Rework the Rift (Relatively simple Limbo fix, with a huge impact)

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

Most of Limbo's major issues, from both the perspective of the Limbo and his allies can be solved by changing our interactions with the Rift. I've shared this a few times in various Limbo threads over these past months with positive feedback, and with Banish becoming universal I think it's even more important now than it was even before.

• Allies automatically change plane to match the enemy they are attacking.
  • Attacking a rifted enemy pulls you into the Rift, and attacking a material plane enemy pulls you out.
  • Players can still dodge roll to manually leave the Rift.
  • Players only stay in the Rift for a short duration upon attacking Rifted enemies. This duration resets as they continue to attack Rifted enemies.
  • With AoE weapons, Rift status will be determined by the majority of targets damaged by the attack.
  • Attacking with Warframe abilities does not change Rift state as they already work on both planes without issue.
• Allies (but not Limbo) can pick up loot in the Rift, and all players (including Limbo) automatically leave the Rift when interacting with doors, consoles, objectives, etc.
• Limbo's passive Rift Portal is no longer needed and is removed, but he can still dodge in and out of the Rift at will for unlimited duration (since that is his defensive skill).
• Cataclysm reverses the natural Rift state, allowing you to briefly leave the Rift when attacking material plane enemies outside of it but resetting you back into the Rift as long as you are within Cataclysm's radius.

These changes allow players to play the game naturally while gaining situational benefits of being in or out of the Rift at any given point, and still maintaining Limbo's "divide and conquer" playstyle but far more organically.

Now that the priority is out of the way, Stasis and Rift Surge may need another look with the new Rift interactions in mind. These are side notes to my suggestion, and I'm not set in stone on these changes so can be disregarded if you've lost interest.

Spoiler

Stasis - It may be far easier to exploit Stasis (an already powerful ability) with the full strength of you and your allies, finally, so the energy cost may need a second look. Currently Stasis is 50 energy for unlimited targets, unlimited range and 15 seconds (who doesn't build him for high duration anyway?). He passively gains 10 energy per enemy killed in the Rift so he's rarely without energy when not spamming Cataclysm, and your allies will be increasing the number of Rifted enemies killed and therefore your supply of energy so I have 2 alternate suggestions to limit the new meta being to just have Limbo banish the whole map and keep them under Stasis forever while allies murder everything.

1. First option - Stasis has a one-time cost of 50 energy minimum to cast, with an additional 5 energy per enemy affected by Stasis after the first 10 enemies. To clarify, the full cost is one time, regardless of how many enemies, where 1-10 enemies costs 50, and 20 enemies would have a one-time cost of 100 energy.
2. The second option is to turn it into a toggle with a max duration, but you do not benefit from his passive 10 energy gain per kill while it is active.

Rift Surge - This has always been underwhelming (without the augment), and generally useless on a team setting since the Rift is such a nightmare currently. My thought is that the surge effect could be turned into something more beneficial for Limbo and his allies. Again, 2 alternate options.

1. Rift Surge charges rifted enemies in the area causing them to detonate upon death dealing damage to material plane enemies. This will be a way for Limbo to manage having a potentially more costly Stasis, by Rifting fewer enemies and turning them into landmines for enemies outside the Rift.
2. Alternately, Rift surge now causes all Rifted enemies in the area to take more damage from all sources. The augment can still work the same, but will likely either need to eliminate or reduce the original effect of additional damage. 

 

[Graavarg]

This seems to me to be a fix aimed at those players that can't handle or don't understand the rift, not a fix for Limbo himself. Your suggestions would make both Limbo and the rift irrelevant. And I think simplifying Limbo into oblivion would be a real shame.

Personally I think there is no need for the change you describe, and I fail to see "the issues". Or rather, players having such issues with the current already fixed Limbo might need some other type of help. There can't be that many players in Warframe that need such a dumbed-down rift system, with everything automated and handled by the game so you can dumbly hack and shoot at everything and the game does the rest. I actually don't get it, is that meant to be an improvement?

On a more general note my opinion is that diversity is the most central thing in Warframe, and from that follows that suggestions aiming to reduce the diversity and make everything into "easy vanilla soup" should be viewed with extreme suspicion. Another core value is the golden principle of "live and let live", which in all simplicity means accepting the diversity of gear, players and playstyles of other players. To me the suggested changes seems to have very little to do with how players enjoy using Limbo, and much more to do with destroying Limbo's unique mechanic for the increased enjoyment of players NOT using Limbo, the minority that can't understand/handle the rift. In my book that is very, very wrong, from start to finish.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

51 minutes ago, Graavarg said:

This seems to me to be a fix aimed at those players that can't handle or don't understand the rift, not a fix for Limbo himself. Your suggestions would make both Limbo and the rift irrelevant. And I think simplifying Limbo into oblivion would be a real shame.

I have played Limbo regularly since he came out. A majority of players either don't know how he works, don't care, or are incapable of working with him. 

My suggestion does nothing to change his capability, therefore could not make him irrelevant. You're just being hyperbolic. 

55 minutes ago, Graavarg said:

Personally I think there is no need for the change you describe, and I fail to see "the issues". Or rather, players having such issues with the current already fixed Limbo might need some other type of help. There can't be that many players in Warframe that need such a dumbed-down rift system, with everything automated and handled by the game so you can dumbly hack and shoot at everything and the game does the rest. I actually don't get it, is that meant to be an improvement?

The most popular frames over the history of this game are in fact the ones with the most dumbed down, braindead skills. 

My suggestions aren't providing special treatment. It's literally giving you back the capability you already had before Limbo was on your team. In fact, the last ability that locked out team participation (Blade Storm) got reworked and had that feature removed because players hated that it prevented them from attacking targets while it was active. 

As Limbo, you still have the same options and are still required to manually exit the Rift in order gain pickups. Limbo should be the only player that takes on additional responsibility with him on the team. Your power trip fantasy is no one else's problem, and this is a co-op game primarily so preventing your team from playing is counterproductive. 

 

1 hour ago, Graavarg said:

On a more general note my opinion is that diversity is the most central thing in Warframe, and from that follows that suggestions aiming to reduce the diversity and make everything into "easy vanilla soup" should be viewed with extreme suspicion. Another core value is the golden principle of "live and let live", which in all simplicity means accepting the diversity of gear, players and playstyles of other players. To me the suggested changes seems to have very little to do with how players enjoy using Limbo, and much more to do with destroying Limbo's unique mechanic for the increased enjoyment of players NOT using Limbo, the minority that can't understand/handle the rift. In my book that is very, very wrong, from start to finish.

Again, this change does absolutely nothing to take away from Limbo's capability, and "diversity" and "ease" have nothing to do with each other. He's still a completely unique frame with divide and conquer capability in a way no other frame has. 

You keep talking about his abilities like they are providing a glorious challenge to the game, except he's the only one with the key to make it easier when the rest of his team has no way to opt in to gameplay without finding his portal or going in to cataclysm. 

"Live and let live" goes both ways, and preventing the many frames that don't have reliable damage abilities from playing doesn't exactly allow "live and let live".

On a team most Limbo players can't use  1 or 3 when allies are around so are missing out on half the kit so this is actually an improvement (again, with absolutely NO loss of capability to Limbo if your goal isn't actually to prevent allies from contributing just to boost your end of mission kill numbers).

It's wrong to you because you have this strange notion that Limbo gets weaker with the Rift change. Tell me, specifically, what Limbo loses in this and I may be able to adjust my post and view point. In all of those words you never once said what capability he actually loses. 

[(PSN)mahoshonenfox]

What's the point of the rift if it doesn't divide properly? Limbo's problem isn't because people can't hit things in the rift (spoilers: you actually can if you know how the rift interacts with game mechanics) His problem is people can't easily tell if enemies are in the rift or not. Even Limbo players fall victim to that because graphical tells are too subtle. You don't always see the little flames on their feet. Normal players just ignore rifted enemies if they know its in the rift. Its up to the Limbo player to clean that up. But if the Limbo player can't find that rifted enemy, how can they kill it?

The up coming change to Banish is gonna add more control. If you see there's a straggler in the rift because your banish timer is ticking, just hold down Banish to reset the field.

[PsiWarp]

59 minutes ago, (PS4)mahoshonenfox said:

The up coming change to Banish is gonna add more control. If you see there's a straggler in the rift because your banish timer is ticking, just hold down Banish to reset the field.

Indeed. It works wonders right now.

As much as I would love to see an overhaul of the Rift interactions, this is as close as we're gonna get. Rather than automated processes, they want to leave the decision to the knowledge and skill of the Limbo player (and Subsumed Banish players).

[Graavarg]

9 hours ago, (PS4)Ozymandias-13- said:

On a team most Limbo players can't use  1 or 3 when allies are around so are missing out on half the kit...

I agree with this (mostly concerning Limbo's 1).

Banish should have a mechanic to reliably and specifically put one target only into the rift (or out of it). The "wave"-mechanic is mostly counterproductive, reducing the usefulness of Banish. Putting the defense objective temporarily in "a safe place" (the rift) or using the augment for healing a friendly player makes little sense when you are forced to "banish" all nearby enemies at the same time (often putting the player or objective at more risk). Banish could (easily) be improved with a "tap-or-hold" split, "tapping" 1 would release the Banish wave in it's current form, "holding" 1 would highlight whatever (single) eligible target current pointed at with the aiming reticle, and Banish that single entity to the void when released.

Using Rift Surge effectively demands high level Limbo play (as in: you actually need to know what you are doing). It can be enormously effective in team play, but only with a team that not only knows how it (and the rift) works, but that has an agreed tactic on how it is used. Using Rift Surge in PUBs is the main recipe for irritation focused on Limbo, as usually chaos ensues. Also, there are those Limbos that either use Rift Surge wrong (as in counterproductively) or simply hasn't a clue what their third ability does.   

But now we are actually talking about improving Limbo for those players that use Limbo, which is quite different from making the rift more palatable to those players who can't get their mind around how the rift works.

As for all those (not so experienced) players running into Limbo's portal and transferring into the rift without understanding what happens (and that don't how to roll out of the rift), a simple and easy fix would be if the portal formed over Limbo's head (instead of centered on his mass, as it currently does). That would remove most of the problems with players running blindly into the rift, but still allow more knowledgeable player to use Limbo's portal by simply jumping through it. If this small change was coupled with an increased duration of the portal (5 sec. => 15 sec.), it would also be much (MUCH) more useful in team play.

[(XBOX)JFosterGoodCall]

2 hours ago, Graavarg said:

As for all those (not so experienced) players running into Limbo's portal and transferring into the rift without understanding what happens (and that don't how to roll out of the rift), a simple and easy fix would be if the portal formed over Limbo's head (instead of centered on his mass, as it currently does). That would remove most of the problems with players running blindly into the rift, but still allow more knowledgeable player to use Limbo's portal by simply jumping through it. If this small change was coupled with an increased duration of the portal (5 sec. => 15 sec.), it would also be much (MUCH) more useful in team play.

I can't help but think that it would be hilarious seeing Limbo pop a portal out of his top hat whenever he rolls.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

6 hours ago, (PS4)mahoshonenfox said:

What's the point of the rift if it doesn't divide properly?

It still divides the enemies exactly as it always  has. This just allows your allies to participate on their own terms instead of relying on Limbo. He Rift his allies, but then then immediately need to dodge back out to get resources and ammo drops. Then what? They're still removed from the Rift and the enemies are still Rifted.

Your ally attacks a Rifted target and enters the Rift. Now all non-Rifted enemies are incapable of interacting with that ally. Then the ally attacks a non-Rifted enemy (or dodges out) and now Rifted enemies cannot interact with that ally. Nothing has changed in that regard except Limbo is not unintentionally trolling allies.

6 hours ago, (PS4)mahoshonenfox said:

(spoilers: you actually can if you know how the rift interacts with game mechanics)

If it's some sort of big secret then it is inherently flawed. People generally know that abilities work on both planes, there's no issue with that. But what about someone like Nyx? Which ability is she going to use to kill a Rifted enemy? Or Loki? Or the whole slew of warframes that have damage abilities but not ones that deal enough damage to outright kill enemies on their own before you run out of energy?

6 hours ago, (PS4)mahoshonenfox said:

His problem is people can't easily tell if enemies are in the rift or not. Even Limbo players fall victim to that because graphical tells are too subtle. You don't always see the little flames on their feet. Normal players just ignore rifted enemies if they know its in the rift. Its up to the Limbo player to clean that up. But if the Limbo player can't find that rifted enemy, how can they kill it?

I agree with this, and my initial endeavor long ago was to make it easily apparent when a target is on the opposite plane from you. That should still be incorporated but it does not in fact fix the issue of allies having very little say of which plane they are in at any given moment. Even as Limbo I'm constantly dodging in and out of the rift in every room to interact with things or pick things up. No matter how many portals you open with your dodge your allies will never have that much freedom with him around.

Players that are aware ignore Rifted targets, but it is not by choice. It's by necessity. No one appreciates going into a mission where one player can "claim" all of the targets for themselves and leave you running around bored. As I mentioned in my previous post, the last ability that did that was Blade Storm and it was removed because there was constant complaint on the forums about Ash making all of the enemies invulnerable to everyone but himself. 

6 hours ago, (PS4)mahoshonenfox said:

The up coming change to Banish is gonna add more control. If you see there's a straggler in the rift because your banish timer is ticking, just hold down Banish to reset the field.

It does, and I'm very happy about that since it's been asked for ever since his rework. It gives you the option of removing the targets from the Rift, but doesn't actually fix the problem of your allies not being able to affect the targets in the Rift...which still means you're limited on your ability usage unless you are constantly Tap Banish, Hold Banish, Tap Banish, Hold Banish to kick enemies back out. Players do not want to be in the rift because it locks out loot (aside from affinity, the entire point of grinding in this game) and ammo that they need for their weapons.

With so much going on in the game at any given point it's not unreasonable to assume there will still be a lot of times Limbo is not looking at the bottom of the screen watching his timer to see if he's locking enemies in the Rift so won't know until his teammates scream at him. That's not going to stop players from hating Limbos on their team.

 

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

4 hours ago, Graavarg said:

I agree with this (mostly concerning Limbo's 1).

Banish should have a mechanic to reliably and specifically put one target only into the rift (or out of it). The "wave"-mechanic is mostly counterproductive, reducing the usefulness of Banish. Putting the defense objective temporarily in "a safe place" (the rift) or using the augment for healing a friendly player makes little sense when you are forced to "banish" all nearby enemies at the same time (often putting the player or objective at more risk). Banish could (easily) be improved with a "tap-or-hold" split, "tapping" 1 would release the Banish wave in it's current form, "holding" 1 would highlight whatever (single) eligible target current pointed at with the aiming reticle, and Banish that single entity to the void when released.

When Limbo came out Banish was single target, and I loved it. But that was back when the game was slower, and it was reasonable gameplay to Banish the Heavy Gunner and have the one-on-one duel with him. I get the change to multi-target made sense, but not a huge cone. That was absurd. It should've been a target and everyone in the radius around them, for strategic and controlled Rifting and I mentioned that when the rework came. My goal for this thread though was to change change as little as possible for Limbo's abilities and gameplay while returning his teammates' to their normal gameplay since he is highly effective, but entirely at the cost to his allies. 

4 hours ago, Graavarg said:

Using Rift Surge effectively demands high level Limbo play (as in: you actually need to know what you are doing). It can be enormously effective in team play, but only with a team that not only knows how it (and the rift) works, but that has an agreed tactic on how it is used. Using Rift Surge in PUBs is the main recipe for irritation focused on Limbo, as usually chaos ensues. Also, there are those Limbos that either use Rift Surge wrong (as in counterproductively) or simply hasn't a clue what their third ability does.   

Agreed, but preformed teams with the goal of utilizing Limbo's full potential would be lucky to make up even 1% of the teams with Limbo on it world wide. PUBs, and casual teams are the standard.

And unfortunately, the Rift Torrent augment (a highly popular tool in his arsenal) encourages throwing strategy out the window with Rift Surge. It's best used on many enemies, and regularly, to build and maintain his damage bonus. Admittedly that is counter-intuitive to the base ability's use on a squad.

5 hours ago, Graavarg said:

But now we are actually talking about improving Limbo for those players that use Limbo, which is quite different from making the rift more palatable to those players who can't get their mind around how the rift works.

As for all those (not so experienced) players running into Limbo's portal and transferring into the rift without understanding what happens (and that don't how to roll out of the rift), a simple and easy fix would be if the portal formed over Limbo's head (instead of centered on his mass, as it currently does). That would remove most of the problems with players running blindly into the rift, but still allow more knowledgeable player to use Limbo's portal by simply jumping through it. If this small change was coupled with an increased duration of the portal (5 sec. => 15 sec.), it would also be much (MUCH) more useful in team play.

The major issue isn't that players run blindly into his portals. It's that they even need a portal, and having to follow a Limbo around to have access to the portal to begin with. Allowing them longer duration in the Rift once going through it would be helpful though.

A majority of the player base only has the option to tolerate Limbo, at best, when on a team with him even knowing exactly how he works. This is not in fact a game that requires skill (or one that even rewards or encourages it most times), and by definition most players are at best average. While we Limbo players are straying from press-4-to-win, we still win by beating up frozen enemies that can't fight back so we're no more skilled than those players. We just add extra button presses, so I guess we're just less lazy if nothing else. It's not crazy to "live and let live" in regards to your allies' natural gameplay while still maintaining the additional effort and options available to Limbo. My changes would only allow Limbo to do what he does well so much more than he can now.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

2 hours ago, (XB1)JFosterGoodCall said:

I can't help but think that it would be hilarious seeing Limbo pop a portal out of his top hat whenever he rolls.

Or his nose...in the case of his deluxe skin. Lol

He rips his "elephant trunk" right off his face with his stance animation, since it no longer has a hat.

[Cyba_Zero]

7 hours ago, (PS4)mahoshonenfox said:

His problem is people can't easily tell if enemies are in the rift or not. Even Limbo players fall victim to that because graphical tells are too subtle.

Very much this. I've probably said it before somewhere, but I'm sure a lot of the Limbo hate would go away if DE just updated the rift visual effects to be more obvious and more intuitive. They updated Nekros' spectres to be more obvious; if I recall correctly the rift effects used to look different before Limbo's rework too.

What it needs is rifted enemies to be obviously semi-transparent or otherwise clearly out-of-phase looking, so when a player hits them and does no damage, there's a good visual indicator of why. The current tiny shadows are hard enough to spot at the best of times, let alone in the midst of a swarm of enemies or when parkouring fast through a mission.

(Or they could even implement it dynamically based on which plane the player is in, so you get a clear visual cue of, say, semi-transparent = in other plane therefore cannot be hit by normal means, although that might cause confusion with abilities still working across planes.)

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

4 minutes ago, Cyba_Zero said:

What it needs is rifted enemies to be obviously semi-transparent or otherwise clearly out-of-phase looking, so when a player hits them and does no damage, there's a good visual indicator of why. The current tiny shadows are hard enough to spot at the best of times, let alone in the midst of a swarm of enemies or when parkouring fast through a mission.

(Or they could even implement it dynamically based on which plane the player is in, so you get a clear visual cue of, say, semi-transparent = in other plane therefore cannot be hit by normal means, although that might cause confusion with abilities still working across planes.)

Transparency could make it difficult to actually find the enemies in a lot of environments. My past suggestion was for the enemies to show as a violently swirling negative image (black and white) instead of their normal colors/textures, with just the outline being your warframe energy color. This would apply to any enemy not on the same plane as you. So a player in the material plane looking at a Rifted enemy would see the negative. And a Rifted player looking at the material plane enemy would see them as a negative.

[Cyba_Zero]

That's another good idea, although I'm still not sure how well that would show up either. What it really needs is to see a selection of possible rift effects in game, in the middle of a swarm, to see which looks the most obvious and also most indicative of what it's trying to represent (i.e. you can't damage this enemy without 'magic' due to being in the opposite plane). I will say that the idea of a negative is cool in the getting across the 'opposite plane' feel though.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

1 minute ago, Cyba_Zero said:

That's another good idea, although I'm still not sure how well that would show up either. What it really needs is to see a selection of possible rift effects in game, in the middle of a swarm, to see which looks the most obvious and also most indicative of what it's trying to represent (i.e. you can't damage this enemy without 'magic' due to being in the opposite plane). I will say that the idea of a negative is cool in the getting across the 'opposite plane' feel though.

My reasoning for the violently swirling negative is because most tilesets are various colors, so having these two distinctly opposite shades will make them show up in both high and low lighting environments, and the "swirling" energy adds motion for easier eye detection so it's easier to tell when someone is being missed.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

On 2020-08-14 at 9:04 AM, (PS4)Ozymandias-13- said:

My reasoning for the violently swirling negative is because most tilesets are various colors, so having these two distinctly opposite shades will make them show up in both high and low lighting environments, and the "swirling" energy adds motion for easier eye detection so it's easier to tell when someone is being missed.

This is a better representation of how I figure they would easily stand out when not on the same plane as you.

[Cyba_Zero]

On 2020-08-31 at 5:06 PM, (PS4)Ozymandias-13- said:

This is a better representation of how I figure they would easily stand out when not on the same plane as you.

Oooh now that would be cool. Sorry about the late reply; notifications didn't come through for some reason.

[--Q--EXHALER_Wolf]

On 2020-08-14 at 12:22 AM, (PS4)Ozymandias-13- said:

all players (including Limbo) automatically leave the Rift when interacting with doors, consoles, objectives, etc.

pros of this:
1. Making Limbo more broken in Spy missions than he already is
2. Reducing the number of times you have to press the roll button

Cons of this:
1. Limbo can't capture targets from safety of rift
2. Limbo can't revive fallen allies from safety of rift
3. Limbo can't open friendship doors from safety of rift
4. Limbo can't collect flora samples in purifier bounty stage from safety of... you get the point.

How hard is it to press roll that you want changes in game mechanics at the cost of some useful little things Limbo can already do safely from rift? (forcing him into using spoiler mode where rift was already enough)

Exodia contagion was nerfed during scarlet spear for being able to hit enemies in both planes. DE was aware of this interaction for a long time but kept it in game until it became the most brain dead meta in scarlet spear. What makes you think DE will revert that change and give every weapon the same functionality? The restrictions on rift-material plane interactions exist to counter Limbo's god like abilities. Your proposed changes will simply kill most of the build diversity and whatever player skill requirement there is and allow a new kind of completely effortless camping-in-minimum-range-cataclysm meta since the game will switch him between planes automatically. I like cheese too, but this is way too much cheese for both Limbo and his allies.

And your suggestions on stasis rework doesn't make much sense, time stop will be time stop. And time stop is always over powered. You can't reduce its effectiveness with energy cost increase alone without making it border line unusable for too high energy cost.

The current rift surge is better and more functional than landmine ability damage rift surge (which will most likely deal as much damage as unmodded mk-1 braton against high level enemies) and the base damage boost potential of rift torrent is currently higher than anything else in the game. I'm not sure exactly what your other suggestion is on rift surge but it sounds like the old rift surge before limbo rework and also like current viral status effect. No need to turn a supercharged vex armor into discount viral proc especially when their bonuses can stack with each other already.

Tbh, it would seem that you don't have enough experience playing limbo and playing around his restrictions. Otherwise you wouldn't be asking for Limbo rework when Zephyr, Hydroid, Grendel etc can use that more. You should never use his abilities in squads unless it serves the mission objective directly (e.g using a medium range cataclysm without stasis to guard an interception point, the minimum range mobile defesne/defense build etc). And you use all your abilities only when solo. To change that situation by DE standards, you gotta throw away the entire theme of a separate plane of existence and rework Limbo into a second wukong.

[Graavarg]

I think too many give "Limbo hate" too much power, and credit. Some hate blacks, some hate whites, some hate women, some hate men, some hate everyone else, some hate things they cannot understand and some hate that others can do things they themselves can't. The absolute majority of such "haters" are emotionally retarded, from a psychological viewpoint. And that surely includes most Limbo haters as well.

Who cares if someone hates Limbo. That is something they should raise with their psychiatrist next visit. The idea that Limbo needs change because some players "hate Limbo" is absurd, all it does is empower haters. And that is something you should never ever do, acknowledge their hate as a reason to do something. Just think about what world we would live in if "hate" was recognized as something legitimate. That hate exists is one thing, making it officially acceptable is... insane. Also in Warframe.

And just to make sure, this has nothing to do with improving warframe abilities and gameplay overall. On the other hand it has everything to with citing "hate" as a reason.

[(PSN)mahoshonenfox]

Back in the day, the rift effect was intense. You can't miss an enemy in the rift because it was enveloped in bright white phantom zone flames. It was fine for just 1 enemy but if it was an entire mob, it blinds your screen. You'll see nothig but flickering white. When Limbo got his Stasis, the enemies would be enveloped in some kind of ghost overlay when in the rift. But it was bugged if stasis was up. When enemies die, their corpses would despawn but their ghost overlay remained in the last position of their death during stasis. That was when DE removed the overlay and just kept the tiny flames on the feet that you can hardly see.

This is how the rift used to look like.

DE wanted it to be like Lord of the Rings or something.

I think a good improvement to indicating something is banished is making it grayscale. Just flat out desaturate its colors while rifted and make its outlines glow in Limbo's energy color. Not sure why DE hasn't thought of this yet. They tried to with the ghost overlay but wouldn't it be easier to just desaturate the banished targets.