's nothing inherent in Warframe's approach to highly-mobile horde shooter design which requires it to be this reductive.

 

21 hours ago, MysteryPig said:

I think there's a little bit of a problem in this game with Warframe abilities being so bright, loud, and overwhelmingly present that it reduces enemy attacks to background noise. Even some of the Lich abilities were difficult to notice or react to. This is magnified by the fact that enemies usually die before attacking, don't attack because you're invisible, or don't matter when they atttack because you have 200k iron skin or 95% damage reduction. It's either that, or they hit you during a weak moment and you melt under the continuous fire from other areas. I think there need to be more attacks that present a specific danger, like status effects or nullification, because things that Hit Hard or are Big and Bright are the only things that will still catch the player's attention.

That's definitely a problem, yes, and a pretty significant one when it comes to adding mechanical complexity to enemies. Most of what I've suggested so far has relied on audio and visual cues, which do tend to get drowned out a lot in the din of Warframe combat. I've proposed a more rigid differentiation between Common and Uncommon enemies in the past, which I feel could help address this problem. If we ensure that Common enemies themselves are simple in terms of mechanics and basic in terms of audio and visual "noise," then that should help the actually meaningful Special enemies stand out more. For instance, I'd take away the voice lines from all of the Grineer Commons. Sure, while "Ket Clem!" is funny every so often, it adds nothing to gameplay and actually drowns out important other sound effects.

Instead, go the route of the Nox. You ALWAYS know that a Nox is on the field because their distinct voice is unmistakable, even at a distance. Moreover, their gun has a sound of its own so you always know when a Nox is shooting. Break their glass and a loud shatter sound plays for everyone in ear shot. Even if you never see the Nox, you can usually track what he's doing just by the sounds he makes. Give that level of distinct sound package to all of the Special enemies. Give Bombards a deep, growly voice and have them shout a foreign-language threat just before he starts charging his big rocket launcher. Give the rocket launcher itself some kind of obvious jet engine wind-up sound before it fires so even people not looking directly at the Bombard know that's charging up. Maybe give the Napalm a raspy, smoker's voice and some kind of loud wheezing laugh just before he charges up a wide area incendiary shot.

There's a lot to be said about toning down the effects of Warframe abilities. I've played a mission from inside a Frost Snowglobe surrounded by a Gaara Glass Wall. I couldn't see S#&$ and ended up firing blind most of the time. There are fixed which can be done there. However, even with bright and blinding player effects, a unique enough sound package can still do a lot of the heavy lifting. As long as Specials and their distinct Special attacks are rare enough that they don't get spammed constantly (and that's going to require a lot of work all its own), then players can learn to respond to distinct, memorable sound effects. To go back to The Division 2, I can hear that god damn beeping sound from an approaching exploding drone or RC car in my sleep by this point. I've started instinctively rolling around away from it like a cat seeing a cucumber for the first time, which to me speaks to pretty dang good game design 🙂 You can do a lot with sound.

 

22 hours ago, MysteryPig said:

I think something that could help this reductivity a lot is an eximus redesign. The only ones I find meaningful are the infested ancient eximi, because they have a little more staying power than the others. Grineer and corpus eximi, though, die too fast, and as a whole they're not dangerous enough. I don't think they should be super high-health minibosses, though; that would go against the current feel of combat, which I like.

I personally feel the very concept of the Eximus enemy is the wrong way to go. I could maybe understand their presence in Warframe's early years when the game didn't have a lot of enemy variety - tagging some enemies as being more powerful could fill the role of a miniboss or a "Special" enemy from other game. By this point, though, I feel it's high time we scrapped that entire system and just designed new enemy units to hold the Eximus title. I agree with you in principle that Eximus units ought to be the equivalent of minibosses - I would just go one further. I feel Eximus units should have unique designs all their own, rather than being slapped onto a random Bombard or Nullifier. I absolutely do believe that Eximus units should be larger, tougher and more dangerous than their regular counterparts, but I also believe they would benefit from having their own holistic designs.

I don't necessarily like the Infested Eximus units largely because they have TERRIBLE player feedback, often being hard to tell apart from regular units featuring abilities which are hard to read. I mean... What is a Sanguine Eximus and what does it do? I still don't know, even to this day. However, an Infested Caustic Eximus is always a variety of a Toxic Ancient with an additional ability - a toxic damage aura. OK, great, but why couldn't that have been an entirely new unit all its own? DE recently added those new Infested enemies from the Railjack trailers. Use that character model, give it the Toxic aura and a few toxic ability and you have a new boss-like enemy. And that's just off the top of my head.

Eximus units have the potential to be straight-up bosses in Warframe. I think we're past the point where the game is so desperate for enemy variety that pallet-swapped enemies are needed. More than that, I think we're at a point in the game's development where we can justify creating these larger, more complex, more unique boss enemies even if we're only ever going to see them very infrequently.

Part of why I find Warframe's combat to be as reductive as it is right now is exactly BECAUSE it throws dozens upon dozens of different enemy types at me in almost equal measure. Eventually I start having trouble telling them apart, keeping their gimmicks straight or really even caring about what it is that I'm shooting at. It's all a bag of HP, it's all killed by shooting it in the head a lot, and I find myself overwhelmed by variety too much to care about any individual enemy's own design. By reducing enemy variety, it's possible to push the importance of certain enemies up while pushing their presence down, to the point where calling them out in chat actually becomes worthwhile. There's no point in calling out an Eximus right now, because chances are there are five of 'em on-screen and nobody cares. Make them into bosses, make them rare, announce their presence with either a radio call from our Handler or just a sound cue of some kind and we may start caring to tell them apart.

 

I'm... Genuinely surprised I managed to string that post together with the appearance of a continuous narrative 🙂

[UnderRevision]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Basically, do three things: Give the player an audio-visual warning than an attack is coming and tell the player where it's going to hit. Wind the attack up for 1-2 seconds, fire the attack, then go into a short reload and maybe a cooldown. Of course, you could potentially still give each individual enemy a more "regular" attack that they could do in the meantime. A Heavy Gunner could fire in shorter bursts, a Bombard can fire micromissiles while their big shot is recharging, Napalms could fire short-range flame jets, etc. Sure, give them something to do while their abilities are recharging, just ensure that they don't hit that much harder than a Common enemy outside of their big hits. That way, you encourage players to scan the crowd for important enemies who will stand out due to their windup, to watch their actual character for indicators for an incoming AoE, and to NOT just stare at their own health/energy bars or the health bar of whatever enemy they happen to be shooting at.

I can't say I'd be adverse to any of that.  I can think of a few games where those sorts of frequent AoE's would get irritating, but those are all situations when the player character have sluggish movement.  Warframes are so mobile, and the mobility itself so enjoyable, that I could have a lot of fun with that.

 

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

That's definitely a problem, yes, and a pretty significant one when it comes to adding mechanical complexity to enemies. Most of what I've suggested so far has relied on audio and visual cues, which do tend to get drowned out a lot in the din of Warframe combat. I've proposed a more rigid differentiation between Common and Uncommon enemies in the past, which I feel could help address this problem. If we ensure that Common enemies themselves are simple in terms of mechanics and basic in terms of audio and visual "noise," then that should help the actually meaningful Special enemies stand out more. For instance, I'd take away the voice lines from all of the Grineer Commons. Sure, while "Ket Clem!" is funny every so often, it adds nothing to gameplay and actually drowns out important other sound effects.

The noise is a problem, but I'll argue against taking away all the voice lines from the rank and file Grineer.  For one thing, complete silence would make them feel pretty lifeless.  For another, if their voicing was just limited to only go off when they came onto the battlefield it'd serve the dual purpose of giving them a little life while also announcing "hey, more enemies incoming".  Sure, later in the game those Lancers may not be a threat, but early on they very much can be, and those new players might not have radar.  Having a new player suddenly get riddled with bullets by a squad of Lancers who appeared behind them completely silently is not an acceptable trade for less noise at higher levels.  And they should definitely be kept talkative for out of combat, since audio cues are an important way to know if you've made an enemy suspicious while stealthing around.

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

I don't necessarily like the Infested Eximus units largely because they have TERRIBLE player feedback, often being hard to tell apart from regular units featuring abilities which are hard to read. I mean... What is a Sanguine Eximus and what does it do? I still don't know, even to this day. However, an Infested Caustic Eximus is always a variety of a Toxic Ancient with an additional ability - a toxic damage aura. OK, great, but why couldn't that have been an entirely new unit all its own? DE recently added those new Infested enemies from the Railjack trailers. Use that character model, give it the Toxic aura and a few toxic ability and you have a new boss-like enemy. And that's just off the top of my head.

I agree so much with this.  And don't forget the energy draining chargers who have their only distinguishing characteristics as a pallet swap and a slight size increase.  Ironically, this is in the faction with the most right to be heavily varied in designs.  I'd love to see them take more Grineer and Corpus units and infest them, like how the Undying Flyer is an Infested Hellion.  An Infested Nox would be a perfect candidate for a Toxic Eximus design.  They already have the association with Toxin damage, which means that the player will immediately understand what this new enemy is and the sort of threat they present, all without having to be explained.  I was really hopeful when they introduced the Flyers and Zealots in the last Nightwave because it opened the door to whole new classes of Infested.  DE could recycle so many assets and add so much badly needed variety to the Infestation.

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'm... Genuinely surprised I managed to string that post together with the appearance of a continuous narrative 🙂

I'm surprised by this whole thread.  It's been so civil and the discussion has been a lot of fun.  Points and counterpoints, and me even changing my mind about a thing to two.

[keikogi]

1 hour ago, UnderRevision said:

agree so much with this.  And don't forget the energy draining chargers who have their only distinguishing characteristics as a pallet swap and a slight size increase.  I

They don't even need to be visually diferent the "attack" should have visual indicator, if the aura created a link between the player and the enemy. This way you could quickly locate the treat. 

1 hour ago, UnderRevision said:

Ironically, this is in the faction with the most right to be heavily varied in designs.  I'd love to see them take more Grineer and Corpus units and infest them, like how the Undying Flyer is an Infested Hellion.  An Infested Nox would be a perfect candidate for a Toxic Eximus design.  They already have the association with Toxin damage, which means that the player will immediately understand what this new enemy is and the sort of threat they present, all without having to be explained.  I was really hopeful when they introduced the Flyers and Zealots in the last Nightwave because it opened the door to whole new classes of Infested.  DE could recycle so many assets and add so much badly needed variety to the Infestation.

I would love if the infested had more infested version of units of other factions so much untapped potential.

Infested jackal , Infested Hyean , Infested condroc , Infested rollers , Indested mining equipment ( the one on the old grineer sabotage mission ) and so on. So much unttaped potential for new units. 

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, UnderRevision said:

I can't say I'd be adverse to any of that.  I can think of a few games where those sorts of frequent AoE's would get irritating, but those are all situations when the player character have sluggish movement.  Warframes are so mobile, and the mobility itself so enjoyable, that I could have a lot of fun with that.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I'm basing a lot of this on The Division 2's grenade/flame indicators and they CAN get a little bit overwhelming if too many grenadiers spawn in the same group. However, The Division 2 also has VERY sluggish movement - it is a cover shooter. Warframe's excessive mobility means we can almost always disengage if we're being spammed by AoE, break sight and force enemies to relocate. Well, I say "always" - Defence style objectives don't always allow for that, but I generally have issues with defence objectives which can be broken by ranged gunfire that I'd rather not get presently.

With that said, though, there are tools that developers can use to mitigate special ability spam. Developers can potentially control the number of Special units with those abilities who spawn on the map. Games like L4D and Payday have hard limits on the number of Specials that can exist on the map at the same time, either broken down by individual special or altogether (I forget which way it goes for L4D). After all, if we manage to make Bombards and Napalms and Heavy Gunners into actual tanks with actually meaningful charge-up attacks, it would make sense to spawn fewer of them. Developers also have the option of putting those special abilities on cooldown, as I described before. Standard-ish DPS output normally, HEAVY damage in a large AoE when using their signature abilities.

In general, though, I agree with you. We have plenty of mobility to lean on when dodging enemy ability spam, including the ability to fire on the move. I strongly believe there's a happy medium to find there.

 

1 hour ago, UnderRevision said:

The noise is a problem, but I'll argue against taking away all the voice lines from the rank and file Grineer.  For one thing, complete silence would make them feel pretty lifeless.  For another, if their voicing was just limited to only go off when they came onto the battlefield it'd serve the dual purpose of giving them a little life while also announcing "hey, more enemies incoming".  Sure, later in the game those Lancers may not be a threat, but early on they very much can be, and those new players might not have radar.  Having a new player suddenly get riddled with bullets by a squad of Lancers who appeared behind them completely silently is not an acceptable trade for less noise at higher levels.  And they should definitely be kept talkative for out of combat, since audio cues are an important way to know if you've made an enemy suspicious while stealthing around.

Hmm... OK, yeah - that's a fair point. I've been leaning on PD2 a lot when making sound-related suggestions because that game does a fairly good job of announcing Specials via sound cues, but even that game still has random voice lines from the cops that say nothing but add to a sense of chaotic action. I can definitely see where you're coming from on enemy barks announcing their intentions and alerting the player to their presence. Hmm... I suppose there are degrees of enemy chatter. Maybe the chatter from Commons can be made rarer and toned down in volume a bit, so that the chatter from Specials can stand out more. Generally speaking, I want players to hear a voice line and know that, say, a Heavy Gunner is about to unload on them, so they need to MOVE!

I like the idea of enemies announcing their presence as they spawn, though. Payday 2 actually used your Handler (Bain or Locke, depending on the mission) to announce some Specials spawning, usually Snipers. For the rest, actual audio cues would play for all players when they spawn. Shields spawning in would play a metal clanking sound, Tasers would play an electric charge-up sound, etc. Bulldozers I think would just yell across the whole map? "You're up against the wall! AND I AM THE WALL!!!" You could just have a random yell in the Grineer language, in a specific Special's voice, when they first spawn on the map, alerting players that they have arrived. Actually thinking about it... That's more or less what Liches do, except they also have a corner-of-the-screen facecam as well. We don't necessarily need to go quite that far for regular Specials.

I've seen a bit of DE's sound team over the last few Dev Streams. I think these guys are creative enough to put together several voice packages which all sound distinctly Grineer, but with different voices and - crucially - personalities to go with them. Also in their wheelhouse should be separate mechanical sound packages unique to each Special's weapons. Or hell... Imagine a series of monstrous screeches and roars, but all of them specific to a different Infested creature - unique enough that we can tell t

hem apart just from how that sound 🙂 I mean hell - they managed to create several Moa voice packs consisting entirely of beeps and yet they still all sound distinctly individual.

 

1 hour ago, UnderRevision said:

An Infested Nox would be a perfect candidate for a Toxic Eximus design.  They already have the association with Toxin damage, which means that the player will immediately understand what this new enemy is and the sort of threat they present, all without having to be explained.

Agreed. The Infestation generally doesn't tend to use the original host body's abilities, but that doesn't mean we can't have a bit of familiarity in design. The Nox is a toxic unit, the Infested have toxic units, so why not lean on player familiarity with the game and make the Infested Nox a toxic unit? And you're right in general - the Infested as a concept really lend themselves to having a wide range of different units, yet they have probably the most limited selection of them. They have two flavours of humanoid, a dog, three flavours of Cthulhu, a Moa, an Osprey and I think a couple of other large units - Boilers and Brood Mothers. I might be missing a few... Oh, and a Juggernaut! I might be missing a few of them since I'm speaking from memory, but that's not a lot of units. It's mostly a lot of functionally identical palette swaps. I still say that the Ancients really need to have separate models, not just minor detail differences.

More to the point, though - the Infested give us precedent for Eximus units that aren't just (seemingly) procedurally generate upgrades on existing units, but unique Specials all their own. I'd like to see this same approach taken to the rest of the factions. Eximus units could serve as the game's occasional Minibosses - the L4D Tank, Payday 2's Captain Winters, etc. Right now, they're little more than a technicolour speed bump that most people blast through without even realising it's there. To me, Cold Eximus units are about the most distinct variety due to the large obvious Snow Globe (and that's a pretty cool ability, by the way), but it's still pretty hard to tell WHICH of the 15 enemies in the bubble is the actual Eximus a lot of the time... So why not just AoE all of them?

Thus far in the thread, I've mostly described the gimmicks of Special units as AoE attacks largely because that's the majority of what DE have given... Kind of most of their units in most of their factions. However, there's nothing saying Eximus units can't have control gimmicks or tanky gimmicks or the like. It might not make the game more difficult, but the extra layer of complexity (especially if it comes with a balance to the number of these mechanics active at the same time) might add a bit more challenge in dealing with a slightly more involved take on our combat system.

 

1 hour ago, UnderRevision said:

I'm surprised by this whole thread.  It's been so civil and the discussion has been a lot of fun.  Points and counterpoints, and me even changing my mind about a thing to two.

Well, I have you guys to thank contributing to the discussion. These kinds of conversations are why I come to the forums, ultimately. Even if what we're discussing here is unlikely to happen (and let's face it - it's unlikely), it's still fun to throw around and who know? Maybe some of the stuff we come up with could amount to something 🙂

[UnderRevision]

 

51 minutes ago, keikogi said:

They don't even need to be visually diferent the "attack" should have visual indicator, if the aura created a link between the player and the enemy. This way you could quickly locate the treat. 

That would be a nice start.  It's so easy to not see the enemy around the corner that's sucking you dry.

53 minutes ago, keikogi said:

Infested jackal , Infested Hyean , Infested condroc , Infested rollers , Indested mining equipment ( the one on the old grineer sabotage mission ) and so on. So much unttaped potential for new units. 

Indeed.  A ton of opportunity there just waiting to be tapped into.  And who knows?  The Corpus are supposedly getting some work with the upcoming Deadlock update, maybe one day it will be the Infestation's turn.

 13 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I've seen a bit of DE's sound team over the last few Dev Streams. I think these guys are creative enough to put together several voice packages which all sound distinctly Grineer, but with different voices and - crucially - personalities to go with them. Also in their wheelhouse should be separate mechanical sound packages unique to each Special's weapons. Or hell... Imagine a series of monstrous screeches and roars, but all of them specific to a different Infested creature - unique enough that we can tell t

hem apart just from how that sound 🙂 I mean hell - they managed to create several Moa voice packs consisting entirely of beeps and yet they still all sound distinctly individual.

Agreed.  They are a talented bunch, and hopefully they'll be able to make good use of their new studio once it's built and they're able to go into the office again.  They've also done these sorts of vocal shoutouts in the past with the Manic Grineer.  The way they cackle before they spawn is unmistakable and gives you exactly the sort of heads up you need to have a fair chance to see such an agile enemy coming.  I could easily imagine the same treatment for these hypothetical new Eximi enemies working quite nicely.  Plus, I think it could really add to the atmosphere of combat.  A variety of Infested howls echoing the halls of a derelict above the slavering growls of the horde.  A heavy Grineer's battle-cry rallying the troops behind his ice dome to advance.  A Corpus priest calling his disciples to honor their vows to the temple of profit.  A lot of room for characterization there.

And for Eximus powers, there's precident for enemies using knock-offs of Tenno powers.  Grineer commanders can use Loki's Switch Teleport, Heat and Cold Eximus units use variations of Ember's Fire Blast and Frost's Snow Globe, that sort of thing.  One of the Scrambus units even uses something reminiscent of Mag's Polarize.  Heck, Scorpions and Ancients arguably use a budget version of Valkyr's Ripline.  There are opportunities there to borrow more of our own arsenal.  Or even to recycle older abilities that got reworked out of the game rather than making something new.

36 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Well, I have you guys to thank contributing to the discussion. These kinds of conversations are why I come to the forums, ultimately. Even if what we're discussing here is unlikely to happen (and let's face it - it's unlikely), it's still fun to throw around and who know? Maybe some of the stuff we come up with could amount to something 🙂

Maybe.  Talking game design is fun either way, right?  Whatever problems Warframe might have, I'm still looking forward to what they have coming for us next.  I loved the Gas City rework and can't wait to see what Deadlock will do for the Corpus ships.

[keikogi]

10 minutes ago, UnderRevision said:

That would be a nice start.  It's so easy to not see the enemy around the corner that's sucking you dry.

I'm not exactly a fan of auras that screw the player over because they are terrible at creating a good gameplay interaction player vs enemy. It usually boils down to leave the invisble circle or shoot the enemy you were going to shoot any way.

13 minutes ago, UnderRevision said:

Indeed.  A ton of opportunity there just waiting to be tapped into.  And who knows?  The Corpus are supposedly getting some work with the upcoming Deadlock update, maybe one day it will be the Infestation's turn.

The infestation was probably side lined because you could not really create infested characters ( they could only exist in the short time windown of someone being partially infested ). After the Arlo strain infested characters can exist , even infested defectors ( plausible ). So I think they were setting up the infestation as the next faction to be updated. Also the sentient open the door too missions where the infestation are allies ( there are two things the infestation can't convert the tenno and the sentient , but thr infestation does not seen aware rhat the warframe are controled by tenno ) , because the infestation probably despises the sentient. 

23 minutes ago, UnderRevision said:

And for Eximus powers, there's precident for enemies using knock-offs of Tenno powers.  Grineer commanders can use Loki's Switch Teleport,

DE should be carefull reusing warframe skills for enemies because warframe skills were not designed with conterplay in mind. The Commander using Loki switch teleport is probably one of the worse enemy desings I've ever seen. An enemy that can both change your position and stun you without much you can do stop him outside of nuking him out of existence as soon as he enters line of sight. Also the stupid animation of an warframe looking around for 3 seconds is just jarring.

[UnderRevision]

38 minutes ago, keikogi said:

 DE should be carefull reusing warframe skills for enemies because warframe skills were not designed with conterplay in mind. The Commander using Loki switch teleport is probably one of the worse enemy desings I've ever seen. An enemy that can both change your position and stun you without much you can do stop him outside of nuking him out of existence as soon as he enters line of sight. Also the stupid animation of an warframe looking around for 3 seconds is just jarring.

Fair point.  Snow Globe and Fire Blast are big and obviously telegraphed enough to work, but other powers not so much.  Switch teleport isn't so bad if you roll out of it when it starts to lock onto you, but combat is messy enough without enemies using Mirage's Prism.  It really would have to be carefully handled on a case by case basis, and balanced for counterplay, but it does at least offer a starting point rather than starting from scratch.  Come to think of it, they've kind of been experimenting with this with Lich powers, haven't they?  I've personally only had three liches in total so I sometimes neglect to consider them when thinking about enemies.

[Steel_Rook]

  

52 minutes ago, UnderRevision said:

Agreed.  They are a talented bunch, and hopefully they'll be able to make good use of their new studio once it's built and they're able to go into the office again.  They've also done these sorts of vocal shoutouts in the past with the Manic Grineer.  The way they cackle before they spawn is unmistakable and gives you exactly the sort of heads up you need to have a fair chance to see such an agile enemy coming.  I could easily imagine the same treatment for these hypothetical new Eximi enemies working quite nicely.  Plus, I think it could really add to the atmosphere of combat.  A variety of Infested howls echoing the halls of a derelict above the slavering growls of the horde.  A heavy Grineer's battle-cry rallying the troops behind his ice dome to advance.  A Corpus priest calling his disciples to honor their vows to the temple of profit.  A lot of room for characterization there.

That is a good point - I'd forgotten about Manics. Man, some of the game's coolest enemies are so dang rare... But yes, something of that nature is what I'm referring to. Boss enemy spawns, presence is announced via some kind of map-wide voice line, laugh or scream. At that point, the player KNOWS that a dangerous enemy is on the map, and it's on them to spot it and deal with it. Hell, I'd argue that the Nox has a similar effect. While their presence isn't announced map-wide, they make so much noise that everyone will know a Nox is on the field as soon as they show actually show up.

MAN they did such a good job with the Nox just all-around, design-wise. He has a unique model, he has his own unmistakable voice package, he has his own unique weapon effects, he has an obvious and exploitable weak point that makes a nice and satisfying glass-break-sound when destroyed, and even his goop globs are well-designed. Did you know they act like Latchers, in that you can roll to shake them off of you? I discovered this by accident, but BOY did I enjoy fighting those guys so much more afterwards.

 

29 minutes ago, keikogi said:

DE should be carefull reusing warframe skills for enemies because warframe skills were not designed with conterplay in mind. The Commander using Loki switch teleport is probably one of the worse enemy desings I've ever seen. An enemy that can both change your position and stun you without much you can do stop him outside of nuking him out of existence as soon as he enters line of sight. Also the stupid animation of an warframe looking around for 3 seconds is just jarring.

Actually, there IS a way to counter-act Commander Switch Teleport. They have a pretty long charge-up time for the ability, during which time your Warframe glows orange. If you roll during this time, you break the link and teleportation fails. The problem is that this is never explained in-game - I only know about it because someone brought it up here on the forums. It's also REALLY badly telegraphed. There's no associated sound effect, the Commander has no associated voice lines and the visual is kind of low-key. Even ignoring the fact that a lot of Warframes cover themselves in their abilities (Ember, Atlas, Rhino, etc.) few people seem to spend much time looking at their own character. It's obvious enough once you spend time deliberately looking out for it, but it can definitely look use a lot more telegraphing.

This is actually along the lines of what I was saying, though. Making the game "more challenging" doesn't necessarily make it "more difficult" and can in a lot of cases make it actually easier IF you're playing along with the mechanics. I'm personally OK with this. I'm OK with letting players cheese otherwise powerful enemies HARD, interrupting or taking away their abilities, exploiting holes in their defences, permanently out-turning them (it's how I fought SWAT Van Turrets in Payday 2 🙂) and all manner of other ways to negate them entirely PROVIDED some amount of mechanical complexity is needed to achieve these kinds of results. The most obvious example I can give is I'm fine with letting players shoot a Bombard's Ogris, forcing the Bombard into a long reload... Then shooting it again when he's done, potentially forcing him into perpetual reload. As long as players have to consciously aim for his gun and not his head, that's still enough complexity to justify that amount of cheese.

However, the only way that's going to work is if the game is good about communicating weak points and special mechanics, good about telegraphing big attacks and other devastating abilities and good about giving players all the information they need to respond. Whether that's more difficult or not, I feel it leads to a more challenging experience because it gives us more factors to consider, more decisions to make and more things to keep us from nodding off.

 

37 minutes ago, keikogi said:

The infestation was probably side lined because you could not really create infested characters ( they could only exist in the short time windown of someone being partially infested ). After the Arlo strain infested characters can exist , even infested defectors ( plausible ). So I think they were setting up the infestation as the next faction to be updated. Also the sentient open the door too missions where the infestation are allies ( there are two things the infestation can't convert the tenno and the sentient , but thr infestation does not seen aware rhat the warframe are controled by tenno ) , because the infestation probably despises the sentient. 

That's a bit of a separate issue since it concerns lore more so than game design, but I wanted to drop a few lines here anyway. DE generally have free reign to push the lore of the game wherever they want, and giving a bit more character and intelligence to the Infestation isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's benefit to having an unknowable, uncommunicative pure monster, but we already know that the Infested are more than that. Again and again they speak with us, and we even have our own Helminth Parasite on the Orbiter. I wouldn't be opposed to exploring what the Infestation is, how it came to be, what it did to the Orokin and what - if anything - it might actually want. Was it really an Orokin Invention, or was it - like a lot of their tech seems to be - "borrowed" from the Void and the nasties that live there? There's room to explore the Infestation, is what I'm getting at.

 

1 hour ago, UnderRevision said:

Maybe.  Talking game design is fun either way, right?  Whatever problems Warframe might have, I'm still looking forward to what they have coming for us next.  I loved the Gas City rework and can't wait to see what Deadlock will do for the Corpus ships.

Yup! I am REALLY looking forward to the Corpus ship redesign. Jupiter Remastered was REALLY good (despite my criticism) and brought a massive breath of fresh air into the game. I can't wait to see what the new Corpus ships will bring, what they'll look like and just how many nodes on the Star Chart will end up affected. See, updates like Warframe Revised and the Jovian Concord are what I enjoy the most. While major content releases are fine, I feel that updating and improving legacy content has substantially longer legs. Fortuna wasn't bad, but it was just an island. Jupiter is (or can be) host to a MASSIVE amount of the game's content from Sorties to Arbitrations to Fissures to Lich missions and beyond. Corpus ships are even more widely spread. Hoping for the best there.

[Avienas]

3 hours ago, UnderRevision said:

-snip-

Though i do enjoy a nice active discussion, the quote walls are getting too huge so lets try to condense things down on further discussion and snip the quotes when they are extremely blockie.

Ultimately, its more on player interaction, then it comes to the actual game that helps players feel active in many ways. Now i just hope the latest trash-heap of content does not get closed off after scarlet spear is over, aka POOF the sentient enemy assets away. Where i feel like they should make the void proxima to be 100% sentient only while Earth gets the Grineer and Saturn should honestly have its proxima be for Corpus only. That or they trash Saturn proxima and replace it with a Jupiter one instead to match up with a Corpus faction.

Also now i kind of want fighters and chests inside of things like anomalies to semi-often drop dirac like how its working in Scarlet spear. Since the event itself has a GREAT reason to return to after you get everything, such as all the dirac, the void proxima tier avionics like fiery phoenix and void hole AND even a number of archwing mods that seem like they can drop inside the murexes, at least i saw AUXILIARY power and energy inversion dropping inside the murex ship on what i saw so far.

[keikogi]

33 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Actually, there IS a way to counter-act Commander Switch Teleport. They have a pretty long charge-up time for the ability, during which time your Warframe glows orange. If you roll during this time, you break the link and teleportation fails. The problem is that this is never explained in-game - I only know about it because someone brought it up here on the forums. It's also REALLY badly telegraphed. There's no associated sound effect, the Commander has no associated voice lines and the visual is kind of low-key. Even ignoring the fact that a lot of Warframes cover themselves in their abilities (Ember, Atlas, Rhino, etc.) few people seem to spend much time looking at their own character. It's obvious enough once you spend time deliberately looking out for it, but it can definitely look use a lot more telegraphing.

Speaking out of memory , in their orinal desing the sound cue was more of death anouciment than a dodge window. You could not stop it from happening 

 

37 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

However, the only way that's going to work is if the game is good about communicating weak points and special mechanics, good about telegraphing big attacks and other devastating abilities and good about giving players all the information they need to respond. Whether that's more difficult or not, I feel it leads to a more challenging experience because it gives us more factors to consider, more decisions to make and more things to keep us from nodding off.

Indeed. Good visual and sound comunication is key for a good combat system. 

38 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Was it really an Orokin Invention, or was it - like a lot of their tech seems to be - "borrowed" from the Void and the nasties that live there? There's room to explore the Infestation, is what I'm getting at.

The infestation refers to tenno as demon ( or at least the helminth ) and can´t infested the tenno either so I doubt they are from the void ( if they were from there they probably would have a affinity for it ). As far as it being an orokin creation or a Discovery , not sure witch one it would be. As far as exploration on their lore I´m all for it. Was it created to evolve humanity to a new level ( the the sheer power of warframes and the durability of Arlo fallowers [at least as far as the game is concerned they are like 10 times more durable than a standard human ]) , or a weapon´s progan or just some of that organic building orokin tech that went haywire or even if it was created by the void ( kind of would expalin why it seens to fear void entities ). 

 

[UnderRevision]

1 hour ago, Avienas said:

That or they trash Saturn proxima and replace it with a Jupiter one instead to match up with a Corpus faction.

I mean, there's no reason they couldn't just keep Saturn and add Jupiter as well.  We could have Earth, Saturn, and Veil for Grineer, then Venus, Jupiter, and Neptune or Pluto for Corpus, putting both factions at three difficulty tiers each.  The problem I forsee with adding more Dirac, at least from DE's perspective, is that there's a finite amount of Dirac needed.  Once your grid and avionics are maxed, does Dirac even have another use or would it just be another resource that piles up?  Fair point about the quote blocks though, I'll try to trim mine down to specific points.

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Man, some of the game's coolest enemies are so dang rare...

Agreed, would love to see Manics more often, and more enemies in that vein besides.  Infested Zealots would fit that mold, as would a Zanuka variant or Amalgam.  Also, I have no idea I could roll out of Nox goop!  How many other things like this am I just completely missing out on?

27 minutes ago, keikogi said:

As far as it being an orokin creation or a Discovery , not sure witch one it would be. As far as exploration on their lore I´m all for it.

So am I.  I've always been fascinated by these sorts of hive-mind species in science fiction and they're hardly ever explored as much as I'd like.  The exception being the Borg, and then the writers kind of undermined the whole hive aspect of it as time went on, but that's a whooole other kettle of fish.  I'm given hope for the future Infested by that concept art they showed of Infested planetoids in a recent Devstream.  I do sort of hope they never tell us exactly where they came from though.  It never hurts to leave at least a little bit of mystery about that kind of thing, especially for an enemy you plan to keep around.  That still leaves plenty of room to explore in both lore and gameplay design.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

On 2020-04-04 at 11:58 AM, Steel_Rook said:

More or less, yes - this is what I believe. Warframe has enough mechanical depth with which to create decent challenge without necessarily leaning into high difficulty, but most of those mechanics are either entirely unused of simply overshadowed by just piling on more DPS, more EHP and more sustain.

I just want to point out, though, that my primary goal here wasn't to make a statement evaluating Warframe's combat system. More than that, I wanted to draw a few distinctions, specifically between "difficulty" and "challenge," as well as to highlight how the EXISTENCE of gameplay complexity doesn't always translate into complex gameplay in actual practice. As I said - this is an exercise in trying to put words to my thoughts and hopefully try to bring a bit of a novel distinction, maybe enough of one to influence how we talk about difficulty/challenge or at least open up a few extra considerations.

If you want a full thesis, it is this: Warframe's combat can use more challenge, but I don't think just making enemies more difficult is a good way of attaining it. There's more to challenge than just the level of the enemies we face, more than just their stats or their abilities or their AI. It requires game design which convinces us to want to engage with Warframe's complexity, rather than trying to circumvent it.

Hmmmm, good thoughts. I think Warframe has a factor in its struggle with "difficulty and challenge" that very few, if any, games have: longevity and the package within it.

Only a few players claim the game began easy. Even less claim the eidolons, orbs, the Wolf and most bosses were not challenging. Of course, it's extremely easy to say this now when, A) years of experience has accumulated and, B) the absolute overloaded amount of YouTube tutorials, builds, spoilers and guides exist. This overabundance of assistance (years of xp + hand holding) changes the narrative and allows such a discussion to take place, where in this day of social media spoiled gaming, anyone can claim to be good.

In truth, most are in the minority when it comes to actual dominance. We can look at stats of other players easily, take notice of their purchasing and identify which content creator's build they watched. DE can't create a solution for self destructive gamers and I don't think they should. After all, arby had a backlash for it's "zero deaths" rule and players went nuts because Railjack began as a non solo level of difficulty. Both were toned down because DE has the real stats that say players aren't as good as the minority "no difficulty" base shouts. Balancing that without pissing of the much larger unspoken masses isn't an easy target.

[Avienas]

1 hour ago, UnderRevision said:

I mean, there's no reason they couldn't just keep Saturn and add Jupiter as well.  We could have Earth, Saturn, and Veil for Grineer, then Venus, Jupiter, and Neptune or Pluto for Corpus, putting both factions at three difficulty tiers each.  The problem I forsee with adding more Dirac, at least from DE's perspective, is that there's a finite amount of Dirac needed.  Once your grid and avionics are maxed, does Dirac even have another use or would it just be another resource that piles up?  Fair point about the quote blocks though, I'll try to trim mine down to specific points.

Considering how many nodes they have loaded up per planet and no mention on them GUTTING most of them to replace them with different game modes or something. Thats kind of why i do not want them cramming more planets with dozens of identical nodes and just further bloating useless, basically the same, missions in. We do not need bloatware content we need content that actually HAS value. This is kind of why i am putting a heavy emphasis on them replacing grineer with sentients into the void proxima. Where Corpus are obviously a whole lot more high-tech then grineer so it would make sense for them to be the mid-level threat, just below sentients who have plenty of b.s. under the hood with adaptation gimmicks and now can adapt to limbo resistance and likely will for other warframe abilities once D.E. gets around to tweaking that stuff.

As for Dirac, i still want them to redesign how railjack currently works by having us get a research system to give permanent stat boosts to the railjack instead of relying on avionics as a lazy repeat meshing of the modding system, While also creating ways to expend excess dirac for other uses like maybe boost effects one can last X number of missions that you can turn on and off whenever you want the next mission to have the effects or not, Kind of like how they showed off the idea of reinforcing the ship with resources, Which they skipped on that crap too.

Granted i STILL want them to condense the number of resources involved in railjack to a much more manageable number, maybe make it only 3 types of resources we use for making the ammo and what not since i still find it annoying type of restock system. Since D.E. has yet to put in a intrinstic that lets us pre-stock materials for making more ammo or boosting the maximum stock capacity, NOT thru some patchwork freaking avionic solution, that only apply to one of them only at once anyway, while wasting a slot to do so.

Overall, Scarlet spear still is showing plenty of railjack bugs and i still hope a massive overhaul is properly put in place before D.E. ships out the REAL new war questline on us and then we are stuck with buggie rather useless railjack ships, where we will likely just use void hole+munitions vortex and Ameshas to cheese any railjack based content with the new war. Granted i REALLY feel like command intrinstics better be in place because if new war is a solo only type quest where you have to bring a railjack, people are gonna be PISSED.

[Kainosh]

On 2020-04-03 at 5:42 PM, Steel_Rook said:

we're just too powerful

There. You said it.  And there is absolutely nothing to argue about.

 

Even if you take enemies straight from Doom eternal and put them in Warframe....nothing will change.

One cast of Shatter shield = no ranged damage. Then just nuke with Peacemakers. One Radial blind and every demon in sight is finishable... 

 

Nothing will change without:

• Cooldowns or Different energy system (no pickups, only regeneration)
• Ability stat nerfs.  Some have too much range, some provide too much invincibility...
• Different ammo economy (without any mutation mods and pizzas). Bramma arrows should be as valuable as BFG ammo....while "bullet hose" ammunition should be quite available. Each weapon needs its own "ammo consumption"
• Further balance and tweaks to Status procs and Crits to make them work VS bosses properly (Stacking cap maybe?)

Without these changes it is pointless to add any cool enemies or expanding combat mechanics. 

 

Also, i doubt that current playerbase will let this happen. Its easier to start developing another game than trying to "fix" this one....

[UnderRevision]

55 minutes ago, Avienas said:

Considering how many nodes they have loaded up per planet and no mention on them GUTTING most of them to replace them with different game modes or something. Thats kind of why i do not want them cramming more planets with dozens of identical nodes and just further bloating useless, basically the same, missions in.  We do not need bloatware content we need content that actually HAS value. 

I'd agree that railjack missions in particular would benefit strongly from more variety.  For example, disruption missions are basically the same between different planets on the normal star chart, yet I go to Uranus for the relics I'm currently grinding, and Neptune for credits.  Railjack doesn't take advantage of this at all presently with all nodes being the same mission type, but if we want the situation to improve, removing and replacing entire planets only limits options for future improvements.

I can't speak to railjack bugs as I hardly ever seem to encounter any and thus lack anything meaningful to contribute.  And I doubt we're likely to get any redesigns on the level of completely replacing the avionics system.  I wouldn't want to see a research style system used regardless until I see focus improved because I think that is what we'd be likely to get if we didn't use a mod-type system.

Edited April 11, 2020 by UnderRevision
Misunderstood something that was said, adjusted thoughts to reflect that