Railjack Revisited (Part 1): Healing Abilities on Objects Feedback Megathread

[Opyt]

Still wish DE would come back and re-examine objective healing.  Flat amounts of healing in a game that has objectives with scaling max health feels very "not good".

[Opyt]

It is now September, we received this (unwelcome) change back in late April.  That means it's been roughly 4 months of this change.  I'm still not happy with flat healing on objectives with scaling health.  I would prefer it to be switched to percentage healing, and will not be purchasing anything from DE be it tennogen, prime access, platinum packs, etc. until DE figures out a way to make the objective healing tolerable.

It doesn't even have to be "satisfactory", I just want it to be tolerable.  5 minutes to heal a defense objective on Sedna using Protective Dash is currently intolerable.  For all intents and purposes: 42,000/100 = 420 seconds, 300 seconds is 5 minutes, and by the point where the objective has lost 30,000 health, you're basically hoping it's extraction time anyways.  It just feels bad.

Objective healing should scale, if every objective scales in health, why wouldn't the means to replenish that scaling health ALSO scale?  DE decided unilaterally that 60% was "trivializing" the game, completely ignoring other silly things that trivialize gameplay above and beyond simply temporarily delaying the end of a mission-type, things like Exodia Hunt + attack speed, as eventually the enemies will scale too high for the healing to matter since everything hits more than one time, and their damage scales upwards.  The only place where it demonstrably trivialized gameplay was in mobile defense missions, but even that fell flat because the healing didn't work reliably, but the 5 seconds of invulnerability did.

So we have objective healing that doesn't scale, when enemy damage scales, objective health scales, enemy health scales, enemy healing scales.  While also lowering the caps on damage reduction.  It has made very little difference in the gameplay that in the past some higher ups at DE have disagreed with.  The biggest change I can think of is that Excavations are more obnoxious and that solo defense missions are irritating and both can be of these can be overcome by running more damage instead of having the freedom to choose what to bring, which was the original stated goal in the dev workshop.

[selig_fay]

I think the current changes should be kept, but the numbers should be scaled from the mission / enemies level at the current moment. (i.e. being weak at the beginning of the mission, but tending to grow with the enemies).

And all of this applies to all healing, including Oberon, Wisp, Khora. This is a much more delicate balance than current trash or regular %.

[Opyt]

On 2020-09-02 at 1:31 AM, selig_fay said:

I think the current changes should be kept, but the numbers should be scaled from the mission / enemies level at the current moment. (i.e. being weak at the beginning of the mission, but tending to grow with the enemies).

And all of this applies to all healing, including Oberon, Wisp, Khora. This is a much more delicate balance than current trash or regular %.

While that could be interesting, I don't see it happening.  It is my opinion that it's beyond DE's development abilities.

The reason I harp on percentage is because it's the easiest way to "fix" it.

  The current state is pitiful, there we agree, and it needs any help it can get.  I know they're capable of having it do percentage healing because that's what Protective Dash did prior to the current "system".  And even if they had interns working on it, provided they had the old code, an intern could reverse engineer it to do percentage based healing.  Having it scale based on enemy level on the other hand would require a lot more effort and won't be done with, potentially, a few key strokes.

 

I just want some common sense objective healing, or healsense if you will.

edit:
Besides if the healing leveled with the enemies it would eventually get us back to where we were: having the ability to heal an objective for more health than it has.

[selig_fay]

1 hour ago, Opyt said:

While that could be interesting, I don't see it happening.  It is my opinion that it's beyond DE's development abilities.

The reason I harp on percentage is because it's the easiest way to "fix" it.

  The current state is pitiful, there we agree, and it needs any help it can get.  I know they're capable of having it do percentage healing because that's what Protective Dash did prior to the current "system".  And even if they had interns working on it, provided they had the old code, an intern could reverse engineer it to do percentage based healing.  Having it scale based on enemy level on the other hand would require a lot more effort and won't be done with, potentially, a few key strokes.

 

I just want some common sense objective healing, or healsense if you will.

edit:
Besides if the healing leveled with the enemies it would eventually get us back to where we were: having the ability to heal an objective for more health than it has.

My guess is that the same logic should apply here as with damage abilities like Vauban. The game mod needs to keep and update the current level of enemies, so I don't think there is a problem getting this. And then, just a formula.

On the other hand, it will be very difficult to balance the healing against the damage of enemies, because the percentage will either dominate early in the mission, or it will be as useless as it is now.

[Opyt]

22 hours ago, selig_fay said:

My guess is that the same logic should apply here as with damage abilities like Vauban. The game mod needs to keep and update the current level of enemies, so I don't think there is a problem getting this. And then, just a formula.

On the other hand, it will be very difficult to balance the healing against the damage of enemies, because the percentage will either dominate early in the mission, or it will be as useless as it is now.

While I don't disagree with you, I just don't believe DE is competent enough to deliver on something that nuanced.  On the bright side it seems like someone accidentally flipped a switch and now Trinity's Blessing is healing for 100%.  Can't wait for that to get fixed.

edit:
huh.  A euphemism for neutering/spaying your pets is "getting them fixed" ... coincidence?

[selig_fay]

2 hours ago, Opyt said:

While I don't disagree with you, I just don't believe DE is competent enough to deliver on something that nuanced.  On the bright side it seems like someone accidentally flipped a switch and now Trinity's Blessing is healing for 100%.  Can't wait for that to get fixed.

edit:
huh.  A euphemism for neutering/spaying your pets is "getting them fixed" ... coincidence?

We only need to believe. But, I think that the whole problem is that the old developers are gone and now there are no people who understand the game. Hence all the problems with crutches. Or they have very little contact with each other, I don't know. It just looks like people are studying the project again.

But I don't like that they are trying to justify the delay in remote work. This might be a problem for the sound guys, but I think for most developers it shouldn't change much. There may be netcode testing problems, but I think this can be solved.

[_R_o_g_u_e_]

I mean, why go after healing objects when the alternative is just slapping a variant of dome over the defence point?

Healing objects is kind of the only other playstyle for high level defence alongside building champions.

If you take away object healing, all that’s left is building over a defence point.

Is the game better when there are less ways to do things?

[Opyt]

10 hours ago, selig_fay said:

We only need to believe. But, I think that the whole problem is that the old developers are gone and now there are no people who understand the game. Hence all the problems with crutches. Or they have very little contact with each other, I don't know. It just looks like people are studying the project again.

But I don't like that they are trying to justify the delay in remote work. This might be a problem for the sound guys, but I think for most developers it shouldn't change much. There may be netcode testing problems, but I think this can be solved.

Again, I'm not disagreeing, as it'd be nice to see it.  I'm disagreeing that DE as a company is capable of a nuanced approach to healing where the healing would scale with enemy level (unless I misunderstood your original suggestion completely).  I do however know that they can do percentages, as that's what Protective Dash had originally, and that if they want more nuance from there they could fine tune those as needed.

My main thrust though is always that flat healing amounts is a poor design decision when everything in the game scales as you move further into the star chart, and the point at which you get Trinity and the Vazarin Focus Tree (much less any of the other frames you see on the list, except maybe Oberon) you're already a fair amount into the star chart.  100hp/s over 5 seconds is a ridiculously low amount for Pluto, where you might actually start to use what you get out of War Within, and where you get Trinity, especially when you explicitly disallow stacking.

I am curious what caused that bug with Trinity going back to the default of full healing objectives instantly though.

10 hours ago, _R_o_g_u_e_ said:

I mean, why go after healing objects when the alternative is just slapping a variant of dome over the defence point?

Healing objects is kind of the only other playstyle for high level defence alongside building champions.

If you take away object healing, all that’s left is building over a defence point.

Is the game better when there are less ways to do things?

Welcome to why I want it to be more common sense than just flat amounts of healing on objectives that scale in health as you go 'round the star chart.

[Zi-Sui]

I used Vazarin's dash to heal and make things invulnerable for a good time before it was nerfed. Now that it's been nerfed, I've been using Oberon and Wisp to cover things up. I think the nerf was pretty just and called for, especially with the 5 second invulnerability on objects. It was tedious enough to keep the objects invulnerable for even a minute and it didn't feel like how this game was intended to be played.

As for the dash's healing amount being nerfed, I think it should be there with the warframe abilities, and it's kinda there now. But I think the dash should give objects a few seconds of damage reduction, percentual. Maybe 3 second damage reduction that had a 5 second cooldown, or something, with 20-80% damage reduction. And make the heal a 10-20 second heal over time instead of 5 seconds, with that 100 health per sec value.

Right now I don't see myself using vazarin school in any situation, not even leveling, as Naramon is more useful to level frames and I just don't bother switching to vazarin to level guns anymore. Vazarin could be useful in mobile defenses, excavations and kuva survival if you buffed it a bit, but right now it's too redundant compared to the dominating focus schools.

[Zi-Sui]

On 2020-08-05 at 3:43 AM, Zhuinden said:

After all these months of this thread being ignored, I just caved in and now use Limbo for excavation as it is the only viable frame for Excavation.

With Zenurik.

Thanks for frame variety, DE!

Yeah maybe if you're planning on doing more than 50 nodes, I guess. Oberon, Wisp, Nidus, Gara. Or any frame really if you want some resemblance of challenge. Maybe you should be more specific, like specify whether you think you can only do even one node of excavation only as Limbo or whether you think Limbo is the only viable build for endless excavations?

[selig_fay]

12 hours ago, SolitaryMan7 said:

Right now I don't see myself using vazarin school in any situation, not even leveling, as Naramon is more useful to level frames and I just don't bother switching to vazarin to level guns anymore. Vazarin could be useful in mobile defenses, excavations and kuva survival if you buffed it a bit, but right now it's too redundant compared to the dominating focus schools.

I continue to use Vazarin. This still works for frame invulnerability, instant resurrection, shield charging, and damage absorption with the dome. I just don't see the point in healing an object when the object's natural regeneration is just 20 times better than my healing. It's the same thing that the use of Titania passive for regeneration of Inaros.

[Lutesque]

Bump...

Never Forget Vazarin !!!

[NoSpax]

Am 9.9.2020 um 06:02 schrieb Opyt:

While I don't disagree with you, I just don't believe DE is competent enough to deliver on something that nuanced.  On the bright side it seems like someone accidentally flipped a switch and now Trinity's Blessing is healing for 100%.  Can't wait for that to get fixed.

I actually like that. That 500 HOT just didn't cut it, when enemies can deal more DPS to the pod as you can heal. Especially in those odd scenarios, where enemy level is higher then the Pod Health.. This thing melts in seconds, if unattended or people shoot those explosive infested instead of meleeing them.

Considering I only see DPS frames most of the time, this is a good tradeoff. So, you want to play risky, get a Trin. 

[selig_fay]

43 minutes ago, NoSpax said:

I actually like that. That 500 HOT just didn't cut it, when enemies can deal more DPS to the pod as you can heal. Especially in those odd scenarios, where enemy level is higher then the Pod Health.. This thing melts in seconds, if unattended or people shoot those explosive infested instead of meleeing them.

Considering I only see DPS frames most of the time, this is a good tradeoff. So, you want to play risky, get a Trin.

The problem is that this is a bug that (if nothing changes) can be fixed and you will get back your 100 hps, instead of 100% healing. Well, I wrote in the next topic why people choose DPS often. In short, DPS do not need outside protection, and support and tank simply do not have tasks, because DPS can cope alone.

[Opyt]

3 hours ago, NoSpax said:

I actually like that. That 500 HOT just didn't cut it, when enemies can deal more DPS to the pod as you can heal. Especially in those odd scenarios, where enemy level is higher then the Pod Health.. This thing melts in seconds, if unattended or people shoot those explosive infested instead of meleeing them.

Considering I only see DPS frames most of the time, this is a good tradeoff. So, you want to play risky, get a Trin. 

It's not even about "playing risky" it's about "alternatives" and "complements" that are so pitiful they might as well be non-existent compared to the usual suspects.

As an extreme example: on Steel Path the very first Earth Defense you come across, the defense objective has 181k hitpoints.  Let's say it gets damaged by 10%, and round it down to 18k for me to be lazy with the math.  The amount of time required to heal that 10% of the objective using what I am defining as "pitiful" (100hp/s) would be 180 seconds.  Or 3 minutes.  That's 3 minutes of void dashing, and you can't just void dash multiple times (or spam the intended Blessing multiple times, or use Equinox's Mend multiple times) within those 5 seconds, because, assuming it works as intended, the healing does not stack.  10% is not "risky", it's something that can happen while you're focused elsewhere.  What I deem to be a "common sense approach" to this situation would be percentage based healing.  If you use 5% over 5 seconds as an example, you would see the health fill up much more quickly.  Since it doesn't exist in a vacuum: a cryopod will regenerate health when it doesn't take damage for ... however many seconds, it might even be as low as 3.  The Cryopod healing IS NOT tied to a flat amount, as it heals at the same speed regardless of the max health (I know percentages do that too).

And while I'm on a rant, the amount of investment to get to the point where you can use Protective Dash (or Trinity for that matter) requires that you at least be at Pluto to gain access to it (Pluto Junction grants War Within, and Trinity comes from Ambulas, the boss of Pluto).  Even if you were invested in the flat healing, Pluto would be a far better place to base the flat healing on than the level 2-5 mission on Earth, which is where I presume (which is a problem on my part) this arbitrary 100hp/s number came from.

At this point I just want "tolerable" healing levels, 1%/s is not exactly a game breaking proposition, especially since it would likely retain the original limitations of non-stacking.

 

And, in case you weren't sure: Trinity is supposed to do the exact same weak heal over time that Protective Dash grants: 100hp/s over 5 seconds so fully healing an objective is, in fact, a bug, and will likely eventually be fixed (if it hasn't been already).  So the argument of "if you want to play risky, get a Trin." is very much invalid.  Nevermind that the focus tree requires more investment than a Trinity would.  The original stated goal of the workshop was for objective healing to be an alternative and/or complement to, the standard area denial approach of frames like Limbo, Gara and Frost.  A flat healing amount is not an alternative to 0 damage taken, and once the objective health & enemy damage are high enough, it's also not even close to an acceptable complement to them.  It's somewhat acceptable on early missions, but even on Tesera (Venus), you're better off running Zenurik or Naramon over Vazarin.

[Flying_Scorpion]

You make a good point. Maybe it should be like oberon's smite spell. A flat value bundled together with a % of the targets health. Just not 60% because that was too high. 

[NoSpax]

Am 11.9.2020 um 20:53 schrieb Opyt:

It's not even about "playing risky" it's about "alternatives" and "complements" that are so pitiful they might as well be non-existent compared to the usual suspects.

As an extreme example: on Steel Path the very first Earth Defense you come across, the defense objective has 181k hitpoints.  Let's say it gets damaged by 10%, and round it down to 18k for me to be lazy with the math.  The amount of time required to heal that 10% of the objective using what I am defining as "pitiful" (100hp/s) would be 180 seconds.  Or 3 minutes.  That's 3 minutes of void dashing, and you can't just void dash multiple times (or spam the intended Blessing multiple times, or use Equinox's Mend multiple times) within those 5 seconds, because, assuming it works as intended, the healing does not stack.  10% is not "risky", it's something that can happen while you're focused elsewhere.  What I deem to be a "common sense approach" to this situation would be percentage based healing.  If you use 5% over 5 seconds as an example, you would see the health fill up much more quickly.  Since it doesn't exist in a vacuum: a cryopod will regenerate health when it doesn't take damage for ... however many seconds, it might even be as low as 3.  The Cryopod healing IS NOT tied to a flat amount, as it heals at the same speed regardless of the max health (I know percentages do that too).

And while I'm on a rant, the amount of investment to get to the point where you can use Protective Dash (or Trinity for that matter) requires that you at least be at Pluto to gain access to it (Pluto Junction grants War Within, and Trinity comes from Ambulas, the boss of Pluto).  Even if you were invested in the flat healing, Pluto would be a far better place to base the flat healing on than the level 2-5 mission on Earth, which is where I presume (which is a problem on my part) this arbitrary 100hp/s number came from.

At this point I just want "tolerable" healing levels, 1%/s is not exactly a game breaking proposition, especially since it would likely retain the original limitations of non-stacking.

 

And, in case you weren't sure: Trinity is supposed to do the exact same weak heal over time that Protective Dash grants: 100hp/s over 5 seconds so fully healing an objective is, in fact, a bug, and will likely eventually be fixed (if it hasn't been already).  So the argument of "if you want to play risky, get a Trin." is very much invalid.  Nevermind that the focus tree requires more investment than a Trinity would.  The original stated goal of the workshop was for objective healing to be an alternative and/or complement to, the standard area denial approach of frames like Limbo, Gara and Frost.  A flat healing amount is not an alternative to 0 damage taken, and once the objective health & enemy damage are high enough, it's also not even close to an acceptable complement to them.  It's somewhat acceptable on early missions, but even on Tesera (Venus), you're better off running Zenurik or Naramon over Vazarin.

Trinity worked that way before, suddenly it's an issue by letting her heal 100% AND shield in < 1s. Yeah.... The last good idea the community had was Xaku, now we all know how that turned out. 

The focus school was meant to have a little extra, not a total replacement for warframes.

Why the F**K is TRINITY (mind you: a healer!) supposed to have the same effect then a measly focus school? If PD can heal the cryopod,maybe we should talk about the unintended interaction between an operator and a cryopod, for the same reason I strangely I can't heal operators with blessing, but operators me? huh.. 

Oh and yes, my point still stands, your wall of text didn't change my mind.

[selig_fay]

6 hours ago, NoSpax said:

Why the F**K is TRINITY (mind you: a healer!) supposed to have the same effect then a measly focus school?

Because Vazarin is a school for healers. On the other hand, I don't see how Vazarin recovers energy.

[Opyt]

23 hours ago, NoSpax said:

Trinity worked that way before, suddenly it's an issue by letting her heal 100% AND shield in < 1s. Yeah.... The last good idea the community had was Xaku, now we all know how that turned out. 

The focus school was meant to have a little extra, not a total replacement for warframes.

Why the F**K is TRINITY (mind you: a healer!) supposed to have the same effect then a measly focus school? If PD can heal the cryopod,maybe we should talk about the unintended interaction between an operator and a cryopod, for the same reason I strangely I can't heal operators with blessing, but operators me? huh.. 

Oh and yes, my point still stands, your wall of text didn't change my mind.

Why the #*!% should a focus school (which requires at least a week of grinding after finishing War Within [Pluto-ish]) be able to compete with a dedicated healer warframe (that can be obtained within 4 days of unlocking Pluto)?  I don't know, maybe because it's the focus school dedicated to healing.  Opposed to the one dedicated to DR, Energy control, Moar Damage, or Moar Melee.

According to DE, prior to these changes Trinity was never supposed to affect the defense objective.  I don't have a problem with it, other than the fact that once DE fixes the bug that caused it (assuming they even care), we'll be right back to square one of pissy healing for objectives with obscene amounts of health compared to the healing they provide.

And Protective Dash has always affected stationary targets (though not always affected them the same way, because DEThings).

My intent has always been to point out that 100hp/s over 5 seconds is pitifully low and should at the absolute least be percentage based.  Whether that gets across to you or not is irrelevant, because unstoppable forces and immovable objects.

[selig_fay]

5 hours ago, Opyt said:

Why the #*!% should a focus school (which requires at least a week of grinding after finishing War Within [Pluto-ish]) be able to compete with a dedicated healer warframe (that can be obtained within 4 days of unlocking Pluto)?  I don't know, maybe because it's the focus school dedicated to healing.  Opposed to the one dedicated to DR, Energy control, Moar Damage, or Moar Melee.

According to DE, prior to these changes Trinity was never supposed to affect the defense objective.  I don't have a problem with it, other than the fact that once DE fixes the bug that caused it (assuming they even care), we'll be right back to square one of pissy healing for objectives with obscene amounts of health compared to the healing they provide.

And Protective Dash has always affected stationary targets (though not always affected them the same way, because DEThings).

My intent has always been to point out that 100hp/s over 5 seconds is pitifully low and should at the absolute least be percentage based.  Whether that gets across to you or not is irrelevant, because unstoppable forces and immovable objects.

Well, I was thinking about this yesterday, when Trinity could restore my necromech instantly, at the same time I needed to do 5 dushes, because you don't get your mech intact after recall. And I thought about 1% and what would make it worse, since now I have 100 hp, but 1% of 4000 is 40hps. Therefore, I do not think that a small percentage is good, because it is good only when the target has a lot of health.

[Opyt]

On 2020-09-15 at 1:55 AM, selig_fay said:

Well, I was thinking about this yesterday, when Trinity could restore my necromech instantly, at the same time I needed to do 5 dushes, because you don't get your mech intact after recall. And I thought about 1% and what would make it worse, since now I have 100 hp, but 1% of 4000 is 40hps. Therefore, I do not think that a small percentage is good, because it is good only when the target has a lot of health.

Yeah, it's why flat+% would probably be more valuable in the long run, but it's still important to have that percentage for other things, like the steel path bounties on Cambion Drift.  Alternatively since the Mech isn't exactly a stationary objective it should get the full effect of healing as if it were a Warframe and, more importantly, it should just be the same proportion of health when you call it in, much like an Archwing would be.

In a more perfect world, 1% wouldn't be the number, it's just that 1% is a step in the right direction.  Ideally Trinity, Equinox and Protective Dash (and other similar effects) would all be 20% over 5 seconds, and then adjust the other powers similarly.

[Opyt]

I still want Objective Healing to scale with Objective Health.

 

I haven't forgotten, and I refuse to let you folks at DE forget it too.

[zhunGamer]

Now I only use Vazarin in Arbitration (because there it is useful), and otherwise use Zenurik + Limbo in every Excavation mission (and in some defense missions).

Thanks DE for improving the number of options that are viable, like, Limbo, Limbo, Limbo and Limbo 

[Opyt]

On 2020-10-05 at 12:54 PM, Opyt said:

I still want Objective Healing to scale with Objective Health.

 

I haven't forgotten, and I refuse to let you folks at DE forget it too.

And with the recent home Devstream I'm even more concerned now.  As it's obvious you want to scale back the DPS potential of the playerbase.  When DPS fails, the sorry state of objective healing will be demonstrable.  There is no "tanking for the objective" in this game, especially as enemy damage increases to higher and higher levels.  Your options slowly become, as the previous poster has pointed out: Limbo, Limbo, and probably a little more Limbo, leaning obscenely hard on stasis being the best option for cc in a group that lacks the DPS to outright murder enemies.

Because I can't say it enough: not all design decisions are created equally, and this one, much like what people were saying with the release of Archwing way back in 2015 with Update 15, was a mistake.  I only hope you can remember that Archmelee is still trash even after you buffed it with the same patch that did the "fun factor" equivalent of what shattering the glass in the old Corpus Ship tileset did to the atmosphere of the room.

Objective health scales.  Enemy damage scales.  Why doesn't any of the objective healing scale?