Enemies are just punching bags (Reworded)

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

Currently i think the game isnt really designed well enough when it comes to missions and combat situations. What i mean by this is that most missions heavily ask the player to only be more tanky and output more damage. Missions are not designed to engage the player with anything else such as reflexes, speed, memory, coordination, etc... 

Why is this a problem?

Its the whole reason why most players want to use the most op gear that nukes everything, and use frames that can take tons of hits without ever going down. Its the reason why frames who arent able to deal or take damage, fall so far behind. The options for combat are far too limited. You cant really avoid damage well in the game (sure you can bounce around walls to reduce enemy accuracy but you are still getting hit which still means the more tankier you are the better. Plus you don't have to be strategic in the way you bounce.), nor is there way to ensure you continue to deal reasonable damage. So your only real options are to become more tanky, and use items that deal more damage.

What's worse is when you are prepared for the battle (not even overprepared), you will notice something about enemies. It's that by large they begin to feel like just punching bags, since the mission is literally unplayable without you either becoming tanky enough to survive all attacks or having enemies unable to move. There's nothing for the player to dodge, no counters, no reason to be afraid. And you have to reduce enemies to this point because there's no other way for the player to not take damage.

It's for these reasons that i ask that warframe does away with this heavy focus on just making enemies tanky and deal rng damage to the player. Its killing variety.

Missions, Warframes, and Enemies should be designed in ways that allow interesting interactions. Strategies should be possible out of these interactions where the player should be asking themselves whats the best position to take out an enemy, what move can they use to avoid an attack, when should they attack to deal more damage to an enemy, etc... and the outcomes of failing or succeeding should have different outcomes too, like increased enemy spawn rate for failing to catch a runner, or a single free insta kill ability cast for taking out a kuva infected enemy.

 

What will happen to warframe if it focuses better on enemy design?

Lots of underused frames and weapons can become far more fun to use. Nyx for example, if you add enemies with the ability to 1 shot kill anything in the game every once and a while, imagine what nyx could do with that. Make a mission where 2 players are needed to stand on pressure plates to call in some allies, Loki will lowkey become more fun to play.

As for weapons, you cant really complain as much if a mediocre weapon is granted some sort of option or skill based feature to take down enemies somewhat close to the time it takes for the strongest weapons to do it. For example, after hitting an enemy X amount of times, enemies begin taking a percent of their health as true damage from your attacks for a short time period. Kills can amplify this damage further (and for anyone concerned about balance, there could be new enemy types that could remove the damage buff in a way thats both fair yet difficult to prevent)

 

After the next quest gets here, im hoping to see some design choices that begin considering these ideas, enhancing the warframe combat experience through increasing the amount of possible interactions that players can have with enemies. It wont get players to 100% stop caring about nukes, but it would at least get people to consider picking up their least used things.

[(PSN)pedrochass2005]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

 

Back in the day of LOR, the focus wasnt on your best gear, the focus was building the best squad to handle puzzles. This lead to people caring less about the best gear and more about finding good squad comps that would allow players to complete puzzles more easily 

 

Wrong, the puzzles were easy If you had a squad with minimal cordinatination, the Focus/meta was cc to ignore enemies

 

1 hour ago, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

 

Lots of underused frames and weapons can become far more fun to use. Nyx for example, if you add enemies with the ability to 1 shot kill players in the game every once and a while, imagine what nyx could do with that.

 

 

So a specific situation that a frame can make trivial, sounds like meta

Just bringing specific equipment to ignore most of the challenges isn't skill

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

8 hours ago, (PSN)pedrochass2005 said:

Wrong, the puzzles were easy If you had a squad with minimal cordinatination, the Focus/meta was cc to ignore enemies

 

So a specific situation that a frame can make trivial, sounds like meta

Just bringing specific equipment to ignore most of the challenges isn't skill

Youre thinking with a mind thats to narrow, the point of what was said is not to trivalize an entire mission but to make oppurtunities for unique interactions that dont habe to be "intentionally" made for one warframe. Yes LOR could be done with pure cc but there were ways to make the mission even easier through use of others warframes such as trinity and lokis decoy. My point for bringing up LOR is that it encouraged players who wanted the best results to play differently due to the mission condition.

Also the part about bringing nyx, the skill part is players having to avoid the 1 shot enemy, for loki it was about having to use good team coordination, i mentioned those 2 frames only to show ways to make things easier and to have more fun, and what was suggested is not so op that it trivalizes anything.

Must see the big picture of whats said here. By making the game more skill focused, it lessons the focus on being meta, nyx isnt meta, but if you have an enemy that can 1 shot you then you wont care as much about using the current meta (like Inaros and wukong) to take on this kind of enemy, instead nyx because slightly more attractive for fun alone.

In a sense, whatever becomes best to use is meta, so technically in a game where everything performs just as well as everything else, then everything is meta. So perhaps my word choice is bad here, some better wording would be expanding strategic options instead of what we have now which is heavily just reduce the damage you take, and deal more damage focused gameplay.

[Loza03]

I appreciate your thought process, but I think it's best to consider just how these missions are meta-focused. After all, technically speaking, every game is 'meta focused', since the meta is what is considered the 'best' way to play a game. Ultimately, the goal should be to make that meta as engaging and interesting as possible.

 

So, what about Warframe's missions makes them 'meta-focused' towards the current meta? Let's ignore the elephant in the room of armour. For one, Warframe's environments are predominantly either indoors or in otherwise enclosed spaces, usually with short sight lines. This benefits shorter-ranged weapons, such as melee weapons, as well as benefitting area-of-effect weapons, since AoE becomes more powerful the more enemies are within its area of effect. Smaller spaces means more enemies packed into that area, means more power to AoE. Likewise, enemy AI tends to cluster enemies into squads, especially in open planes like the open areas, so that too puts a lot of emphasis on AoE weapons too.

For reference, I did a quick once-over of engagement ranges. Looking at Earth, the Grineer asteroid mines area, the Corpus Venus map and the Corpus Cruiser, I noticed that most mid-sized rooms were hovering around 30-40 metres across, 60-80 metres for 'big' rooms, with most corridor rooms rarely being longer than those either and often being a mere 5 metres wide - the most I was getting for those were around 100 metre sightlines, and that's often for the biggest, emptiest rooms, or corridors with no doors. Bear in mind this is the total size of these rooms - a lot of the time, enemies don't hug the walls and the player has probably put themselves in the middle, so a 30-40 metre room means engagement ranges of maybe 20 metres naturally - which matches up with an even quicker once-over I did with that respect.

This becomes an issue when you consider the ranges a lot of frames cast at - most AoE abilities operate at around a 15-20 metre radius at base, often swelling very quickly to that 30-40 metre radius zone. Suddenly you can start to see why enemies  will 'just walk into' most abilities - oftentimes, they'll have little choice but to, if they even get that choice at all in smaller rooms. 

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

7 hours ago, Loza03 said:

I appreciate your thought process, but I think it's best to consider just how these missions are meta-focused. After all, technically speaking, every game is 'meta focused', since the meta is what is considered the 'best' way to play a game. Ultimately, the goal should be to make that meta as engaging and interesting as possible.

 

So, what about Warframe's missions makes them 'meta-focused' towards the current meta? Let's ignore the elephant in the room of armour. For one, Warframe's environments are predominantly either indoors or in otherwise enclosed spaces, usually with short sight lines. This benefits shorter-ranged weapons, such as melee weapons, as well as benefitting area-of-effect weapons, since AoE becomes more powerful the more enemies are within its area of effect. Smaller spaces means more enemies packed into that area, means more power to AoE. Likewise, enemy AI tends to cluster enemies into squads, especially in open planes like the open areas, so that too puts a lot of emphasis on AoE weapons too.

For reference, I did a quick once-over of engagement ranges. Looking at Earth, the Grineer asteroid mines area, the Corpus Venus map and the Corpus Cruiser, I noticed that most mid-sized rooms were hovering around 30-40 metres across, 60-80 metres for 'big' rooms, with most corridor rooms rarely being longer than those either and often being a mere 5 metres wide - the most I was getting for those were around 100 metre sightlines, and that's often for the biggest, emptiest rooms, or corridors with no doors. Bear in mind this is the total size of these rooms - a lot of the time, enemies don't hug the walls and the player has probably put themselves in the middle, so a 30-40 metre room means engagement ranges of maybe 20 metres naturally - which matches up with an even quicker once-over I did with that respect.

This becomes an issue when you consider the ranges a lot of frames cast at - most AoE abilities operate at around a 15-20 metre radius at base, often swelling very quickly to that 30-40 metre radius zone. Suddenly you can start to see why enemies  will 'just walk into' most abilities - oftentimes, they'll have little choice but to, if they even get that choice at all in smaller rooms. 

Agreed! And yes the design of rooms certainly limit the attractiveness of weapons and abilities

Arguably i feel having a large open field causes this issue as well. Its one of the reasons i made a post earlier about allowing us to carry more weapons. If DE really wants to open up rooms, i think allowing the player more weapons wouldnt be too crazy of an idea. It would allow for a lot more creativity when it comes to combat which can make it a lot more entertaining. For example, If you love shotguns, you wouldnt be severly disadvantaged in open spaces as much if you were allowed to at least bring a rifle too. 

I digress, just really agree with the points youve made

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

7 hours ago, Loza03 said:

I appreciate your thought process, but I think it's best to consider just how these missions are meta-focused. After all, technically speaking, every game is 'meta focused', since the meta is what is considered the 'best' way to play a game. Ultimately, the goal should be to make that meta as engaging and interesting as possible.

 

So, what about Warframe's missions makes them 'meta-focused' towards the current meta? Let's ignore the elephant in the room of armour. For one, Warframe's environments are predominantly either indoors or in otherwise enclosed spaces, usually with short sight lines. This benefits shorter-ranged weapons, such as melee weapons, as well as benefitting area-of-effect weapons, since AoE becomes more powerful the more enemies are within its area of effect. Smaller spaces means more enemies packed into that area, means more power to AoE. Likewise, enemy AI tends to cluster enemies into squads, especially in open planes like the open areas, so that too puts a lot of emphasis on AoE weapons too.

For reference, I did a quick once-over of engagement ranges. Looking at Earth, the Grineer asteroid mines area, the Corpus Venus map and the Corpus Cruiser, I noticed that most mid-sized rooms were hovering around 30-40 metres across, 60-80 metres for 'big' rooms, with most corridor rooms rarely being longer than those either and often being a mere 5 metres wide - the most I was getting for those were around 100 metre sightlines, and that's often for the biggest, emptiest rooms, or corridors with no doors. Bear in mind this is the total size of these rooms - a lot of the time, enemies don't hug the walls and the player has probably put themselves in the middle, so a 30-40 metre room means engagement ranges of maybe 20 metres naturally - which matches up with an even quicker once-over I did with that respect.

This becomes an issue when you consider the ranges a lot of frames cast at - most AoE abilities operate at around a 15-20 metre radius at base, often swelling very quickly to that 30-40 metre radius zone. Suddenly you can start to see why enemies  will 'just walk into' most abilities - oftentimes, they'll have little choice but to, if they even get that choice at all in smaller rooms. 

Changed the wording, meta focus was a bad choice of words

[Malikaith]

What also required a limited amount of strategy is how DE let the Nightwave 3 ending notice fall off the ingame announcements, so many people, like myself, lost months worth of grinding when they made the credits useless(Which seems insane alone, why do that?)

 

[Loza03]

10 hours ago, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

Agreed! And yes the design of rooms certainly limit the attractiveness of weapons and abilities

Arguably i feel having a large open field causes this issue as well. Its one of the reasons i made a post earlier about allowing us to carry more weapons. If DE really wants to open up rooms, i think allowing the player more weapons wouldnt be too crazy of an idea. It would allow for a lot more creativity when it comes to combat which can make it a lot more entertaining. For example, If you love shotguns, you wouldnt be severly disadvantaged in open spaces as much if you were allowed to at least bring a rifle too. 

I digress, just really agree with the points youve made

You're right in open areas also causing this issue - however, the main benefit is that it makes a different group of frames and weapons more desirable (or at least it would if the AI wasn't still clustering together, made use of their terrain, and players couldn't command 50-odd metres).

I'm not really sure that the issue with weapon switching is that there's too few options. We can already bring three guns if you count the Arch-gun. Four if you count the Operator's amp. The issue is in part how slow and clunky weapon switching is, often taking a second or so, making any benefits of switching to a more appropriate weapon usually moot. The other issue is how rarely switching weapons is a valuable thing to do - the DOOM (2016) Super Shotgun problem. Most big-shot AoE weapons can be very easily supplemented by Ammo Mutation up the Wazoo to give them unlimited up-time and usually sport few meaningful drawbacks to their use in their core design. Even outside the 'self-damage' debate, where's the drawback or weak point to spraying down an five or six enemies at a time with the Phantasma or Ignis Wraith? Normally that'd be ammo or a forced cool-down if the weapon's fired for too long, but neither of those things exist in Warframe.

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

1 hour ago, Loza03 said:

You're right in open areas also causing this issue - however, the main benefit is that it makes a different group of frames and weapons more desirable (or at least it would if the AI wasn't still clustering together, made use of their terrain, and players couldn't command 50-odd metres).

I'm not really sure that the issue with weapon switching is that there's too few options. We can already bring three guns if you count the Arch-gun. Four if you count the Operator's amp. The issue is in part how slow and clunky weapon switching is, often taking a second or so, making any benefits of switching to a more appropriate weapon usually moot. The other issue is how rarely switching weapons is a valuable thing to do - the DOOM (2016) Super Shotgun problem. Most big-shot AoE weapons can be very easily supplemented by Ammo Mutation up the Wazoo to give them unlimited up-time and usually sport few meaningful drawbacks to their use in their core design. Even outside the 'self-damage' debate, where's the drawback or weak point to spraying down an five or six enemies at a time with the Phantasma or Ignis Wraith? Normally that'd be ammo or a forced cool-down if the weapon's fired for too long, but neither of those things exist in Warframe.

Yea i know, i just think it would be more fun being able to swap to a sniper rifle after using a shotgun when your situation changes to a bit of long range combat. Archgun is extremely difficult to use and i feel like secondaries dont be cutting it half the time. Perhaps its more of a personal thing that ijust desire than it is objective, really seems like a cool and fun idea to extend players combat options without having to hit the arsenal as often

And 100% agree, weapon swapping for primary to secondary i think should be instantaneous too, cause doing it with melee be feeling so freaking good! 

[Yuzuki-Prime]

On 2021-08-28 at 9:45 AM, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

You cant really avoid damage well in the game

If I remember correctly, a few years back they added accuracy debuffs to enemies that is applied based on the players movement. The more you move, they less accurate they are. The game wants you to use your ninja moves. Most squads camp, and in general, kind of nullify the necessity for high movement, but give it a try next time you play solo. It's a ton of fun bouncing around avoiding bullets.

 

 

On 2021-08-28 at 9:45 AM, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

does away with this heavy focus on just making enemies tanky

Well, there is actually a wide variety of enemy types that dictate a players decision making.
Ancient Healers, Nullifiers, Eximus (and their various permutations), Bombards, and so on. In a single crowd of enemies, an optimal player would know which enemy type out of the crowd is the highest priority to remove first.
Secondly...Warframe, at it's core, is not really designed to be a "heavy thinkers" kind of game. The game play values fast, quick game play against hordes of enemies, rather than decisive, considered plays against a few enemies.
Consider Warframe more along the lines of Diablo, rather than Portal or Tekken 😉

 

On 2021-08-29 at 12:05 PM, Malikaith said:

What also required a limited amount of strategy is how DE let the Nightwave 3 ending notice fall off the ingame announcements

Go away, you're becoming a meme at this point.

 

On 2021-08-28 at 9:45 AM, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

Make a mission where 2 players are needed to stand on pressure plates

Unfortunately, I think most players would be opposed to this type of content. It's just not what Warframe is about. And I don't think this kind of content would really make people feel encouraged to use different frames, rather it would make players feel like they are forced to use specific frames, which is the exact opposite of having the freedom to play whatever they want/enjoy.
Warframe is just likely not a good platform for this kind of content. If you want an example of more "thoughtful" sections, the Second Dream quest has some slower moments that take a bit of thinking...and, in my opinion, those sections were the least enjoyable because as I said already; it's just not what this game is about.

[Aesthier]

@Yuzuki-Prime

Thank you for that concise and elegant post. It sums up everything I have been feeling in response to a plethora of community "suggested changes" for years now.

[(NSW)Greybones]

On 2021-08-31 at 1:11 AM, Yuzuki-Prime said:

If I remember correctly, a few years back they added accuracy debuffs to enemies that is applied based on the players movement. The more you move, they less accurate they are. The game wants you to use your ninja moves. Most squads camp, and in general, kind of nullify the necessity for high movement, but give it a try next time you play solo. It's a ton of fun bouncing around avoiding bullets.

Hello fellow ninja!!

(sorry, got really excited to see someone else bouncing around 😋. It's the main way I keep alive at higher levels)

On-topic; I wouldn't mind more clever ways to engage with the fights or environments. The original post's "what's the best position to take out an enemy, best move to use to dodge, best time to attack" may be something that I experience fairly constantly, but I wouldn't say "No" to additional situations like those, since they're pretty fun. I think "1-shot kills" may be a little simplistic, but it may be kind of cool if a Mobile Defense target's destruction didn't necessarily mean mission failure, and instead opened up an alternative route (with its own fail states). 🤔 It would mean that the sense of "Oh no nonono" may not be as strong when watching the console's health drop, but it may mean additional ways to experience the same roller coaster of emotions, just as an alternative situation.

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

On 2021-08-30 at 11:11 AM, Yuzuki-Prime said:

remember correctly, a few years back they added accuracy debuffs to enemies that is applied based on the players movement. The more you move, they less accurate they are. The game wants you to use your ninja moves. Most squads camp, and in general, kind of nullify the necessity for high movement, but give it a try next time you play solo. It's a ton of fun bouncing around avoiding bullets.

I use this and it doesnt work well. Idk if im missing something here, but around the time you even need to start doing this enemies become so tanky and start dealing so much damage that it becomes a huge waste of time killing them and they still down you eventually. Less accuracy doesnt matter when 1 bullet is enough to take you out, or when you are still getting hit by enough bullets to keep your shields from fully recharging.

On 2021-08-30 at 11:11 AM, Yuzuki-Prime said:

Ancient Healers, Nullifiers, Eximus (and their various permutations), Bombards, and so on.

Thanks but this is already known and is not what im asking for in this post. These enemies are primarily tanks or Bullet sponges, they arent inviting any strategy. Especially a bombard.

Prioritization is good though, it offers a really nice change of pace to content. It gets a bit overdone in this game tho, but i digress

On 2021-08-30 at 11:11 AM, Yuzuki-Prime said:

Secondly...Warframe, at it's core, is not really designed to be a "heavy thinkers" kind of game. The game play values fast, quick game play against hordes of enemies, rather than decisive, considered plays against a few enemies.

Id argue that warframe is a game of experimentation. Its about figuring out how to handle situations better than before, typically through modding. Theres a lot of number crushing and things to learn in this game that id argue requires much more heavy duty thinking than something like standing on a pressure plate.

I think its false to say that warframe isnt a game of thought. Only thing that seperates the thinking required in this game from complicated thinking game is that its not designed to stump you.

(Atleast the good parts of warframe arent designed that way.)

On 2021-08-30 at 11:11 AM, Yuzuki-Prime said:

Unfortunately, I think most players would be opposed to this type of content.

You think most people would be opposed to fighting enemies in their normal way until their teammate arives to hit a pressure plate for a quarter of a second, and then continue to fight off enemies? May I ask why you think this in relation to the game's current state? I think missions such as survival suggest players are 100% fine with having to stand near something for a second and then continue to do their thing.

On 2021-08-30 at 11:11 AM, Yuzuki-Prime said:

And I don't think this kind of content would really make people feel encouraged to use different frames, rather it would make players feel like they are forced to use specific frames,

You'd feel forced to use Nyx if there was an enemy that can one shot others... Or youd feel forced to use loki if there was a mission with 2 pressure plates....

One doesnt feel forced to play Gauss when theres a lot of room to go fast? I dont see how the creation of enemies and missions that keep warframes abilities in mind, forces anyone to feel the need to play warframe over others, unless its in a state of being absolute like steel path where having a frame that can take hits and output lots of damage is highly mandatory. Now that gamemode forces you to play things

However simply having a few rooms for warframes like zephyr and gauss to move in instead having everything be extremely tight? Forcing you to play zephyr?

No...

On 2021-08-30 at 11:11 AM, Yuzuki-Prime said:

If you want an example of more "thoughtful" sections, the Second Dream quest has some slower moments that take a bit of thinking...and, in my opinion, those sections were the least enjoyable because as I said already; it's just not what this game is about.

I cant remember doing the second dream quest, but i will say i hate puzzles that dont have anything obvious about them, stopping the flow of a game. Im a huge fan of this game called Devil May Cry but the moments where it hits you with puzzles that left you a bit too unclear of what to do next, i dreaded them.

So if thats what youre thinking im asking for here, the answer is no. Warframe is fast paced, any puzzle brought into the game should be just as fast to deal with. A players first time dealing with it should only be a minor set back like people's first time fighting a nox, but once you figure it out the enemy is easy and fast to dispatch of. 

Its a hard thing to describe to players who have never played games like Devil May Cry before. DMC is fast paced, where the difficult part about it is reaction time and paying attention. Testing what can you attack and what cant you. Not much different between Warframe and DMC if you look at them with a slight open mind.

Its whatever, i figured i wouldnt be able to explain this right. Its hard to make any fight that requires thought sound too appealing to players through text, without making people think your asking for rocket science. 

[Yuzuki-Prime]

11 minutes ago, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

they arent inviting any strategy.

Well, they are. If you're playing entirely Steel Path, especially in like Level 200+, then sure, a lot of strategy gets washed behind sponginess.
I think you will find most players are quickly adjusting their aim to take down priority targets first before shifting back to your regular grunts. This is strategy. If everything was the same enemy, then there is no reason to consider who should you kill first, you just shoot everything. Even if the priority targets are "more tanky", that doesn't change the fact that it takes split moment decision to decide to either kill the tank guy, kill the melee guy rushing up to you, or reduce the number in the horde. These are all split second decisions we are making as we play the game - and...🤷‍♀️ I don't know what else to call it except strategy.

I'm not really going to break down your whole response, but:

 

On 2021-08-28 at 9:45 AM, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

strategies should be possible out of these interactions where the player should be asking themselves whats the best position to take out an enemy

 

On 2021-08-31 at 12:11 AM, Yuzuki-Prime said:

Ancient Healers, Nullifiers, Eximus (and their various permutations), Bombards, and so on. In a single crowd of enemies, an optimal player would know which enemy type out of the crowd is the highest priority to remove first.

 

18 minutes ago, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

Thanks but this is already known and is not what im asking for in this post.

Basically what this looks like is, "I want this, but not like that!"
🤷‍♀️
It kind of sounds like you just want to play a different game. That's okay too. It's good to take a break from Warframe from time to time.

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

33 minutes ago, Yuzuki-Prime said:

Well, they are. If you're playing entirely Steel Path, especially in like Level 200+, then sure, a lot of strategy gets washed behind sponginess.
I think you will find most players are quickly adjusting their aim to take down priority targets first before shifting back to your regular grunts. This is strategy. If everything was the same enemy, then there is no reason to consider who should you kill first, you just shoot everything. Even if the priority targets are "more tanky", that doesn't change the fact that it takes split moment decision to decide to either kill the tank guy, kill the melee guy rushing up to you, or reduce the number in the horde. These are all split second decisions we are making as we play the game - and...🤷‍♀️ I don't know what else to call it except strategy.

I'm not really going to break down your whole response, but:

 

 

 

Basically what this looks like is, "I want this, but not like that!"
🤷‍♀️
It kind of sounds like you just want to play a different game. That's okay too. It's good to take a break from Warframe from time to time.

Bolding "more tanky" in this quote, because i think the issue youre forgetting is 

On 2021-08-27 at 8:45 PM, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

Its to ask that warframe does away with this heavy focus on just making enemies tanky and deal rng damage to the player. Its killing variety

That was mentoined in the very first post. Do forgive me if it sounds like im saying "i want this but not like that" but i did try to make this clear in the very first post that tankiness is focused way to heavily in the game, its about the only route that DE ever goes for

So yes, im not asking for tankiness when asking for strategy... im asking for the many other things mentioned, reflex, memory, etc...

 

And yes, i play other games when i dont feel like playing warframe.

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

8 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Hello fellow ninja!!

(sorry, got really excited to see someone else bouncing around 😋. It's the main way I keep alive at higher levels)

On-topic; I wouldn't mind more clever ways to engage with the fights or environments. The original post's "what's the best position to take out an enemy, best move to use to dodge, best time to attack" may be something that I experience fairly constantly, but I wouldn't say "No" to additional situations like those, since they're pretty fun. I think "1-shot kills" may be a little simplistic, but it may be kind of cool if a Mobile Defense target's destruction didn't necessarily mean mission failure, and instead opened up an alternative route (with its own fail states). 🤔 It would mean that the sense of "Oh no nonono" may not be as strong when watching the console's health drop, but it may mean additional ways to experience the same roller coaster of emotions, just as an alternative situation.

This is more on point, i still dont understand what in the world you guys are talking about when it comes to bouncing around as in my experiencr it buys you little to no defense whatsoever against actual tough enemies (what level enemies do you guys typically play against?) 

Aside from that, yes, more situations that open up creativity is exactly whats being asked for here. A step away from simple tanking and damaging the player, to something more colorful. Especially ones that keeps players warframes' capabilities in mind.

I mean what would be the point of making fast warframes like Gauss and Zephyr if every mission has super small rooms? Whats the point of making frames that can clone itself when the clone does close to nothing? Whats the point of making a warframe be able to crowd control, when no one is encountering any enemy that is a threat to their survival? Or trying to use an enemy to help you with damage when it only tickles them?

It doesnt make any sense. If you want that much variety with warframes, give them something to do.

Thus my point of the post

[(NSW)Greybones]

5 hours ago, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

This is more on point, i still dont understand what in the world you guys are talking about when it comes to bouncing around as in my experiencr it buys you little to no defense whatsoever against actual tough enemies (what level enemies do you guys typically play against?) 

Aside from that, yes, more situations that open up creativity is exactly whats being asked for here. A step away from simple tanking and damaging the player, to something more colorful. Especially ones that keeps players warframes' capabilities in mind.

I mean what would be the point of making fast warframes like Gauss and Zephyr if every mission has super small rooms? Whats the point of making frames that can clone itself when the clone does close to nothing? Whats the point of making a warframe be able to crowd control, when no one is encountering any enemy that is a threat to their survival? Or trying to use an enemy to help you with damage when it only tickles them?

It doesnt make any sense. If you want that much variety with warframes, give them something to do.

Thus my point of the post

Bouncing looks a bit like this against level 45 Aten enemies (recorded from PC account)

I’ve got some 110 Lich missions lined up that I can record as well; hitscan Grineer can be a little scary, but I keep my shield recharge rate high so chip damage from hitscan weapons can be recovered quickly. Usually I don’t bother with Steel Path; little of interest in there, the entry fee of required mods is quite high, and sometimes high spawnrates can be a little unfun with how confusing everything can get.

On-topic; I’d love to see more situations where a type of Warframe shines (there’s already a few, like the open corridors of the Corpus Ship for Gauss to run through), but there’s also the thing to consider that for some players, choosing to simply overpower the fight will nullify any said attempts.

It’s definitely worth considering how situations can be made interesting, but it’d be doubly impressive if it was something that wasn’t so easy to simply overpower as well as being one that doesn’t hard-require a singular Warframe

[(PSN)AccursedImmortal]

On 2021-08-27 at 8:45 PM, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

Currently i think the game isnt really designed well enough when it comes to missions and combat situations. What i mean by this is that most missions heavily ask the player to only be more tanky and output more damage. Missions are not designed to engage the player with anything else such as reflexes, speed, memory, coordination, etc... 

This game is like dynasty warriors with guns with the same positives and negatives. You have endless hordes of mobs that constantly funnel into your area which you defeat easily. It's incredibly fun at first being so powerful, but eventually the joy becomes a shallow one over time. The only difficulty at End Game is increased Enemy Health and Enemy Damage. Instead DE should tweak current enemies creating harder variants that require more timing and thoughtfulness during combat. 

Examples for End Game Enemy Tweaks for future steel path update combating power creep:

1) Ospreys should play like Arbitration Shield Drones. Whatever they're shielding cannot take damage until the Osprey is destroyed.

2) MOA's shockwave jump should not only knock out shields, but freeze the player in place similar to Rhino's stomp instead of a knockback. This encourages jumping into the air to dodge or facing repercussions of free hits. MOA should also be invulnerable until after they stomp, requiring timing for bullet aim jumps.

 

[Lutesque]

Ive been saying this for months... 

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

On 2021-09-02 at 6:20 AM, (PSN)AccursedImmortal said:

Ospreys should play like Arbitration Shield Drones. Whatever they're shielding cannot take damage until the Osprey is destroyed.

Maybe a specific type that spawns in groups but rarely spawns. Arb drones are cool but i do dislike it when theyre spammed

On 2021-09-02 at 6:20 AM, (PSN)AccursedImmortal said:

MOA's shockwave jump should not only knock out shields, but freeze the player in place similar to Rhino's stomp instead of a knockback. This encourages jumping into the air to dodge or facing repercussions of free hits. MOA should also be invulnerable until after they stomp, requiring timing for bullet aim jumps.

Sounds kind of nice actually, or just add a knew enemy called the freeze moa, be cool

On 2021-09-02 at 6:20 AM, (PSN)AccursedImmortal said:

This game is like dynasty warriors with guns with the same positives and negatives. You have endless hordes of mobs that constantly funnel into your area which you defeat easily. It's incredibly fun at first being so powerful, but eventually the joy becomes a shallow one over time. The only difficulty at End Game is increased Enemy Health and Enemy Damage. Instead DE should tweak current enemies creating harder variants that require more timing and thoughtfulness during combat. 

Exactly!

Or even enemy that deals a lot of powerful damage up close, but eventually he takes like a 4 second breathing period where he stops attacking. During this period lets say a heavy melee attack could deal a ton of damage to him. The faster you hit him with that melee attack, the more damage you'll deal.

Issue? You need to get close fast to deal the most damage!

What frames can get you close fast? Gauss, Volt, Ash, Nova. Note how these frames wouldnt be mandatory to deal with such an enemy, they just open up a new creative and effective option for combat.

Just asking combat that keeps in mind that players have a brain. It doesnt have to be rocket science, just something they can go off of like what was previously mentioned. Youd need far more than this but its a beautiful setup to start making these frames far more attractive.

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

23 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Ive been saying this for months... 

Theres just seems to be this intense paranoia that people have that such an idea would slow down combat in the game

They cant picture fighting enemies and doing another task at the same time eventhough they do it in game already.

One person thinks people would hate having to wait near a pressure plate for a teammate to arive (aka waiting near an objective), even though there are 10s of thousands of players perfectly fine with the game mode mobile defense that has you waiting near an objective 10 to 100 times longer.

Theyre also are afraid that throwing in an enemy into the mix of enemies you already fighting, that has attacks you can dodge and weak points you can access, would slow down the fast paced nature of the game. Even though such an enemy sounds very akin to the Nox enemy type in the game currently, that doesnt seem to be doing any harm to the game.

Change just scares people i think, it stops them from thinkin

[Lutesque]

7 hours ago, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

Change just scares people i think, it stops them from thinkin

That's essential what it boils down to....

But we should keep pushing for these changes.... They will be worth it.... 

I think we need to find examples of when DE has done this already....

[Silligoose]

On 2021-08-28 at 2:45 AM, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

Currently i think the game isnt really designed well enough when it comes to missions and combat situations. What i mean by this is that most missions heavily ask the player to only be more tanky and output more damage. Missions are not designed to engage the player with anything else such as reflexes, speed, memory, coordination, etc... 

Why is this a problem?

Its the whole reason why most players want to use the most op gear that nukes everything, and use frames that can take tons of hits without ever going down. Its the reason why frames who arent able to deal or take damage, fall so far behind. The options for combat are far too limited. You cant really avoid damage well in the game, nor is there way to ensure you continue to deal reasonable damage. So your only real options are to become more tanky, and use items that deal more damage.

Back in the day of LOR, these issuses were less problematic, as goal for the mission was building the best squad to handle different puzzles (Thus a strategy other than taking and dealing damage was created). This lead to people caring less about dealing damage and being tanky, to caring more about finding good squad comps that would allow players to complete puzzles more easily (LOR was one of the reasons Loki was more popular than he is now because of his ability to activate multiple pressure plates with his decoy and rad disarm making it hard for enemies to touch you).

Whats my point in saying all this? Its to ask that warframe does away with this heavy focus on just making enemies tanky and deal rng damage to the player. Its killing variety 

Missions, Warframes, and Enemies should be designed in ways that allow interesting interactions. Strategies should be possible out of these interactions where the player should be asking themselves whats the best position to take out an enemy, what move can they use to avoid an attack, when should they attack to deal more damage to an enemy, etc... and the outcomes of failing or succeeding should have different outcomes too, like increased enemy spawn rate for failing to catch a runner, or a single free insta kill ability cast for taking out a kuva infected enemy.

 

What will happen to warframe if it focuses better on enemy design?

Lots of underused frames and weapons can become far more fun to use. Nyx for example, if you add enemies with the ability to 1 shot kill anything in the game every once and a while, imagine what nyx could do with that. Make a mission where 2 players are needed to stand on pressure plates to call in some allies, Loki will lowkey become more fun to play.

As for weapons, you cant really complain as much if a mediocre weapon is granted some sort of option or skill based feature to take down enemies somewhat close to the time it takes for the strongest weapons to do it. For example, after hitting an enemy X amount of times, enemies begin taking a percent of their health as true damage from your attacks for a short time period. Kills can amplify this damage further (and for anyone concerned about balance, there could be new enemy types that could remove the damage buff in a way thats both fair yet difficult to prevent)

 

After the next quest gets here, im hoping to see some design choices that begin considering these ideas, enhancing the warframe combat experience through increasing the amount of possible interactions that players can have with enemies. It wont get players to 100% stop caring about nukes, but it would at least get people to consider picking up their least used things.

Going through your post, I agree with the overall premise of the thread, but disagree with some of the points you made:

In Warframe one reaches a point where the strategy or tactics boil down to just shooting anything and everything with as much damage as possible, because pretty much everything can be killed in one hit (there are rare exceptions, but they are rare in most missions that aren't endurance runs), while being able to stay alive (though different means, not just straight-up face-tanking). Nothing else really matters: Not not cc, not e synergy with teammates for more damage or damage mitigation, or even healing.

I disagree that with your reasoning regarding why players get the most OP gear, disagree with the idea that Warframe isn't designed to have strategical play or tactics and disagree with the idea that enemies should be less durable:

Why do some players use the most OP gear:

• Players are conditioned to want to do missions fast, because they are rewarded with loot faster for doing so. The most OP gear tends to be the most efficient way to finish a mission, hence, the most efficient way to get rewarded.
• Players usually worked at getting this gear. They want to use it.
• They enjoy it

There are probably more reasons, but I think the above covers the majority of reasons.

Warframe is well designed at the core and has the capability for strategical play. You most likely employed it when you were still early-game:

Despite the memes, enemies in Warframe aren't braindead: They will generally employ battle tactics when taking on players, by using cover, by using formations, by attempting to maintain a proper distance and by working with their allies. There are different types of enemies that play different roles and given proper balance, there will certainly be priority targets for Tenno to target. An example is the Shield Osprey. Tactical play is required in that one has to take out the Shield Osprey before taking out whatever it is shield, if enemies can't simply be one-shot. Do note in certain missions, such as Survival, enemies tend to be more aggressive and less tactical.

Enemies have different resistances and weaknesses, based on their types of armour, shield and/or health, even within factions. Given proper balance, we actually need different elements to take on different enemies and given mods (like Condition Overload), need to prime targets before doing the main damage. We'd need better strategical planning and tactical play if enemies couldn't simply be one-shot regardless.

Different Warframes specialize in different areas, such as Crowd Control, Damage, Healing, Defense, Support etc. These different areas of expertise allow for different Warframes to compliment one another in various situations, for example. Frost has great defense and decent crowd control, but lacks damage when compared to Mirage, who has excellent damage, but lacks defensive capabilities and crowd control when compared to Frost. Paired together, they will make for an excellent defensive duo to protect a target - better than two Frosts, or two Mirages, if enemies couldn't simply be one-shot.

There are more examples, but this should suffice. Warframe already has the foundation and mechanics to make for tactical and strategical play, given proper balance.

Enemies should be more durable, not less:

In the current state of Warframe, many of the tactical and strategical elements are lost due to how easily we can kill enemies. There is no need to stun something and then kill it, if we can just kill it outright. Support enemies like Shield Ospreys aren't priority targets, if we can kill whatever it is supporting outright. We don't need defensive barriers like Snow Globe, if we can kill the attackers outright. 

Accomplishing a meta with more strategical and tactical play:

It is pretty simple: More durable enemies. That alone will already help shift the meta to more strategical and tactical play. With some additional, minor balancing, the meta can be shifted even more towards synergistic co-op play. It wouldn't require an entire overall, just some adjustments.

I'll give an example regarding more durable enemies and I'll use Loki as I get the feeling you would like for him to be seen as moree useful:
You and a teammate (Frost) are playing Defense, Corrupted Tileset. Enemies are more durable in this example, but you have your OP Zarr weapons to take care of business. Weapons are modded to deal with armored units, such as Corrupted Lancers and Corrupted Heavy Gunners. A few Corrupted Crewman come along, whom you dispatch in around 3 seconds with your OP Zarr weapons. Then comes a group of 8 Corrupted Crewman and an Orokin Drone, around 35 meters away. You and Frost fire some shots, but the Crewman's shields are regenerated to the point where you are reloading and they aren't dead yet. The Orokin Drone is thus the priority target. The Drone is too high up for the AoE to kill it and is too evasive to hit reliably. Now you are getting shot at, Snow Globe is getting weakened, you can't kill the group quickly enough due to the shield regen and more enemies enter the room at closer range on the right flank, so they are also a threat. Frost turns his focus on the flanking enemies. Loki goes invisible, throws down a Decoy, switches places with the Drone using Switch Teleport, throws out a Radial Disarm, then switches with the Decoy to be next to the Orokin Drone, destroying it at close range and the 8 Crewman are now forced to run closer, since they have been disarmed. That's tactical play that you just won't have the opportunity to employ when the 8 Crewman + Drone group is simply annihilated with 2 shots from the Zarr. That's tactical play arising simply because enemies are more durable.

It might sound like a lot to some people, or sound like a complicated set of moves, but plays like that are made pretty quickly in the heat of battle and extremely satisfying.

 

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

On 2021-09-06 at 1:54 PM, Silligoose said:

disagree that with your reasoning regarding why players get the most OP gear, disagree with the idea that Warframe isn't designed to have strategical play or tactics and disagree with the idea that enemies should be less durable:

Why do some players use the most OP gear:

• Players are conditioned to want to do missions fast, because they are rewarded with loot faster for doing so. The most OP gear tends to be the most efficient way to finish a mission, hence, the most efficient way to get rewarded.
• Players usually worked at getting this gear. They want to use it.
• They enjoy it

There are probably more reasons, but I think the above covers the majority of reasons

Your first reason is what I'm talking about. Players want to get their missions done quickly because it increases the rate at which you receive rewards. Increasing the durability forces more and more players to use op damage gear. In order to speed things up

So you agree I believe, not disagree

On 2021-09-06 at 1:54 PM, Silligoose said:

Warframe is well designed at the core and has the capability for strategical play. You most likely employed it when you were still early-game:

Despite the memes, enemies in Warframe aren't braindead: They will generally employ battle tactics when taking on players, by using cover, by using formations, by attempting to maintain a proper distance and by working with their allies. There are different types of enemies that play different roles and given proper balance, there will certainly be priority targets for Tenno to target. An example is the Shield Osprey. Tactical play is required in that one has to take out the Shield Osprey before taking out whatever it is shield, if enemies can't simply be one-shot. Do note in certain missions, such as Survival, enemies tend to be more aggressive and less tactical.

Enemies have different resistances and weaknesses, based on their types of armour, shield and/or health, even within factions. Given proper balance, we actually need different elements to take on different enemies and given mods (like Condition Overload), need to prime targets before doing the main damage. We'd need better strategical planning and tactical play if enemies couldn't simply be one-shot regardless.

Different Warframes specialize in different areas, such as Crowd Control, Damage, Healing, Defense, Support etc. These different areas of expertise allow for different Warframes to compliment one another in various situations, for example. Frost has great defense and decent crowd control, but lacks damage when compared to Mirage, who has excellent damage, but lacks defensive capabilities and crowd control when compared to Frost. Paired together, they will make for an excellent defensive duo to protect a target - better than two Frosts, or two Mirages, if enemies couldn't simply be one-shot.

There are more examples, but this should suffice. Warframe already has the foundation and mechanics to make for tactical and strategical play, given proper balance

For the small bit talking about actually game play yes but all you have mentioned here is the limited amount of strategy I was talking about before. The game can use more of it, specifically in the attacks for enemies section of it. There's little to go off of. Enemies in the game are by large, punching bags.

The rest of that isn't necessarily about gameplay or in combat strategies. Arsenal/loadout related content isn't my issue.  It's when the player is on the battlefield 

On 2021-09-06 at 1:54 PM, Silligoose said:

Enemies should be more durable, not less:

In the current state of Warframe, many of the tactical and strategical elements are lost due to how easily we can kill enemies. There is no need to stun something and then kill it, if we can just kill it outright. Support enemies like Shield Ospreys aren't priority targets, if we can kill whatever it is supporting outright. We don't need defensive barriers like Snow Globe, if we can kill the attackers outright. 

You misunderstood what I meant. I'm asking that DE stops making this the single route they choose. Durability. Enemies need some offensive capabilities that require thought to deal with. 99% of the time outside of boss fights, the focus is just tanking. Yes you can aim glide and what not to reduce enemy accuracy but even then your survival will still depend on you being tanks enough to survive those 3 projectiles that do hit you, or if you can kill the enemy in time (tank and damage).

Yes you can cc the enemy instead of tank but that isn't necessarily giving you the player more to do or develop any new strategies. And again:

Enemies have enough defenses.

On 2021-09-06 at 1:54 PM, Silligoose said:

complishing a meta with more strategical and tactical play:

It is pretty simple: More durable enemies. That alone will already help shift the meta to more strategical and tactical play. With some additional, minor balancing, the meta can be shifted even more towards synergistic co-op play. It wouldn't require an entire overall, just some adjustments.

I'll give an example regarding more durable enemies and I'll use Loki as I get the feeling you would like for him to be seen as moree useful:
You and a teammate (Frost) are playing Defense, Corrupted Tileset. Enemies are more durable in this example, but you have your OP Zarr weapons to take care of business. Weapons are modded to deal with armored units, such as Corrupted Lancers and Corrupted Heavy Gunners. A few Corrupted Crewman come along, whom you dispatch in around 3 seconds with your OP Zarr weapons. Then comes a group of 8 Corrupted Crewman and an Orokin Drone, around 35 meters away. You and Frost fire some shots, but the Crewman's shields are regenerated to the point where you are reloading and they aren't dead yet. The Orokin Drone is thus the priority target. The Drone is too high up for the AoE to kill it and is too evasive to hit reliably. Now you are getting shot at, Snow Globe is getting weakened, you can't kill the group quickly enough due to the shield regen and more enemies enter the room at closer range on the right flank, so they are also a threat. Frost turns his focus on the flanking enemies. Loki goes invisible, throws down a Decoy, switches places with the Drone using Switch Teleport, throws out a Radial Disarm, then switches with the Decoy to be next to the Orokin Drone, destroying it at close range and the 8 Crewman are now forced to run closer, since they have been disarmed. That's tactical play that you just won't have the opportunity to employ when the 8 Crewman + Drone group is simply annihilated with 2 shots from the Zarr. That's tactical play arising simply because enemies are more durable.

It might sound like a lot to some people, or sound like a complicated set of moves, but plays like that are made pretty quickly in the heat of battle and extremely satisfying

The rest of this yes, for durability but once again am asking for offense. Making enemies durable can get people to use abilities to make them easier to take down but all it does make the problem worse.

You have even more of a boring punching bag.

[(NSW)randomoddguy]

On 2021-08-28 at 11:14 AM, Loza03 said:

I appreciate your thought process, but I think it's best to consider just how these missions are meta-focused. After all, technically speaking, every game is 'meta focused', since the meta is what is considered the 'best' way to play a game. Ultimately, the goal should be to make that meta as engaging and interesting as possible.

 

So, what about Warframe's missions makes them 'meta-focused' towards the current meta? Let's ignore the elephant in the room of armour. For one, Warframe's environments are predominantly either indoors or in otherwise enclosed spaces, usually with short sight lines. This benefits shorter-ranged weapons, such as melee weapons, as well as benefitting area-of-effect weapons, since AoE becomes more powerful the more enemies are within its area of effect. Smaller spaces means more enemies packed into that area, means more power to AoE. Likewise, enemy AI tends to cluster enemies into squads, especially in open planes like the open areas, so that too puts a lot of emphasis on AoE weapons too.

For reference, I did a quick once-over of engagement ranges. Looking at Earth, the Grineer asteroid mines area, the Corpus Venus map and the Corpus Cruiser, I noticed that most mid-sized rooms were hovering around 30-40 metres across, 60-80 metres for 'big' rooms, with most corridor rooms rarely being longer than those either and often being a mere 5 metres wide - the most I was getting for those were around 100 metre sightlines, and that's often for the biggest, emptiest rooms, or corridors with no doors. Bear in mind this is the total size of these rooms - a lot of the time, enemies don't hug the walls and the player has probably put themselves in the middle, so a 30-40 metre room means engagement ranges of maybe 20 metres naturally - which matches up with an even quicker once-over I did with that respect.

This becomes an issue when you consider the ranges a lot of frames cast at - most AoE abilities operate at around a 15-20 metre radius at base, often swelling very quickly to that 30-40 metre radius zone. Suddenly you can start to see why enemies  will 'just walk into' most abilities - oftentimes, they'll have little choice but to, if they even get that choice at all in smaller rooms. 

In my case I feel the best thing to do is actually to make the game significantly more balanced so people don't feel as inclined/obligated to use meta builds. The difference in DPS between an optimal loadout and one you just kind of threw together is ACTUALLY astronomical. Enemy scaling combined with not nearly enough options for gear that are at least good in late game content (meaning there is little competition for the, say, top ten most effective strats) means people will trend toward what is the most effective significantly more than they would if they were just a meta slave when they play games. (Those people will always exist.)