With Marked for Death severe nerf, it's time to finally look at other AoE nuking abilities

[LagerhausJonny]

vor 6 Stunden schrieb Reidenshi:

Do you actually believe it? Have you seen the ability description? "A portion of the next damage you deal to the enemy will be dealt to all enemies around". After the nerf the description stayed the same, yet now it's not the damage you dealt, but the damage that enemy health threshold received. And we deal a lot more damage most of the time.

In fact they're not. DE are reluctant to nerf them due to potential (and obvious) extremely negative reaction from a certain vocal part of community. They admitted it at one interview. Even mentioned they're having problems with enemy design because of it.

I do not work at DE and neither do you, so neither you or me have any basis to stand on other than what information DE provides. You are free to interpret those in any way - but that does not make you any more right than anyone elses guess.

[Edit] I found this thread without much effort on a good analysis of the ability in question. Skip to the last page for some analysis on why the previous function was probably bugged - just as DE stated: 

 

Everything you write is somehow asserting that you are part of a silent majority that you exclusively represent. That may be my own subjective feeling but in any case - what statistics and proof can you present to make you think that you and your associates represent the significant counterpart to that vocal group that likes AoE frames you mentioned? Which facts can you offer to disprove you yourself do not belong to a really small minority in this community? 

Looking at this thread most of the posts are from you and most of them that are not, are not agreeing with you. Just looking at this trend: what offer do you bring to the table to restore some of the lost fun if DE were actually make happen, what you perceive as a problem? Given this topics polarizing potential you surely must have thought about an offer to the community instead of changing the games concept into something that you personally like better and leaving everyone else who had fun the way it is in the dust? Shrinking the community of the game further by making drastic changes cannot be in your interest due to all attached implications, right?

[-Augustus-]

4 hours ago, selig_fay said:

all complaints are only about AFK potential, which means 4 ability

Your not having any idea what AFK actually means in the context of Warframe isn't what I'd call a personal failing, but it does negate your opinion as to what should happen to avoid people supposedly AFKing.

[Reidenshi]

5 hours ago, -Augustus- said:

This is how you kill a game that's already in unsteady shape.

So the only reason for you to play is being able to spam AoE nukes. Ah well.

[Reidenshi]

2 hours ago, LagerhausJonny said:

I do not work at DE and neither do you, so neither you or me have any basis to stand on other than what information DE provides. You are free to interpret those in any way - but that does not make you any more right than anyone elses guess.

It's not a matter of interpretation.

Let's say, you deal 1 million damage to a single target. The number you see on screen is exactly 1 million. Your arsenal states that the portion M4D deals is 75% of your dealt damage. Yet in fact M4D doesn't deal 750 000 damage to enemies around the target, despite its description. It deals 600 damage because the target happened to have 800 HP.

You know, this isn't the first time DE call the nerf a "fix". Exactly same thing happened when they removed Venari's ability to heal defense targets and called it a fix. Later they even admitted calling this a fix was incorrect. It was about half a year ago. Don't you remember?

2 hours ago, LagerhausJonny said:

Everything you write is somehow asserting that you are part of a silent majority that you exclusively represent.

You really think community divides only in two parts? You're not even in the same boat with "never nerf" squad since you support DE's decisions when they call them fixes. If, let's say, next week they introduce universal line of sight restriction to all AoE stuff and call it a late fix, you'll be defending their decision in some other topics about false claims or whatever.

2 hours ago, LagerhausJonny said:

Looking at this thread most of the posts are from you and most of them that are not, are not agreeing with you.

Pffft, so what? First of all, this is just a participating member forum post. 99,9% of the community won't even notice its existence. Such a post should come from DE for some real reaction. Secondly, those who noticed and agree with it are likely to not post anything because they have nothing to add. Thirdly, those who noticed yet don't really care about the topic won't comment either. Lastly, I don't even have to bother replying to anything here, since my post is a question to DE only, community members can't answer it anyways.

[IamLoco]

5 hours ago, BRZZAFK said:

So you think just because M4D is out outperform Nuker in a small place. It deserve the big hammer. but Nuker putting every other dps frame and weapon out of job in most places is fine? 

No.

 

[CopperBezel]

3 hours ago, Reidenshi said:

You know, this isn't the first time DE call the nerf a "fix". Exactly same thing happened when they removed Venari's ability to heal defense targets and called it a fix. Later they even admitted calling this a fix was incorrect. It was about half a year ago. Don't you remember?

Cloud Walker's speed nerf as well, although that one was complicated, since the patch notes presented it as a fix for something that didn't even accurately describe the change that had actually been made in practice, and could only really be explained as an internal miscommunication. 

M4D does look more like a fix than others do, because a) the change to the damage cap came alongside changes to interactions with mods and arcanes that were definitely bugs, and b) it's completely plausible that they really did intend for M4D to be quite limited. With the changes that were made, you really can still kill squads of enemies with the right setup, and it's plausible to me that that's what they had in mind.

But I do think those are two different kinds of fixes, because the former is fixing a bug and the latter is fixing a (very easy to find) exploit. There are a lot of interactions in Warframe that don't seem to have been intended but are safely considered a part of normal gameplay, like using a Helios with a Deconstructor Prime statstick to get extra Blood Rush from the Gladiator set. The example of the Xoris is relevant again since that gave players a benefit that DE didn't intend, but was simply a result of using fully intended mechanics in an unexpected combination. 

So yeah, I completely agree with you that "fix" is a spectrum here, and sometimes the thing being "fixed" is the loophole that players discovered, despite the fact that finding loopholes is itself a normal part of the game until one results in something just a bit too silly. (I do think that in the furthest edge cases, the word "fix" gets used partly for fear of the never-nerf crowd, where a less dysfunctional community can actually stomach the word "ban".)

3 hours ago, Reidenshi said:

Pffft, so what? First of all, this is just a participating member forum post. 99,9% of the community won't even notice its existence. Such a post should come from DE for some real reaction. Secondly, those who noticed and agree with it are likely to not post anything because they have nothing to add. Thirdly, those who noticed yet don't really care about the topic won't comment either. Lastly, I don't even have to bother replying to anything here, since my post is a question to DE only, community members can't answer it anyways.

I'm still waiting for your response to what a "limited, inefficient nuke" looks like if not Breach Surge. So far as I can tell, the premise of your original post is simply not true once you take the time to work it out, and the whole thing dissolves into the ether. 

[Solarsyphon]

Currently warframe has a variety of different play styles tied to different mission types and aoe nuking is one of them.  De can and has created game modes that specialise to different types such as the disruption and boss missions which prioritizes single target damage,  tank meta in  arbitration, excavation and mobile defence which prioritize CC as well as the exterminate and survival missions which prioritise nuking. I think really what they are better off doing is at the high end ramping up the specialisation of mission types.  To bring back CC all that really needs to happen is to have some high threat enemies that are better off CC than dead.

2 hours ago, Reidenshi said:

You know, this isn't the first time DE call the nerf a "fix". Exactly same thing happened when they removed Venari's ability to heal defense targets and called it a fix. Later they even admitted calling this a fix was incorrect. It was about half a year ago. Don't you remember?

Part of the M4D nerf was definitely a bug fix, it was double applying damage modifiers and actually doing way more damage than it was claiming. Its a bug we've seen before with gas there is something screwy in their programming of stealth finishers which causes this problem and its been consistently removed when ever it applies to enough of the damage for people to notice.  There must be a black list in the code or something that they keep forgetting to update. That said capping to the enemies current health did reduce the power more than you would expect from the description and that perhaps makes the ability feel disappointing which is a problem. however, I really disagree with your framing it as if calling it a fix is some kind of deception when it really isn't. A nerf is a type of fix, its a balancing fix. Arguably there is a language difference between De and the community with the community using the slang term Nerf but it would be very virtue signally to try to forcea them to performatively use the language of the community in some false solidarity. Ultimately there will always be the separation inherent to the relationship of salesmen and consumer. 

[LagerhausJonny]

Since OP does not want to indulge us on answers to the real important questions that several of us, including myself, have asked, I see no further purpose in pursuing this conversation. 

See you in another thread, maybe.

[Reidenshi]

20 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

I'm still waiting for your response to what a "limited, inefficient nuke" looks like if not Breach Surge.

Sleight of Hand with lowered range, for example.

10 minutes ago, Solarsyphon said:

Part of the M4D nerf was definitely a bug fix, it was double applying damage modifiers and actually doing way more damage than it was claiming.

Yeah, I only address the part about health threshold cap.

6 minutes ago, LagerhausJonny said:

Since OP does not want to indulge us on answers to the real important questions that several of us, including myself, have asked, I see no further purpose in pursuing this conversation. 

And what question of yours have I not addressed? About having fun? Fun is subjective. Who knows, you might find it in active gameplay once nuking becomes limited.

[Xaero]

6 hours ago, LagerhausJonny said:

Shrinking the community of the game further by making drastic changes cannot be in your interest due to all attached implications, right?

Wait, what? Drastic game changes? Where? In the OP? Tell me, how will the game change if AoE nuking becomes more limited? What's gonna happen?

Shrinking the community? You think people play the game because of AoE spam? You think people leave because of something like this and not the quality of the content? You know, there's a lot of AoE spam in Railjack. You can clear the whole map in about a minute with Tether. Does that make Railjack enjoyable. Nope, it's boring. Because there's no content there at all. One mission type, identical objectives, same stuff all the way. After Railjack update Warframe couldn't even get in top 15 played games (Steam statistics). Now we have Deimos update, which has little to do with AoE spam. Yet it brought us a fair amount of interesting and engaging content, and even now, almost a month later, the game is still in top 10 (Steam statistics).

You're trying to give AoE nuking more importance than there actually is. Quality of content is what's really important. Engaging gameplay. Good economy. Diversity.

[CopperBezel]

16 minutes ago, Reidenshi said:

Sleight of Hand with lowered range, for example.

Put Molt on a frame with high range and strength and low duration, then? I honestly think you're better off with Breach Surge. And either way, there are exactly as many S#&$ty nukes as there are S#&$ty tanking abilities. (I say this while still wanting Null Star, a garbage tanking ability, to be replaced with Antimatter Drop, a moderate nuking ability. Because again, I see no inconsistency in that the Helminth gives us damage mediation and damage dealing but not true tanking or nuking, but actually don't think it would have broken anything to include a baby nuke in there.)

[selig_fay]

8 hours ago, -Augustus- said:

Your not having any idea what AFK actually means in the context of Warframe isn't what I'd call a personal failing, but it does negate your opinion as to what should happen to avoid people supposedly AFKing.

Well, semi-AFK. It doesn't matter. It's just not the first time I've come across the opinion that Saryn needs nerfs who either have double standards or have no idea that Vauban is the same thing, just like Inaros, who can't die in actual content (put mecha mods and get 30 meter slash nuck). On the other hand, there are some people who call the old days the best and the fact that the warframe lost its way at some stage. This is also not entirely true, because the immortal Trinity with Ogris destroyed everything and was always an OP, before the first nerf came. 

But then again, Trinity was an OP, because there were no limits for her. Well, except for an old vampire who made you kill the enemy before the ally looked in his direction, because everyone except Trinity was just starving.

[Xepthrichros]

5 hours ago, Xaero said:

Wait, what? Drastic game changes? Where? In the OP? Tell me, how will the game change if AoE nuking becomes more limited? What's gonna happen?

Shrinking the community? You think people play the game because of AoE spam? You think people leave because of something like this and not the quality of the content? You know, there's a lot of AoE spam in Railjack. You can clear the whole map in about a minute with Tether. Does that make Railjack enjoyable. Nope, it's boring. Because there's no content there at all. One mission type, identical objectives, same stuff all the way. After Railjack update Warframe couldn't even get in top 15 played games (Steam statistics). Now we have Deimos update, which has little to do with AoE spam. Yet it brought us a fair amount of interesting and engaging content, and even now, almost a month later, the game is still in top 10 (Steam statistics).

You're trying to give AoE nuking more importance than there actually is. Quality of content is what's really important. Engaging gameplay. Good economy. Diversity.

AOE nuking definitely is quite important. The amount of posts about the MfD nerf and how it has ruined people's fun should make it self-evident.. The game is in top 10 because the Deimos update includes Helminth, and almost everyone knows the resource demands, which result in grind, of that duplicitous clam-in-the-wall-which-Ordis-hates (and now I see why Ordis hates it, Helminth's abilities can be changed on a whim... i.e. devs will nerf the abilities it provides at any time they want, and Ordis apparently was given meta dialogue telling us to never invest in that thing). Don't mistake more grind as diverse gameplay and quality content.  Let's see what others think of the your so-called successful first month which you think proves Deimos is great. Take note, I personally had fun in Deimos missions, but I am not blind to the grievances mentioned by others in the patch notes feedback, some of which go directly against your claim of engaging gameplay or diversity, or even good economy.

Deimos = more  conservation, fishing, mining. Some of which is glitchy so people cannot find their target resource thus adding gameplay time

Deimos = more defend point A, point B, point C objectives.

Deimos = another content island, now with forced resource grinds to previous isles (e.g. breath of the eidolons) in the weapon blueprints, just because they want to avoid the criticism of being another content island.

Deimos = definitely cheesible with AOE-style attacks like Mesa's and Ember's 4 etc. and Octavia 1-to-win on Necramechs. So this isn't producing diverse gameplay.

Deimos = grinding Iso Vaults again and again because the Necramech mods have 10% drop chance and Scintillant was also not spawning/dropping for a good amount of time due to "glitches", 

The two aspects of Deimos that might've genuinely added some diversity or new gameplay were the Necramech we can build, and Helminth ability infusion.
Necramech because it is generally different from all the warframes in terms of how it moves, but this thing is locked behind a grind, so grinding to obtain it does add gameplay time. Then leveling the necramech mastery is adding gameplay time (and there is that glitch where you don't earn mastery even when you used the necramech, for whatever reason). And I already mentioned the grind for the mods above.
Helminth enables people to explore more meme ways to be OP and nuke things, and overkill stuff, or become even tankier and more immortal than before. This, along with the grind for resources to feed Helminth, are retaining players. But the fun meme-ness of Helminth could be living on borrowed time, for with the way the devs handled MfD (which itself had added diversity by letting players have ONE MORE WAY to nuke stuff, until it was taken away), it may just be a matter of time before they "Fix" all the other interesting interactions players discover.

 

As for Railjack, AOE spam or not, was not the issue that people avoided it. Rather, they didn't play it because pre-adjustments, it gave off the impression of requiring a competent squad, and the community is failure-adverse, and thus did not want to take that chance of having an incompetent squad in a public game. And there's others that hated archwing and see railjack as an extension of archwing. And similarly, also those that want to play warframe to actually enjoy warframes with their abilities, bullet jumping, etc., not fly a ship. I personally was an early adopter of railjack, did everything before the devs went back to adjust the difficulty etc. and now it is really on par with the meme-explosions-everywhere-lets-chill level after it was adjusted.

[shootaman777]

How about we don't nerf the good things?

How about we buff the bad things so we have a lot of good options, first?

Then, we can talk about some tweaks to the good options that stand out as 'better than good'?

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

On 2020-09-18 at 12:43 AM, Reidenshi said:

If you consider this a problem, why is nuking overall still not addressed?

Because MfD was nerfed based on popularity.  Not power.

DE isn't against us nuking in the game.  Just "effortless" gameplay.  Most of the frames DE reworked retained a vast majority of the power they had.  you just needed to do extra steps to have said power.  because they want people interacting with the game more.  And the bare minimum of that to them is more button pressing.

DE isn't going to shoot nuking out the air lock because the game is ultimately a power fantasy horde based game.  We're meant to cleave through enemies.  It's not a tactical game.  They tried that initially and it wasn't popular.

[Reidenshi]

42 minutes ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

Because MfD was nerfed based on popularity.  Not power.

 

On 2020-09-17 at 7:55 PM, [DE]Megan said:

overwhelmingly nuking enemies left, right, and center

[(PSN)Siramezz]

tl;dr you want the game to be more harder, tedious, boring and long, leading to decline playerbase, all because you hate nukes?. This also means that you want to do wave 5 defense in 3 hours because of LoS.

[Reidenshi]

26 minutes ago, (PS4)Siramezz said:

This also means that you want to do wave 5 defense in 3 hours because of LoS.

 

On 2020-09-18 at 10:20 AM, Reidenshi said:

I'm pretty sure this problem will be fixed in no time with enough complaints. Right now we have AoE crutch so no need to make the gamemode better, right?

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

1 hour ago, Reidenshi said:

 

Yeah sorry but if the best you can do to "counter" my point is take a quote from DE when DE isn't consistent with their changes then I'm just not going to respond further.

[Reidenshi]

17 minutes ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

Yeah sorry but if the best you can do to "counter" my point is take a quote from DE when DE isn't consistent with their changes then I'm just not going to respond further.

What the? How do you know DE nerfed it because of popularity but not for the reason they themselves stated? Are you saying they lied? Where's the proof for your statement though? I very much doubt popularity was the case simply because most likely majority of playerbase haven't even unlocked it yet.

[Xaero]

4 hours ago, Xepthrichros said:

AOE nuking definitely is quite important. The amount of posts about the MfD nerf and how it has ruined people's fun should make it self-evident.

Aren't there always tons of posts after any nerfs? Riven dispositions, for example, have nothing to do with AoE topic, yet there are dozens of topics every time they get brought down. Yet how many people actually leave the game after the nerfs?

4 hours ago, Xepthrichros said:

The game is in top 10 because the Deimos update includes Helminth, and almost everyone knows the resource demands, which result in grind, of that duplicitous clam-in-the-wall-which-Ordis-hates (and now I see why Ordis hates it, Helminth's abilities can be changed on a whim... i.e. devs will nerf the abilities it provides at any time they want, and Ordis apparently was given meta dialogue telling us to never invest in that thing). Don't mistake more grind as diverse gameplay and quality content.  Let's see what others think of the your so-called successful first month which you think proves Deimos is great. Take note, I personally had fun in Deimos missions, but I am not blind to the grievances mentioned by others in the patch notes feedback, some of which go directly against your claim of engaging gameplay or diversity, or even good economy.

Didn't Railjack demand lots of grinding as well? It did. But the game couldn't reach top 15 after its launch. Not right away, and not months later.

Yeah, Deimos isn't perfect. But it's much better compared to Railjack release. Nerfs don't change the fact people are having fun with the update. There were no nerfs with RJ iirc, only buffs. Didn't help.

4 hours ago, Xepthrichros said:

Deimos = more  conservation, fishing, mining. Some of which is glitchy so people cannot find their target resource thus adding gameplay time

You mean, people spend more time in the game than they would because of bugs? That's an interesting point of view. But, once again, RJ bugginess didn't help.

4 hours ago, Xepthrichros said:

Deimos = more defend point A, point B, point C objectives.

I'd say low enemy density is the problem here. Timer ticks fast when you got lots of stuff to kill.

4 hours ago, Xepthrichros said:

Deimos = another content island, now with forced resource grinds to previous isles (e.g. breath of the eidolons) in the weapon blueprints, just because they want to avoid the criticism of being another content island.

How is Deimos a content island? It's not isolated like PoE was on release. Iso vaults are full of rare resources from other gamemodes. Necramechs are usable in other open-world maps and will be usable in regular missions in the future. Hema research can be accomplished easier now thanks to Deimos. Yet you call it a content island? What do you expect it to do in order to not be a content island?

4 hours ago, Xepthrichros said:

Deimos = definitely cheesible with AOE-style attacks like Mesa's and Ember's 4 etc. and Octavia 1-to-win on Necramechs. So this isn't producing diverse gameplay.

Well, I don't play Mesa or Ember or Octavia, but even if they are making content cheesible, aren't they the problem then? Regarding gameplay diversity, I meant different stuff to do. Unlike RJ where it's always exterminate and identical diversion objectives.

4 hours ago, Xepthrichros said:

Deimos = grinding Iso Vaults again and again because the Necramech mods have 10% drop chance and Scintillant was also not spawning/dropping for a good amount of time due to "glitches"

Well, they made things better with moving some mods to syndicate offerings. Drop chances sure could use serious buffs, but at least you can opt out and farm platinum to buy needed mods.

5 hours ago, Xepthrichros said:

Necramech because it is generally different from all the warframes in terms of how it moves, but this thing is locked behind a grind, so grinding to obtain it does add gameplay time. Then leveling the necramech mastery is adding gameplay time (and there is that glitch where you don't earn mastery even when you used the necramech, for whatever reason). And I already mentioned the grind for the mods above.

And what do you imply? That people wouldn't play otherwise?

5 hours ago, Xepthrichros said:

Helminth enables people to explore more meme ways to be OP and nuke things, and overkill stuff, or become even tankier and more immortal than before. This, along with the grind for resources to feed Helminth, are retaining players. But the fun meme-ness of Helminth could be living on borrowed time, for with the way the devs handled MfD (which itself had added diversity by letting players have ONE MORE WAY to nuke stuff, until it was taken away), it may just be a matter of time before they "Fix" all the other interesting interactions players discover.

What if they really hate nuking? I remember Pablo wanting to nerf Saryn (despite being the one who made her last rework). And there was an interview where he said they're having problems with enemy design because of our AoE power, and they're afraid of nerfing it because of the negative reaction. M4D might've been nerfed because it's new stuff, and majority of the players probably didn't manage to acquire it by that time.

5 hours ago, Xepthrichros said:

As for Railjack, AOE spam or not, was not the issue that people avoided it. Rather, they didn't play it because pre-adjustments, it gave off the impression of requiring a competent squad, and the community is failure-adverse, and thus did not want to take that chance of having an incompetent squad in a public game. And there's others that hated archwing and see railjack as an extension of archwing. And similarly, also those that want to play warframe to actually enjoy warframes with their abilities, bullet jumping, etc., not fly a ship. I personally was an early adopter of railjack, did everything before the devs went back to adjust the difficulty etc. and now it is really on par with the meme-explosions-everywhere-lets-chill level after it was adjusted.

There's simply nothing to do there aside spamming identical missions with identical process. So even those who enjoyed its core don't play it anymore.

[XaoGarrent]

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

We should try not to use low level enemies as a baseline for nerfing nukes, as really anything can "nuke" the starchart, but no one talks about how the damage very quickly falls off at higher levels. 

This is just more about a couple frames "stepping on your toes" when you could simply make your own group. Because I just "nuked" a low level Hydron with Gauss, yet no one is railing against gauss....

And then after said nerfs, will you be suggesting nerfing the Bramma again? If that's your issue, you should have no problem deleting that weapon from the game. Let's get rid of the Lenz as well and the tonkor and the penta. 

It would probably just be easier for you to make your own group instead of trying to return the game to some romanticized 2014 version. 

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

On 2020-09-18 at 2:40 AM, Reidenshi said:

You try to make it sound more complicated than it actually is.

Should they be the only frames that can do that job though? Because it's not the case with any other "speciality" anymore. I'll repeat once again: I promise to stop bringing this topic up if DE go back on their own words and make nuking universally available.

Yes, they should be. How would you suggest we make Trinity a nuker without removing my ability to heal lures?

There's 44 frames and they all have a niche. Saryn and Equinox are bad and not useful in many situations. When I was a new player I got Saryn and was surprised I didn't even end up using her as much as I thought I would. Just like any frame, you take them out for a situation that calls for it. I don't need Saryn for spys or arbitration defenses and many other missions.

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

4 hours ago, Reidenshi said:

What the? How do you know DE nerfed it because of popularity but not for the reason they themselves stated? Are you saying they lied? Where's the proof for your statement though? I very much doubt popularity was the case simply because most likely majority of playerbase haven't even unlocked it yet.

You mean where's my proof that DE is inconsistent with their takes on aspects of the game? I hope you're joking. 

 

As for the unlocking bit that's really irrelevant. DE nerfed abilities from helmith before anyone touched the system because ignorant individuals claimed those were the only good abilities and Theyed slap them in everything without even noting how something might not fit in the way that frame builds. 

 

DE nerfed catchmoon based on popularity even though other kitgun options were perfectly viable. 

 

DE nerfed limbos interaction with sentients because he became a popular option for scarlet spear farming. Etc.