Can u return SELFDAMAGE and STOP NERF?

[Teridax68]

48 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

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.

Self-CC can get the player killed if they're in the heat of combat, so that's not really true at all.

48 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

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.

... but it didn't work at all, and did in fact tar a very large part of the arsenal; that's why it got changed.

48 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

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.

Which arose from the Tonkor simply being overtuned in general. Making the Tonkor incapable of self-damage before the removal of self-damage altogether did not bring it back into meta. I agree that a design environment where nothing can be allowed to have drawbacks is less interesting than if those were allowed, but at the end of the day, drawbacks are not the silver bullet that fixes every design problem, nor are they essential to making something good. It also does not mean that we should include any sort of drawback regardless of whether or not that drawback actually contributes positively to gameplay, which was the main problem with the previous self-damage system for AoE.

[TheLexiConArtist]

8 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Self-CC can get the player killed if they're in the heat of combat, so that's not really true at all.

"Can." Inconsistently. It's the papercut analogy again - you can get a papercut, but you don't think and worry about it every time you pick up a sheet of paper. It's ineffective enough that you can also not-die from a full self-inflicted knockdown in the middle of an Elemental Enhancement Sortie enemy group, too.

8 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

... but it didn't work at all, and did in fact tar a very large part of the arsenal; that's why it got changed.

What 'very large' part? The ~4% of pure dumbfire? The ~10% of all self-damage-capable weapons (Concealed Explosives/Thunderbolt mods disincluded)? It was giving the player consequences for poor usage, which is exactly what it was meant to do. Whether there are some cases (e.g. ally collision) where this may not be adequately designated to user error, or whether the scale of just how soon in modded power growth the unequivocal fatality sets in was quite right, those don't mean that the function of "misuse = consequence" wasn't served.

8 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Which arose from the Tonkor simply being overtuned in general. Making the Tonkor incapable of self-damage before the removal of self-damage altogether did not bring it back into meta. I agree that a design environment where nothing can be allowed to have drawbacks is less interesting than if those were allowed, but at the end of the day, drawbacks are not the silver bullet that fixes every design problem, nor are they essential to making something good. It also does not mean that we should include any sort of drawback regardless of whether or not that drawback actually contributes positively to gameplay, which was the main problem with the previous self-damage system for AoE.

Let's first be accurate with regards to the Tonkor Meta Timeline:

1. Tonkor was released, during Parkour 1.0, with 'grenade jump' mechanic as an excuse for lacking self-damage _{(disregarding the fact other games' rocket/grenade jumps do generally harm the player, especially where this is consistent with risk factors on equivalent AOE weapons which do not jump)}
2. Parkour 2.0 was released approximately one month later, making a grenade jump obsolete because of Bullet Jump. The excuse is no longer valid.
3. The Tonkor and Simulors rise to meta due to large-scale AOE, lack of real drawback despite comparable damage - or in the Tonkor's case, significantly better damage.
   • I recall a comparison between the Tonkor and the Soma Prime, in its own meta heyday, and the Tonkor outdid the Soma effortlessly despite its reload and all that jazz. And without needing several targets to match output.
4. As all explosives automatically headshot (most) units mechanically, their output was generally double listed stats. However, the Tonkor was the first real crit launcher, which meant that it enjoyed another 200% multiplier courtesy of headcrit. Simulors less so, but their imperfect crit rate was made up by the frequency _{oh god the VFX and SFX haunt my dreams}
5. In an attempt to curb the problem of the Tonkor/Simulor meta, without giving the Tonkor self-damage, all explosives were altered to no longer headshot. This meant that everything else in the category was also halved in damage just because people wouldn't take the drawback on the one. (This is comparable to the 'everything staggers whether it had damage/is avoidable or not' and falloff making some AOEs fail to AOE sufficiently issues of today)
6. Removing autoheadshot did not work. The meta continued.
7. Finally, in the same patch, the following things happened together, ending this era:
   • The Tonkor was given proper Self-Damage.
   • The Simulor series was changed mechanically - because they operated too close to be self-damaging (unavoidable self-staggers on things like Amps somehow managed to overlook that part..)
   • The weapons were also significantly reduced in potency AS WELL AS the above changes to mechanics/introduction of drawback.

 

That last one is the real kicker. Being nerfed and having its drawback implemented put it largely where everything else in the category was languishing - all of which having been made drastically worse after the blanket autoheadshot removal without compensation. So yes, explosives were unilaterally pretty godawful for a long while before the waves of weapon balance sweeps rolled in relatively-recently.

What you refer to as 'making the Tonkor incapable of self-damage' prior to the complete systemic removal was turning it into an arm-distance weapon, if I'm not mistaken? That is not nearly the same as removing self-damage altogether. Significant part of the Meta-problem was that you could use the Tonkor mindlessly at point-blank range to full (and top-tier) effect. This is not possible with arm-distance, nor does arm-distance necessarily preclude still harming yourself with especially grievous user error. You remember Gauss being released with the Acceltra, and being fast enough to run into his own signature weapon's explosions even with the arm-distance mechanic, I'm sure.

Arm-distance explosives were in the >4%/<10% of my weapon grouping statistic - along with other grace mechanics like the delay of the Lenz, you could still self-damage, but it was generally safer, which served the less diehard explosive junkies just nicely.

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

"Can." Inconsistently. It's the papercut analogy again - you can get a papercut, but you don't think and worry about it every time you pick up a sheet of paper. It's ineffective enough that you can also not-die from a full self-inflicted knockdown in the middle of an Elemental Enhancement Sortie enemy group, too.

You seem to think that the only adequate way to punish a player is to kill them then and there, which is not how punishment works. If nothing else, clearly not everyone seems to enjoy the kind of punishment you do.

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

What 'very large' part? The ~4% of pure dumbfire? The ~10% of all self-damage-capable weapons (Concealed Explosives/Thunderbolt mods disincluded)? It was giving the player consequences for poor usage, which is exactly what it was meant to do. Whether there are some cases (e.g. ally collision) where this may not be adequately designated to user error, or whether the scale of just how soon in modded power growth the unequivocal fatality sets in was quite right, those don't mean that the function of "misuse = consequence" wasn't served.

Attempt to rationalize all you want, the fact of the matter was that explosives did not see play unless they were either ridiculously strong, i.e. the Bramma, or had some kind of special mechanic that avoided self-damage (and even then, that didn't necessarily make the weapon good). Part of this was because many of those weapons were just weak, but another large part came from the self-damage itself, which was too great a drawback for, in most cases, not much gain compared to other weapons.

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Let's first be accurate with regards to the Tonkor Meta Timeline:

1. Tonkor was released, during Parkour 1.0, with 'grenade jump' mechanic as an excuse for lacking self-damage _{(disregarding the fact other games' rocket/grenade jumps do generally harm the player, especially where this is consistent with risk factors on equivalent AOE weapons which do not jump)}
2. Parkour 2.0 was released approximately one month later, making a grenade jump obsolete because of Bullet Jump. The excuse is no longer valid.
3. The Tonkor and Simulors rise to meta due to large-scale AOE, lack of real drawback despite comparable damage - or in the Tonkor's case, significantly better damage.
   • I recall a comparison between the Tonkor and the Soma Prime, in its own meta heyday, and the Tonkor outdid the Soma effortlessly despite its reload and all that jazz. And without needing several targets to match output.
4. As all explosives automatically headshot (most) units mechanically, their output was generally double listed stats. However, the Tonkor was the first real crit launcher, which meant that it enjoyed another 200% multiplier courtesy of headcrit. Simulors less so, but their imperfect crit rate was made up by the frequency _{oh god the VFX and SFX haunt my dreams}
5. In an attempt to curb the problem of the Tonkor/Simulor meta, without giving the Tonkor self-damage, all explosives were altered to no longer headshot. This meant that everything else in the category was also halved in damage just because people wouldn't take the drawback on the one. (This is comparable to the 'everything staggers whether it had damage/is avoidable or not' and falloff making some AOEs fail to AOE sufficiently issues of today)
6. Removing autoheadshot did not work. The meta continued.
7. Finally, in the same patch, the following things happened together, ending this era:
   • The Tonkor was given proper Self-Damage.
   • The Simulor series was changed mechanically - because they operated too close to be self-damaging (unavoidable self-staggers on things like Amps somehow managed to overlook that part..)
   • The weapons were also significantly reduced in potency AS WELL AS the above changes to mechanics/introduction of drawback.

 

That last one is the real kicker. Being nerfed and having its drawback implemented put it largely where everything else in the category was languishing - all of which having been made drastically worse after the blanket autoheadshot removal without compensation. So yes, explosives were unilaterally pretty godawful for a long while before the waves of weapon balance sweeps rolled in relatively-recently.

What you refer to as 'making the Tonkor incapable of self-damage' prior to the complete systemic removal was turning it into an arm-distance weapon, if I'm not mistaken? That is not nearly the same as removing self-damage altogether. Significant part of the Meta-problem was that you could use the Tonkor mindlessly at point-blank range to full (and top-tier) effect. This is not possible with arm-distance, nor does arm-distance necessarily preclude still harming yourself with especially grievous user error. You remember Gauss being released with the Acceltra, and being fast enough to run into his own signature weapon's explosions even with the arm-distance mechanic, I'm sure.

Arm-distance explosives were in the >4%/<10% of my weapon grouping statistic - along with other grace mechanics like the delay of the Lenz, you could still self-damage, but it was generally safer, which served the less diehard explosive junkies just nicely.

Interesting, you were doing quite well until you decided to stop at the year 2017, and only listed a single change from update 20.0. You seem to have conveniently forgotten about the Tonkor's other nerfs during that time:

• The Maximum lifespan of grenade has dropped from 5 to 3 seconds.
• The Critical Chance has been reduced to 25%.

And its changes in update 24.2:

• Changed from 'fire on release' to 'fire on press' and removed grenade arc visual.
• Projectile now explodes on impact after traveling past 6m. If it impacts before 6m it is destroyed without exploding.
• Updated explosion effect and matched radius to damage (6m).
• Fire Rate increased from 2 to 3.17.
• Radial damage increased from 325 to 650.
• Clip size reduced from 2 to 1.
• Ammo capacity reduced from 40 to 30.
• 50% damage fall off added.
• Tonkor Reload Speed increased from 2 seconds to 1.7 seconds

So as can clearly be seen, self-damage was but one of many nerfs, and in fact it wasn't even the biggest one, particularly as it was itself mitigated by the arming distance. The Tonkor didn't fall out of favor because it got made to deal self-damage, it fell out of favor because it got its stats severely nerfed overall. Your narrative that self-damage has ever acted as any sort of positive balance mechanism is entirely fabricated, and reliant upon selective omission of facts.

[TheLexiConArtist]

2 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

You seem to think that the only adequate way to punish a player is to kill them then and there, which is not how punishment works. If nothing else, clearly not everyone seems to enjoy the kind of punishment you do.

The main point is the consistency. Don't strawman me here, it's not 'flat out fatality or nothing'. But when the stagger fails to put you at a real risk in one of the most dangerous environments available most of the time, it's failing to do the job.

Even if enemies don't finish you off immediately from a non-fatal but significantly damaging mistake, you're still hurting and it's just a matter of time until a bullet lands unless you take action; the stagger is instead a window-of-opportunity for enemies that closes completely by itself, leaving the player functionally unaffected if the AI chose to be dumb.

3 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Attempt to rationalize all you want, the fact of the matter was that explosives did not see play unless they were either ridiculously strong, i.e. the Bramma, or had some kind of special mechanic that avoided self-damage (and even then, that didn't necessarily make the weapon good). Part of this was because many of those weapons were just weak, but another large part came from the self-damage itself, which was too great a drawback for, in most cases, not much gain compared to other weapons.

'Did not see play' sounds an awful lot like an absolute. You mean, they weren't commonplace? Like, say, they're dangerous, risky weapons, not reliable every-day ones you can take into any situation? Of course they weren't in every squad. If they were, it'd probably be hinting at a bigger problem. It's like how most people will lazily roll through missions as Inaros when there are softer frames that can do excellently, but take effort. Niche tools in such a varied arsenal isn't a bad thing.

Explosive power levels might have been a little undertuned, but as I've posited before, that was at least partially encouraged to remain as such because of the excessive complaints about self-damage, most of which were fallacious or less than factual.

15 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Interesting, you were doing quite well until you decided to stop at the year 2017, and only listed a single change from update 20.0. You seem to have conveniently forgotten about the Tonkor's other nerfs during that time:

And its changes in update 24.2:

So as can clearly be seen, self-damage was but one of many nerfs, and in fact it wasn't even the biggest one, particularly as it was itself mitigated by the arming distance. The Tonkor didn't fall out of favor because it got made to deal self-damage, it fell out of favor because it got its stats severely nerfed overall. Your narrative that self-damage has ever acted as any sort of positive balance mechanism is entirely fabricated, and reliant upon selective omission of facts.

I'm sorry, but this seems like you really need to look at that segment again.

My point was exactly that the other nerfs to the Tonkor are why it fell into such active disfavour. I even made a big bold deal about the nerfs in update 20.0 that went along with the mechanical changes (addition of self-damage to the Tonkor in particular).

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

1. • The weapons were also significantly reduced in potency AS WELL AS the above changes to mechanics/introduction of drawback.

If I may be a little pedantic, I also called that the Tonkor META Timeline and not a complete then-to-now Tonkor Timeline. This is why I didn't directly itemise anything after Update 20 ended the meta. That one word is easily overlooked, so it's understandable.

It's obviously conjecture to claim that the Tonkor specifically might have been moderately still used if it had only been given self-damage, but it's certainly.. plausible.

Anecdotally, before the meta took over, I still saw weapons like the Ogris and Penta showing up in public runs on an infrequent but noticeable basis, as I would consider appropriate for the design. Obviously, once the Problem Weapons took over, they were entirely obsoleted, and even though Ogris got a little bump in U20.0 alongside the meta-killer changes it wasn't going to be enough to compensate having effective damage halved by the removal of Auto-headshot (while other explosives didn't even get a small touch-up either). Between being even weaker than before, and the overbearing presence that the Meta had caused skewing player perspectives on appropriate power levels, there's really small wonder they went almost entirely unused after the dust settled.

[Teridax68]

12 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

The main point is the consistency. Don't strawman me here, it's not 'flat out fatality or nothing'. But when the stagger fails to put you at a real risk in one of the most dangerous environments available most of the time, it's failing to do the job.

Even if enemies don't finish you off immediately from a non-fatal but significantly damaging mistake, you're still hurting and it's just a matter of time until a bullet lands unless you take action; the stagger is instead a window-of-opportunity for enemies that closes completely by itself, leaving the player functionally unaffected if the AI chose to be dumb.

But again, that is false, because the player has plenty of ways to heal, so unless the damage is instantly lethal, it has about the same chance of killing the player as self-CC, perhaps even less so. By contrast, self-CC denies the player the agency they have to recover during that time. There's no straw man at hand here, you are merely grasping at straws to make it seem like self-damage is somehow more justified than self-CC.

12 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

'Did not see play' sounds an awful lot like an absolute. You mean, they weren't commonplace? Like, say, they're dangerous, risky weapons, not reliable every-day ones you can take into any situation? Of course they weren't in every squad. If they were, it'd probably be hinting at a bigger problem. It's like how most people will lazily roll through missions as Inaros when there are softer frames that can do excellently, but take effort. Niche tools in such a varied arsenal isn't a bad thing.

Explosive power levels might have been a little undertuned, but as I've posited before, that was at least partially encouraged to remain as such because of the excessive complaints about self-damage, most of which were fallacious or less than factual.

So putting aside the fact that you are now the one drawing straw men, as I am clearly not saying that those weapons literally never saw any play at all, so much as pointing out they were heavily unpopular, you yourself are admitting that explosives were undertuned, and so didn't need self-damage to tune themselves down. Why then do we need self-damage to help balance those weapons?

12 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

I'm sorry, but this seems like you really need to look at that segment again.

My point was exactly that the other nerfs to the Tonkor are why it fell into such active disfavour. I even made a big bold deal about the nerfs in update 20.0 that went along with the mechanical changes (addition of self-damage to the Tonkor in particular).

If I may be a little pedantic, I also called that the Tonkor META Timeline and not a complete then-to-now Tonkor Timeline. This is why I didn't directly itemise anything after Update 20 ended the meta. That one word is easily overlooked, so it's understandable.

It's obviously conjecture to claim that the Tonkor specifically might have been moderately still used if it had only been given self-damage, but it's certainly.. plausible.

Anecdotally, before the meta took over, I still saw weapons like the Ogris and Penta showing up in public runs on an infrequent but noticeable basis, as I would consider appropriate for the design. Obviously, once the Problem Weapons took over, they were entirely obsoleted, and even though Ogris got a little bump in U20.0 alongside the meta-killer changes it wasn't going to be enough to compensate having effective damage halved by the removal of Auto-headshot (while other explosives didn't even get a small touch-up either). Between being even weaker than before, and the overbearing presence that the Meta had caused skewing player perspectives on appropriate power levels, there's really small wonder they went almost entirely unused after the dust settled.

Putting aside how, once again, you did not list all of the facts, and so in a manner that was clearly disingenuous given the subsequent changes that made the Tonkor what it is now, you seem to be agreeing with me now that it was the overall nerfs to the Tonkor, not simply the addition of self-damage, that made it fall out of favor. Ergo, we do not need self-damage as a balancing lever to explosive weapons.

[TheLexiConArtist]

23 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

But again, that is false, because the player has plenty of ways to heal, so unless the damage is instantly lethal, it has about the same chance of killing the player as self-CC, perhaps even less so. By contrast, self-CC denies the player the agency they have to recover during that time. There's no straw man at hand here, you are merely grasping at straws to make it seem like self-damage is somehow more justified than self-CC.

All that is required for you to not be self-CC'd any more once the window of 'vulnerability' ends is either "Nothing at all" (staggers) or "Not be literally hands-off the controls" (knockdowns, and even then only because of that odd no-auto-standup change).

It may be trivial to heal, but that's still an action you take, or at least an element you have to consider in your build (before you say 'medi-ray though'). You make the same mistake again, maybe you do die this time. You go on without healing, whenever the enemy does clip you, maybe you die. The mistake persists beyond the immediate moment you made it.

You can go unmodded, rocket your feet, and stand back up with nothing lost if the enemies were simply a little distracted 'petting' your Kavat during the self-CC. And all you did to get back to square one of pre-'punishment' was press any direction. The mistake does not persist.

1 minute ago, Teridax68 said:

Putting aside how, once again, you did not list all of the facts, and so in a manner that was clearly disingenuous given the subsequent changes that made the Tonkor what it is now, you seem to be agreeing with me now that it was the overall nerfs to the Tonkor, not simply the addition of self-damage, that made it fall out of favor. Ergo, we do not need self-damage as a balancing lever to explosive weapons.

Oh no, no. I was about to deride you for saying I agree something 'now' that I stated as my point from the outset, but then I took a second look at the exact verbiage.

Adding self-damage would have made the Tonkor fall out of favour.
Drastically reducing the power of the Tonkor may have made it fall out of favour.
BOTH reducing the power AND adding self-damage to the Tonkor made it fall not just out of favour, but into disfavour (which is not the same thing, it's not a pure dichotomy).

 

You have somehow logic-leapt from that into 'self-damage is non-admissible'. What? The combination of power reduction and also a drawback made a weapon go from Way Too Good to Too Bad, passing right by the spot in the middle where we want it to live.

How, in any way shape or form, does that mean Self-damage inherently doesn't work or shouldn't be a design option for a subset of weaponry? Going (in the abstract) from "0% risk 200% reward" to "100% risk 100% reward" is flipping the whole imbalance over, not trying to equalise balance. Instead, going to "100% risk 200% reward" is viably comparable to "0% risk 100% reward" - as is "50% risk 150% reward", etc. All of them are aiming for a better proportion.

Sure, we could make AOEs that have 0% risk and 100% reward - and we had those anyway -  but that doesn't state why we wouldn't also allow for the other scales of risk-reward AOE, in a game which is built on having a grand variety of available options.

[Teridax68]

7 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

All that is required for you to not be self-CC'd any more once the window of 'vulnerability' ends is either "Nothing at all" (staggers) or "Not be literally hands-off the controls" (knockdowns, and even then only because of that odd no-auto-standup change).

It may be trivial to heal, but that's still an action you take, or at least an element you have to consider in your build (before you say 'medi-ray though'). You make the same mistake again, maybe you do die this time. You go on without healing, whenever the enemy does clip you, maybe you die. The mistake persists beyond the immediate moment you made it.

You can go unmodded, rocket your feet, and stand back up with nothing lost if the enemies were simply a little distracted 'petting' your Kavat during the self-CC. And all you did to get back to square one of pre-'punishment' was press any direction. The mistake does not persist.

You yourself just pointed out how self-healing can in fact be just as passive as powering through self-CC, which itself has the indelible effect of slowing the player down, arguably a worse crime than self-damage. You really are trying to establish a distinction where none exists.

7 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Oh no, no. I was about to deride you for saying I agree something 'now' that I stated as my point from the outset, but then I took a second look at the exact verbiage.

Adding self-damage would have made the Tonkor fall out of favour.
Drastically reducing the power of the Tonkor may have made it fall out of favour.
BOTH reducing the power AND adding self-damage to the Tonkor made it fall not just out of favour, but into disfavour (which is not the same thing, it's not a pure dichotomy).

 

You have somehow logic-leapt from that into 'self-damage is non-admissible'. What? The combination of power reduction and also a drawback made a weapon go from Way Too Good to Too Bad, passing right by the spot in the middle where we want it to live.

Again, that is not how balancing works. Balancing isn't a magic recipe where you have to alter a certain mechanic in order for the thing's power to change, it's a sliding scale where any number of things can make something more or less powerful. Self-damage really wasn't what balanced the Tonkor, and it certainly isn't what's balancing it now. The very fact that the Tonkor is still not meta despite its now complete lack of self-damage is itself proof that self-damage had nothing to do with its fall from grace, and the way the Bramma itself was balanced also shows that self-damage wasn't necessary to its own balancing either. Insist as you might, there is no balance need for self-damage on AoE in this game.

7 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

How, in any way shape or form, does that mean Self-damage inherently doesn't work or shouldn't be a design option for a subset of weaponry? Going (in the abstract) from "0% risk 200% reward" to "100% risk 100% reward" is flipping the whole imbalance over, not trying to equalise balance. Instead, going to "100% risk 200% reward" is viably comparable to "0% risk 100% reward" - as is "50% risk 150% reward", etc. All of them are aiming for a better proportion.

Sure, we could make AOEs that have 0% risk and 100% reward - and we had those anyway -  but that doesn't state why we wouldn't also allow for the other scales of risk-reward AOE, in a game which is built on having a grand variety of available options.

Well, I did propose an alternative method of self-damage that you completely ignored, so let's pull that out again and see what you think: one method of self-damage that I think could work is if a weapon cost health to fire. It would implement the self-damage you so crave in a manner that would be far more consistent than it could ever be on AoE, and would punish the player for not making the most of their shots. Would that sound reasonable?

[Aldain]

This thread in a nutshell right now.

[Teridax68]

7 hours ago, Aldain said:

This thread in a nutshell right now.

And, clearly, your post, your only one on this thread, makes some sort of positive contribution to discussion, right? You seem to have a habit of doing this, too, which raises the question of what exactly you're trying to achieve.

[kgabor]

What about a reverse Cautious Shot mod that gives a huge dps increase not achievable by most other regular mods at the cost of self damage?

Couldn't be used with Cautious Shot, obviously.

[Nok-Rntha]

The only thing I'd want would be the removal of self-stagger from weapons that never did any self-damage.
Really feels like each time we ask for some change, DE has to be like a jealous ex about it and introduce some caveat out of spite and gift wrap it with the words 'bALAnCe'

[EtherPigeon]

Another issue is that self-stagger feels so uniform across warframes - Rhino should not flinch the same as Limbo. If stagger chance and duration were affected by armour, it'd feel a lot better as bulky frames could just sit through it more often than not - which was probably the original idea behind self-damage before damage number inflation turned them all into insta-kills.

[Xylena_Lazarow]

6 hours ago, Nok-Rntha said:

The only thing I'd want would be the removal of self-stagger from weapons that never did any self-damage.

No thanks, "some explosions hurt you and others don't" made no sense and completely undermined the point of self-damage as a balancing factor for AoE weapons.

Even now, the self-stagger on something like the Zarr or Amps (lol) seems utterly pointless when things like the Kuva Nukor, frame nuke abilities, or pretty much any melee weapon can do the same job completely risk-free. Neither self-damage nor self-stagger are going to balance AoE damage in this game. I hope DE figures out something better.

[Nok-Rntha]

30 minutes ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

No thanks, "some explosions hurt you and others don't" made no sense and completely undermined the point of self-damage as a balancing factor for AoE weapons.

Even now, the self-stagger on something like the Zarr or Amps (lol) seems utterly pointless when things like the Kuva Nukor, frame nuke abilities, or pretty much any melee weapon can do the same job completely risk-free. Neither self-damage nor self-stagger are going to balance AoE damage in this game. I hope DE figures out something better.

The point is consistency. Arbitrarily deciding which weapons now do self-stagger when they previously did no self-damage is laughably stupid and short-sighed. It does nothing to make things better; it only makes them worse by introducing yet another means of getting stun, piling on top of crowd favorites like the Scorpions' and Ancient's hitscan rope.

[Xylena_Lazarow]

3 minutes ago, Nok-Rntha said:

The point is consistency.

I agree. The current system is much more consistent than the old one, but still a mess of "some AoE staggers you and other AoE doesn't."

It still doesn't even matter. Deleting the Bramma would not stop people from deleting maps with the various already risk-free forms of massive AoE damage.

[Nok-Rntha]

7 minutes ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

It still doesn't even matter. Deleting the Bramma would not stop people from deleting maps with the various already risk-free forms of massive AoE damage.

Dominant strategy. If you take out the best option, people just flock to the second best. Nerfing one weapon (or god forbid removing it) instead of buffing the other options to match it is a sloppy and short-sighed way to balance.

[Xylena_Lazarow]

30 minutes ago, Nok-Rntha said:

Dominant strategy. If you take out the best option, people just flock to the second best. Nerfing one weapon (or god forbid removing it) instead of buffing the other options to match it is a sloppy and short-sighed way to balance.

So what is your solution? Remove stagger from the Crutchmoon but cripple the Penta? What does this accomplish?

I'd be fine with completely removing all self-stagger and self-damage at this point. Like you say, buff the other options.

[TheLexiConArtist]

On 2020-08-19 at 11:49 AM, Teridax68 said:

You yourself just pointed out how self-healing can in fact be just as passive as powering through self-CC, which itself has the indelible effect of slowing the player down, arguably a worse crime than self-damage. You really are trying to establish a distinction where none exists.

Again, that is not how balancing works. Balancing isn't a magic recipe where you have to alter a certain mechanic in order for the thing's power to change, it's a sliding scale where any number of things can make something more or less powerful. Self-damage really wasn't what balanced the Tonkor, and it certainly isn't what's balancing it now. The very fact that the Tonkor is still not meta despite its now complete lack of self-damage is itself proof that self-damage had nothing to do with its fall from grace, and the way the Bramma itself was balanced also shows that self-damage wasn't necessary to its own balancing either. Insist as you might, there is no balance need for self-damage on AoE in this game.

Well, I did propose an alternative method of self-damage that you completely ignored, so let's pull that out again and see what you think: one method of self-damage that I think could work is if a weapon cost health to fire. It would implement the self-damage you so crave in a manner that would be far more consistent than it could ever be on AoE, and would punish the player for not making the most of their shots. Would that sound reasonable?

1. Medi-ray and healing cat-scratches are both inherently delayed and limited (especially by AI in the second case), a complete return to form (assuming the self-damage isn't but a scratch) is not immediate as with the stagger, unless the player takes action with a superior option. Slowing the player down may feel bad, but this is not a risk. There is a clear distinction in favour of damage, but you know what - sure, let's say hypothetically there's no difference; with that you've also implicitly agreed that self-damage can viably exist in any situation where stagger can, thus defeating the No Self Damage Allowed argument.
2. It may surprise you to learn that the Soma Prime isn't meta today either. No, self-damage absolutely factored into the Tonkor's fall from grace, and the rest of this second response is pure waffle, because now you're the one handwaving all the other changes with this false dichotomy argument. It's not 'just no self-damage but old power grade' now, so it's not any sort of 'proof' that self-damage alone wasn't a relevant factor. By all appearances, the Bramma still isn't particularly well-balanced, as expected by virtue of that same history.
3. This suggestion is something of a risk, but it's not a punishment. Stagger is a punishment, but not a (consistent or significant) risk. Weapons could cost health to fire as a mechanic (Hema costs it on reload, right?) but it's not really the same paradigm served by self-damage from explosive misuse. Could it be used as an alternative balancing lever for some breed of AOE weapon where that's the only drawback? Sure, why not. Does it fit for everything in the explosive archetype thematically? I'd say no. Analogy: A blood mage (fueling power with personal life force) is not the same as an Evoker (tossing out fireballs which could hurt them/their allies if in the area of effect).

1 hour ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

No thanks, "some explosions hurt you and others don't" made no sense and completely undermined the point of self-damage as a balancing factor for AoE weapons..

It was consistent enough. Maybe the balance of reward for lack-of-risk was off, but it was pretty consistent for the differing design and themes. An EMP is not a chemical explosive is not whatever the hell Quanta cubes do. All the conventional chemical explosives consistently self-damaged, whether that was a rocket, a grenade, or tiny bombs on arrowheads.

37 minutes ago, Nok-Rntha said:

Dominant strategy. If you take out the best option, people just flock to the second best. Nerfing one weapon (or god forbid removing it) instead of buffing the other options to match it is a sloppy and short-sighed way to balance.

No, that's the short-sighted 'buff everything' mentality which causes more problems than it solves.

If you have a minority outlier, you bring them in line. Doesn't matter whether that's positive or negative. Otherwise you have to make changes to more things than just the couple of outliers, then you have to change the external balance surrounding them (e.g. enemies more stronk because all weapons OP), then the systems surrounding that (enemies now too stronk for the objective design), and so on and so forth.

[Teridax68]

3 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

1. Medi-ray and healing cat-scratches are both inherently delayed and limited (especially by AI in the second case), a complete return to form (assuming the self-damage isn't but a scratch) is not immediate as with the stagger, unless the player takes action with a superior option. Slowing the player down may feel bad, but this is not a risk. There is a clear distinction in favour of damage, but you know what - sure, let's say hypothetically there's no difference; with that you've also implicitly agreed that self-damage can viably exist in any situation where stagger can, thus defeating the No Self Damage Allowed argument.
2. It may surprise you to learn that the Soma Prime isn't meta today either. No, self-damage absolutely factored into the Tonkor's fall from grace, and the rest of this second response is pure waffle, because now you're the one handwaving all the other changes with this false dichotomy argument. It's not 'just no self-damage but old power grade' now, so it's not any sort of 'proof' that self-damage alone wasn't a relevant factor. By all appearances, the Bramma still isn't particularly well-balanced, as expected by virtue of that same history.
3. This suggestion is something of a risk, but it's not a punishment. Stagger is a punishment, but not a (consistent or significant) risk. Weapons could cost health to fire as a mechanic (Hema costs it on reload, right?) but it's not really the same paradigm served by self-damage from explosive misuse. Could it be used as an alternative balancing lever for some breed of AOE weapon where that's the only drawback? Sure, why not. Does it fit for everything in the explosive archetype thematically? I'd say no. Analogy: A blood mage (fueling power with personal life force) is not the same as an Evoker (tossing out fireballs which could hurt them/their allies if in the area of effect).

Delayed... like the recovery time on knockdowns? Limited... as in free and instant, as is the case with Magus Repair? Not risky... when the player cannot take action against enemies attacking them? You once again misunderstand: I'm not saying there is no difference at all, I'm just pointing out that the distinctions you are drawing in favor of damage simply don't exist. There is therefore no reason to return to self-damage. Similarly, you admitting that the Soma Prime has fallen out of favor is itself an admission that there is no such thing as a need for self-damage to balance a weapon that's overpowered at a given time. I'm not ignoring anything here, I'm just pointing out how self-damage was not what killed the Tonkor meta, a fact you know and are somehow trying to spin against me... somehow. It's also not what took the Bramma out of favor, and making some mealy-mouthed criticism that it "isn't particularly well-balanced" says absolutely nothing. It's pretty clear that your insistence here isn't coming from any sort of rational or objective basis, but from an obsession: you're not even willing to accept self-damage in any other form, because you want self-damage on AoE and nothing else, even when it's proven not to work. It's time to move on.

[TheLexiConArtist]

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

Delayed... like the recovery time on knockdowns? Limited... as in free and instant, as is the case with Magus Repair? Not risky... when the player cannot take action against enemies attacking them? You once again misunderstand: I'm not saying there is no difference at all, I'm just pointing out that the distinctions you are drawing in favor of damage simply don't exist. There is therefore no reason to return to self-damage. Similarly, you admitting that the Soma Prime has fallen out of favor is itself an admission that there is no such thing as a need for self-damage to balance a weapon that's overpowered at a given time. I'm not ignoring anything here, I'm just pointing out how self-damage was not what killed the Tonkor meta, a fact you know and are somehow trying to spin against me... somehow. It's also not what took the Bramma out of favor, and making some mealy-mouthed criticism that it "isn't particularly well-balanced" says absolutely nothing. It's pretty clear that your insistence here isn't coming from any sort of rational or objective basis, but from an obsession: you're not even willing to accept self-damage in any other form, because you want self-damage on AoE and nothing else, even when it's proven not to work. It's time to move on.

You are so full of double-speak, it's actually quite impressive. Orwell would be proud.

The question is how much of my time I waste actually dissecting them and rebuking them from your post, considering.. it's not going to do a damn thing to change your opinion.

-Delay: Knockdown is over passively as its own window of opportunity. Passive healing takes longer - Medi-Ray has its internal cooldown, as I took care to specify the self-damage hypothetical was to be more than a mere scratch that one cycle would repair.

-Limited: Again we were in context of pure passive, so Magus Repair is a false comparison, you've taken the action to transfer out.

-Risk:  Has already been covered in how utterly inconsistent and a failure at the role it is. In the controlled environment of the simulacrum, with minimal obstructions and a tight mob of enemies ready to point at you with no distractions, you go and knock yourself down, maybe - and even then, it's still a maybe, thanks in no small part to shield-gating - you'll be shot before you're on your feet. In the more realistic scenario, having an window of extrinsic vulnerability is not consistent risk. Let's look another way: If that explosive is strong enough to obliterate your opposition, who is left to take advantage of your vulnerability when you jump into the middle of your enemies and rocket your feet? You're rewarded for misuse then, the supposed risk is a non-factor.

-Burden of proof: You have consistently failed to argue any reason why we should not have self-damage. It's not 'proven not to work'. The onus is with you to prove why self-damage should be off the table in entirety.

-"You have admitted": I have not admitted any of that nonsense you say I did. I have said there are many factors and more than the perceived dichotomy upon which your argument is predicated. Self-damage 'killed the Tonkor meta' absolutely - with or without the additional nerfs, it would no longer have been the brain-dead everyman's weapon to excel in every situation with no thought or effort. You are conflating this with a fall into active disfavour - as the nerfs caused by inverting the imbalance simultaneously on both sides of the risk/reward equation. Self-damage works to make you consider your options. Explosives are situational by design where they're not your only available tool, because why use anything else otherwise? _{Hey, that sounds familiar - it's the entire context of the Tonkor/Simulor Meta.}

-Bramma: The Bramma was OP before - by virtue of frames which were bypassing its risk - then was OP after, because now every frame could bypass the non-risk drawback of stagger, if they even cared to. Even when it was recently 'nerfed', the only lasting effect was in its ammo economy, another easily circumvented restriction, just roll with Carrier or slap a Mutation on that there Exilus and you're back in business; reducing the cluster count was compensated by improving their falloff and radius.

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

You are so full of double-speak, it's actually quite impressive. Orwell would be proud.

The question is how much of my time I waste actually dissecting them and rebuking them from your post, considering.. it's not going to do a damn thing to change your opinion.

Apparently, the answer is: "quite a bit." The psychological projection in your response is so blatant it's not even funny.

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

-Delay: Knockdown is over passively as its own window of opportunity. Passive healing takes longer - Medi-Ray has its internal cooldown, as I took care to specify the self-damage hypothetical was to be more than a mere scratch that one cycle would repair.

You seem to be holding desperately onto Medi-Ray as if it were the only form of healing out there. Spoiler alert: it isn't, Arcane Grace is also a thing, Magus Repair has no cooldown, and shields regenerate on their own. Meanwhile, what does "knockdown is over passively as its own window of opportunity" even mean? It's still delayed, and during that delay you cannot take action.

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

-Limited: Again we were in context of pure passive, so Magus Repair is a false comparison, you've taken the action to transfer out.

This is casuistry and you know it. Putting aside how stuff like Arcane Grace is both quick and passive, transference is routinely done anyway for Zenurik and Energy purposes, and is incredibly quick, so your argument that healing is slow or limited holds no water. Also, if you really want to split hairs over what counts as "pure passive", knockdown requires a movement input to get yourself back up. If you really were to be purely passive, you'd be perma-knocked down.

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

-Risk:  Has already been covered in how utterly inconsistent and a failure at the role it is. In the controlled environment of the simulacrum, with minimal obstructions and a tight mob of enemies ready to point at you with no distractions, you go and knock yourself down, maybe - and even then, it's still a maybe, thanks in no small part to shield-gating - you'll be shot before you're on your feet. In the more realistic scenario, having an window of extrinsic vulnerability is not consistent risk.

I'm sorry, having a window of vulnerability in an actual combat scenario does not put the player at risk? And the player will only be at risk in the Simulacrum?! What even are you smoking?

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Let's look another way: If that explosive is strong enough to obliterate your opposition, who is left to take advantage of your vulnerability when you jump into the middle of your enemies and rocket your feet? You're rewarded for misuse then, the supposed risk is a non-factor.

Interesting, I did not know explosive weapons cleared literally every room in one hit, and the rooms beyond it. Also, the same could be said of self-damage... assuming the self-damage were non-lethal, at which point the player could easily heal. It seems your only idea of vulnerability is for the player to one-shot themselves on a poorly-placed shot, which is exactly why self-damage got removed to begin with. This does not even begin to get into how if you can one-shot a whole room, you're probably playing at too low a level anyway to be threatened regardless, and are ultimately asking for a weapon that could put the player in danger even in low-level content -- all the more reason for those weapons to get thrown in the dumpster when safer and similarly effective options exist. Again, this is why self-damage on AoE got removed, but it's already been established you have only a selective memory for facts.

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

-Burden of proof: You have consistently failed to argue any reason why we should not have self-damage. It's not 'proven not to work'. The onus is with you to prove why self-damage should be off the table in entirety.

It already is, to the rejoicing of players all around. My burden of proof has already been honored thanks to changes already implemented in-game. Meanwhile, not only is it you who have failed to provide any objective reason for reintroducing self-damage to the game, you are arguing against established fact: self-damage already existed in the game, and was notoriously unpopular, which is why it got removed. It had its chance, and it failed. You have, effectively, been disproven already, and lost this argument before you even started it.

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

-"You have admitted": I have not admitted any of that nonsense you say I did.

Oh really? So what's this?

6 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

1. It may surprise you to learn that the Soma Prime isn't meta today either.

Or this?

On 2020-08-19 at 3:09 AM, TheLexiConArtist said:

My point was exactly that the other nerfs to the Tonkor are why it fell into such active disfavour. I even made a big bold deal about the nerfs in update 20.0 that went along with the mechanical changes (addition of self-damage to the Tonkor in particular).

It seems there are two problems at hand: for one, you can't seem to keep your story straight from one post to the other, as you contradict yourself severely each time, and sometimes outright lie. Secondly, it seems you're trying very hard to contradict whatever I'm saying at any given moment... even if it contradicts something you've said before, or even your main point. Your blind contrarianism has, effectively, caused you to admit that self-damage wasn't the magic solution to the Tonkor, among other things. No matter which side you attempt to take or deny, you will inevitably end up going against your own word. You have, effectively, argued yourself into a corner.

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

I have said there are many factors and more than the perceived dichotomy upon which your argument is predicated. Self-damage 'killed the Tonkor meta' absolutely - with or without the additional nerfs, it would no longer have been the brain-dead everyman's weapon to excel in every situation with no thought or effort. You are conflating this with a fall into active disfavour - as the nerfs caused by inverting the imbalance simultaneously on both sides of the risk/reward equation. Self-damage works to make you consider your options. Explosives are situational by design where they're not your only available tool, because why use anything else otherwise? _{Hey, that sounds familiar - it's the entire context of the Tonkor/Simulor Meta.}

I'm sorry, but what exactly is the difference? If the non-self-damage nerfs were enough to bring the Tonkor into active disfavor, then why even need self-damage as a balancing factor? No matter which spin you try to put on this, you've flat-out admitted that explosive weapons can be balanced without factoring in self-damage at all. The proof is in the game right now, with the Tonkor being nowhere even near meta despite completely lacking self-damage. The same goes for the Bramma, now no longer a dominant weapon after its nerf which itself featured no reinstatement of self-damage.

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

-Bramma: The Bramma was OP before - by virtue of frames which were bypassing its risk - then was OP after, because now every frame could bypass the non-risk drawback of stagger, if they even cared to. Even when it was recently 'nerfed', the only lasting effect was in its ammo economy, another easily circumvented restriction, just roll with Carrier or slap a Mutation on that there Exilus and you're back in business; reducing the cluster count was compensated by improving their falloff and radius.

Argue what you like, the Bramma is no longer dominant. I actually agree with you that its current drawbacks can be mitigated -- but that doesn't matter, because the weapon is no longer overpicked, and so due to balance changes that had nothing to do with self-damage. Your attempt to reframe its state of balance around its self-damage, and how it could be bypassed, therefore makes absolutely no sense. Once again, if you were to look even a little bit beyond your increasingly outmoded fixation with self-damage, all of this would be obvious. If you want to continue beating a dead horse and keep crusading for an unpopular mechanic that's been out of the game for months now, though, be my guest.

[TheLexiConArtist]

Mmm.. right there is where we hit the point where it's not entertaining to grind the absolute inanity into the dirt over and over.

Hopefully anyone else looking in on this at least has a better level of reading comprehension - or rather, doesn't wilfully twist and misinterpret words like you're doing, because you probably can comprehend, it just doesn't suit your ill-founded, fallacious retorts.

[Teridax68]

On 2020-08-21 at 1:29 AM, TheLexiConArtist said:

Mmm.. right there is where we hit the point where it's not entertaining to grind the absolute inanity into the dirt over and over.

Hopefully anyone else looking in on this at least has a better level of reading comprehension - or rather, doesn't wilfully twist and misinterpret words like you're doing, because you probably can comprehend, it just doesn't suit your ill-founded, fallacious retorts.

That's a lot of verbiage just to say you're taking your ball and going home. Better luck next time, hopefully you'll fool someone then.

[Xylena_Lazarow]

Thought experiment: If you think self-damage should return to this game, should it be added to frame AoE nuke abilities? What about to melee, since those are actually the most powerful AoE weapons in the game? Or do you just hate the Angstrum that much...

[Aryustailm]

I'd point out the stagger's as bad (or worse, I've probably taken more damage while staggered than all my Lenz moments combined) in the same way: Why aren't melee weapons staggering you when their AoE is faster, wider and generally more damaging than any ranged weapon? Frame AoE nukes aren't staggering us either, why are the guns?

When I was chipping at my shields a little from using my guns danger-close, it felt exciting not tediously annoying. When I accidentally-my-Angstrum it was worth a chuckle, even the numbers could be a bit pleasing despite whom they just fragged.

They gave everybody shield gating, and gave AoE weapons Falloff "to compensate". They took away self damage, and gave basically-impact-procs if you so much as clip that 10% outer region to AoE weapons "to compensate" again. Weapons that had been balanced around hurting 3-4 things for full damage, that now deal half or less. And what did they tell us to do about it?

"Aim True, Tenno!" ... Aim true indeed: you'll kill those four guys a lot faster with a Rubico-Prime bullet each than your Ogris could dream of, with just as much accuracy needed (whether or not the gun provides it)!