Small fixes to Catabolyst

[Graavarg]

In desperate need of content I flipped through my Riven collection and noticed that I had never really built a "maxed" Catabolyst. A sidearm that needs quite a few forma and some getting used to.

All-in-all it is a better weapon than I expected, though the "throw grenade at reload"-mechanic is decidedly strange. Not the "shoot-and-throw" itself (which is great), but how it is implemented. However, after killing zillions of enemies with it (levelling up after the 5th forma, and it will need one more after that) I have only one bigger and one smaller gripe. The bigger one is the lack of an "ammo finished/throw grenade state"-indicator.. and the smaller one is being unable to use alt-fire.

For those unfamiliar with the weapon, it charges a grenade while emptying the mag (max grenade damage at zero ammo left in the mag), and you will then throw the grenade by manually re-loading. This mechanic means that automatic re-loading is disabled, and as a result you continuously end up in a state where nothing happens when you press the trigger. This is accentuated by the Catabolyst being a beam weapon, which means you generally fire it by keeping the trigger pressed. If you intuitively reload (in order to be able to fire your weapon) you will also throw the grenade "somewhere" (= wherever you cursor happens to be pointing) and if it hits the floor or a wall close enough it will stagger you. And of course you just wasted the killing power of the grenade (which is considerable).

To top this up, sometimes you get another grenade after throwing one grenade, which means that throwing your grenade does NOT reload your weapon. Instead you are stuck a zero ammo until you throw another grenade. You can of course play with one eye at the ammo counter, but this really distracts from both play and enjoyment. Overall the Catabolyst is sort of "generally counter-intuitive": it doesn't reload when empty, reloading throws a grenade, your alt-fire also does nothing, and sometimes throwing the grenade doesn't reload the gun but gives you another grenade. And for all this there are no other indicators than your ammo counter.

All the Catabolyst needs would be two small fixes:

1. A small sound/"bipp" (bipp...bipp...bipp...bipp...) whenever your magazine is empty, indicating that you have a grenade ready for throwing. This would fix both the "ammo at zero"-state and the "oh, I got another grenade"-state. It would enhance Catabolyst use immensely (I am actually not joking).
2. Equating the "alt-fire"- and "reload"-action on the Catabolyst, allowing us to reload/throw the grenade with either a "reload" or an "alt-fire" action. This would be quite convenient, since playing Warframe a lot will store your actions in your (crocodile?) brain. Since the "normal" extra action would be your "alt-fire" button, all of us wasting brain space for storing Warframe commands wouldn't have to reprogram our internals specifically for the Catabolyst. Instead those that want/need to do so could continue with their Pavlovian reflexes and get the same result from pressing "alt-fire" as from "reload".

Neither change changes the weapon itself (stats) or how it functions, but taken together they would really enhance Catabolyst as a weapon ("make it whole again"). They would also improve the use of the "shoot-and-throw"-mechanic, which is another of those Warframe-thingies (when you get "it" together and gets into the flow, you enter another space... 😉).

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

I'd like to see:

when fully empty, releasing and re-pressing Fire does a throw/reload

(in addition to the above Reload to throw and Alt to throw)

 

because as an offensive action, it makes sense for me to press the Fire button

and as a Controller User, this allows me to simultaneously aim the grenade. (since the Thumbstick cannot be used at the same time as Reload)

 

Interestingly, my request is How the Catabolyst Worked on Release.

but they changed it.... which made me really sad, totally messed up my 'flow' with the weapon to have my grenade throw move from the offensive (Fire) button to the (Reload) button.

[Tsoe]

isnt the second grenade related with multishoot ?

[Graavarg]

22 minutes ago, Tsoe said:

isnt the second grenade related with multishoot ?

That would have been my theory too. But it is not in any way consistent with MS stats (fort instance having 100% MS does not guarantee a second grenade).

And somehow getting affected by status/stagger during the grenade throw seems to affect getting a second grenade. So my other theory is that some sort of interruption of the throw animation (or maybe the reload animation after a throw?) results in both a thrown grenade and still having it equipped/loaded in the gun.

Bloody irritating though, especially in hectic battles where you need to be able to trust your equipment.