removed

[sunderthefirmament]

On 2021-04-27 at 4:32 PM, Duality52 said:

As brutal as it sounds, I believe it would be best that equipping the Decaying Dragon Key should remove Shield Gating. Dragon Keys were meant to add risk in the attempt to open Derelict Vaults, but ironically the Decaying Dragon Key is the only one providing any benefit.

This seems reasonable to me, and not at all brutal.  It's not like you ever really need to wear those keys outside of the very isolated farm for corrupted mods or the occasional riven challenge.  And there are plenty of frames and builds that trivialize those scenarios, even with all keys equipped.

[Duality52]

1 hour ago, sunderthefirmament said:

This seems reasonable to me, and not at all brutal

While true, those who heavily rely on/mainly equip the Decaying Dragon Key will likely complain about the change. I'll be surprised if these players are willing to accept the change.

[sunderthefirmament]

45 minutes ago, Duality52 said:

While true, those who heavily rely on/mainly equip the Decaying Dragon Key will likely complain about the change. I'll be surprised if these players are willing to accept the change.

That degree of shield gating is probably only needed in extreme endurance, and I can't imagine extreme endurance players make up anything resembling a majority.  Shield gating from augur mods, brief respite, or various abilities/weapons (Rakta Dark Dagger, Secura Penta I guess) is plenty for basically anything.

 

I don't think DE would have much to worry about with the Decaying Dragon Key change you're proposing.

[Birdframe_Prime]

9 hours ago, Duality52 said:

While true, those who heavily rely on/mainly equip the Decaying Dragon Key will likely complain about the change. I'll be surprised if these players are willing to accept the change.

You're right, players that use exploitative interactions like this do not like change, they've found a niche little function and want to keep it.

A compromise I had earlier is that the nerf to the Dragon Key only be that it removes 50% of the shield gate, so at reasonable levels (not at one-shot levels) it's still effective enough at not letting all damage through. The difference would simply stop the exploitative immortality builds.

That said, the way to soften that change, and rather than just nerfing Shields again, give Shields a different buff.

If all Shield increasing mods came with additional Damage Reduction, based on the percentage that they increase Shields, that would actually give that particular stat that a lot of players have been asking for in the Forums (Shield Armour).

Say that Redirection added 440% Shields and 22% Damage Reduction on Shields. As the base DR of Shields is 25%, that would give us 47% DR, the equivalent of adding 170 Armour, which is actually better for Shields than putting on a Steel Fiber is for Health (Frames like Banshee, Loki and Mag have 100 Armour, adding Steel Fiber would give them only 210 armour, for 41% Damage Reduction). It would also give frames with a base of 300 Shields a number value of 740 Shields, and an Effective value of 1400 or so (quick maths in my head).

With the other Shield mods, they could add less base Shields, but proportionally more Damage Reduction, so some frames might use Primed Vigor, because while it only adds 220% Shields, it might add 20% DR to shields. So using both Redirection and Primed Vigor would give a frame with 300 Shields a number total of 960 Shields, but with 67% total Damage reduction, you'd have approximately 600 'armour' for about 2800 Effective Shields (with margin for error with my brain calculations).

What this would mean, then, is that shield tank frames that can only shield tank with the Gate currently (most of them using the Dragon Key), would then have a new way to actually shield tank. They could actually take shield damage because it has DR like Armour has for Health. Importantly, frames that can use the Overshield mechanic, like Mag, Volt, Harrow and Hildryn, have access to at least 1200 extra Shield points for that Damage Reduction to scale with.

I believe that nerfs to one mechanic should only ever be used if they're balanced with buffs to another mechanic that encourages modding in a more positive direction.

[Steel_Rook]

15 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

There is, however, a very big difference between the proposed tactic and other potential tactics for fixing the exploitative behaviour that OP has a problem with. Does this function need structural change to fix it? Because I believe it doesn't.

That's a very reductive view of the matter, to the point of coming across as disingenuous. Second time I've come across one of these today. It doesn't matter what terminology the OP may have used. The problems with the shield gating system aren't an "exploit." They're an issue of fundamental design. Well-design systems should communicate their design to the player intuitively. Shield gating is entirely backwards. On face value, it's part of the broader shields system, offering additional mitigation. Intuitively, "more shields" should lead to "more mitigation." Practically, the opposite is true. Not only is it confusing to player still trying to figure it out, it renders pointless the majority of the legacy system's actual components.

The same is true with Railjack critical breaches, by the way. On initial release, Railjacks had such low health and shield values that neither really mattered. People were simply leaving breaches open as long as they could for the invulnerability. There, DE implemented a fix - the faster you fix a breach, the longer the follow-up invulnerability, giving players reason to interact with the game like they're meant to.

This isn't an issue with players "exploiting" shield gating. It's an issue with shield gating itself being fundamentally poorly designed and encouraging unintended behaviour. Addressing player behaviour and patching outliers doesn't help, because those are symptoms of a more fundamental problem.

 

15 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

When the intended purpose is to stop players from using the shield gate as a way to achieve near immortality, and the only way that this function is even realistically possible for those frames is by using an item, one specific item, that cuts your shields down to a very low value... what is the actual problem there? It's the item, not the system. The shield gate as it is, isn't a problem unless you use that one item in combination with mods that also should not produce that interaction.

This is absolutely not true. Neither the "one item" nor players achieving immortality are the issue. I can achieve far greater immortality by just being Inaros. Or Nidus. Or Atlas. Or any other number of Warframes with no special conditions. The shield gate as it is very much is a problem because it's badly designed. It scales inversely with shield strength, which is both confusing and counter to itself. Having a statistic which both adds mitigation and subtracts mitigation at the same time is not good design. If anything, I'd argue that the current implementation of Shield Gating itself is an attempt to prevent exploitative behaviour.

Why do we need full shields in order to reset our shield gate in the first place? Payday 2 has a shield gate of its own (technically an armour gate, but it's a different name for that same thing). That game doesn't require full armour before gating again, so players build for Bullseye - the perk which grants a normally meaningless amount of armour on headshot every 2 seconds. As long as you get headshots, you get tremendous mitigation even with next to no armour. And all of this without penalising players for having more armour - it's just mostly unnecessary at that point.

DE chose to tie the shield gate to full shields as a direct limiter on how often players can use it, apparently failing to account for the consequences of this decision. This is no different from per-pellet status chance for weapons with native multishot (i.e. shotgun status). That system was designed to make shotgun status appear indistinguishable from rifle status by abstracting pellet count entirely. On a rifle, you have one pellet so you build for one status proc. On shotguns, you have multiple pellets so you build for "at least one status proc" and the game back-calculates per-pellet status chance for you. Simple, right? Except the function they used to do this (the reverse of "at least one") was radical with increasing returns so massive that it ostensibly became binary.

The issue with shield gating is not the player, not the Dragon Key, not the invulnerability, not the exploits. The issue with shield gating is the decision to tie refreshing the shield gate to reaching maximum shields in a system where reaching maximum shields takes progressively longer the more shields one has. Either the shield gate needs to scale with shield capacity, or the time needed to regain full shields needs to not scale with shield capacity. I can't see any other way to prevent high shield capacity from acting as a detriment.

[Birdframe_Prime]

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

This is absolutely not true. Neither the "one item" nor players achieving immortality are the issue. I can achieve far greater immortality by just being Inaros.

How is it not? With all of your examples you're modding positively for stats that those frames have, with more health leading to more survivability. You're not taking the Decaying Dragon key as a lynch-pin item in a build that reduces your health to, say, permanently be in your Undying state with Nidus, are you?

You are making my own point from a different angle.

Adding something to shields to completely benefit modding for more shields is exactly what I suggested in my earlier comments, so that modding positively is encouraged and pays off with better survivability, so that frames can effectively 'tank' with shields like they can with Health.

The shield gate itself is not the issue because all the shield gate was specifically implemented to do was to prevent a one-shot death through a short duration of invulnerability. No more, no less. DE explained that when they debuted the mechanic.

The mechanic of using that duration of invulnerability repeatedly or even permanently is not intended. 

The method of achieving that repeated and permanent use of the shield gate is only possible (on the vast majority of frames) by use of an item that reduces shields enough to allow us to restore full shields in the duration of the shield gate.

Therefore that is an unintended and exploitative interaction within the system.

The counter-intuitive nature of it right now is, you're correct, due to them not following through and making shields a truly effective Health pool in the first place.

Is it an oversight? Yes.

Does it need the shield gate itself to be changed? No.

It needs the interaction that produces the unintended result being removed/changed to prevent it, and then it needs Shields counting for more in a way that encourages positive modding for shields.

Not even a way that interacts with the Shield Gate. Just make modding for more shields give more survivability outside of the Gate and make that function apply fairly for all frames.

That's why iteration, just fixes to the system we have, is the route forward instead of back-tracking and completely reworking the entire system.

You want the shield gate to scale with shield capacity? Sure. I'd be with that, up to a point. There would have to be a balance to that.

The difference between that and what OP directly stated they want is that, by their system, it would mean that the vast majority of frames would have a lesser shield gate than is possible now, and would absolutely have to mod in shields in order to even have something close to what they do now.

It would be old Iron Renewal again, where adding a percentage inversely helped the frames with the highest armour, and barely helped the frames with the lowest, while new Iron Renewal adds a flat value, which massively helps the frames with the lowest, and still provides a high boost to frames with the highest.

Frames with the lowest shield counts, regardless of whether they have a kit that supports shield gating or not, would be functionally nerfed by the change and their modding often encourages barely putting any EHP on because they survive with Abilities instead. Frames that do not mod for shields, because their EHP is better with Health and Abilities, would be the ones affected by this.

Meanwhile, frames with already high capacity and the ability to restore their shields innately would be the only ones to benefit from the proposed Shield Gate system at all.

Under a system like I suggested, where the mods add something based on whether you're using the mod, and not based on the original value of the shields you have, is exactly like the new Iron Renewal is for Health. Where you get more EHP by putting on the mods, and every frame, no matter their base shields, benefits from that on their shields.

That's an equal system. OP's is not.

OP's is time and effort to effectively nerf most of the frames at base, benefit only a few, and modding positively for more shields is then not an 'encouraged' function, it's the only way to get back the base survivability that those frames previously had.

Iterating on the existing system, where you remove an unintended and exploitative interaction with the shield gate, then you make shields a viable Effective Health Pool by giving them ways to gain damage reduction the way Health gains Armour (which is currently just pure damage reduction, since Tenno Health and Armour are neutral to all sources of damage), you then have survivable shield-based modding to promote positive modding that is not confusing for any player trying to get to grips with the system.

And all of that is implementable with almost no effort, aside from minor balance checks.

Adding one stat to mods that increase shields. Change one item so that a shield gate no longer gives full invulnerability to health. Buff a frame that needs a buff. These are all easy, par-for-the-course changes that could be done by their interns, let alone the full team.

Far from band-aids, they're a viable solution to the problem of Shield Gate abuse.

And they would specifically not take dev time away from actually doing things that they've been promising to do for three years now and not delivered on.

[Steel_Rook]

2 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

The method of achieving that repeated and permanent use of the shield gate is only possible (on the vast majority of frames) by use of an item that reduces shields enough to allow us to restore full shields in the duration of the shield gate.

But that's just a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. If your game crashes when you equip any sword weapon, the solution is not to remove all sword weapons. Yes, that would stop the crashes for now. If you don't address the underlying code issue, however, it's going to crop up again. How long before players find another way to reduce their shields? An Arcane, a Corrupted Mod, some Warframe ability? More to the point, how long until DE release another particularly low-shield Warframe like Grendel? The underlying game design itself is what needs a fix.

All messing with the Dragon Key does is sweep the problem under the rug, while also potentially impacting legitimate use of the key (as a key). Don't get me wrong, I'll be perfectly happy to get rid of Dragon Keys as a concept altogether, but that's entirely sideways of the issue at hand.

 

2 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

It needs the interaction that produces the unintended result being removed/changed to prevent it, and then it needs Shields counting for more in a way that encourages positive modding for shields.

That's not enough. For one thing, making shields "count for more" is a massively complex issue, relative to the simple tweak of scaling shield gate length peak shield value since the last gate. Moreover - even if we assume that you can somehow magically make shields so desirable that players build for them over the shield gate, you're still leaving a conundrum in the game. Building for shields makes you stronger in some ways but weaker in others, in a duality that really adds nothing to game's build diversity. It's literally just an unintended consequence of overly strict restrictions which ended up creating more problems than they solved.

Far as I'm concerned, Warframe needs more ambition in game design, not less. The various Revised updates have so far been easily the best content that Warframe's had because they address long-standing issues and revisit old balance concerns. No, not all of them have been perfect, but I'd rather DE at least try to move forward than stagnate in the status quo because implementing systemic change is hard. When systems are broken, systemic change is needed.

 

3 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Far from band-aids, they're a viable solution to the problem of Shield Gate abuse.

You keep saying that, but it's a red herring. "Shield gate abuse" is not a problem. It certainly isn't THE problem. That's a bit like removing Bloodrush and proclaiming that the problem of cascading criticals is fixed as though that "fixes" melee weapon balance altogether. One of the central problems with the implementation of shield gating is that it that shield gate delay scales inversely with shield capacity. Messing with Dragon Keys isn't going to change that.

 

3 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Frames with the lowest shield counts, regardless of whether they have a kit that supports shield gating or not, would be functionally nerfed by the change and their modding often encourages barely putting any EHP on because they survive with Abilities instead. Frames that do not mod for shields, because their EHP is better with Health and Abilities, would be the ones affected by this.

That's an entirely separate issue. If a majority of Warframes are only survivable due to a single unintended gameplay mechanic, then to me that suggests a more fundamental problem than that specific mechanic. Holding onto what amounts to a bug as the only way to play reads to me like an admission of systemic failure. It's a bit like insisting that the only Railjack mission worth playing is Gian Point because it can be completed in a couple of minutes, thus skipping most of the mode. Well, you saw what happened to that. Balancing the game around bugged mechanics and unintended behaviour is what got us here in the first place.

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

The underlying game design itself is what needs a fix.

That is, simply, where we're going to disagree.

I don't feel that this system needs a fix, and definitely not in the way OP has tried to balance it.

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

One of the central problems with the implementation of shield gating is that it that shield gate delay scales inversely with shield capacity.

Except, and this is where we're talking at cross purposes, the shield gate doesn't need to fully recharge to do the actual job it was implemented to do, which is to stop one-shot deaths and give the player enough time to react to the damage and do something about it.

The problem you're describing is to do with having greater availability and potential up-time of the shield gate for damage mitigation. That's not what the shield gate is for, or was implemented to do.

The attempt to rebalance it to give more or less duration is a waste of time because the process of using it as reliable damage reduction is the wrong interaction to have with the shield gate.

That's why a rework in OP's style wouldn't work, because it would remove the original intent for the shield gate, rather than addressing what makes a shield gate in Warframe problematic in their eyes.

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

"Shield gate abuse" is not a problem. It certainly isn't THE problem.

You're right.

But it's OP's problem, and the one they're trying to solve.

Shield Gate abuse is a problem. THE problem is that there is no incentive to mod for more shields on any frame at all because an unintended interaction grants better damage reduction overall.

And that's wrong, as I said, because the Shield Gate is not supposed to be a consistent method of damage reduction.

Shields are supposed to be a method of damage reduction, before the Shield Gate kicks in, which is what can be done by giving players actual base tanking methods for shields that do not rely on a shield gate, such as straight damage reduction to shields that you can mod on.

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

If a majority of Warframes are only survivable due to a single unintended gameplay mechanic

Okay, that's just twisting my words into something I did not say.

The shield gate is a mechanic to stop one-shots and give the player a reaction time window. If the result of this change is to give a player no time to react, because the frame has a greatly reduced shield gate through no problem with the frame itself, only with the choice to mod for Health instead of Shields, then that is unfair to the player and to the frame itself.

That is a mechanically unfair rework.

And further, it does not achieve the goal of 'giving incentive to mod for more shields' it only succeeds in 'punishing a player for not modding more shields'.

[Steel_Rook]

22 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

That is, simply, where we're going to disagree. I don't feel that this system needs a fix, and definitely not in the way OP has tried to balance it.

I mean... Fair enough. I'm fine with agreeing to disagree. It's a matter of game design - there aren't always obvious "right" answers. Although just fair warning - I don't necessarily hold the OP's views on the matter :)

 

22 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

The problem you're describing is to do with having greater availability and potential up-time of the shield gate for damage mitigation. That's not what the shield gate is for, or was implemented to do. The attempt to rebalance it to give more or less duration is a waste of time because the process of using it as reliable damage reduction is the wrong interaction to have with the shield gate.

OK, this is new. So if I'm reading this correctly, you believe that the shield gate should only be used to prevent instant death, rather than as active damage mitigation? If you've already said that, then my apologies - seems like I missed it. I do agree, though, generally speaking. I've brought up Payday 2 a few times, but that's all the shield gate does in that game anyway. A single instance of damage can't deal damage to both armour and health at the same time. If I had to guess, I'd say DE went with a longer period of invulnerability to cover more ground than just that. What if an enemy hits you with a shotgun or with some kind of DOT? What if two enemies hit you at the same time? Creating a grace period ensures that players can survive damage spikes rather than just single instances of really high damage.

Here's a hypothetical situation, though. Let's say we're able to affect some kind of change which restricts the Shield Gate mechanic to protecting from JUST one-shots. Would you actually be OK with this? It would have the knock-on effect of drastically reducing the durability of low-shield Warframes, but it seems like you don't think Warframes should be using the shield gate as a primary means of mitigation at all. Or am I reading you wrong?

I'm personally of the opinion that invulnerability periods and gates are a bad idea for player mechanics in general. They always seem to create counter-intuitive edge cases and promote really dumb builds focused entirely around them. I like the idea on enemies because it encourages the use of different weapon types against different enemies, but I feel it simply adds too much unnecessary complexity on players. If we want more players relying on shields, then shields themselves need to not suck ass. Gating is a stopgap.

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Here's a hypothetical situation, though. Let's say we're able to affect some kind of change which restricts the Shield Gate mechanic to protecting from JUST one-shots. Would you actually be OK with this? It would have the knock-on effect of drastically reducing the durability of low-shield Warframes, but it seems like you don't think Warframes should be using the shield gate as a primary means of mitigation at all. Or am I reading you wrong?

That is exactly the kind of change I'm thinking should be implemented. Although it's not all of the change I think should be implemented.

The problem that is described by OP is that the shield gate is being abused because there is no reason to mod for high shields since the interaction that uses Shield Gates as DR exists. Their solution is to make shield gating based on the actual volume of shields you have, with potentially more time invulnerable for having larger shields, while most frames that do not typically mod for shields would see a decrease in that invulnerability.

Preventing one-shots by having the grace period is how, at least in the way the Devs described it, we mitigate things like DoT and multiple instances of damage, and having a reduced grace period for not fully charging your shields is pretty much a bonus for getting any shields back at all in the time between damage instances. The key is that a 1.3 second grace period is enough time to do something about the damage. Move, react, cast an ability, use an item, cleanse status etc. while 0.33 seconds for the partial shield gate is enough for the standard person to recognise that they've been hit and need to do something, but not typically succeed in doing so without suffering some Health damage. That's based of typical human reaction times, where the average person has a reaction time close to a third of a second, which can be brought down with practice to around 0.17 seconds, or by situations that trigger an adrenaline response. It's why DE believed that still modding for Health over Shields would be appropriate.

And if that were literally all the Shield Gate did, I would be happy with that. Genuinely. If the interactions that produced the 'shield gate as damage mitigation' were gone, I believe we would not have most of the situation we have now.

The problem with OP's solution is that it still didn't offer incentive to mod for more shields, merely punished the player of frames that now had less grace period and therefore would consistently take damage immediately after their Shield Gate from DoT or multi-source damage.

The problem with just changing the systems, even in my suggestion of nerfing the Dragon Key to prevent its interaction allowing for that behaviour, is that it still doesn't actually incentivise modding for Shields. 

Taking away that side of the Shield modding is only half the solution. We need to add to shield modding in order to make the change a buff rather than a nerf.

That's where I suggested, instead, to give an actual bonus for modding more shields.

Shields as an EHP are terrible because they are no different than Health, but have no mods to give them the benefits that Health has. Frames have innate Armour, with the lowest giving them 25% Damage Reduction to health, and frames have innate DR on Shields that equals 25%. But Frames have up to 700 Armour at base, for 70% DR to health before modding. This is not reflected in Shields at all.

DE claims this is because Shields naturally recharge, and to a certain extent that's true. But as you, and many others, have pointed out... Shields have a fixed 4 seconds delay before recharging from 0, which cannot be modded for, and the current only frame that can affect that is Gauss, who gains a passive delay reduction of up to 80% depending on his battery (reducing the delay to only 0.8 seconds at max). And while that delay is only 1 second when partially depleted, it's hardly an effective method to use against anything of semi-high level.

Then there's the recharge rate on top, with 15 per second plus 5% of maximum, so a frame with only 300 shields would take, from depleted, 4 seconds to begin recharge and then a further 10 seconds (as 5% of 300 is 15, so 30 per second total). That's a long time to be without your maximum EHP.

So, going over that, it's absolutely no fudging wonder that modding for more shields isn't as effective as modding for more Health, nor is it as effective as using the Gate as a damage mitigation tool.

The only way we move away from using the gate as a mitigation tool is to put the mitigation back in the EHP side of the equation.

That example I keep waving, because it was just a spit-ball attempt, but could actually be effective, would allow the existing mods for Shields to have a secondary stat on them that worked like Armour does for Health. Adding a Redirection could give us X% DR on Shields as well. As it's the mod for the most shields, you could balance that by making the proportional DR be low. So if a mod like Augur Accord were used instead, it would only add a low percentage of Shields, yet give a comparatively high DR percentage bonus.

Cap that amount at a decently high amount, or make it scale on a curve like Armour does, so you never reach total DR, then it doesn't matter which frame you put these mods on, you get the Effective increase to the Shields to increase EHP in the same way that Armour increases EHP.

There honestly does need to be something like that.

A system where more shields grants more EHP in a scaled fashion, or innate Shield DR that balances their innate Armour stats. Maybe a frame like Banshee, with the minimum Armour stat, would have a high Shield DR stat instead, so adding more shields would increase her EHP not just by the points value, but also by the DR value.

That's the kind of change to shields that would not only be positive, it would fix OP's (and sort of my) problem with players negatively modding to use the Shield Gate in an unintended fashion.

So the process would be; Nerf the Dragon Key. Buff that one frame (Grendel) and ensure that no frames have a low enough base shield to do that interaction going forward (because if they're going to have a shield that low, then DE might as well make them Health Only anyway...). Then give all frames a positive incentive to add their shield mods in on frames that can run with shields by giving them a stat that works similarly to the way Armour works on Health.

It's a few minimal changes.

Quick and simple, as it were (apart from Grendel, he might need a little work to be the best he can be).

[Steel_Rook]

15 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

And if that were literally all the Shield Gate did, I would be happy with that. Genuinely. If the interactions that produced the 'shield gate as damage mitigation' were gone, I believe we would not have most of the situation we have now.

Hmm... OK, that's definitely not where I thought you were going. However, I am in agreement. I do agree with using the Shield Gate purely as a means of preventing one-shots and NOT as a source of significant invulnerability uptime. Tanking damage to shields should always be the purpose of shields, rather than gating with them. It's why I was opposed to Shield Gating in the first place.

I don't think there's a good way of accomplishing that without completely wrecking people's existing builds, though. Personally, I'm fine with a ~1s invulnerability window on the shield gate, and I'd probably leave it like that regardless of level of shields recharged. Rather, I'd probably just give it an absolute cooldown. Something like 4 seconds from the end of the last gate should be fine. Possibly affected by mods/buffs which reduce shield recovery delay. I'm speaking off the top of my head, though, so that may be overly harsh.

 

15 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

DE claims this is because Shields naturally recharge, and to a certain extent that's true. But as you, and many others, have pointed out... Shields have a fixed 4 seconds delay before recharging from 0, which cannot be modded for, and the current only frame that can affect that is Gauss, who gains a passive delay reduction of up to 80% depending on his battery (reducing the delay to only 0.8 seconds at max). And while that delay is only 1 second when partially depleted, it's hardly an effective method to use against anything of semi-high level.

Then there's the recharge rate on top, with 15 per second plus 5% of maximum, so a frame with only 300 shields would take, from depleted, 4 seconds to begin recharge and then a further 10 seconds (as 5% of 300 is 15, so 30 per second total). That's a long time to be without your maximum EHP.

Yes, completely agreed here. If shields actually WERE a rapidly-recharging pool of health, they might actually be worth a crap. Unfortunately, they take forever to start recharging and then take forevermore to recharge back to full. You gave an example of 300 shields, but they get a lot higher than that. Hyldrin with 4500 shields would take almost 20 seconds to recover back to full. And sure, Hyldrin and the likes of Harrow/Mag have shield recovery mechanics to compensate. However, that's not the power of "shields." That's the power of those specific Warframes. Standard health/armour mechanics offer very powerful mitigation mechanics native to that system. You don't NEED to be Inaros or Atlas or whatever to be tanky - enough health, armour and a couple of decent Arcanes will usually get you most of the way there. The same doesn't apply to shields because their core mechanic - automatic regeneration - is just too slow. Basically I'm repeating what you said :)

This is why I feel the player shields mechanic itself needs sweeping structural changes, more so than just the shield gate. It's why I feel that we either need constant shield regen or full shield regen after a delay - NOT BOTH. It's a ham-fisted approach, granted, and it's going to make a few already powerful Warframes that much stronger... But I think it would make shields as a whole stronger, which is the goal. If a mitigation system is sold on being fast to collapse but fast to recover, it needs to be... You know, fast to recover. I don't think shields need to be "tougher," strictly speaking, so making them recover faster seems like the logical conclusion.

But this is what I've been saying all along, though. I'm convinced that we can't get away with just tweaking stats here and there. I believe that shields as a whole need to be rethought and given some kind of design purpose. Right now, shields seem to exist in "might as well" land. They've been in the game since the start, plenty of games have them, might as well leave them as they are. Warframe needs its own unique take on Shields. It needs a paradigm shift, else people will keep disregarding shield capacity.

 

15 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

So the process would be; Nerf the Dragon Key. Buff that one frame (Grendel) and ensure that no frames have a low enough base shield to do that interaction going forward (because if they're going to have a shield that low, then DE might as well make them Health Only anyway...). Then give all frames a positive incentive to add their shield mods in on frames that can run with shields by giving them a stat that works similarly to the way Armour works on Health.

I would personally go further. I'd say buff shields DRASTICALLY, but strip shields from a number of Warframes altogether. Grendel has no business having shields, neither do the likes of Atlas, Wukong, etc. Nidus and Inaros already work just fine without shields. Sure, any Warframes losing shields might need tweaks to give them some kind of sustain, but... Most of them already have that. Grendel heals off Nourish, Atlas heals off of Rubble (could probably stand to heal more), Wukong heals off of that mist ability, etc. Oh, and lest I forget - all of them heal off of Medi-Ray and Arcane Grace :)

As far as I'm concerned, shields should be a privilege, not a right. Warframes with high health and armour values, and significant sustain abilities shouldn't ALSO have shields. Inversely, Warframes with high shields probably shouldn't be tanking damage to health. That does put the likes of Frost in a weird spot since he kind of has both, but you can have exceptions to the rule, as well. Nothing wrong with that. Warframe's had this issue since before I started three years ago. Sooner or later, it needs to be addressed.

[Lutesque]

I honestly don't even know how to feel about Survivability anymore....

Whether I die in one shot or 1000 Shots doesn't even matter to me anymore.... Because either way you're getting Shot at constantly and that's just not a good feeling....

Shield Gating isn't the Problem... It's the unavoidable Nature of Damage in Warframe that's the problem....

Give me a way to Dodge Bullets and you can do whatever you want to my Shields....

[bnuy]

17 hours ago, Lutesque said:

I honestly don't even know how to feel about Survivability anymore....

Whether I die in one shot or 1000 Shots doesn't even matter to me anymore.... Because either way you're getting Shot at constantly and that's just not a good feeling....

Shield Gating isn't the Problem... It's the unavoidable Nature of Damage in Warframe that's the problem....

Give me a way to Dodge Bullets and you can do whatever you want to my Shields....

That is an issue, but a separate one entirely. Converting enemy damage to be hit-scan with indicators would be a massive overhaul to the combat system but would make the combat infinitely more engaging and rewarding. Even with these changes however shields would still fall drastically behind except for cases where shield-gate abuse comes into play.

On 2021-05-02 at 3:31 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

snip

18 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

snip

So basically what I'm getting is we should be able to amplify our shield damage reduction value? I absolutely agree with this, and I believe did mention it somewhere in the post. I do believe though even if we get the ability to do things of that nature that shield-gating still needs a change, or there would still be the potential for edge-cases to abuse it. I do agree they should make shields more uncommon among Warframes. There are as you said many tanky health/armour frames that still have some semblance of shields which benefit the tanky frames the same amount they do for the squishy frames, which means even if you make shields stronger via some of these methods, without removing the shields from these frames they would get the same benefit from shields as squishier frames do, which is unfair. This is why I see making the effectiveness of the shield-gate scale with the max shield value would be a good change, although instant replenishment or constant regeneration even while in combat may be the ideal approach for the regeneration aspect of shields. An issue I've had with Warframe since I started playing is that no frames have any basic regeneration, we have no base health regeneration stat, no energy regeneration, and shields on replenish when out of combat for a short duration. While it's not inherently a design flaw, it is something that bothers me a slight bit, and this would allow the squishier frames to have a form of constant regeneration if shield regen was constant even in combat, and would be a very neat change to see that I am quite sure I would absolutely love.

[(XBOX)Erkwounder]

Perhaps shield gate need somekind sort cool down time too. That because shield gate can block infinite amount of damage.

[Steel_Rook]

13 minutes ago, (XBOX)Erkwounder said:

Perhaps shield gate need somekind sort cool down time too. That because shield gate can block infinite amount of damage.

That was one of my suggestions, yes. Unhook it from shield recovery entirely, put it on its own cooldown.

[bnuy]

@Steel_Rook @Birdframe_Prime updated thread based on feedback, would appreciate if y'all could give it a quick once-over to see how you feel about the new suggested changes. I feel this solves a few of the issues that still existed with my previous suggestion, and this feels like a fantastic direction for shields imo.

[Birdframe_Prime]

30 minutes ago, scam said:

updated thread based on feedback

I see.

That is a much cleaner way to handle the actual Shield Gate, and does make it do what the original function intended; prevent one-shots.

I still think the base duration is too small because the stated reason for the 1.3 and 0.33 second duration is to allow the player time to actually react to the damage, the average high reaction time for a human is 0.3 seconds (the highest is around 0.17), so DE are a little generous there.

On the other hand your original aim of getting players to mod for shields doesn't really seem to be there. Sure, you get a longer shield gate for having more shields, but what that boils down to is just... rather than 'not benefiting' players for using default shields, it's more on the border of 'punishing' players for not modding more shields.

You definitely need to look into that positive reason to mod for more shields, making them an Effective Health Pool that's on par with the Health and Armour system for survivability.

Enemy scaling shields is fine. I would argue, however, that this is actually a little like the old problem with our own shields, because headshots on shielded enemies allow damage bleed-through. So if the Shield is equal to the Health, all that happens is you kill the enemy just as easily with precision shots, but modding for Magnetic actually kills them faster.

An improvement to your base idea, just not all the way.

[bnuy]

3 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

I see.

That is a much cleaner way to handle the actual Shield Gate, and does make it do what the original function intended; prevent one-shots.

I still think the base duration is too small because the stated reason for the 1.3 and 0.33 second duration is to allow the player time to actually react to the damage, the average high reaction time for a human is 0.3 seconds (the highest is around 0.17), so DE are a little generous there.

On the other hand your original aim of getting players to mod for shields doesn't really seem to be there. Sure, you get a longer shield gate for having more shields, but what that boils down to is just... rather than 'not benefiting' players for using default shields, it's more on the border of 'punishing' players for not modding more shields.

You definitely need to look into that positive reason to mod for more shields, making them an Effective Health Pool that's on par with the Health and Armour system for survivability.

Enemy scaling shields is fine. I would argue, however, that this is actually a little like the old problem with our own shields, because headshots on shielded enemies allow damage bleed-through. So if the Shield is equal to the Health, all that happens is you kill the enemy just as easily with precision shots, but modding for Magnetic actually kills them faster.

An improvement to your base idea, just not all the way.

Not mentioned in this post, as it's solely about shield-gating, we would have mods that increase our shield damage reduction. This would allow us to build for actual shield tankiness and up-front damage mitigation rather than solely for the invulnerability period.

[keikogi]

17 minutes ago, scam said:

Not mentioned in this post, as it's solely about shield-gating, we would have mods that increase our shield damage reduction. This would allow us to build for actual shield tankiness and up-front damage mitigation rather than solely for the invulnerability period.

DR is bad mechanically because of the way the math works

25 % barely increases your ehp

50 % doubles your ehp 

75 % quadruples your ehp 

100 % gives you invunerability 

Any kind of DR system will lead people to either go to the cap or not engage at all with it on the same way people already use for DR buff and armor striping debuffs.

If you are suggesting a shield " density " stat that's pretty much armor for shields I would be reluctant agree with it for the sake of simetry between Def stats. Despite not liking the existence of armor in the way it works right now.

[Birdframe_Prime]

22 minutes ago, keikogi said:

DR is bad mechanically because of the way the math works

Yyyyeah... but surprisingly it's how DE have already approached Shields.

Lowest base Armour for every frame is 100, giving them 25% DR to Health (which is actual DR now, due to the neutral damage resistances to all damage types). And so DE has given all Shields a base 25% DR too. I kind of wish there was a scale there, like we have with Armour, so that some frames could get a base higher DR with Shields to compensate for lower base DR on their Health.

In any case, all you'd have to do is grade it on a curve the exact same way that Armour is already. Or you could make it so that it adds flat DR, but even with all the mods combined you'd cap at 95% or so, similar to how Efficiency caps.

There's ways to handle that, and it's something discussed further back here that would be an easy stat to add to Shield mods; just one line extra, and shield mods would increase base numbers and also EHP overall because of it. It could be a fair stat overall because, unlike the number increase that makes things biased for frames that already have high base shields (just like frames with higher base Health or Armour get better returns for those mods) you could add the DR stat independently, based on whether you have the mod equipped or not, so any frame equipping the same mod might get more or less total shield points, but would all get the same boost in DR.

Ways and ways.

But OP's right, it's not in the purview of the thread to include that, so I'll let it drop.

[bnuy]

1 hour ago, keikogi said:

DR is bad mechanically because of the way the math works

25 % barely increases your ehp

50 % doubles your ehp 

75 % quadruples your ehp 

100 % gives you invunerability 

Any kind of DR system will lead people to either go to the cap or not engage at all with it on the same way people already use for DR buff and armor striping debuffs.

If you are suggesting a shield " density " stat that's pretty much armor for shields I would be reluctant agree with it for the sake of simetry between Def stats. Despite not liking the existence of armor in the way it works right now.

The damage reduction for shields isn't an extra damage reduction like armour is. Everything in the game has a multiplier to incoming damage based on the type of damage taken, Ferrite takes 75% bonus damage from corrosive, Alloy takes 75% bonus from radiation. This is good design and a healthy mechanic, the only reason armour isn't a healthy mechanic is because it's an extra damage reduction applied on top of this. Tenno Shields use this elemental modifier system for incoming damage as their effective "shield armour", because it has equal resistance values across the board. With my system they would have their base resistance values similar to current, around 25% to all elements (except for toxin as it bypasses shields, which is unhealthy design, but that's another topic entirely). This 25% elemental modifier would then be able to be increased via mods and other methods, reaching somewhere around 65-75% reduction at max, allowing shield tank frames to at least have some way to compete with armour tank frames, as they currently can not.

Damage reduction is not an unhealthy mechanic, the unhealthy part comes from having multiple different damage reductions stacking on-top of one another to achieve near full damage immunity. If they converted armour to another life pool like health/shields are, then gave them greatly increased elemental modifiers and removed the extra damage reduction armour applies, then units with hefty shields, armour, and health, would all be balanced effectively against one another, just with differing methods to deal with them.

[bnuy]

So basically, give us methods to increase these elemental resistances. Once shield-gating abuse is fixed, then the only real purpose of shields is a means to achieving invulnerability, much like it currently is. This would mean shields clearly still have design issues. If we are able to increase the elemental resistance modifiers of them to say 75% or above by building for it, then heavy shield frames are now able to compete with heavy armour frames in tankiness, just through a different means.

[Steel_Rook]

On 2021-04-23 at 1:42 AM, scam said:

Shield gate now has a cooldown that only resets when out of combat for a short duration.

• shield gate is consumed upon shields being entirely depleted, it is only replenished once the recharge delay is met
• shields are replenished instantly to 100% after being out of combat (no damage taken) for a short delay
  • 2.0s delay for partially depleted shields
  • 4.0s delay for fully depleted shields
  • upon shield recharge delay being met shield-gates are active again, this is the only way to reset the gate

I like this. Letting full shields recover instantly after shield recharge delay is a good idea. It gives shields a lot of additional power which they ABSOLUTELY need. It also heavily reinforces the design paradigm between shields as a separate mechanic from health and armour. Shields drop quickly but recover just as quickly if the player is able to manage their incoming fire. Barrier abilities in particular benefit from this, as they can be used as temporary mobile hiding spots for easy access to shield recovery. That's a more refined version of the system Payday 2 uses, and that already worked pretty well to justify building for heavy "shields" while still making players vulnerable.

I really like the mechanic of reducing shield recharge delay significantly before shields are fully broken. It incentivises people to learn their limits and disengage in time, but also gives them a fall-back in case they misjudge. This then becomes a choice - pull back early and get shields back more quickly or stick it out, ride the gate but regain shields more slowly. I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense. I really like this suggestion.

 

On 2021-04-23 at 1:42 AM, scam said:

Shield gating duration now scales depending on the amount of max shields and also in some instances, the current over-shields value.

• shield gating has a base duration of 100ms
  • shield gating duration increased by 1ms for each point of max shields
• if shields are depleted in one damage instance then the duration is
  increased by 1ms for each point of over-shields depleted (only if over-shields are active)

That's close to what you had before. I liked it then, I like it even more now. With shield recharge gone (shields recharge straight to full after shield recharge delay), it makes sense to tie the shield gate to shield recharge delay. This way all players get it back equally as quickly regardless of how much shield capacity they have. Tying the shield gate duration to shield capacity is a good idea. 1ms per shield capacity - or 1s per 1000 shields - makes sense. For most Warframes, that'll be 0.7-1.5s of gate, which is pretty generous. For the likes of Hyldrin, we're looking at 3s+, which also makes sense. She could even gain an additional shield gate bonus as her passive. So could Harrow, for that matter. Tying overshields to shield gate duration on a one-shot is pretty clever. It gives us reason to have overshields and offers further one-shot protection.

 

Overall, I'm pretty happy with what you're proposing here. It's probably going to be a tough sell because you're going to get accused of "power creep," but honestly... Our shields system is worthless. They drop too fast, they come back too slow, they're irrelevant. Yes, this would make a lot of Warframes much more powerful, but that's a price I'm willing to pay for an all-around better system. You are going to have to start looking into removing shields from at least a few Warframes, though - give them the Inaros/Nidus treatment. With shields made more powerful, it makes sense that not everyone should have easy access to them. I still think that at least Grendel and Atlas need to just not have shields. Give Atlas more health regained on Rubble pickup and you're just about done.

[TnaneverRisen]

On 2021-04-22 at 3:42 PM, scam said:

The issue with shields arises from the gating invulnerability, it is two fixed amounts depending on if the shields were partially or fully recharged. The duration is however not affected by the amount of shields in question. Having more shields does not help increase the invulnerability period, and having more also means that shields take longer to recharge. So having more shields effectively punishes you with the gating period, since you wait longer to get the same benefit.

Shield Gating Fixes:

• Shield gate now has a cooldown that only resets when out of combat for a short duration.
  • shield gate is consumed upon shields being entirely depleted, it is only replenished once the recharge delay is met
  • shields are replenished instantly to 100% after being out of combat (no damage taken) for a short delay
    • 2.0s delay for partially depleted shields
    • 4.0s delay for fully depleted shields
    • upon shield recharge delay being met shield-gates are active again, this is the only way to reset the gate
       
• Shield gating duration now scales depending on the amount of max shields and also in some instances, the current over-shields value.
  • shield gating has a base duration of 100ms
    • shield gating duration increased by 1ms for each point of max shields
  • if shields are depleted in one damage instance then the duration is
    increased by 1ms for each point of over-shields depleted (only if over-shields are active)

 

• Along with these changes, enemy shields are getting a slight tweak as they are much too weak to begin with when compared to armour in any form.
  • enemy shield scaling should be made equal to health scaling, currently since shield scaling is lower, you run into this issue...
    
  • the enemy gets a lower percentage of shields compared to health as the levels scale higher, this leads to a power difference between healthy/armoured and shielded units as they are all balanced around the same base value ranges, yet some of the base values have less of an effect at higher levels of content

 

Ideally, shield would be redesigned so that it's as useful as armor, but with a different style (similar to shields vs armor in Eve Online), and shield gating should be eliminated.

If they don't do that, then something like your suggestion makes sense to me.

[bnuy]

3 hours ago, TnaneverRisen said:

 

Ideally, shield would be redesigned so that it's as useful as armor, but with a different style (similar to shields vs armor in Eve Online), and shield gating should be eliminated.

If they don't do that, then something like your suggestion makes sense to me.

This is just my suggestions for shield-gating, I have other ideas as well of course that don't directly relate to shield-gating. Tenno Shields currently reduce incoming damage from all sources by 25%. If we were able to use mods and other means to buff this value to say, 80% or so, then shield-tank frames would be able to compete against armour, at least in some capacity. This would still keep shields as a very unique design as opposed to armour.