The biggest problem with the Khora nerf is poor communication

[(PSN)digitalgabeg]

I want to say this up-front: DE, as a company, you are very good about communication. You listen to your players, you talk about changes, you have multiple weekly staff streams. You all work hard to keep in touch with us. This is good, and I appreciate it.

Here's what you did wrong with the Khora nerf:

• You announced changes to various other warframe abilities weeks ago. You did not mention changing Whipclaw in any of these.
• You made the pending changes for this update available to the community for beta testing. As far as I know, these tests did not include the change to Whipclaw.
• You announced the Whipclaw change as a single line in a long list of changes, with no explanation as to why it was done.

All of these things together make it look like you're trying to trick us - trying to slip this change in without us noticing, or distract us from discussing it by surrounding it with other changes. I doubt that this was actually your intent, but that's how it looks. And this isn't the first time that something like this has happened, which makes this feel worse.

I don't want to get into the mechanics of the change itself here - suffice it to say that: 1) this is not a small change; 2) it's a change to an ability for which many people have invested multiple forma and hours of time grinding affinity; and 3) the change removes a feature which was present as long as the ability has been in the game, and which serves to mitigate targeting problems that are inherent to the ability. All of which means that changing this ability abruptly is both unkind and likely to produce unexpected problems.

There are times when it makes sense not to communicate about a change in advance. This was not one of those times.

I love your game, DE, and I love all of your people. I'm sorry that a lot of people are being loud and angry about this issue right now; that's not nice and not fair. But there are legitimate grievances buried under all the yelling. I don't know whether this change was buried accidentally or deliberately, innocently or maliciously; because I like you and your people, I'm inclined to believe that it was an innocent accident. There's a lot going on in these Deimos Arcana changes; maybe it slipped through the cracks. But whatever the reason was, making this change in this way undermines the trust you have earned with your community. I know you can do better.

[Loza03]

This is fair criticism. Design intent statements - especially consistent ones - not only help ease tensions, but facilitate more communication in the future. At the end of the day, we don't really have much idea about what Warframe's direction IS, which is probably part of the reason why things get so fractured.

[Spectre-8]

Khora change is good for the game , now it should be applied to all warframes so things even things out .

[Skaleek]

Definitely a deliberate attempt at an "under the radar" change. Who cares though? SE farm is dead anyways, khora's whipclaw can die with it. She still has 3 great abilities.

[nslay]

Just out of curiosity... have you tried Khora after the change? You may be surprised how nothing changed... They fixed a problem that wasn't actually the problem posters complain about (because those posters generally don't understand how Khora works).

[Yakhul]

I never bothered with Khora, there are other frames that i like better. But compared to the other thread with 8 pages with nothing but ranting and a video of a content creator rallying up his audience to complain here in the forums, I praise this thread that explains the issue in a constructive and polite way, makes things much easier to understand for those like me who havent played with Khora as much. +1 like.

[Skaleek]

9 minutes ago, nslay said:

Just out of curiosity... have you tried Khora after the change? You may be surprised how nothing changed... They fixed a problem that wasn't actually the problem posters complain about (because those posters generally don't understand how Khora works).

Yes, the LOS is a pain in the ass, and it is a noticeable change, but the damage is still insane on it. Personally i would've rather them just remove stat sticks from the equation. At least the nerf was actually put in the notes, so better than the past.

[nslay]

Just now, Skaleek said:

Yes, the LOS is a pain in the ass, and it is a noticeable change, but the damage is still insane on it. Personally i would've rather them just remove stat sticks from the equation.

No. It's not a noticeable change. This change doesn't fix any real problem... just like my post stated. Nothing's changed!

You read a change about an ability that isn't responsible for the complaints. It's Strangledome man! That's the one that grabs enemies through walls and floors and lets Whipclaw damage enemies through walls and floors... Not Whipclaw itself! And Whipclaw didn't generally penetrate objects, walls, floors, etc... before this change (depends on the tile).

I ran ESO an hour ago... look... what's been fixed? Nothing's changed:

Spoiler

DE listened to the wrong the people about the wrong problem. DE should not listen to players about frames they don't have experience with. And it seems to me... they did just that... listened to players who don't really understand Khora or Khora's problems.

I killed 3477 enemies in 8 rounds of ESO. I gained 97,679 Vazarin focus. This is the same performance I got before this "change." And you see in the screenshot I'm killing enemies through walls and floors. Other players who don't play Khora might look at this picture and blame Whipclaw (which is what DE "fixed").

[PublikDomain]

I agree with OP. I knew this day would come, just hoped I'd know about it instead of having the change sneaked in like all of the other attempts to nerf her. There was a time to test this change in the open, and DE chose not to.

5 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

Yes, the LOS is a pain in the ass, and it is a noticeable change, but the damage is still insane on it. Personally i would've rather them just remove stat sticks from the equation.

I'd much rather we not. All she needs is damage falloff, not having her damage crippled or having janky LoS checks added.

[nslay]

Just now, PublikDomain said:

I agree with OP. I knew this day would come, just hoped I'd know about it instead of having the change sneaked in like all of the other attempts to nerf her. There was a time to test this change in the open, and DE chose not to.

I'd much rather we not. All she needs is damage falloff, not having her damage crippled or having janky LoS checks added.

No! Damage fall off is not the problem either. Why do you think this is the problem?

[PublikDomain]

Just now, nslay said:

No! Damage fall off is not the problem either. Why do you think this is the problem?

It's off-topic, but Khora can:

• Deal high damage
• Deal high damage to every enemy in range
• Spam her abilities

High damage is nothing new, Khora didn't invent the red crit. Neither is spamming abilities. Yet Khora is definitely overpowered. Why? Because she can spam her high damage in a large area and spread it equally. That's why she can rocket through a hallway spamming 1 killing every enemy in her way: because she doesn't need to aim to get the full damage. As long as you hit in the general direction you will kill. And you'll still be able to do this after the LoS changes, just you might find enemies sometimes don't get hit when they should. So instead you'll play Khora by spamming Whipclaw a little more often, or you'll play her camping in her dome where the LoS changes don't matter.

To get back on topic, the LoS change is not going to be received favorably. And it's not going to really do much to Khora's power except make her feel janky and buggy. DE had a chance to be honest and test these changes in the open and get this feedback before making the change, but they decided not to. And that's not something to praise.

[nslay]

12 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

It's off-topic, but Khora can:

• Deal high damage
• Deal high damage to every enemy in range
• Spam her abilities

High damage is nothing new, Khora didn't invent the red crit. Neither is spamming abilities. Yet Khora is definitely overpowered. Why? Because she can spam her high damage in a large area and spread it equally. That's why she can rocket through a hallway spamming 1 killing every enemy in her way: because she doesn't need to aim to get the full damage. As long as you hit in the general direction you will kill. And you'll still be able to do this after the LoS changes, just you might find enemies sometimes don't get hit when they should. So instead you'll play Khora by spamming Whipclaw a little more often, or you'll play her camping in her dome where the LoS changes don't matter.

To get back on topic, the LoS change is not going to be received favorably. And it's not going to really do much to Khora's power except make her feel janky and buggy. DE had a chance to be honest and test these changes in the open and get this feedback before making the change, but they decided not to. And that's not something to praise.

It's not off topic. This is about LoS. Khora can deal damage to every enemy in range.... through Strangledome (which has no LoS).

When you see pictures of players nuking large swathes of a map... it's Strangledome that's doing that. So if you implement damage fall off? Just like this LoS change of Whipclaw... that has 0 effect on Strangledome's synergy with Whipclaw spreading the damage.

Your proposed change for damage fall off doesn't solve any problem. You just setup a Strangledome, it grabs enemies through walls and floors... and you just need to hit one enemy with Whipclaw and every single enemy in Strangledome takes the damage. Do you see why damage fall off for Whipclaw itself misses the problem entirely?

[Skaleek]

36 minutes ago, nslay said:

No. It's not a noticeable change. This change doesn't fix any real problem... just like my post stated. Nothing's changed!

You read a change about an ability that isn't responsible for the complaints. It's Strangledome man! That's the one that grabs enemies through walls and floors and lets Whipclaw damage enemies through walls and floors... Not Whipclaw itself! And Whipclaw didn't generally penetrate objects, walls, floors, etc... before this change (depends on the tile).

I ran ESO an hour ago... look... what's been fixed? Nothing's changed:

Yes, the LOS change is noticeable. Just because YOU don't notice it, doesnt make it not noticeable, if anything it just means you didn't really test it all that thoroughly. You're probably thinking you can still hit through walls because enemies in your dome are getting the spread damage effect of whipclaw. Go test only whipclaw on an interception map like lets say... Odin (you know the map where everyone was running khora?). She also has melee punchthrough on whipclaw, and that does go through walls like all other punchthrough, but its not the full 280% (assuming you built entirely for range) on your cast.

The problem with whipclaw was never LoS. It was all the insane stacking from stat sticks, blood rush, and accumulating whipclaw. Also coupled with client side stacking bugs this went to the next level.

[nslay]

Just now, Skaleek said:

Yes, the LOS change is noticeable. Just because YOU don't notice it, doesnt make it not noticeable, if anything it just means you didn't really test it all that thoroughly. You're probably thinking you can still hit through walls because enemies in your dome are getting the spread damage effect of whipclaw. Go test only whipclaw on an interception map like lets say... Odin (you know the map where everyone was running khora?). She also has melee punchthrough on whipclaw, and that does go through walls like all other punchthrough, but its not the full 280% range on your cast.

As somebody who plays Khora a lot... even well before Steel Path... no, it's not noticeable at all. I sure hope more people actually think this is some kind of big game changer. Then we can stop seeing nerf posts about Khora.

You think Whipclaw has melee punchthrough. It does depend on the tile... it really doesn't bypass obstacles/walls/floors in general. Trust me... I play Naramon and energy is gold for me. I notice when Whipclaw doesn't land due to obstacles (and it often doesn't!).

You know what really enables Whipclaw to bypass obstacles/walls/floors without fail? Strangledome... you know what posters always miss about this topic? Strangledome.

[Kainosh]

They did it to wrong ability.

Its the Dome that needs a LoS requirement.   Same goes for Vauban's vortex.   These abilities pull enemies through walls, causing them to get stuck.  

[Skaleek]

13 minutes ago, nslay said:

You know what really enables Whipclaw to bypass obstacles/walls/floors without fail? Strangledome... you know what posters always miss about this topic? Strangledome.

Yeah i said as much in my post. You read it right? We're going to have to disagree on the LoS changes, i do notice the LoS changes, its just not that big a deal, because whipclaw spreads damage on dome.

[PublikDomain]

15 minutes ago, nslay said:

It's not off topic. This is about LoS. Khora can deal damage to every enemy in range.... through Strangledome (which has no LoS).

For this post, it's off topic. This post is about DE's communication around the nerf, not the nerf itself.

15 minutes ago, nslay said:

When you see pictures of players nuking large swathes of a map... it's Strangledome that's doing that. So if you implement damage fall off? Just like this LoS change of Whipclaw... that has 0 effect on Strangledome's synergy with Whipclaw spreading the damage.

Your proposed change for damage fall off doesn't solve any problem. You just setup a Strangledome, it grabs enemies through walls and floors... and you just need to hit one enemy with Whipclaw and every single enemy in Strangledome takes the damage. Do you see why damage fall off for Whipclaw itself misses the problem entirely?

I feel like you're the one missing the point... If you're using Strangledome, obviously you're not going to feel the LoS change. If you're using Strangledome, obviously you're not going to feel a damage falloff if there were one. The type of gameplay you're describing isn't the one being targeted by DE by this LoS change, and it's not the type of gameplay anyone else is talking about either. That is, where Whipclaw is being used all by itself.

[nslay]

3 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

Yeah i said as much in my post. You read it right? We're going to have to disagree on the LoS changes, i do notice the LoS changes, its just not that big a deal.

I mean, it's basically the most effective way to kill the most amount of enemies possible without any kind of LoS issues whatsoever... it's way way way better than just using Whipclaw alone.

I guess if you didn't exploit Strangledome with Whipclaw before, you might notice now. But I can't picture using Whipclaw by itself... for me, it would be a waste of energy. I use Ensnare and a melee weapon to build up combo to at least x6 in ESO before I pull out Strangledome + Whipclaw.

[Tiltskillet]

2 hours ago, (PSN)digitalgabeg said:

I want to say this up-front: DE, as a company, you are very good about communication. You listen to your players, you talk about changes, you have multiple weekly staff streams. You all work hard to keep in touch with us. This is good, and I appreciate it.

Here's what you did wrong with the Khora nerf:

• You announced changes to various other warframe abilities weeks ago. You did not mention changing Whipclaw in any of these.
• You made the pending changes for this update available to the community for beta testing. As far as I know, these tests did not include the change to Whipclaw.
• You announced the Whipclaw change as a single line in a long list of changes, with no explanation as to why it was done.

All of these things together make it look like you're trying to trick us - trying to slip this change in without us noticing, or distract us from discussing it by surrounding it with other changes. I doubt that this was actually your intent, but that's how it looks. And this isn't the first time that something like this has happened, which makes this feel worse.

I don't want to get into the mechanics of the change itself here - suffice it to say that: 1) this is not a small change; 2) it's a change to an ability for which many people have invested multiple forma and hours of time grinding affinity; and 3) the change removes a feature which was present as long as the ability has been in the game, and which serves to mitigate targeting problems that are inherent to the ability. All of which means that changing this ability abruptly is both unkind and likely to produce unexpected problems.

There are times when it makes sense not to communicate about a change in advance. This was not one of those times.

I love your game, DE, and I love all of your people. I'm sorry that a lot of people are being loud and angry about this issue right now; that's not nice and not fair. But there are legitimate grievances buried under all the yelling. I don't know whether this change was buried accidentally or deliberately, innocently or maliciously; because I like you and your people, I'm inclined to believe that it was an innocent accident. There's a lot going on in these Deimos Arcana changes; maybe it slipped through the cracks. But whatever the reason was, making this change in this way undermines the trust you have earned with your community. I know you can do better.

I don't play Khora or have an opinion about the nerf, but agree with what you've said completely.  

[_Tormex_]

3 hours ago, (PSN)digitalgabeg said:

I want to say this up-front: DE, as a company, you are very good about communication. You listen to your players, you talk about changes, you have multiple weekly staff streams. You all work hard to keep in touch with us. This is good, and I appreciate it.

Here's what you did wrong with the Khora nerf:

• You announced changes to various other warframe abilities weeks ago. You did not mention changing Whipclaw in any of these.
• You made the pending changes for this update available to the community for beta testing. As far as I know, these tests did not include the change to Whipclaw.
• You announced the Whipclaw change as a single line in a long list of changes, with no explanation as to why it was done.

All of these things together make it look like you're trying to trick us - trying to slip this change in without us noticing, or distract us from discussing it by surrounding it with other changes. I doubt that this was actually your intent, but that's how it looks. And this isn't the first time that something like this has happened, which makes this feel worse.

I don't want to get into the mechanics of the change itself here - suffice it to say that: 1) this is not a small change; 2) it's a change to an ability for which many people have invested multiple forma and hours of time grinding affinity; and 3) the change removes a feature which was present as long as the ability has been in the game, and which serves to mitigate targeting problems that are inherent to the ability. All of which means that changing this ability abruptly is both unkind and likely to produce unexpected problems.

There are times when it makes sense not to communicate about a change in advance. This was not one of those times.

I love your game, DE, and I love all of your people. I'm sorry that a lot of people are being loud and angry about this issue right now; that's not nice and not fair. But there are legitimate grievances buried under all the yelling. I don't know whether this change was buried accidentally or deliberately, innocently or maliciously; because I like you and your people, I'm inclined to believe that it was an innocent accident. There's a lot going on in these Deimos Arcana changes; maybe it slipped through the cracks. But whatever the reason was, making this change in this way undermines the trust you have earned with your community. I know you can do better.

Yeah the biggest issue is the communication, and the second biggest issue is that the nerf was released at the same time as the exploit patch, making the fix redundant and unnecessary.

[Leqesai]

4 hours ago, Spectre-8 said:

Khora change is good for the game , now it should be applied to all warframes so things even things out .

[Spectre-8]

Just now, Leqesai said:

Our comments will get deleted again 🤣 HE MADE ME DO IT just kidding 777 77 77 77 777 .

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

5 hours ago, (PSN)digitalgabeg said:

you are very good about communication

I laughed.

 

5 hours ago, (PSN)digitalgabeg said:

You listen to your players

And then I laughed harder.

[Shatom]

On 2020-11-20 at 8:21 PM, PublikDomain said:

That is, where Whipclaw is being used all by itself.

This style of play is completely dead atm. I don't know if it's a bug or a feature at this point, hard to tell the difference these days with DE. But as it stands, Khora is dead. Jumping normally, bullet jumping, sliding, about 40% of the time, my whip just misses the target, even though he's just standing right there in front of me. I can proceed to whip the same target 6-7-8 times, nothing happens, then the 9th time it will hit him, and I did nothing different compared to the first 8 hits that completely missed. It just makes ZERO sense.

[Shatom]

On 2020-11-20 at 7:06 PM, Spectre-8 said:

Khora change is good for the game , now it should be applied to all warframes so things even things out .

So you would rather they nerf all warframes and weapons, instead of buffing them. So Khora is fun, and strong, LETS nerf her, and make her less fun and less powerful. Instead of buffing the other warframes and weapons making them more fun and viable... Most moronic thing I've heard all day. It would have some merrit if it were a competetive game, but it's not. I'm quite sure the Grineer or infested doesn't send letters to DE complaining about how OP players are.