Some changes to Steel Path missions to make non-aoe weapons/frame more viable?

[XenoYana]

I just want to share my idea of making the Steel Path better than what it is right now (don't get me wrong, I love playing it and farming kuvas). However, the general sentiment around SP is that due to the high spawn rates, it is overwhelmingly more advantages to use melees, certain guns such as Kuva Bramma and Kuva Nukor, because they can target hordes of enemies at a same time. This makes single targeted weapons like bows, pistols, and some rifles obsolete. 

My proposal is that for certain SP missions, we don't need that high of a spawn rate, but maybe each enemies are harder to deal with.

To put this into terms, let's say in regular star chart survival, we get 100 enemies per minute, and the current SP brings that up to 1000 enemies per minute. We can change that where for some planets, that 1000 enemies spawn stays the same, but maybe for other missions, the spawn will still be 100 (the same as regular star chart) but half of those 100 units are like eximus, or enemies that are very difficult to deal with). Think about the experience that is somewhat tangent to sedna arena or index.

To make this even more thematically correct, we can have the SP grineers stay the same; infested spawns way more, like 1300 enemies per minute but they are relatively easier to kill indivdiually; corpus can have like the less enemy spawns but each individual enemies have significantly harder AI and movesets to deal with. This is already achieved in Orb Vallis and corpus proxima.

Thematically this works too, corpus cares about profit, they would invest in high tech gears and weapons that are super advanced, doesnt make sense for them to send a billion mobs for kamikaze attacks. Versus infested which is actually the opposite, they are literally zombies that overwhelms people with numbers. 

I believe by doing this, people can actually deploy different frames, weapons, and strategies within steel path, and they can always choose the mission that they enjoy. 

[Tyreaus]

While I'm all for differentiating factions even more, especially to give different weapons different niches, there's two problems.

On the weapon side, a good number of AoE weapons have damage values exceeding their single-target relatives. A Bramma has a single-target damage over 2x that of a Vectis, and even ekes out the Daikyu in pure base damage numbers (not counting crit). If more than one enemy is in that radius, even if its fewer than the Infested spawn rates, then you're adding even more damage atop that. Melee weapons are at a similar point, where their damage - even against one target - tends to outpace dedicated single-target weapons.

On the gameplay side, being blunt, the game encourages mass slaughter. Things like life support for Survival and kill quotas for Exterminate and ESO (though that's not pertinent to Steel Path) directly need high kill rates. The point at which spawn rates would need to be tuned down to make a notable difference in the single-target / AoE competition is the point where mission structures would need to be touched up quite a bit.

Basically, it's not terribly likely to make much of a difference in weapon / Warframe favoritism. Likewise, I don't see this idea making a major benefit to Steel Path (though I'm not 100% sure why it'd need to be restricted to Steel Path anyway - wouldn't those kind of spawn / EHP changes work across the board?). It's not bad, I just don't see it doing what it sets out to do.

[Uhkretor]

... My Single Target weapons are fine in any SP mission... By "fine", I mean 1-shot.

... SP is basically fine as it is now. Making it even remotely resembling Regular mode in any aspect will kill it... Let people enjoy SP mode as it is...

[Zeddypanda]

3 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

If more than one enemy is in that radius, even if its fewer than the Infested spawn rates, then you're adding even more damage atop that.

It goes further than that! If you miss slightly with a single target weapon, you do 0 damage. If you miss slightly with an AoE weapon, you do full, or nearly full damage. Even against a single target, your DPS is far higher with an AoE weapon, especially as accuracy decreased. Enemies in warframe are small and jittery.

Every aspect of Warframe from enemy design to crappy hitboxes, to overcomplicated level geometry, to enemies blending into the terrain, to AoE damage being granted to explosions as long as you shoot slightly above the enemy, skews ideal weapon usage into those you can avoid having to aim with.

Let's take Tyl Regor. Would you rather use AoE or a single target weapon against him? You can struggle for your life to hit him at the precise moment he warps somewhere with about half a second to do so (and possibly still hit his shield) or you can blast the ground with Kuva Bramma the moment you hear him warp over or see his dot on the radar. I'm on a gamepad, I'm going for that AoE every time.

Tl;Dr: Enemies are too hard to hit for single target weapons to be a good option.

The spawn rate in steel path is the best reason to play it. Don't take that away.

[XenoYana]

1 hour ago, Uhkretor said:

... My Single Target weapons are fine in any SP mission... By "fine", I mean 1-shot.

... SP is basically fine as it is now. Making it even remotely resembling Regular mode in any aspect will kill it... Let people enjoy SP mode as it is...

hmm... do you use a prime bane mod? I personally think single targeted weapons still under perform. take things like dread for example. It is considered to be one of the strongest single targeted weapon. sSre it does one shot most enemies, but having 30 enemies in front just makes it obsolete to use. Yes it does have infinite punch through, but punch through is just not as reliable as aoe dmg. 

And I am not asking to take away the large enemy spawns. I just think for the whole star chart, there are no differentiation. And I feel like that is a missed opportunity. The point is, some weapons/frames are designed to do single targeted tasks. So in order to make them shine again, why not just offer missions that actually make their strength useful? In the end, everyone can choose to farm steel essence in a mission that they really like :)

[XenoYana]

4 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

While I'm all for differentiating factions even more, especially to give different weapons different niches, there's two problems.

On the weapon side, a good number of AoE weapons have damage values exceeding their single-target relatives. A Bramma has a single-target damage over 2x that of a Vectis, and even ekes out the Daikyu in pure base damage numbers (not counting crit). If more than one enemy is in that radius, even if its fewer than the Infested spawn rates, then you're adding even more damage atop that. Melee weapons are at a similar point, where their damage - even against one target - tends to outpace dedicated single-target weapons.

On the gameplay side, being blunt, the game encourages mass slaughter. Things like life support for Survival and kill quotas for Exterminate and ESO (though that's not pertinent to Steel Path) directly need high kill rates. The point at which spawn rates would need to be tuned down to make a notable difference in the single-target / AoE competition is the point where mission structures would need to be touched up quite a bit.

Basically, it's not terribly likely to make much of a difference in weapon / Warframe favoritism. Likewise, I don't see this idea making a major benefit to Steel Path (though I'm not 100% sure why it'd need to be restricted to Steel Path anyway - wouldn't those kind of spawn / EHP changes work across the board?). It's not bad, I just don't see it doing what it sets out to do.

Sure, we can introduce this to the regular star chart, but the reason why I am saying to do this in steel path is because only in steel path most people start to realize the overwhelming advantages of melee and aoe weapons.

If I take a soma to a level 60 survival, I can spray all my bullets and can kill a lot of enemies, in steel path you have to 1) aim at the head, 2) wait for the slash, and 3) then 1 enemy dies. versus melee I can roll bullet jump slide crit during my combos with no setbacks to dps. For a gun like bramma I can jump up and down across the room and just need to aim approximately at the right direction to kill a group of enemies. In regular star chart this difference isnt that apparent imo. If we aren't going to go with the faction differentiation, then we need to buff the helll out of single targeted weapons, which is more work on de's end? cuz they cant just change the values of mods of existing primary mods, then aoe primaries will get the boost as well.

[XenoYana]

13 minutes ago, Zeddypanda said:

It goes further than that! If you miss slightly with a single target weapon, you do 0 damage. If you miss slightly with an AoE weapon, you do full, or nearly full damage. Even against a single target, your DPS is far higher with an AoE weapon, especially as accuracy decreased. Enemies in warframe are small and jittery.

Every aspect of Warframe from enemy design to crappy hitboxes, to overcomplicated level geometry, to enemies blending into the terrain, to AoE damage being granted to explosions as long as you shoot slightly above the enemy, skews ideal weapon usage into those you can avoid having to aim with.

Let's take Tyl Regor. Would you rather use AoE or a single target weapon against him? You can struggle for your life to hit him at the precise moment he warps somewhere with about half a second to do so (and possibly still hit his shield) or you can blast the ground with Kuva Bramma the moment you hear him warp over or see his dot on the radar. I'm on a gamepad, I'm going for that AoE every time.

Tl;Dr: Enemies are too hard to hit for single target weapons to be a good option.

The spawn rate in steel path is the best reason to play it. Don't take that away.

hmm i fully agree with your point! but if we dont do any changes to the steel path (probably the only content besides eidolons that requires attention), how do we fix the single targeted weapons? Again, what I am proposing is that for each factions there are spawn rate differences. You can still enjoy two thirds of the steel path like the way it is right now. Because grineer and infested doesnt decrease their spawn rate. Heck, I am asking for more spawns for infested! the feeling in cambodian drift where hordes of infested eggs pop up after killing an enemy is really amazing! It gives you the disease spreading uncontrollably vibe. And thats where aoe weapon and frames will shine.

But if we can make the corpus missions different (like my suggestion), we will then need other sets of strategy/frame/weapon choices to tackle them. Just like how in index the meta weapons and frames are things like stropha, fulmin, nezha, rhino, etc. What really is fun and unique about corpus right now? I personally really enjoy fighting the orb vallis corpus because they actually have strong and unique units, but at the end of the day, open world is its own content island. Steel path corpus just feels like a weaker version of grineers.

Again, I think these things requires little to no effort to implement compared to other options, and it adds diversity to the game which it clearly lags behind now. 

[Zeddypanda]

19 minutes ago, XenoYana said:

hmm i fully agree with your point!

Thanks! Rare to hear this on internet forums.

I also think it's a shame single target weapons aren't more viable. To make them viable wouldn't necessarily involve changes to just steel path, but the game in general. You'd have to introduce or change enemies in the game where hyperfocus is rewarded.

Off the top of my head I think a good enemy could be the rachnids. They're very big, so single target weapons are a good choice on them. Maybe even make them a bit bigger, and introduce similar big enemies like grinneers riding powerlifters or something. You give them a big shield pool/loads of arbitrary damage reduction, and then have the shield take more damage every time you hit it subsequently, with this vulnerability decreasing over time. This way you rewards using a rapid fire weapon and focusing it on this one single target all the way until its shields are down. As this would be bad for snipers, you could also put smaller weak points surrounding the rachnid that only takes damage when hit directly. It would have a flat or logarithmic damage reduction aspect, such that slow, heavy-hitting direct attacks would work better than rapid fire which would work better than near missing with aoe.

Mix this kind of enemy with still having horde spam, and someone on the team would focus on that miniboss while someone else clears mobs or you use some kinda CC ability to keep the mobs at bay while you focus on the miniboss alone.

 

TL;DR: More enemies like Nox and Deimos Saxum.

[Uhkretor]

12 hours ago, XenoYana said:

do you use a prime bane mod?

... No, I haven't fixed my builds to include those just yet...

Yes, I am using "no faction mod" builds in SP and they're working great, like I mentioned before.

[XenoYana]

On 2021-04-16 at 11:43 PM, Zeddypanda said:

Thanks! Rare to hear this on internet forums.

I also think it's a shame single target weapons aren't more viable. To make them viable wouldn't necessarily involve changes to just steel path, but the game in general. You'd have to introduce or change enemies in the game where hyperfocus is rewarded.

Off the top of my head I think a good enemy could be the rachnids. They're very big, so single target weapons are a good choice on them. Maybe even make them a bit bigger, and introduce similar big enemies like grinneers riding powerlifters or something. You give them a big shield pool/loads of arbitrary damage reduction, and then have the shield take more damage every time you hit it subsequently, with this vulnerability decreasing over time. This way you rewards using a rapid fire weapon and focusing it on this one single target all the way until its shields are down. As this would be bad for snipers, you could also put smaller weak points surrounding the rachnid that only takes damage when hit directly. It would have a flat or logarithmic damage reduction aspect, such that slow, heavy-hitting direct attacks would work better than rapid fire which would work better than near missing with aoe.

Mix this kind of enemy with still having horde spam, and someone on the team would focus on that miniboss while someone else clears mobs or you use some kinda CC ability to keep the mobs at bay while you focus on the miniboss alone.

 

TL;DR: More enemies like Nox and Deimos Saxum.

This idea remind of a bit fighting the profit taker. I think its a great mechanic they've introduced. I really like the bigger units with more mobs around them idea.  I never understood why couldn't they add more stuff like the raknoids into regular missions. My guess is that it won't work with the way old tilesets are designed, not allowing them to fit through certain places like stairs (laughs in necramech), but i guess we are seeming more of them in open worlds which is definitely the right move. 

They should also probably rework some boss, if not more, bosses to fit this theme. One great example of this is lephantis. To hit its head, bows, rifles, and snipers are definitely viable choices. However, it is too easy rn with titania on top of barely any infested spawns near you. Maybe make lephantis spawn airborne mobs as well. I also favor bigger bosses because they tend to have more telegraphed attacks so we know wth is going on.  

[XenoYana]

On 2021-04-17 at 11:15 AM, Uhkretor said:

... No, I haven't fixed my builds to include those just yet...

Yes, I am using "no faction mod" builds in SP and they're working great, like I mentioned before.

hmm... i would love to see you do a 1 hour solo steel path mot with just a soma prime with no bane mods on it. At least I tried... Even with the help of some invis frame, I just cant do enough dps that keeps up with the spawn rate. Compared that to melee? Pff, I can bring a b tier melee and wack them around, add some magus lockdowns, even with no invis I can probably go for 30 min without paying attention. So again, if you can upload some videos or hmu in game to show me how you do it, it will be greatly appreciated. 

[Uhkretor]

9 hours ago, XenoYana said:

soma prime

... Yeah, that explains why you can't... One of the things I didn't like in the regular Soma was the lack of damage, despite being heavily oriented for critical builds, and honestly I wasn't surprised when Soma Prime followed the exact same thing...

"But it kills so fast on regular star chart so well" people may think... yet it starts failing when enemies start moving away from the regular mode.

... I know some players prefer a certain type of weapon, I also do that... But there are plenty of weapons with better performance than soma prime. Some of which are completely independent of faction mods... There is a moment where preference starts hurting more than helping and adapting to the situation helps a lot but that requires solid knowledge that's not gained by online videos and guides. Knowing that moment is something that only the player itself feels at a split second, as long as the player has proper observational skills past the usual "damage numbers ftw" routine.

 

I'm not going to upload videos of how I do my missions. I'm sorry, but I'm not that kind of person. I can last 1 hour and half in SP Mot, with a little effort from my part, and my builds still need correcting as they're not optimized... By "optimized", it isn't "gotta go fast to lvl9999", its "Comfortably solo survive for an hour and half" which I'm still not quite there yet (The "comfortable" part is lacking).

Unlike popular belief, Slash+Viral isn't universal, and that's mainly why I don't need faction mods (excluding weapon choice, of course)... But I can tell you for sure that I only keep weapons that are the absolute best within their respective weapon class (Bow, Assault Rifle, Sniper, Shotgun, etc etc etc) and I sold Soma the first chance I got, due to its performance, and Soma Prime will follow suit as soon as I can build it.

 

As much critical as you can stick on your Soma Prime, you still can't kill if you don't have the non-critical damage to back it up. It doesn't matter, for example, if your critical rate is 400% and your critical damage is x50 when your weapon deals below 20 damage on the type (physical, elemental or both) they have vulnerability against... and on Mot? Yeah, you need to make 3 different weapon builds to cover all 3 types of "faction" units, away from that Slash+Viral nonsense... And if you can include the respective faction mods into those builds, even better...

Or, like I usually say to my Clan members, you need proper Anti-Faction builds that goes beyond the "slap a faction mod to make it anti-faction build" rule that, apparently, doesn't work at all in SP....