Why not make Overguard more interesting instead of nerfing it?

[Luka-Song]

People complained that current Overguard is annoyingly tanky, and Pablo's solution from today's livestream is to reduce Overguard values so Eximus units die faster.

But why are the only options being considered just increasing or decreasing Overguard values? Why are the only design options for this feature making Eximus units a bigger or smaller bullet sponge?

Add a skill or mini-game element to it, such as needing to shoot specific points on the guarded unit to break Overguard, similar to how you need to scan specific points on Simaris targets to capture them. As I remember, when Nox grineer units were introduced, they were quite a hit because people liked the added challenge of landing headshots to better kill a super tanky enemy, breaking the mold of just mindlessly slaughtering everything in the map without even looking at it properly. For a melee variant, hitting an Overguarded unit with a 6x combo melee heavy attack would break their Overguard.

If you make Overguard just a giant shield to mindlessly soak bullets until it breaks, it's gonna be boring and frustrating, but if you reduce it, the Eximus unit that was supposed to be a mini-boss will be inconsequential as they die almost instantly. You're really not gonna win by taking the easy route here.

[keikogi]

Idk man monkey with a canon can't deal with that so DE would never to that. But cc frames losing their best protection is fine.

On a serious note , I think that has been tried with the glassed enemies and DE apparently did not like the results. Since the mechanic has not made a come back

My personal problem with just about every enemy with weak spots in this game. Turn rate , enemies just turn so fast that can't be shot on the back unless the player applies aplliea cc and they easily make projectile weapons miss the weak spot if the player is shooting while maneuvering. The second but minot problem is the weapon switch speed is ass so swapping to a precision weapon ( assuming the build has one ) is a way bigger pain the ass than it need to be.

[Duality52]

48 minutes ago, keikogi said:

On a serious note , I think that has been tried with the glassed enemies and DE apparently did not like the results. Since the mechanic has not made a come back

This was tied to three specific parts of an enemy, who can be erratic in their movements. Not to mention how Stealth Affinity runs would be ruined by the sound of Nora telling you of enemies getting glassed.

To make it interesting, depleting Overguard would prime the enemies with them like a "stagger bomb". That is, stagger the enemy with Overguard and nearby enemies.

If one of DE's original intent was to make Operators a viable choice in depleting Overguard, having them deplete the Overguard will cause the explosion to both stagger and damage enemies (akin to an Arbitration Drone blowing up, but 5-10% of the enemies health not affected by Viral procs). To fully make Amps a viable but somewhat risky choice against depleting Overguard, have Amps deal a damage multiplier to Overguard similar to how we finish off spectral Thraxes.

To be honest, even the Aerolyst is better designed than what Overguard has going for it.

[Drasiel]

It seems like you missed the part of the announcement that said while reducing overguard they were increasing the health so the tankiness remains about the same but you can CC them sooner. They are also fixing the bug where viral was affecting overguard so if you were running viral before then the overguard will still likely feel just as tanky as it currently is even though it's total has been reduced.

[Joewoof]

10 hours ago, Drasiel said:

It seems like you missed the part of the announcement that said while reducing overguard they were increasing the health so the tankiness remains about the same but you can CC them sooner. They are also fixing the bug where viral was affecting overguard so if you were running viral before then the overguard will still likely feel just as tanky as it currently is even though it's total has been reduced.

Yes, I think a lot of players missed the upcoming Viral "bug fix" for Overguard. This is a net buff, NOT a nerf.

[Frendh]

13 hours ago, Luka-Song said:

Add a skill or mini-game element to it, such as needing to shoot specific points on the guarded unit to break Overguard, similar to how you need to scan specific points on Simaris targets to capture them.

Fun for about five minutes. After two hours I will want to tar and feather whoever came up with the idea.

[EinheriarJudith]

1 hour ago, (NSW)Joewoof said:

Yes, I think a lot of players missed the upcoming Viral "bug fix" for Overguard. This is a net buff, NOT a nerf.

viral isnt the only damage amp. you'll see this when it goes live. i regularly play mag, nezha, nova, wisp, and xaku. banshee's sonar will still be laughing that they reduced overguard into irrelevancy.

[Redpaws]

I'm just glad that I might be able to use Parazon finishers on Eximus units again. In their current state, opening them for mercy kills is near impossible as it feels like 95~% of their effective health is Overguard. Too many times have I watched a slash or heat proc deal less than 5% damage per tick to their Overguard, have it break it, only to instantly kill them from full regular health with the next DoT tick.

I like using Power Drain to power up certain channeled abilities, but that's VERY hard to do against Eximus enemies right now, who used to be my go-to target. Just easier to look for the glowy enemy than standard heavy units.

[Joewoof]

2 hours ago, Redpaws said:

I'm just glad that I might be able to use Parazon finishers on Eximus units again. In their current state, opening them for mercy kills is near impossible as it feels like 95~% of their effective health is Overguard. Too many times have I watched a slash or heat proc deal less than 5% damage per tick to their Overguard, have it break it, only to instantly kill them from full regular health with the next DoT tick.

I like using Power Drain to power up certain channeled abilities, but that's VERY hard to do against Eximus enemies right now, who used to be my go-to target. Just easier to look for the glowy enemy than standard heavy units.

Yeah, I really like using Power Drain as well and maybe occasionally triggering Hard Reset. Hopefully this makes Mercy usable again. Seems like +50% health should be enough, but we'll see.

[Luka-Song]

6 hours ago, Redpaws said:

I'm just glad that I might be able to use Parazon finishers on Eximus units again. In their current state, opening them for mercy kills is near impossible as it feels like 95~% of their effective health is Overguard. Too many times have I watched a slash or heat proc deal less than 5% damage per tick to their Overguard, have it break it, only to instantly kill them from full regular health with the next DoT tick.

I like using Power Drain to power up certain channeled abilities, but that's VERY hard to do against Eximus enemies right now, who used to be my go-to target. Just easier to look for the glowy enemy than standard heavy units.

That's also true, I'm glad that mercy kills will get a bit easier to perform now, as some of the mercy mods are quite useful, and also mercy kills are just fun to use.

I'm just really bummed out that the new eximus effects are so interesting and fun to play around, but Overguard takes away part of the fun by making them dull bullet sponges. Especially dissapointing that in the same update we got Void Angels, that are really just slumbering bullet sponges without any real challenge. Makes DE's preferred method of adding "difficulty" a bit too obvious when they do it twice in the same update.

[Lutesque]

On 2022-05-28 at 4:18 AM, Luka-Song said:

 

Add a skill or mini-game element to it, such as needing to shoot specific points on the guarded unit to break Overguard, similar to how you need to scan specific points on Simaris targets to capture them.

I've seen this Suggestion crop up numerous Times in Warframe.... Presumably because players have seen it work nicely in other Games....

The Reason why this Doesn't Work for Warframe is because nobody could be Bothered to Animate these Enemies Properly.... They move and Fidget and Rotate Erratically so much that they had to Add Kinetic Siphon Traps for Synthesis to Actually be Viable....

I mean... Just look at Thumpers....

They serve as a Shining Example of why this is A Terrible idea Specifically and Exclusively for Warframe....

Make the same Suggestion In any other game and yeah... It actually might be fun....

Warframe is just using "Weak Points" as Pseudo Invulnerability Phases ¯\_(ツ)_/¯....

On 2022-05-28 at 4:18 AM, Luka-Song said:

 

If you make Overguard just a giant shield to mindlessly soak bullets until it breaks, it's gonna be boring and frustrating, but if you reduce it, the Eximus unit that was supposed to be a mini-boss will be inconsequential as they die almost instantly. You're really not gonna win by taking the easy route here.

You say that is if The Current Overguard was Tanky For Meta Slaves....

Hint:

It's Not.... 😝

 

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

3 hours ago, Luka-Song said:

That's also true, I'm glad that mercy kills will get a bit easier to perform now, as some of the mercy mods are quite useful, and also mercy kills are just fun to use.

I'm just really bummed out that the new eximus effects are so interesting and fun to play around, but Overguard takes away part of the fun by making them dull bullet sponges. Especially dissapointing that in the same update we got Void Angels, that are really just slumbering bullet sponges without any real challenge. Makes DE's preferred method of adding "difficulty" a bit too obvious when they do it twice in the same update.

I mean, the difficulty is tankiness in a meta where everything is one shot. I would like for some more interesting enemies (I like the eximus because even with my Wukong I like having to shoot them multiple times with nataruk), but idk the way of making them more powerful without causing invisible poison clouds or giving them more aimbot. Even if you had to shoot them directly in weakspots to shatter/hurt through the overguard, that would still equal more tankiness because aoe or most melee weapons wouldn't work requiring people to pull out their nukor and zap them for the higher ttk instead (meaning if you run melee all the eximus are overly tanky because you can't hit the weakspots for easy depletion.)

[Teoarrk]

They initially wanted to add in Eximus weakpoints in a rework a while back. The community hated it and DE went back to the drawing board. I think that it would be possible to consider this if and only if it came with a lower enemy spawn rate. Many of us have the game sense to find those weakpoints in a pinch, but we're not all players.

 

[keikogi]

10 hours ago, Teoarrk said:

They initially wanted to add in Eximus weakpoints in a rework a while back. The community hated it and DE went back to the drawing board. I think that it would be possible to consider this if and only if it came with a lower enemy spawn rate. Many of us have the game sense to find those weakpoints in a pinch, but we're not all players.

 

The problem with weakpots in general in warframe is weakstops mechanics are given to fast moving targets and more often than not the weakspot can be covered by imune parts of the hit box. Remember how hard was to hit a aerolist because your shot never quite hit the canister. Also DE disregarded turn rate as a balance leverage so types of directional block mechanics fail spectacularly because it might as well be full on damage reduction( remember brusas can drift on their blocking stance than they can run on the running stance ). The last nail on the weak spot coming is weapon switch speed that makes carrying a side arm to deal with this kind of enemy a stupid idea because just powering thought it os faster than switching weapons.

Also enemies lack a proper self stun state, after attack so the player has no time to properly dump dps on the weakspot enemy. Remember when necramech enemies came out with their frontal imunity and instant turn rate. They had a wall attack that had a small animation lock but not anything you could use to dump dps on them. You could destroy their Limbs but that would just make them stronger because their AI would just spam its strongest attacks.  It's kind of general problem with eenmt desing in warframe , when DE decides a enemy should be strong its immunity to just about everything and any attempt of counter play will be met with a even stronger counter leaving the player only option finding a way to cheese the fight on the arsenal screen. 

[(XBOX)Kuhl MC]

Please NO weakspot mini games anymore!! I don't want to see the dreaded Glassmaker "experience" ever again... Imagine a SP run on Ophelia, where 10+ enemies spawn every 2 seconds and  then you have to deal with 3 or 4 " Glassmaker" Eximus, that constantly spam abilities, while you can't kill them due to wonky movement and weird hitboxes... Hell no!

[(PSN)rexis12]

You don't even have to look at Necramechs for their ineptitude I'd putting weakspots, just look at Nullifier Drones. They clip into walls', turn with the Nullifiers so it sometimes zips around due to enemies having absolutely zero turn delay and sometimes clips into each other making it both:

A) impossible to actually use a Weakspot.

And

B)Much more effective to just brute force the Nullifier Fields

It's absurd how that's not handled yet.

15 hours ago, keikogi said:

instant turn rate

Doesn't one of the Jupiter enemies have an absurd spin/turn rate? Or was that just a visual bug.

If weakspots want to be a thing, besides headshots, they need to actually turn down overall enemy turn speed.

[keikogi]

12 minutes ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

You don't even have to look at Necramechs for their ineptitude I'd putting weakspots, just look at Nullifier Drones. They clip into walls', turn with the Nullifiers so it sometimes zips around due to enemies having absolutely zero turn delay and sometimes clips into each other making it both:

A) impossible to actually use a Weakspot.

And

B)Much more effective to just brute force the Nullifier Fields

It's absurd how that's not handled yet.

I could have brought up the great grampa of bad weakpots itself , vayhek. Tiny weak spot with overlaping hit boxes and only vulnerable for brief moments. No way to force a vulnerable state. It's like they were actively trying to make as annoying as possible 

The noxes are also quite bad with their massive hit boxes that cover their vulnerable spot Frost just about everyplace but a frontal engagement. It's not like they could have a weak spot on the back to.

16 minutes ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

Doesn't one of the Jupiter enemies have an absurd spin/turn rate? Or was that just a visual bug.

If weakspots want to be a thing, besides headshots, they need to actually turn down overall enemy turn speed

Idk about Jupiter because it has been a while ibplayed there but the new corpus enemies with a frontal shield can turn it around faster than I can bullet jump over them so Idk why the shield if frontal 

[quxier]

On 2022-05-28 at 4:18 AM, Luka-Song said:

. As I remember, when Nox grineer units were introduced, they were quite a hit because people liked the added challenge of landing headshots to better kill a super tanky enemy, breaking the mold of just mindlessly slaughtering everything in the map without even looking at it properly

They make Nox' glass/head things to "disable" Overguard.

On 2022-05-29 at 9:40 AM, Lutesque said:

You say that is if The Current Overguard was Tanky For Meta Slaves....

Hint:

It's Not.... 😝

First, unless it's photoshop, game allowing you to name 3 things the same is interesting.

Secondly, using "melee Kuva bramma" on Mirage (with clones of course) wouldn't be great. Sure, you get 2 more shoots (Mirage shoot using 2 clones but melee with 4 clones) but one would stuns you constantly... well  there is Primed sure footed, now that I think of.

 

Oh, and Roar. Nice screenshot.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

They're not nerfing it

its getting a buff so that Viral doesn't affect it

this loss of damage multiplier more than offsets the reduced base health of overguard.

[(PSN)rexis12]

14 minutes ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

this loss of damage multiplier more than offsets the reduced base health of overguard.

Some guy actually showed on Reddit that it takes about 3.5 times more shot without Viral when using the same gun. I think it was 34 for Viral and 124 for without Viral.

Funnily enough, if you removed the Viral multiplier and do reduce the Overguard by straight up 50%, that still means you need about 62 shots, almost double the amount.

So yeah, Buff when going against Viral, Nerf with the rest. Take that as you will.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

3 hours ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

Some guy actually showed on Reddit that it takes about 3.5 times more shot without Viral when using the same gun. I think it was 34 for Viral and 124 for without Viral.

Funnily enough, if you removed the Viral multiplier and do reduce the Overguard by straight up 50%, that still means you need about 62 shots, almost double the amount.

So yeah, Buff when going against Viral, Nerf with the rest. Take that as you will.

Yeah, well, I need the Viral for the Everything Else on the map

and its not like I can swap configs mid mission

so..... with the exception of Eximus Stronghold Sortie

I'll keep the viral on and call it as an Eximus Buff overall

[quxier]

3 minutes ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

 

so..... with the exception of Eximus Stronghold Sortie

I'll keep the viral on and call it as an Eximus Buff overall

Most people would keep Viral. It's just you cannot call it "eximus buff".

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

On 2022-05-27 at 10:18 PM, Luka-Song said:

Add a skill or mini-game element to it, such as needing to shoot specific points on the guarded unit to break Overguard

This was an original design intention.  It was not well received.  They tried it out on temporary enemies for a nightwave episode and people hated it.  The issue is the overall game design, and not players just not wanting complexity.  

You can't have two dozen enemies on screen and then also make half of them complicated to kill while the only balancing that's ever done is just numbers changes.  You end up with a bunch of base units with bad AI and aimbot tracking just blasting the player while they're trying to deal with another dozen units with complex mechanics.  No good game does this.  If the combat is chess and there's one player, then you limit the amount of things they have to juggle at once.  This is not chess, and if you add that complexity to it without adjusting anything else, it becomes miserable.  Maybe you and others would like it.  The community has already been quite vocal about disliking it though.

Tack on top of that the fact that kill speed = grind speed and grinding is almost the entire game loop, and you have to realize that no one wants to acquire the things they're grinding for at a slower pace than they already are.  I farmed condition overload way back in the day and it took over 60 in-mission hours before it dropped and yes I had a meta set up.  Add even a fraction lower grind speed and that would have increased the time it took tremendously, and it was already such a soul crushing grind that I still remember how long it took.

They need to add in mechanics that don't require that the player drop everything to deal with the special units, especially considering that they aren't really special with how often they spawn.  They have to fit the mechanics within the rest of the game as they've designed it.  It's not a task I envy them, but it's also entirely their fault.

My suggestion for making them feel like an actual threat and a priority target:

• Make their passive abilities trigger in an AOE on being melee attacked and make them punishing.  Hitting an energy leech would drain energy on every melee hit in a radius around them.  Hitting an arson eximus with melee would knock the player back, set them on fire and do a flat % of their max health.  Make them hurt to force use of ranged attacks.  Have this functionality cease when overguard is gone.
• Let CC affect them again.
• Give them segmented health gates for their overguard, rather than scaling health.  These health gates should be able to be brought down by pretty much any damage, with a very short invulnerable period in between.  This heavily punishes using low ammo weapons, which most AOE weapons are.  This provides an advantage to automatic weapons and weapons that are ammo efficient.  This also incentivizes using the operator, as their ammo regenerates.
• Their main functionality should be making all the units in a radius around them more dangerous by providing buffs.  Energy leeches would give all the units around them a very small amount of flat damage to player energy per hit, which would add up quickly in groups.  Arson would provide fire damage with status chance.  The same thing for toxin, which again, makes these units priority targets.  Every unit having toxin damage is very dangerous.

This forces the player to expend ammunition, which punishes using only high damage AOE weapons as it would automatically eat up a set amount of ammo per encounter.  No more one-shotting the whole OG bar with a single shot from a Kuva Zarr.  Now it's going to deplete those ammo reserves or force you to use another weapon or your operator.  Using an automatic weapon would burn through OG quickly, but would take up a loadout slot, limiting how many AOE weapons you can cram onto your frame.  Or you'd have to use your operator, which was half the point of the rework coinciding with this update.  It forces you to fight at distance, controlling the space the player has to move in, providing a mechanical shift.  Negligible health on each OG segment would ensure that even a new player could take down OG, and just means that they have to actually maneuver during the units' slightly longer TTK, since there would be very short health gates for each segment, with segment count scaling with level.  This makes them more durable without making them bullet sponges.  They are actual threats now, and would actually fill the role of a higher level unit being on the field, making the other units around them better.  It incentives operator play, and because operators exist as well as ranged melee attacks and low health meaning you could take literally any secondary with you to deal with OG, does not invalidate any playstyles.  It would take slightly longer for them to die than before the rework, which does increase grind time, but them not being bullet sponges means it increases TTK evenly across players, rather than what it is now, where new players struggle and vets blow through them.

This discussion is for naught though, because DE doesn't like doing this kind of work.  Look at what they did with underperforming augments.  It's always "what number can we change so people will shut up?" rather than putting in the labor to make it good.

[Luka-Song]

4 hours ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

They're not nerfing it

its getting a buff so that Viral doesn't affect it

this loss of damage multiplier more than offsets the reduced base health of overguard.

 

On 2022-05-29 at 4:40 AM, Lutesque said:

You say that is if The Current Overguard was Tanky For Meta Slaves....

It being buffed, nerfed, tanky, etc isn't the problem per se, the problem is that DE enemy design appearently only has two settings: bullet sponge or wet tissue paper.

Sure, Viral changes mean it might be a buff instead of a nerf, so they're getting tankier and I have to brainlessly shoot them for longer, yipee...

Sure, I could be a meta slave and kill them in one shot with an AoE weapon without even noticing they were there at all. How fun.

Difficulty in Warframe often boils down to how much time it takes for the grineer-shaped training dummy to die, there's very little thinking or attention required.

This was bad design back then, and it is bad design now. Adjusting time-to-kill to provide appropriate challenges is fine and all, but when it's the *only* challenge, then there's a problem.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

Just a reminder:

Halo CE, Hunters

best 'eximus' ever

shrugs off everything you throw at them

but after doing one well telegraphed melee attack, if you successfully dodge it they leave their back open so a single shot to the weakpoint downs them

 

Note how this some some parallel to how DE wants Eximus leech attacks to be telegraphed. Imagine if after rolling to avoid the energy leech blast, the Eximus who fired it became highlighted in flashing yellow and was open to finisher for 2 secs? (thinking of the way Doom displays this)

 

Pablo says we don't need AI because we kill stuff too fast for it to matter

well that's a chicken and egg problem, maybe if we had good AI we wouldn't be just sweep the map, but actually interact with enemy behavior

 

*defining "AI" here loosely as interesting enemy behaviors like above, not neccessarilly advanced pathing, tactics, or cover. Just making them have more interactions that point and shoot.