Armor, Scaling and AI: Why change?

[Megalomaniakaal]

@Aldain True that. I like the Veldt too.

 

[Megalomaniakaal]

2 minutes ago, A-Midnight-Shanking said:

Bullet sponge, need a particular element setup, end-game build. I'd like it if there was an ammo cache weakpoint on them that you could target to make them explode (or at least chunk a % health) if you don't have the proper elemental setup.

I like that, even if it doesn't(and arguably perhaps shouldn't) kill them it should disable them from shooting any more 'plosives at you!

 

4 minutes ago, A-Midnight-Shanking said:

And then there's the Battalyst.

I find these pretty easy but I have to agree that rewarding is not even in the lexicon to use here.

[(PSN)GingyGreen]

1 hour ago, Berzerkules said:

The problem I have with SP Stalker is he is immune to warframe abilities and status effects. With a 1.5% spawn rate it's not worth modding for a chance encounter with him. When he does show up its easier to just die and get back to what you were doing than fight him with an inadequate loadout. If there were more enemies that were ability/status immune then I would run a loadout that to combat those enemies and stalker wouldn't be a problem. 

 

Well when some Warframe powers include...

 

1) outright mind control...

2) freezing someone in place almost permanently...

3) sucking the enemy into your puddle to kill them while they can't do a thing about it...

 

Yeah I think it's reasonable for bosses to be immune to some Warframe powers

 

 

 

 

 

[Berzerkules]

2 minutes ago, (PSN)GingyGreen said:

Well when some Warframe powers include...

1) outright mind control...

2) freezing someone in place almost permanently...

3) sucking the enemy into your puddle to kill them while they can't do a thing about it...

Yeah I think it's reasonable for bosses to be immune to some Warframe powers

I think having status/ability immune enemies is a piss poor attempt to add difficulty and it just feels like a lazy solution on the devs part. 

Instead of making an engaging fight where you have to use every possible tool at your disposal they limit your kit. 

[Surbusken]

I am semi on board with the 'mechanics over stats" argument. Hitpoint sponging just makes the grind longer.

But just don't forget the backdoor into that mentality, most weapons and mods, the loot, boil down to a stat increase.

"End-game" as in the riven lottery is straight up blank stats, that do nothing for the mechanics. Window 95 notepad edit.

It's a nice and easy way, to control the game through zero amount of work.

You can just edit the numbers on an item and then gate it behind whatever gameplay you want, to have the metrics justify the content, as with planet-grinding or nighwave.

See, everyone is playing it!!! So it's great, right?

Versus having quality gameplay mechanics stand on their own and carry content, then we'd see the reality of the situation but would require a lot more work.

I don't think they are willing to take the chance or put in the work - we laugh at how simple the game is, but by extension that also makes the work less complex.

D and D pen and paper stats controlling the loot is coasting but it does work.

No content in the history of the game has gone un-grinded, if the notepad stats are right. Terrific failsafe when you think about it, don't have to worry about the actual quality.

[0_The_F00l]

As long as Warframe remains a pseudo slot machine where you keep doing the same thing over and over , most players will want to have a mechanism to keep doing it effectively.

adding anythings that increases the time between pulls (HP , AI , mechanics) will always be disliked by such players, this is a hole that DE has dug themselves into though.

[GEN-Son_17]

12 hours ago, _R_o_g_u_e_ said:

What is your source for stating that fun directly correlates with enemy complexity? Because in most games AI isn’t terribly intelligent. PoE, Diablo, Destiny, Borderlands all have extremely basic AI. 
 

They have path finding, cover mechanics and abilities like jumps or grenades, all of which are present in warframe. When you state “more complex,” what exactly do you want from them?

I see a lot of people taking shots at the AI, and asking for it to be better. But never giving any insight into what that might look like.

Hopefully it goes without saying that “make something better” or “more complex,” is by itself worthless feedback.

This is my main concern with the AI argument as well. It will be incredibly hard to add "smarter" AI when the ultimate goal of Warframe is to be in a power fantasy. There are already several enemies that exist that I've seem players, vets included, simply try to avoid, using the "they're annoying enemies" excuse. Orb Vallis on the highest alert is a great example as it looks like only in this forum do I run into the "this is easy" crowd. I'm not doubting the skills but I'm just not seeing the real world results that "appear" match forum skills. If DE is finding that same result to be true, then it goes back to the question of why should they bother adjusting anything?

[GEN-Son_17]

16 hours ago, Yamazuki said:

Excluding stalker, most of the enemies were/are easily killed in 1-2 shots. Even then, SP Stalker doesn't take long to kill.

"Bullet sponges" don't exist to anyone utilizing the tools to deal with the specific enemy. The issue is, people have some very questionable builds and don't properly make use of Warframe abilities. Add on the issue of extreme variance in performance between the best weapons and the worst weapons. You could have two people with similar builds, but different weapon choices, and that alone is enough to cause a massive difference in dps.

When it came to old Railjack Grineer, I could kill them quickly using assault rifles, it was only the officer that was immune to armor removal that was an issue. However, you had people using magnetic complaining they were "bullet sponges", or someone else that stacked reload speed and other non-damage stats complaining. At this point, this is no different to being level 1 in an RPG complaining a level 100 enemy is a dps sponge.

The only way to "fix" this is both balancing weapons so there is less of a gap, and dumbing down the arsenal system so it ends up being nearly impossible to have a bad loadout. As it is, simply balancing weapons isn't enough when there's a long list of really bad mods, or combinations, that reduce damage dealt to a severe degree as well as all the interactions weapons have with abilities.

 

I disagree with the solution for the very same reason of the issue you're addressing: player skill. Using a meta build, aka the best of the best, is the goal of Steel Path and goes back to why I'm questioning the need to change things. If players are not utilizing the "proper" load-outs then that is 100% ok and is not an issue with the gameplay or game mechanics. Honestly, the AI, armor, etc issues are "I played for a very long time and want a change" issues, which is also 100% ok to voice but mostly not ok to address, dev side.

 

[Tyreaus]

4 hours ago, GEN-Son_17 said:

This is my main concern with the AI argument as well. It will be incredibly hard to add "smarter" AI when the ultimate goal of Warframe is to be in a power fantasy. There are already several enemies that exist that I've seem players, vets included, simply try to avoid, using the "they're annoying enemies" excuse.

I feel part of the issue is that the thinking is, often, on individual units when we're made to be mowing down groups of enemies. Enemies in things like Halo or Destiny or even Minecraft aren't the most intelligent, but their designs are sufficiently unique / complex and the general purpose is to be taking down those enemies one at a time. In those games, we have the ability to appreciate nuanced (even if simplistic) AI and consider things like priority targets (e.g. between grunts and elites in Halo) and cover and positioning. It's less about unit intelligence or complexity and more about enticing different player reactions - and AI is, really, just one wrench in that toolbox.

But if you actually were to take the TTK in those games (and, as far as I can remember, it's actually quite similar) and apply it to Warframe, you wouldn't kill one enemy in Warframe, but several. And that reflects in the spawn rates. So the thinking is different. "One enemy" isn't a unit so much as it is a small platoon. Yet the AI is centred around individual enemies as if those enemies were like those from Halo. Likewise, spawn organization is nonexistent, so any "one enemy" is a wild amalgamation of a bunch of disorganized units that follow no sense or cohesion. It's not unlike if you took the Elites from Halo and had them spaz around on the ground in a drug-fuelled, glitchy rave, shooting from every which direction. How do you tackle that? Would you consider cover, or where to hit it? Or would you look at the sheer mess and just do whatever you could to get through it, either by throwing everything at it or just avoiding it altogether?

So I'd say, if we were going to have improvements in AI, it should be based on groups. Not necessarily big ones, but not individual units either. Have Bombards preceded by a few shield lancers like a legitimate tank. Heavy Gunners flanked by...whatever the snipers are called, Ballistas I think. Or a handful of basic enemies teleported in by a single Commander (Captain? I forget - again, bad at names). If you were to treat groups of enemies like individual enemies from other games, you'd probably have next to no issue. They wouldn't be smart, per se, but they'd be distinct in terms of behaviour, make-up, appearance, and so on - the same sort of thing other games do.

[Orokin]

18 hours ago, Megalomaniakaal said:

Now that's dangerous talk, next we'll have destiny like situation where enemies get scaled to each player such that gear won't matter at all and the only real difference will be if power level/item mastery rank determines if whether you can even damage an enemy or not.

We already have enemies that do this. Orphix, demolishers/demolysts and several others. But your DPS still increases so your gear still matters, just at a lower rate. They essentially reduce the DPS differential from for example 10,000 and 100,000 to 5150 and 13,950

 

This is not ideal obviously. But what else can they do without massive overhauls of several core components of the game?

[VoidArkhangel]

hace 17 horas, _R_o_g_u_e_ dijo:

What is your source for stating that fun directly correlates with enemy complexity? Because in most games AI isn’t terribly intelligent. PoE, Diablo, Destiny, Borderlands all have extremely basic AI. 
 

They have path finding, cover mechanics and abilities like jumps or grenades, all of which are present in warframe. When you state “more complex,” what exactly do you want from them?

I see a lot of people taking shots at the AI, and asking for it to be better. But never giving any insight into what that might look like.

Hopefully it goes without saying that “make something better” or “more complex,” is by itself worthless feedback.

Personal experience (lol), never tried PoE(refering to Path of Exile) nor Diablo since I don't like that kind of game. Destiny and Borderlands on the other hand are just like you said, extremely basic AI but that doesn't mean you will have more fun than in Warframe.

Jesus Christ did you even read my post? I never said that DE should improve the AI, sure a little tweak here and there could be really nice but what I said is that DE needs to put more mechanics to defeat the enemies and that is why I put the Marauder from DOOM Eternal as an example.

You see, the AI on DOOM Eternal is nothing from another world (no pun intended), in fact the AI is pretty simple: Look for enemy, grab a position that is close/far from the enemy, attack so where does the fun come from? the mechanics, you need to think what to use on who and when and that is where the fun begins, sure you may want to chill with something simple but I'm not saying that this kind of complex enemies should be everywhere, I say that the "harder" the mission is the more enemies with unique mechanics should be... do not exagerate either, nobody wants to fight 50 Marauders.

[Lutesque]

That's very Simple to explain....

We, Tenno, play Warframe in two States:

1) To Have Fun...

2) To Get Something....

These two things are not mutually Exclusive.... But can only be designed Mutually Exclusively....

What I mean by This is... The Jackal is a Fun Boss... So long as you already have Rhino....

Sentients are a Tough Enemy... So long as you don't need to make it to the Mission Results screen to see your Loot.

When we want to have fun then Tougher enemies are Welcome... But if we want to get Something then Tougher Enemies are just Slowing things down....

People can definitely have fun while trying to get Something but you definitely can not Design a Game to be fun while trying to get something... Or rather you can't use Challenge to achieve both those things....

This is what you're seeing when people complain... And this is why I never wanted Steel Path to have Better Rewards...

22 hours ago, VoidArkhangel said:

What DE doesn't seem to understand is that difficulty and fun comes from complex enemies with unique mechanics and not from the same enemy with more health.

If you've played The Original Dark Sector then you know that DE Actually does understand this pretty well... More or Less.... Atleast as far as Boss Variety goes because none of them are even Remotely Similar....

I don't know what changed between Then and Warframe but it seems like they either forgot or all the Staff responsible for Dark Sector's Variety just up and left before they started working on Warframe.

22 hours ago, continue said:

@Megalomaniakaalhe said "significant figures" but he meant how many digits are in the damage number. (significance is a measure of precision, not magnitude)

What's the Difference ? 🤔

22 hours ago, _R_o_g_u_e_ said:

What is your source for stating that fun directly correlates with enemy complexity? Because in most games AI isn’t terribly intelligent. PoE, Diablo, Destiny, Borderlands all have extremely basic AI.

Using words like "Intelligent" and "Complex" to describe AI is always going to provoke Responses like this. 

The truth is 90% of the AI we encounter in most games isn't even all that Intelligent or Complicated.... It's all smoke and Mirrors... You can make people think AI is smarter just by giving it more Dialogue like "She's Over There !!!" 

The Tomb Raider Games' seems to walk this line quite well because it's Partially Scripted to make it seem clever.... But in Reality it's just almost as Dumb as Warframe's AI....

22 hours ago, _R_o_g_u_e_ said:

Hopefully it goes without saying that “make something better” or “more complex,” is by itself worthless feedback.

Bingo !!!

Infact 90% of Everything we try to Describe to Developers is literally Useless jibberish to them... I feel bad for whoever has to try and make sense out of anything we say....

 

[(PSN)GingyGreen]

On 2021-04-03 at 8:00 PM, Berzerkules said:

I think having status/ability immune enemies is a piss poor attempt to add difficulty and it just feels like a lazy solution on the devs part. 

Instead of making an engaging fight where you have to use every possible tool at your disposal they limit your kit. 

Because taking a Limbo to permanently freeze the Wolf or Vay Hek in place as you stand there to unload all your ammo into them will be engaging? How well is letting Grendel eating the Stalker and keeping him a non threat all mission long going to turn out?

Ability immunity is a necessity due to how overpowered frames can be

[Aadi880]

On 2021-04-04 at 7:15 AM, VoidArkhangel said:

What DE doesn't seem to understand is that difficulty and fun comes from complex enemies with unique mechanics and not from the same enemy with more health.

Neither does the players.

No really, I mean it.

[ShortCat]

On 2021-04-04 at 1:34 AM, PublikDomain said:

A lvl175 Tech has 1/13th the EHP as a lvl175 Heavy Gunner.

EHP is a misleading stat to represent durability, since you will achieve similar TTK on both units if you use appropriate damage types.

Armor scaling is not a problem. HP scaling has way more impact than armor.

[vegetosayajin]

On 2021-04-04 at 2:34 AM, PublikDomain said:

The enemies have never been the problem, it's the players.

The enemies are not the problem, nor the players.
The only problem is unique rewards.
The reason most people say enemies are spongy and boring is because they don't drop/give compaling rewards for something that is considered some kind of achievement by the perception of the player("I reached level 5-10k without dying", "The capsule didn't take any/little damage for 30 waves", "I did this and this the fastest").
And for the trouble of grinding the game for months or years, getting the gear, modding and knowing how the game works they are rewarded with "rot c 100 endo".
The game needs unique scaling rewards. Something that doesn't become another plat platform.

[Teridax68]

I agree with both @PublikDomainand @Tyreaushere: solving the problem of difficulty purely via enemies is a lost cause, because even against level 9999 enemies, we have the tools to shut down interaction with them entirely, whether by perma-CCing them, going perma-invisible, and so on. This is also why Steel Path enemies are seen as bullet sponges rather than interesting challenges, because on top of generally simplistic AI, the strategy against them is the same as with regular enemies, which is to just damage them until they die. Even then, the right weapon and build can still one-shot them while other weapons struggle to tend them at all, because on top of our power being generally out of control, the balance between our weapons is nonexistent when some can deal several orders of magnitude more damage than others. It is impossible to balance an enemy to be enjoyable for both the maxed-out player with 100k+ EHP and 100k+ DPS, and the one with the 1k EHP frame and a Stug, so there never was a point to trying. What we need, and what DE has been afraid of doing for fear of player backlash, is a comprehensive rebalance to our frames and our weapons, so that we can't just shut down gameplay at the press of a button, and so that the difference in tankiness or damage output between options can no longer factor in the hundreds, or even the tens.

[PublikDomain]

6 hours ago, vegetosayajin said:

The only problem is unique rewards.

That seems like a separate issue...? Even if we had unique rewards the enemies and resulting gameplay would still be trivial and uninteresting.

6 hours ago, ShortCat said:

EHP is a misleading stat to represent durability, since you will achieve similar TTK on both units if you use appropriate damage types.

I have definitely not experienced this... Shielded enemies die much quicker than Armored ones even using builds more suited for Armor.

[vegetosayajin]

1 hour ago, PublikDomain said:

That seems like a separate issue...? Even if we had unique rewards the enemies and resulting gameplay would still be trivial and uninteresting.

It really isn't. Everything that has to be repeated a gazzilion times will become like that sooner or later. Just like a job, at some point you have to have a raze, no matter how interesting your job is.

[GEN-Son_17]

On 2021-04-03 at 7:27 PM, (PSN)GingyGreen said:

Well when some Warframe powers include...

 

1) outright mind control...

2) freezing someone in place almost permanently...

3) sucking the enemy into your puddle to kill them while they can't do a thing about it...

 

Yeah I think it's reasonable for bosses to be immune to some Warframe powers

 

 

 

 

 

Agreed and I think we should have more mostly ability immune bosses. No boss should be susceptible to slow down, freeze or stun abilities.

[ShortCat]

1 hour ago, PublikDomain said:

I have definitely not experienced this... Shielded enemies die much quicker than Armored ones even using builds more suited for Armor.

I did not say there is no difference in TTK when you use whatever build agaisnt shields as well as armor. I said dedicated anti-armor build has similar TTK agaisnt armored units, as a dedicated anti-shields build has agaisnt shielded units.

[PublikDomain]

39 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

I did not say there is no difference in TTK when you use whatever build agaisnt shields as well as armor. I said dedicated anti-armor build has similar TTK agaisnt armored units, as a dedicated anti-shields build has agaisnt shielded units.

And I haven't really experienced this: in my experience shielded enemies die faster than armored enemies regardless of what I shoot them with. With a proper anti-shield build they'd die even faster.

[Megalomaniakaal]

On 2021-04-04 at 10:32 PM, Tyreaus said:

So I'd say, if we were going to have improvements in AI, it should be based on groups. Not necessarily big ones, but not individual units either. Have Bombards preceded by a few shield lancers like a legitimate tank. Heavy Gunners flanked by...whatever the snipers are called, Ballistas I think. Or a handful of basic enemies teleported in by a single Commander (Captain? I forget - again, bad at names). If you were to treat groups of enemies like individual enemies from other games, you'd probably have next to no issue. They wouldn't be smart, per se, but they'd be distinct in terms of behaviour, make-up, appearance, and so on - the same sort of thing other games do.

Yes, 'hero units' taking command of nearby grunts as I would put it. They'd have to add goal oriented action planning to the AI system. The GOAP can then control and drive the behaviour trees which in turn drive the unit animation/state-machines.