So, the Void Status proc is getting updated too, right?

[Ikusi_Prime]

The devs are buffing Void damage, making it neutral to all health types - awesome, that's fantastic news. It's been needing it for a long time.

Hopefully, when they make this pass on Void damage, they also update its status proc.

Not only did it not get updated with the previous round of status changes (i.e., it can't stack), it's actually detrimental to your damage output. The Void proc makes it impossible to land headshots on enemies that are affected by it. They just get sucked into the bubble and count as bodyshots. Moreover, it redirects damage to enemies you have already damaged, making it more likely to overkill the affected enemy with the pellets intended for their surrounding allies.

This status proc needs to be overhauled, if not reworked completely.

A simple fix would be to force headshots with the bubble, rather than prevent them. This would make the status proc actually improve your damage output, for the most part. It wouldn't fix the overkill potential, but it would make it an actual bonus. As for the stacking component, it could increase the affected target's headshot multipliers (shrinking the bubble with each stack, if necessary), or have the bubble fire off homing projectiles that deal a stacking percentage of the damage it absorbs.

An alternative proc would be a stacking chance to drop a special pickup. It could restore energy, provide overshields, health regen, energy regen, temporary damage resistance, etc.

Another idea would be to have Void damage strip the target's natural resistances (and possibly weaknesses), similar to how it strips the resistances of Sentient enemies. Or it could do the reverse and amplify them, rewarding players who have tailored their damage types to the enemy with increased damage output.

 

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Don’t get your hopes up.

[Ikusi_Prime]

12 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Don’t get your hopes up.

DE tends to take their time, but when they act they usually try to address something in its entirety before they put it down. I can't imagine someone at DE will let it slide that the Void proc prevents you from headshotting enemies and doesn't stack like the rest of them.

[Tyreaus]

Personally, I'd give it a natural anti-scaling mechanic. As in, Void procs literally de-level enemies, reducing health and shields and armour and damage outputs. It doesn't have to be that style of damage buffing explicitly, but with all the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff tied to the void, taking enemies "back to their weaker selves" kind of fits the theme.

It's also the kind of effect you can see happen before your eyes. You can see level indicators on enemies drop instantly. Vanilla damage buffing is nice, but you don't really notice it until after the first bullet lands.

And I'd like to see Magnetic get the bullet attraction bubble (adjusted to land headshots - since the Corpus are all about that anyway), along with the shield stuff. It fits with Mag, after all.

EDIT: But yes, to state the obvious: I'd really like to see the Void proc touched up.

[Kaggelos]

2 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

Personally, I'd give it a natural anti-scaling mechanic. As in, Void procs literally de-level enemies, reducing health and shields and armour and damage outputs. It doesn't have to be that style of damage buffing explicitly, but with all the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff tied to the void, taking enemies "back to their weaker selves" kind of fits the theme.

It's also the kind of effect you can see happen before your eyes. You can see level indicators on enemies drop instantly. Vanilla damage buffing is nice, but you don't really notice it until after the first bullet lands.

And I'd like to see Magnetic get the bullet attraction bubble (adjusted to land headshots - since the Corpus are all about that anyway), along with the shield stuff. It fits with Mag, after all.

EDIT: But yes, to state the obvious: I'd really like to see the Void proc touched up.

Legit good idea mate

[DrivaMain]

3 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

Personally, I'd give it a natural anti-scaling mechanic. As in, Void procs literally de-level enemies, reducing health and shields and armour and damage outputs. It doesn't have to be that style of damage buffing explicitly, but with all the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff tied to the void, taking enemies "back to their weaker selves" kind of fits the theme.

It's also the kind of effect you can see happen before your eyes. You can see level indicators on enemies drop instantly. Vanilla damage buffing is nice, but you don't really notice it until after the first bullet lands.

And I'd like to see Magnetic get the bullet attraction bubble (adjusted to land headshots - since the Corpus are all about that anyway), along with the shield stuff. It fits with Mag, after all.

EDIT: But yes, to state the obvious: I'd really like to see the Void proc touched up.

Might be too overpowered and make standard warframe combat irrelevant. Because why bother investing on new toys when I can just go out in operator and de level 1000s to 1?

I just want Void Damage to be just an amalgamation of current status effects. effects of Viral, Corrosive, Radiation, Impact, Electric all in 1 status proc. I mean lore wise the void energy can be manipulated into something else. That's how the warframes came to be. 

[Tyreaus]

6 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

why bother investing on new toys when I can just go out in operator and de level 1000s to 1?

Time, probably. If you cut an enemy's level by, say, 25% per proc, you could bring that level 1000 down to level 1 eventually. But if your weapon can take out the enemy in an instant at level 200, it's faster to stop reducing the target's level once they hit 200 and just shoot them. Likewise, if your shiny new weapon can take out that enemy at level 300, that means all the procs between levels 200 and 300 aren't needed, and you're offing them earlier in the process.

[DrivaMain]

5 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

Time, probably. If you cut an enemy's level by, say, 25% per proc, you could bring that level 1000 down to level 1 eventually. But if your weapon can take out the enemy in an instant at level 200, it's faster to stop reducing the target's level once they hit 200 and just shoot them. Likewise, if your shiny new weapon can take out that enemy at level 300, that means all the procs between levels 200 and 300 aren't needed, and you're offing them earlier in the process.

Still deleveling can get pretty cheesy for DE’s taste. Imagine if you can de-level the hydrolyst to level 1 once DE removes their status immunity.

[Ikusi_Prime]

40 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

Might be too overpowered and make standard warframe combat irrelevant. Because why bother investing on new toys when I can just go out in operator and de level 1000s to 1?

I assume it would work as a capped stacking mechanic, similar to other status procs. For example, the first proc would bring enemy level down by 12%, and every proc after that increases that by 2%, capping at 10 stacks for a 30% level reduction.

So you could bring a level 100 enemy to level 70, but no lower. Quite a significant reduction in HP/armor/damage output, but not ludicrous. It could be tuned to be comparable to the value you get from other status procs, it just needs to be something that doesn't actually prevent you from landing headshots.

[Steel_Rook]

On 2020-09-16 at 8:56 AM, Ikusi_Prime said:

he Void proc makes it impossible to land headshots on enemies that are affected by it.

This is far from true. You can still land headshots just fine, though you typically need to aim slightly higher than usual. I use and abuse the Operator Magnetic procs on my Liches, allowing me to get easy headshots with automatic weapons as the tolerance on the bubble is significantly higher than on their actual model. Obviously, I wouldn't be opposed to the Void bubble redirecting all shots to the head, though. No issue there.

 

7 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

Personally, I'd give it a natural anti-scaling mechanic. As in, Void procs literally de-level enemies, reducing health and shields and armour and damage outputs. It doesn't have to be that style of damage buffing explicitly, but with all the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff tied to the void, taking enemies "back to their weaker selves" kind of fits the theme.

Generally not a fan of solutions like this. For one thing, it makes Magnetic and Corrosive even more pointless since Void does the same thing only better under those rules. Moreover, the issue with enemy scaling is the actual scaling itself. I'd personally rather look at scaling again as we ARE long overdue for a damage buff stacking pass, than to keep adding crutches to get around it. Realistically speaking, you can't have a game that's solely centred around stripping armour - or stripping armour by proxy as in this suggestion. By allowing Void to de-level enemies, you're essentially making it mandatory for all high-level content the way Corrosive used to be prior to Warframe Revised. It's a neat idea, but always consider what suggestions do to the status quo.

[DrakeWurrum]

8 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

Personally, I'd give it a natural anti-scaling mechanic. As in, Void procs literally de-level enemies, reducing health and shields and armour and damage outputs. It doesn't have to be that style of damage buffing explicitly, but with all the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff tied to the void, taking enemies "back to their weaker selves" kind of fits the theme.

It's also the kind of effect you can see happen before your eyes. You can see level indicators on enemies drop instantly. Vanilla damage buffing is nice, but you don't really notice it until after the first bullet lands.

And I'd like to see Magnetic get the bullet attraction bubble (adjusted to land headshots - since the Corpus are all about that anyway), along with the shield stuff. It fits with Mag, after all.

EDIT: But yes, to state the obvious: I'd really like to see the Void proc touched up.

Hrm. Reducing enemy levels as a status proc would make it fit the theme, and ridiculously powerful. I like it.

Fully agree on the Magnetic bit.

 

6 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Generally not a fan of solutions like this. For one thing, it makes Magnetic and Corrosive even more pointless since Void does

Stop. Void damage comes from two places. Amps, and Xaku.

And frankly, it shouldn't come from Xaku. (His 1st ability should work like Revenant's 4th ability, imo - adapting damage type to enemy weaknesses.)

It does not compete with other damage types as you cannot mod for it. (and hopefully that never changes)

[Steel_Rook]

1 minute ago, DrakeWurrum said:

Stop. Void damage comes from two places. Amps, and Xaku.

You say that like it makes it better. I'd argue it's far worse. Making Void a "de-levelling" Status effect basically means that everyone now has to grind up their Operator, now has to constantly use their Operator and - crucially - can only ever use Status Amps. In other words - the exact same issue we had with Corrosive. Only status guns work, criticals don't do enough damage. I'm not opposed to giving Operators more usefulness (even if I'd like for that to happen via a general Operator redesign), but turning them into the one-size-fits-all solution to high-level content is not the answer. Making a tool required doesn't make that tool "useful" so much as it turns it into "the cost of doing business." You don't bring Void damage because you value its strength. You bring Void damage because the game is balanced around requiring it. Which it would have to be - stripping even 30% of enemy level is the sort of thing that absolutely requires a balance pass of its own.

If I'm honest, I'd rather just drop enemy level by 30% across the board than implement a Status Effect that requires babysitting in return for dropping enemy level by 30% across the board, especially considering it's a status effect everyone has access to at no opportunity cost.

[DrakeWurrum]

42 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

You say that like it makes it better. I'd argue it's far worse.

I absolutely disagree. Keeping Void as an Operator-exclusive damage type would be the key to balancing them properly for combat.

They've messed that up some with Xaku, and I really hope they don't continue down that slippery slope.

42 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

everyone now has to

Firstly: False. Tell me: why do you assume they have to? Why do you assume maximum efficiency at ALL times is really needed? To what purpose does min/maxing every fine detail of our power actually serve?

Secondly: That's a problem specifically with that particular status proc suggestion -there are other ideas, and ways to design around the problem you specifically worry about. That has nothing to do with the statements of yours that I am arguing against. There is zero reason to pretend Void competes with Magnetic or any other damage type, and claiming otherwise only obfuscates the fact that Magnetic has issues on its own.

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, DrakeWurrum said:

Firstly: False. Tell me: why do you assume they have to? Why do you assume maximum efficiency at ALL times is really needed? To what purpose does min/maxing every fine detail of our power actually serve?

Because there's only so far one can go against obvious optimisation until the game starts to feel hollow. I constantly get accused of "min/maxing" when the majority of my builds - especially for weapons - are sub par specifically because I care more about "feel" and "theme" than performance. But again, that only goes so far. Right now, even level 100 Grineer are tough enough for my gear that they start getting less pleasant to fight. It's why I cite 60-80 as my "sweet spot" - that's where average weapons still work just fine without needing to min/max. Creating a situation where level 100 enemies can be reduced to level 70 enemies means two things. First of all, 100 now becomes the de-facto standard (which it arguably already is). Secondly, I'm expected to heavily abuse Void in order to fight level 70 enemies in level 100 missions whether I want to or not.

Digital Extremes have made a choice. They've chosen to motivate us almost entirely on "extrinsic rewards," presumably because they don't think their game is ultimately very good. As such, their game design determines to a large extent what we end up doing. What they pick as optimal is what we end up using. Sure, individual players can resist this and pick obviously inferior builds that still nevertheless work. I do routinely. However, it's difficult to escape the feeling that you're underpowered by choice. And while this usually isn't a problem, it does take away from the experience in the long run. Especially if you happen to know people who keep insisting you min/max like they do.

To make a long story short, developers set the status quo based on what they make the most efficient. This is why it's important to be cognizant of what kind of efficiency you bring into the game when making suggestions. Unique sources of powerful tools are going to be seen as mandatory, whether you personally see it that way or not. When discussing changes to the game, we don't have the luxury of viewing game design from a player's perspective - of viewing games as stuff we ourselves would like to play. By necessity, we need to view games as developers and consider how players could use the tools we're proposing to break the game, shift the meta and overall affect everybody else. Power creep doesn't happen because everyone wants more power. It happens because developers fail to do precisely this. Power is added conditionally, the conditions erode, power is assumed, new challenges are introduced to match it, and the status quo moves up with it.

Introducing a mechanic to de-level enemies by 30 levels simply shifts enemy levels on-screen up by 30%.

 

1 hour ago, DrakeWurrum said:

Secondly: That's a problem specifically with that particular status proc suggestion -there are other ideas, and ways to design around the problem you specifically worry about. That has nothing to do with the statements of yours that I am arguing against. There is zero reason to pretend Void competes with Magnetic or any other damage type, and claiming otherwise only obfuscates the fact that Magnetic has issues on its own.

I'm not sure what argument you're making here. Yes, there are other suggestions for altering Void, but that's not what I'm responding to. This specific suggestion is the one I picked, because I feel it's going to lead to power creep if it were introduced. The reason I brought up Corrosive is because it used to have a similar issue of being seen as "mandatory" for high-level content. It reduced high-level Grineer to lower-level Grineer in actual practice, which led to it displacing both most other damage types and all weapons which weren't status-focused. No, this didn't apply to most content in the game, but DE have been slowly introducing more and more power creep. Newer content is generally higher-level and features enemies with bloated stats relative to their levels. Terra Corpus and now Deimos Infested have inflated stats, Railjack and Lich missions cap out at 80+, etc. I'm not necessarily opposed to it in principle, but I worry about high-level play being conditioned on a small subset of tools, similar to how high-level Grineer were conditioned on Corrosive and Slash.

JUST making Void damage resistance-neutral would be a major upset, though I don't think that alone is enough to make it feel "mandatory." DE talked about turning it into True damage, but they didn't mention Void damage ignoring resistance from armour and shields, or innate enemy damage resistances. All that does is make Void damage not S#&$, which is fine by me. Slapping a Status Effect on it that de-levels enemies, however, is a bridge too far for me. I would personally go with a different suggestion - ideally one that doesn't depend heavily on Status Effect chance.

 

1 hour ago, DrakeWurrum said:

I absolutely disagree. Keeping Void as an Operator-exclusive damage type would be the key to balancing them properly for combat.

You're going to have to elaborate on that, because I don't see how that helps. Everyone who can be expected to run high-level content can equally be expected to have an Operator, even if not a particularly kitted-out one. When proposing a "balance of extremes" - which is what this idea is - power is typically counter-balanced by availability in some fashion. Maybe the item in question is hard to get or expensive to maintain or it displaces some other important item. None of this applies in this case. All high-level players have easy, cost-less access to Void damage. To me, that's a bit like suggesting that Bullet Jumping next to an enemy drops their level by 30%, but it's OK because ONLY Bullet Jumps can do it. That's not much of an "only" when Bullet Jumps are one of the most ubiquitous things in Warframe. The same applies to Operators. Anyone who's done The War Within has no choice BUT to bring Void Damage with them because the operator always tags along and their Void Damage can no longer be fully swapped to elemental.

How does putting enemy de-levelling on the one thing we all have and can summon instantly for no cost at any time without restriction counter-balance the power it brings?

[Tyreaus]

19 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

Still deleveling can get pretty cheesy for DE’s taste. Imagine if you can de-level the hydrolyst to level 1 once DE removes their status immunity.

AFAIK they're planning on Eidolons (and, I think, other status-immune enemies) having a similar "proc cap" to Liches, which max out at 4 procs apiece. I don't think that's terribly unreasonable, especially since stacking Heat could also lead to a DPS "explosion" if done in inappropriate excess.

16 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Generally not a fan of solutions like this. For one thing, it makes Magnetic and Corrosive even more pointless since Void does the same thing only better under those rules. Moreover, the issue with enemy scaling is the actual scaling itself. I'd personally rather look at scaling again as we ARE long overdue for a damage buff stacking pass, than to keep adding crutches to get around it. Realistically speaking, you can't have a game that's solely centred around stripping armour - or stripping armour by proxy as in this suggestion. By allowing Void to de-level enemies, you're essentially making it mandatory for all high-level content the way Corrosive used to be prior to Warframe Revised. It's a neat idea, but always consider what suggestions do to the status quo.

As far as I'm concerned, Magnetic and Corrosive need significant touch-ups in the direction of universality anyway. I've always disagreed with their niche proc designs - in my opinion, Viral only gets away with that kind of proc because literally everything has health. Armour, likewise, deserves its own touch-up. As you say, you can't have a game that's solely centred around stripping armour - and that is, for the most part, what we have in higher levels. Those are problems, perhaps made worse by that kind of suggestion, but that also exist outside that suggestion. It's kind of like a UV light: it may seem to make the mess worse, but it's just showing what's already there.

On the topic of Void becoming mandatory, it is kind of "the" Tenno element. To me, it makes sense that it has a central place in the game (albeit, as mentioned above with armour needing a rework, ideally that wouldn't be too central). How it's currently accessed is cumbersome and doesn't flow into things whatsoever, though, and I would much rather see it integrated into gameplay more purposefully and fluidly than via Operators or Xaku. Perhaps via the rage mechanic, for example.

[Steel_Rook]

9 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

As far as I'm concerned, Magnetic and Corrosive need significant touch-ups in the direction of universality anyway. I've always disagreed with their niche proc designs - in my opinion, Viral only gets away with that kind of proc because literally everything has health. Armour, likewise, deserves its own touch-up. As you say, you can't have a game that's solely centred around stripping armour - and that is, for the most part, what we have in higher levels. Those are problems, perhaps made worse by that kind of suggestion, but that also exist outside that suggestion. It's kind of like a UV light: it may seem to make the mess worse, but it's just showing what's already there.

This is a much broader topic that's probably not worth getting into here, but we have just too many damage types. As a result, many end up being either highly situational or highly crap. DE seem to agree, because they were supposedly using Railjack as a testbed for a new damage system and that has only 7 to Warframe's normal 13 damage types, with Magnetic and Corrosive merged together into one "anti-EHP" damage type. I'm of the opinion that something similar ought to happen to our Warframe weapons. In general, I'm not a big believer in faction-specific damage types in general as they create more busywork than gameplay. But again - that's somewhat outside the scope of this conversation.

 

9 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

On the topic of Void becoming mandatory, it is kind of "the" Tenno element. To me, it makes sense that it has a central place in the game (albeit, as mentioned above with armour needing a rework, ideally that wouldn't be too central). How it's currently accessed is cumbersome and doesn't flow into things whatsoever, though, and I would much rather see it integrated into gameplay more purposefully and fluidly than via Operators or Xaku. Perhaps via the rage mechanic, for example.

Despite the above, I'm not opposed to our Operators in general and Void damage in particular having a unique role - specifically, as a tool against the Sentients. The difference here is two-fold, however. Firstly, we always have access to our Operators and they always have access to Void. Secondly, not everything in the game is Sentient. That's not how it ends up working out in practice, unfortunately, as sentients aren't... actually weak to Void. They just lose their resistances and might be stunned. What they're usually weak to is Corrosive since they all have Grineer Ferrite armour. A Corinth Prime built for Corrosive (thanks to Primed Charged Shell) does a hell of a lot more damage to them than any Amp I have, and a Paracesis is good enough at resetting their resistances.

I do agree, however, that the way Operators work now is cumbersome, ESPECIALLY as a client since Transference is expressly synced with the host (for some reason). That means I typically have around a second's worth of delay every time I try to switch, and the switch also resets my camera view. Even then, what am I really switching for? Am I perhaps planning to spend some time fighting as my Operator? Well... No, because my Operator sucks ass even with all the upgrades I have for them. No, I'm switching to my Operator to fire exactly one shot cast exactly one Void Blast in order to trigger game mechanics, then I'm swapping right back to my Warframe. It's a glorified Transcendence at that point, which does fit with your proposal for a "rage meter." I don't think DE ever really thought through Operator gameplay, so we're left with a neat system that we never really have reason to use. Sort of like K-Drives.

[DrakeWurrum]

On 2020-09-17 at 7:22 AM, Steel_Rook said:

-snip-

You have completely missed the entire point of my argument. Your argument is why the Helminth system is terrible. It's why the abilities it grants got nerfed down so that nearly every choice is either niche or useless.

If you continue to argue "But then everybody will have to use that!" nothing will get added to the game, and it will only stagnate, out of fear of adding anything too effective or powerful. It's what is preventing Operator combat from actually being fun, let alone effective in any fashion. Because people like you have this concern that making it too effective will "force" players to use it.

Even though players already find niche uses for it with what little is in there (like Zenurik energy regen, or Naramon for combo point management), so that they are "forced" to use it for certain things.

I'm taking issue with that argument being used against adding things to the game that are powerful or effective.

On 2020-09-17 at 7:22 AM, Steel_Rook said:

I'm not sure what argument you're making here.

I'm not sure how you're missing the argument there. You were trying to compare Void's status proc to what other status procs do, worried that Void would make them useless if buffed to be too effective.

Void does not compete with other damage types. You cannot trade out the Viral damage on your melee weapon for Void.

That's why I brought up that it only comes from Amps (and now Xaku).

 

Nothing of what I responded to you with had anything to do with his specific suggestion of de-leveling enemies. I think it's a status proc that could work if designed right, and I feel it would fit the theme of the damage type, but you're right that it has obvious problems and that there are better designs.

[Steel_Rook]

9 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

Nothing of what I responded to you with had anything to do with his specific suggestion of de-leveling enemies. I think it's a status proc that could work if designed right, and I feel it would fit the theme of the damage type, but you're right that it has obvious problems and that there are better designs.

I think we're talking past each other a little bit, then. My concerns are specifically about de-levelling enemies. I agree that Void could use a better status effect, no argument there. Bullet Attract is "nice," but it requires coordination to use since you need to then SHOOT the attracted enemy. That works with Unairu's Magnetic Blast because the Bullet Attract effect there is guaranteed. I can pop into my Operator, Void Blast an enemy, then pop back into my Warframe and unload. Not so much with random Void Status chance, especially since Amps generally have fairly low percentages. Be nice if the Status Effect recoloured to match Amp energy, too.

I think it's worth getting into what DE's design goal behind Operators even was. What's the core gameplay loop there? They don't want Operators to be stronger than Warframes so there's no reason to STAY as an Operator for long periods of time. However, if we're only going to jump into them for a few seconds here and there for spike damage or spike control or spike support or some such... Is Transference substantially better than Transcendence? It seems to me like DE threw Operators into the game because someone thought the idea was cool, but without a solid plan for how players were intended to play that. As a result, I have a hard time imagining what a better Void Status would even be without turning Operators into even more of a Stat Stick. Like... How are they even supposed to help me fight Sentients, for example? The game claims this is the case, but I'm not feeling it in practice.

I'm definitely up for a better Void Status effect. I just worry that de-levelling enemies is too powerful, and potentially the wrong way to address the game's still-pretty-bad level scaling system.