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Guen, 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑲𝒖𝒗𝒂 𝑾𝒂𝒓𝒇𝒓𝒂𝒎𝒆 🌶️ (Mutalist Frame #1) [𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛 𝗔𝗥𝗧!]


(XBOX)Mentor0fHeroes

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I feel that Guen needs a way to heal herself. With your abilities gating off health and you taking redirected damage off your kuva shields/bodyguard (even 5% is lethal at high levels especially against a target that's large and cannot move) she is being penalised healthwise twice for using an ability, which in a real battle situation would make her too fragile to use effectively. I think that the shield and bodyguard should not be invincible and redirect damage to her. Instead they should have their original health values (enemy damage is very weak against enemy health), if they are still too fragile you can apply a multiplier to their health. To heal herself you can incorporate into her passive that for every enemy near her suffering a status proc she drains their lifeforce continually to restore the 'dead' portion of her health bar with this becoming stronger the more status procs they have.

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On 2020-05-26 at 11:31 PM, (XB1)SirMilkfiend said:

I feel that Guen needs a way to heal herself. With your abilities gating off health and you taking redirected damage off your kuva shields/bodyguard (even 5% is lethal at high levels especially against a target that's large and cannot move) she is being penalised healthwise twice for using an ability, which in a real battle situation would make her too fragile to use effectively. I think that the shield and bodyguard should not be invincible and redirect damage to her. Instead they should have their original health values (enemy damage is very weak against enemy health), if they are still too fragile you can apply a multiplier to their health. To heal herself you can incorporate into her passive that for every enemy near her suffering a status proc she drains their lifeforce continually to restore the 'dead' portion of her health bar with this becoming stronger the more status procs they have.

Yeah, I think you’re right. With all of the health drain Guen is made too vulnerable. I tried to fix this with her “soul food” augment mod, but I don’t think that’s going to be enough. And implementing an augment mod as a necessity for the warframe’s build kind of defeats the purpose.

1) Here’s what I’m thinking. Instead of Guen’s shields/ bodyguardian being made invincible, the health used to make them get’s added to the enemies base health to create the total shield/ bodyguardian health.

The enemy would still have to technically be dead. Otherwise, after defeating all of the enemies in a defense mission, everyone would still have to wait until Guen deactivates her ability before doing the next round.

I always knew this idea was a possibility for Guen’s build, but I always kind of tried to avoid it, here’s why. It doesn’t fit into the theme as well, and changing this would change a lot of other things too. Without this feature it takes away the primary form of invulnerability, which is something kuva is known for. Also, if the shields are not made invincible, I’m afraid they may be far less useful in battle. So many other warframes have shields that make way more sense to use (volt, frost, gara). Guen’s shields take way longer to cast than any other, and without invincibility it’s just a worse version of volt’s.

2) Another solution that may be viable is to only lower the Guen-shield link. This means that when the shields take damage now Guen only receives 1% or 2% of their damage.

I might lower the Guen-bodyguardian link too, but only a little, probably to 4%. I wouldn’t want to lower it too much because only one bodyguardian can be cast at a time, and it drains more health in casting it. I just think it makes more sense for it to have a greater link.

3) One last possible solution is to get rid of the link entirely. This means that when Guen’s shields/ bodyguardian take damage, Guen does not get effected at all. Instead of the link, Guen’s shields and bodyguardian would only stay alive for a limited amount of time. That means that, all of Guen’s shields/ bodyguardian would be invincible, but after 30 or 45 seconds they would die, and the kuva used to activate them would return to Guen.

4) As for healing, I think that would be a good idea if there were a manner of healing that fit Guen’s theme. I’ll look into it, but there doesn’t seem to be any healing properties to kuva. I may have to just put it in.
Before now, all of Guen’s abilities have a connection to Guen’s story and origin. But I agree with you, Guen’s build could really use some healing capabilities. I’ll try to make that happen.

Thanks for the feedback! If you think of anything else feel free to share it with me.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2020-05-26 at 11:31 PM, (XB1)SirMilkfiend said:

I feel that Guen needs a way to heal herself. With your abilities gating off health and you taking redirected damage off your kuva shields/bodyguard (even 5% is lethal at high levels especially against a target that's large and cannot move) she is being penalised healthwise twice for using an ability, which in a real battle situation would make her too fragile to use effectively. I think that the shield and bodyguard should not be invincible and redirect damage to her. Instead they should have their original health values (enemy damage is very weak against enemy health), if they are still too fragile you can apply a multiplier to their health. To heal herself you can incorporate into her passive that for every enemy near her suffering a status proc she drains their lifeforce continually to restore the 'dead' portion of her health bar with this becoming stronger the more status procs they have.

Ok, I think i’ve solved this problem.

What I did was I lowered Guen’s shield link from 5% damage, to 2%. This way, if you have all shields active at once you are less likely to perish from your own devices. I also added a time limit for each of Guen’s shields. This time limit can be renewed any time Guen activates her 4th ability.

Guen’s bodyguardian I left alone. The reason for this is because you can only have the one bodyguardian, therefore it is less of a risk having it around. Also, since Guen’s 4th ability already influences Guen’s shields, it makes more sense for them to be renewed by the scepter than the bodyguardian. In other words, I didn’t give Guen’s bodyguardian a timer because you would forget about it. And without a timer, I see no way or reason to lower the link. I know this isn’t my best explanation, if you have specific questions about this change, or lack there of, I’ll be happy to answer them.

I saw no way of adding extra healing properties to Guen while also staying on theme. Luckily it is possible to regenerate all of Guen’s health through the use of her passive ability. Someone may choose to even mod Guen for lower health on purpose to make Guen’s passive ability regeneration work faster. This may of course backfire and make Guen more vulnerable instead. The choice is up to the individual player.

Let me know what you think. Is this enough to fix the problem? Is it too much? I really value everyones ideas and they really do help me out so don’t be afraid to speak your mind.

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I have been summoned 🙂

Looking over the ability write-up, I see interesting potential. However, I feel you're getting a bit too hung up on trying to stay true to the themes of Kuva we've seen so far, pushing ability tech in fairly complex directions which may not necessarily help while leaving a few potentially interesting interactions unexplored. Let me explain. Look at something like Hyldrin. What is her "core gameplay loop?" You lose shields from taking damage and triggering abilities, you gain shields by pulling them off enemies. It's a give-and-take. Look at Gauss. You use energy on abilities to gain Battery, you use Battery to mitigate damage, you take damage to recover energy. Look at Grendel: You expend energy to consume and retain enemies, you expend enemies at no energy cost to fuel your abilities. When I look at Guen's stats (high health and armour, standard shields) and her abilities (use health for abilities), I see an opportunity.

 

Proposal:

Your abilities are fairly complex so I'm going to interpret them more simply for the sake of discussion. You have Kuva Cloud, Kuva Flood, Kuva Guardian, Kuva Scepter. Let's say that Cloud, Scepter and Guardian drain health and reserve portions of your health bar as "Orange" as you've described it. Kuva Scepter would then heal orange health for every enemy it hits. That means you can end up with MORE health invested in enemies affected by your abilities than your health bar can actually sustain. Gaining that health back when the abilities are disabled would go into "overhealth" - a mechanic unique to Guen. Overhealth would work like overshields, meaning you can't be healed into overhealth and you'll lose overhealth before you start losing your actual health. Abilities you cast, however, will still "reserve" portions of your regular health. I'd give her an overhealth cap of 2400 to match Harrow's double overshields.

This would give Guen the dynamic of deliberately sacrificing portions of her health, voiding the sacrifice, then reabsorbing the sacrificed health into overhealth, or just plain healing if she's below max. Again I'm going to treat abilities more simply than you have designed them just for the sake of example. Let's say Kuva Cloud costs 30 health per enemy affected, Kuva Flood costs 40 health per enemy affected and Kuva Guardian (which I'm going to treat as a "thrall" for the time being) costs 100 health per enemy affected, with the ability to affect several people. I would personally push her health to a Grendel-like 350 and drop her shields either completely or to a Grendel-like 25. So that's 350 shields at Rank 0, or 3360‬ health at Rank 30 with Vitality and Primed Vigor. Let's say fire a Kuva Cloud, nail 5 people with it, costing you 150 health. Then you drop a Kuva Flood and you hit another 10 people, costing you another 400. You turn three people into your Kuva Guardians, costing you another 300 health. You are now sitting at 2 510‬ health with 850 health "reserved" and 850 health "stored" in cast abilities and . Now you cast Kuva Scepter. For every enemy the Scepter hits, it converts 50 "reserved" health into actual health. You cast it once, you hit 10 people, converting 500 "reserved" health into standard health. You're now sitting at 3010 health with 450 health reserved. You cast Scepter again, you clear all "reserved" health. You're back to 3360 health again. However, you still have 850 health "invested" in your abilities.

10-30 seconds later, all of your abilities run out, and hat health is returned to you. You now have 3360 health AND 850 overhealth, for a total of 4210 health. The next time you cast Kuva Cloud, a portion of your normal health is reserved, with overhealth not being affected. This allows you to keep healing yourself by "investing" health into enemies, voiding the cost of that investment, then pulling the health back to you, over and over again. And if you're already at full health, you can boost your health by an additional 2400 overhealth. Not only is this a fairly unique mechanic in Warframe (not entirely, but to a large extent), it also fits your Kuva theme. Guen is effectively a walking Kuva Siphon, using some of her blood but ultimately collecting more from enemies, continually getting back more than she put in. Boost the Warframe's armour a little bit (say 350-400) and you have a pretty tanky regenerator.

 

Ability niggles:

One final note on the subject of Kuva Bodyguard/Guardian: I feel you're vastly overthinking it. Absorbing enemies who somehow exist inside Guen but can still shoot her, but she can eject them as shields, etc. - that's both a technical nightmare to pull off and far too fiddly in actual practice. Whenever possible, avoid creating multiple steps per ability cast. Instead, I'd treat Kuva Guardians as glorified Revenant Thralls. Have them fight for you, maybe have them heal you for a portion of the raw damage they take, or if not "heal" then at least "void some of the reserved health." Alternately, you can treat them similar to a Trinity/Nidus link. Just have them absorb some of the damage you're taking. I get that you want to stick to the Kuva Guardian theme of being invulnerable, but I feel that this is where gameplay ought to trump theme. Pets and converts are almost never worth bothering with in Warframe due to the minuscule amount of damage enemies deal to each other relative to their own EHP. If you want those guys to "tank" for you, simply have them either heal you or absorb part of the damage. Invulnerability just doesn't work well here.

I'm also not a fan of your abilities inflicting "random" status effects. I'd say pick one and stick with it. You might also want to give Kuva Cloud and Kuva Flood a bit more of a meaningful effect. As it stands now, Kuva Flood seems to amount to a version of Accelerant - a weak ability which exists solely to power up other abilities. As I said - I'd rather avoid creating multiple steps when using abilities, so having to drop a Flood before you use your other abilities seems unnecessary. Come up with some real effect of its own. Cloud stuns, maybe Flood immobilises? Maybe it slowly pulls enemies towards the centre? Just, I'd recommend doing something more meaningful than "a random status effect."

 

In conclusion:

I like the general idea and concept of the Warframe, but I feel the focus of its design leans a bit too heavily in the direction of novelty and theme at the expense of the Warframe's core gameplay loop. What this tends to do in my experience is cause me to disregard some or all of a Warframe's abilities. I brought up Gauss because I commonly use almost all of his abilities - they all "feel" like they have a purpose. He has a movement ability, an AoE control/damage ability, a shield and an ult. Grendel similarly gives me reason to use all of his abilities. His first ability us crucial to both eat and spit, his second ability heals and buffs which is useful, his third ability is good at range and his fourth good for digestion. What, on their own, do you envision Guen's abilities being good at? That's not necessarily a question you need to answer to me. It's more of a point worth considering. Because Warframe all too often gives us abilities that don't seem to have a lot of use. What am I supposed to use Atlas' stone wall for? What am I supposed to use Inaros' Sandstorm for? Etc. While a Warframe's total ability kit does need to work together, I need to have a reason to use each individual one on its own.

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2 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I have been summoned 🙂

Looking over the ability write-up, I see interesting potential. However, I feel you're getting a bit too hung up on trying to stay true to the themes of Kuva we've seen so far, pushing ability tech in fairly complex directions which may not necessarily help while leaving a few potentially interesting interactions unexplored. Let me explain. Look at something like Hyldrin. What is her "core gameplay loop?" You lose shields from taking damage and triggering abilities, you gain shields by pulling them off enemies. It's a give-and-take. Look at Gauss. You use energy on abilities to gain Battery, you use Battery to mitigate damage, you take damage to recover energy. Look at Grendel: You expend energy to consume and retain enemies, you expend enemies at no energy cost to fuel your abilities. When I look at Guen's stats (high health and armour, standard shields) and her abilities (use health for abilities), I see an opportunity.

 

Proposal:

Your abilities are fairly complex so I'm going to interpret them more simply for the sake of discussion. You have Kuva Cloud, Kuva Flood, Kuva Guardian, Kuva Scepter. Let's say that Cloud, Scepter and Guardian drain health and reserve portions of your health bar as "Orange" as you've described it. Kuva Scepter would then heal orange health for every enemy it hits. That means you can end up with MORE health invested in enemies affected by your abilities than your health bar can actually sustain. Gaining that health back when the abilities are disabled would go into "overhealth" - a mechanic unique to Guen. Overhealth would work like overshields, meaning you can't be healed into overhealth and you'll lose overhealth before you start losing your actual health. Abilities you cast, however, will still "reserve" portions of your regular health. I'd give her an overhealth cap of 2400 to match Harrow's double overshields.

This would give Guen the dynamic of deliberately sacrificing portions of her health, voiding the sacrifice, then reabsorbing the sacrificed health into overhealth, or just plain healing if she's below max. Again I'm going to treat abilities more simply than you have designed them just for the sake of example. Let's say Kuva Cloud costs 30 health per enemy affected, Kuva Flood costs 40 health per enemy affected and Kuva Guardian (which I'm going to treat as a "thrall" for the time being) costs 100 health per enemy affected, with the ability to affect several people. I would personally push her health to a Grendel-like 350 and drop her shields either completely or to a Grendel-like 25. So that's 350 shields at Rank 0, or 3360‬ health at Rank 30 with Vitality and Primed Vigor. Let's say fire a Kuva Cloud, nail 5 people with it, costing you 150 health. Then you drop a Kuva Flood and you hit another 10 people, costing you another 400. You turn three people into your Kuva Guardians, costing you another 300 health. You are now sitting at 2 510‬ health with 850 health "reserved" and 850 health "stored" in cast abilities and . Now you cast Kuva Scepter. For every enemy the Scepter hits, it converts 50 "reserved" health into actual health. You cast it once, you hit 10 people, converting 500 "reserved" health into standard health. You're now sitting at 3010 health with 450 health reserved. You cast Scepter again, you clear all "reserved" health. You're back to 3360 health again. However, you still have 850 health "invested" in your abilities.

10-30 seconds later, all of your abilities run out, and hat health is returned to you. You now have 3360 health AND 850 overhealth, for a total of 4210 health. The next time you cast Kuva Cloud, a portion of your normal health is reserved, with overhealth not being affected. This allows you to keep healing yourself by "investing" health into enemies, voiding the cost of that investment, then pulling the health back to you, over and over again. And if you're already at full health, you can boost your health by an additional 2400 overhealth. Not only is this a fairly unique mechanic in Warframe (not entirely, but to a large extent), it also fits your Kuva theme. Guen is effectively a walking Kuva Siphon, using some of her blood but ultimately collecting more from enemies, continually getting back more than she put in. Boost the Warframe's armour a little bit (say 350-400) and you have a pretty tanky regenerator.

 

Ability niggles:

One final note on the subject of Kuva Bodyguard/Guardian: I feel you're vastly overthinking it. Absorbing enemies who somehow exist inside Guen but can still shoot her, but she can eject them as shields, etc. - that's both a technical nightmare to pull off and far too fiddly in actual practice. Whenever possible, avoid creating multiple steps per ability cast. Instead, I'd treat Kuva Guardians as glorified Revenant Thralls. Have them fight for you, maybe have them heal you for a portion of the raw damage they take, or if not "heal" then at least "void some of the reserved health." Alternately, you can treat them similar to a Trinity/Nidus link. Just have them absorb some of the damage you're taking. I get that you want to stick to the Kuva Guardian theme of being invulnerable, but I feel that this is where gameplay ought to trump theme. Pets and converts are almost never worth bothering with in Warframe due to the minuscule amount of damage enemies deal to each other relative to their own EHP. If you want those guys to "tank" for you, simply have them either heal you or absorb part of the damage. Invulnerability just doesn't work well here.

I'm also not a fan of your abilities inflicting "random" status effects. I'd say pick one and stick with it. You might also want to give Kuva Cloud and Kuva Flood a bit more of a meaningful effect. As it stands now, Kuva Flood seems to amount to a version of Accelerant - a weak ability which exists solely to power up other abilities. As I said - I'd rather avoid creating multiple steps when using abilities, so having to drop a Flood before you use your other abilities seems unnecessary. Come up with some real effect of its own. Cloud stuns, maybe Flood immobilises? Maybe it slowly pulls enemies towards the centre? Just, I'd recommend doing something more meaningful than "a random status effect."

 

In conclusion:

I like the general idea and concept of the Warframe, but I feel the focus of its design leans a bit too heavily in the direction of novelty and theme at the expense of the Warframe's core gameplay loop. What this tends to do in my experience is cause me to disregard some or all of a Warframe's abilities. I brought up Gauss because I commonly use almost all of his abilities - they all "feel" like they have a purpose. He has a movement ability, an AoE control/damage ability, a shield and an ult. Grendel similarly gives me reason to use all of his abilities. His first ability us crucial to both eat and spit, his second ability heals and buffs which is useful, his third ability is good at range and his fourth good for digestion. What, on their own, do you envision Guen's abilities being good at? That's not necessarily a question you need to answer to me. It's more of a point worth considering. Because Warframe all too often gives us abilities that don't seem to have a lot of use. What am I supposed to use Atlas' stone wall for? What am I supposed to use Inaros' Sandstorm for? Etc. While a Warframe's total ability kit does need to work together, I need to have a reason to use each individual one on its own.

As I read this feedback it became clear that you prioritize gameplay over theme. This is actually perfect because it clashes with my views and forces me to think differently.

I understand that some of my abilities are too complex, I’ll see what I can do to simplify them.

I lowered Guen’s shields to 25. I think you’re right, they are a bit high considering everything else in her stats is high as well.

I don’t know about raising the armor so much. Since her health is so high I think it makes more sense to keep her armor at a reasonable level.

I really liked your over-health idea. I’m not so sure that it would be activated through the use of the kuva scepter, but I will try to find the best way of implementing it into Guen.
I’ve thought about adding this to Guen before, not exactly the way you presented it here though. The reason I didn’t add it before is because it doesn’t fit perfectly with her theme. But you’re right, I need to focus a little less on theme and more on gameplay.

About the random status effects thing. I agree that picking one would be better, but how do you pick just one for something like kuva? I mean, kuva literally involves every status effect in multiple ways. There isn’t any one status effect that aligns best with kuva and what it does.

I understand that some of the abilities are fairly dependent on others to have a real impact on things. I will try to think of ways to involve them more and make them a bit more independent. I did like that “pull enemies into the center” idea, I might use that. It stays on theme very well too.

Thanks for the help!👍 This feedback really helped a lot. If you come up with anything else let me know.

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7 hours ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

As I read this feedback it became clear that you prioritize gameplay over theme. This is actually perfect because it clashes with my views and forces me to think differently.

Right 🙂 I do agree that character concept is important (as an old City of Heroes vet), but I feel that gameplay has to come first. You can always bend the lore a little to fit a fun gameplay experience, but gameplay flaws can't really be covered even with good explanations. I tend to look to newer Warframes (Gauss, Grendel, etc.) and old Warframes recently redesigned (Ember, Wukong, etc.) mostly because those generally feel well-designed. They do occasionally break theme, they do occasionally not work all that well, but they have a cohesive "feel" to their kit which makes them unique in actual gameplay. Nail that, and the story will follow.

 

7 hours ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

I lowered Guen’s shields to 25. I think you’re right, they are a bit high considering everything else in her stats is high as well. I don’t know about raising the armor so much. Since her health is so high I think it makes more sense to keep her armor at a reasonable level.

I'm mostly basing this off three examples: Inaros, Nidus, Grendel. Inaros has 550 health, 400 armour with substantial healing. Nidus has 150 health with 300 armour and constant passive regeneration. Grendel has 350 health, 25 shield and 350 armour with conditional healing. All three of these characters generally work as "tanks" through a combination of high EHP (health + armour) and some form of Sustain. When I look at Guen, I see her in a similar situation - low shield, high EHP and her own version of healing through committing health, voiding the commitment, then getting that health back. It IS a more dangerous prospect since you need to effectively wager health in order to heal which makes it subject to cascade failure, but it is a fairly unique mechanic among Warframes.

 

7 hours ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

I really liked your over-health idea. I’m not so sure that it would be activated through the use of the kuva scepter, but I will try to find the best way of implementing it into Guen.
I’ve thought about adding this to Guen before, not exactly the way you presented it here though. The reason I didn’t add it before is because it doesn’t fit perfectly with her theme. But you’re right, I need to focus a little less on theme and more on gameplay.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm drawing on a concept from Payday 2 here. The Stoic Perk Deck does a few interesting things. The player only takes 25% of all damage, with the rest delivered as DPS of a fixed speed. On the player's health bar, this is marked by a cross-hatched section, denoting how much health the player will lose if the DPS is allowed to expire fully. The player also has a Whiskey pocket flask. Drinking from the flask voids ALL pending DPS and heals the player for 25% of all voided health. It's not exactly the same mechanic, but it's a similar concept. The player is allowed defer damage taken, then discard said damage taken before actually taking it. Payday 2 uses this to reduce incoming damage. The Overhealth proposal I made for Guen could be used to heal, instead.

Basically, I want Guen to wager her own health, with the aim of not having to pay the wager AND keep the wagered health. Overhealth helps give this a purpose even at full health. It's actually a bit similar to something like Garuda, though obviously the mechanical implementation is different. Garuda can burn health in return for energy, then burn energy to heal. If you get caught with your pants down and no energy for Blood Altar, you're in trouble. I envision Guen doing somthing similar. Invest health into enemies and abilities, clear her "health debt," then get that health back on top of it to heal and go into overhealth. As long as she can retain a decent health buffer, she can be quite the tank. Especially when you throw in the likes of Medi Ray and Arcane Grace, inventory permitting.

Up to you, though, but I kind of like the idea 🙂

 

7 hours ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

About the random status effects thing. I agree that picking one would be better, but how do you pick just one for something like kuva? I mean, kuva literally involves every status effect in multiple ways. There isn’t any one status effect that aligns best with kuva and what it does. I understand that some of the abilities are fairly dependent on others to have a real impact on things. I will try to think of ways to involve them more and make them a bit more independent. I did like that “pull enemies into the center” idea, I might use that. It stays on theme very well too.

Generally speaking, make sure that each ability has a primary standalone use first and foremost. Even if an ability is predominantly designed to synergise with other abilities (say, Saryn's Toxic Lash being used predominantly to spread Spores), it should still have a defined use. I understand your concerns with the theme of Kuva, but you could just not use preexisting Status effects. You could have some amount of control, like Kuva Flood pulling people in the centre and Kuva Cloud stunning or confusing people. Just make sure that abilities don't end up existing just because they sound cool or fit thematically. Again - you can end up with unused abilities that way. And that's not a criticism towards you. Warframe as it stands already has plenty of unused abilities simply because DE themselves never gave them a purpose.

Anyway, happy to help. This sounds like a cool concept, and bonus points for using the Heroes of Might and Magic 5 Succubus model as an example. Always thought that was a really good character design 🙂

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5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Right 🙂 I do agree that character concept is important (as an old City of Heroes vet), but I feel that gameplay has to come first. You can always bend the lore a little to fit a fun gameplay experience, but gameplay flaws can't really be covered even with good explanations. I tend to look to newer Warframes (Gauss, Grendel, etc.) and old Warframes recently redesigned (Ember, Wukong, etc.) mostly because those generally feel well-designed. They do occasionally break theme, they do occasionally not work all that well, but they have a cohesive "feel" to their kit which makes them unique in actual gameplay. Nail that, and the story will follow.

Rare to see you around here.

Both made frames around a theme and frames around a skill/ gameplay loop. It´s not really that Gameplay come first , it is gameplays dictates the boundaries and rules that warframe must fallow. Think of a plane, it is affected by gravity, but it does not mean it can’t fly. The goal should be using both together to create a good design. 

Going two give two examples coming from my latest frame. One starting with theme and the other starting with gameplay.

Theme

I´ve created a light frame with a skill that allows him to teleport forward and attack 5 times with the equipped melee weapon. This translates well the theme of moving at light speed but would break the game as is. So here what I did , after the initial rush + light speed attacks the skill gives an attack speed buff with unlimited duration but limited amount of charges, each melee attack consumes a charge from the buff and the skill cannot be recasted until the charges were spent. In this way both the idea of light speed attacks works and the gameplay loop of charging forwards and pressing the attack with normal melee srike work well.

Gameplay

I wanted to create a warframe that can copies allies build (frame, mods , weapons and so on).Copying allies is remarkable tricky design because if the copy is not stronger than the original why not just equip the original if the copy is stronger than the original why bother with the original. So, the shadow theme allows me to create a weird rule, if the ally cast a skill, you must cast it too (like a shadow you must fallow the original). So, the theme created the limitation that allows the gameplay to exist.

It goes both ways and it can go remarkably wrong because either side is compromised. For example: there is revenant on the broken theme side where the skill just don´t feel like they belong but there is also atlas where the skill work on a thematic point but they don´t quite have the numbers or scaling necessary to feel good or scale well( the wall is weak sauce [at least allow me to punch it , or make it spawn far away and quicly move towards atlas puling enemies along the path] , petrify is overcosted and rumblers are unimpressive for 4 [ the chad wuclone vs the virgin rock bros ].  

Pet peeve seriously this is how I feel about revenant

 

 

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Generally speaking, make sure that each ability has a primary standalone use first and foremost. Even if an ability is predominantly designed to synergise with other abilities (say, Saryn's Toxic Lash being used predominantly to spread Spores), it should still have a defined use. I understand your concerns with the theme of Kuva, but you could just not use preexisting Status effects. You could have some amount of control, like Kuva Flood pulling people in the centre and Kuva Cloud stunning or confusing people. Just make sure that abilities don't end up existing just because they sound cool or fit thematically. Again - you can end up with unused abilities that way. And that's not a criticism towards you. Warframe as it stands already has plenty of unused abilities simply because DE themselves never gave them a purpose.

I kind feel the same about this I see to many skill sacrificed on the altar of “synergy” ( I prefer to use the language of combo for extra effects that skill gains on conjunctions and synergy for stuff just working well as package but DE uses the word synergy for both Harrow´s kit and Oberon and I don´t like that ). I prefer to pursue fist good standalone effects, then natural synergy than at last a few “combos” to tie the kit together.

13 hours ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

As I read this feedback it became clear that you prioritize gameplay over theme. This is actually perfect because it clashes with my views and forces me to think differently.

As far is OP is concerned his approach is fine, I really think the kit needs streamlining but the idea seems fine going to take a deeper look at it later. For now my best piece of adivice is use spoiler tabs. Try to give a short description of what the skill does and all the mechanical stuff about it like this 

 

-|6cda6d3f50e5f63f30b00e38678f6def.jpg| Ability #3, “Merge”:

There are 3 different ways Merge can be used. In the 1st an enemy is pulled into Guen. In the 2nd and 3rd an enemy is pushed out of Guen. (Merging with an enemy while it’s standing in a kuva puddle will decrease the attack speed of that enemy while inside of you) 

-{Merge,1} Pulled into Guen, granting invincibility:

Energy cost: 54 energy

Guen’s body begins to liquify slightly. Guen then quickly zips to the nearest enemy, absorbing it into herself. The kuva exposure causes the enemy to swell up within her, as well as become invincible. Although the enemy is now invincible, Guen is in control, and because she and the enemy are now one, they share the same invulnerability.

Spoiler

 

•The only problem is, the enemy within Guen is still able to damage her from the inside. And since the enemy is attacking her from within, it is able to evade Guen’s shields completely. Also, as a result of the kuva enhancement, the enemy within her does more damage than normal.

•This ability lasts for 10 seconds, after that, the enemy will be automatically thrown out of Guen alive and unharmed. Also, both Guen and the enemy will be stripped of their invulnerability.

•Any time an enemy is thrown out of Guen, Guen will shrink back to her normal size and lose her invulnerability to attacks.

•Any time an enemy is thrown out of Guen, but does not remain invincible, that enemy will shrink back to it’s normal size and it won’t cost any health/ health capacity.

•If an enemy is thrown out of Guen, and does remain invincible (by either recasting Merge or using the kuva scepter), then that enemy will retain it’s larger/ bulkier figure and it will cost some health/ health capacity. 

 



-{Merge, 2} Pushed out of Guen, becomes an invincible shield:

Health cost: 30 health & max health capacity (90 at rank 30, 120 at rank 40)

Ability activation limit: Guen can only have 1 shield active at a time (3 at rank 30, 4 at rank 40).

If this ability is recast while an enemy is still within Guen then, once the enemy is finally thrown out of Guen automatically (meaning 10 seconds have passed), the enemy will be spit out as one of Guen’s kuva shields. What this means is that now, if Guen wants to take cover from incoming fire, she can hide behind one of her invincible kuva shields. She can also place them strategically in order to prevent something else from taking damage.

Spoiler

 

•This ability has a time limit, but that time limit varies anywhere from 30 to 50 seconds for each shield. Luckily the time limit on each of her shields will be renewed any time Guen uses her kuva scepter ability. When a shield is renewed, the duration for that shield will be a randomized again, between 30 and 50 seconds.

•If the time for one of Guen’s shields run out, and the kuva scepter ability has not been used, then that shield will expire. When this happens the kuva within that shield will quickly jump out of the shield and back into Guen, leaving behind the lifeless corpse which it previously inhabited.

•Whenever a shield expires, the health and health capacity used to create it will be refunded.

•So long as at least one kuva shield is active a small green clock will be displayed at the bottom right of your screen (In the same place as Gauss’ battery). It should look something like this: 25765049e5124708529eea8a364ec19b.jpg7a64f7d1823f87f2104a32e4c2b7f3c2.jpge8573876a63547537d4220948ae8ecfa.jpg(It turns right/ clockwise). This clock represents the amount of time left before the shield nearest to expiring does so. Once this clock makes a full revolution, the shield that corresponds to that clock will expire.

•If the shield nearest to expiring has less than 10 seconds left, then both the clock and the corresponding shield will begin to flash red: 30aa1bd0531321451745c8bf56dadd04.jpge39c49fe39b632d1cf5be6a1dfdf8fa4.jpgab6ca9371bc5b20340bf28b45107f110.jpg Also, a beeping sound will begin to warn you that your shield is running out of time.

If one of Guen’s shields expire, and Guen still has more shields active, then the hand on the clock will quickly snap to the position matching the progression of the shield which is now closest to expiring (I know this sentence is a mouthful, but I think if you reread it a few times it will make sense).

•As a way of further limiting and balancing this ability, 2% of the damage that is/ would be inflicted upon each of Guen’s shields will instantly be dealt upon Guen instead. (This happens because Guen is still connected with the kuva she used to create her shields)

•If the operator ever exits Guen, then the time limit for each of her shields will freeze, and so will the clock. The timers on her kuva shields will only unfreeze after the operator has reentered Guen. (Meaning, whenever the operator exits Guen the kuva shields cannot expire)

•If this ability is recast but the max number of shields has already been reached, then, once the enemy is automatically thrown out of Guen, it will die. Nothing else special about it. (In this case, recasting Guen’s Merge ability doesn’t cost any health or health capacity. The reason for this is because, in this case, none of Guen’s Kuva remains infused with the enemy after it dies.)

•Guen’s shields will always remain standing in the same spot, unless ordered to move through the use of Guen’s Kuva scepter ability.

•Whenever Guen stands behind one of her shields, that shield ducks. Whenever Guen ducks behind one of her shields, that shield will remain standing. This makes it easier for Guen to switch between hiding or hitting enemies while taking cover.

•You may be wondering why the enemies die, and why their corpses are invincible. Well the answer to both questions is simple. The enemies die from the overwhelming levels of kuva exposure, but the corpse they leave behind is still infused with Guen’s kuva, which is why they’re invincible.

•You may also be wondering what is making Guen’s shields stand and walk as if they were alive. Well, the reason Guen’s shields are able to stay upright, and even walk around when ordered to, is because they are being controlled by the parts of Guen that are still fused with them.

(Once this ability either expires or has been deactivated, both the health and health capacity you spent on casting this ability will be refunded)

 



-{Merge, 3} Pushed out of Guen, becomes a Kuva bodyguardian:

Health cost: 40 health & max health capacity (120 at rank 30, 160 at rank 40)

Ability activation limit: Guen can only have 1 kuva bodyguardian active at a time

If Guen’s 4th ability is used while she is merged with an enemy then, when the enemy is finally thrown out of Guen automatically (meaning 10 seconds have passed), it will be thrown out as Guen’s kuva bodyguardian, an invincible corpse that fights for you.

Spoiler

 

•Similar to Guen’s kuva shields, Guen’s kuva bodyguardian will be invincible indefinitely. Also, 5% of damage that is/ would be inflicted upon Guen’s kuva bodyguardian will instantly be dealt upon Guen instead.

•This sub-ability has no time limit, so unless you die or deactivate this ability Guen’s bodyguardian is permanent.

•If you mark an enemy with your waypoint, then your kuva bodyguardian will target that enemy until it dies, unless you remove the waypoint.

•If the operator ever exits Guen, then her kuva bodyguardian will be immobilized. Her bodyguardian will only unfreeze after the operator has reentered Guen. (Meaning, whenever the operator exits Guen, the bodyguardian will just be another shield)

•If Guen’s Kuva scepter ability is used while Guen is merged with an enemy, but there is already a bodyguardian active, then the enemy will be spit out already dead. Nothing else special about it. (In this case, casting Guen’s kuva scepter while merged with an enemy won’t cost any health capacity. The reason for this is that, in this case, none of Guen’s kuva remains infused with the enemy after it dies. But if your goal is to simply kill an enemy, I would go with recasting Merge while the max number of shields are active. It costs less energy and it has the same result.)

•Although this sub-ability (the “kuva bodyguardian”) is technically in the “merge” description, it is actually more a part of the “Guen’s kuva scepter” ability. When you create a bodyguardian, a number will appear above the “Guen’s kuva scepter” ability symbol, not the “merge” one. And to claim the refund on your bodyguardian, you have to hold the ability button for the “Guen’s kuva scepter” ability, not the “merge” ability.

(Once this ability has been deactivated, both the health and health capacity you spent on casting this ability will be refunded)

({This ability was created with the help of “velitria” and “SirMilkfiend”})

 

Also there is some backwards stuff happening here. Never create a AI unit that damages the user, seriosly the player will be punished by the stupidid off the AI. Also man its way easyer to not create a lot of unecessary steps. I would design this skill like this.

Tap

Consume enemy

Hold Process the enemy

Processing before  10 seconds

Kuva shield

Processing after  10 seconds

Kuva Guardian

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11 hours ago, keikogi said:

Rare to see you around here.

Yeah, I tend to keep to General Feedback, but I was invited 🙂 Hopefully, my input is not disruptive.

 

11 hours ago, keikogi said:

Rare to see you around here. Both made frames around a theme and frames around a skill/ gameplay loop. It´s not really that Gameplay come first , it is gameplays dictates the boundaries and rules that warframe must fallow. Think of a plane, it is affected by gravity, but it does not mean it can’t fly. The goal should be using both together to create a good design. 

That's a fair point. One doesn't necessarily have to prioritise one over the other. I was just trying to suggest not limiting a Warframe's mechanics too overly strictly based on concept, because concept can always bend to accommodate a compelling gameplay loop. Concept is also not an exact science. Back in the days of City of Heroes, I used to dabble in amateur writing, so I've done my fair share of trying to craft reasonable stories about why my 15-year-old Street Justice/Super Reflexes Scrapper is able to summon ancient spirits as an Incarnate power. Working with canon lore is a bit more tricky since you don't always have free reign, but you do still have leeway - especially here in Warframe where DE have no compunctions about ret-conning and straight-up changing their lore.

Take Sentient Shields, for instance. On some Sentients, they adapt to damage, developing damage resistance. On other Sentients - the small ones - they do nothing. They're just regular shields. On the Eidolons, Sentient shields are completely invulnerable to damage except for Void. On the Orbs, they're completely invulnerable to Void damage, but have a rotating vulnerability to a single damage type. Oh, and Revenant? The Eidolon/Sentient Warframe? He has none of any of that. So DE themselves have warped and bent what it means to have "sentient shields" based on what mechanic they were trying to achieve. I feel the OP should feel free to step outside the boundaries of the few examples of Kuva we have in the game, if it makes for more interesting gameplay.

Not necessarily even the gameplay loop I propose, either 🙂 Predominantly, I find that Kuva Cloud and Kuva Flood do very little on their own outside of synergy and that Kuva Guardian is too complicated to explain and has too many steps to use. In my view, at any rate. At the same time, the "health banking" mechanic is interesting and unique and could serve to make Guen very fun to play, but that can't be the only focus of her abilities. Thematic though it may be, I worry it's not going to play well.

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1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

That's a fair point. One doesn't necessarily have to prioritise one over the other. I was just trying to suggest not limiting a Warframe's mechanics too overly strictly based on concept, because concept can always bend to accommodate a compelling gameplay loop. Concept is also not an exact science. Back in the days of City of Heroes, I used to dabble in amateur writing, so I've done my fair share of trying to craft reasonable stories about why my 15-year-old Street Justice/Super Reflexes Scrapper is able to summon ancient spirits as an Incarnate power. Working with canon lore is a bit more tricky since you don't always have free reign, but you do still have leeway - especially here in Warframe where DE have no compunctions about ret-conning and straight-up changing their lore.

Not really much of writer here, I can create the story layout (where the story will go and the events ) but telling it on any compelling manner is impossible to me. Yeah, I´m aware of the difficulty of writing well around someone else creative work. As far as justifying power sets is concerned the closer they are thematically the easier to justify them, for your 15 years old concept I would use two moving parts originally school boy interested on mechanical engineering ( justify the scrapper part ) them some supernatural event happens and he gains a connection to ancient spirits gaining a minor degree of clairvoyance on the process ( working as a synonym for super reflexes ).

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Not necessarily even the gameplay loop I propose, either 🙂 Predominantly, I find that Kuva Cloud and Kuva Flood do very little on their own outside of synergy and that Kuva Guardian is too complicated to explain and has too many steps to use. In my view, at any rate. At the same time, the "health banking" mechanic is interesting and unique and could serve to make Guen very fun to play, but that can't be the only focus of her abilities. Thematic though it may be, I worry it's not going to play well.

After talking I think the best to way to put it is gameplay gives you the boundaries of what work and theme gives the direction of the design.  

There are similar ways to achieve the same effect thematic for example just have Kuva guards prioritize enemies affected by Kuva cloud ( so it works as command skill ) and gain a bonus per enemy killed while afflicted by kuva cloud.

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Yeah, I tend to keep to General Feedback, but I was invited 🙂 Hopefully, my input is not disruptive.

Due to your consistently polite and well-reasoned manner, your input usually results on good discussion.  Me on the other hand, sometimes I´m to blunt ( not a native speaker so sometimes when I try to be polite I end up speaking nothing )  and people get defensive.

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2 hours ago, keikogi said:

Not really much of writer here, I can create the story layout (where the story will go and the events ) but telling it on any compelling manner is impossible to me. Yeah, I´m aware of the difficulty of writing well around someone else creative work. As far as justifying power sets is concerned the closer they are thematically the easier to justify them, for your 15 years old concept I would use two moving parts originally school boy interested on mechanical engineering ( justify the scrapper part ) them some supernatural event happens and he gains a connection to ancient spirits gaining a minor degree of clairvoyance on the process ( working as a synonym for super reflexes ).

The character was a girl and a "mutant." I ended up merging with another character - an ancient long-dead martial artist, who served as both a mentor and a link to the spirit world. The spirits she could summon, then, were others she had met and befriended (and fought, because she's basically a gender-swapped Naruto), whom the girl could call on for help. I'm over-simplifying because it's drastically off-topic, but that's the sort of writing I used to do a lot of the time. "Hey, this character's backstory sort of aligns with that one. Let's just throw them together in a storyline and have them explain each other 🙂 The same applies when doing collaborative writing with other people. I've done some writing on City of Titans (I've no idea how that's doing, by the way), and that was some of the most fun I've had, largely because I ended up collaborating with some fairly open-minded people. Stories are the most fun when they mutate to account for each other, in my opinion. Hence why I encourage writers to put their own spin on fan works, rather than trying to be perfectly in-canon.

 

2 hours ago, keikogi said:

After talking I think the best to way to put it is gameplay gives you the boundaries of what work and theme gives the direction of the design. There are similar ways to achieve the same effect thematic for example just have Kuva guards prioritize enemies affected by Kuva cloud ( so it works as command skill ) and gain a bonus per enemy killed while afflicted by kuva cloud.

That's not a bad idea. We could use the Kuva Cloud as a minor control effect and a small heal, in order to offset the "health wagering" mechanic. Let's say a weaker but AoE version of Trinity's Well of Life. Affected enemies are knocked down and afflicted with "Kuva" for 10-ish seconds. Dealing damage to them would trigger and refresh a single heal over time on Guen, for say 5-10 HPS for 5 seconds. So it's a knockdown and a minor heal. Kuva Flood could temporarily confuse enemies and draw them towards the Centre. Kuva Guardian would then be effectively a Thrall - one or more convers who fight for you and prioritise people afflicted Kuva Cloud, dealing additional damage to enemies trapped in a Kuva Flood. Would something like that make sense? I'm speaking off-the-cuff, so these proposals are not entirely thought through. That's more to illustrate the direction I was looking in.

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55 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

merging with another character - an ancient long-dead martial artist, who served as both a mentor and a link to the spirit world.

Seems like I was right about both the reflexes and the link to the spiritual world coming from the same place.

57 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Hey, this character's backstory sort of aligns with that one. Let's just throw them together in a storyline and have them explain each other 🙂 The same applies when doing collaborative writing with other people. I've done some writing on City of Titans (I've no idea how that's doing, by the way), and that was some of the most fun I've had, largely because I ended up collaborating with some fairly open-minded people. Stories are the most fun when they mutate to account for each other, in my opinion. Hence why I encourage writers to put their own spin on fan works, rather than trying to be perfectly in-canon.

This kind of work is really interesting , ends up giving you a lot of collaboration group collaboration skills.

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

That's not a bad idea. We could use the Kuva Cloud as a minor control effect and a small heal, in order to offset the "health wagering" mechanic. Let's say a weaker but AoE version of Trinity's Well of Life. Affected enemies are knocked down and afflicted with "Kuva" for 10-ish seconds. Dealing damage to them would trigger and refresh a single heal over time on Guen, for say 5-10 HPS for 5 seconds. So it's a knockdown and a minor heal. Kuva Flood could temporarily confuse enemies and draw them towards the Centre. Kuva Guardian would then be effectively a Thrall - one or more convers who fight for you and prioritise people afflicted Kuva Cloud, dealing additional damage to enemies trapped in a Kuva Flood. Would something like that make sense? I'm speaking off-the-cuff, so these proposals are not entirely thought through. That's more to illustrate the direction I was looking in.

Seems like it works well a small healing , combined with soff cc grouping up enemies. A lot of weak effects but together they create a good skill.  I aprove of this direction because I usually avoid damage based skills because they have to pass the following test. 

If I have a weapon would I use this skill ?

If I have this skill would I use a weapon ? 

 

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1 hour ago, keikogi said:

Seems like it works well a small healing , combined with soff cc grouping up enemies. A lot of weak effects but together they create a good skill.  I aprove of this direction because I usually avoid damage based skills because they have to pass the following test. 

If I have a weapon would I use this skill ?

If I have this skill would I use a weapon ? 

Agreed. I typically find that direct-damage skills don't work very well in Warframe. They rarely scale well to high levels, and if they do they often make lower levels hilariously trivial. Mesa's Regulators come to mind as the latter. I find that our guns do a more than good enough job killing things, so our abilities ought to do other things. Defence, control, sustain, healing, utility, etc. - anything that's not just an attempted replacement for a weapon is fine in my book.

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I really like this dialogue back and fourth that’s happening here. It’s giving me a lot to work with.

Here’s what I gather that I should change in Guen’s build so far (tell me if I’m not understanding correctly or if I missed something):

1) Give Guen a bit more armor

2) Simplify Guen’s abilities. Make them both easier to understand and easier to use. Make each abilities’ activation no more than one step.

3) Add a “over-health” feature to Guen somehow (If I added this I think it would have to replace Guen’s current passive ability)

4) Make sure each ability has a purpose. Each ability should be able to function by itself as well as synergize with one another.

5) Either make the first 2 abilities inflict 1 single status effect, or get rid of status effects all together. (I don’t know that I like this one because I feel like random status effects works well with both the theme and gameplay, but if you feel differently I’ll think about it.)

6) Make Guen’s kuva flood draw enemies into it’s center and trap them there.

7) Use spoiler tabs to shorten the descriptions of abilities

8) Get rid of the bodyguardian link. AI’s are not reliable enough in this game, so trusting them enough to allow part of their damage to effect you is not possible. OR don’t make them invincible, because without invincibility the bodyguardians would better fit into the gameplay.

9) Make bodyguardians target any enemies effected by kuva cloud

10) Possibly add a heal buff feature that is activated whenever damage is dealt upon an enemy which is being effected by a kuva cloud.

11) Don’t make any abilities that simply do direct damage

 

There seems to be only 2 things that you guys left out:

-Kuva shields. Kuva shields are the second way that the merge ability can be used. Some of your thoughts about Guen’s kuva shields would be greatly appreciated.

-Guen’s passive ability. What do you guys think about her current passive ability? Should I replace it with your “over-health” idea, or find a way to make them both a part of her build.

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On 2020-06-08 at 9:02 PM, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

-Kuva shields. Kuva shields are the second way that the merge ability can be used. Some of your thoughts about Guen’s kuva shields would be greatly appreciated.

I'm generally not a fan of "deployable obstructors" in Warframe. Taking cover behind an object is a neat idea, but Atlas' Tectonics ability is I think an objective lesson for why that doesn't really work. The game's pace is such that crouching behind terrain just rarely works all that well. Take that from an Atlas player who used to try hiding behind his rock walls 🙂 Now granted, something large like Volt's shield could be useful, but I personally find that as well to be too cumbersome to really use reliably. I think you'd need something massive like a Snow Globe or else like a Reinhardt Barrier if you're going to actually make it useful. If you're going to simplify Kuva Guardian, I'd recommend going for a fire-and-forget design that turns an enemy into a temporary pet.

The longer I play Warframe, the more I realise that highly situational abilities which take time, care and precision in setting up end up not getting used a lot. Even when I'm not rushing through missions, it's often simpler to just shoot enemies than to try and outsmart them with barriers and multi-ability setups. If you've seen people criticise, for instance, Ash's Bladestorm, it's because it takes so long to mark enemies that, say, a Mesa can just straight-up shoot them with screen-wide auto-aim, or a Nova can nuke them with an Antimatter Drop. The same applies here. If I'm being shot at, want to not be shot at and don't have the opportunity to kill or control my enemies, I always have the option of just bullet-jumping around a corner or out of the room. About the only time physical obstructions work are when trying to defend an objective and... Well, you're never going to beat a Frost or a Limbo in this regard, or even do much given an objective can be shot from any direction.

If you're intent on using some kind of physical barrier, though, I'd recommend going with at least an Orisa Barrier. That is to say - a large half-sphere shield which can protect you or an objective from at least a 180 degree arc.

 

On 2020-06-08 at 9:02 PM, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

-Guen’s passive ability. What do you guys think about her current passive ability? Should I replace it with your “over-health” idea, or find a way to make them both a part of her build.

I think you can make both work on her. After all, Inaros has two passives, so does Hyldrin, so does Atlas, so do a lot of Warframes 🙂 I think you may want to redesign the UI a little bit, though. I've been talking about these things in loose terms, so let me define some terminology:

  • Overhealth - health gained in addition to maximum health. Overhealth takes damage after shields but before health. It's depicted as an orange bar between health and shields
  • Reserved health - a portion of max health reserved by ability use. If health drops below the reserved health threshold, the Warframe is downed. It's depicted as a grey bar between health and "death."
  • Invested health - a bank of health that Guen can invest into and draw from. Invested health is gained through ability use by converting some regular health into reserved health. Invested health is reclaimed when said abilities (or the enemies they're applied to) expire. When reclaimed, Invested Health first goes into reclaiming Reserved Health. If there is no Reserved Health, it goes into healing Guen. If Guen is at full health, it goes into generating Overhealth. If Overhealth is capped, Invested Health is discarded.

As an example, let's say Guen has 25 shields, 1200 overhealth, 4320 health, 1000 of which is Reserved and 1000 of which is Invested. Her health bar would, then, look a little something like this:

[[========================================]]
🩸1000

So that's next to no shields (why would one build her for shields at all?), a bit of overhealth, a lot of health, part of which is reserved. A separate icon tracks invested health, both in the buff bar under the health display and down by the weapon UI. Using Kuva Scepter would turn a portion of the black health into red health at the cost of energy. If Guen's health drops into the black, she immediately goes down and is set to 0 health. If Guen has more than 100 (negoiable) of Effective Health, she is revived with no shields and healed for the amount of Invested Health she has. All of her abilities are placed on a 15-second cooldown. This ability cannot trigger more than once every 60 (negotiable) seconds.

This gives Guen the following core gameplay loop: Attempt to infect as many enemies as possible with Kuva in order to Invest as much health as possible. Be careful, however, as this also builds up reserved health. Burn energy to negate Reserved health, then reclaim some Invested Health to heal and build Overhealth. Be careful, as you always want to have at least some Invested Health as a buffer against dying. Look for tanky or boss enemies to invest in, since Invested Health returns to Guen when the target it was invested in dies. This also gives Guen the following Theme: Infect enemies with Kuva, let it work. Recover from this activity. Kill or harvest the enemies to get your Kuva back with intrest. Don't infect too many enemies too quickly or you go weak. Don't harvest too many enemies too quickly, or else you starve your own supply.

Sorry about the shoddy graphic. I didn't feel like dealing with graphics software right now, and I figured forum formatting would do the trick anyway 🙂 I think this kind of Passive setup would work pretty well. You'd still need to hook it into all of her abilities, of course. The way I've described it this time, you'd also want to have each ability "cost health" per target affected, rather than per ability cast since you want to be able to kill the targets to harvest their Kuva (something the Scepter can already do, so it's thematic), but I personally feel that's better anyway. You can even put an icon or some other kind of visual effect over Kuva-infected enemies, so the Guen player would be able to make informed kill/save decisions.

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6 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'm generally not a fan of "deployable obstructors" in Warframe. Taking cover behind an object is a neat idea, but Atlas' Tectonics ability is I think an objective lesson for why that doesn't really work. The game's pace is such that crouching behind terrain just rarely works all that well. Take that from an Atlas player who used to try hiding behind his rock walls 🙂 Now granted, something large like Volt's shield could be useful, but I personally find that as well to be too cumbersome to really use reliably. I think you'd need something massive like a Snow Globe or else like a Reinhardt Barrier if you're going to actually make it useful. If you're going to simplify Kuva Guardian, I'd recommend going for a fire-and-forget design that turns an enemy into a temporary pet.

The longer I play Warframe, the more I realise that highly situational abilities which take time, care and precision in setting up end up not getting used a lot. Even when I'm not rushing through missions, it's often simpler to just shoot enemies than to try and outsmart them with barriers and multi-ability setups. If you've seen people criticise, for instance, Ash's Bladestorm, it's because it takes so long to mark enemies that, say, a Mesa can just straight-up shoot them with screen-wide auto-aim, or a Nova can nuke them with an Antimatter Drop. The same applies here. If I'm being shot at, want to not be shot at and don't have the opportunity to kill or control my enemies, I always have the option of just bullet-jumping around a corner or out of the room. About the only time physical obstructions work are when trying to defend an objective and... Well, you're never going to beat a Frost or a Limbo in this regard, or even do much given an objective can be shot from any direction.

If you're intent on using some kind of physical barrier, though, I'd recommend going with at least an Orisa Barrier. That is to say - a large half-sphere shield which can protect you or an objective from at least a 180 degree arc.

 

I think you can make both work on her. After all, Inaros has two passives, so does Hyldrin, so does Atlas, so do a lot of Warframes 🙂 I think you may want to redesign the UI a little bit, though. I've been talking about these things in loose terms, so let me define some terminology:

  • Overhealth - health gained in addition to maximum health. Overhealth takes damage after shields but before health. It's depicted as an orange bar between health and shields
  • Reserved health - a portion of max health reserved by ability use. If health drops below the reserved health threshold, the Warframe is downed. It's depicted as a grey bar between health and "death."
  • Invested health - a bank of health that Guen can invest into and draw from. Invested health is gained through ability use by converting some regular health into reserved health. Invested health is reclaimed when said abilities (or the enemies they're applied to) expire. When reclaimed, Invested Health first goes into reclaiming Reserved Health. If there is no Reserved Health, it goes into healing Guen. If Guen is at full health, it goes into generating Overhealth. If Overhealth is capped, Invested Health is discarded.

As an example, let's say Guen has 25 shields, 1200 overhealth, 4320 health, 1000 of which is Reserved and 1000 of which is Invested. Her health bar would, then, look a little something like this:

[[========================================]]
🩸1000

So that's next to no shields (why would one build her for shields at all?), a bit of overhealth, a lot of health, part of which is reserved. A separate icon tracks invested health, both in the buff bar under the health display and down by the weapon UI. Using Kuva Scepter would turn a portion of the black health into red health at the cost of energy. If Guen's health drops into the black, she immediately goes down and is set to 0 health. If Guen has more than 100 (negoiable) of Effective Health, she is revived with no shields and healed for the amount of Invested Health she has. All of her abilities are placed on a 15-second cooldown. This ability cannot trigger more than once every 60 (negotiable) seconds.

This gives Guen the following core gameplay loop: Attempt to infect as many enemies as possible with Kuva in order to Invest as much health as possible. Be careful, however, as this also builds up reserved health. Burn energy to negate Reserved health, then reclaim some Invested Health to heal and build Overhealth. Be careful, as you always want to have at least some Invested Health as a buffer against dying. Look for tanky or boss enemies to invest in, since Invested Health returns to Guen when the target it was invested in dies. This also gives Guen the following Theme: Infect enemies with Kuva, let it work. Recover from this activity. Kill or harvest the enemies to get your Kuva back with intrest. Don't infect too many enemies too quickly or you go weak. Don't harvest too many enemies too quickly, or else you starve your own supply.

Sorry about the shoddy graphic. I didn't feel like dealing with graphics software right now, and I figured forum formatting would do the trick anyway 🙂 I think this kind of Passive setup would work pretty well. You'd still need to hook it into all of her abilities, of course. The way I've described it this time, you'd also want to have each ability "cost health" per target affected, rather than per ability cast since you want to be able to kill the targets to harvest their Kuva (something the Scepter can already do, so it's thematic), but I personally feel that's better anyway. You can even put an icon or some other kind of visual effect over Kuva-infected enemies, so the Guen player would be able to make informed kill/save decisions.

I get that about the shields. I’ll have to figure something else out, because you’re right, it doesn’t really fit in with the fast pace gameplay. I may have to just replace it with the bodyguardian, but by doing that do I make the scepter ability less worth using? Will I have to add a feature to the kuva scepter to make it a better stand alone ability?

I don’t know about adding a black health regeneration feature to the scepter. Considering the fact that she already has overhealth, and can come back from the dead, I think the black health should really make players nervous. I mean, with all of the other stuff we’re adding to her, some players will rarely see the black health. When they do I want it to mean something. This isn’t exactly a deal breaker, but I’m not so sure it’s the right thing for her. 
Maybe instead, the more enemies that are effected (or “infected”) by kuva, the faster the black health regenerates back into regular health.

I don't think I’m understanding this part, can you explain it again?: 
“If Guen has more than 100 (negoiable) of Effective Health, she is revived with no shields and healed for the amount of Invested Health she has. All of her abilities are placed on a 15-second cooldown. This ability cannot trigger more than once every 60 (negotiable) seconds.”

I finally figured out how I’m going to add overhealth! Here’s what I’m thinking: instead of Guen’s abilities draining health capacity, they drain health. So while an ability is being used Guen can still heal. That way, if an ability ends while Guen has full health, the health in the ability gets added to the total as overhealth. This would also simplify things so that Guen doesn’t have 4 different types of health. And even better, this way it fits in with her theme as well! 
I know you made your own means of overhealth for Guen, and it seems like you put a lot of thought into it, but I’m not sure thats the way to go. Like Guen’s current abilities, that means of overhealth appears to be too complicated for fast pace gameplay. If you feel differently please tell me why, but I think what I suggested above for overhealth is the way to go.

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1 hour ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

I don’t know about adding a black health regeneration feature to the scepter. Considering the fact that she already has overhealth, and can come back from the dead, I think the black health should really make players nervous. I mean, with all of the other stuff we’re adding to her, some players will rarely see the black health. When they do I want it to mean something. This isn’t exactly a deal breaker, but I’m not so sure it’s the right thing for her. Maybe instead, the more enemies that are effected (or “infected”) by kuva, the faster the black health regenerates back into regular health.

The reason I went with "black health" was because I wanted to create a buffer. My idea was for Guen to tie Guen's health into her abilities in a way that can't be healed via "healing." You're literally transferring your health (your Kuva) into the enemies as you affect them with abilities. This shifts part of your health into a "bank" attached to the enemy. When that enemy dies or the Kuva effects on them end, that health goes back to you. The gimmick I was proposing was for Guen to have some means of burning energy to turn black health into red health. The idea here was that you would transfer your health into enemies, "heal black health," then pull that transferred health back to yourself in the form of additional healing and overhealth.

Think something like Hyldrin - you need to spend shields to gain shields. Pillage costs her shields to activate, but if you play your cards right you're almost always going to get more shields out of it than you put in. I wanted to give Guen a similar dynamic, but for health. Burn health to debuff enemies, try to get more health than you burned so you can sustain. Realistically, I picked Kuva Scepter at random for the effect. It's her fourth ability and it's a PBAoE. Basically, it meant that Guen had the option of jumping into melee to hit as many enemies as possible, turn as much of her current black health into red health as she can, then pull back the Kuva she's already invested into enemies. Outside of some interaction with Kuva Guardian, the ability doesn't really do all that much, so I figured it would be a good vessel for the mechanic.

Ultimately, though, it's your concept so it's up to you. If you don't like it, then you don't like.

 

1 hour ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

I don't think I’m understanding this part, can you explain it again?: 
“If Guen has more than 100 (negoiable) of Effective Health, she is revived with no shields and healed for the amount of Invested Health she has. All of her abilities are placed on a 15-second cooldown. This ability cannot trigger more than once every 60 (negotiable) seconds.”

I misspoke there. I meant to say "Invested Health" - the little blood drop icon I appended to the health bar visualisation. Not "Effective Health." I'll edit that out. Basically, if Guen has enough enemies affected with Kuva to total over some amount of health, she can revive using that health, but at the cost of all of her abilities going on cooldown. The cooldown is mostly there to prevent cheesing the mechanic by constantly grabbing a bit more Invested Health.

 

1 hour ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

I finally figured out how I’m going to add overhealth! Here’s what I’m thinking: instead of Guen’s abilities draining health capacity, they drain health. So while an ability is being used Guen can still heal. That way, if an ability ends while Guen has full health, the health in the ability gets added to the total as overhealth. This would also simplify things so that Guen doesn’t have 4 different types of health. And even better, this way it fits in with her theme as well! 

That's more or less what I was suggesting, as well. The primary difference is I deliberately wanted to avoid direct healing counteracting the effects of health loss since Warframe already has a lot of sources of healing - not least of which being Arcane Grace. For a high-health Warframe, that can total a near-constant heal of over 150 HP/s, before you even consider the likes of Medi Ray and Squad Health Restores. Then again... Not only does Inaros' Scarab Armour not prevent him from healing the 2900 health it costs him to cast, but Inaros himself is overloaded with self heals. So I suppose what you propose there isn't really that much out of the ordinary.

A revision, then: Guen takes damage per enemy affected by her abilities. The damage she takes is stored WITH the enemy. Once the enemy dies or the ability times out, Guen is healed for that amount of health back. If she has been healed in the interim, any excess health goes into Overhealth. This removes the need for "black health" but it would still retain the need for the "blood drop health" display in her buff bar and near her weapon UI. This preserves the same core gameplay loop of transferring health to cast abilities, healing, then pulling that health back into overhealth. I'm not married to my specific implementation as long as you're fine with the general concept.

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2 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

The reason I went with "black health" was because I wanted to create a buffer. My idea was for Guen to tie Guen's health into her abilities in a way that can't be healed via "healing." You're literally transferring your health (your Kuva) into the enemies as you affect them with abilities. This shifts part of your health into a "bank" attached to the enemy. When that enemy dies or the Kuva effects on them end, that health goes back to you. The gimmick I was proposing was for Guen to have some means of burning energy to turn black health into red health. The idea here was that you would transfer your health into enemies, "heal black health," then pull that transferred health back to yourself in the form of additional healing and overhealth.

Think something like Hyldrin - you need to spend shields to gain shields. Pillage costs her shields to activate, but if you play your cards right you're almost always going to get more shields out of it than you put in. I wanted to give Guen a similar dynamic, but for health. Burn health to debuff enemies, try to get more health than you burned so you can sustain. Realistically, I picked Kuva Scepter at random for the effect. It's her fourth ability and it's a PBAoE. Basically, it meant that Guen had the option of jumping into melee to hit as many enemies as possible, turn as much of her current black health into red health as she can, then pull back the Kuva she's already invested into enemies. Outside of some interaction with Kuva Guardian, the ability doesn't really do all that much, so I figured it would be a good vessel for the mechanic.

Ultimately, though, it's your concept so it's up to you. If you don't like it, then you don't like.

 

I misspoke there. I meant to say "Invested Health" - the little blood drop icon I appended to the health bar visualisation. Not "Effective Health." I'll edit that out. Basically, if Guen has enough enemies affected with Kuva to total over some amount of health, she can revive using that health, but at the cost of all of her abilities going on cooldown. The cooldown is mostly there to prevent cheesing the mechanic by constantly grabbing a bit more Invested Health.

 

That's more or less what I was suggesting, as well. The primary difference is I deliberately wanted to avoid direct healing counteracting the effects of health loss since Warframe already has a lot of sources of healing - not least of which being Arcane Grace. For a high-health Warframe, that can total a near-constant heal of over 150 HP/s, before you even consider the likes of Medi Ray and Squad Health Restores. Then again... Not only does Inaros' Scarab Armour not prevent him from healing the 2900 health it costs him to cast, but Inaros himself is overloaded with self heals. So I suppose what you propose there isn't really that much out of the ordinary.

A revision, then: Guen takes damage per enemy affected by her abilities. The damage she takes is stored WITH the enemy. Once the enemy dies or the ability times out, Guen is healed for that amount of health back. If she has been healed in the interim, any excess health goes into Overhealth. This removes the need for "black health" but it would still retain the need for the "blood drop health" display in her buff bar and near her weapon UI. This preserves the same core gameplay loop of transferring health to cast abilities, healing, then pulling that health back into overhealth. I'm not married to my specific implementation as long as you're fine with the general concept.

1) You know what, I think I’m willing to hold on to that black health regeneration idea. There are many different ways that idea can be implemented. In the end if I decide to use it, it may not come in the form you had detailed here, but I can see it working. I may turn it into an augment mod. I think it would work pretty well as an augment mod don’t you?

2) “Guen had the option of jumping into melee to hit as many enemies as possible”
By this comment, do you mean that Guen would use her kuva scepter as a melee weapon (similar to Excalibur’s exalted blade ability, or Wukong’s primal fury ability). If this is what you mean then I kind of like it. I don’t know that I’d add black health healing properties, but I’m not totally against it. I think there are probably better ways we could add such features to her, but I’m open to it. 
Here’s something I would add. If the scepter is activated while merge is being used, in addition to it creating a kuva guardian, Guen would also slam the butt of her scepter to the ground like the original idea. Stunning any enemies in close proximity.

3) So, I’m going to see if I understand the part that I had trouble with before. Tell me if I’m still misunderstanding.
What I think you mean here is that, if Guen has already used up her passive and gets downed, she can still evade death. So long as she has a certain amount of ability health stored up she can revive herself once again. 
If this is the case, then I don’t think it’s the right thing for her. Guen already evades death once every so often by using her passive ability. I think that’s enough. I do admit that the way you detailed it in your post appears to be fairly balanced, but Guen already has a similar feature. It just seems a bit unnecessary to me. If you still feel differently, then please tell me why. I may feel differently after hearing your reasoning.

4) “This removes the need for "black health"” 
Not really. The black health is actually the health that gets eaten up when Guen’s passive ability is used. Then again, I did just change it to grey in my post, so I suppose I should have been calling it grey health instead of black health.

5) “I'm not married to my specific implementation as long as you're fine with the general concept.”
I am definitely more than fine with the concept. This overhealth idea is definitely going to be in my post the next time I update it. The only reason I haven’t updated it yet is because you’re coming up with so many solid suggestions. I figured I’d just throw them all in at the same time, once they've been finalized.

Sorry I’ve been doing quotes in such a weird way. Once I already have the post open, and I’ve already started typing, I don't know how to insert the quotes properly. I’ll figure out how to make it work later, but for now you’ll be stuck with quotes made the old fashioned way.

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7 hours ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

By this comment, do you mean that Guen would use her kuva scepter as a melee weapon (similar to Excalibur’s exalted blade ability, or Wukong’s primal fury ability). If this is what you mean then I kind of like it. I don’t know that I’d add black health healing properties, but I’m not totally against it. I think there are probably better ways we could add such features to her, but I’m open to it. 

While you could turn the Kuva Scepter into an Exalted Weapon, that's not what I was proposing. The way I read your description for the Kuva Scepter, it was basically a standard "foot stomp" - a Player-Based AoE. My proposal was for every enemy hit by it to contribute towards reclaiming "black health" or else towards healing Guen, for the purposes of then recovering Invested Health and gaining Overhealth. I should probably come up with different nomenclature now that we seem to be moving away from "black health." Let's call it Kuva. For every enemy Guen hits with her 1, 2 and 3 abilities, she loses health but gains an equivalent amount of Kuva. When the affected enemy dies or the effects expire, the Kuva invested in the enemy is returned to Guen in the form of healing if hurt, Overhealth otherwise. This cleans up the terminology, it cleans up the UI and makes it easier to explain.

Burn health to debuff/control enemies and gain Kuva, kill enemies to turn Kuva into health.

 

7 hours ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

3) So, I’m going to see if I understand the part that I had trouble with before. Tell me if I’m still misunderstanding.
What I think you mean here is that, if Guen has already used up her passive and gets downed, she can still evade death. So long as she has a certain amount of ability health stored up she can revive herself once again. 

I believe you are misunderstanding. My proposal was a slight modification to your passive, necessitated by the way I suggested handling her health. Your proposal as I read it is that if Guen goes down with her abilities running, she doesn't die but instead gets a grace period and her abilities are cancelled. This is because in your model, the health she burns on abilities isn't tracked. In my model, all health burned on abilities is converted to Kuva, which can later be converted back to health. As such, I've modified your Passive to trigger not if Guen has "abilities still active" but rather if Guen has "at least 100 Kuva." If she has at least 100 Kuva, she doesn't die but is rather healed for the amount of Kuva she has and is basically hit with a Ability Nullification for 15 seconds (to prevent her cheesing the system), as well as locked out of this death prevention for 60 seconds (in order to prevent her reviving every 15 seconds).

We're talking about the same thing. Mine just sounds different because I'm adapting it to the logistics of my own proposal.

 

7 hours ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

4) “This removes the need for "black health"” 
Not really. The black health is actually the health that gets eaten up when Guen’s passive ability is used. Then again, I did just change it to grey in my post, so I suppose I should have been calling it grey health instead of black health.

Honestly, I think you were right the last time - the fewer the colours in the health bar, the better. Rather than going with black/grey health to track health that Guen has lost, just have her abilities cost health to use. Nekros already does this with his Despoil augment, causing Desecration to burn health instead of energy. Simply have all of Guen's abilities cost health instead of energy (or health and a LITTLE energy) and give her one semi-reliable self-heal. That's effectively what you proposed last time, or so I though. After all, the game already has "black health" of its own. It's the colour of your health bar that represents the damage you've taken to health 🙂 We've already agreed, I thought, that blocking Guen from having her black/grey health healed is unnecessary given similar (and actually tankier) Warframes don't have the same limitation.

As such, I propose a simple alternative, more or less copied from earlier in this post. Have Guen's abilities cost health and generate an equivalent amount of Kuva for her. When an enemy dies, the Kuva invested in that enemy is returned as health and removed from Guen's Kuva pool.

Bonus points if the health that abilities drain is a percentage of her max health, rather than a flat amount. That way, Guen building for Max Health won't utterly trivialise ability cost AND would also increase the amount of healing she gets back (what Inaros and Grendel do with Arcane Grace and Medi Ray). You could then additionally institute a multiplier on health gained from absorbed Kuva. When Guen reabsorbs X amount of Kuva, she heals for Kuva*ability_strength. At 100% ability strength, that's a 1-to-1 ratio - she gets back exactly as much as she invested. At 130% ability strength (i.e. using Intensify), she would get 30% more health than she invested in Kuva.

Hmm...

Spoiler

Here's an alternative, just for your consideration. I still prefer the above, but let's say we went the opposite way - the Nidus model. Let's say Kuva Cloud and Kuva Flood cost ONLY health to cast per target affected and generate an equivalent amount of Kuva. Having Kuva gives Guen a passive health regeneration equivalent to the amount she has, up to a cap (either on Kuva or regeneration). Kuva Guardian and Kuva Scepter by contrast, cost energy. Kuva Guardians act like Trinity's link, absorbing a portion of damage and a portion of status effects from the player. Damage and status effects transferred to Kuva Guardians cost an equivalent amount of Kuva. Kuva Scepter becomes a standard Foot Stomp. For every enemy affected, Guen is healed a large amount at the cost of a large amount of Kuva, with health above the cap going into Overhealth.

If you cap Kuva fairly low (say 1000-3000), make it quick to gain (say 1% of max health per enemy affected by Kuva Cloud or Kuva Flood) and quick to use (don't have numbers for Guardian and Scepter), you could create an interesting "resource" dynamic similar to Ember's overheat meter.

But again, I don't intend for this to BE my actual suggestion. That's why it's in Spoiler tags. Feel free to disregard, because I doubt I'll be returning to this suggestion.

 

 

8 hours ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

Sorry I’ve been doing quotes in such a weird way. Once I already have the post open, and I’ve already started typing, I don't know how to insert the quotes properly. I’ll figure out how to make it work later, but for now you’ll be stuck with quotes made the old fashioned way.

No worries - either works. However, if you're looking for convenience: Highlight text from my post and wait a second. A "Quote" button will appear on the bottom right of the text. Hit that and a quote box containing the highlighted text will appear in your reply, at the location of your text cursor. The forum is fiddly so sometimes it'll tend to highlight the entire web page, and sometimes the Quote button won't appear. If that happens, just unselect and highlight the text again.

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7 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Honestly, I think you were right the last time - the fewer the colours in the health bar, the better. Rather than going with black/grey health to track health that Guen has lost, just have her abilities cost health to use. Nekros already does this with his Despoil augment, causing Desecration to burn health instead of energy. Simply have all of Guen's abilities cost health instead of energy (or health and a LITTLE energy) and give her one semi-reliable self-heal. That's effectively what you proposed last time, or so I though. After all, the game already has "black health" of its own. It's the colour of your health bar that represents the damage you've taken to health 🙂 We've already agreed, I thought, that blocking Guen from having her black/grey health healed is unnecessary given similar (and actually tankier) Warframes don't have the same limitation.

That was kind of what I was saying, but not entirely. It should have been though, it makes way more sense the way you explained it.

What I was saying is that we should only get rid of the orange health (health reserved from ability use). But it never occurred to me that we could do the same thing with her black/ grey health (health reserved from passive ability use). Might as well right, were doing it with everything else. 

So yeah, that's what I’ll do. When I update Guen’s build, I’ll replace all health capacity drain with normal health drain, and by doing so I’ll be able to get rid of all the different types of reserved health. It’s way cleaner that way, and it seems like we both agree that it is better than the original idea.

Once I’m done making these health drain changes maybe we’ll come back to that melee scepter idea. I will definitely need some help reinventing most of Guen’s abilities and augment mods, but you’ve already made some very strong suggestions so we’re already on our way.

 

7 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I believe you are misunderstanding. My proposal was a slight modification to your passive, necessitated by the way I suggested handling her health. Your proposal as I read it is that if Guen goes down with her abilities running, she doesn't die but instead gets a grace period and her abilities are cancelled. This is because in your model, the health she burns on abilities isn't tracked. In my model, all health burned on abilities is converted to Kuva, which can later be converted back to health. As such, I've modified your Passive to trigger not if Guen has "abilities still active" but rather if Guen has "at least 100 Kuva." If she has at least 100 Kuva, she doesn't die but is rather healed for the amount of Kuva she has and is basically hit with a Ability Nullification for 15 seconds (to prevent her cheesing the system), as well as locked out of this death prevention for 60 seconds (in order to prevent her reviving every 15 seconds).

Now it’s time to talk about this proposal of yours, which I simply couldn't seem to wrap my head around.

First, before I attempt to interpret your proposal, I think I have found what may be causing some confusion. In your post you said that Guen’s health turns into kuva, and that kuva is then transferred into enemies. Well, the way I see it, Guen’s health is kuva, they are one and the same. Meaning 100 health= 100 kuva (you probably already know this, but I thought I’d just make sure). In the lore and logic of the frame I may explain that somewhere along the line, Guen’s health becomes kuva, and vice versa. But for the sake of keeping things simple in the ability explanations, I would stick to just calling it health.

Anyway, here’s what I think you mean in your proposal: For the passive ability to take effect, you must have at least ___ health invested in your active abilities, if you don't you’ll just die. If you do have enough, then in addition to automatic revival and a grace period, your abilities will not be functional for the duration of the grace period. There will also be a 60 second timer on Guen’s passive ability to prevent spamming/ immortality.

I’m not exactly against this change, but I don’t really see the point. If the cap for activating Guen’s passive ability is 100 invested health. Lets say that there was no cap, and instead of 100 someone has only 50 invested health. If that person were to evade death using Guen’s passive ability, all the health he would be left with is a measly 50 health. Technically if he played his cards right he could come back from that, but with such low health he’s pretty much as good as dead already. No point in making him any more dead than he already is.

As for that ability blocker idea, I’m not so sure it’s necessary either. If someone just evaded death using Guen’s passive ability, odds are he has little health to be throwing away on abilities. So if he does decide to use his abilities, all he’s really doing is killing himself. Although, this may be a good way of preventing people from accidentally killing themselves directly after evading death, so I may end up adding this ability blocker feature after all.

From what I understand, that 60 second timer serves as a way of preventing people from using Guen’s passive ability multiple times back to back. The only thing is, there is already a system in place preventing this from happening. You may not have noticed it because I put it all the way at the end, but at the bottom of the passive ability explanation it says: “Once this passive is used once, it cannot be used again until Guen has regenerated all of her dead health capacity.” 

 

7 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

You could then additionally institute a multiplier on health gained from absorbed Kuva. When Guen reabsorbs X amount of Kuva, she heals for Kuva*ability_strength. At 100% ability strength, that's a 1-to-1 ratio - she gets back exactly as much as she invested. At 130% ability strength (i.e. using Intensify), she would get 30% more health than she invested in Kuva.

I’m not crazy about your hidden alternate suggestion, but I really like the one above. I think ability strength determining the amount of health Guen gets back is perfect, a true stroke of genius. I could list the many reasons why I think this idea is so great, but instead I’m going to save us both some time and energy by simply saying 👏BRAVO!👏

 

7 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Highlight text from my post and wait a second. A "Quote" button will appear on the bottom right of the text. Hit that and a quote box containing the highlighted text will appear in your reply, at the location of your text cursor. The forum is fiddly so sometimes it'll tend to highlight the entire web page, and sometimes the Quote button won't appear. If that happens, just unselect and highlight the text again.

Thanks for the tip 🙂

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10 minutes ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

Well, the way I see it, Guen’s health is kuva, they are one and the same. Meaning 100 health= 100 kuva (you probably already know this, but I thought I’d just make sure). In the lore and logic of the frame I may explain that somewhere along the line, Guen’s health becomes kuva, and vice versa. But for the sake of keeping things simple in the ability explanations, I would stick to just calling it health.

This is a matter of terminology, I think. I use the term "Kuva" to refer to the health stored in the little 🩸 icon in the buff bar and just "health" to her regular health. While I understand your conceptual theme, we do still need different terms for those so we know which one is being talked about. I'm honestly open to whatever terminology you choose, just so long as we're on the same page 🙂

 

13 minutes ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

So yeah, thats what I’ll do. When I update Guen’s build, I’ll replace all health capacity drain with normal health drain, and by doing so I’ll be able to get rid of all the different types of reserved health. It’s way cleaner that way, and it seems like we both agree that it is better than the original idea.

Agreed. Lost health is just taken as damage which the health bar is already equipped to display and reserved health (aka Kuva) can be tracked in a separate UI element. You have options here. It could be tracked in the buff bar similar to Inaros' Scarab Armour, over the ability icon ala Rhino's Iron Skin or as a separate unique graphic like Nidus' Mutation. For instance, you could have a graphic representing that recognisable curved teardrop container which displays as empty and slowly fills with Kuva the more Guen invests, up to a cap (if there is one). Overhealth would still go on the health bar, though, to be consistent with Overshields. Orange health is a good choice for that, as players are already trained to recognise orange bars as health due to Grineer armour.

 

17 minutes ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

From what I understand, that 60 second timer serves as a way of preventing people from using Guen’s passive ability multiple times back to back. The only thing is, there is already a system in place preventing this from happening. You may not have noticed it because I put it all the way at the end, but at the bottom of the passive ability explanation it says: “Once this passive is used once, it cannot be used again until Guen has regenerated all of her dead health capacity.”

Oh, so Hyldrin Shield Gating, then? I remember seeing that, but it must have completely slipped my mind. Oops! Yeah, with that caveat I think there's no need for further limitations. Realistically speaking, my goal was indeed what you cite here - to prevent Guen from chaining resurrects one after the other ad infinitum. Requiring full health before the Passive can retrigger is another way of accomplishing that, and a more elegant one at that. I stand corrected - your approach is better. No need for additional cooldowns, then, if that's the case.

 

20 minutes ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

I’m not crazy about your hidden alternate suggestion, but I really like the one above. I think ability strength determining the amount of health Guen gets back is perfect, a true stroke of genius. I could list the many reasons why I think this idea is so great, but instead I’m going to save us both some time and energy by simply saying 👏BRAVO!👏

Yeah, I put it in a Spoiler tag for that very reason. It was more of an aside that I didn't feel strongly about and didn't want to derail into. Feel free to disregard - I intend to. And you're right - that suggestion is not necessary in order to hook Guen's returned health amount into her ability strength.

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As a random side note - the text in some but not all of your posts is GIGANTIC on my screen 🙂 Double the size of my text, at least, though still using the same font. I don't even know how one changes text size on this forum... Not necessarily a problem, but it's caught my attention a few times.

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On 2020-06-04 at 4:17 PM, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

think i’ve solved this problem.

What I did was I lowered Guen’s shield link from 5% damage, to 2%. This way, if you have all shields active at once you are less likely to perish from your own devices. I also added a time limit for each of Guen’s shields. This time limit can be renewed any time Guen activates her 4th ability.

Guen’s bodyguardian I left alone. The reason for this is because you can only have the one bodyguardian, therefore it is less of a risk having it around. Also, since Guen’s 4th ability already influences Guen’s shields, it makes more sense for them to be renewed by the scepter than the bodyguardian. In other words, I didn’t give Guen’s bodyguardian a timer because you would forget about it. And without a timer, I see no way or reason to lower the link. I know this isn’t my best explanation, if you have specific questions about this change, or lack there of, I’ll be happy to answer them

For gameplay reasons its better to just have a upkeep cost them a damage transference mechanic , because the amount of damage you are going to take is unpredictable ans there not much you can do mitigate it. About the kuva shield I would just make it part of the guard. Tap summons a guard with a spear , hold summons. Guard with a shield. A skill having multiple effects is fine but they have to be closely related.

7 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Bonus points if the health that abilities drain is a percentage of her max health, rather than a flat amount. That way, Guen building for Max Health won't utterly trivialise ability cost AND would also increase the amount of healing she gets back (what Inaros and Grendel do with Arcane Grace and Medi Ray). You could then additionally institute a multiplier on health gained from absorbed Kuva. When Guen reabsorbs X amount of Kuva, she heals for Kuva*ability_strength. At 100% ability strength, that's a 1-to-1 ratio - she gets back exactly as much as she invested. At 130% ability strength (i.e. using Intensify), she would get 30% more health than she invested in Kuva.

My experience with flat health cost is they are dread full before you can apply health modifiers and meaninless after you can. It usually better to create current health cost or total healt cost ( current health is an amazing alternative if the skill is empowered by the amount of health spent ).

20 minutes ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

As for that ability blocker thing, I’m not so sure it’s necessary either. If someone just evaded death using Guen’s passive ability, odds are he has little health to be throwing away on abilities. So if he does decide to use his abilities, all he’s really doing is killing himself. Although, this may be a good way of preventing people from accidentally killing themselves directly after evading death, so I may end up adding this ability blocker feature after all.

It is because trinity is a thing and health restores as well , both can fully heal a player on moments notice. Or even something as simple as life strike can give you a full heal.

 

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4 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

As a random side note - the text in some but not all of your posts is GIGANTIC on my screen 🙂 Double the size of my text, at least, though still using the same font. I don't even know how one changes text size on this forum... Not necessarily a problem, but it's caught my attention a few times.

Yeah, I noticed that too. You must have caught me as I was right in the middle of fixing it. The reason it was like that is because I typed the responses somewhere else, then pasted them onto here. 

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1 minute ago, keikogi said:

My experience with flat health cost is they are dread full before you can apply health modifiers and meaninless after you can. It usually better to create current health cost or total healt cost ( current health is an amazing alternative if the skill is empowered by the amount of health spent ).

Agreed. I'd cite two examples. Garuda sacrifices 50% of her health for her Bloodletting ability, regardless of her absolute health amount. The Hema itself will always cost up to 3% of the player's health regardless of how much health that player has. For my 8000 HP Inaros, that's 240 damage per reload from empty. In short, I agree that percentage health costs are a better approach. Especially if the OP can be convinced to go with a Grendel-like 350 health, you could probably get away with 1% health converted into Kuva for every enemy affected by Kuva Cloud and Kuva Flood. It's pretty easy to drop a flood and snag 20 people in close quarters, which is a LOT of health. I'd go with 10% health lost per Kuva Guardian, with a cap of three simultaneous ones (not affected by mods or ability strength).

The idea here is to give Guen a large health pool, but still let her dump A LOT of health into abilities very quickly. Absolute simply wouldn't work. At the proposed base health of 350, even something as simple as 30-40 health lost per enemy would be brutal, but with an estimated 3000-4000 health, it would be nothing. Remember - we want Guen to deal a lot of damage to herself, since that damage can then potentially come back as overhealth.

 

8 minutes ago, keikogi said:

For gameplay reasons its better to just have a upkeep cost them a damage transference mechanic , because the amount of damage you are going to take is unpredictable ans there not much you can do mitigate it.

While I know this wasn't addressed at me, I still want to address it. I consider myself an "Inaros Main." One of Inaros' primary mechanics is his Scarab Armour/Swarm. It's a mechanic by which Inaros can invest A LOT of health into his armour, then burn this health on either offensive abilities via Scarab Swarm or defensive abilities via Negation Swarm. By FAR the most damage I end up taking in a mission is caused by recasting my Scarab Armour. No, enemy damage can't be accounted for perfectly, but one can make some educated guesses. In my mind's eye, I see that as the point. Guen is a naturally really tough Warframe, but her abilities require her to take calculated risks, the same way Inaros and Garuda would need to. She needs to deliberately use up some of her health, ensuring to have enough left over to not die.

Basically, you build for massive overkill survivability and then trade portions of that off to fuel your abilities. That seems to be the case for a lot of the newer Warframes. Grender can overeat and burn through all of his energy VERY quickly. Gauss can overuse his abilities and run his battery dry. Especially under Overcharge, that's not hard to do. Even Ember runs the risk of overheating and burning through all of her energy, with the alternative being to dump heat but lose damage resistance in he process. In the past I may have argued against this, but these days I tend to find that creates compelling gameplay moments. Sure, when done right there is little risk. A smart Garuda would never use Bloodletting if she's low on health, not when Blood Altar is a thing. A smart Inaros would never be within 3000 HP of death. A smart Ember would never let Immolation max out for too long. However, as I've said in other threads - I personally feel that mechanically complex gameplay often leads to EASIER gameplay simply because it gives players more power if we play our cards right.

Basically, if Guen tags 30 people with a Kuva Flood, loses the majority of her health and gets killed - I'd argue that's her design working as intended. The player either got greedy or failed to keep appraised of the situation and over-indulged. I've lost count of how many times I've eaten far more enemies with Grendel than I'd meant to and thrown up as a result 🙂

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