Jump to content
Dante Unbound: Share Bug Reports and Feedback Here! ×

"Kill stealing", and the mechanics that suffer from it.


(PSN)Tactless_Ninja

Recommended Posts

Alright so this has been bugging me awhile and now with Nidus Prime around the corner might be a good time to bring it up again? I haven't been reading posts lately so I don't know what the consensus is. 

So here's the issue: mechanics centered around securing personal kills. Nidus needs living enemies to build his stacks, Fatboy can't use 3 of his powers if he can't suck in a single enemy, Harrow the next Prime has a very useless ability if he can't get a shot in. 

These issues probably drop off the more you play higher level content, but the higher level content suffers the same issue. Primary arcanes demand sacrifice to maintain their killing prowess and are constantly losing power. It's like using a manual crank flashlight. Constantly dull.

Should team mechanics be taken into consideration more? Auras buffed? I mean Limbo still hasn't been deleted so I doubt it. Even story mode depicts a lone Tenno. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, (PSN)Tactless_Ninja said:

Alright so this has been bugging me awhile and now with Nidus Prime around the corner might be a good time to bring it up again? I haven't been reading posts lately so I don't know what the consensus is. 

So here's the issue: mechanics centered around securing personal kills. Nidus needs living enemies to build his stacks, Fatboy can't use 3 of his powers if he can't suck in a single enemy, Harrow the next Prime has a very useless ability if he can't get a shot in. 

These issues probably drop off the more you play higher level content, but the higher level content suffers the same issue. Primary arcanes demand sacrifice to maintain their killing prowess and are constantly losing power. It's like using a manual crank flashlight. Constantly dull.

Should team mechanics be taken into consideration more? Auras buffed? I mean Limbo still hasn't been deleted so I doubt it. Even story mode depicts a lone Tenno. 

Thats why kill buffs are stupid
Hit buffs are the only proper way
 

ON HIT and not WHILE AIMING + standing on 1 leg + holding 1 hand behind + eyes closed + only when there is solar eclipse BS

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you consider it from the standpoint of the team's effectiveness, I think it's a non-issue.  If a player is literally having trouble obtaining kills, then the power level of the squad is probably in good shape to succeed the mission, and buffing one specific frame is more of a fun juggling act for one player than anything that will truly help the team.

From a personal fun issue, can it be a bit of a bummer?  Sure.  But I think that's less important than the team, and this slight sacrifice of personal buffs isn't going to make or break anyone's experience.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wasn't Nidus' larva changed so it gives stacks even if teammates killed the enemies it sucks up?

The on kill effects are perfectly fine in solo setting but when there's a wukong/rhino/nezha spamming bramma/zarr/tonkor and whiping the content fron existence you can never get stacks, On hit effects also don't work because you need enemies to hit but there's none if they get vapouraized the instant they spawn.

Only solution i can think of is to play solo and have fun

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, ZeroX4 said:

Thats why kill buffs are stupid
Hit buffs are the only proper way
 

ON HIT and not WHILE AIMING + standing on 1 leg + holding 1 hand behind + eyes closed + only when there is solar eclipse BS

Makes sense for the headshot ones at least. The stacks for that are gone by the time I get another headshot kill. And crit chance is useless without crit damage. I remember using Amprex way back and had nothing but red crits constantly all doing 5 damage each tick. 

But my concern is with the variants. Alone it works fine. Another Tenno running around disrupts you easily just by doing their own thing. Other players should always be taken into account. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, (PSN)goonie4good said:

Which arcane is that and do you have any extras?🤣

Its called Arcane of Clem
To get it you simply need to press F13 on your keyboard
If you are on console you need to press X button for 20 years
 

8 minutes ago, (PSN)Tactless_Ninja said:

Makes sense for the headshot ones at least. The stacks for that are gone by the time I get another headshot kill. And crit chance is useless without crit damage. I remember using Amprex way back and had nothing but red crits constantly all doing 5 damage each tick. 

But my concern is with the variants. Alone it works fine. Another Tenno running around disrupts you easily just by doing their own thing. Other players should always be taken into account. 


Look we have hordes of enemies and thats cool
But there are situations where arcanes like ON KILL or ON HEADSHOT are piece of $***
Like on bosses or like when you encounter lonely NOX

And then there comes ones like wall latch ones
If you want to break from your gameplay heat to just get a buff thats fine and all
But buffs should be activated from using something not from performing some stupid tasks
You care to know why?
Cause eventually we will have mods/arcanes like 100% damage after (5 rolls + 10 bullet jumps + wall latch for 1 minute) for 5 secs

We should get buffs for using our weapons or abilities and not for performing various tasks
Enemies should die faster while we attack them i mean start to die faster
And not makes us do so mumbo jumbo

You want to just play the game or aim glide  for 5 sec buff or maybe kill with melee for secondary weapon buff?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, ZeroX4 said:

To get it you simply need to press F13 on your keyboard

Fun fact!  F13 is a valid key assignment.  F13-F24 are often mapped to specialty functions on laptops, but they do exist.  They are of limited use as it's a toss up if any given piece of software will respond to them, even if you have a way to press them like macrosoftware or an Arduino.

Yes, I understand it's a joke.  On a more on topic note, I have to agree with this person though

42 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

If you consider it from the standpoint of the team's effectiveness, I think it's a non-issue.  If a player is literally having trouble obtaining kills, then the power level of the squad is probably in good shape to succeed the mission, and buffing one specific frame is more of a fun juggling act for one player than anything that will truly help the team.

Enemies are dying, mission is progressing, the individual kill counts are largely irrelevant.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, (PSN)Lollybomb said:

Enemies are dying, mission is progressing, the individual kill counts are largely irrelevant.

That is pretty much the case, but i feel awkward when someone else is rowing the boat while i sit there twiddling my thumbs like a confused schoolgirl, rather row myself

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

If you consider it from the standpoint of the team's effectiveness, I think it's a non-issue.  If a player is literally having trouble obtaining kills, then the power level of the squad is probably in good shape to succeed the mission

I would agree with this for the most part but only in the normal start chart. In the SP people who go out of their way to nuke enemies grabbed by Nidus's larva they can hinder him badly, but we all know how people can be its all about "kills and BDD numbers" to some 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, ReddyDisco said:

Wasn't Nidus' larva changed so it gives stacks even if teammates killed the enemies it sucks up?

The on kill effects are perfectly fine in solo setting but when there's a wukong/rhino/nezha spamming bramma/zarr/tonkor and whiping the content fron existence you can never get stacks, On hit effects also don't work because you need enemies to hit but there's none if they get vapouraized the instant they spawn.

Only solution i can think of is to play solo and have fun

He was, though I can't find it at the moment, like you stated if other players kill enemies in the larva Nidus gets stacks or some of them, not sure, my mind's on the fritz.

When I heard it I thought hell yeah stop my mates killing everything before I could build stacks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the fundamental issue behind these issues is that despite Warframe being a cooperative game, kills are counted individually, and many frames are designed in a vacuum where it's assumed they're the only ones playing. This not only affects the mechanics of frames, but also mods, Nightwave challenges, and even Dog Days rewards that all depend on kills. It's one of those instances of plainly incompetent design that needs to be altered to properly fit the game, so that players don't have fight each other over kills and get frustrated with one another for playing the game normally.

Personally, my take on this would be the following:

  • What counts as a kill in-game should be more broadly extended to include participating in the enemy's death, rather than simply dealing the killing blow: affecting enemies with damage, status, or crowd control, or applying a buff to an ally who dealt the killing blow, should count the enemy's death as a kill even if you didn't deal the last hit. This should allow abilities like Nidus's Larva to consistently give him stacks regardless of who deals the killing blow without that needing to be explicitly coded in.
  • Mechanics that explicitly rely on getting the killing blow should be reworked to function properly in cooperative play: Harrow's Thurible, for example, should restore Energy in his aura whenever any ally in the aura kills an enemy, not just himself (which could be achieved with the above if the aura itself were coded as a team buff, which should normally be the case).

And with this, players would no longer be competing for kills, so much as contributing to each others' kill requirements when that applies.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

56 minutes ago, (PSN)Lollybomb said:

Fun fact!  F13 is a valid key assignment.  F13-F24 are often mapped to specialty functions on laptops, but they do exist.  They are of limited use as it's a toss up if any given piece of software will respond to them, even if you have a way to press them like macrosoftware or an Arduino.

Yes, I understand it's a joke.  On a more on topic note, I have to agree with this person though

Thats the point of the joke you know it exists i also and iknow it can be mapped to some keys by 3rd party apps like AutoHotKey for example
Yet you see the irony?
Even going out of your line to get that F13 functionality to check if im joking or telling the truth is just nonsense compared to something that you would actually care to try out

Same story with BS demands of some arcanes or mods to even trigger

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honestly, I never have problems to stack my arcanes or get kills with Nidus. Yeah, Nidus is a bit special, because if you cast Larva, this seems to teleport 15-20 Tenno on the same position which clear the stack of enemies in 0.21 seconds. In all seriousness, find a spot alone and you stack to 100 in a couple of minutes.

 

But getting a couple of kills for the Arcane? If that is a problem, you need to look elsewhere, because that is no problem at all ever.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, minininja77 said:

I would agree with this for the most part but only in the normal start chart. In the SP people who go out of their way to nuke enemies grabbed by Nidus's larva they can hinder him badly, but we all know how people can be its all about "kills and BDD numbers" to some 

Honestly it goes both ways.  I've been in plenty of missions where I have trouble getting kills because a Nidus is scooping them all up.  Generally it's nothing I care about, and I'll just let the Nidus have their fun, but if it comes to the point where it feels like there's literally nothing to do or I need some kills for Nightwave then I don't think there's anything wrong with not letting them have all the fun.

That said, I think this deviates the conversation from discussing the "mechanics" to discussing a specific kind of bad player behavior.  Going "out of your way" to prevent Nidus from getting kills sounds more like trolling than a natural result of the gameplay systems.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i think for nidus prime his 5 enemy hit to build a stack should be reduced to 4, a lot of damage dealing warframes and aoe weapons have been made for this game since the normal variant was released and leaving it at 5 doesn't make sense anymore or reduce his needing 15 stack to not die to 12 at least.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Harrow has a pretty cool augment already: 

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Tribunal

If your allies are killing so fast you can't even get some condemns in, chances are they have no need for the proc from your thurible or penance anyways.

If you really cannot get kills with your Nidus and Harrow in general, chances are, your ramp up abilities are not needed in this mission and you should adjust your strategy for that type of mission. 

In theory, I agree with the OP, but this is where theorycrafting falls apart when it meets practice.

We can talk about kill stealing affecting on kill abilities/mods and how it "unduly hampers Tenno", but the truth is that in practice, in a game with so much dang cannon fodder, if the team is really killing everything so fast that you cannot even get enough kills to keep your abilities or mods going, then you don't need them

And that's why gameplay is more important than theory. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nidus did get changed so that he still gains stacks from enemeis caught in Larva, even when someone else gets the kill. but ultimately, if you're in a public mission where you can't get the kills, then perhaps another frame is a better choice.  don't get me wrong, Nidus is SUPER stronk, but because of the way he works he shines bets played solo or with a squad you can communicate with, where you have the chance to get kills yourself. bets I find I can do in a public group of nukers is run ahead and Larva for them over and over, then maybe on the rare occasion one of them goes down or stands still, I'll cast Parasitic link; temporarily ruining their fashionframe for a buff is a fair trade IMO, and also revenge for stealing kills lol. 

there's also a difference between purposefully trying to steal kills, and just performing better than you inadvertently because they are using tools more suited to the job at hand. personally I don't mind who gets the kills in a public game, because that's what randoms are for: a chance, if they are competent anyway, to get a mission done faster. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I also think its about a bit of gaming experience, for example, if I see a Nidus working an area I know what he is doing (getting stacks) so I bugger off to somewhere else .. but after playing a bit of Nidus I know that a lot of pub players have no clue and just wait for Nidus to chuck up the larva and then shoot into it.. but you learn not to be too fazed by it and just keep going  - lol but 99% of the time I dont do pub gameplay anymore 🙄

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, (PSN)Lollybomb said:

Fun fact!  F13 is a valid key assignment.  F13-F24 are often mapped to specialty functions on laptops, but they do exist.  They are of limited use as it's a toss up if any given piece of software will respond to them, even if you have a way to press them like macrosoftware or an Arduino.

I hope you know I enjoyed this lol

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The kills are so inconsequential that I don't really think there's anything to steal, it's an issue with a game where there are team play character options that rely on making kills and they're really just not needed by any other player with a decent arsenal. Excepting some specific niches like Eidolons, Warframe eventually becomes an anti teamplay game - you're so strong that actually all your teammates are doing is competing against you for kills and entertainment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with on kill being S#&$. Not only can you just not stack, but they are useless on any boss type enemies in the game. On hit is way better.

 

with Nidus I asked for kills in affinity range to give points for stacks. We got the larva change though a great step, not really that big of a help in any mission like exterminate or capture. You’ll still never be able to cast your 3-4 with out stopping or falling behind.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...