Unpopular opinion: Single target guns will NEVER compete with AoE guns even if buffed to 100x as long as AoE weapons remain very convenient (Primed Sure Footed must die)

[Jarriaga]

In the past, the only thing properly balancing AoE weapons from flat-out dominating the game was their rather big drawback: They could kill you. This translated to said weapons having a direct risk vs reward formula in which you could trade safety for efficiency. This resulted in many AoE weapons not being used at all because it was too easy to kill yourself when a teammate crossed your path, but it allowed for single-target weapons to have a purpose.

Want safety? Go for single target. You won't ever kill yourself. Want to spread-out your damage more effectively? Go AoE, but be careful. Simple tradeoffs. Nothing too convenient. You had mods like Cautious Shot, but this didn't work as well because 1% of 10 million was still going to vaporize you, but at least there was a form of mitigation that didn't outright remove the only balancing mechanism that mattered.

But then DE decided to remove self-damage and replace it with self-stagger while apparently being oblivious to the existence of (Primed) Sure Footed. This is the exact same situation as the Decaying Dragon Key with shield gating, unintentionally turning a drawback or handicap into merely a nuisance at worst if not an actual benefit as well.

This effectively removed any form of drawback from AoE weapons. Replacing a QoL Exilus mod with the ability to go shotgun Kuva Bramma/Ogris? WORTH IT! So what else is there to hold back AoE weapons? Nothing. 

I often see in these boards the opinion that a single target gun that deals 10 million damage to 1 enemy is less desirable that an AoE weapon that deals 1 million damage to 10 enemies. How can you argue against such reasoning in scenarios other than boss fights in a horde shooter? Efficiency is king after all. It's not about how much damage you deal to an enemy, but rather how many enemies are dying as this affects how many enemies are rolling their droptables to drop life support or resources. Extra damage is not going to improve the odds of you getting what you want, but extra dead enemies will.

And this problem will be further accentuated with Galvanized mods and merciless arcanes. These mods and arcanes stack. Their maximum values can be reached significantly faster by killing more enemies in a wider area. These mods and arcanes are plain and simply the death of single-target weapons. AoE weapons with Primed Firestorm benefit the most from these. So what do single-target weapons have in their favor? Precision? Sure. How desirable is that outside boss battles? Players have to understand that this is something that can not be fixed without a nerf to AoE weapons, as no buff to the Soma will ever make it be desirable against the Ogris when doing Survival or Disruption. 

And since making weapons directly weaker by changing stats may simply not be enough, the only nerfs that would matter are those that would directly affect convenience:

- (Primed) Sure Footed no longer protects you from stagger triggered from your own weapons. It only protects you from stagger caused by enemies.

- On top of staggering you (Because Primed Sure Footed is now dead), re-introduce self-damage, but code it so it deals damage in relation to your own health. In this case 90% self-damage means your health drops to 10%. This ensures self-damage is a consideration, but it will never kill you. Hard-code Chroma so he doesn't benefit from this.

- Cautious Shot should then be your only protection against self-stagger and self-damage, but even at 90% this is still too convenient because it's a gun exilus mod. Thus, this mod should not be exilus, and should clash with Firestorm (Rename it Cautious Firestorm) in order to further decrease convenience by virtue of having to sacrifice a true mod slot and being unable to have your cake and eat it too (AoE range or AoE protection, not both).

This is the only real thing that will allow for single-target weapons to become relevant again unless you wish to present the argument that all weapons should be AoE, which is not a reasonable request in any way, shape, or form for the long-term health of the game.

[Butterfly85]

Single target guns are always going to be trash outside of a few specific missions (eidalons) compared to aoe guns because melee exists. 

As someone who admittedly plays like an utter forehead with the Ogris + PSP mod, I can see where you're coming from there. However I can't see self damage coming back. A lot of people hated it and it was never that well implemented. 

My personal gripe with the old system was I would take the time to ensure I was in a safe spot before firing my Ogris only for lol jk, teammate/pet/ random enemy would suddenly swoop across after I had committed to firing and would now be blocking my shot. Whoops my corpse has now achieved escape velocity as it ragdolls off the map.

Dying because I was an idiot and decided to fire point blank is one thing. Being punished because some wonk ran across me after I had fired is something else.

[Unibot]

AOE weapons still have damage falloff. How it is not a drawback ?

[Jarriaga]

Just now, Butterfly85 said:

Single target guns are always going to be trash outside of a few specific missions (eidalons) compared to aoe guns because melee exists. 

If you're going to go there and circle around an issue by highlighting another issue then you might as well say "any weapon is always going to be trash outside very specific missions because nuke abilities exist". Moving the goalpost fixes nothing, and the upcoming mods are gun-only, which means these issues (Single target vs AoE gun) are going to be further highlighted. Melee has nothing to do in this discussion for the same reasons abilities are not part of it.

3 minutes ago, Butterfly85 said:

However I can't see self damage coming back. A lot of people hated it and it was never that well implemented. 

It was not well implemented because it could kill you. If it deals damage in relation to your own health then this is not a concern, and it applies equally to both Inaros and Mirage. In addition, DE could make it so yours shots bypassed your teammates and pets.

 

[trst]

I like where your heart is but self damage was only ever an inconvenience for bad/inexperienced players or those who're at mythical levels of unlucky. Taking just the briefest of moments to not fire at your own feet or at enemies at point-blank range until it becomes  a habit removed the existence of self damage altogether. And bringing it back won't actually solve the issue and if anything those who can't seem to avoid it will just go back to using face-tank frames to ignore it.

 

In order to actually solve the issue of single target vs aoe is either to kneecap aoe across the board to give it the typical drawback of "less damage per target but more in total spread across enemies". Either by heavily reducing their damage or making aoe damage be reduced to a % cap based on the number of enemies hit.

Or we could take the less nuclear approach and add more aoe by introducing more innate/modded punchthrough exclusively for non-aoe weapons. That way there is at least a practical distinction for room clearing aoe and hallway clearing aoe.

[Jarriaga]

2 minutes ago, Unibot said:

AOE weapons still have damage falloff. How it is not a drawback ?

For the same reason dealing significantly more damage with single-target guns is not allowing them to shine: It still means more enemies are hit at once even if taking less damage.

There's a reason why I used the argument ¨single target gun that deals 10 million damage to 1 enemy is less desirable that an AoE weapon that deals 1 million damage to 10 enemies". It applies to base damage, total damage, and falloff damage alike.

[Venus-Venera]

vor 13 Minuten schrieb Jarriaga:

In the past, the only thing properly balancing AoE weapons from flat-out dominating the game was their rather big drawback: They could kill you. This translated to said weapons having a direct risk vs reward formula in which you could trade safety for efficiency. This resulted in many AoE weapons not being used at all because it was too easy to kill yourself when a teammate crossed your path, but it allowed for single-target weapons to have a purpose.

Want safety? Go for single target. You won't ever kill yourself. Want to spread-out your damage more effectively? Go AoE, but be careful. Simple tradeoffs. Nothing too convenient. You had mods like Cautious Shot, but this didn't work as well because 1% of 10 million was still going to vaporize you, but at least there was a form of mitigation that didn't outright remove the only balancing mechanism that mattered.

But then DE decided to remove self-damage and replace it with self-stagger while apparently being oblivious to the existence of (Primed) Sure Footed. This is the exact same situation as the Decaying Dragon Key with shield gating, unintentionally turning a drawback or handicap into merely a nuisance at worst if not an actual benefit as well.

This effectively removed any form of drawback from AoE weapons. Replacing a QoL Exilus mod with the ability to go shotgun Kuva Bramma/Ogris? WORTH IT! So what else is there to hold back AoE weapons? Nothing. 

I often see in these boards the opinion that a single target gun that deals 10 million damage to 1 enemy is less desirable that an AoE weapon that deals 1 million damage to 10 enemies. How can you argue against such reasoning in scenarios other than boss fights in a horde shooter? Efficiency is king after all. It's not about how much damage you deal to an enemy, but rather how many enemies are dying as this affects how many enemies are rolling their droptables to drop life support or resources. Extra damage is not going to improve the odds of you getting what you want, but extra dead enemies will.

And this problem will be further accentuated with Galvanized mods and merciless arcanes. These mods and arcanes stack. Their maximum values can be reached significantly faster by killing more enemies in a wider area. These mods and arcanes are plain and simply the death of single-target weapons. AoE weapons with Primed Firestorm benefit the most from these. So what do single-target weapons have in their favor? Precision? Sure. How desirable is that outside boss battles? Players have to understand that this is something that can not be fixed without a nerf to AoE weapons, as no buff to the Soma will ever make it be desirable against the Ogris when doing Survival or Disruption. 

And since making weapons directly weaker by changing stats may simply not be enough, the only nerfs that would matter are those that would directly affect convenience:

- (Primed) Sure footer no longer protects you from stagger triggered from your own weapons. It only protects you from stagger caused by enemies.

- On top of staggering you (Because Primed Sure Footed is now dead), re-introduce self-damage, but code it so it deals damage in relation to your own health. In this case 90% self-damage means your health drops to 10%. This ensures self-damage is a consideration, but it will never kill you. Hard-code Chroma so he doesn't benefit from this.

- Cautious Shot should then be your only protection against self-stagger and self-damage, but even at 90% this is still too convenient because it's a gun exilus mod. Thus, this mod should not be exilus, and should clash with Firestorm (Rename it Cautious Firestorm) in order to further decrease convenience by virtue of having to sacrifice a true mod slot and being unable to have your cake and eat it too (AoE range or AoE protection, not both).

This is the only real thing that will allow for single-target weapons to become relevant again unless you wish to present the argument that all weapons should be AoE, which is not a reasonable request in any way, shape, or form for the long-term health of the game.

how about a little less emotional first? otherwise reads very childishly and has little to do with reality ...
in addition, topic name is 100% click bait ... how can somebody then still discuss objectively ......?

[Jarriaga]

1 minute ago, Battle.Mage said:

how about a little less emotional first? otherwise reads very childishly and has little to do with reality ...
in addition, topic name is 100% click bait ... how can somebody then still discuss objectively ......?

I'm not addressing you further. We've done this before.

[Aldain]

1 minute ago, Jarriaga said:

It was not well implemented because it could kill you. If it deals damage in relation to your own health then this is not a concern, and it applies equally to both Inaros and Mirage. In addition, DE could make it so yours shots bypassed your teammates and pets.

That would have likely have been a better option overall.

Back when self-damage was still a thing even a modestly modded base Tonkor could kill a lot of frames in one hit, putting a cap on how much you can damage yourself in a single shot would have gone a long way to stop the "my Kavat walked in front of me and I died" issues.

[Jarriaga]

Just now, (XBOX)TyeGoo said:

I actually fell for it.. 😢

You fell for nothing. If you think this is a troll post then by all means leave the discussion and put me on ignore so you don't see future troll posts from me.

[(PSN)DBR87]

The community literally complained for years to get self damage removed and the tipping point was reached when Tonkor was nerfed. I lived through years of that S#&$ storm. We are not going back to self damage. I don't even use AoE weapons often. I like the feel of rifles and shotguns in this game and use them because they are fun. But I don't see DE putting self damage back in.  The game should be fun more than anything and few people found self damage fun. I have see a lot of suggestion for putting a damage cap on self damage but I just don't think we are going back to self damage. At the end of the day, the player decides what they use in a mission. If a player wants to be a sweaty tryhard and carpet bomb a map with there Bhramma then let them. If they want to take things slower with Vaykor Hek then they will. If we kill AoE weapons with self damage what happens? We go back to complaining about how Saryn and Ember nuked the map before I got to shoot my Paris at one enemy? I see no end to this cycle given the nature of Warframe.

[Sl4ught3r777]

Let's say u have 100 mobs coming at you , do u use  guns which can't kill even 1 enemy even if u shot 10 times or melee which can control them a bit and then kill them , Even if u 1 shot those lvl 165 mobs (no chance) there are still 99 left . Only choice is to give a arcane sth like per shot emits a line of sight projectile that stagger all enemy , or even better someone suggested make all weapon auto which  100% one shots 

[Jarriaga]

7 minutes ago, trst said:

I like where your heart is but self damage was only ever an inconvenience for bad/inexperienced players or those who're at mythical levels of unlucky. Taking just the briefest of moments to not fire at your own feet or at enemies at point-blank range until it becomes  a habit removed the existence of self damage altogether. And bringing it back won't actually solve the issue and if anything those who can't seem to avoid it will just go back to using face-tank frames to ignore it.

I agree it was a bad experience overall. But it worked.  

In addition, the proposed percentage-base self damage means going for frames that can face-tank won't be an option because they would still be taking damage in accordance to their health.

11 minutes ago, trst said:

n order to actually solve the issue of single target vs aoe is either to kneecap aoe across the board to give it the typical drawback of "less damage per target but more in total spread across enemies". Either by heavily reducing their damage or making aoe damage be reduced to a % cap based on the number of enemies hit.

Utterly knee-capping AoE would work as well. I just think that the backlash would be even bigger than decreasing self-stagger and self-damage protection. 

11 minutes ago, trst said:

Or we could take the less nuclear approach and add more aoe by introducing more innate/modded punchthrough exclusively for non-aoe weapons. That way there is at least a practical distinction for room clearing aoe and hallway clearing aoe.

That would effectively remove single-target guns from the game. Things would be transformed, as you mentioned, into hallway Aoe vs room Aoe. Both are AoE.

[Tiltskillet]

13 minutes ago, Unibot said:

AOE weapons still have damage falloff. How it is not a drawback ?

Single target has falloff too: 0% damage at .0001 meters. 😉

[Zhoyzu]

The solution is punch through on your single target weapons. The problem is that even with punch through it has to be modded for in most cases and even innate punch through on some of those weapons isnt enough. Giving non-AoE weapons all a default 2m punch through or w/e the value is would go a long way to bringing the weapons in line with their AoE counterparts.

 

Idk how many people remember the Flux rifle with its 'may as well be infinite' punch through that would damage everything to the beams max length. You could literally cut through swaths of infested and grineer as they all like to bunch up and funnel themselves. This was well before damage 2.0 that removed rainbow builds and introduced viral, corrosive and the others.

As it stand the only exilus mods for primary/secondary worth equipping are the ammo mutations and only for specific cases. Perhaps its time to make those punch through mods exilus mods as well.

If all these single target weapons had infinite or close to punch through beam weapons would likely be at the top of the food chain so we cant also just not limit punch through or well just end up in the same boat.

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

I wouldn't mind primed/sure footed only working on enemies it wouldn't be dead at all unless you spam explosions at your feet, that would also make Handspring more viable.

[Jarriaga]

13 minutes ago, Aldain said:

That would have likely have been a better option overall.

Back when self-damage was still a thing even a modestly modded base Tonkor could kill a lot of frames in one hit, putting a cap on how much you can damage yourself in a single shot would have gone a long way to stop the "my Kavat walked in front of me and I died" issues.

Indeed. Those were weekly threads. I don't know if it was a limitation due to spaghetti code or DE actually not wanting for you to do teammate punch-through, but the end result was the drawback to self damage as a balancing mechanic.

[Unibot]

1 минуту назад, Tiltskillet сказал:

Single target has falloff too: 0% damage at .0001 meters. 😉

I'll be more specific. AOE guns have AOE explosion damage falloff.
Yes shot damage falloff is present on single target guns as well as aoe guns, but please focus on AOE explosions as that is the main thread focus here.

[Jarriaga]

37 minutes ago, Zhoyzu said:

The solution is punch through on your single target weapons. The problem is that even with punch through it has to be modded for in most cases and even innate punch through on some of those weapons isnt enough. Giving non-AoE weapons all a default 2m punch through or w/e the value is would go a long way to bringing the weapons in line with their AoE counterparts.

This would effectively turn all weapons into AoE. It would just be, as another user said, hallway AoE vs room AoE. Both (All) are AoE even if the degrees are different, which is that I hope this game doesn't come down to.

 

[Jarriaga]

16 minutes ago, Sl4ught3r777 said:

Let's say u have 100 mobs coming at you , do u use  guns which can't kill even 1 enemy even if u shot 10 times or melee which can control them a bit and then kill them , Even if u 1 shot those lvl 165 mobs (no chance) there are still 99 left . Only choice is to give a arcane sth like per shot emits a line of sight projectile that stagger all enemy , or even better someone suggested make all weapon auto which  100% one shots 

As I posted above in this thread before your own response:

If you're going to go there and circle around an issue by highlighting another issue then you might as well say "any weapon is always going to be trash outside very specific missions because nuke abilities exist". Moving the goalpost fixes nothing, and the upcoming mods are gun-only, which means these issues (Single target vs AoE gun) are going to be further highlighted. Melee has nothing to do in this discussion for the same reasons abilities are not part of it.

[(PSN)xFelipeRage]

1 hour ago, Jarriaga said:

In the past, the only thing properly balancing AoE weapons from flat-out dominating the game was their rather big drawback: They could kill you. This translated to said weapons having a direct risk vs reward formula in which you could trade safety for efficiency. This resulted in many AoE weapons not being used at all because it was too easy to kill yourself when a teammate crossed your path, but it allowed for single-target weapons to have a purpose.

Want safety? Go for single target. You won't ever kill yourself. Want to spread-out your damage more effectively? Go AoE, but be careful. Simple tradeoffs. Nothing too convenient. You had mods like Cautious Shot, but this didn't work as well because 1% of 10 million was still going to vaporize you, but at least there was a form of mitigation that didn't outright remove the only balancing mechanism that mattered.

But then DE decided to remove self-damage and replace it with self-stagger while apparently being oblivious to the existence of (Primed) Sure Footed. This is the exact same situation as the Decaying Dragon Key with shield gating, unintentionally turning a drawback or handicap into merely a nuisance at worst if not an actual benefit as well.

This effectively removed any form of drawback from AoE weapons. Replacing a QoL Exilus mod with the ability to go shotgun Kuva Bramma/Ogris? WORTH IT! So what else is there to hold back AoE weapons? Nothing. 

I often see in these boards the opinion that a single target gun that deals 10 million damage to 1 enemy is less desirable that an AoE weapon that deals 1 million damage to 10 enemies. How can you argue against such reasoning in scenarios other than boss fights in a horde shooter? Efficiency is king after all. It's not about how much damage you deal to an enemy, but rather how many enemies are dying as this affects how many enemies are rolling their droptables to drop life support or resources. Extra damage is not going to improve the odds of you getting what you want, but extra dead enemies will.

And this problem will be further accentuated with Galvanized mods and merciless arcanes. These mods and arcanes stack. Their maximum values can be reached significantly faster by killing more enemies in a wider area. These mods and arcanes are plain and simply the death of single-target weapons. AoE weapons with Primed Firestorm benefit the most from these. So what do single-target weapons have in their favor? Precision? Sure. How desirable is that outside boss battles? Players have to understand that this is something that can not be fixed without a nerf to AoE weapons, as no buff to the Soma will ever make it be desirable against the Ogris when doing Survival or Disruption. 

And since making weapons directly weaker by changing stats may simply not be enough, the only nerfs that would matter are those that would directly affect convenience:

- (Primed) Sure footer no longer protects you from stagger triggered from your own weapons. It only protects you from stagger caused by enemies.

- On top of staggering you (Because Primed Sure Footed is now dead), re-introduce self-damage, but code it so it deals damage in relation to your own health. In this case 90% self-damage means your health drops to 10%. This ensures self-damage is a consideration, but it will never kill you. Hard-code Chroma so he doesn't benefit from this.

- Cautious Shot should then be your only protection against self-stagger and self-damage, but even at 90% this is still too convenient because it's a gun exilus mod. Thus, this mod should not be exilus, and should clash with Firestorm (Rename it Cautious Firestorm) in order to further decrease convenience by virtue of having to sacrifice a true mod slot and being unable to have your cake and eat it too (AoE range or AoE protection, not both).

This is the only real thing that will allow for single-target weapons to become relevant again unless you wish to present the argument that all weapons should be AoE, which is not a reasonable request in any way, shape, or form for the long-term health of the game.

Primed Sure Footed prevents the most ANNOYNG enemies in the game from taking us down, as well as being a hard mod to get just by login, so no, PSF don't need to die.

[Sl4ught3r777]

1 minute ago, Jarriaga said:

As I posted above in this thread before your own response:

If you're going to go there and circle around an issue by highlighting another issue then you might as well say "any weapon is always going to be trash outside very specific missions because nuke abilities exist". Moving the goalpost fixes nothing, and the upcoming mods are gun-only, which means these issues (Single target vs AoE gun) are going to be further highlighted. Melee has nothing to do in this discussion for the same reasons abilities are not part of it.

When u say nuking exist u mean to go as saryn and nuke ?
i meant nerfing melee so that people use primaries   makes no sense .  And that way for buffing also makes not that much sense. So as per you , need to resolve one issue at a time. 

Ex Melee many people use  nerf it -> make primary better( community complain about melee)-> no secondary usage -> nerf primary(community raged about melee)  ->ok looks like we have fixed it now(community complain about primary)  hmm weird all use secondary now nerf it too.   that got to solve the problem. What all using ability -> nerf nerf nerf there.

so let;s see what other issue are there  and what community thinks

 

 

To bad it does not work that way ultimately we are the one's who is playing and more than 80% like to go up and slash out enemy not shoot them up  

[Tiltskillet]

Just now, Unibot said:

I'll be more specific. AOE guns have AOE explosion damage falloff.
Yes shot damage falloff is present on single target guns as well as aoe guns, but please focus on AOE explosions as that is the main thread focus here.

Hey, you said "drawback", not me.  That word only makes sense in comparison to something else that doesn't have the drawback.

And sorry, this thread is about single target weapons too.  It says so right in the title.

So, in that context, falloff isn't a drawback, it's a reduction of an advantage.  Anything a weapon gets beyond the first target is an advantage, especially if it gets it inherently.

AoE weapons -do- have actual drawbacks though.  Maybe focus on those?

[minininja77]

46 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

(Primed) Sure footer no longer protects you from stagger triggered from your own weapons. It only protects you from stagger caused by enemies.

This I could get behind, IF I cared about how other people played the game and had their fun and wanted to be a kill joy but I don't. Why should I care if someone wants to spend their entire day in WF with a Bramma point at their feet?

 

[DrivaMain]

22 minutes ago, (PSN)xFelipeRage said:

-snip-

I can see you are biased toward AoE spam.

Primed Sure Footed made Cautious Shot irrelevant. It needs to be nerfed where it will not protect you from self staggers. Buff the cautios shot percentage to 100% to compensate.