Good and Bad enemy design

[Scar.brother.help.me]

Hello, Tenno Fellas, let's talk about enemies u like and enemies you hate in Warframe.

Let me share my thoughts to begin a discussion. I'd like to start from the enemy I really like and explain why I think it is well designed.

Nox. This enemy has a very hard damage reduction unless you aim to his head. He changes his behavior to more aggressive once you break his glass helmet and starts to emit aoe toxin cloud. Why I personally think that this is a good enemy? Because he is not ANNOYING. You can still take him down by raw damage, slowly, but you can. It is much faster to shoot his head but you are not forced. Projectiles he shoots attach to you, slow you down and stack the effect. The gun is powerful, but it doesn't one-shot you and it is possible to roll out of it's stacks. This is a good example of a Strong, Beefy enemy with a weak point which is fun (at least not annoying) to face. I wish there were more enemies like Nox in Warframe.
 I wish there were more interesting beefy enemies with weak points, interesting behaviors. Enemies that can be taken down slowly by raw damage, may be even focused by the team, but have tricky ways ti kill it faster. Have openings after some actions, like a short berserker assault or a a slowly charging strong AOE attack and then some self stun/overheat with vulnerability.

Now the enemy i despise - Nullifiers. They are not challenging, not tough, they die quickly, but they remove any buffs and ability objects (dashwires, wisp motes, limbo/frost domes, etc) that their bubble touches. This gets much worse when they spawn a lot, their bubbles grow very big and they start to jump around. This is not challenging, this is annoying. After contact with the bubble you need to reapply your buffs and recast erased abilities until another one randomly appears nearby and removes it again. Recasting removed abilities is not a fun way to play at all and this is the main reason I try to avoid any corpus/corrupted missions if I can choose grineer/infested instead, and this is the reason I play these missions most of the time as Inaros (just so I can tank relying on his passive HP amount rather than any kind of frames who rely on their buffs). This bubble also saves enemies inside from Tenno powers and does not allow to cast them while inside - this mechanic alone is fine.
 If it only it temporarily shut any buffs down but as soon as you exit the bubble - all the channeled abilities and buffs recovered again and Tenno power created objects remained untouched by it, fair if their effects were neutralized inside the nullifier field (when inside Cataclysm - Nullifier bubble area remained a normal plane, snow globe's slow effect, etc). I think the only exception now is Khora's Strangledome. This enemy has to be changed in some way, this is a very bad design.

A few more unhonorable mentions of bad design:
Eximus Energy drain and toxin auras - the bigest problem is that their hosts are very hard to see in the crowd of other enemies and work through walls. Energy drain, Tenno power immunity, status immunity are bad and lazy mechanics by themselves and might work nicely during some phases of the boss fights where you can learn the pattern to avoid it, but when this happens in the crowd - this is out of nowhere. It should go, there is no fun to play with no energy, it just forces you to play Inaros. 
Energy drain conditions during Sorties and Nightmare missions - same story - pick Inaros (because why bother bringing any squishier frames if you can't use abilities - the core of warframes difference)

I am sure I'm not the first to bring this out, I think I've read this on forums before but hope for some discussion.

[Loza03]

Make no mistake, there's plenty of poorly designed enemies.

 

But make no other mistake - Nullifiers especially are that way because far too many frames choke out any chance at good design. Even the Nox, which you hold up as good design, does absolutely nothing in the face of CC. Nullifiers and the ilk of such ability ignoring enemies are that way because there is no other way to counter abilities.

Poor design begets poor design.

[Scar.brother.help.me]

 

15 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

Nullifiers especially are that way because far too many frames choke out any chance at good design.

I can accept that and I've pointed that out.

33 minutes ago, Scar.brother.help.me said:

This bubble also saves enemies inside from Tenno powers and does not allow to cast them while inside - this mechanic alone is fine.

I have a problem with permanent buff-stripping and abilities shutting down. It would be ok if it was "disconnected" while inside the null-field and coming back "online" as soon as leaving the enemy sphere (no pause on duration, they continue to expire, their icons could become gray)

[Scar.brother.help.me]

24 minutes ago, moostar95 said:

Toxic accents suck. Doesn't communicate they one hit toxic attacks all that well. Can pop up out of no where and kill your run. 

Word, I suffer it with Ivara while it both kills me through shields to my health as well as burning NRG in prowl in seconds or even in a blink of en eye killing/exposing her whatever happens first.

I forgot I've farmed an anti-toxin arcane, need to try it.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Scar.brother.help.me

[Loza03]

9 minutes ago, Scar.brother.help.me said:

 

I can accept that and I've pointed that out.

I have a problem with permanent buff-stripping and abilities shutting down. It would be ok if it was "disconnected" while inside the null-field and coming back "online" as soon as leaving the enemy sphere (no pause on duration, they continue to expire, their icons could become gray)

The point of Nullifiers is to force players to constantly play around their bubble. And the best way to do that is make them a hard counter that forces all Warframes to respect them. Buff stripping allows this, since otherwise buff frames could just jump in and almost immediately get their buff back with little consequence.

There's nothing wrong with the base nullifier (B a s e) in and of itself, it's the levels of spamming them that some missions do that makes them awful. By nature, they're a giant, extremely obvious and slow targets that pose several problems, but has numerous counters. Operators, high rate of fire, even that little drone on top when it wants to work. You can work around them, and you have to - just like with the Nox. What makes them bad enemies is that instead of being some fairly major event, they're dropped in like any normal enemy.

Which brings me to Isolator Bursas and Orb Vallis Shield Drones. THESE enemies should receive nerfs like this. Isolator Bursa's can drop their bubbles wherever they damn well please and OV Shield Drones can give Nullifier bubbles to enemies fast, durable or both that absolutely should not have nullification. The point of enemy design is play and counterplay. Nullfiers (on their won at least) have good counterplay. That Sycto Raknoid miniboss that now has complete immunity to both damage and abilities? Does not have good counterplay.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Loza03

[Scar.brother.help.me]

If nullifiers were more pleasantly reworket - change this ability effects deleting to pausing, I would gladly jump on their heads with melee slams to finish them off quick. Right now I just want to avoid going to their missions, even relics sometimes.

Arbitration drones are another annoying thing. It could just permanently boost some limited amount of enemies they connect to, explode after the buff and you just have to deal with a group of heavilly buffed and biffed units to deal with.

[Scar.brother.help.me]

26 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

The point of Nullifiers is to force players to constantly play around their bubble. And the best way to do that is make them a hard counter that forces all Warframes to respect them. Buff stripping allows this, since otherwise buff frames could just jump in and almost immediately get their buff back with little consequence.

There's nothing wrong with the base nullifier (B a s e) in and of itself, it's the levels of spamming them that some missions do that makes them awful. By nature, they're a giant, extremely obvious and slow targets that pose several problems, but has numerous counters. Operators, high rate of fire, even that little drone on top when it wants to work. You can work around them, and you have to - just like with the Nox. What makes them bad enemies is that instead of being some fairly major event, they're dropped in like any normal enemy.

Which brings me to Isolator Bursas and Orb Vallis Shield Drones. THESE enemies should receive nerfs like this. Isolator Bursa's can drop their bubbles wherever they damn well please and OV Shield Drones can give Nullifier bubbles to enemies fast, durable or both that absolutely should not have nullification. The point of enemy design is play and counterplay. Nullfiers (on their won at least) have good counterplay. That Sycto Raknoid miniboss that now has complete immunity to both damage and abilities? Does not have good counterplay.

I really agree with you on everything you write. I just want to point out that the buff stripping is annoying, this makes you want to play in a more lazy way, either choose less complicated conditions for your buffs activation (forget Growing Power, Energy Conversion, Pax Bolt, friend/specter Nidus, relic buffs and use more lazy mods) or just facetank with Inaros.

For me losing buffs is pretty much death or like death. If I wasn't killed I still have to recast all the stuff and prepare myself as after death. when it happens too often - you stop enjoying interesting builds and go meta.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Scar.brother.help.me

[Loza03]

21 minutes ago, Scar.brother.help.me said:

I really agree with you on everything you write. I just want to point out that the buff stripping is annoying, this makes you want to play in a more lazy way, either choose less complicated conditions for your buffs activation (forget Growing Power, Energy Conversion, Pax Bolt, friend/specter Nidus, relic buffs and use more lazy mods) or just facetank with Inaros.

Only abilities are nullified. Other buffs are not. In other words, most of those buffs are entirely unaffected by Nullifiers - only the Nidus Spectre is affected.

Note that I'm inside a Nullifier field and the Pax Bolt buff is still active.

 

And there's also really nothing stopping you from equipping anti-nullifier weaponry as well, if your buffs are that important. High RoF weapons or Miter with its augment are excellent examples. Certain weapons like the Opticor can also effectively target the drone on top. Your Operator can also equip good weapons for dealing with them, if you don't want to give up a loadout slot. Trust me, my main is Limbo, probably one of the frames worst-hit by Nullifiers. There's ways around them.

[BlackCat500]

I do think nullifiers need to be spammed less but are not necessarily bad. As you say, temporarily disabling abilities while going in would be a decent idea. I also think any buffs you have caused by tenno abilities should be cut by a percentage of their max duration upon entering, but not removed. That is very punishing, but not an outright removal.

 

As for general enemy design, look no further than infested. They need some love. Like, literally, the way infested tilesets look, the current units' looks, the toxic instant kills or instant energy drains on top of the annoying grappling and...actually not having a lot of interesting units in the first place. If I could give out a vote for what to rework next, I would pick infested so hardcore any day.

[MonsterOfMyOwn]

Comba also comes with ability cancel but are spammed less, does more damage and are a bit tankier.

Remore nullies and add more combas