DE you promised to take a 2nd look at explosive weapons after Warframe Revised. Could you, pretty please?

[Sdric]

Category 1: No self damage before

• Staticor, Sonicor etc.: Those weapons were already being balanced by external factors like charge time or low damage. None of them was problematic from a balancing perspective. They not only got worse in relation to all other weapons, but also in relation to weapons that used to have self damage. They're the biggest losers of this patch.
• Amps: I can't recall a single player ever asking for a nerfs off Amps. Adding self stagger made a variety of Amos utterly unusable in Eidolon hunts and just incredibly bad at any normal content.

Category 2: Self damage & deserving of nerfs

• Kuva Bramma: This weapon deserves a category on it's own. It has no classic reload (= infinite magazine) and its limiting factor Charge time (~=RoF) is far less significant than on other weapons as it gains full Bow-benefit from fire rate mods. The Kuva Bramma has essentially none of the disadvantages of "classic AoE Launchers", but essentially features an infinite magazine, larger AoE and higher damage combined with an above average crit and status chance. Even after it got Falloff reduction it remains quite possibly the strongest weapon ingame, capable of 1-shotting level 170s without a Riven. The Bramma deserves a big nerf to its base stats, not just riven disposition tweaks.

Category 3: Self damage before

• Penta, Ogris, Tonkor, etc.: Balanced by low magazine size, low RoF, long reload times, low projectile speed and damage pre-patch now got MASSIVE damage fall-off on top of self stagger. Most non-Kuva version were pretty darn bad pre-patch already, Kuva version were arguably good, but definitely not gamebreaking. On top of that multiple of them received Riven Dospostion nerfs as well. It's just too much on all ends to make them worth using these days. Most single target weapons can slap Primed Shred on them and kill all enemies in a line within less than half of the time those weapons require to kill even one enemy. The AoE radius were they can deal noticeable damage against higher leveled enemies is a mere joke - especially with the upcoming hard mode these weapons will become even worse. With often 2,3s+ reload depending on the weapon combined with their poor range the damage reduction can be a massive concern. Due to the self-damage removal changes a lot of those weapons are far worse than were with Cautious Shot.
• A common argument back during the changes was "but enemy armor has been reduced". An often neglected and ignored fact that explosive weapons were to ONLY weapon type that were nerfed for this while all other weapon categories were untouched, meaning that relative to all other weapons they became even worse than they were. With the upcoming introduction of hard mode settings this issue is only about to become worse.

 

Summary:

• Self stagger is an annoying, but acceptable alternative to self damage. Most weapon now have less damage than they had with Cautious Shot).
• The primary function of AoE weapon has been replaced by basic rifle gameplay, hurting gameplay variety. (Searching for the sweat spot that allows you to hit the most enemies at once has become, just point at one enemy without considering enemy positioning)
• The falloff changes however hit a lot of undeserving weapons (without self damage), underpowered weapon (with self damage) and punished explosive weapons for changed gameplay elements no other weapon got punished for.
• The one weapon that was and still is really problematic, Kuva Bramma, was the one weapon that suffered the least from this change

P.S.: I am still baffled that even the Stug was nerfed, which already before was considered one of the worst weapon singame. It's possibly the prime example that those changes were made to fit a theme, but didn't took balancing into consideration at all.

 

Edited May 13, 2020 by Sdric

[Xylena_Lazarow]

14 minutes ago, Sdric said:

I am still baffled that even the Stug was nerfed, which already before was considered one of the worst weapon singame. It's possibly the prime example that those changes were made to fit a theme, but didn't took balancing into consideration at all.

To be fair, getting all explosive AoE weapons on the same page (stagger as the balancing factor) was a step in the right direction. It was utterly idiotic for some explosive AoE weapons to self-damage but not others. At least now they can move forward with balancing the Staticor against the Angstrum from a more logical starting point, although I have no idea how they're supposed to balance explosive AoE weapons against something like the Kuva Nukor.

[TheLexiConArtist]

5 minutes ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

To be fair, getting all explosive AoE weapons on the same page (stagger as the balancing factor) was a step in the right direction. It was utterly idiotic for some explosive AoE weapons to self-damage but not others. At least now they can move forward with balancing the Staticor against the Angstrum from a more logical starting point, although I have no idea how they're supposed to balance explosive AoE weapons against something like the Kuva Nukor.

Conventional explosives - chemical boom reactions - always did self-damage consistently. Except the Tonkor at its launch, as an excuse for a mechanic that became obsolete within a month but took so much longer to be brought in line.

Other weapons with radial AOE but no self-damage were generally explained away as a completely different 'type' of payload. That's the thematic reasoning. (Pure) Concussions are not Tesla discharges, are not EMP bursts, are not chemical explosives, are not whatever energy shenanigans the Quanta box does (even if the result is blast typed damage).

 

Then there's the gameplay reasoning for it - it allowed different playstyles to coexist, for people who don't like the risk factor to not be shut out entirely. Self-damage capable weapons accounted for only 10% of all available primaries and secondaries, by my counting. If you count pure dumbfire only, that's a paltry 4%. Nothing forced you to use those 4-10% because the alternatives existed.

There was no need to outright remove self-damage. At all.

 

But it was removed, and now instead of 'no risk, mid risk, high risk' each with their own potential power grades and playstyle experiences, we have a lump of some 20-25% weapons that all act boringly identical and there is no thrill factor in using an explosive for the people who actually enjoyed the risk and could accept their own errors in judgement as being their faults instead of whining about the level geometry 'jumping out in front of them'.

[Sdric]

vor 12 Minuten schrieb Xylena_Lazarow:

To be fair, getting all explosive AoE weapons on the same page (stagger as the balancing factor) was a step in the right direction. It was utterly idiotic for some explosive AoE weapons to self-damage but not others. At least now they can move forward with balancing the Staticor against the Angstrum from a more logical starting point, although I have no idea how they're supposed to balance explosive AoE weapons against something like the Kuva Nukor.

Depends on how you see it.

If you see self damage as a balancing lever it was completely plausible to balance one type of weapon by giving it a drawback like self damage, but another one a different drawback like charge time (Staticor) or low damage (Sonicor).

If you say that it's better as it is more realistic to be affected by an explosion you stand in, I'd argue that we're telekinetics controlling living armor that can do magic, but somehow not nuke other living armors within a hail of meteors (Ember) until either one is affected by radiation. 

As for consistency, I have to disagree as well. If consistency meant that weapons with similar effect have to have the same underlying mechanics sniper scope bonuses would have to be removed as well. Every rifle would have to be hitscan or ever assault rifle would have to have bullet travel time... You get the idea. Changes that hurt balancing for the sake of "consistency" are a facade at best given that especially drawing from different mechanic is what defines gameplay variety.

[Xylena_Lazarow]

I'd really like to avoid whatever contrived nonsense is required to explain how the Quanta gives explosion immunity to its wielder while the Zarr does not. Explosions should behave like you'd expect explosions to behave, regardless of whether they're conjured by magic or shot out of a gun, or shot out of a magical gun.

13 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

There was no need to outright remove self-damage. At all.

But it was removed, and now instead of 'no risk, mid risk, high risk' each with their own potential power grades and playstyle experiences

What playstyles? You had "no risk, high reward" and you had mastery fodder. I love the Zarr mechanically and aesthetically, but I've rarely used it over the years. Why walk on eggshells to avoid exploding yourself when you can blast away carefree with an Ignis Wraith or even a Kohm and get the same or better results? Okay so now they've removed self damage, am I using the Zarr now? Nope, because it's a sad joke compared to the Bramma, even with a solid Riven. I'm in full agreement that the system has a ton of problems, and would love for DE to put aside the spaceships and focus on core gameplay mechanics, but consistent explosion behavior was something DE finally got right.

[TheLexiConArtist]

1 hour ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

I'd really like to avoid whatever contrived nonsense is required to explain how the Quanta gives explosion immunity to its wielder while the Zarr does not. Explosions should behave like you'd expect explosions to behave, regardless of whether they're conjured by magic or shot out of a gun, or shot out of a magical gun.

What playstyles? You had "no risk, high reward" and you had mastery fodder. I love the Zarr mechanically and aesthetically, but I've rarely used it over the years. Why walk on eggshells to avoid exploding yourself when you can blast away carefree with an Ignis Wraith or even a Kohm and get the same or better results? Okay so now they've removed self damage, am I using the Zarr now? Nope, because it's a sad joke compared to the Bramma, even with a solid Riven. I'm in full agreement that the system has a ton of problems, and would love for DE to put aside the spaceships and focus on core gameplay mechanics, but consistent explosion behavior was something DE finally got right.

What 'is' a Quanta cube payload, though? It's one of the best examples because it even deals blast damage naturally, but whatever it is in-universe, it's clearly not just a good old reaction bomb.

Explosions were behaving like you'd expect, within reason. Being shielded against (or naturally resisting) one type of payload doesn't mean you're immune to all of it. A brick isn't going to be affected by an EMP in the same way running electronics would be. That's all the plausible deniability you need - and with that in mind, consistency was more or less achieved. Bombs were damaging, right down to the 'attach tiny bombs to arrowheads and knives' mods.

 

Just because you personally didn't cotton to the idea of enjoying the inherent risk of the more dangerous fare doesn't mean that nobody liked that. Sure, we would have liked the output to be brought up to par, but even before the Bramma, there was a niche for players to find their thrills and enjoyment, their 'power fantasy', in carrying an explosive identifiable as 'so powerful even I, practically demigod as I am, need to be careful where I put it'.

Instead of output being brought up to par - an act that would have exacerbated the whinging self-entitled players who can't handle 4% of weapons not being their collective cup of tea - their outputs (reward) are now pathetically lowered by falloff to pay the price of unnecessarily removing the risk. We warned about 'old Tonkor' outcomes, but the solution to that past problem was adding appropriate self-damage where it belonged - and changing the Simulor mechanically because it couldn't operate with self-damage.

The latter there bears a special mention because Stagger, as we can see, was blindly added in complete violation of this common sense. Weapons designed to explode 5m from your face with a 4.5m blast radius still got the stagger. Unpredictable weapons that actually could go where you didn't control (Cyanex arbitrarily homing back) had self-damage understandably removed, but now stagger.

It was a wholesale mistake.

[Xylena_Lazarow]

35 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

but whatever it is in-universe, it's clearly not just a good old reaction bomb

"This destructive radial force represented by Blast damage isn't an explosion" is exactly what I mean by contrived nonsense.

I'm actually not opposed to the concept of self damage as a balancing factor for AoE weapons in shooters, nor am I in love with the stagger mechanic. I think I'd prefer reasonably scaling self-damage over stagger myself, but I'll take pretty much anything over "some explosions instakill you and others do nothing" or the dreaded "instakilled because your cat randomly jumped backwards across the screen."

The whole mess could've been avoided by buffing Cautious Shot to remove 100% self damage with no penalty.

[TheLexiConArtist]

10 minutes ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

"This destructive radial force represented by Blast damage isn't an explosion" is exactly what I mean by contrived nonsense.

I'm actually not opposed to the concept of self damage as a balancing factor for AoE weapons in shooters, nor am I in love with the stagger mechanic. I think I'd prefer reasonably scaling self-damage over stagger myself, but I'll take pretty much anything over "some explosions instakill you and others do nothing" or the dreaded "instakilled because your cat randomly jumped backwards across the screen."

The whole mess could've been avoided by buffing Cautious Shot to remove 100% self damage with no penalty.

Oversimpification by words aside, it's immediately obvious that a bog-standard rocket and Mr. Boxy Boom Boy are plausibly different things in-universe. Damage type is a bad judge because we can mod damage types onto any weapon, and I didn't see any blast modded onto a melee self-murdering because 'explosion' either. It's only an abstract; on the opposite side of this any other damage type can be rendered 'explosively' as well on the weapons that operate as such. Castanas are legitimate self-harming without Blast, because they're an indiscriminate electrical arcing payload, right?

Consistency was fine as it was (thematically) and had a purpose (mechanically) to exactly not make people obliged to risk themselves.

 

Cautious Shot never needed to be in the game to begin with. It was a futile effort to silence that vocal minority but had the opposite effect, it just gave them something to rally around and deride because they're still sucking on the end of their launchers whenever they pull triggers just the same.

It was never going to just 'work'. Either it brings back the Tonkor Meta problem (removing all risk, retaining all reward) or there's always a point where it fails because of the way that self-damage is calculated - linearly linked, while the health pools on either side of the equation are not linearly scaling; we exponentiate our damage but our effective health doesn't raise by the same schema or to the same extents.

 

But players have given suggestions to address the 'problems' for years, ways that do maintain some arguable semblance of risk. I myself offered an algorithmic approach that directly uncouples that problematic linear linking of damages with variables that can be tweaked to the taste of overall game balance at any time, keeping it flexible for the future of the game - and yes, recommended the removal of ally collision as well, even though that's a massively overblown mythos. _{I couldn't even deliberately get in the way of a bloke shooting the Bramma around from standstill the other day. What vanishingly small odds are there for these things to happen by pure coincidence?}

Instead, we got a game-flow interruption that is non-risk-based and purely an annoyance. We got rewards slashed accordingly, and now AOE explosives barely AOE at all either. It's boring. It's dull. There's no joy in it, and all people are doing is circumventing the 'drawback' easily with the 10 different ways of doing so and using them with impunity, surprise surprise.

[Uryel_Stormrider]

Sonicor. Can't say much about others, but the changes on this one make me especially angry.

It was my second favourite secondary weapons, second only to the catchmoon (for obvious reasons, there are times tou need to pack some punch). Now it's collecting dust in my armory. Why ? Because stagger.

Sonicor was never about damage, it was about utility, and fun, too. Worst case scenario, you ragdoll an enemy that's way too strong for you until he dies, or until you fus-ro-dah it out of the map. It was also a very good path clearing tool. Now, it's pretty much useless, because you're almost guaranteed to be inside the area of effect, and thus, it's going to be as detrimental for you as for the enemy, minus the (low) damage.

I thought stagger was supposed to replace self damage, so why did they even add it to a weapon that never had self damage in the first place and had low damage anyway ?

On the other hand of the spectrum, the Falcor, with which I killed myself enough times to be embarrassed about, is now a perfectly safe weapon. The damage is so high that it's completely worth using, because yeah, you'll be staggered if you're not careful, but everything else else will be dead anyway.

[Bristoling]

Is "consistency" supposed to be some kind of an argument to keep stagger on things like amps, Cyanex, Pox or other weapons that previouly had miniscule or non-existent self damage before? Because if we want real consistency, then:

- all enemies should be staggered equally as our Warframes are

- AoE Warframe abilities should also stagger us. Octavia's Mallet, Mag's Magnetize, Saryn's Miasma, you name it, if it is an AoE, it should stagger you.

- shooting an ally with an AoE weapon should stagger them, their grandparents, and their pet cat.

Because consistency. Or we can throw it out the window because it is a ninja teenage wizard power fantasy and inconsistencies can be explained by "space magic". "Consistency" in a video game is not an argument in and out of itself if it doesn't serve gameplay.

Stagger should be decided on a per-weapon basis. For example, please build a Dissic scaffold for your Operator and explain how it's 2 layers of stagger serve to improve the gameplay.

Edited May 18, 2020 by Bristoling