Can u return SELFDAMAGE and STOP NERF?

[TheLexiConArtist]

40 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

I think here we run into a bit of a debate with shield gating. That is, how much of a feel of danger is losing shields in the modern game? If it's a sufficiently huge deal to make it feel dangerous, shield-gating theoretically solves most of the problem by itself - after all, it's insta-gibbing that's the main issue - and calculations would only be needed to give Inaros and Nidus some compensation - assuming that's even desired. Maybe they just have to be more careful with those kinds of weapons, to compensate for their ability to face-tank against enemies.

I was going to get into the nitty-gritty of the formulas in your thread but, rather than that:

This brings up the major issue that a lot of this is subjective. In quite real terms, one person says self-damage can't be based on the Warframe's health because it makes weaker frames too able to tank it. Another says self-damage must be based on the Warframe's health because it makes stronger frames too able to tank it. Both justify on the fact that self-damage weapons should be dangerous to use. If your job is now to appease both of them, I can only wish you luck, because that contention is just one slice of the entire debate pie and it only gets worse. After all, you've yet add in shield gating, status procs, toxin bypass, damage reduction, healing abilities, and a number of other elements that shuffle Warframes about the survivability scale like a game of curling played by cocaine addicts - and people aren't going to be happy wherever that line is drawn.

I do think many of us can agree that, on a macroscopic level, self-stagger feels worse than self-damage. That's not the issue here. The issue is: how do you compromise with problems like the above dilemma and get a solution that, while imperfect, should at least be acceptable?

(It might be easier thinking conditionally, too. E.g., self-damage = min ( x% of players health | x% of weapon's modded damage ), or whatever specific equations or values to make lower-health frames fit one box and higher health frames hit another. But I imagine you're bound to get people contending that doesn't work, either...)

Subjectively: I'd push for shield-gating being ignored by self-inflicted damage, because it can be refreshed instantly. It's a nice bump to shielded-frame survivability, but currently, it might be a little.. abusable in general, making it undershoot the 'natural drawback' goal we're aiming for. Same as how PSF makes the stagger non-existent, and how select few frames had the ability to bypass the natural drawback of self-damage even at fatal levels.
Yes, many will disagree with me, but if it's a balancing mechanic of any sort, then I think it has to either be a compromise to those specific-cases or to just.. be allowed to surmount them all as the invariably-fatal self-damage we all knew.

That's why my suggestion wasn't set in its variables, why I showed the ranges that could be expected at different Magic Numbers. As long as DE are equipped to move the pins of lower limit, higher limit and curvature then the subjective argument all comes out in the wash. DE makes the final decision on how far and how hard the diminishing goes, ideally after considering the debated reasoning behind those subjective viewpoints like 'Unmodded Loki probably shouldn't still be able to tank it'.

Offering the algorithm (although even that is only a suggested example of what CAN work) is objective. Proof of concept, you can make a scalable calculation work instead of it being either linear or fixed-point.
Where the control variables should be pinned is the subjective part - it is capable of anything from no-throttling self-damage threats to throttling so hard that Loki really could soak the fallout of a million-damage rocket, as the examples show.

 

Bearing in mind a little self-awareness of personal bias, I'd argue that most of the differing opinions are looking too narrowly anyway, treating certain aspects in a vacuum, which is why I tackled some of the broader concepts in my thread - like how the backlash of fatal self-damage naturally discouraged explosives getting buffed, but also making them simply powerful enough to fully warrant the fatality might make them too obligatory to use for people who don't actually want to, an equally undesirable outcome. There's always a web of softer and harder potential links of causation to consider... but DE trying to shortcut that with the blanket changes made their effort to please the few result in dissatisfying the many.

[Tyreaus]

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

[snip]

The particular "issue", as it were, with your proposed formula is that it has certain axioms baked into it, such as ignoring rate of fire (if that were accounted for, I think I had calculated Zhuge Prime's self-DPS to be around 1,200, and Lenz's at around 190-ish) and differences in player EHP. For example, your formula can't do something like take the lesser of the calculated self-damage and 85% of the player's maximum health and shields and apply it as True damage. It will always be the case that, if it won't murder Loki, it won't tickle Inaros. As much as the numbers can be tweaked, certain relationships are constant. And, again, that asks the question of: should it? And if people can't agree on whether it should, because people put different weights on different axioms, how do you reach a workable solution?

I say that because your opening post here mirrors your opening post there: these are the things that need to happen for self-damage, here's a solution, this is what it does or allows. There are two options in response to that: the philosopher's option, which involves debating the issue until time immemorial; and the engineer's option, which seeks to come to some kind of solution. Considering there's a thread linked here that shows the end result of the philosopher's option, and considering I don't feel like coming up with a dozen ways to calculate self-damage that I know you won't agree with, probably not a bad idea to try the engineer's route, no?

EDIT: To make one exception to the "dozen ways to calculate self-damage" - Make self-damage increase damage vulnerability of the player based on the damage mods they have equipped on the weapon, including a factor of the relationship between the weapon's base damage and the player's maximum health (perhaps as duration), and disable shield gating for the time that debuff is active. I.e., don't kill the player with the self-damage, make the self-damage kill the player indirectly. Bonus points if it comes with an upper-body-only animation that signifies this occurs without actually CCing the player as current stagger does.

[Twilight-Knight]

On 2020-08-13 at 3:00 AM, SebyShine said:

Stop nerfing! reintroduce self-damage, put BRAMMA back as it was before and put valid content where badass weapons can be used.

You are a fool when trying to argue with these amatures. Game lost it's balance in gameplay already. Hell if you can even put on a proper compensation post that people find it critical ?, the admins will delete it like it've never been exist.

[SebyShine]

11 hours ago, Twilight-Knight said:

You are a fool when trying to argue with these amatures. Game lost it's balance in gameplay already. Hell if you can even put on a proper compensation post that people find it critical ?, the admins will delete it like it've never been exist.

then, the whole community must move in this direction and stop complaining about difficult things!  they must learn to use their heads!

[AzureTerra]

It would be wonderful to have Selfdamage back, DE however keep capitulating to the vocal minority.

[Teridax68]

Okay, so a few things:

• I'm struggling to see how the removal of self-damage can be interpreted as a nerf, or how reinstating it would do the game any good. Self-damage on AoE was a silly, poorly-balanced mechanic that never worked in Warframe, and heavily discouraged the use of certain weapons that already weren't very good to begin with.
• For all the perception that the Kuva Bramma was massively nerfed... it kind of wasn't? You'll need an ammo mutation mod in the exilus slot, which was arguably the case pre-nerf, but with that, the weapon still deals ridiculous amounts of damage.

Really, I'd say that if we want to talk about undoing nerfs... why not just ask to remove self-staggers? Self-CC on AoE isn't a particularly good mechanic either, and has ruined some Operator amps, while adding a significant degree of clunkiness to the gameplay of certain weapons when the frame doesn't have Primed Sure Footed equipped. Removing it could be a pure benefit to the game.

[Kokokojo]

On 2020-08-14 at 2:20 PM, TheLexiConArtist said:

Citation needed.

It's a very conventional way to punish the player for poor use of explosives. See almost every game with such things ever. If you're next to an automatic door (hint: assume it's automatic, since 99% are not Friendship Doors that stay opened) that's your bad positioning if it closes and you shoot danger-close. You have more weapons available. I'll grant that unpredictable allied units/players was a valid point of contention, but the rest.. well, it's just players who would rather shift the blame by complaining about a perfectly normal drawback of a weapon archetype than admit their own errors in judgement.

Also, a large number of players who even had issues with self-damage voiced that they'd actually rather have it back, than have the awful self-staggering and wet-noodle AOE falloff we got in place... In fact, if not for how accessible it is to completely remove that so-called alternative drawback of stagger I'd wager a lot more players who use them 'because' self damage is gone would have put them right back on the shelf once the novelty wore off and the non-risk, all-irritant stagger got to them.

 

Cautious Shot wasn't an attempt to 'work around' the mechanic, it was introduced as an attempt to give the complainants something to frankly shut them up a bit. It didn't work, of course, because that sort of person is never going to be pleased until they get their way precisely, not any sort of compromise. And because the linearly-linked damage output to self-damage risk is a poor fit for Warframe, but that's solvable and doesn't mean delete the whole archetype to replace them with annoying potato cannons.

 

It was a terrible change for the sake of a vocal greedy minority - bearing in mind less than 10% of weapons had any self-damage mechanic at all, and less than 4% had no 'grace' feature such as being triggered, delayed explosion or arm-distance.

It still needs reverting so that players who actually like risky weapon choices actually have something to play with again. Currently, the militant anti-selfdamage complainers have about 5% more weapons to choose from than before, counting the stagger-weapons that arrived since the atrocity. On the other hand, players who enjoyed that niche playstyle have -100% weapons to choose from. Is that 'fair'? Did that 5% of weaponry really need to be homogenised to the wider playerbase, or was it harmless to have them only actively used by a smaller proportion?

They listen to the majority of the community (or the lack of it, in Raids case)

Raids got removed, spin2win got killed, Warframes, such as Ember, got their playstyle reworked (RIP my Hydroid) and self-damage got removed.

Is it fair? Yes. It is. Removing self-damage made those weapons more appealing to the majority part of the community, I see nothing wrong with giving the player in the power-fantasy game, well, more power. They still pack the old punch they had, but now you just have to shift your attention on not getting your corpse in the seeling to aiming the explosion to avoid the damage fall-off. The game moves on.

[TheLexiConArtist]

40 minutes ago, (NSW)Kokojo said:

They listen to the majority of the community (or the lack of it, in Raids case)

Raids got removed, spin2win got killed, Warframes, such as Ember, got their playstyle reworked (RIP my Hydroid) and self-damage got removed.

Is it fair? Yes. It is. Removing self-damage made those weapons more appealing to the majority part of the community, I see nothing wrong with giving the player in the power-fantasy game, well, more power. They still pack the old punch they had, but now you just have to shift your attention on not getting your corpse in the seeling to aiming the explosion to avoid the damage fall-off. The game moves on.

Literally none of those examples were based on community majority, so nice job with that.

Raids were removed more due to the burden of being bug-ridden and breaking with every other patch than any demands from community for their removal.

Ember getting reworked was not majority. The majority probably weren't running Mercury missions enough to feel like Ember was really 'overpowered' enough to complain about it (as the saying goes, everything is overpowered on Mercury) and World on Fire was actually inoffensive compared to things which have a much greater impact (with scaling) and proportion of complaints, yet remain unaddressed. Also the rework is a self-defeating mess, so yay that.

Spin to win was changed because balance is not irrelevant even in a PvE game. As with self-damage, the 'majority' in this case was silent ambivalence. Some minor subset wanted to keep their busted meme-strikes, some minor subset argued it should maybe be changed for the sake of sensible balance. The majority don't mind or don't care.

 

The real majority accepted that they don't have to like every weapon in the game and didn't see much of a loss by not using some 4%-10% of possible options. The entitled, greedy vocal minority demanded that the change be made to suit them, at the entire cost of a playstyle for the opposite minority who enjoyed them but (due to the status-quo) were generally not vocally defending self-damage.

Did the majority necessarily enjoy self-damage? No. Did the majority insist it should be removed? Also no. Most people situationally used, or did not use them to their personal tastes, because the game has plenty of other options to choose from. 'Don't mind or don't care' is almost always the greatest proportion, you just don't see them talking about that neutral standpoint.

[Kokokojo]

4 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Literally none of those examples were based on community majority, so nice job with that.

Raids were removed more due to the burden of being bug-ridden and breaking with every other patch than any demands from community for their removal.

Ember getting reworked was not majority. The majority probably weren't running Mercury missions enough to feel like Ember was really 'overpowered' enought o complain about it (as the saying goes, everything is overpowered on Mercury) and World on Fire was actually inoffensive compared to things which have a much greater impact and proportion of complaints, yet remain unaddressed. Also the rework is a self-defeating mess, so yay that.

Spin to win was changed because balance is not irrelevant even in a PvE game. As with self-damage, the 'majority' in this case was silent ambivalence. Some minor subset wanted to keep their busted meme-strikes, some minor subset argued it should maybe be changed for the sake of sensible balance. The majority don't mind or don't care.

 

The real majority accepted that they don't have to like every weapon in the game and didn't see much of a loss by not using some 4%-10% of possible options. The entitled, greedy vocal minority demanded that the change be made to suit them, at the entire cost of a playstyle for the opposite minority who enjoyed them but (due to the status-quo) were generally not vocally defending self-damage.

Did the majority necessarily enjoy self-damage? No. Did the majority insist it should be removed? Also no. Most people situationally used, or did not use them to their personal tastes, because the game has plenty of other options to choose from. 'Don't mind or don't care' is almost always the greatest proportion, you just don't see them talking about that neutral standpoint.

Then let me change my phrase, since I "did a good job on that"

They listen the people who scream the loudest. 
Better?
 

[TheLexiConArtist]

Just now, (NSW)Kokojo said:

Then let me change my phrase, since I "did a good job on that"

They listen the people who scream the loudest. 
Better?

Much. And since there's much less incentive to speak about something you have no investment in OR something you agree with that has also been standard for long enough to consider as a background fact of 'the way things are', well, you start to see the problem with that.

You can't even judge if the screaming crowd is a larger minority than their direct opposition, much less whether they're even statistical-significance compared to the majority.

[Kokokojo]

4 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Much. And since there's much less incentive to speak about something you have no investment in OR something you agree with that has also been standard for long enough to consider as a background fact of 'the way things are', well, you start to see the problem with that.

You can't even judge if the screaming crowd is a larger minority than their direct opposition, much less whether they're even statistical-significance compared to the majority.

That still donest' change the fact Self-dmaage removal was better for the game and the community overall.

You can say changing it made people who USE it less likely to keep using, but it also triggered people who didn't use it explosive weapons because Self-Damage to pick and use, even if they didn't used such weapons in the first place.

What I'm understanding from what you are saying is: People who loved Self-Damage didn't liked because their bubble popped, and now other people can join in.

The punishment still there, just less brutal and more welcoming for the most part.

[TheLexiConArtist]

Just now, (NSW)Kokojo said:

That still donest' change the fact Self-dmaage removal was better for the game and the community overall.

You can say changing it made people who USE it less likely to keep using, but it also triggered people who didn't use it explosive weapons because Self-Damage to pick and use, even if they didn't used such weapons in the first place.

What I'm understanding from what you are saying is: People who loved Self-Damage didn't liked because their bubble popped, and now other people can join in.

The punishment still there, just less brutal and more welcoming for the most part.

Not really. Variety is the spice of Warframe, and with the removal of self-damage we got not only a drastic cut in variety, but also a broad dulling of AOE weaponry to go along with it due to the knock-on balance effects - after all, we remember the Tonkor Meta.

As a result of self-damage being removed, compared to before removal:

• People who liked self-damage have 0% of options to suit their playstyle.
• People who hated self-damage have 104%-111% of options to suit their playstyles.

That, my friend, is not a reasonable distribution. Complete loss for strictly minor gains.

 

Also, the stagger is not even a threat. It's so ineffective that even if you don't just circumvent it entirely, it does not oblige the player to avoid it. All it does is annoyingly interrupt your control - something which you shrug off, continue playing the exact same way, instead of the damage risk which made you actually avoid shooting yourself.

It's so ineffective that I've died once due to the knockdown whilst being deliberately reckless with my Shedu and Kulstar since the mechanic was added.

 

It's a 'punishment', but it's not a risk. Nobody is having fun or laughing at their own mistakes for being staggered, they just sigh at the loss of control, shrug, move on.

 

It's like comparing the irritating sting of a papercut (stagger) to slicing yourself open with a knife because you were doing something dumb with it (damage).

[Kokokojo]

4 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

It's a 'punishment', but it's not a risk. Nobody is having fun or laughing at their own mistakes for being staggered, they just sigh at the loss of control, shrug, move on.

If you want to go to the "nobody" road, I can say that nobody was having fun and lauging seeing their Warframe going through wall because that one cluster shot back-fired.
 

6 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Not really. Variety is the spice of Warframe, and with the removal of self-damage we got not only a drastic cut in variety, but also a broad dulling of AOE weaponry to go along with it due to the knock-on balance effects - after all, we remember the Tonkor Meta.

As a result of self-damage being removed, compared to before removal:

• People who liked self-damage have 0% of options to suit their playstyle.
• People who hated self-damage have 104%-111% of options to suit their playstyles.

That, my friend, is not a reasonable distribution. Complete loss for strictly minor gains.

 

Also, the stagger is not even a threat. It's so ineffective that even if you don't just circumvent it entirely, it does not oblige the player to avoid it. All it does is annoyingly interrupt your control - something which you shrug off, continue playing the exact same way, instead of the damage risk which made you actually avoid shooting yourself.

It's so ineffective that I've died once due to the knockdown whilst being deliberately reckless with my Shedu and Kulstar since the mechanic was added.

It's like comparing the irritating sting of a papercut (stagger) to slicing yourself open with a knife because you were doing something dumb with it (damage).

That still donest' change the fact Self-dmaage removal was better for the game and the community overall.
You can say changing it made people who USE it less likely to keep using, but it also triggered people who didn't use it explosive weapons because Self-Damage to pick and use, even if they didn't used such weapons in the first place.

[TheLexiConArtist]

3 minutes ago, (NSW)Kokojo said:

If you want to go to the "nobody" road, I can say that nobody was having fun and lauging seeing their Warframe going through wall because that one cluster shot back-fired.

Most people, especially who can't accept their own mistakes (most complaints about self-damage are results of this) wouldn't laugh about the result.

But the people who enjoy the actual risk of explosive weaponry certainly would have a chuckle when they flatten themselves through their own misadventure. It's no fun if you don't lose the occasional eyebrow, y'know? It breaks up the monotony if you have that "WHOOPS, I'm an idiot!" moment of levity.

4 minutes ago, (NSW)Kokojo said:

That still donest' change the fact Self-dmaage removal was better for the game and the community overall.
You can say changing it made people who USE it less likely to keep using, but it also triggered people who didn't use it explosive weapons because Self-Damage to pick and use, even if they didn't used such weapons in the first place.

Is this what your 'argument' is reduced to? Copy-pasting (typos and all) the same vacuous claims that I rebuked as if repeating them counters my rebuttal? Come on, man. You're not even trying.

[Kokokojo]

9 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Most people, especially who can't accept their own mistakes (most complaints about self-damage are results of this) wouldn't laugh about the result.

But the people who enjoy the actual risk of explosive weaponry certainly would have a chuckle when they flatten themselves through their own misadventure. It's no fun if you don't lose the occasional eyebrow, y'know? It breaks up the monotony if you have that "WHOOPS, I'm an idiot!" moment of levity.

Not having fun is different from not accepting their own mistakes. Sure, some people didn't accepted but there were people who just plain dindn't liked the Self-Damage.

9 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Is this what your 'argument' is reduced to? Copy-pasting (typos and all) the same vacuous claims that I rebuked as if repeating them counters my rebuttal? Come on, man. You're not even trying.

I mean, I rather copy-paste that than make a whole essay to basically say the same thing again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
and again: "That still donest' change the fact Self-dmaage removal was better for the game and the community overall."

If your nitch got removed, find another, it's not like the game lacks weapons and nich loadout set-up.

[TheLexiConArtist]

1 minute ago, (NSW)Kokojo said:

Not having fun is different from not accepting their own mistakes. Sure, some people didn't accepted but there were people who just plain dindn't liked the Self-Damage.

I mean, I rather copy-paste that than make a whole essay to basically say the same thing again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
and again: "That still donest' change the fact Self-dmaage removal was better for the game and the community overall."

If your nitch got removed, find another, it's notlike the game lacks weapons and nich loadout set-up.

I did say especially the ones who can't accept their mistakes. Yes, it also includes people who just don't like the self-damage to that point, but that's fine, there's the other 90-96% of weapons for those to use.
On the other hand, I sincerely doubt there's a single person enjoying the stagger as a stagger. The 'fun' in the self-damage kills I suppose is because it's got a sort of spectacle to it. You yeet yourself into oblivion, someone's gonna find it funny, even if they did it to themselves. Stagger's just there. Interrupting. Whoop de doo.

 

You failed to address any of the counterpoints I made to those empty claims. Is it better for the game? Not really, because of the collateral damage and homogenisation which goes against the 'variety' paradigm of Warframe's design. And what do you exactly define as 'better for the community'? Because all of the "ugh stagger on my (Amp/Zakti/everything)" complaints don't look like things have really been that concrete of an improvement over just letting the few weapons stay as they were.

People aren't using self-damage weapons now that self-damage is removed. They're using mechanically different weapons that just happen to borrow the same model and name of the old self-damage weapons. Functionally speaking, they might as well just have chosen to use the weapons which already did AOE damage without self-damage risks. Except in this case, it also functionally deleted the weapons for the people already using them as they actually were.

[Kokokojo]

20 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

I did say especially the ones who can't accept their mistakes. Yes, it also includes people who just don't like the self-damage to that point, but that's fine, there's the other 90-96% of weapons for those to use.
On the other hand, I sincerely doubt there's a single person enjoying the stagger as a stagger. The 'fun' in the self-damage kills I suppose is because it's got a sort of spectacle to it. You yeet yourself into oblivion, someone's gonna find it funny, even if they did it to themselves. Stagger's just there. Interrupting. Whoop de doo.

 

You failed to address any of the counterpoints I made to those empty claims. Is it better for the game? Not really, because of the collateral damage and homogenisation which goes against the 'variety' paradigm of Warframe's design. And what do you exactly define as 'better for the community'? Because all of the "ugh stagger on my (Amp/Zakti/everything)" complaints don't look like things have really been that concrete of an improvement over just letting the few weapons stay as they were.

People aren't using self-damage weapons now that self-damage is removed. They're using mechanically different weapons that just happen to borrow the same model and name of the old self-damage weapons. Functionally speaking, they might as well just have chosen to use the weapons which already did AOE damage without self-damage risks. Except in this case, it also functionally deleted the weapons for the people already using them as they actually were.

Well, this can go on for a while by you saying "My nich got removed, I want it back" but in 20 lines and I can just keep coming and saying "that nitch was not very well seeing, it ain't coming back".

Also, about the stagger:

1 - There are people who enjoy seeing their Warframe performe the stagger dodge/recover after blowing up everything in front of him. Fun is subjective, you saying "I sincerely doubt there's a single person enjoying the stagger as a stagger" just shows that you aren't having fun with it, so nobody is allowed to have either.

2 - Most of the stagger complains I see, personally, is not that they added stagger to the previous self-damage, but complains that they added stagger to weapons that didn't had anything to do with it.

3 - People ARE using self-damagind weapons because self-damage was removed, otherwise self-damage would've been kept at the fist place. Without self-damage people now have access to more variety of AoE damaging weapons, since those X%~Y% other weapons in games can be severely cut down if you consider mechanically equal weapons, such as Baza, Soma, Gorgon, Karak, etc.

(Homogenisation: Had to look that up to understand what it is, you could've just used mixed or generalization instead, no need to be fancy about it)

[Tyreaus]

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

As a result of self-damage being removed, compared to before removal:

• People who liked self-damage have 0% of options to suit their playstyle.
• People who hated self-damage have 104%-111% of options to suit their playstyles.

That, my friend, is not a reasonable distribution. Complete loss for strictly minor gains.

I would just like to point out super quick that this reasoning goes for just about anything. People who liked Coptering versus those who don't (or like bullet jumping more). People who like self-stagger versus those who don't (just to invert it). Any form of change where one option is removed is going to follow that pattern: the people who liked the removed option get messed over while the people who don't get more options but could have just not done the initial thing they don't like. You don't need to copter, just run. You don't need self-stagger, just don't use the weapons. So on and so forth.

Similar goes for:

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Nobody is having fun or laughing at their own mistakes for being staggered, they just sigh at the loss of control, shrug, move on.

Which applies to self-stagger, too. Sometimes I laugh and shrug off my mistake with self-stagger. Sometimes I sigh at the loss of control, shrug, and move on. That happens with self-damage, too, and the stupid (in a good way) ragdolls versus the loss of a life - mind that you lose both with a balanced self-damage system. The difference is less in the mechanic, more in frequency. It's funny the first time you blow up, whether that kills you or flings you around. After the fifteenth time in one run at Hydron, it gets annoying. Any worthwhile consequence used to balance explosives is going to get annoying after triggering it so often, and if it doesn't get annoying, it's not doing its job in balancing the weapon.

Just to illustrate the point: pretty sure every Bramma user gets a little frustrated or surprised when they first run out of ammo. If it happens almost constantly, they're probably getting quite annoyed. That makes sense, but again, that applies to any interfering balance aspect. Long reload times, even, are going to annoy many players if or when they run into it often enough.

[TheLexiConArtist]

2 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

I would just like to point out super quick that this reasoning goes for just about anything. People who liked Coptering versus those who don't (or like bullet jumping more). People who like self-stagger versus those who don't (just to invert it). Any form of change where one option is removed is going to follow that pattern: the people who liked the removed option get messed over while the people who don't get more options but could have just not done the initial thing they don't like. You don't need to copter, just run. You don't need self-stagger, just don't use the weapons. So on and so forth.

I mean, you can claim almost anything if you draw the target narrowly enough. Literally Coptering may have gone, but the core paradigm of 'I want better, faster A to B motion than running' was served by the replacement of Parkour 2.0 over Coptering, so nobody particularly lost there.

On the other hand, with self-damage gone, there's no intrinsic risk to any of the weapons. There's no Big Dangerous weapon for the mad-lads to use at the cost of themselves if they're not careful. You can self-stagger yourself endlessly without concern, which is fundamentally different. Only an extrinsic risk of staggering yourself when already damaged and also surrounded - and even then, the AI have to actually decide to shoot you and not your buddies or your cats, or take cover, or throw a grenade.. You can knock yourself down in the middle of a group of enemies in an Enhancement Sortie and not get killed by them, by sheer chance.

Returning self-damage doesn't mean self-stagger couldn't still be an option, either for future weapons as an alternative or, possibly, left on some of the dubiously over-performing AOEs that had no drawbacks at all, previously. Poor comparison. It would just serve as another 'middle ground' tier of playstyle between the 'no risk' and the 'grace risk' of the various delayed, arm-distance and manual triggered self-damage weapons. A tier 2 of minor-risk in between the 1 (non-risk aoe), 3 (grace-risk) and 4 (pure dumbfire, full-risk) of the previous game state.

 

 

I'll withdraw my suggestion that nobody is enjoying the stagger. It was a fool's errand claiming absolutes, fallacies I'm usually calling out, not making myself.
It's subjective that I suppose I just can't see how you'd enjoy something that takes your control away, repeatedly, in such an otherwise un-impactful manner - I've seen streamers confused and annoyed what's even locking up their controls, not even realising they're running into the stagger. The grand impact of ragdolling and murdering yourself, while polarising, at least implies a grander response on part of the player, whether in the bad or good way.

[Tyreaus]

35 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

I mean, you can claim almost anything if you draw the target narrowly enough. Literally Coptering may have gone, but the core paradigm of 'I want better, faster A to B motion than running' was served by the replacement of Parkour 2.0 over Coptering, so nobody particularly lost there.

We can also say that the core paradigm of explosive weapons having a drawback is served by self-stagger, which hinders outgoing DPS. We can also say that the core paradigm of explosive weapons having a risk is also served by self-stagger, because as often ineffective as the stagger is in posing a threat, it still poses a non-zero threat. There are very likely core paradigms that fall within both states - self-damage and self-stagger - and there are likely core paradigms that fall within just one or the other, such as the intrinsic and extrinsic risks mentioned.

If you can pick and choose which angle to focus on, then so can anyone else on those other topics. Self-stagger lacks the intrinsic risk, so that's why we should favour the old system that has intrinsic risk? Bullet jumping lacks technical skill for execution, so we should favour the old system that has more technical skill. Conversely, if bullet jumping is just fine because it still increases speed, then self-stagger is just fine because it still gives weapons a drawback.

58 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Returning self-damage doesn't mean self-stagger couldn't still be an option, either for future weapons as an alternative or, possibly, left on some of the dubiously over-performing AOEs that had no drawbacks at all, previously. Poor comparison. It would just serve as another 'middle ground' tier of playstyle between the 'no risk' and the 'grace risk' of the various delayed, arm-distance and manual triggered self-damage weapons. A tier 2 of minor-risk in between the 1 (non-risk aoe), 3 (grace-risk) and 4 (pure dumbfire, full-risk) of the previous game state.

This solves nothing because the argument is, effectively, fractal. Contentions around self-damage or self-stagger or whatever drawback on explosive weapons in general very often apply just as well to any particular explosive weapon. The problem isn't resolved or avoided by saying "some weapons can have stagger, some can have damage", it's just deferred to the first explosive weapon you pick up for discussion.

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

I'll withdraw my suggestion that nobody is enjoying the stagger. It was a fool's errand claiming absolutes, fallacies I'm usually calling out, not making myself.
It's subjective that I suppose I just can't see how you'd enjoy something that takes your control away, repeatedly, in such an otherwise un-impactful manner - I've seen streamers confused and annoyed what's even locking up their controls, not even realising they're running into the stagger. The grand impact of ragdolling and murdering yourself, while polarising, at least implies a grander response on part of the player, whether in the bad or good way.

If I'm being honest, I feel that the error is that the angles at which you're approaching the problem are overcomplicating things. Just for example, in the process of asserting people are excluded as a justification for bringing self-damage back, you're having to justify why your argument counts for self-damage but not for, say, coptering, or the old insta-gib scenarios that your earlier thread advocated against. And that says nothing about previous claims on here about a minority being against self-damage (when, if DE was in the business of capitulating to minorities, Conclave should be in a much better spot than it is) or that very few developers want to hit ctrl + Z unless there's massive, irreparable backlash - and there isn't here. It creates holes you're having to patch up with additional qualifiers and contexts that don't even necessarily hold up themselves.

Then there's the alternative angle of: self-stagger feels like S#&$. Period. Why doesn't it work well? Because Warframe is a game about fluid movement and stunning the player immediately takes away from that in a jarring, unproductive manner. That, by practical definition, is a pile of suck.

That's it. There's nothing to do with popularity, exclusions or inclusions, extrinsic or intrinsic risks. There's nothing arbitrary, nothing subjective, nothing about core paradigms or even what players want. Nothing about hitting the undo button, and nothing readily hijacked for some other chants to revert Warframe to its early days. It is simply "this is the overall nature of the game and this aspect of the game doesn't fit with it; more progress is needed".

What should go in its place, since many will argue there should be something as counter-balance? Something that doesn't interrupt fluid movement - same reason given for removing self-stagger. So, likely, something damage-based. Probably not something that'll instagib a player because you're right back at square one in that case. Scaling damage based on EHP? Increased damage vulnerability? Those are fitting options for that line of reasoning.

Compare that to the complexities and controversies of your reasoning. You needn't follow that ad verbatim, by far, but it should highlight at least a few points where things can be made a little simpler and straightforward.

[TheLexiConArtist]

1 hour ago, Tyreaus said:

If I'm being honest, I feel that the error is that the angles at which you're approaching the problem are overcomplicating things. Just for example, in the process of asserting people are excluded as a justification for bringing self-damage back, you're having to justify why your argument counts for self-damage but not for, say, coptering, or the old insta-gib scenarios that your earlier thread advocated against. And that says nothing about previous claims on here about a minority being against self-damage (when, if DE was in the business of capitulating to minorities, Conclave should be in a much better spot than it is) or that very few developers want to hit ctrl + Z unless there's massive, irreparable backlash - and there isn't here. It creates holes you're having to patch up with additional qualifiers and contexts that don't even necessarily hold up themselves.

Compare that to the complexities and controversies of your reasoning. You needn't follow that ad verbatim, by far, but it should highlight at least a few points where things can be made a little simpler and straightforward.

I'm an old hand on the subject. I was there for the Tonkor Meta and spearheading arguments for fixing it and the SySim. You can imagine that over all that time there's a certain amount of extra grit that accumulates onto the core of the argument as opposition rises and is addressed. A sort of pre-empting any counter-arguments already fielded with the conclusions that were reached before.

Granted, it doesn't always work like that, everyone needs the same thing stated 12 different ways when they find new and exciting ways to bog it down in fallacies and what-have-you. I'm not very good at keeping concise rather than point-for-point dissections that can go on for many, many pages. And yes, when you try to beat something into particularly dense skulls in so many different ways, eventually you're even trying to explain it using the leaps of logic that don't perfectly fit. Such is debate.

1 hour ago, Tyreaus said:

We can also say that the core paradigm of explosive weapons having a drawback is served by self-stagger, which hinders outgoing DPS. We can also say that the core paradigm of explosive weapons having a risk is also served by self-stagger, because as often ineffective as the stagger is in posing a threat, it still poses a non-zero threat. There are very likely core paradigms that fall within both states - self-damage and self-stagger - and there are likely core paradigms that fall within just one or the other, such as the intrinsic and extrinsic risks mentioned.

If you can pick and choose which angle to focus on, then so can anyone else on those other topics. Self-stagger lacks the intrinsic risk, so that's why we should favour the old system that has intrinsic risk? Bullet jumping lacks technical skill for execution, so we should favour the old system that has more technical skill. Conversely, if bullet jumping is just fine because it still increases speed, then self-stagger is just fine because it still gives weapons a drawback.

Then there's the alternative angle of: self-stagger feels like S#&$. Period. Why doesn't it work well? Because Warframe is a game about fluid movement and stunning the player immediately takes away from that in a jarring, unproductive manner. That, by practical definition, is a pile of suck.

What should go in its place, since many will argue there should be something as counter-balance? Something that doesn't interrupt fluid movement - same reason given for removing self-stagger. So, likely, something damage-based. Probably not something that'll instagib a player because you're right back at square one in that case. Scaling damage based on EHP? Increased damage vulnerability? Those are fitting options for that line of reasoning.

It's reaching a bit far back in the old memory by now, but I don't remember there being any 'skill' to coptering. Just picking a weapon that triggers it, and doing a slide attack mid-jump, more or less.

I'll pass on the mutually-disagreed matter of whether the risk of stagger is significant enough to even call it a risk (see papercut analogy), but you're right that the core problem with stagger beyond that is exactly that it just feels awful. But then you say it in such uncertain terms and you get to deal with all the subjectivity argument of that statement, too.

For the record, though I offered a possible solution to scaling the self-damage, I personally would be fine without that. Let me obliterate myself all the same. As I've said before, it's just part of the fun for me.
Instead, it was a suggestion of if something had to be done to extend usage to people, identifying what the keystones of the complaints were in practice. One direct, why self-damage is so invariably fatal, and one indirect, the ally-collision being the only thing that came close to genuinely not being down to user error (but that isn't exclusively a self-damage thing either, allies can eat any bullets, it's just more immediately impactful to die from it than not kill your target).

My standpoint is that the self-damage from an explosive weapon in Warframe should be perfectly avoidable by the time you hit its max rank. That may not help people who passively leech-level things, but at that point, you expect such people to still shoot themselves in the foot. It's called mastering weapons for good reason, after all. The weapon needs to enforce that mastery through consistency of its risks, otherwise you get habitual carelessness, just like with the stagger. If it's not going to affect you 99% of the time, mildly inconvenience you 0.99% of the time, and actively threaten you 0.01% of the time, then it's not really justifying itself enough to make you mindful of it.

 

In the same vein as you judge my arguments as 'creating more holes that need patching', isn't that exactly what avoiding a straight reversion of a bad mechanical change accomplishes for the game? That's why it's so hard to get away from the "just revert it" mentality. It's not that things can't be bettered from where they were, it's that the foundation was far, far more stable than the rickety mess that we have because of the sweeping-generalisation nature of the changes. It's just flex tape over a gaping hole. That's still a lotta damage under there.

Poetically, "admitting mistake and starting again to make a better second try" is both exactly what more people needed to accept with self-damage in the first place, as well as the best course for the design changes surrounding it.

[Tyreaus]

I was going to post a more in-depth reply, but...

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

"admitting mistake and starting again to make a better second try" is...exactly what more people needed to accept with self-damage in the first place

If you're going to cap off your post with the idea of "people should just get used to it" _{(I wonder what else that philosophy applies to - every single bug, the Lich death system...)}, and in the process ignore my entire stance of it being something that ruins the pacing of the game, then I can only conclude you're looking to stifle critique and discussion. So, wish granted.

[Teridax68]

Ah, I see some familiar faces have returned to do their usual thing, like clockwork:

12 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Poetically, "admitting mistake and starting again to make a better second try" is both exactly what more people needed to accept with self-damage in the first place, as well as the best course for the design changes surrounding it.

This is the case as well with self-staggers, so why are you using this as an argument to return to self-damage? For all the paragraphs of arguing, what it really boils down to is that you personally liked self-damage on AoE, and are still not over the fact that it got removed. There is no objective reason to reintroduce self-damage to the game, it's just your personal preference, and ultimately a minoritary one at that.

I'm also with Tyreaus here in that I think even self-staggers aren't a good mechanic either, and ought to be removed. There are ways of punishing players for their mistakes, but not all of them necessarily lead to more enjoyable gameplay for most players. Killing the player or stunning them because some part of their AoE landed closer than anticipated in our occasionally cramped and geometry-laden environments generally falls into the latter.

The thing is, I do think self-damage could work, if one weren't to implement it on AoE: if a powerful weapon cost health to fire, the player would in fact be punished for not aiming properly, because they'd take damage and wouldn't have gotten much out of it. Because the mechanic would be more consistent than if it were attached to a weapon's AoE, it would likely feel less random, and if it were properly balanced to not one-shot the player, it would also likely feel fairer. I'm not sure, however, how acceptable a compromise this would be to someone who so far has been purely arguing for self-damage on AoE specifically.

[(PSN)LeBlingKing]

I don’t get this community sometimes, man. People were sick of self-damage and kept asking for it removed, and as soon as the developers removed it, all I see is people asking for it back.

Feedback like this legitimately pisses me off because the constant begging for things to be reverted back to the way they were after bullying the devs to change how the mechanic worked in the first place only serves to hinder precious development time they could be using to implement something else. 
 

And to display it in such an immature and selfish way... I hope no employee of Digital ever grants your feedback with the time of day.

[TheLexiConArtist]

13 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

I was going to post a more in-depth reply, but...

If you're going to cap off your post with the idea of "people should just get used to it" _{(I wonder what else that philosophy applies to - every single bug, the Lich death system...)}, and in the process ignore my entire stance of it being something that ruins the pacing of the game, then I can only conclude you're looking to stifle critique and discussion. So, wish granted.

It's not a 'git gud' statement, it's acknowledging the problem that a lot of people would poison the well by still considering it as the weapon's fault they died if they shoot it into their feet. Killing yourself wasn't 'inevitable' in every mission, that's why I use the Kulstar-in-a-snowglobe anecdote for example. If I strayed too far towards the edge, clipped the outside of the Globe with my shot and died - that's poor spatial awareness and judgement. When not making that mistake, it was commonly possible to kill enemies within that radius, while not damaging myself.

It's like seeing feedback that the Orb Mother explosions have to be removed because the player giving the feedback flagrantly ignored the NPCs' instructions to get out of the danger zone and got killed every time they fought one (putting aside the current fact that shield-gating laughably ignores it). Is that sound feedback on the fight design, or is it flawed because all the information was present to avoid the negative outcome, just not acted upon?

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Ah, I see some familiar faces have returned to do their usual thing, like clockwork:

This is the case as well with self-staggers, so why are you using this as an argument to return to self-damage? For all the paragraphs of arguing, what it really boils down to is that you personally liked self-damage on AoE, and are still not over the fact that it got removed. There is no objective reason to reintroduce self-damage to the game, it's just your personal preference, and ultimately a minoritary one at that.

I'm also with Tyreaus here in that I think even self-staggers aren't a good mechanic either, and ought to be removed. There are ways of punishing players for their mistakes, but not all of them necessarily lead to more enjoyable gameplay for most players. Killing the player or stunning them because some part of their AoE landed closer than anticipated in our occasionally cramped and geometry-laden environments generally falls into the latter.

The thing is, I do think self-damage could work, if one weren't to implement it on AoE: if a powerful weapon cost health to fire, the player would in fact be punished for not aiming properly, because they'd take damage and wouldn't have gotten much out of it. Because the mechanic would be more consistent than if it were attached to a weapon's AoE, it would likely feel less random, and if it were properly balanced to not one-shot the player, it would also likely feel fairer. I'm not sure, however, how acceptable a compromise this would be to someone who so far has been purely arguing for self-damage on AoE specifically.

Objectively, the stagger is bad. Subjectively, it's worse.

It's a 'mistake' to hit yourself with the stagger (aside from the weapons, amps and such that make it implausible not to) but the mistake has no impact other than on your own enjoyment. Which you can easily circumvent, anywhere and anytime, with PSF or equivalent.

So it fails to act as a risk-factor for balance, it fails to justify why you should avoid the mistake instead of ignoring or circumventing it.

Reversion should happen because we had a system that, on the overall scale of things, worked and was consistent without tarring half the game's weaponry with the same irritating brush. Whether you liked it or not, self-damage did its job. Once you accept the personal error factor for self-damage, every mistake you acknowledge making is a push to improve yourself. The lack of an impact with staggering does not achieve this. Mistake or no, it's all the same attrition.
From the game design perspective, too. Why do I get knocked about if I shoot a pure damage, no status (Impact or _old Blast) explosive at my feet, but that Elite Shield Lancer needs to proc status with his explosive for that result, otherwise damaging me? Why don't I get to ignore those NpcThrownGrenadeWeapons because all they do is make me truffle-shuffle for a hot second? (No, the 'why don't enemies self-damage' counterpoint isn't valid, because we all know they don't output enough to actually hurt their own EHP pools to a relevant degree, otherwise people would play Nyx.)

It's inconsistent. It brought homogenisation of a ridiculous swathe of weaponry in a game designed for variety. It's non-functional for its task even when not using the easy circumvention methods. And, as Tyraeus put it, it feels like S#&$.

Removing drawbacks entirely is also inadvisable for variety and balance. Either the result would be AOE weakening even further to the point of being too weak to function or barely AOE at all.. or there's no reason to use anything but an AOE. We remember the Tonkor Meta.

 

We can have a second look at improving self-damage as a mechanic, but only when we have that stable footing. What we have now is not stable. It's a mess.

39 minutes ago, (PS4)LeBlingKing said:

I don’t get this community sometimes, man. People were sick of self-damage and kept asking for it removed, and as soon as the developers removed it, all I see is people asking for it back.

Feedback like this legitimately pisses me off because the constant begging for things to be reverted back to the way they were after bullying the devs to change how the mechanic worked in the first place only serves to hinder precious development time they could be using to implement something else. 
 

And to display it in such an immature and selfish way... I hope no employee of Digital ever grants your feedback with the time of day.

Most of those were different people. Players had almost no reason to shout about keeping self-damage when it was the status quo. That's just how things work. Just take a casual look at the topic list and see how many 'I like this' posts exist compared to 'Change this'.

Having said that, it's actually true that quite a number of players who were complaining about self-damage actually changed their mind when we got the current travesty as its replacement. Grass is greener on the other side. They look back and realise, maybe it wasn't so bad after all.