Too many damage types, not enough diversity

[Teridax68]

1. Introduction

With Damage 3.0 having released a little over a year ago, it's pretty clear we've been stuck in a meta for damage types: Heat+Viral reigns supreme, alongside Slash, with every other type ranging from highly situational to downright useless. Threads regularly appear on the forums pointing out that a certain status effect is underwhelming (Puncture, Blast, Gas... take your pick), with the suggestion usually being to rework the effect outright, rather than just buff it. All of this I think begs the question: what is the point of all these damage types?

2. Criticism

We can talk all day about what's wrong with specific damage types and how to change them, but really, I think those are merely symptoms of a deeper and larger problem, which is the damage and status system itself: since Damage 2.0 (the previous overhaul), our damage has been split into a variety of types, some of which combine to produce others, and virtually all of those types have their own status effect, some of which also aren't attached to a particular element (e.g. knockdown, Lifted, staggers...). In total, we have sixteen different damage types, and eighteen different status effects. That's a lot! Too much, even, and I think the system we have has caused many problems since:

2.1. Warframe's current damage system is bloated and impossible to balance

To list a few quick points:

• The three most dominant damage types under Damage 3.0 are Viral, Heat, and Slash (because they make short work of armored enemies at most levels). The rest don't come close.
• Under Damage 2.0, the dominant damage types were Corrosive and Slash (also because they were great against armor). Thus, only three damage types at most out of our sixteen have really seen widespread amounts of use.
• Five different status effects are DoTs.
• Five/six different status effects debuff the target's damage output.
• Five different damage and/or status types are anti-armor (Puncture damage, Slash status, Heat status, Corrosive damage and status, and Viral status), with Cold having a bonus against Alloy Armor as well.
• Three different damage and/or status types are anti-shields (Impact damage, Toxin damage and status, and Magnetic damage and status), with Cold having a bonus against basic shields as well.

So clearly, there's a lot of redundancy in our damage and status system, and not a lot to show for it, because we ignore almost all of it just to settle on whichever combination works best most of the time (and that combination is based on what's best against armored enemies up to about level 150). Not only is the system bloated with a lot of effects that kind of repeat themselves, that redundancy makes balance essentially impossible, because several damage and status types are in direct competition with one another: when Viral's better against armored enemies at most levels, Corrosive becomes less relevant, whereas Puncture and Magnetic's respective bonuses against armor and shields tend to not really be worth much when Slash procs and Toxin damage can bypass those respective stats entirely. Not only has our bloated damage and status system only produced a small handful of types truly worth using at any given time, it can't really do otherwise, because the moment some damage types become good, others become less good simply because they're competing for the same niche. Under the system we have, there can never really be a time when all damage and status types are all worth building for, let alone equally viable.

2.2. Warframe's current damage system reduces diversity of play and customization

As we all know, a big part of our damage system is its elemental combination mechanic: our four primary elements combine to give us six secondary elements depending on how we slot our elemental mods on our weapons' modding table. This was originally done to prevent "rainbow builds", where players would slot in one of every elemental mod to deal damage of every element, which made every weapon feel boring and samey. However, with the years we've seen the consequences:

• Virtually all of our weapons tend to be modded for the same damage types.
• Virtually all of our weapons end up with the same mod setup, because modding for elemental damage and/or status takes up most of our modding space.
• Weapons with innate elemental damage fail to stand out in an arsenal of weapons that can all be modded for the same element.

So effectively, the system designed to avoid samey weapons and builds has made virtually all of our weapon builds the same, and practically all of our weapons deal the same kinds of damage. There is no real diversity to our weapon modding right now, at least not when it comes to guns, and it's also led to weapons themselves losing their unique traits: rather than enhance diversity, being able to mod for any element means we can make all of our weapons deal the same kind of damage (which many players do), regardless of their original characteristics. Even weapons as thematically opposed as the Glaxion and the Ignis can be modded to deal the same damage type (e.g. Viral), which also means they end up competing purely based on stats, rather than unique traits. Choosing from our vast and diverse arsenal often ends up boiling down to numbers comparisons, because our damage and status system eliminates many of the other differences, and only further contributes to a weapon modding system primarily focused on layering damage multipliers on top of damage multipliers, rather than any true customization to our playstyle.

Because a picture is worth a thousand words, to help illustrate the above, here's a diagram of the current situation made with my terrible amazing MS Paint skills:

https://i.imgur.com/n897dvv.png

Basically, our weapons are a combination of stats, damage types and associated status effects, and occasional unique mechanics. However, because of how our damage and modding works, we can override a large part of those weapons' unique traits, and so comparison between weapons ends up boiling down to their stats and whichever other mechanics they may have (if they have them). Thus, the systems we have ultimately reduce diversity, rather than enhance it.

2.3. Warframe is not a game made for a complex damage system

In forum discussions, it's easy to distance oneself from our mission gameplay and talk about modifiers, math, modding, and other kinds of theorycrafting (or, at least, as much theorycrafting to be had from a system that is ultimately not all that deep). However, when it comes to our missions, our actual moving around and shooting, our gameplay is about feel: when we fight, we don't really do math in our head, we move, aim, cast and attack based on much more rapid-fire information such as enemy positioning, our objective, the environment, and so on. This, I think, is also where our damage system breaks down:

• Every enemy has a list of damage modifiers based on their health, shield, and armor type. With the exception of very specific boss enemies, this does not usually make us change our damage types.
• However, these damage modifiers nonetheless make our damage output inconsistent when we're past the one-shot-everything range, because the same enemies in the same mission can have radically different resistances and vulnerabilities, and we fight all of them at once.
• When players do swap damage types to deal better with a certain faction, the difference is merely in time to kill. Even if we were to actually all do so, modding the right elements for the right faction just boils down to color-matching.
• Even if we were made to change our damage types for each mission, practically speaking we tend to rapidly go from mission to mission, which is a good thing. At that point the question becomes: would we even really want to spend time swapping our mods after every mission?
• Most of our status effects either deal damage, amplify our damage, or make the enemy less able to hurt us. Virtually none make us change our playstyle, or let us approach enemies in different ways outside of maybe applying status to prep a Condition Overload melee weapon (which melee can do fine by itself).
• Percentage chances in practice just boil down to how often we apply status, and our most effective status weapons can now be modded for over 100% status chance to apply multiple status effects per second (e.g. the Kuva Nukor).
• Even the most basic physical damage weapon usually outputs at least three different damage types (Impact, Puncture, and Slash), each with their own status effect. That's a lot of base complexity, and it's not really complexity most players really want or care for (in fact, some players outright remove Impact damage from weapons through Riven mods just to land more status procs from another damage type, such as Slash).

So for all its complexity and large amounts of different damage and status types, not only does our damage and status system fail to meaningfully add depth and variety to our gameplay in practice, even if it were to work, it would still not add any real degree of depth: color-matching our mods to a faction just to kill them quicker isn't really switching up our gameplay, not when our damage and status types all end up just boosting our DPS instead of encouraging us to play differently. Warframe could certainly use more ways to make us alter our playstyle, but our damage and status system is fundamentally incapable of providing that. The very notion of swapping out mods for every mission just to deal with a faction better doesn't particularly mesh with the pace at which we play, and wouldn't make our gameplay more interesting if it were to happen. Our damage and status system is both too complex for what is ultimately a pretty simple core gameplay loop, and too shallow to give us actual depth or diversity of play. In fact, it's arguably reduced it, and limited our ability to meaningfully customize our gameplay.

3. Conclusion

TL;DR: The problem with our damage meta isn't with specific damage types or status effects (even though there are serious imbalances that could be reduced), but with the damage and status system itself: for all its complexity, the system has not only failed to inject diversity of builds and play into Warframe, but has in fact been severely reducing it, homogenizing weapons and having us all mod for the same optimal elemental combination. This doesn't make us play differently either, it just makes us kill enemies faster as we play in pretty much the same way as if we weren't to have damage or status types at all, just the same amount of multiplied DPS. Thus, Damage 3.0 I think has ultimately failed to meaningfully improve the state of damage and status in the game, because the most durable solution isn't to modify individual damage types or status effects, but to overhaul our damage system entirely. What we need isn't a damage system overloaded with largely redundant types and ultimately fairly shallow status effects, but a simpler system that gives individual weapons more room to express their own differences and unique mechanics.

[keikogi]

I've been through all damage system and all off them boiled down to what deal with armor best. Serrated  blade , corrosive procs and slash procs,  viral slash and fire. These are the metas off each era and all they did was being good against armor. Personally I don't think the problem can be solved until DE first removes armor scaling all together  quick equation to illustrate.

Infested HP = HP x LVL scaling 

CORPUS = HP XBOX LVL SCALING + HP X LVL SCALING 

GRINEER = HP x LVL SCALING x ( ARMOR X LVL SCALING ) 

Note: simplified the armor to a simple health multiplier because that is what it effectively.

This create the problem where there is a different SCALING for each faction and I side thr same faction the SCALING is out off wack to ( a butcher is close to a bombard EHP at level 1  but at level 100 they are not even  on the same ballpark). So it does not matter what the damages types do,  because if a shielded unit at level 100 has 100(just for a example) EHP but the armored counterpart has 10000 people will just use what ever is good against armor because using magnetic against alloy target makes the target unkillable but using slash against shields is like 3 times slower than toxic. 

 

I don't disagree that the current system is over bloated and I would argue that it has fundamental problems with it status system as well ( number of procs instead of base damage behind the proc makes low ROF weapond bad ). 

[Teridax68]

12 minutes ago, keikogi said:

This create the problem where there is a different SCALING for each faction and I side thr same faction the SCALING is out off wack to ( a butcher is close to a bombard EHP at level 1  but at level 100 they are not even  on the same ballpark). So it does not matter what the damages types do,  because if a shielded unit at level 100 has 100(just for a example) EHP but the armored counterpart has 10000 people will just use what ever is good against armor because using magnetic against alloy target makes the target unkillable but using slash against shields is like 3 times slower than toxic.

I completely agree, and I think this has always been a problem with our damage system as well. Making one faction's EHP scale quadratically on top of whichever baseline scaling every faction follows just means that all of our damage modding ends up orienting itself towards dealing against that faction (and given that every faction has armored units, that applies to most parts of the game anyway). The excuse for this has always been that this was meant to be the Grineer's unique way of being a late-game threat, but that's bull, because it's not really a feature that's unique to the Grineer anymore, and it's also a feature we invalidate almost entirely through our builds.

With this in mind, I think the solution to that particular problem should be to just make armor static, and no longer have it scale with level. Additionally, current armor-stripping effects should all strip flat amounts of armor, rather than percentages. Different units could have different amounts of armor, but ultimately Grineer should follow the same EHP scaling as the rest. If they need a way of posing a credible late-game threat relative to the Corpus, one could simply put more focus on their Slash procs, which tend to happen more often at higher levels anyway.

[syl42]

There are already other threads regarding status effect, but what if they would remove some elemental mods from a weapon category, let's say only primary can apply viral, secondary corrosive, etc...

Or maybe add some synergies via status, enemies with magnetic proc takes increased damage from melee.

[Teridax68]

1 minute ago, syl42 said:

There are already other threads regarding status effect, but what if they would remove some elemental mods from a weapon category, let's say only primary can apply viral, secondary corrosive, etc...

Or maybe add some synergies via status, enemies with magnetic proc takes increased damage from melee.

I think both still bring us back to the same problems, and could possibly even make them worse: limiting which weapons apply which damage type means we may end up not even using one or more entire classes of weapons if those weapons don't deal an optimal damage type. Adding more mechanics onto status effects also risks making the system even more bloated, while ultimately still leaving us with a meta in which only a handful of damage and status types are considered worth using, since most damage/status types compete with one another and the status system doesn't really lend itself to subtle gameplay niches.

[keikogi]

54 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

completely agree, and I think this has always been a problem with our damage system as well. Making one faction's EHP scale quadratically on top of whichever baseline scaling every faction follows just means that all of our damage modding ends up orienting itself towards dealing against that faction (and given that every faction has armored units, that applies to most parts of the game anyway). The excuse for this has always been that this was meant to be the Grineer's unique way of being a late-game threat, but that's bull, because it's not really a feature that's unique to the Grineer anymore, and it's also a feature we invalidate almost entirely through our builds.

I don't think armor scaling is a good way to convey their superior thoughtless I think just have really hight base armor ( upwards off 2000 ) but having such nonsense as Rear armor , slow turn rates , unarmored weak spots would make the grineer stand out as a faction off lumbering titans instead off the faction that vulnerable to slash even if armor is supposed to  e good against slash. It would be far more interesting if grineer where the faction off weak spots and flanking and not the faction serrated blade weapons even dought they wear heavy armor.

 

[Steel_Rook]

I know we've discussed this before, so I'll keep off the "remove status/critical chance" arguments this time around :)

I agree. Warframe's combat system isn't anywhere near deep enough to bother with a damage system this complex. The results are pretty much as you describe them - superfluous Arsenal min/maxing which fails to affect the way we play in any substantive way beyond modifying TTK. This, more than anything else, should show us that Warframe's damage system isn't working as intended and possibly never could. I can only speak from experience, but all of my weapons - ALL OF THEM - have the same mods in 6 out of 8 slots, with the remaining 2 being filled with a selection of maybe a dozen other mods. Judging other people's build guides, most people don't seem to give themselves even that much choice.

Unfortunately, there are several issues all bundled together to create this fine mess. I'd like to look through a few of them:

 

Too many damage types:

AKA what you talked about in the OP. I agree. Warframe doesn't need 13-14 individual damage types. Most people use 2 or 3, with the rest barely seeing use. Personally, I have the same radical solution here as I've proposed before - do to enemy health types what DE did to Tenno health pools. Have all damage types to the same damage against all health types. Simple as that. This ensures that out damage type choice is governed purely by what status effect we want our weapon to do, rather than picking "whatever does the most damage to Grineer health/armour." Sure, it's probably still going to be Viral, Heat and Slah, which is where my second radical suggestion comes in:

Remove the moajority of damage types from the game. Leave only 5 behind - 1 physical and 4 elemental. Doesn't matter what you call them. Physical damage would do stagger, leading to knockdown at enough stacks. Each elemental type would do one of the following: DOT, debuff, anti-EHP, control. DoT would be just standard Damage Over Time, debuff would be some combination of -damage/-accuracy/-range, anti-EHP would be armour strip/shield strip/anti-heal and control would be a slow leading up to a full hold at full stacks. Because all damage types do the same amount of damage to all health types, status effects can then be chosen to alter the way our weapons behave on a more practical, gameplay level.

This still leaves us with the problem of Grineer armour, however, since "anti-EHP" would remain the most popular damage type. Well...

 

NPC armour/shields/health:

For the sake of context - armour provides damage resistance by the following formula: resistance = armour/(armour + 300). This is a rational function with diminishing returns. Damage resistance contributes to EHP by the following formula: EHP = HP/resustance. This is a rational function with increasing returns. When you add both formulae together, you get the following: EHP = HP + HP*(armour/300). That's a linear relationship. Every point of armour adds 1/300th of a health point to that enemy's EHP. This is a very clever bit of math, because it shows that some developer at DE sat down and tried to turn damage resistance into a linearly scaling addition to EHP... And then some other developer at DE completely undermined this by instituting an exponential increase in BOTH health AND armour as enemy level increases. Because HP and armour are multiplicative with each other, this leads to truly stupid levels of EHP. DE haven't really done much about it because they know that anything less would completely unravel their combat system.

Thus, I propose the following three things: Rework armour entirely (at least on enemies). Armour now reduces BASE weapon damage by a flat amount or 50%, whichever results in more damage. Say a specific amount of armour resists 10 damage. The Soma does a total of 12 base damage, which would be reduced to 6 (or by 50%). All mods and buffs are then applied to that base damage. The Vasto deals 58 damage, which would be reduced to 48 (or by ~17%). An Opticor deals 1000 damage, which would be reduce to 990 (or by 1%). The higher the base damage of your weapon, the better it penetrates armour. Similarly, I would tie enemy shield recharge delay after their shield gate to their shield capacity. The higher the enemy shield capacity, the faster shields start recharging after "gating".

The point? Currently, high-powered, slow-firing weapons are of limited use against the Corpus. They CAN be used, especially with precision headshots. However, automatic weapons work substantially better because they fire much faster than Corpus shield recharge and they deliver damage in smaller chunks so less is lost to shield gating. Without the need for damage resistance or much in the way of stats, ALREADY game mechanics encourage the use of some weapon archetypes against the Corpus. The same does not apply to the Grineer, and it really should. Thus, I see the benefit in swapping their armour as described above. Not only would that encourage the use of slower-firing more powerful weapons against them, but it would also remove their ability to resist 95%, 96%, 97% of our damage and thus MANDATING anti-armour status types. I call that a win-win.

And yes, something like that would absolutely require another major enemy health/armour/shield/scaling rebalance. However, I personally feel that whatever comes out the other end would both scale much better and also lean less heavily on "meta" damage types. Sure, some people would still swear by anti-EHP damage types, but I'd personally probably go with debuff or control. If you've ever seen any of my builds, I try to aim for Tank/Support in spirit, at least. I'd much rather have a slower but safer fight where I outlast my enemy than be a glass cannon. To each his own, after all.

 

Weapon modding:

Personally, I feel that letting us slather our weapons in multiple copies of +60%, +90%, +165% elemental damage mods is not just silly but overall bad design. I can't slap on multiple Serration mods, but I can equip 4 "Elemental Serration" mods at the same time. Not only does this balloon our damage to truly stupid levels (my basic mod setup boosts weapon damage by *30 before crits or status), it also means that ALL of our guns become elemental guns. Soma? Viral. Tenora? Viral. Corint? Corrosive. Lex? Radiation. Doesn't matter that the Lex is 104 Punctire out of 130 damage, meaning it's designed to be "anti-armour." When I slap on Viral damage for a total of 255% of ALL of its physical damage, that's now a Radiation gun. Puncture doesn't matter so much.

My solution to that would be to remove all Elemental Damage mods and replace them with "elemental conversion" mods, instead. Think Virtuous Arcanes, changing a percentage of total damage done to that element. Because we'd only have the five damage types I listed above and most weapons would do physical, you'd only really need one mod for extra elemental damage. I'd probably make those into Exilus mods, as well, and probably cap them to 60 or 80%. There ought to be a reason to use pure elemental weapons, after all, no?

This has a few effects. For one, it removes a LOT of our damage creep by slashing a pretty large modifier - larger than what I've noted here as many people slap more of those on their guns than I do. It also removes a the ability to stack copies of the same damage buff, further reducing creep. It frees up quite a few slots in weapon modding, potentially opening the door for accuracy/stability buffs, magazine buffs, etc - stuff that normally wouldn't matter. And while sure - there will always be new "meta" buffs," it eliminates at leasr some of the major ones.

 

Overall:

I realise this is a pretty invasive set of changes that I expect to see a lot of pushback against. However, I also feel that we need changes of this severity if we're ever going to see "balance," or at least a reason to use more than a handful of builds. We have too many damage types and they're wrapped up too badly into a number of legacy systems. Warframe's issues have lasted this long because of how interconnected they are. You can't fix one thing without entirely unravelling several others. Most of them, then, need to be altered at once else you end up with a mess.

[Tyreaus]

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

We can talk all day about what's wrong with specific damage types and how to change them, but really, I think those are merely symptoms of a deeper and larger problem, which is the damage and status system itself: since Damage 2.0 (the previous overhaul), our damage has been split into a variety of types, some of which combine to produce others, and virtually all of those types have their own status effect, some of which also aren't attached to a particular element (e.g. knockdown, Lifted, staggers...). In total, we have sixteen different damage types, and eighteen different status effects. That's a lot!

I feel like a secondary criticism is an apparent desire by devs to keep the current damage schema and minimize the changes. The latest changes to Slash and other elements that procured the Viral meta kept a system where Slash - as the armour bypass element - was a physical type, while Toxin - the shield bypass element - was a primary type. And Blast still exists.

Of course this leads to the current bloat of "too many damage types", but I do feel DE should be more willing to put a sledgehammer to the current setup. That's what led to the current system in the first place, and AFAIK, that was better received than the first damage system. But "better received" doesn't mean "structurally flawless". The utter mess of damage bonuses in a horde shooter should point to issues. And yeah, breaking down something like that feels bad, but it worked before. There shouldn't be fear to do it again.

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

To list a few quick points:

I'd also like to add, my personal consternation: every damage-dealing effect is over time. There are no instantaneous damage effects. Blast, for example, could serve a much better purpose if it was like Concealed Explosives, generating an instance of AoE damage on impact with a target. Same could go for Cold effects, and various other sub-par elements.

(Personally, I feel that the current pace of the game doesn't jive with DoT effects anyway. The TTK for many enemies is quite low to the point of being instantaneous in most cases, so we switch from target to target quite quickly. But that means the "hurry up and wait for the enemy to bleed to death" idea divorces the player's action from the result. That is: if you do have a setup relying on Slash procs that bleed the targets to death, you're probably moving on to the next enemy or group and not paying attention to the target that you know is going to die. You don't see the fruits of your labour. That's not great for entertainment.)

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This was originally done to prevent "rainbow builds", where players would slot in one of every elemental mod to deal damage of every element, which made every weapon feel boring and samey.

I don't believe there is a way to prevent "boring and samey"-feeling builds unless elements are made similar enough to the point that electing a given elemental setup is down to flavour over efficacy. As you mention later on, "color-matching our mods to a faction just to kill them quicker isn't really switching up our gameplay". The builds end up the same with only a minor tweak to elemental combinations. That's not to say that a given elemental setup can't be slightly better than another for a given faction, but that - in most cases - the difference isn't enough to overcome the desire to electrocute some baddies. See, e.g., Rattleguts and Tombfinger kitguns: one is, generally, more powerful, but overall, you aren't going to go wrong if you want a custom built laser assault rifle.

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

a simpler system that gives individual weapons more room to express their own differences and unique mechanics.

I think there is a certain conflict between simplifying the damage system to let individual weapons shine more and making the damage system (procs in particular) affect our gameplay more. If, for example, you were to give elements more innate properties - like Radiation having innate punch through - then something like punch through on a sniper ends up de-emphasized by comparison. On the other hand, if elemental effects are, largely, flat and homogenous and more of a background effect - perhaps something to emphasize weapon's base properties rather than overshadow them - then innate properties of weapons tend to shine above that. But that relationship depends on the prominence of status effects: more impactful effects tend to overshadow innate weapon effects and vice versa.

That also affects just how prominent the modding screen is. If elements matter a lot less, then players aren't likely or incentivized to re-mod their weapon past their preferences. Is that desired? (I'd say so, because it puts more focus on active gameplay, but arguments could be made...)

There isn't really a "wrong answer" in that sort of continuum, it being a continuum and all, but it is something to keep in mind for the gameplay one desires.

 

I didn't quote everything because I agree wholeheartedly. My personal solution would be to embrace the changes Railjack put forward: 

Spoiler

 

1. Heat strips armour with diminishing returns (so approaches total strip but never hits 100%), or strips armour's damage resistance directly (so max enemy damage reduction becomes 50%), with fire DoT and panic
2. Electric increases damage against shields and has a solid AoE DoT
3. Toxin increases damage against health, applies Radiation CC, and a single-target DoT (with no shield bypass)
4. Cold slows targets and decreases accuracy and increases damage taken overall

And the combined elements would have no procs, like RJ, but take the above schema - heat for anti-armour, electric for anti-shield, toxin for anti-health, cold for overall - to deal bonus damage based on its composition. So something like Blast (cold + heat) would deal a small bonus to everything with a slightly higher bonus against armour, Corrosive (toxin + electric) would have large bonuses against shield and health but nothing for armour, etc.

It could also be that physical procs have a generic "bleed" proc (with no bonuses or detriments, whether or not it still ignores armour), with Impact, Puncture, and Slash themselves being more like combined elements: not having their own procs, but carrying bonuses against shields, armour, and health respectively. That way the base damage composition of a weapon only affects up-front damage and you don't have something like a high status Impact weapon being a lot less useful than a high status Slash one. (And for 'realism' sake: blunt weapons can still cause internal bleeding, so I think it works)

Having thought about this a touch more, I do feel it would be better to turn those elemental DoTs into instance damages. Heat being an explosion (in appearance, not necessarily effect), Toxin a burst of sludge or some sort - that sort of stuff. Maybe with something tacked onto Cold, too. It'd also allow the generic "bleed" proc to be the only DoT, setting it apart from the elemental effects.

 

 

I think the number of elements we have could work, but their purposes need to be shuffled around some so that it A: isn't quite so messy and B: we have fewer procs and C: there's a more solid schema of what goes in what elemental "tier" (instead of armour strip being on both a primary and secondary element, there being a DoT effect as a secondary element, CC elements being all over hell's half acre...).

[ShortCat]

20 hours ago, keikogi said:

Personally I don't think the problem can be solved until DE first removes armor scaling all together  quick equation to illustrate.

I disagree with this.

The core messege in the OP is that all the different damage types and all the different health types fail to create meaningfull choices. All of them, except if the player is dealing with armor. Then base IPS destribution, other stats as well as modding matters a lot. As such, the only conclusion I can draw is that armor is the only health type which makes player's choice matter. I say - armor is not too strong; other health types fail to resist "whatever" damage types.

 

18 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

this leads to truly stupid levels of EHP

EHP is a meaningless stat to measure how durable an enemy actually is. Even in case of armor's "double scaling" it is deceptive, becasue armor ignore option make the armor scaling portion irrelevant, while armor reduce options themselves use non-linear scaling. (Note: Corrosive as armor reduce option is underperforming right now)

18 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

The point? Currently, high-powered, slow-firing weapons are of limited use against the Corpus. They CAN be used, especially with precision headshots. However, automatic weapons work substantially better because they fire much faster than Corpus shield recharge and they deliver damage in smaller chunks so less is lost to shield gating.

Toxin ignores shields.

18 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Have all damage types to the same damage against all health types. Simple as that. This ensures that out damage type choice is governed purely by what status effect we want our weapon to do, rather than picking "whatever does the most damage to Grineer health/armour."

How do you intend to make several hundreds weapons, with similar handling, stats and/or gamepaly distinguishable from each other?

 

[keikogi]

3 hours ago, ShortCat said:

The core messege in the OP is that all the different damage types and all the different health types fail to create meaningfull choices. All of them, except if the player is dealing with armor. Then base IPS destribution, other stats as well as modding matters a lot. As such, the only conclusion I can draw is that armor is the only health type which makes player's choice matter. I say - armor is not too strong; other health types fail to resist "whatever" damage types.

You are missing my point entirely. Armor SCALING is fundamentally broken because it scales twice screwing the internal EHP balance on a faction( difference off ehp from grunts to elites ) and the external difference off off EHP(FROM FACTION TO FACTION). I'm actually in favor off just loading the enemy on their health and shield values , increasing the base armor and remove armor SCALING all together. 

Simply speaking armor is just better and giving enemies EHP on a fundamental mechanical level because armored units scale twice and armor resist damage twice ( armor increases against bad damage types , long story short if you use a bad damage type against armor the unit "gains" armor ). 

It's almost impossible to buff shields to the same ridiculous level off armor and impossible to buff health to the same level ( any buff to health would just make armor stronger) 

Armor does not make you take a decision , it just makes you pick a few mods on the modding screen and ignore the mechanic all together. So what the point off a mechanic if you can and should ignore it. Armor has no meaningful game play impact because the only way you can deal with it on the molding screen. There are no weak spots on the armor , no rear armor no destructable armor parts. There absolutely nothing off interest as far as gameplay is concerned, unless you count the modding scream is the APEX off warframe gameplay 

[Steel_Rook]

2 hours ago, keikogi said:

It's almost impossible to buff shields to the same ridiculous level off armor and impossible to buff health to the same level ( any buff to health would just make armor stronger) 

I know this is orthogonal to the discussion, but:

This is true if you're trying to achieve that through stats alone. I personally feel that at this point in Warframe's life, we're better off using mechanics, instead. I already discussed potential changes to armour above, but Shields can become VERY problematic with a short enough recharge delay due to shield gating. Right now, DE still seem to be fairly conservative on Corpus shield recharge, setting it to something I think 2 seconds at least. Now imagine a shield recharge with a delay of 200ms. Any weapon below 5 RPM is GOING to hit a shield gate on every other shot. Of course, this would completely negate slower-fire weapons, so you could increase the shield gate bleed-through to something like 15-20%. But this right there shuts down most slow-firing weapons right out the gate.

The same could apply to Infested Health. With enough health regen and a mechanic which transforms direct damage to DOT, you can make them absurdly sturdy to the point of forcing players to massively overkill them. Sure, it would go against their design as the "Zerg" faction of throwaway rushers, but you could reserve for just larger units - Ancients and such. Maybe let melee weapons bypass the DOT transform mechanic, in order to emphasise melee use. Or maybe give them a gestalt health pool shared infested in proximity, in order to encourage the use of AoE.

I'm not saying any of these are GOOD ideas, mind you. Just saying that there are plenty of mechanics which could be implemented in order to make Infested and Corpus just as tough as Grineer. It just so happens that the Grineer are the only faction in the current game that actually HAS an EHP gimmick. The Corpis attained one only relatively recently and DE didn't actually go very far with it, while the Infested plain don't have one. And worst of all, Grineer armour is just... Boring. It's just stats. It's not like we can knock off their armour plates or shoot them in the unarmoured bits or do anything else clever like with Corpus Shield Gating. It's just flat damage resistance. Warframe could - and should - do better than that.

[LillyRaccune]

3 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

5 RPM

Do you mean rounds per second?

5 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

It's not like we can knock off their armour plates or shoot them in the unarmoured bits or do anything else clever like with Corpus Shield Gating. It's just flat damage resistance. Warframe could - and should - do better than that.

This is a good explaination. I think I would like if DE added some extra mechanical strategies. At least the Corpus nullifier units have a shield regulator module that, if we can snipe, kills their bubbles.

[CephalonCarnage]

On 2021-03-14 at 2:06 PM, Teridax68 said:

With this in mind, I think the solution to that particular problem should be to just make armor static, and no longer have it scale with level. Additionally, current armor-stripping effects should all strip flat amounts of armor, rather than percentages

Yup. I did a "thinking out loud" concept of how to make shields and armour more interesting, whilst still being simple. Armour scaling has to go, replaced with a armour bar that you can whittle down whilst absorbing part of the damage dealt. Then we can deal with the whole "slash bypasses armour" concept that is such an abuse a decent combat system.

[Tiltskillet]

I really don't think damage types should be removed.  Just better balanced.   Note:  I did not say "perfectly balanced".  Frankly, I don't care much if there are two or four generally better damage types out of 16, as long as the others are interesting and there are cases to be made for them in some meaningful content.  Moreso than now, anyway, where the case for Blast is largely "Kill 150 enemies with Blast damage". 

 

[syl42]

Il y a 1 heure, Steel_Rook a dit :

I know this is orthogonal to the discussion, but:

This is true if you're trying to achieve that through stats alone. I personally feel that at this point in Warframe's life, we're better off using mechanics, instead. I already discussed potential changes to armour above, but Shields can become VERY problematic with a short enough recharge delay due to shield gating. Right now, DE still seem to be fairly conservative on Corpus shield recharge, setting it to something I think 2 seconds at least. Now imagine a shield recharge with a delay of 200ms. Any weapon below 5 RPM is GOING to hit a shield gate on every other shot. Of course, this would completely negate slower-fire weapons, so you could increase the shield gate bleed-through to something like 15-20%. But this right there shuts down most slow-firing weapons right out the gate.

Shield gating is already a problem with Kuva Dragkoon (and most shotgun I guess), you can't one shot corpus enemies and it usually requires 2 shots. One to down the shield and another one for the life.

[Teridax68]

On 2021-03-14 at 4:04 PM, Steel_Rook said:

I realise this is a pretty invasive set of changes that I expect to see a lot of pushback against. However, I also feel that we need changes of this severity if we're ever going to see "balance," or at least a reason to use more than a handful of builds.

I agree with pretty much everything you've said in your post. I just posted a concept thread for a prospective Damage 4.0 system, and it too aligns with what you've said: ultimately, I'd want to get rid of our different elements, get rid of status as this generic system, and instead have a damage system in Warframe that's both much simpler and more geared towards doing something, like shooting people in the head or comboing different actions together, rather than just pumping enemies full of numbers. It does leave some gaps, though, and one of them is enemy armor, which requires its own set of changes. Reworking it to counter high-ROF weapons and favor slower-firing, higher damage-per-shot weapons could add a much greater degree of strategy than the current generic damage reduction it provides, and as you mentioned would have Grineer and Corpus favor different weapon classes. Both of us propose large changes, but large changes I think are what we need if the state of damage in Warframe is to ever durably improve.

22 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

Of course this leads to the current bloat of "too many damage types", but I do feel DE should be more willing to put a sledgehammer to the current setup. That's what led to the current system in the first place, and AFAIK, that was better received than the first damage system. But "better received" doesn't mean "structurally flawless". The utter mess of damage bonuses in a horde shooter should point to issues. And yeah, breaking down something like that feels bad, but it worked before. There shouldn't be fear to do it again.

I'm entirely on board with this. I mention it above in this comment, but I made a separate thread with my own take on how to rework damage in Warframe, and I also think the game needs comprehensive, systemic reworks, not another set of surface-level changes that don't address the core problems at hand. What I find bizarre is that some players oppose the idea of larger changes to the game's systems on the grounds that they'd be too complex or would destabilize the game too much, despite the fact that Warframe's development history is full of massive overhauls, most of which did the game a lot of good. It's happened before, and it should happen again.

22 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

I'd also like to add, my personal consternation: every damage-dealing effect is over time. There are no instantaneous damage effects.

I very much agree with this as well: it's strange to have five DoTs and not a single proc that could spread an attack's damage instantly (and I agree, Blast would be the perfect status effect for this; it need not even damage the main victim so long as it damages those around them). I'm also with you that DoTs are not a good fit for Warframe's general gameplay, especially not at our current pace: it could be fine to make certain very specific effects apply DoTs, but there's no sense in giving us so many and across so many weapons, as currently they just serve to cheese armored enemies at higher levels in not particularly satisfying ways.

22 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

I don't believe there is a way to prevent "boring and samey"-feeling builds unless elements are made similar enough to the point that electing a given elemental setup is down to flavour over efficacy.

I think there is a certain conflict between simplifying the damage system to let individual weapons shine more and making the damage system (procs in particular) affect our gameplay more. If, for example, you were to give elements more innate properties - like Radiation having innate punch through - then something like punch through on a sniper ends up de-emphasized by comparison. On the other hand, if elemental effects are, largely, flat and homogenous and more of a background effect - perhaps something to emphasize weapon's base properties rather than overshadow them - then innate properties of weapons tend to shine above that. But that relationship depends on the prominence of status effects: more impactful effects tend to overshadow innate weapon effects and vice versa.

That also affects just how prominent the modding screen is. If elements matter a lot less, then players aren't likely or incentivized to re-mod their weapon past their preferences. Is that desired? (I'd say so, because it puts more focus on active gameplay, but arguments could be made...)

There isn't really a "wrong answer" in that sort of continuum, it being a continuum and all, but it is something to keep in mind for the gameplay one desires.

I fully agree with all of this. At the end of the day, any possible mechanic that can happen in Warframe can either be applied to a specific feature, e.g. a weapon, ability, etc., or to a mod or other mode of customization that can be applied to a wide range of features. The more mechanics we give to universally-applicable mods, the less room we give for weapons and the like to differentiate themselves. Personally, it's because of this that my pie-in-the-sky idealized modding system in Warframe would feature no universal mods at all, and instead only offer mods tailored to the individual weapon, warframe, companion, etc. However, if we're just talking about our damage system, I'm with you that if we can mod any weapon for any element, then we need to make sure elements and status effects give weapons a chance to stand out via their own unique traits. This isn't really possible with the system we have, which is why I think our elements and status effects need to be pared down (or even flat-out removed).

22 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

I think the number of elements we have could work, but their purposes need to be shuffled around some so that it A: isn't quite so messy and B: we have fewer procs and C: there's a more solid schema of what goes in what elemental "tier" (instead of armour strip being on both a primary and secondary element, there being a DoT effect as a secondary element, CC elements being all over hell's half acre...).

I can definitely get behind the system you're proposing. I agree, there's definitely room to simplify (I personally think the Electricity DoT could just be an instant chain of damage between enemies, rather than a DoT), but at least what you're suggesting would give players reason to go for primary elements, as well as give each one a much more distinct niche. It would be a significant step up from what we have at the moment.

6 hours ago, ShortCat said:

The core messege in the OP is that all the different damage types and all the different health types fail to create meaningfull choices. All of them, except if the player is dealing with armor. Then base IPS destribution, other stats as well as modding matters a lot. As such, the only conclusion I can draw is that armor is the only health type which makes player's choice matter. I say - armor is not too strong; other health types fail to resist "whatever" damage types.

I think this misses the point rather severely, because I also mention that at best, the anti-armor/health/shield component to our elemental damage system is just a color-matching game: unless we collectively agree that the toddler's game of putting the square peg in the square hole is the height of strategic adaptation, I think we can do better. Just because our current anti-enemy specialization looks more like this does not mean the idea it plays off of is that much deeper, let alone desirable to implement properly in Warframe.

2 hours ago, gbjbaanb said:

Yup. I did a "thinking out loud" concept of how to make shields and armour more interesting, whilst still being simple. Armour scaling has to go, replaced with a armour bar that you can whittle down whilst absorbing part of the damage dealt. Then we can deal with the whole "slash bypasses armour" concept that is such an abuse a decent combat system.

I very much agree with this. I posted a reply in your thread, and I would very much support a rework to armor that a) removed the quadratic component to armored enemy scaling, and b) made armor more than just a health multiplier.

1 hour ago, Tiltskillet said:

I really don't think damage types should be removed.  Just better balanced.   Note:  I did not say "perfectly balanced".  Frankly, I don't care much if there are two or four generally better damage types out of 16, as long as the others are interesting and there are cases to be made for them in some meaningful content.  Moreso than now, anyway, where the case for Blast is largely "Kill 150 enemies with Blast damage". 

I feel there's an internal contradiction here, because an environment in which 2-4 damage types dominate is an environment where virtually none of the other types see much use at all. This has been the situation since Damage 2.0, and I think tweaks to elements and status effects can only go so far. Really, there's nothing about damage types and status effects that can't just be directly implemented on certain weapons, and that could arguably bring us a lot more diversity and more interesting use cases than letting us layer the same elements and mechanics onto every weapon.

[keikogi]

4 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I know this is orthogonal to the discussion, but:

I donpt think it´s ortogonal, enemy damage resistence and damage mitigation mechanics are the foundation where the damage is built. IF you have a mostly well balanced damage system but there a common enemy that makes a mockery off your system ,well the ystem felt apart and got distorted because everyone has to deal with that common enemy with a good flavour off bs. 

4 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

This is true if you're trying to achieve that through stats alone. I personally feel that at this point in Warframe's life, we're better off using mechanics, instead. I already discussed potential changes to armour above, but Shields can become VERY problematic with a short enough recharge delay due to shield gating. Right now, DE still seem to be fairly conservative on Corpus shield recharge, setting it to something I think 2 seconds at least. Now imagine a shield recharge with a delay of 200ms. Any weapon below 5 RPM is GOING to hit a shield gate on every other shot. Of course, this would completely negate slower-fire weapons, so you could increase the shield gate bleed-through to something like 15-20%. But this right there shuts down most slow-firing weapons right out the gate.

I also had an idea for corpus shields, shield links , nearby units would linl their shields make it so all the shields would be linked together to make just 1 massive pool. Howerver , that mechanic is just to comunist for the corpus so discarded that train off tought. Flickering shhields could be a good mechanic for corpus , maybe making "heinhert " wall shield that need to be flanked would be a nice adtion too. 

4 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

The same could apply to Infested Health. With enough health regen and a mechanic which transforms direct damage to DOT, you can make them absurdly sturdy to the point of forcing players to massively overkill them. Sure, it would go against their design as the "Zerg" faction of throwaway rushers, but you could reserve for just larger units - Ancients and such. Maybe let melee weapons bypass the DOT transform mechanic, in order to emphasise melee use. Or maybe give them a gestalt health pool shared infested in proximity, in order to encourage the use of AoE.

I had similar but diferent idea with magots , dealing damage to a infested unit would spam flying maggots , the expecial thing is , if there are enought maggots they would reform into a new unit reistet to what ever spawed them on the frist place. so the infested keept the ident off mass of stuff hurling itself on your direction. 

 

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I feel there's an internal contradiction here, because an environment in which 2-4 damage types dominate is an environment where virtually none of the other types see much use at all. This has been the situation since Damage 2.0, and I think tweaks to elements and status effects can only go so far. Really, there's nothing about damage types and status effects that can't just be directly implemented on certain weapons, and that could arguably bring us a lot more diversity and more interesting use cases than letting us layer the same elements and mechanics onto every weapon.

I see this but what would take elemental mods place that couldn't just work as a rework to the elements?

[Steel_Rook]

6 hours ago, LillyRaccune said:

Do you mean rounds per second?

I mean per second, yes - 5 RPS. That would equate to 300 RPM - a number I chose to be deliberately low. 300 RPM is actually around where I consider the transition from semi-auto to full-auto to be.

 

6 hours ago, LillyRaccune said:

This is a good explaination. I think I would like if DE added some extra mechanical strategies. At least the Corpus nullifier units have a shield regulator module that, if we can snipe, kills their bubbles.

I posted this in another thread, but I'd love to be able to snipe something on heavier Corpus units - some kind of shield emitter - to permanently shut down their shields. That's a bit of a separate topic about enemy complexity and weak points, though, so I don't want to derail.

 

4 hours ago, syl42 said:

Shield gating is already a problem with Kuva Dragkoon (and most shotgun I guess), you can't one shot corpus enemies and it usually requires 2 shots. One to down the shield and another one for the life.

In my opinion, that's as it should be. I know this sounds confrontational and I do apologise for that, but that's part of what I like about shield gating. Without relying very heavily on stats balance, that mechanic does a great job of dis-incentivising the use of slow-firing, hard-hitting weapons against the Corpus. Such weapons typically trade rate of fire for damage per hit, but their massive overkill goes to waste on a shield gate hit. It's why I stopped trying to use my Opticor against the Corpus - and to me, it made sense to do that.

I'd argue the same applies to the Infested, albeit in slightly different context. It makes no sense to bring a sniper rifle to an Infested mission. You COULD - nothing's stopping you and a good player will likely do fine regardless. However, because Infested forces are comprised of many weak, fast-moving units, a slow-firing precision weapon is at a disadvantage. It sacrifices performance where it counts for benefits that don't help. It makes much more sense to grab a rapid-fire gun, or even resort to melee since the Infested naturally put themselves in perfect melee range and density.

This is why I've been trying to brainstorm ways for making Grineer armour less about resisting all damage and more about resisting CHIP damage, thus incentivising players to use slow-firing, hard-hitting "armour-penetrating" weapons against them. It would solve both the issue of runaway EHP due to armour and create a more "ludonarrative" reason for weapon selection, rather than the current entirely artificial one of colour-matching damage type to health type.

And yes, that does mean that certain enemy factions will heavily penalise certain entire weapon classes and playstyles, but I personally think that's fine for this game. Warframe excels at one thing above all others - no, not Parkour, but Inventory. By this point, the game has such a cornucopia of items and builds and mods that any player should - after they come into their own - be able to adapt to practically any situation. Be it sniping armoured targets, barraging shielded targets, scrapping with melee enemies and more - we have the inventory and opportunity to do so. And crucially - these kinds of systems change how we play, more so than just what colour and value stats we bring.

  

1 hour ago, keikogi said:

I had similar but diferent idea with magots , dealing damage to a infested unit would spam flying maggots , the expecial thing is , if there are enought maggots they would reform into a new unit reistet to what ever spawed them on the frist place. so the infested keept the ident off mass of stuff hurling itself on your direction. 

Oh, hey - now THAT is an interesting idea :) Killing Infested enemies generates a sort of free-floating "Infested Mass." If the player fails to cull it (possibly just by attacking it), it can start spawning more enemies and healing existing ones. I like it. Thinking about it - Infested Ancients could have a lot of potential for interesting mechanics. The issue is that they have such poor audio-visual design that they end up failing to fulfil that role. Ancients are hard to tell apart, it's hard to tell when they're affecting other units and even then it's hard to find where the Ancient in question is. We end up with a game of Where's Ancient Waldo which feels more frustrating than challenging long-term.

Compare them against something like Arbitration Drones. Yes, yes - I know people don't like those, but consider for a second. Arbitration drones are visually linked to all enemies they affect AND they damage said enemies when killed. Yes, they can be difficult to deal with for skill-heavy Warframes, but to me they're very satisfying to deal with because they make me feel smart in using the enemy's weapons against them. The Infested have a lot of potential, but very little of that seems to have been realised with Deimos. They just got given more ranged units and more large units. The only even remotely interesting one of those is the guy with mouths on his shoulders - at least to me.

[George_PPS]

Agree. I really prefer DE to spend more time to make enemies stronger in diverse ways,  it to NERF our loadouts, frames and weapons in diverse way after each update. 

[Steel_Rook]

4 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I just posted a concept thread for a prospective Damage 4.0 system

Bookmarked. I'll have a look through it as time permits. Thanks for the link and for putting in the effort :)

 

4 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I agree with pretty much everything you've said in your post. I just posted a concept thread for a prospective Damage 4.0 system, and it too aligns with what you've said: ultimately, I'd want to get rid of our different elements, get rid of status as this generic system, and instead have a damage system in Warframe that's both much simpler and more geared towards doing something, like shooting people in the head or comboing different actions together, rather than just pumping enemies full of numbers.

"Pumping the enemy full of numbers" is a good way of describing it. Warframe seems to suffer from the same shortcomings as a lot of "looter shooters," in that the compound progression systems serve to obscure, dilute and ultimately undermine what would otherwise be a pretty fun action combat system. That's obviously not to say that there's NO room for RPG mechanics in action games, but what Warframe seems to miss so often is that those mechanic need to serve as a supplement to the action, not as a replacement for it. I'm absolutely on board with you for designing a system based around shooting weakpoints and manipulating enemies more so than just out-DPSing them. How exactly that's achieved is a pretty big topic, but at this point I think this should be our goal at least in spirit.

And just to pick up on a thought from another post: I feel that it's fine for a game to get easier the more a player progresses due to player skill, knowledge and inventory. What causes issues - specifically in Warframe - is when the game becomes SIMPLER the more a player progresses. Energy? Only an issue for new players. Ammo? Only an issue for new player. Headshots? Somewhat important, but mostly not an issue for veterans. So many mission types, enemies and encounters become trivial when the player brings the right build that there's... Well, not much of a game left. And I'm guilty of it just as anyone else, for my inability to stop playing Inaros :)

 

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Reworking it to counter high-ROF weapons and favor slower-firing, higher damage-per-shot weapons could add a much greater degree of strategy than the current generic damage reduction it provides, and as you mentioned would have Grineer and Corpus favor different weapon classes. Both of us propose large changes, but large changes I think are what we need if the state of damage in Warframe is to ever durably improve.

Very much agreed, and I'm always on the look out for new ways of doing that. Although to be perfectly honest, this idea sort of materialised on its own - at least for me. As soon as Corpus Shield Gating launched and I actually tried playing it, it became immediately obvious that my old approach wasn't going to work. My weapon of choice for Orb Vallis was an Opticor Vandal, which is hard to get headshots with due to the AoE component (a wholly separate technical issue). I could previously one-shot just about any of the Terra Corpus enemies, but now they were all taking two shots. Switching to a Tenora I had on file but considered "too weak" had immediate effects, because it all but disregarded shield gating.

DE did such a good job hobbling "cannons" against the Corpus that it just made sense to do the opposite against the Grineer. It would create new gameplay opportunities and promote the use of potentially underutilised weapons, plus... You know, it makes thematic sense :) Enemy using heavy armour? Pick a bigger gun. Mechanical implementation is where this gets hard, though, as classifying what constitutes "powerful" vs. "weak" weapons isn't trivial to do. I forget who, but someone proposed scaling damage resistance from armour based on armour value AND weapon base damage. I went with the Overwatch armour system of "-absolute value" or "% of original damage," whichever gives more weapon damage. 

Our conversations on stuff like shooting off armour plates or hitting enemy weak points tend to be pie-in-the-sky stuff that's probably not going to happen. A redesign of armour to be less about general damage reduction and more about chip damage reduction could actually happen, though. Its ramifications are significant, but its design footprint is fairly small. Hopefully we get more Revised patches coming up. Warframe Revised is - to this date - my favourite path in Warframe. We'll see if Railjack Revised Again can top it :)

[keikogi]

4 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Oh, hey - now THAT is an interesting idea :) Killing Infested enemies generates a sort of free-floating "Infested Mass." If the player fails to cull it (possibly just by attacking it), it can start spawning more enemies and healing existing ones. I like it. Thinking about it -

THats the idea. I think it would do wonders to convey the mass off stuff filling off the infested and make it so the way to fight it is total destruction. 

4 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Infested Ancients could have a lot of potential for interesting mechanics. The issue is that they have such poor audio-visual design that they end up failing to fulfil that role. Ancients are hard to tell apart, it's hard to tell when they're affecting other units and even then it's hard to find where the Ancient in question is. We end up with a game of Where's Ancient Waldo which feels more frustrating than challenging long-term.

I kind off think the entire design problem with ancient is lack off contrast through shape and color pallet to they fail to different themselves enough from the mass off stuff. So they don't feel like the corner stone off the mass off stuff they just feel like just another grunt in the wave.

I really feel like they would benefit from a different rollout pallet and overall shape. If the ancients where proper fossilized armor ( pale white plates ) it would go a long way into make ancients feel like a different breed off infested.

Something like this but with more rounded shapes and deep black instead off red.

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

And just to pick up on a thought from another post: I feel that it's fine for a game to get easier the more a player progresses due to player skill, knowledge and inventory. What causes issues - specifically in Warframe - is when the game becomes SIMPLER the more a player progresses. Energy? Only an issue for new players. Ammo? Only an issue for new player. Headshots? Somewhat important, but mostly not an issue for veterans. So many mission types, enemies and encounters become trivial when the player brings the right build that there's... Well, not much of a game left. And I'm guilty of it just as anyone else, for my inability to stop playing Inaros :)

It's kind off huge design issue off warframe that the more you play the worse you get as player. Your power becomes so overwhelming that most off the decision become moot. Should I manage energy , nah I have energy restores; should a manage ammo nah I also have infinity restores ; should I bother myself with actually defending the mission objective, nah I have the ancient healer specter ; should I try to head shot , da#*!% is headshot man I just point microwave gun that goes brrrr or just fire a my Ogris at the general direction it will probably kill with a 12 meters radius blast ; someone is downed should I lock the enemies down before revive,  nah I just use insensible revive button. Being "good" at warframe is doing your best to ignore the game mechanics in the arsenal scream. As much as people praise the teorical build diversity that exist in warframe but builds are based on making you the best at not playing the game. 

I think the overwhelming power off the arsenal scream combined with there a mod for that mentality from DE makes it so playing warframe is just picking the right build , after that the playing the mission part is essentially meaningless.

A bit off a side  note what I mean there is a mod for that mentality. DE design system around mods and not mods around system. Meaning that most off the game quite literally don't work without some mod. Mercy kill, a waste off time until that rare mod you don't know exist ( speaking from the near player point off view ) dropped ( pretty sure the first one drops in litch crill as a rare drop so people are unlikely to stumble into it ). Combo , impossible to keep up before combo durations and equality impossible to drop after combo duration mods and focus school ( instead off you know , just giving decaying combo from the start and forgo mods altogether). Charge attacks , there a mod to skip the whole build up combo stick. Energy , impossible to survive drought until you get the to mods that effectively multiply both your energy income and energy pool by a factor off 4 ( efficiency pretty much does that ). Armor , literally unbeatable outside off the arsenal scream. Picking up loot , there a mod for that until we release a new system and there will be no mod for that for like 4 month to 3 years. Ranged weapons are underpowered,  well there going to be a mod for that because God forbid if we actually addressed the unbalanced at the core off the system , we will just add more bells and whistles and hope the system somehow balances like a jenga game tower.

Pet peeve about vaccum , an my the only one that goes "how many times we have to teach off this lesson old man " whenever DE releases something with a bad or no vaccum. It's not like kubrows were dead on arrival due to tack off vaccum and even the overpowerd kavats could not match the shear convenience off vaccum. It bother me because it happened to every system,  AW , pets,  railjack and necramech. It is so hard to just give people a good vaccum to begin with instead off going with this pointless dance off the player base either picks pitch forks or abandons something until DE finally decides to cave.

 

 

[Zeddypanda]

4 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

This is why I've been trying to brainstorm ways for making Grineer armour less about resisting all damage and more about resisting CHIP damage, thus incentivising players to use slow-firing, hard-hitting "armour-penetrating" weapons against them.

Another action MMO I used to play had, for the most part, a fairly straightforward formula. Total damage = Damage - Armor. (It switches to a different formula when armor is more than half the damage so you never do 0, but the effect is similar.)

With that setup,  if you have rapid weapons total more dps when no armor is involved, then infested could have loads of health while grineer have loads of (considerably less-scaling) armor, and that would encourage heavy attacks for grineer and light attacks for infested. (Or since there's three factions: Heavy attacks for grineer, light attacks for corpus, aoe attacks for infested as their strength is numbers.)

I never saw the point of an armor system that just translates x armor to y% damage reduction. Why not just increase health by 1/y? Armor didn't have to exist as a mechanic for that effect.

[MonsterOfMyOwn]

I agree that damages would need a rebalance. Not only in procs or damage but also health / armor class should, and also status immunities

Kyta raknoids are a good example : high shield values, immune to mag effect, alloy armor. In SP you still need mag to take out their shield (because it's the only effecient damage even without proc) and then rad to deal damage, but mag and rad can't be set on the same weapon

[syl42]

Il y a 10 heures, Steel_Rook a dit :

In my opinion, that's as it should be. I know this sounds confrontational and I do apologise for that, but that's part of what I like about shield gating. Without relying very heavily on stats balance, that mechanic does a great job of dis-incentivising the use of slow-firing, hard-hitting weapons against the Corpus. Such weapons typically trade rate of fire for damage per hit, but their massive overkill goes to waste on a shield gate hit. It's why I stopped trying to use my Opticor against the Corpus - and to me, it made sense to do that.

I'd argue the same applies to the Infested, albeit in slightly different context. It makes no sense to bring a sniper rifle to an Infested mission. You COULD - nothing's stopping you and a good player will likely do fine regardless. However, because Infested forces are comprised of many weak, fast-moving units, a slow-firing precision weapon is at a disadvantage. It sacrifices performance where it counts for benefits that don't help. It makes much more sense to grab a rapid-fire gun, or even resort to melee since the Infested naturally put themselves in perfect melee range and density.

This is why I've been trying to brainstorm ways for making Grineer armour less about resisting all damage and more about resisting CHIP damage, thus incentivising players to use slow-firing, hard-hitting "armour-penetrating" weapons against them. It would solve both the issue of runaway EHP due to armour and create a more "ludonarrative" reason for weapon selection, rather than the current entirely artificial one of colour-matching damage type to health type.

And yes, that does mean that certain enemy factions will heavily penalise certain entire weapon classes and playstyles, but I personally think that's fine for this game. Warframe excels at one thing above all others - no, not Parkour, but Inventory. By this point, the game has such a cornucopia of items and builds and mods that any player should - after they come into their own - be able to adapt to practically any situation. Be it sniping armoured targets, barraging shielded targets, scrapping with melee enemies and more - we have the inventory and opportunity to do so. And crucially - these kinds of systems change how we play, more so than just what colour and value stats we bring.

FYI, that's how Path of Exile armour scaling works, armour mitigate small hits, but is inefficient against big hits. Scaling isn't linear.

But the problem with corpus and shotgun isn't apparent at all with Kuva Tonkor and Energized Munitions, that's why it's surprising (or maybe I deal too much damage), so in the end, should I just use my Tonkor everywhere? Or their shield gate delay is low enough to take the second hit, and if they increase the delay, it will be really annoying. Maybe the big AoE weapons are just broken and should be nerfed to the ground...

I agree it would be more interesting to bring the right weapon for the enemy type. That's what we already do for the mission type. But that would be quite annoying to swap weapon every 5 minutes. I don't use Bane mods for that reason. They would also have to rework weapon loadout.