How Do We Break out of the AoE Meta

[Drachnyn]

vor 7 Minuten schrieb Uhkretor:

inb4 crying threads everywhere

crying threads from people not being able to be toxic or stupid (or both) about damage dealt % anymore? There are few things I'd enjoy more on the forum.

[lukinu_u]

So, your solution to break the "AoE meta" is to make every weapons AoE ?
It's may sounds like a good idea at first, but it really isn't, with this you really don't reward players with good aim and further encourage the use of AoE because you know... everything is AoE...

What we need is instead, some big drawbacks to AoE weapons and good reasons to use non-AoE weapons.

• Keep self-stagger AND bring back self-damage. It was a great way to bring a risk/reward play style, with more risks as the AoE range increase.
• Add more weakspots based enemies. With Scarlet Spear, Aerolysts was a great step in this direction and really encouraged using accurate weapon rather than AoE to kill them. You still can use AoE weapons and switch to you accurate single target gun for these traget, but it brings more diresity in you playstyle (and you still can use melee against them).
• Greatly reduce the base AoE damage, but make it depend on projectile headshot multiplier. This way, AoE weapons require you to precisely aim the head of a target to get the max damage output from AoE, which is a much more skillful playstyle.
• Reduce again the AoE weapons max ammo. It was done a few years ago when Ogris was one of the most used weapons, and it needs to be done again. Lack of ammo is a great way to balance strong weapons and having only 1-2 magazines of max ammo would encourage ammo management unless you rely on ammo mutations.

[ant99999]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Viveeeh said:

I just wanted to express, this shouldn't bother anyone. Just play how you like playing. I don't mind if others one click kill every enemies in a 10m radius, if that's what they enjoy.

Yeah, I get that, but my problem is not my relative performance to other players, but one weapons to other.

Because I find it rather sad to scroll down all the way from one border of the collossal arsenal we have to the other to then find where that Fulmin is again among those other weapons I never use, because it will make me less efficient if I do.

[Uhkretor]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)Viveeeh said:

I just wanted to express, this shouldn't bother anyone.

Ok.

 

But it does bother, however. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here.

[Uhkretor]

3 minutes ago, Drachnyn said:

crying threads from people not being able to be toxic or stupid (or both) about damage dealt % anymore? There are few things I'd enjoy more on the forum.

I know, right?

[Aldain]

25 minutes ago, ant99999 said:

Not to mention we have melee

...Don't forget Equinox pressing 4 and killing everything through walls.

[Savire510]

11 minutes ago, (PS4)Viveeeh said:

I just wanted to express, this shouldn't bother anyone. Just play how you like playing. I don't mind if others one click kill every enemies in a 10m radius, if that's what they enjoy.

I think when there is clrearly a better weapon than anything else in the game we have a problem.

Sure, you can use anything else, but no matter how hard you try, how amazing of a riven you got, there is a weapon that kills more in less time, even without a riven. When a game has hundreds of weapons and only 1 is considered the best then that only shows broken balance. Why balance in PvE game? It's still important. Do you want to play a game when everyone uses only 1 "best" weapon? Why even bother with modding if there is 1 "best" build that everyone will use?

Not everyone likes to handicap themselves. They will use the meta.

Statistics will show, just like with catchmoon, how huge the % of players that use bramma really is.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Savire510

[Drachnyn]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb ant99999:

Yeah, I get that, but my problem is not my relative performance to other players, but one weapons to other.

Because I find it rather sad to scroll down all the way from one border of the collossal arsenal we have to the other to then find where that Fulmin is again among those other weapons I never use, because it will make me less efficient if I do.

Then make it so melee weapons outshine literally every gun and not almost every gun? The only way to solve this in a constructive way is by enemy variety. Aerolyst, Nox and Profit taker all resist the typical radial AoE. But forcing regular rifles to be the best at trash clear by nerfing everything to the ground will ruin the game. At that point we might aswell rename the game to gears of warframe.

[ant99999]

6 minutes ago, lukinu_u said:

So, your solution to break the "AoE meta" is to make every weapons AoE ?

Exactly.

Because my point was to not try to reverse the course the game is taking. Warframe was steadily headed more and more towards killing the most enemies per second possible for all its lifetime. That cource isn't bad by itself, the community is fine with it, but we don't really know what the result will be if we try to reverse Warframe to the good ol' times where we only had a couple of AoE weapons.

Most of the players we have now joined the game when not caring much about the shooter side of things was already the reality. However making every weapon competitive (or close to it) to Bramma & Co. won't change the present gameplay much, just will add a bit of variety

[Aldain]

8 minutes ago, Drachnyn said:

The only way to solve this in a constructive way is by enemy variety. Aerolyst, Nox and Profit taker all resist the typical radial AoE.

While I agree with the first part I disagree with Profit-taker being a positive for enemy design.

Overall through we do need more varied enemies, things that are weak to rapid fire weapons (take more damage from continous shots like beams or machine guns) but resistant to aoe or single hits, or things that have huge damage resistance that need to be hit in a weak point to be dealt with quickly (think like Bursas).

The enemy design is part of the problem because EVERYTHING is cannon fodder, there aren't enough unique enemies that pose a threat. There needs to be a greater distinction between light medium and heavy enemies.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Aldain

[ant99999]

And about those Aerolysts you mentioning. In case you don't know two great solutions to them are Catchmoon and Klamora, which are AoE.

Adding enemies withweak spots is nowhere against my point btw, just make them actually weak points, not additional health pool.

[z3us32610]

1 hour ago, Savire510 said:

Yeah, aoe meta is just bramma.

Bramma needs to be nerfed.

Yeah, no reload time, infinite ammo with an ammo mutation mod, huge aoe that can be supplemented with Hunter Munitions for slash procs. Not only is it boring, but it's annoying constantly seeing 2 out of the other 3 players in a squad firing this thing non stop.

Bramma needs a 2 second reload time or its aoe reduced to a third of what it is, or both.

Edited May 7, 2020 by z3us32610

[Ragnafiro]

1 hour ago, ant99999 said:

So we all know that the majority of the game's content is dominated by AoE weapons that can hit multiple enemies at once. The more changes DE make to the balance and the more new weapons get added the more AoE dominance is getting set in stone.

That is quite natural if to think of it, the game is about killing hordes of enemies standing close to each other and those snipers we have even being great on paper are simply not suited for it.

Yet for some reason the devs are either trying to somehow equalize AoE and non-AoE weaponry or flat out pretend it is all ok and nothing needs to change.

Why instead we don't embrace it and develop this AoE prevalence further? I'm looking at the games like Path of Exile: there you can modify your attacks in most curious ways making even the most modest fireball viable for killing crowds.

Why don't Warframe have something similar. Mods that change the effects of the weapons. A Rubico doesn't need even more damage, why don't we put there a mod making its shots chain between the enemies at the cost of sacrificing damage. Why don't we make Opticor fire a cone of beams instead of just one. Why don't we make Soma P have bullet magnetism so that you don't have to target every single enemy. Why don't have a weaker spectral copy of Ignis Wraith following us around and helping to kill things. Why don't we then combine multible such mods to make killing the crowds even more effective.

Someone may ague that it takes the identity of some weapons like Amprex away. But let's be realistic, nothing takes away more identity than the meta being dominated by a single digit number of popular weapons just because they are capable of damaging multiple enemies at once.

I don't pretend I came up with the greatest idea possible, maybe someone out there has a better one, but something needs to be changed.

It's not just AoE weapons, but AoE nuke frames lol. As long most of WF's content require large amount of bodies dropped in the shortest amount of time, it doesn't matter if it's just a weapon problem that you claim, people who tryhard will lean toward to the tools that give the best result while the rest of the mediocres pretend that their Fulmin worth something in the grand win condition of things.

The only way I can think of to slightly discourage the mass-kill meta we are in right now is to rework mission types.

[(PSN)Viveeeh]

25 minutes ago, Savire510 said:

I think when there is clrearly a better weapon than anything else in the game we have a problem.

Sure, you can use anything else, but no matter how hard you try, how amazing of a riven you got, there is a weapon that kills more in less time, even without a riven. When a game has hundreds of weapons and only 1 is considered the best then that only shows broken balance. Why balance in PvE game? It's still important. Do you want to play a game when everyone uses only 1 "best" weapon? Why even bother with modding if there is 1 "best" build that everyone will use?

Not everyone likes to handicap themselves. They will use the meta.

Statistics will show, just like with catchmoon, how huge the % of players that use bramma really is.

Okay, now I understand better what the problem is. It's funny though. There are certain warframes and weapons which are able to kill enemies more efficiently than others, it's undeniable. So, we (or maybe I should say, people in general) either need a balance in the meta, or some flexibility? This game can be played various ways. Different warframes have different advantages, require different play styles, and subsequently can make use of different weapons.

For example, nowadays I'm having a lot of fun playing Loki in survival. Irradiating Disarm, Invisibility, a hushed sniper, and I can stay alive for a longer time than certain frames with better health/armour/shield stats. I'm working on a Skiajati build, just for him, which he'll can stealth murder irradiated enemies with - the Skiajati's passive gives you invisibility on stealth kills, I want to use it to cover that few secs I need to re-cast Invisibility. Loki is not a strong warframe, the Skiajati is not the best Nikana stat-vise, but the synergy is excellent. It's fun, and it's effective.

The meta is bad, and sad because it makes people believe it's their only option, but it's really just one of them.

Edited May 7, 2020 by (PS4)Viveeeh

[DrivaMain]

1 minute ago, Ragnafiro said:

The only way I can think of to slightly discourage the mass-kill meta we are in right now is to rework mission types.

This.. all of this. Let’s rework the content that forces you to use it (Looking at you ESO) before we mess around with the power of AoE.  The current “Nerfing player power only” makes everything slower because the content demands it and we all know “Slow” is heresy in the fast paced game we know as Warframe.

Do Warframe : Mission Revised first. After that process is done, now we can start Warframe : AoE rebalancing.

 

[shadowstormr]

The aoe meta exists because the game is a horde simulator and the best horde removal tool is an aoe weapon. The current issue with bramma is that it overtakes every other available option by miles. Acceltra is fast firing aoe that you can spread very, very fast but it's outshined by sheer amount of distance covered by the aoe and the sheer damage the bramma can output. I run with the bramma myself and 70% of my missions are filled with others also running the bramma. What is the result ? Trivialized content. Trivialized content = loss of interest in content = faster burnout. It's not difficult to understand this. Bramma needs a nerf, not sure if the aoe as a whole does. This is me talking as the guy who can outdps an anemic agility mesa with a bramma. Having dmg % at the end of mission is irrelevant and inconsequential to a vet like me, maybe the crybabies who need it are the ones trying to save bramma from the inevitable nerf. We don't have self damage anymore to offset gains, so it only follows that it needs a nerf.

[ant99999]

2 minutes ago, Ragnafiro said:

It's not just AoE weapons, but AoE nuke frames lol. As long most of WF's content require large amount of bodies dropped in the shortest amount of time, it doesn't matter if it's just a weapon problem that you claim, people who tryhard will lean toward to the tools that give the best result while the rest of the mediocres pretend that their Fulmin worth something in the grand win condition of things.

The only way I can think of to slightly discourage the mass-kill meta we are in right now is to rework mission types.

I have nothing against the mass-kill meta, it's quite fun actually.

But I have something against mass-kill using 1% of the game's arsenal meta.

In case of warframes, I don't really consider the situation thete as bad as with weapons, you can buff/nerf the extremes, but with them it is simpler because a dd frame comes out maybe once a year, quite a reasonable time to balance it as is.

With weapons' scale, where we have like half a thousand in our arseanals and only use 10, simple rebalance on the personal basis isn't sufficient anymore and already was proven so by how many those balance passes we had solving absolutely nothing.

[Aldain]

10 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

This.. all of this. Let’s rework the content that forces you to use it (Looking at you ESO) before we mess around with the power of AoE.  The current “Nerfing player power only” makes everything slower because the content demands it and we all know “Slow” is heresy in the fast paced game we know as Warframe.

Do Warframe : Mission Revised first. After that process is done, now we can start Warframe : AoE rebalancing.

One small hiccup with that approach, reworking mission design to not need mass killing doesn't stop mass killing from being the most efficient way of clearing it.

Mainly because dead enemies can't hurt anything, the old adage of "Death is the strongest CC" from some games still holds true, hell, even in Mobile Defense missions or Scarlet Spear Space missions killing everything in seconds reduces the failure rate to zero.

Conversely it would be very clunky to make missions fail if you DO kill something, or if you kill the wrong things, because that would lead to intentional trolling avenues.

Currently the draw of AoE isn't just that it speeds things up, but also that it makes nothing a threat because everything is dead, mission types alone can't fix that issue.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Aldain

[ant99999]

9 minutes ago, (PS4)Viveeeh said:

The meta is bad, and sad because it makes people believe it's their only option, but it's really just one of them.

Meta is (afaik) an abbreviation of 'most effective tactic available', at least I interprete it as this.

Which means it can't be 'good' or 'bad', it just is there. And for the players sticking to it it means just that - being efficient. Not the only choice but the prefered one.

The question is not in it's existence, but in it's contrast to the other tactics out there. A lot of people I believe won't run a Lich mission with only a Lato not because they consider Bramma the only weapon out there, but because they don't find it fun to bother doing a mission being deliberately handicapped.

Especially in a looter shooter like Warframe.

[Ragnafiro]

8 minutes ago, ant99999 said:

I have nothing against the mass-kill meta, it's quite fun actually.

But I have something against mass-kill using 1% of the game's arsenal meta.

In case of warframes, I don't really consider the situation thete as bad as with weapons, you can buff/nerf the extremes, but with them it is simpler because a dd frame comes out maybe once a year, quite a reasonable time to balance it as is.

With weapons' scale, where we have like half a thousand in our arseanals and only use 10, simple rebalance on the personal basis isn't sufficient anymore and already was proven so by how many those balance passes we had solving absolutely nothing.

Yeah, either we can do "Nerf Catchmoon 2: Electric Boogaloo" onto things like the Kuva Bramma or just buff other weapon on a massive scale that strengthens the specialization they have. *Cried in the fact that all non-AoE bows are just really shtty snipers with 0 combo damage.*

[(XBOX)Calliber]

1 hour ago, Uhkretor said:

"Power fantasy" is a poor excuse

Thank you for stating this ^  

Before I say too much, this has more to do with explosive AoE weapons rather than things like Amprex.  There was a decent check to AoE weapons and that was....self-damage (dun-dun-dunnnnnn), which is now gone aside from some minor overlooked weapon perks.  Collateral damage should be the inherent downside of AoE weapons to compensate for the high efficiency (ammo economy another option and/or RoF), and I'd say extend that to your companion/sentinel as well.  They already had ways to prevent tank frames from utilizing it to further beef up, Nezha and Rhino for instance couldn't utilize self-damage weapon effects to increase Halo/Skin prior to the self-damage removal and Trinity lost the ability to utilize it with Link, they just needed to extend this to the other frames that could utilize it (Chroma).  Granted not all weapons that had AoE had self damage (Staticore for some reason never got it added and Amprex wouldn't make any sense).  But we got stagger...snooze. 

[George_PPS]

2 hours ago, ant99999 said:

So we all know that the majority of the game's content is dominated by AoE weapons that can hit multiple enemies at once. The more changes DE make to the balance and the more new weapons get added the more AoE dominance is getting set in stone.

That is quite natural if to think of it, the game is about killing hordes of enemies standing close to each other and those snipers we have even being great on paper are simply not suited for it

.....

I don't pretend I came up with the greatest idea possible, maybe someone out there has a better one, but something needs to be changed.

AoE Weapons and abilities are most fun and most powerful. Are you proposing NEFfffffSss???? DE has been destroying meta AoE stuff from the game forever and player base are angry about it always and then many quit. We need to expand AoE and restore previous AoE meta in all categories to being players back,  not nerfing it. 

[(PSN)ForNoPurpose]

It would require DE to make more open maps.

Aoe will always win over single target when all the enemies are clustered in a hallway.

So its not going to happen in all likelihood.

[Aldain]

1 minute ago, George_PPS said:

We need to expand AoE and restore previous AoE meta in all categories to being players back,  not nerfing it.

Why don't you just propose that we delete everything but the Kuva Bramma and AoE nuke frames rather than this roundabout way of making everything else useless by comparison?

Because that is pretty much the exact end result if such things happen.

[SneakyErvin]

Nerf Bramma pretty much, the other AoE weapons are in a pretty good spot.

Bramma is just too fast both when it comes to reloading and charging it, plus it has rediculous AoE scaling due to the clusters, very high crit, good status and access to hunter munitions. It should be nerfed to a point where it is a trash killer and not a weapon that serves as both single target versus very tough mobs and as an AoE trash clearer. It should be on level with Kuva Ogris so the Chakkhurr can shine as the single target tough mob killer as it should be.