Biggest changes in latest update? (the rj revisted one)

[(NSW)Katsuro]

2 hours ago, NigglesAU said:

Scanned through the list. Avionics. Vacuum . Fighter health/armor halved. Improved rj rewards/drops

What else?.Sure sounds like they are making the game "easier"....

seeker volley is now meta and with warhead avionic can 1 shot fighters even in veil ruse warfield

[Loza03]

Just now, nslay said:

It could not down Gokstad Officers in less than 1 clip before the armor scaling changes and status changes. In fact, you could use almost all rounds to down just one.

Not helping your case here. That's just further proof that they were worse on release.

If the vast majority of even powerhouse weapons can't deal with regular enemies due to sheer power creeped health pool bloating, then there's a serious, systemic problem that needs to be addressed. Leaving the Officers where they were would not help any ability to fix those problems. It's like energy - energy and its relation to abilities is broken, with both minor upgrades or mobility powers and literally infinite damage or complete immunity to combat ecounters all on the same economy, and it's only gotten worse and worse because of how long each majorly problematic new element has been allowed to remain that powerful. At this point, any minor change to energy will have colossal consequences on the entire gameplay loop.

Enemies need to have cartoonishly big health bars and tons of arbitrary immunities because we have those same arbitrary immunities. If we were to remove our arbitrary immunities to basic gameplay loops, then the enemies would be absurd. 

[nslay]

Just now, Loza03 said:

Not helping your case here. That's just further proof that they were worse on release.

If the vast majority of even powerhouse weapons can't deal with regular enemies due to sheer power creeped health pool bloating, then there's a serious, systemic problem that needs to be addressed. Leaving the Officers where they were would not help any ability to fix those problems. It's like energy - energy and its relation to abilities is broken, with both minor upgrades or mobility powers and literally infinite damage or complete immunity to combat ecounters all on the same economy, and it's only gotten worse and worse because of how long each majorly problematic new element has been allowed to remain that powerful. At this point, any minor change to energy will have colossal consequences on the entire gameplay loop.

Enemies need to have cartoonishly big health bars and tons of arbitrary immunities because we have those same arbitrary immunities. If we were to remove our arbitrary immunities to basic gameplay loops, then the enemies would be absurd. 

The point is that with the status changes and armor scaling changes, the Gokstad Officers could already be downed practically by mid tier weapons... No longer just snipers, melee and Kuva Chakkhurr.

And I'm just going to say it plainly: Soma Prime is not good. I call it a "pea shooter" and use it as an example because it's actually just an OK weapon compared to all the newer stuff available. It has low base damage, poor ammo economy, bad status. It's really not all that great. And given it's MR requirement (and that it's a rifle), I guess that's fitting... most low MR weapons are just not all that great.

And yes, I tested weapons like Soma Prime on release and I know that even with Hunter Munitions, it would take something ridiculous like 800 rounds to bleed Gokstad Officers to death. Now it's less than a clip... So if an OK-ish weapon like Soma Prime can down a Gokstad Officer in less than a clip, why do we need to halve the HP of all the Railjack ground units? It wasn't needed man!

[Loza03]

1 minute ago, nslay said:

The point is that with the status changes and armor scaling changes, the Gokstad Officers could already be downed practically by mid tier weapons... No longer just snipers, melee and Kuva Chakkhurr.

And I'm just going to say it plainly: Soma Prime is not good. I call it a "pea shooter" and use it as an example because it's actually just an OK weapon compared to all the newer stuff available. It has low base damage, poor ammo economy, bad status. It's really not all that great. And given it's MR requirement (and that it's a rifle), I guess that's fitting... most low MR weapons are just not all that great.

And yes, I tested weapons like Soma Prime on release and I know that even with Hunter Munitions, it would take something ridiculous like 800 rounds to bleed Gokstad Officers to death. Now it's less than a clip... So if an OK-ish weapon like Soma Prime can down a Gokstad Officer in less than a clip, why do we need to halve the HP of all the Railjack ground units? It wasn't needed man!

On the last point first - because you're not dealing with a single-target mannequin, you're dealing with an entire combat encounter. The role most automatic rifles play is as a midpoint between AoE and single-target. They're not that great as single-target damage dealers, or as crowd-clearers, but are versatile enough to play both roles. Meanwhile, most AoE weapons generally serve as fodder clean-up whilst most precision weapons serve as 'pick' weapons for tankier or more important targets. But if every enemy has the health pool of tank (i.e. a pick weapons role) than you're only ever going to take pick weapons because they're the only weapons viable. Warframe isn't just a Diablo-style looter, it's also an action game. Even though some concessions to the action are going to be made for the RPG looting, there's also going to have to be concessions to the RPG looting for the action. Namely, whilst the weapon sandbox is obviously going to heavily diluted and not as tight as a dedicated action game can be, the basic principles of a weapon sandbox should still apply to that loot.

 

Simply put - the fact that we look at enemies and aren't seeing parts of an action setpieces but raw numbers is a problem. We have long since passed the point where Warframe's action (y'know, one of the big appeals of Warframe) has become buried under CC spam, permanent invisibility, ballooned health pools on both sides of the spectrum and nukes, with the enemies getting less designed for action and more designed as counterpoints to our damage numbers. It's why I agreed about officers having better offensive capabilities to counteract their lower durability within reason of no insta-kills. Officers that present big, threatening targets make for a more interesting combat encounter. But bullet sponges where two brick walls shoot at each other for a minute straight with no running around, jumping taking cover, using the environment, target-prioritising is not an interesting combat encounter.

[nslay]

2 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

Simply put - the fact that we look at enemies and aren't seeing parts of an action setpieces but raw numbers is a problem. We have long since passed the point where Warframe's action (y'know, one of the big appeals of Warframe) has become buried under CC spam, permanent invisibility, ballooned health pools on both sides of the spectrum and nukes, with the enemies getting less designed for action and more designed as counterpoints to our damage numbers. It's why I agreed about officers having better offensive capabilities to counteract their lower durability within reason of no insta-kills. Officers that present big, threatening targets make for a more interesting combat encounter. But bullet sponges where two brick walls shoot at each other for a minute straight with no running around, jumping taking cover, using the environment, target-prioritising is not an interesting combat encounter.

Yeah, at least the Officers use their Karak Wraith like an actual automatic weapon (they currently use it like a burst rifle... shoots 3 bullets). Also the Corrupted and normal Heavy Gunner counterparts have a knockdown ability (they punch the ground)... I don't remember Gokstad Officers ever trying to knock me down. Those Heavy Gunners also have no trouble using their Gorgons!

But even so, they were most certainly not bullet sponges after the armor scaling and status changes. A lot of weapons could be used to kill them after those changes... so halving the HP makes no sense to me. What, does DE want something like the MK1-Braton to be able to kill the Gokstad Officer? You know what... with the way Viral works and with different armor scaling, I wager even MK1-Braton could kill them efficiently before this half-HP change! Seriously...

[Tiltskillet]

3 hours ago, [DE]Megan said:

Helminth Cysts can now be removed in the Helminth Infirmary after one day as opposed to waiting a whole week. 

[JackHargreav]

2 hours ago, Loza03 said:

I'm reserving judgement about the fighters until I get my hands on them (still waiting for the damn download cache) but the on-foot enemies? I'd like to remind everyone that the Officers used to have the effective health of an Eidolon.

Hydrolyst.

Including the limbs (though granted not the shields)

 

There's 'making the game easier' and then there's 'making it so that regular enemies don't have the health points of literal raid bosses.'

Wtf?

I didn't know they had that much health. Holy sh*t.

[Loza03]

3 minutes ago, nslay said:

Yeah, at least the Officers use their Karak Wraith like an actual automatic weapon (they currently use it like a burst rifle... shoots 3 bullets). Also the Corrupted and normal Heavy Gunner counterparts have a knockdown ability (they punch the ground)... I don't remember Gokstad Officers ever trying to knock me down. Those Heavy Gunners also have no trouble using their Gorgons!

If we got more wide environments where you fight officers in Railjack, I wager their little rollers would be better off. It'd give officers a real difference. Up the roller's damage potential and speed, and you've got a pretty interesting  duo, a roller chasing you out into the waiting gunfire of the Officer and/or their squad.

6 minutes ago, nslay said:

But even so, they were most certainly not bullet sponges after the armor scaling and status changes. A lot of weapons could be used to kill them after those changes... so halving the HP makes no sense to me. What, does DE want something like the MK1-Braton to be able to kill the Gokstad Officer? You know what... with the way Viral works and with different armor scaling, I wager even MK1-Braton could kill them efficiently before this half-HP change! Seriously...

My point is that, as an action game, a lot of Warframe isn't just 'what weapon kills an enemy most efficiently' it's 'what weapon or weapons deals with the combat ecounters most effectively'.

A gamemode where you only face bullet sponges is antithetical to this entire philosophy. If we think of a combat encounter in, say, Halo, you have Grunts, Jackals, Elites and Brutes all over the place. They all have different amounts of health, and health types and philosophies to approaching them in combat. Lower health fodder like grunts is a problem for single-target 'pick' weaponry because there's a lot of them, and most pick weapons are going to greatly overkill them and waste ammo. Meanwhile, taking an assault rifle or other weapon great at dealing with fodder to an elite fight, and you're going to have a bad time with their aggressive AI and large health pool shrugging off your fodder targets, especially since their shields take reduced damage. This creates an interesting combat scenario where you're juggling and strategising whether to deal with the fodder or elite, since you can't effectively do both, except with a select few weapons which usually have less ammo to work with to begin with.

Now take that and have every single enemy have a health pool that you'd need pick weapon like a sniper or shotgun to deal with them effectively, and you have Empyrean on-foot enemies. Fewer interesting combat choices, and it forces every weapon to be used like a 'pick' weapon, just pumping tons of bullets into overly tanky enemies.

 

Granted, I don't think that the damage changes are great. Viral is absolutely too homogenous, and arguably too powerful. But that's not a reason to leave the products of the old, even more egregiously broken damage system in the game as they were. Warframe needs to get its action back. 

[Hypernaut1]

6 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

If we got more wide environments where you fight officers in Railjack, I wager their little rollers would be better off. It'd give officers a real difference. Up the roller's damage potential and speed, and you've got a pretty interesting  duo, a roller chasing you out into the waiting gunfire of the Officer and/or their squad.

My point is that, as an action game, a lot of Warframe isn't just 'what weapon kills an enemy most efficiently' it's 'what weapon or weapons deals with the combat ecounters most effectively'.

A gamemode where you only face bullet sponges is antithetical to this entire philosophy. If we think of a combat encounter in, say, Halo, you have Grunts, Jackals, Elites and Brutes all over the place. They all have different amounts of health, and health types and philosophies to approaching them in combat. Lower health fodder like grunts is a problem for single-target 'pick' weaponry because there's a lot of them, and most pick weapons are going to greatly overkill them and waste ammo. Meanwhile, taking an assault rifle or other weapon great at dealing with fodder to an elite fight, and you're going to have a bad time with their aggressive AI and large health pool shrugging off your fodder targets, especially since their shields take reduced damage. This creates an interesting combat scenario where you're juggling and strategising whether to deal with the fodder or elite, since you can't effectively do both, except with a select few weapons which usually have less ammo to work with to begin with.

Now take that and have every single enemy have a health pool that you'd need pick weapon like a sniper or shotgun to deal with them effectively, and you have Empyrean on-foot enemies. Fewer interesting combat choices, and it forces every weapon to be used like a 'pick' weapon, just pumping tons of bullets into overly tanky enemies.

 

Granted, I don't think that the damage changes are great. Viral is absolutely too homogenous, and arguably too powerful. But that's not a reason to leave the products of the old, even more egregiously broken damage system in the game as they were. Warframe needs to get its action back. 

we need some enemies that have high health pools. Im tired of fighting enemies that just feel like fodder. 

[Loza03]

Just now, Hypernaut1 said:

we need some enemies that have high health pools. Im tired of fighting enemies that just feel like fodder. 

Some, yes of course. Not arguing that point - indeed, I bring up the Elites for the very reason.

But as is, officers aside, your average melee grunt - which, as the rest of the game has pretty clearly shown off, is the most frail enemy type - had a health pool you'd normally see on a Bombard in the rest of the game. In other words, on an enemy that should be that high health pool enemy. And that subsequently discounts every weapon that isn't supposed to counter that kind of enemy because the fodder targets they're supposed to used on suddenly have the health pool of those big tanks. 

This is a systemic problem. It needs a systemic solution. Not just liberally applying more and more power creep to the enemies, because that just makes things worse.

[Nobody_PhD]

Railjack was always easy, it just went slower the less prepared you were. A solo mission in the veil could easily take 20-30 minutes if you didn’t have the right avionics. Making the missions go quicker was probably the biggest change.

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

3 hours ago, anarchy753 said:

Now they just need to give Garuda's blood effects the same treatment.

And atlas rubble too. I want my rocks to fit my fashion!!

[SneakyErvin]

3 hours ago, nslay said:

The armor scaling and status changes were already enough to make weapons like Kuva Kohm or Soma Prime able to down Gokstad Officers in a practical amount of time and ammo. They should not have halved the HP further!

Agreed. Not sure why they overnerf stuff like this.

With melee they were already dying to a harsh sneeze prior to armor scaling and status changes, after it they turned into pushovers where weapons like those you mention would kill them fine. I have a really hard time to find the reason for the 50% HP nerf, unless they plan to scale up the levels in RJ soon. It is the same deal with the enemy fighters, they werent tough before, they already gotten adjusted more than enough and then today they get nerfed even further.

Next we'll get spore and miasma type of abilities for RJ that has a ranged of 20k kilometers.

[Obviousclone]

3 hours ago, Splotim said:

Railjack was always easy, it just went slower the less prepared you were. A solo mission in the veil could easily take 20-30 minutes if you didn’t have the right avionics. Making the missions go quicker was probably the biggest change.

yeah they made it much quicker/faster especially for solo

I used to solo gian point, veil proxima in 12 minutes SOLO, using munitions vortex to clear out fighters and dome charges to clear out crewships (and tycho seekers to clear out skold crewship shields).

Now I'm getting times like 7 minute runs solo, using pretty much the same strat. More enemies spawn closer to you. The crewships are much easier to kill since they made their engines much more vulnerable to shoot out so they don't fly away when you swap to the thee tunguska. It only takes 2 cryophon shots to get a munitions vortex to insta-kill crowds instead of 3 shots.

 

More importantly for me though, the valence fusion and increase in titanium gain are huge, the credit gain (80k-150k per veil mission) increase, the base speed increase and the flux cost decreases across the board have been the big game changers for my railjack runs.

[(PSN)Kakurine2]

Anyone else having issues getting todays patch to download it keeps crashing on pc for me.  Console doesn't have it yet.

[Hypernaut1]

16 minutes ago, Obviousclone said:

yeah they made it much quicker/faster especially for solo

I used to solo gian point, veil proxima in 12 minutes SOLO, using munitions vortex to clear out fighters and dome charges to clear out crewships (and tycho seekers to clear out skold crewship shields).

Now I'm getting times like 7 minute runs solo, using pretty much the same strat. More enemies spawn closer to you. The crewships are much easier to kill since they made their engines much more vulnerable to shoot out so they don't fly away when you swap to the thee tunguska. It only takes 2 cryophon shots to get a munitions vortex to insta-kill crowds instead of 3 shots.

 

More importantly for me though, the valence fusion and increase in titanium gain are huge, the credit gain (80k-150k per veil mission) increase, the base speed increase and the flux cost decreases across the board have been the big game changers for my railjack runs.

game changer as in easy peasy right? 

At this point, they should just hand things out after doing it once. It seems to make a great first impression! everyone wins!

Edited May 1, 2020 by Hypernaut1

[SpringRocker]

Yeah, they made an already easy game even easier.

I hate it and have given up hope after years for anything meaningful in this game.

[AandOE]

I like to think that the enemies are getting easier... because we beat all of the hard ones. All this update is doing is reflecting the logical outcome of all our long labor! In conclusion, folks.... we did it! We beat down the Space-Grineer! All hail the Lotus! ❤️ 

[Alpha_Tango]

RJ is now braindead easy. It is funny when people mention that there is still a "meta" for it when everything blows up by just looking at anything moving.

[DOOMPATRIOT]

hace 2 horas, Alpha_Tango dijo:

RJ is now braindead easy. It is funny when people mention that there is still a "meta" for it when everything blows up by just looking at anything moving.

So It just became normal Warframe...

[Tenno76856]

Played around a bit with RJ last two days. It sure feels easier. Faster especially with quicker movement. Yes less grindy. More arcadey (more feasible to pilot and shoot at same time now) . Actually, feels better to me right now as was never fan of the flight sim (it sure felt like at launch) it had felt like. Fighters easier to kill. And as people pointed out.. fighting mobs on ships now feels a bit better (always felt they were harder compared to similar level mobs on starchart missions). Makes sense mobs dropped more archwing mods now. Still not fan of archwing melee lol. 

 

OTOH anyone notice DE tends to release new stuff on "harder" end of spectrum then tone it down once people starting to give "feedback" ?. 

[DrivaMain]

35 minutes ago, NigglesAU said:

OTOH anyone notice DE tends to release new stuff on "harder" end of spectrum then tone it down once people starting to give "feedback" ?. 

They’ve been doing this for years. Example..

Fortuna on launch : OV Enemies actually poses a threat -> Players complain -> Nerf them to higher alert levels. Even though this is not a bad nerf it “forces” the players to let alert level rise and there is no max alert bounties, thus making them not worth it.

Railjack : Tenebrous Ephemera having multi layer RNG -> Players complain -> Moved to a shop.

Arcanes : Too grindy to grind on release when raids were around -> players complain -> Moved to eidolons -> players complain again because of the time gates and RNG -> DE added Scarlet Spear that almost obliterated their value.