Do we really need Stamina?

kwlingo · October 15, 2020

On 2020-10-11 at 9:14 AM, Steel_Rook said:

Currently, only three things that I can think of have Stamina in any fashion - Necramechs, Railjack, Operators. I want to question whether the Stamina mechanic of each serves a real purpose, whether it can be removed entirely or reduced in scope or altered in some fashion without offering power creep.

This is probably one of the best things to help balance the mechanics but players are always trying to find ways around it. Too many want challenge but if we cannot ever be limited by any means, the game just becomes way to AFKish and easy. And spamming the same ability has never sound fun to me.

But I'm sure the "macro Khora Steel Essence" farmers will beg to differ. If DE implemented stamina for spamming same abilities over and over. The Khora exploit would have been eliminated and the AFK game play would disappear completely and not the AFK AI instead.

selig_fay · October 15, 2020

19 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'll ask this again - what does limited Stamina add to the Necramech core gameplay experience?

I apologize if something offended you in my post.

The question you asked is the answer. I can supplement this with an additional question: "why should necromech not experience stamina restriction?" Any of your answers will not be related to gameplay, for one simple reason, necromech does not have a place for this gameplay to take place.

I can only say that as long as this limitation is here, necromech has a chance of creating a big call to content, where you will only manage necromech. But as soon as this limitation is removed, this hardcore potential immediately drops down. This is my reason why I stand for this. In fact, this is what can create a new warframe gameplay within a warframe. This is what the players want. We don't nerfs, we just provide a different game. And I think it has to do with duviri paradox.

Steel_Rook · October 15, 2020

I have a suspicion that I'll ned up asking the same question multiple times, so please bear with me.

1 hour ago, kwlingo said:

This is probably one of the best things to help balance the mechanics but players are always trying to find ways around it. Too many want challenge but if we cannot ever be limited by any means, the game just becomes way to AFKish and easy. And spamming the same ability has never sound fun to me.

How? By what mechanism does Stamina "help balance the mechanics?" I've already seen this stated multiple times in this thread, but never with any substance or supporting evidence. I'm given this general idea that Stamina improves the game in some fashion, but I'm never given either a reason to believe this or even a clear explanation for what this entails. I went to great lengths to examine the potential roles that Stamina as it's implemented right now could be argued to serve, and offered my reasoning for why I felt those roles brought mainly inconvenience with very little benefit.

Again, let me offer the same examples: What role does limited Stamina for Necramech Sprint serve? There is negligible difference between Necramech Sprint and Walk, thus the solution to Sprint Stamina is to just not use Sprint. There is no effect on gameplay. What role does limited Stamina for Necramech Headrush serve? The continuos Headrush - the only one where Stamina costs actually matters - has no role in combat. It is, pure and simple, a travel tool. As a travel tool, however, it has a range of ~400 meters with mods, after which the player needs to idle for ~10 seconds before travelling again. The player is rarely if ever in any danger when this happens, so the only effect it has is creating a 10-second buffer of dead air every so often. How is that an improvement to the core gameplay loop?

I've been told that Stamina in some way helps to limit mobility. Assuming that that's a good thing (which I find questionable, but let's roll with it for the sake of argument), is Necramech mobility not already limited enough by other factors? Necramecs are large and thus can't fit into small spaces. Necramechs can jump high, but their jumps cover fairly little lateral distance. Necramechs can Hover, but their hover has very low lateral speed. Headrush is a decent travel tool, but it's slow relative to other tools we can bring with no opportunity cost (K-Dridves and Archwings) while still being heavily limited by both the Necramech's size and its own very wide turning radius. All of these things combined serve as a sufficient limiter to Necramech mobility without also requiring a Stamina bar.

Again, you're telling me THAT Stamina helps balance, but you're not giving me any substance on why or how, nor really attempting to convince me that this is a good thing. There's only so much I can do with this information.

59 minutes ago, selig_fay said:

I can only say that as long as this limitation is here, necromech has a chance of creating a big call to content, where you will only manage necromech. But as soon as this limitation is removed, this hardcore potential immediately drops down. This is my reason why I stand for this. In fact, this is what can create a new warframe gameplay within a warframe. This is what the players want. We don't nerfs, we just provide a different game. And I think it has to do with duviri paradox.

How? By what mechanism will Necramech Stamina "create a big call to content?" What constitutes "hardcore potential" that can be lost if Necramech Stamina is removed? You start a sentence with "this is my reason" yet no reason is actually supplied in the preceding text. You assert that "this is what players want." What is "this" that players want, in this context? Can you provide some evidence, citation or at least argument that "this" - whatever that is - is in fact what players want? I assume English is not your primary language (neither is it mine, I'm Bulgarian) which would explain why your text is somewhat garbled, but it makes your points genuinely difficult to track. You speak in vague generalities and make these statements that don't really mean anything out of context... Yet don't seem interested in providing said context.

General statements like these are easy to make with an air of authority. To borrow a different subject I've been posting about, I can say with authority that "removing Critical Chance entirely and turning all headshots into Criticals instead will improve combat. Better combat is what people want." This sort of thing sounds true if you don't think about it and sounds reasonable if you read it in an affirmative tone, but it's entirely hollow. HOW would this improve combat? WHY am I asserting that people want it? What exactly does this entail? What about non-headshot weak points? What about headshot multiplers? What about critical headshot multipliers? What about mods? Making blanket statements is easy, but it's also meaningless. I don't write these long posts just because I like the sound of my own voice, figuratively speaking. I write them because I'm trying to eke out specific information. I can't really do anything with what you're giving me, because there's nothing specific in it.

To both of you:

You can very easily turn my argument around on me. After all, if I don't think there's any substance to your arguments for why Stamina is good, then what are my arguments for why it isn't. The thing, though, is... That's what the OP is for. I laid out my argument for why I feel that Stamina fails to contribute meaningfully to the core gameplay loop and why removing it - or in many cases limiting/redesigning it - would lead to improved gameplay, and specifically what form that gameplay would take. I don't expect you to necessarily agree with them. However, if you disagree then I would appreciate it if you could address the arguments and tell me where - specifically where - I went wrong and why you feel those parts are left wanting. This isn't so I can fight you - quite the opposite. If I have some idea of what in particular you have a problem with, then I can work to rectify it and propose compromises.

And if your disagreement is ideological - that ANY proposal to remove or reduce the impact of Stamina in ANY way is detrimental for the game... OK, but if that's the case then I'd like to know why that is. What do you fear will happen, that isn't happening already? And if you feel that more of what's happening already will spread, why do you dislike what's happening already? What's the problem, what kinds of possible solutions might be there? Because absent any specifics, I'm left speaking in vague generalities like exactly what I'm doing here. There's nothing wrong with discussing overall game design, but without at least some thought cast to implementation then we're ostensibly contemplating our own navels.

selig_fay · October 15, 2020

@Steel_Rook I'll say it again. I may or may not agree with you, because the problem of stamina is very acute right now. Stamina is not a major problem right now, because you can use an operator, frame, or archwing at any time. Right now, it's more about convenience than gameplay. On the other hand, we don't know if it will work in the future. Stamina doesn't work by itself, it works for situations and micro-moments of the game where poor management can kill you.

The only reason why this exists now is that if it is removed and then added back, it will cause a ton of negativity from the community that is used to living without stamina. This is already causing negativity now. And I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about the community. I'm talking about my favorite youtuber, for example, who I agreed with on everything but this.

My opinion is that it's hard to create content when players are gods. Stamina is just one aspect of restrictions that can help create something really interesting. People even suggest necromech pvp, because it's much more balanced than the space monkeys we call warframes. You can call it repeating old mistakes, but I think it's worth trying to restart the old game concept again. This is not about DE not learning from its mistakes. It may be about trying to fix the error in a different way than just removing the mechanics.

Again, when I talk about you, I don't mean you personally. I'm talking about the community because I know that my opinion is not popular.

The other way is to limit mobility completely, but no one wants that, I think.

kwlingo · October 15, 2020

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Again, you're telling me THAT Stamina helps balance, but you're not giving me any substance on why or how, nor really attempting to convince me that this is a good thing. There's only so much I can do with this information.

Okay so how about infinite duration on all abilities. For example Khora whipclaw the damage just stays forever as a tick damage arua in the atmosphere and every ability cast stays infinite roaming forever thus actually causing an infinite damage since the ability damage or effect never ends, just cumulative. Even 1 damage lingering forever spammed will reach damage cap. The End.

The stamina for the current whipclaw effect is at the instance of cast. But if you eliminate stamina, the effect to linger forever it changes the game mechanic as some abilities have a stamina effect duration. The reason an ability can linger is because the effect is able to withstand the atmospheric pressure for a period of time withstanding elemental decay. If the atmosphere is vacuumed or contained then the effect can live on forever, such as a test tube that scientist use for research. By creating a environment where you take out stress, fatigue and endurance, most things can stay at their state of creation.

Stamina = Duration

A great example of balance is the stamina/duration time one can use pads on Steel Path content and is limited to a set number of usage per mission. Thus creating some strategy instead of spamming mindlessly.

Steel_Rook · October 15, 2020

45 minutes ago, kwlingo said:

The stamina for the current whipclaw effect is at the instance of cast. But if you eliminate stamina, the effect to linger forever it changes the game mechanic as some abilities have a stamina effect duration. The reason an ability can linger is because the effect is able to withstand the atmospheric pressure for a period of time withstanding elemental decay. If the atmosphere is vacuumed or contained then the effect can live on forever, such as a test tube that scientist use for research. By creating a environment where you take out stress, fatigue and endurance, most things can stay at their state of creation.

I think you might have misunderstood what I meant by Stamina. Please refer to my OP for a proper definition. What you seem to be discussing here is not Stamina, but Energy. I'm using the term "Stamina" in reference specifically to movement mechanics in the game, not Warframe energy. The subject of Energy economy is... Far too large and complex to get into it here. If your concern is about how the removal of Stamina would reflect on Warframe abilities, then don't be. This is not what I'm discussing here, and no changes to Stamina have implications on Energy. I hope that clears it up.

1 hour ago, selig_fay said:

Stamina doesn't work by itself, it works for situations and micro-moments of the game where poor management can kill you.

Can you give me any examples of this? Again, that's an incredibly vague statement. Let's take Necramechs since we can actually filed-test those right now. Name one instance where poor Necramech Stamina management can kill me. Ideally, make it an instance where good Necramech Stamina would have saved me. Granted, Necramech deaths don't actually "kill" us, but we'll disregard that for the sake of argument. Assuming losing a Necramech is a failure condition, what circumstances can you imagine where proper Stamina management can make the difference between success and failure? Because I genuinely can't think of any - and I did try. As a point of fact, my inability to conceive of such circumstances is precisely why I posted the thread in the first place. I couldn't think of a single thing that Necramech Stamina actually DID, other than provide a mild inconvenience, thus I questioned why we need it in the first place.

1 hour ago, selig_fay said:

The only reason why this exists now is that if it is removed and then added back, it will cause a ton of negativity from the community that is used to living without stamina.

But that reason is tautological - it's a circular argument. Yes, if Stamina were removed and then re-added, it would cause complaints but it doesn't address why it was added in the first place. Or failing that - because historical arguments are useful only for the sake of curiosity - it doesn't address what purpose Stamina serves now, or indeed even what purpose it could serve in the future. I get the feeling that you have some kind of suggestion or plan for the future that you're talking around - some what to expand on Stamina to make it more useful. If you do, then please share it. I'd like to know, because right now it feels like we're talking past each other altogether.

1 hour ago, selig_fay said:

My opinion is that it's hard to create content when players are gods. Stamina is just one aspect of restrictions that can help create something really interesting. People even suggest necromech pvp, because it's much more balanced than the space monkeys we call warframes. You can call it repeating old mistakes, but I think it's worth trying to restart the old game concept again. This is not about DE not learning from its mistakes. It may be about trying to fix the error in a different way than just removing the mechanics.

So there's a lot here - let me try to unpack. I'm going to sidestep the PvP aspect entirely. I have no experience in PvP, no interest in PvP and Warframe already has its own entirely separate PvP ruleset. If Stamina has a use in PvP, then it can be added into PvP separately without affecting PvE. Warframe has plenty of precedent for exactly these kinds of decisions and - on the rare occasions that I check out PvP discussions - people seem to be of the opinion that more of these special PvP rules are needed. I may be wrong there as it's outside my wheelhouse, but my point is this: Stamina can exist in PvP without existing in PvE.

You also seem to be arguing that the removal of Stamina from Warframes was a mistake, but I still don't see why you think that. I'm not saying you're wrong, but rather that you're repeating this assertion without making an effort to explain or convince. What makes legacy Warframe "better" than current Warframe? Or to ask the question more narrowly - what makes Stamina in legacy Warframe a better mechanical implementation of movement than Stamina-less movement now? I wasn't around for Warframe 14 years ago, but I've read and seen a lot about it. It strikes me as a game with a fundamentally different paradigm - a semi-cover shooter, essentially. It feels closer to something like Payday 2 or the old Relic Space Marine game, intended for slower, weaker characters and with a much greater emphasis on breaking line of sight to take cover. While I'll freely admit that this is a different style of game, it's not an objectively better style of game. If anything, I'd argue that semi-cover shooters with a Halo-style regenerating shield are a dime a dozen.

What Warframe constitutes now - a game with fully unbridalled movement - is substantially less represented in video games as a whole. The closest modern comparison I can give is maybe Titanfall 2, but even that is substantially more grounded with a substantially higher "opportunity cost" to its various parkour manoeuvres. Warframe's bullet jump is fairly unique. The only game I can call off memory being anywhere close to this was City of Heroes back in the day - and even that took a few years before travel costs were reduced enough for that to be the case. That's the only other game I can think of which allowed me to just push a button and leap over a tall building, or push a button and simply fly with no eventual end point. I recall fondly spending 45 minutes roaming a "Hazard Zone" fighting various enemies with my feet never touching the ground. Warframe doesn't quite match that as DE seem determined to prevent us from using Archwings for long periods of time, but that experience is fairly rare nonetheless. How was that a mistake?

You assert that Stamina can "help create something really interesting." OK, what? What really interesting thing are you picturing that the presence of Stamina could help create that the absence of Stamina would make impossible or at least impractical? Again, I'm not trying to attack you here, I genuinely don't know what kind of gameplay you're envisioning for which Stamina is necessary. Because if you're envisioning some kind of slower-paced tactical combat... Well, Stamina isn't needed for that. Again, Division 2 has infinite Stamina (it doesn't have any limitations on Sprint) and yet that game's able to achieve far more tactical combat than Warframe.

Again - go back through my OP. I'm aware that some instances of movement limitation make sense. I'm not proposing we allow players to Void Dash back-to-back at no cost because that would be silly. It's why the Itzal's version of Blink was removed and then reimplemented as Universal Blink with a 3-second cooldown. My proposal was along the same lines. I proposed a different implementation of Void Dashes, but one which retains as close to the same limitations as I could manage. I'm not, therefore, suggesting we just get rid of Stamina unilaterally without any additional considerations. In fact, I made very specific suggestions, some of which even retain some form of limitation. Do you find these specific suggestion to be bad for the game? If so, how and why? Could I potentially do something to improve them?

If I may be vague in return for a moment...

Again, general statements give me nothing to work with. I can make assertions, like that you seem to just be against mobility in general, but I don't know if that's true, either since I don't know exactly what we're talking about. It's entirely possible for games to have high, unrestricted mobility and still offer compelling combat. It's been done in the past, within the various examples I've given. What, specifically, do you believe prevents Warframe from doing the same? I ask this, because I strongly suspect your issues are entirely unrelated to Stamina, but appear to be caused by for superficial reasons. To me, it's a bit like criticising, say, the Sentient Stasis resistance change to Scarlet Spear as making the game worse, when it's only the superficial manifestation of a much more serious problem of uncountered large-scale AoE control abilities, in particular when they also come with a barrier. Changing Stasis for Sentients only papered over the issue, but didn't address it. Slapping people with Stamina will obviously make us less mobile, but it won't really address the deeper reason of why people use mobility to skip content. Smart game design works WITH players, not against them, at least in my experience.

City of Heroes lead developer at the time Matt Miller is often quoted as saying "Give the players what they want (within reason)." That's largely what I base a majority of my development proposals on. How are people playing the game, what can we do to facilitate them playing it this way, but also having more fun. Attempting to railroad players into playing a game how you (as a developer) want them to play is why previous City of Heroes lead developer Jack Emmert is most famous for talking about "his vision" for the game, and the lengths he and his team went to try and prevent people from playing it any other way. I was there, and I can tell you for a fact - it didn't work. City of Heroes is in many ways fondly remembered as much DESPITE its developer's vision as because of it. From what I've seen so far, much the same applies to Warframe.

Rasdan · October 15, 2020

On 2020-10-11 at 9:14 PM, Steel_Rook said:

I'm not sure about Hover. My gut tells me that we can just remove the Stamina cost of Hover and leave it as it is.

Hover should work like Aim Glide, Jump and hold the aim button to hover.

Skaleek · October 15, 2020

Stamina does nothing to enrich railjack or necramech play. Nor does it provide any balance. It's just a limitation for the sake of limitation. Having unlimited afterburner or unlimited stamina would change very little in the way both modes play.

selig_fay · October 15, 2020

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

But that reason is tautological - it's a circular argument. Yes, if Stamina were removed and then re-added, it would cause complaints but it doesn't address why it was added in the first place. Or failing that - because historical arguments are useful only for the sake of curiosity - it doesn't address what purpose Stamina serves now, or indeed even what purpose it could serve in the future. I get the feeling that you have some kind of suggestion or plan for the future that you're talking around - some what to expand on Stamina to make it more useful. If you do, then please share it. I'd like to know, because right now it feels like we're talking past each other altogether.

If we are talking about using stamina, then some abilities could do this instead of energy. At least movement abilities like rhino charge.

If about stamina in general, it depends on how you build the map. For example, the enemy is in a sniper position. The map has a large area with small covers with different accents from each other. The sniper does a lot of damage and you can't kill him yet until you complete some tasks. Also, mobs will spawn on the location to interfere with you and knock you out of cover. A warframe will solve this problem easily, because there is no stamina and more mobility. But if the stamina ends at a bad time for Necromech, it will be a different conversation. Similarly, if you make mobs that can stun players, then this stun must be blocked or the player must evade it. But if the players are highly mobile, this is what we get about the harpoon problem, which doesn't give the player time to Dodge because the mob itself doesn't have time to conduct an attack. That is, we can't make a slow stun mechanic that the player will be able to evade, because the player will do it automatically due to high mobility, which means it doesn't make sense. On the other hand, if this attack is fast, it creates a false impression that the game is not fair. Stamina does not allow this. You're the one who let the stamina run out, which means you're guilty of it. But there is also a fine line here, like the old blocking for stamina, where you lost the entire stamina for 1 bullet. It's just about what was most revealing about why stamina was removed. The mechanics were fine, but no one wanted to do numbers.

But it depends on what DE want to try. Necromech is a 100% public testing ground. At the moment, it is not created for anything else.

By the way, bulletjump appeared due to a bug. This was due to a melee attack that allowed you to go through three rooms in a couple of seconds. It was a fix, but the players made a fuss, so the developers decided to make a concession. This was not intended mechanics. And I would say it doesn't work for the gameplay, it works more for ignoring the gameplay. Think about it the next time you go to make a capture and run through a crowd of enemies who just don't have time to even shoot at you.

Steel_Rook · October 16, 2020

15 hours ago, Rasdan said:

Hover should work like Aim Glide, Jump and hold the aim button to hover.

What I'm about to say is slightly off-topic, but I'd actually like to have it the other way around. I've long felt that we should separate Glide from Aim entirely, specifically so that I could glide without aiming. I realise that there are mods which reduce aimglide zoom, but to my mind their existence is also tautological - solving an issue at some opportunity cost even though the issue doesn't need to exist. The same goes for separating Wall Latch from Aiming. To my understanding, the reason those things are bound is a mix of grandfathered rules and technical limitations - it's the same reason why we're forced into a Glide any time melee auto-block triggers in the air. Because both Block and Glide are implemented as aspects of aim, auto-block triggers an aim (which doesn't zoom with a melee weapon), which in turn triggers a glide, even though that's clearly not intentional.

But that's a separate issue.

14 hours ago, selig_fay said:

If we are talking about using stamina, then some abilities could do this instead of energy. At least movement abilities like rhino charge.

Rhino Charge isn't exactly a movement ability, but I get your point. We could use Gauss Mag Rush and the argument still works. That's a fair point and one I hadn't considered. There's a bit of a complication here, however, in that one of the major changes I'd personally like to make to Warframe movement (if I could wave a magic wand and do it) is to boost Warframe Walk speed to Sprint speed, then refactor Sprint entirely into a Gauss Mag Rush equivalent with no cost whatsoever. This would give us a reason to use Sprint as a separate action from Walk in that the movement speed difference would be meaningful, but would also be self-limiting as Mag Rush itself is difficult to use due to its slow turning radius and the clutter of indoor maps.

Gauss is one of my "secondary" Warframes (with Inaros being the sole "primary") so I've toyed around with his rush quite a bit. I can say with confidence that the ability's cost is largely immaterial within the scope of his build. The cost only matters if I try to use it for long-distance travel in Free Roam maps. In actual combat, it costs far too little to matter, which is easily recovered via Kinetic Plating. Sort of the same argument I had for Necramech Headrush, come to think of it.

Leaving that aside, though, there are still a few "travel" abilities that I can't brush aside like this, such as Zephyr's Tailwind. In principle, I'm not opposed to moving those off to a separate Stamina bar, rather than having them cost energy. However - and this is sort of my central point here - this doesn't require that our standard movement abilities (the ones shared with all other Warframes) also have a Stamina cost. It's entirely realistic to simply give some Warframes a separate resource on which some of their abilities draw instead of Energy. All of Hyldrin's abilities cost Shields instead of energy. Nidus' Parasitic Link and Ravenous cost stacks of Mutation instead of energy. Grendel's Regurgitate and Pulverise cost health from people in Grendel's gut instead of energy... Though they do end up costing energy by proxy via keeping people in his gut. That's just off the top of my head - I'm sure there are more. Thus, having Rhino's Charge or Gaus' Magrush or Zephyr's Tailwind cost no energy but draw on a separate bar would make sense in isolation, without requiring that Sprint or Bullet Jump also cost the same resource.

14 hours ago, selig_fay said:

If about stamina in general, it depends on how you build the map. For example, the enemy is in a sniper position. The map has a large area with small covers with different accents from each other. The sniper does a lot of damage and you can't kill him yet until you complete some tasks. Also, mobs will spawn on the location to interfere with you and knock you out of cover. A warframe will solve this problem easily, because there is no stamina and more mobility. But if the stamina ends at a bad time for Necromech, it will be a different conversation. Similarly, if you make mobs that can stun players, then this stun must be blocked or the player must evade it. But if the players are highly mobile, this is what we get about the harpoon problem, which doesn't give the player time to Dodge because the mob itself doesn't have time to conduct an attack. That is, we can't make a slow stun mechanic that the player will be able to evade, because the player will do it automatically due to high mobility, which means it doesn't make sense. On the other hand, if this attack is fast, it creates a false impression that the game is not fair. Stamina does not allow this. You're the one who let the stamina run out, which means you're guilty of it. But there is also a fine line here, like the old blocking for stamina, where you lost the entire stamina for 1 bullet. It's just about what was most revealing about why stamina was removed. The mechanics were fine, but no one wanted to do numbers.

You're framing this within the context of Stamina, but the majority of your proposals here are only tangentially related. Let me explain. Say you have said sniper that players have to be exposed to yet can't kill. Ignoring the fact that this is incredibly cheap (similar to the unkillable cameras in the Kuva Fortress), this requires a specific tile which likely means a specific mission type. A mission type like this would simply breed its own Meta. I'm being shot at by a sniper? Well, let me bring something that can tank that. Inaros, for instance, can tank pretty much any amount of damage the game throws at him. Make the sniper hit hard enough to damage Inaros and you're creating a massive overkill oneshot for most other Warframes. But OK, you've made him into a one-shot... So I bring Frost and make my own cover. Sniper can't shoot me through the bubble, especially during the "absorb" phase. Maybe that's not enough? OK, I'll bring Limbo and simply phase out of reality. Sniper can't even interact with me. Now you have to start giving that sniper ability nullification aspects, at which point you're going to lose a plurality of your audience. And none of this even touches Stamina to begin with. Your design seems centred around the notion of "cover," but Warframe left that behind years ago. There's not enough damage in the universe to push us back into having to use cover. Stamina and mobility aren't the issue here. Core game design is.

The same goes for enemies who can stun players. For one thing, I encourage you to look up the history of Grineer Nervos and the player reception thereof. In my experience with various video games over the last 20 years, it's become pretty clear to me that just about nobody enjoys having control taken away from them, pretty much regardless of the situation. Stun-heavy enemies are going to be heavily reviled whatever form they take. They're also - too - going to create a meta. Remember - some Warframes resist Status Effects, and stuns are Status Effects. Rhino with his Iron Skin, Nezha with his Iron Halo, Inaros with his Negation Swarm, Valkyr during Hysteria and that's just off the top of my head - those entirely ignore control effects. In fact, remember when DE replaced AoE weapon self-damage with self-stagger? Plenty of people complained that only Tank Warframes can use explosives now, because they could just disregard the self-stager. Whether this is true or not, that's what giving enemies heavy control effects brings - criticism and control-resistant metas. And again - Stamina doesn't even enter into this, because we have far more reliable means of resisting stuns than dodging them.

In order to make Stamina matter, you'd need to undo 13 years of game development and power creep. The issue you're having isn't really with Stamina or how mobile our Warframes are. On the contrary - your issue is with how much DPS we deal and how much EHP we have, meaning that we don't NEED to be mobile in the first place. I play Inaros, I don't dodge anything. What would be the point? Nothing can hurt me, including Steel Path enemies. I resist Status Effects and staggers. I might get drained of energy on occasion, but that comes back on its own due to Rage - Inaros has no shields, thus all the damage he takes is to health. You can include all the snipers and stunners and rushers that you want - I'm going to ignore them and just walk forward. And Inaros is hardly the only one. Atlas can do much the same, as can Rhino, as can Grendel to a point. Via different mechanics, Hildryn can as well, and these are the easy ones.

With all of that said, though - thank you for the examples. I think I have a better idea of what you're trying to achieve. I do think it's way too late in the game for Warframe, however. We can and should roll back some - or a LOT - of the power creep, I agree. I don't think you're going to go back to a Gears of War / Payday / Division style of gameplay with it ever again, though. More than Stamina, you'd need to gut a large number of the existing game systems fairly drastically.

14 hours ago, selig_fay said:

By the way, bulletjump appeared due to a bug. This was due to a melee attack that allowed you to go through three rooms in a couple of seconds. It was a fix, but the players made a fuss, so the developers decided to make a concession. This was not intended mechanics. And I would say it doesn't work for the gameplay, it works more for ignoring the gameplay. Think about it the next time you go to make a capture and run through a crowd of enemies who just don't have time to even shoot at you.

I'm aware, yes, but that doesn't make Bullet Jump a bad thing. Bugs and mistakes can - if reimplemented correctly - lead to positive changes. My favourite example is something from the City of Heroes revival, when players got to make our own changes to the game's code. A new version of the Invulnerability powerset was introduced, but it had an implementation bug. A toggle ability was meant to give a large amount of "absorb" - basically extra temporary health. Instead, however, it kept giving a small amount of absorb and refreshed this every second. I brought this up as a bug report, but others piped in to argue that this was intended. The ability designer piped in to explain that it was not, but we ended up in a fairly lengthy debate about how the bug was actually pretty cool. What ended up happening was something in the middle. The ability would now give a small amount of "absorb" per tick, stacking up to a maximum of I think 5 ticks. Basically, a small regenerating shield, or "super armour" from a fighting game. An invulnerable player was able to shrug off some amount of damage before actually starting to take damage.

In my experience, people are very likely to reject new proposals if they are explained to them theoretically, but FAR less likely to reject them if they actually get to try them. This is why I've spent so much time modding my own games - not to change them for myself, but to offer empirical evidence and first-hand accounts of how proposed changes would work. Sometimes, bugs can do the same thing - they can show us gameplay we didn't even realise we wanted or that was even possible. To me, this is the case for Bullet Jump. No, Warframe was not designed for it. Once people experienced it, however, it was pretty clear that the game would be better with that mechanic retained in an intentional fashion than with the mechanic removed. At this point, it's integral to Warframe. New Tilesets are designed with Bullet Jumps in mind, as are new enemies.

This is what I talked about in the abstract - "Give the players what they want (within reason)." To my eyes, what Warframe's players want is high mobility all of the time. To me, it's simply smart business to design a game with high mobility in mind, rather than trying to turn back the clock and recapture some imagined glory day when the thing people want wasn't in the game. Yes, high player mobility causes design issues, but these can be solved by design changes, rather than by trying to hold the tide back with our hands. Warframe was clearly designed as a Diablo-style dungeon crawler back in the day, but this no longer working. Massive empty missions with a 1600m run to a single objective no longer work. Simple-objective missions no longer work. The way to solve this is to shift the game's paradigm in terms of what constitutes a mission.

Railjack is a good example of playing to Warframe's strengths. Rather than having massive sprawling instances with a single objective, it has a series of small short-ish instances with multiple objectives which can be milti-tasked. Alternately, you have the likes of Disruption and Defection - missions where objectives persist over time, rather than consisting of a single action. People end up speed-running Capture missions the way they do not because Bullet Jump is bad, but rather because Capture missions themselves are bad. You have a 1 Km run, ostensibly to push a button. Can you really blame people for wanting to skip past the padding and just get to the end? Would forcing players to grind their way through all the enemies en route really improve the experience? Or would it turn the game dull?

Your mileage may vary, but I assert that the solution to players skipping content is better content, not more restrictions. Specifically, better more complex objectives which put us into conflict with the enemy, rather than rewarding us for avoiding conflict. To bring up Division PvP for a moment... The Division 1 had an issue. The Dark Zone was massive and predominantly PvE, which simply caused a lot of people to avoid PvP altogether. Mechanics had to be created to put people into conflict with each other, such as Points of Interest and gear extraction, but it still didn't work. The Division 2 attempted to remedy this by creating multiple much, MUCH smaller Dark Zones and drasitcally limiting the PvE encounters. This was necessary in order to put people into conflict with each other and foster actual PvP. Warframe could use similar design elements - objectives which put us in conflict with enemies, but in ways where said conflict isn't our only goal. Newer mission types do better than older ones.

Taking Bullet Jump away isn't going to make people fight everything along the way, and it's certainly not going to make those fights fun.

selig_fay · October 16, 2020

@Steel_Rook We don't have to make separate modes for this. You can create separate map blocks that will trigger the event. It already exists in the game, but it is done in a very boring way of "you can activate it or ignore it". I'm talking about a thing that confronts you with the fact, either you pass it using mechanics, or you cancel the mission as a little girl. Sorry, I didn't mean to offend anyone. It's just for thought.

You're right about how high HP, invulnerability, nucking and CC make stamina irrelevant. Most of these problems are solved by working with the energy system, so that each energy orb and each unit of energy becomes the ultimate unit that players always worry about. But it requires a lot of rework. More precisely, it requires a rework of all the frames, because I think that when all 4 abilities cost energy, it's bad. A maximum of 1-2 abilities should do this, while others should do cd or stamina. Anything you like. But, accordingly, the energy abilities should be much stronger than others.

The problem of high HP is solved by damage, which depends on HP, or extremely powerful slow attacks, which you must interrupt or block, otherwise you will die without options. Tanks must be invulnerable against normal mobs, they must do aggression and distract them. It is normal that 95% of mobs cannot kill you. On the other hand, dangerous mobs that can oneshote you will be easier for dps, because dps will kill him faster and free himself from this mechanic. But ordinary mobs should be very dangerous for dps. Of course, what I said now is too abstract, but this is how the classes are balanced. And this is how the group game is played, because the tank distracts ordinary mobs by solving the dps problem, dps kills dangerous mobs, solving the tank problem. And the support does nothing, because if I say that it is the support's job to restore the stamina (and control of the group's resources in general), you will kill me. But speaking about the restoration of resources, I mean the help of restoration, and not as it is happening now, where Trinity can restore full energy in a couple of seconds. On the other hand, a support should not have tank potential and high dps, and this also applies to class balance, because you are much more efficient when giving resources to an ally than using them yourself.

By the way, stamina could well be spent on making you resist the nullifier effect. This is also a gameplay moment when you lose mobility in order to save abilities buffs.

Sorry for this long post on the trinity system, but I haven't seen a single shooter where this is well organized. Basically this is fat dps, full dps and dps with healing.

But here again, everything remains behind the question of how stamina will be used and what it is done for. You are asking this question correctly. But the problem is that, apart from the developers, no one knows the answer to it. And let's be optimistic and imagine that the developers are doing it for a reason.

For me personally, stamina is not a problem. It recovers very quickly and, as I wrote above, I would make necromech 1 and 3 cost stamina instead of energy. The only problem I see is drain mechanics. Stamina must recover continuously and without delay. It’s the same with energy, by the way. I hate drain block.

Teletric · October 16, 2020

Quote

Necramechs are heavily limited by Stamina. Their Sprint, their Headrush and their Hover all draw on the same Stamina bar. To my mind, this is excessively onerous and largely pointless. It doesn't really serve to limit Necramech mobility because their sheer size does this already, but it does serve to limit their ability to travel long-distance across Free Roam maps, which is the only place where they're useful. I don't see this as a benefit.

Necramechs aren't designed to travel long distances -- that's the role that Archwing and K-Drive fulfill. Necramechs are moreso geared towards providing offensive support within a certain area like mechs usually are. So the stamina/engine bar is doing its job fine. Keep in mind that there's also nothing stopping you from just getting out of your mech and just deploying it somewhere else because there is no cooldown on the Necramech summon.

Additionally, in Home Devstream #5 DE_Scott stated that they are looking into implementing them into regular missions with the environment being the limiting factor as to where you can use it (I.E. if the door to exit the room is too small, you will be forced to exit to progress in the mission), so you may find that the stamina bar has a purpose when that happens.

Steel_Rook · October 16, 2020

3 hours ago, selig_fay said:

You're right about how high HP, invulnerability, nucking and CC make stamina irrelevant. Most of these problems are solved by working with the energy system, so that each energy orb and each unit of energy becomes the ultimate unit that players always worry about. But it requires a lot of rework. More precisely, it requires a rework of all the frames, because I think that when all 4 abilities cost energy, it's bad. A maximum of 1-2 abilities should do this, while others should do cd or stamina. Anything you like. But, accordingly, the energy abilities should be much stronger than others.

You're right that this requires "a lot of rework" but you're selling the scope a little short, for a couple of reasons. Simply putting more emphasis on Energy isn't going to be enough. You'd need to pull all of our sources of infinite energy recover. No Arcane Energise, no Energising Dash, no Squad Energy Restores. If anything, Necramechs pretty much already do that, since they can't benefit from any of the above and it's true - their energy economy is a lot more meaningful. Unfortunately (and this is kind of a separate topic), what this does is it simply makes them less fun to play. I don't have enough energy to use my fun abilities pretty much ever, so I just use Storm Shroud and my gun. It's a similar issue to my new player's experience of Warframe, where all Frames felt interchangeable since I couldn't use any of their abilities anyway, due to lack of energy. This is, in fact, the primary reason why I keep suggesting "cooldowns" no matter how angry people get at me over it. Cooldowns might be more restrictive than energy, but they ensure you always have nominal use of all of your abilities. When each ability is on a separate cooldown, then using one doesn't preclude using the others, meaning one "good" ability doesn't block the use of the rest of that Warframe's kit. But that's a whole other subject that I don't want to get into here.

Even then, though, you're still running into a major problem - some Warframes just don't need to use abilities. Inaros keeps coming up because he plays just fine even if you never touch any of his abilities. Well, except Scarab Armour, but that doesn't cost energy. Ask me how I know this :) Even when I need abilities for something - say to pretend that I use them - Inaros can generate energy from taking hits. Then you have outliers like Hildryn, who doesn't use energy AT ALL. Perfect candidate for "energy reduction" Nightmare missions, incidentally.

What I'm getting at is that this IS possible. The amount of heavy-handed changes needed to make it work is quite extreme, however. It's not one or two or three things contributing to our current state of power creep. It's a major chunk of the game's pool of core mechanics.

3 hours ago, selig_fay said:

The problem of high HP is solved by damage, which depends on HP, or extremely powerful slow attacks, which you must interrupt or block, otherwise you will die without options. Tanks must be invulnerable against normal mobs, they must do aggression and distract them. It is normal that 95% of mobs cannot kill you. On the other hand, dangerous mobs that can oneshote you will be easier for dps, because dps will kill him faster and free himself from this mechanic. But ordinary mobs should be very dangerous for dps. Of course, what I said now is too abstract, but this is how the classes are balanced. And this is how the group game is played, because the tank distracts ordinary mobs by solving the dps problem, dps kills dangerous mobs, solving the tank problem. And the support does nothing, because if I say that it is the support's job to restore the stamina (and control of the group's resources in general), you will kill me. But speaking about the restoration of resources, I mean the help of restoration, and not as it is happening now, where Trinity can restore full energy in a couple of seconds. On the other hand, a support should not have tank potential and high dps, and this also applies to class balance, because you are much more efficient when giving resources to an ally than using them yourself.

There's a bit to unpack here. For one thing, I don't think you'll meet much support for the concept of "classes." We here on the forums tend to refer to some Warframes as "tank frames" colloquially, but Warframe doesn't actually have character classes. It does have a range of playstyles, but it doesn't have strict classes like what a late 2000s MMO might have. You don't actually have "tanks" whose job is to play taunt-bot and not actually deal damage. You don't have "DPS" whose job is to be glass cannon. You certainly don't have "healers" whose job is to tag along and enable the rest of the team to exist. That's really not how Warframe is balanced, and I don't get the impression that this particular aspect was ever any other way. All Warframes in this game are good at all things - they're good at survival, they're good at killing things, pretty much none of them are good at team support. You can eke out something resembling a class from a few individual Warframes, but most don't really have one.

To make a long story short - the "MMO holy trinity" of Tank/Healer/Damage Dealer is an outdated concept that modern games no longer use. At best, you'll find it grandfathered into long-running titles like World of Warcraft or Lineage 2 or uh... Is EverQuest still around? Maybe you'll find it in deliberately archaic throwback MMOs like Wildstar, which aim less to create a unique experience and more to ape old-school MMOs. I've gone on about this at length, but the long and short of it is this - the age of MMOs is over. The MMO bubble burst in the early 2010s and took a lot of MMOs down with it. Wildstar, Warhammer Online, Lord of the Rings Online, I think Dungeons and Dragons online, not to mention - yes - City of Heroes. The "MMOs of today" are the modern 4-player co-op Live Services. Things like The Division, Destiny, Anthem and - yes - Warframe. While these games have character archetypes, each archetype is a complete character, usually capable of defence, damage and some form of Sustain. A Division "all blue" armour build is just as good as an "all red" damage build in killing enemies, but does so in a rather different fashion. There are no "taunt" mechanics, but "tank" players are generally freer to engage and typically draw more fire that way. Speaking as a "tank" player in Division 2, however, I'm typically able to out-damage my DPS counterparts for one simple reason - while they take cover, heal and reload I'm spending my time machinegunning everything in sight. Despite my much weaker guns, I rarely fall far behind in terms of overall damage done.

Basically what I'm getting at is I don't think you're ever going to see the MMO holy trinity in Warframe, and I see no evidence that it ever existed.

That's one thing. Then there's your proposal of just making dangerous enemies even more dangerous as a means of getting tanks killed, with the idea that this will give DPS a role. That sounds fine in theory, but it doesn't work in practice. I actually have a direct example here. City of Heroes lead developer Jack Emmert's "vision" for the game required that Boss-class enemies should not be able to be defeated solo - something that Scrappers and Tankers were able to do quite easily due to their nice mix of offence and defence. In order to force the issues, we saw "the great Boss buff" of 2004, where bosses got stats equivalent to their level +2, effectively. This change did absolutely nothing to Scrappers and Tankers being able to solo them. It was A LITTLE harder, but it worked just fine. Blasters, on the other hand, were absolutely SOL. Already struggling trying to out-damage bosses, they were effectively rendered incapable of competing. The great Boss buff was rolled back very quickly because it was both highly unpopular and completely ineffective.

You can't combat Tanks by boosting enemy damage, because Tanks are the ones least affected by it. The damage needed to actually kill Inaros or Rhino or Atlas with any regularity is enough to delete pretty much every other Warframe before they're even able to take an action. At best, you're creating a game of extreme rocket tag where a DPS character is simultaneously expected to carry a combat encounter yet is always dead the moment an enemy looks at them wrong. This is before we consider just how broken Warframe's damage resistance is, where I can have 95% damage resistance on top of 80% damage resistance on top of 80% damage resistance. When I'm taking, say, 1% of all damage fired at me and you're taking 50%, any change enough for me to feel is going to overkill you 10 times over. Even if we use basic numbers - a Tank with 90% damage resistance needs to take 10 times more damage in order to break even. A DPS with no damage resistance will simply take 10 times more damage. One has the tools to survive it, the other does not.

I guess this is why you're proposing the MMO holy trinity - so that Tanks could taunt these high-damaging enemies while DPS kill them and healers put their heals on auto-cast. However, this requires that Tanks themselves can't already kill said tough enemies which... Most of them can. Our primary offensive capability in Warframe comes from our guns, and our guns don't require Warframe abilities to use. I could play the game's heaviest tanks and still bring a meta-gun with a stupid Riven and wipe the floor with everything. In order to institute this MMO holy trinity, then, you would have to drastically reduce my DPS to the point where I functionally can't solo. And even then... Well, the Division 2 tried just that. It didn't work. I'm a tank player there and I'm still fully capable of killing just about everything I need to kill, up to "team only" difficulty settings.

And then there's the issue of solo play. If you've followed the history of MMOs, you'll have noticed a relentless trend towards more solo-friendly content and design. The old late 90s MMOs were basically trying to be D&D, so they simply didn't allow players to solo. You need tank, a healer and a damage dealer or you won't last in a fight. Once the fight is over, you need to healer to top you up lest you succumb to attrition. There was this I'd argue debunked idea of "social networking," where players would keep playing games they're burned out on for their friends still playing it. Fast forward to late 2000s / early 2010s MMOs. The old classes still exist, but they're all slightly hybridised, encounters scale to team size and a perpetual talk of "soloability" is had all of the time. I know from experience, because I've had to answer the "why solo in an MMO" question more times than I can count. This was a transition period, where those of us playing City of Heroes patted each other on the back and joked about how other MMO players' heads would explode if they ever saw our solo Scrappers. Now fast forward to the late 2010s Live Service games and you'll notice an almost complete lack of classes. Where classes exist, they're modelled closer to Hero Shooters than old-school MMOs, with all characters still good at killing stuff, just with a different kit. Destiny, for instance, gives you Titans who have high health and strong melee, Warlocks who have AoE and magic bullS#&$ and Hunters who are fast and agile... But they're all good at killing. Your choice of class determines HOW you want to be able to kill, not WHETHER you're able to kill.

I've watched the evolution of team video games from the inside for the last close to 20 years now. I don't think you can turn back the clock and restore the MMO holy trinity. Not in the mainstream, anyway. See, the MMO market didn't disappear after the great crash in the early 2010s. There are still a few MMOs kicking about and some new ones being made in the old mould. However, the market shrunk back to its core audience, down from the peak of the zeitgeist when everything was going to be an MMO. I interpret this to mean that the old EQ model of team content is not universally good and definitely not applicable to modern video games - like Warframe. I say this not to criticise but to inform. Trying to contrive designs which require the cooperation of multiple players with multiple distinct roles is simply not practical any more. There are far too many foreveralone A******s like myself who'll jump in and ask "OK, but what do I do if I don't have a team?"

3 hours ago, selig_fay said:

But here again, everything remains behind the question of how stamina will be used and what it is done for. You are asking this question correctly. But the problem is that, apart from the developers, no one knows the answer to it. And let's be optimistic and imagine that the developers are doing it for a reason. For me personally, stamina is not a problem. It recovers very quickly and, as I wrote above, I would make necromech 1 and 3 cost stamina instead of energy. The only problem I see is drain mechanics. Stamina must recover continuously and without delay. It’s the same with energy, by the way. I hate drain block.

Granted, none of us are game developers. However, I trust we've all played Warframe long enough to figure out how it works and speculate on what it might be capable of. I personally consider "collecting game mechanics" as one of my hobbies, so I have a decent catalogues of past game experiences in my head - as you've likely noticed :) For this reason, I feel it's worth trying your hand at designing a system and working out the details. For one thing, it can be fun if you can get others to engage with you in good faith. For another thing, it's a good way to gain perspective on the challenges that developers need to solve. It's easy to make a claim about a new gameplay system. Trying to write it out with discrete rules and exceptions, however, often reveals a lot of additional complexity and unintended side effects.

For instance, your idea of splitting ability costs between Energy and Stamina is not inherently bad. There's merit to it. After all, our capability is already split between Energy which fuels our abilities and Ammo which fuels our guns, while quite a few Warframes have an additional resource which fuels some of their abilities instead of energy. Again - Nidus and Grendel do precisely what you're proposing, and Gauss does it somewhat, up to a point. However, figuring out which abilities use which resources isn't trivial, nor how one would recover the new Stamina resource without the extensive energy economy in Warframe. This also doesn't answer the question of why this new secondary resource needs to be shared with movement abilities, because that's a wholly separate issue. The devil's in the details. This is why I constructed my OP as I did. It was an attempt to work through the actual mechanical implementations and the implications thereof. I've already been called out on a few of them, as my proposal for Void Dash apparently shifts Operator balance even more significantly towards Void Strike, since the Void Dash cost helped mitigate this - and I didn't know that since I've not used Void Strike.

With all of that said, though - I think I have a decent idea of what you're proposing here, now that we've had a chance to talk about it. I don't necessarily agree for reasons I've outlined above, but at least I have a concrete idea of what we're talking about. Thank you for that.

Steel_Rook · October 16, 2020

31 minutes ago, Teletric said:

Necramechs aren't designed to travel long distances -- that's the role that Archwing and K-Drive fulfill. Necramechs are moreso geared towards providing offensive support within a certain area like mechs usually are. So the stamina/engine bar is doing its job fine. Keep in mind that there's also nothing stopping you from just getting out of your mech and just deploying it somewhere else because there is no cooldown on the Necramech summon.

Oh, I'm aware that Necramechs aren't meant to travel long distances. However, I'd like to turn the question around on you, if I may - is there a downside to letting them travel long distances uninterrupted? Or in other words - is there a benefit to making them stop every 40 meters and rest? Because to me, this seems like inconvenience for the sake of inconvenience without an actual game design role in practice. And yes, I'm aware that I can just abandon the Necramech and resummon it. As of the change which stopped them despawning when I get too far, this is probably what I'll end up doing anyway. However, it just strikes me as odd that Necramechs HAVE their own long-range travel system that they just can't use for long-rang travel. I mean... What IS the perpetual Headrush supposed to be used for if NOT for travel? It has no use in combat, where the fixed-length Headrush is much more practical.

35 minutes ago, Teletric said:

Additionally, in Home Devstream #5 DE_Scott stated that they are looking into implementing them into regular missions with the environment being the limiting factor as to where you can use it (I.E. if the door to exit the room is too small, you will be forced to exit to progress in the mission), so you may find that the stamina bar has a purpose when that happens.

I don't follow. How would stamina have more of a purpose in indoor locations than it does outdoors? Quite literally the only meaningful use for Stamina right now is to travel long distances via Necramech - a consideration which doesn't exist indoors. Both the smaller scale of the locations and the cluttered nature of close quarters prevents perpetual headrush from being perpetual even with infinite Stamina anyway. I'd argue that Stamina is less meaningful indoors, to the point of being entirely meaningless. To the point, in fact, that I'm probably going to have an alternate "indoor" build for my Voidrig which doesn't have any of the "Engine" upgrade mods. It's the same reason I have a Space build for my Archguns with magazine boosts, where my Ground build is the same but uses an ammo capacity boost.

I'm not trying to attack you here. I genuinely don't understand what you believe makes Stamina more meaningful indoors than outdoors.

(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan · October 16, 2020

On 2020-10-11 at 12:13 PM, BiancaRoughfin said:

There is no Actual Stamina in game currently and you kinda got confused what those Bars are...

In the case of Necramech and Railjacks, extra performance usually draws more energy than their reactor can produce, thus requiring them to have a reserve energy source for situations that require them to put more effort/thrust into, thats why they have an Energy bar that limits for how long you can use the Necramech and the Railjack's Dash/Booster.
Consider as an example real cars using Nitro, its an external additional energy source for the engine with an extra kick, still limited in the amount and requires replenishing after use.

In the case of Operators, they siphon their energy straight from the void tho the amount drawn is limited, acting in the same manner as the Necramech and Railjack's reactors that has a limited production, Operators cant use more than they produce which is why their energy bars drains when using abilities. As you unlock Focus abilities that improve max energy and regeneration, its like the Operators have improved their ability to siphon and store that energy from the void.

I personally am not in favor of the removal of those bars, in the case of Necramech and Railjack there are Mods/Avionics that give them increased storage cap and regeneration wile Operators benefit from Focus skills tho i would be in favor of [DE] further improving on this, perhaps adding more Skills to each focus school that adds on a bit further and Arcanes that affected/proced energy regen in certain conditions.

You very clearly didn't actually read the post, since every argument you make is already fully covered.

selig_fay · October 17, 2020

14 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

the "MMO holy trinity" of Tank/Healer/Damage Dealer is an outdated concept that modern games no longer use.

In fact, only shooters have a broken Trinity where everyone tries to dps. In an RPG, the system evolves. The Trinity now is not a class or role, but a direction. This is about characteristics. Tanker characteristics use the concept of the perfect tank. DPS characteristics use everything that makes a perfect DPS. The same goes for support. This is because some MMOs don't have a clear definition of roles, but they continue to use the concept of the Trinity.

For example, your character's role in TESO won't be clean until you finish your build. Yes, you can make a Tank with Healer potential and it will work in a normal concept, but when you go to the veteran dungeons, you will feel that you do not have enough HP, you do not have enough protection, you do not have enough stamina and mana to block attacks (and there some mobs can actually oneshot you even in normal DLS dungeons). You can do whatever you want, but the reality of the game just won't let you make an OP character.

On the other hand, BnS is a game where all the characters have DPS potential. You are working on DPS, other characteristics are not so important. On the other hand, some characters are still Tanks because they can increase the aggression set from their DPS by 300%. Everyone can tank, but Tanks do it better. In fact, there is no clear definition of Support, because all characters have support abilities and the group is stacking them, but there are characters who have more support and they do it better. So the Trinity is still there, it's just perverted, but it works.

I think the Trinity should be discussed here constantly, because this is what will give the concept of balancing. Now it looks like a terrible chaos. For example, is Mesa strong because it has peacekeepers? No, Mesa is strong because it has 95% DR projectiles and in fact mobs can't kill her even when she is standing still. If you have a good DPS concept, players must face the problem of protection otherwise this is why protection supports won't work and why tanks won't be needed. On the other hand, Inaros is completely useless to the group. Give it aggression (including the ability to control bosses, maybe even Eidolon movement) and it will be much much better. I understand that it's not a problem to keep the Eidolons in one place right now, but as a reserve for the future.

15 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

With all of that said, though - I think I have a decent idea of what you're proposing here, now that we've had a chance to talk about it. I don't necessarily agree for reasons I've outlined above, but at least I have a concrete idea of what we're talking about. Thank you for that.

But Yes. I understand your concerns about the fact that stamina can be bad. Because it can really feel bad when used incorrectly by a game designer. But I still want them to work on this in necromech as a testing ground.

Steel_Rook · October 17, 2020

3 hours ago, selig_fay said:

In fact, only shooters have a broken Trinity where everyone tries to dps. In an RPG, the system evolves. The Trinity now is not a class or role, but a direction. This is about characteristics. Tanker characteristics use the concept of the perfect tank. DPS characteristics use everything that makes a perfect DPS. The same goes for support. This is because some MMOs don't have a clear definition of roles, but they continue to use the concept of the Trinity.

I would personally like to table the discussion on the "MMO Holy Trinity" for the moment as I don't think it's entirely relevant to the concept of Stamina, but it definitely is something worth discussing in general. We could start a separate thread about that if you'd like. That's an actual proposal, by the way. I could throw one together in the next few days if you feel it's worth doing. The reason I want to table it here, however, is because it's a fairly large topic on its own, similar to the Energy economy or redesigning Status effect, etc. It IS relevant to Stamina up to a point, but I feel threatens to overshadow the core discussion. Especially since it feels we're on opposite ends of that particular spectrum.

I suppose there's the broader question of whether Warframe is an RPG or a shooter, as well. I fall firmly on the "shooter" end with the "maybe some RPG elements" addendum, but I definitely don't consider Warframe to be an RPG of the Elder Scrolls or World of Warfcraft variety. In fact, one of the main thrusts of my game design proposals for Warframe has been an attempt to move mechanics out of the Arsenal and into moment-to-moment gameplay as much as possible. In my eyes, Warframe's core mechanics have the potential to make for an awesome action shooter game, if they were actually allowed to work rather than constantly being superseded by power creep numbers. But again, that's a broader topic.

For the time being, I understand your position on Stamina and how it's rooted in the core designs of more traditional MMOs. That's valuable context - thank you for that.

nooneyouknow13 · October 18, 2020

On 2020-10-15 at 7:31 AM, Steel_Rook said:

This is true to a point, though it's also something I already covered in the OP. I proposed replacing the Vector Manoeuvre with the maximum-strength shunt from the end of a full Drift, handled like Archwing Blink. That is to say - one shunt every 3 seconds on its own separate Stamina bar. I'm still not sold on whether I want to let the Railjack shunt in any direction or just forward, but that's not really relevant to the point you're raising here. As of right now, I consider the Vector Manoeuvre to be pretty much pointless as its distance travelled is far too low to matter and missiles can be avoided by just moving quickly. That and a well-built Railjack can tank pretty much any kind of incoming fire. Replacing it with a Shunt that also breaks target locks would be an improvement in my opinion, because it would serve as an actual dodge as well.

Vector Maneuever doesn't just dodge the missiles though, it breaks the target locks. I use a shield based RJ build with a Levan reactor so I can cram in all more speed and damage avionics. Crewship missiles are the only thing that can even dent my shields let alone take them down, and they can do that quite quickly without breaking the target locks. If I could break the locks once every 3 seconds, with no limit on the boost bar, my railjack would likely never be in any danger from anything ever again. Also, forward shunts only would play hell with anyone trying to actually aim the tunguska cannon, side Vectors don't interfere with that much.

Althaline · October 18, 2020

28 minutes ago, nooneyouknow13 said:

Also, forward shunts only would play hell with anyone trying to actually aim the tunguska cannon, side Vectors don't interfere with that much.

Side Vectors entirely cancel the charging of the Tunguska Cannon, so I don't know what this point is talking about. In fact, any "stamina"-related movement other than maintaining Drift cancels the charge.

nooneyouknow13 · October 18, 2020

52 minutes ago, Iamabearlulz said:

Side Vectors entirely cancel the charging of the Tunguska Cannon, so I don't know what this point is talking about. In fact, any "stamina"-related movement other than maintaining Drift cancels the charge.

Then apparently no pilot I've ever gunned for has ever used them, because this is news to me. I've never seen anyone stop charging when I dodged before either.

Steel_Rook · October 18, 2020

5 hours ago, nooneyouknow13 said:

Vector Maneuever doesn't just dodge the missiles though, it breaks the target locks. I use a shield based RJ build with a Levan reactor so I can cram in all more speed and damage avionics. Crewship missiles are the only thing that can even dent my shields let alone take them down, and they can do that quite quickly without breaking the target locks. If I could break the locks once every 3 seconds, with no limit on the boost bar, my railjack would likely never be in any danger from anything ever again.

Right, but that's contingent on you actually doing that - it's an active form of defence. This isn't the kind of change where you can just AFK and go have lunch. You need to be there actively dodging in order to keep breaking missile lock. To me, that's no different from allowing Warframe Bullet Jump to avoid enemy fire, in that it's powerful but also entirely manual. In my opinion, Warframe can use more of these kinds of mechanics. I don't want to go too in-depth on this here, but you can check my thread on challenge and reductive combat if you'd like more context. Long story short, I'm fine with mechanics which in theory make us unkillable or unstoppable or outright make the game easier as long as they're manual actions that we have to keep doing correctly or else knowledge of the game that we can apply as players.

5 hours ago, nooneyouknow13 said:

Also, forward shunts only would play hell with anyone trying to actually aim the tunguska cannon, side Vectors don't interfere with that much.

The "forward shunts only" idea actually exists mostly to keep parity with Archwing Blink, which only allows you to Blink forward. I don't know if that's an intentional design choice or was necessary due to Blink being draped over existing Arcwing dodges, but I'm not entirely sold on it myself. I'm not really opposed to letting the Railjack Shunt in any direction - it's one of the things I was hoping to get a bit more input into, actually :)

selig_fay · October 18, 2020

7 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

The "forward shunts only" idea actually exists mostly to keep parity with Archwing Blink, which only allows you to Blink forward. I don't know if that's an intentional design choice or was necessary due to Blink being draped over existing Arcwing dodges, but I'm not entirely sold on it myself. I'm not really opposed to letting the Railjack Shunt in any direction - it's one of the things I was hoping to get a bit more input into, actually :)

To be honest, I hate that they did this. There are so many button combinations they could choose from. Why front evade? This is a big pain if you are trying to evade missiles in open worlds, because there is a chance that evade will misunderstand you and teleport you to the nearest wall.

DoomFruit · October 19, 2020

11 hours ago, selig_fay said:

To be honest, I hate that they did this. There are so many button combinations they could choose from. Why front evade? This is a big pain if you are trying to evade missiles in open worlds, because there is a chance that evade will misunderstand you and teleport you to the nearest wall.

I have this problem with Limbo. Ever since rolling toggled his rift status, he's been basically unplayable for me because rolling is an important part of fast movement and I constantly flip back and forth and back and forth simply by moving around.

Steel_Rook · October 19, 2020

17 hours ago, selig_fay said:

To be honest, I hate that they did this. There are so many button combinations they could choose from. Why front evade? This is a big pain if you are trying to evade missiles in open worlds, because there is a chance that evade will misunderstand you and teleport you to the nearest wall.

Personally, I think they should have made it much simpler. If you're Boosting, replace all dodges in all directions with Blink. Maybe reduce distance when used in a non-forward direction since the player inherently can't see what's in that direction. If you're not Boosting (i.e. hovering) retain regular Archwing dodges - the flips and barrel rolls. That way you can always dodge in every direction normally by releasing Sprint (or toggling it off if you use a toggle) and you can always Blink in every direction by simply Sprinting. Archwing combat is one of my favourite movement system implementations exactly because it allows me to seamlessly switch between two radically different speeds useful for different situations. Kind of wish Railjack worked like that as well.

I don't THINK it'll happen since it would involve a fairly major change... But then, Railjack is still relatively young and currently awaiting another major Revised patch. So you never know...

5 hours ago, DoomFruit said:

I have this problem with Limbo. Ever since rolling toggled his rift status, he's been basically unplayable for me because rolling is an important part of fast movement and I constantly flip back and forth and back and forth simply by moving around.

To be perfectly honest, I feel Warframe Dodge in general can use a once-over. It's not BAD, but it certainly feels outdated. Visually, the majority of our dodges feel like something out of Dark Souls - something more appropriate for a heavy, non-super-human combatant, not space ninja wizard. Practically, our dodges are way too slow and cover way too long of a distance. Considering they lock our controls and interrupt reloads, that's unnecessary. Pretty much all the new Warframes have come with their own much faster dodges - Hildryn, Protea, Xaku, probably others. I'd say we should use one of those dodges and apply it to Warframes across the board.

Yes, including Limbo. Him leaving portals every time he dodges is honestly annoying to me, as someone who consistently fails to notice I've walked through one of them. They're easy to get out of... Once I figure out why my guns aren't doing damage.

DoomFruit · October 19, 2020

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

To be perfectly honest, I feel Warframe Dodge in general can use a once-over. It's not BAD, but it certainly feels outdated. Visually, the majority of our dodges feel like something out of Dark Souls - something more appropriate for a heavy, non-super-human combatant, not space ninja wizard. Practically, our dodges are way too slow and cover way too long of a distance. Considering they lock our controls and interrupt reloads, that's unnecessary. Pretty much all the new Warframes have come with their own much faster dodges - Hildryn, Protea, Xaku, probably others. I'd say we should use one of those dodges and apply it to Warframes across the board.

Yes, including Limbo. Him leaving portals every time he dodges is honestly annoying to me, as someone who consistently fails to notice I've walked through one of them. They're easy to get out of... Once I figure out why my guns aren't doing damage.

I was thinking more in terms of high-speed movement, where you bullet jump and then roll in mid air for some extra distance. It's also useful for small changes of direction in mid-air and to skip over obstacles which you would otherwise collide with if you continued falling in the normal ballistic trajectory (mid-air rolls either interrupt or interfere with vertical motion).

This is admittedly a niche thing used for getting the absolute best speed across rough terrain, but I enjoy it and I've won a few races against players who use operator dash.

Do we really need Stamina?

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