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The solution to companion survivability issues


(PSN)Sentiel

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There's quite a few complaints about companion survivability, especially on Steel Path, and unless you're running Inaros, their survivability is a problem after level 80 even with the best builds, proven already by Liches. Not to mention our Warframe choice shouldn't be affected by our pets issues.

Shield gating can help, but it's a part of many needed and complex changes that companions need in order to stop being a liability and an annoyance in such missions.

Many interesting yet complex solutions were offered by the community but DE's ears are deaf (deaf to this subject at least). There is a much easier and simpler solution which you can see in many other games where you are accompanied by an AI controlled sidekick. (God of War - Atreus and The Last of Us - Ellie just to name a few well known examples).

And the solution is...

 

Make companions invincible.

 

With safety measures. 🙂

Make companions idle if the player is idle as well, the same way Spectres do it, in order to avoid having your companion kill everything while you're afk.

Done!

All companion survivability issues are gone in a simple and effective solution.

 

Does this brake the game? No.

 

Perhaps there is a way to still abuse being afk and have your companion kill everything but if so, that means you can already do that with Spectres and nobody seems to mind.

 

Even with all companion mods focused on offence they won't be able to kill everything for you, unless you run level 3 missions at which point you already kill everything just with your fashion and newbies won't have these mods so they can't cheese their way trough the Star Chart. I mean, they can pay for them, sure, but DE won't say no to more money, right?

 

What about the survivability mods you already own and have invested in?

Well, what about the Railjack Avionics we farmed and grinded for (perhaps even paid Platinum) that were removed? Same thing.

 

Added benefit for DE, you don't have to worry about their numerical values for shields, health, Armor and especially don't have to deal with their atrocious AI.

After some testing, the companions damage might need adjusting, I can't predict that, but even if your dog chases Sentients back to Tau, tell him it's good boy and give him a Grineer to play with instead of nerfing him.

It's a win-win for everyone except their new chew and scratch toys! 💜

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7 minutes ago, (PS4)Sentiel said:

Make companions idle if the player is idle as well, the same way Spectres do it, in order to avoid having your companion kill everything while you're afk.

In reality, I think this logic is better used as a reason for buffing Robotic weapons, which can have some...abysmal stats. Especially when we have Wukong.

That said, the argument is a bit iffy. Spectres, in spite of a big health pool, aren't invincible. In principle, and over time, they could be taken out. So it only really gets so far as to say, "make companions have scaling health with enemy level".

Though, if we were following the Spectre route, that would also mean adding in an accessible way to bring back deceased companions. At that point, you're not really that far off from immortality, the only difference being gear wheel fuss and crafting / buying revives. And maybe, besides the inherent avoidance of BS things like sentinels dying during the Exploiter Orb cutscenes, immortality becomes a desirable trait to remove that crafting monotony, along the same reasoning as what made Archwing deployers infinite.

15 minutes ago, (PS4)Sentiel said:

What about the survivability mods you already own and have invested in?

Unlike RJ avionics, there is also the potential to invert those mods, bestowing the player with buffs based on companion stats (or retaining some as-is but with tweaks, such as giving Sacrifice a revival timer like Reawaken). There are some creative avenues there.

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As much as I like pets to survive more in fights... making them invincible isn't the correct answer imo.

38 minutes ago, (PS4)Sentiel said:

Even with all companion mods focused on offence they won't be able to kill everything for you, unless you run level 3 missions at which point you already kill everything just with your fashion and newbies won't have these mods so they can't cheese their way trough the Star Chart. I mean, they can pay for them, sure, but DE won't say no to more money, right?

That is actually pretty false, there are certain builds that will allow pets to do ridiculous amounts of damage

 

Personally my suggestion would be for pets to have "the same" buffs warframes has (link buff)

so if warframe has dmg reduction abilities, it will also affect the pet, giving them much better protection

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2 minutes ago, Leyers_of_facade said:

Personally my suggestion would be for pets to have "the same" buffs warframes has (link buff)

so if warframe has dmg reduction abilities, it will also affect the pet, giving them much better protection

Unfortunately this also limits your Warframe choice as not all Warframes have damage reduction abilities.

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12 minutes ago, Leyers_of_facade said:

Personally my suggestion would be for pets to have "the same" buffs warframes has (link buff)

so if warframe has dmg reduction abilities, it will also affect the pet, giving them much better protection

I'm not sure this would really fix the issue. Besides what's said above about limiting WF choices, many DR options I can think of do apply to the companion as-is, like Trinity's Blessing, or otherwise apply via other Link mods, like armour increasing abilities. Yet, here we are.

It doesn't help that, chances are, sentinels would be excluded in the same way they can't use link mods of other types...

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3 minutes ago, (PS4)Sentiel said:

Unfortunately this also limits your Warframe choice as not all Warframes have damage reduction abilities.

not quite, by link buff, I am recommending that literally every "buff" that protects your warframe is automatically on your pet, which will include things like adaptation, as well as abilities such as turbulence (zephyr), halo (nezha), nullstar (nova)

so practically speaking, if you aren't dying to the enemies, your pets probably won't be doing so as well.

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8 minutes ago, Leyers_of_facade said:

not quite, by link buff, I am recommending that literally every "buff" that protects your warframe is automatically on your pet, which will include things like adaptation, as well as abilities such as turbulence (zephyr), halo (nezha), nullstar (nova)

so practically speaking, if you aren't dying to the enemies, your pets probably won't be doing so as well.

Even with Adaptation, most frames lacking direct damage reduction abilities can't tank high level damage. This will naturally apply to their pets as well.

For example, I like to play as Volt, and even with Primed Pack Leader, Capacitance, Shepherd, and all Link mods, my dog gets easily killed in seconds in high level missions.

I ensure my survivability with my mobility, which the dog lacks and in worst case scenarios, with my Electric Shield, which doesn't affect my pet in any way and wouldn't do it any good even with your suggestion.

You can test this yourself. Use Nezha's Halo or Gaara's Splinters on your pet. It helps their survivability, yes, but they die anyway and still do so quickly and often.

What you're suggesting is not bad but as I mentioned originally, this would need many follow up changes and tweaks and is generally complex to do hence DE is less likely to do it, while making pets invulnerable is simple and achieves the same goal.

 

 

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sentinels: give them an arcane slot, so arcane bodyguard can be equipped to them instead of self. (melee play would only benefit from this, but animals already have the melee play healing from primed pack leader).

animals: separate weapon from the main build, currently damage mods go in the body for kavats and kubrows, meaning if you want ehp in them and them to do what they do best they cant do damage to self heal so player must melee for primed pack leader.

moas and sentinels: make the attack skill mods not a mod, as this takes a slot, make it still optional but not consume mod slot to give such functionality. 

Sentinel weapons: allow melee to more then just helios, and add reload mod for deconstructor. as healing return is limited to at most 30 ish healing every 3 seconds. 

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Make them immune to aoe damage and change AI so they only attack things you have fired on (or give us passive / defensive / aggressive options). This would solve a lot of the frustration I have with companions.

At least pets now seem to teleport to you when they die, saves you from running back three rooms because pet refused to follow.

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Before going full invincibility I'd like to see a simpler change:

-make all companions (sentinels too) immune to aoe

-make all companions (sentinels too) immune to hazards. 

Whenever my pet starts constantly dying and sentinels explode its From stuff like napalm, sapping osprey bombs, moa sap etc because the ai cannot register hazards and aoe and blithely just stands right in it. If we can't get the ai improved I feel this is next best option

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Play the game; watch companions in operation.

>notice companion not doing there job<

Sitting still chk

Attacking but doing no damage chk 

Under somebody's stairs chk

No where around chk 

Dead again chk

>Revive<

Dead again chk

Design these "ATTRIBUTES" out of play and pets will be fixed!

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You all have great ideas, I don't want you to think I dislike them, not at all, however, as the first post mentions, these are all complex solutions. While they may achieve the same goal - increase companion survivability - their complexity makes them likely to cause additional issues, but most importantly, the more complex it is the less likely DE will do and the more likely it is they will screw something up (just purely from the human error perspective).

Making companions invincible is a simple on/off switch solution that achieves the goal and is arguably foolproof. Not only that but it also addresses future enemy level increases, just like Steel Path introduced, because these high levels enemies outright murder any pet.

While they are invincible, DE can run more complex test for a nice solution that allows companions to be killable again but not a hindrance to the player in any way.

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Would be nice if we could stick to a single thread so I wouldn't have to repost, but...

I've been saying this for a while. The player has no agency in what the pet does and very little agency in whether it lives or dies. As such, penalising us by taking away our Vacuum and Animal Instinct for what often amounts to random chance does not make for compelling gameplay. The simplest option here would be to make pets invulnerable across the board and just ditch survivability mods on them.

Alternately, giving pets an auto-revive mechanic or a manual revive mechanic might also be nice. I've often suggested a gear item called "Recall Pet" which teleports your pet to you if it's away, heals it to full if it's damaged and revives it if it's dead. Put it on a 20-second cooldown and call it a day. Or don't even bother and just have the pet come back at full health 20 seconds after dying like Venari does. Honestly, babysitting our pets is a chore.

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21 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Would be nice if we could stick to a single thread so I wouldn't have to repost, but...

I've been saying this for a while. The player has no agency in what the pet does and very little agency in whether it lives or dies. As such, penalising us by taking away our Vacuum and Animal Instinct for what often amounts to random chance does not make for compelling gameplay. The simplest option here would be to make pets invulnerable across the board and just ditch survivability mods on them.

Alternately, giving pets an auto-revive mechanic or a manual revive mechanic might also be nice. I've often suggested a gear item called "Recall Pet" which teleports your pet to you if it's away, heals it to full if it's damaged and revives it if it's dead. Put it on a 20-second cooldown and call it a day. Or don't even bother and just have the pet come back at full health 20 seconds after dying like Venari does. Honestly, babysitting our pets is a chore.

Sorry about that.

The other recent thread, while having amazing ideas, is more focused on the complex reworks. I don't want to discuss those since it's been done before many times and I have seen MANY awesome and incredibly thought out ideas, yet I haven't really saw someone make a thread to advocate for companion invincibility recently. Since it's an easier solution, it gives me hope DE might actually implement it. To put it simply, extend the same option from Simulacrum to the entire game.

I made the thread, not to lure people with their own ideas, but to troubleshoot the invincibility solution. I don't see any drawbacks to it, but more minds means more thoughts, so the goal here was to gather and resolve the problems that would come with the invincibility, so it can be then presented to DE with most if not all issues already addressed. I'm not a positive enough person to believe they will give a damn, but I want to give it a try anyway.

I'm very happy you understand my frustration. Indeed, babysitting our pets is a chore! One we certainly don't need and doesn't add any value to the game.

Whether we go for invincibility, auto-revive, or whatever other solution, as long as it results in the player not having to babysit the pet in any way, or do anything of the sort during the mission but at the same time doesn't affect the player's choice of Warframe or equipment in any way as well, then I will support it in whatever way I can.

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Make Companions immortal, but have them enter a cooldown state for their offensive capabilities
(but not stuff like Animal Instinct / Vacuum / Mod set boni) when they take "lethal" damage.

That would make the current Health etc Mods / defensive options still have a purpose,
stuff like Bleed Out Mods / Regen / Reawaken would be reworked to affect that cooldown.

And while we're at it, whether or not it's in addition to the above,
make Companions invincible (and stop attacking) while you're using your Operator.

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On 2020-07-13 at 3:42 PM, (PS4)Sentiel said:

I made the thread, not to lure people with their own ideas, but to troubleshoot the invincibility solution. I don't see any drawbacks to it, but more minds means more thoughts, so the goal here was to gather and resolve the problems that would come with the invincibility, so it can be then presented to DE with most if not all issues already addressed. I'm not a positive enough person to believe they will give a damn, but I want to give it a try anyway.

I'm for invincibility, as well. There's no inherent gameplay in keeping one's pet alive, since we lack any sort of agency over them. I have an easier time keeping Eidolon Lures alive than my pet, because Lures at least don't run off from me and stand in the middle of an AoE damage field. The primary issue, I think, is modding. Pets have a wealth of survivability mods that all of use use (those of us who don't fancy reviving our pets every 30 seconds, anyway, even though we do). Removing those would mean retiring a large number of mods, which DE might be loathed to do. I can also imagine situations where a player sits out of line of sight, letting their invulnerable bet fight with no threat of damage.

More reliable pet revival would solve the above issues as it retains pretty much every part of Status Quo by targeting only a specific mechanic. I don't think people would care all that much about their cats and dogs dying constantly if we didn't have to constantly spend 10 seconds reviving them. Think about this - is anyone bothered by Clem constantly going down in his own mission? I'd argue no, because Clem simply gets back up after a while and keeps fighting. Sure, he gets up at next to no health and likely almost immediately goes down again, but he can't bleed out and disappear. And besides, why NOT let Clem revive at full health anyway? He's Clem. He's tough. Cut the guy a break.

In short, I'd argue that it's not our pets DYING that people are consistently upset about. It's how we revive them - or don't, as is the case with Sentinels - that gets on people's nerves. Fix revival and the deaths themselves would become white noise.

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