Change about AoE Weapons (DevStream 163)

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

49 minutes ago, Llympack said:

Good day, and thank you for taking the time to respond. 

I did notice that this change is possible and not sure and some, my fourth sentence seems to indicate.;)

Then Perhaps

you shouldn't be worrying about a change until it actually happens

save your energy until seeing it in person ad seeing just how good or bad it plays

[Graavarg]

11 hours ago, DarkSkysz said:

Another proof that the guy that wants to nerf AOE have no f'ing idea how things works said that explosions can't do headshots... I mean, for #*!% sake, do he even understand what an explosion is? If you launch a grenade over a dummy head and let it explode, the dummy head will be gone. How the #*!% explosions can't hit the head?

Well, I agree. Nerfing headshots and nerfing range mods is completely wrong, since that will affect players using "single-shot" AoE more than the spammers (the spammers will just spam even more). The problem is the spamming of grenades/rocket etc., not the damage from a single grenade. And the easiest way to stop that spam is to change mag sizes/reload times/fire rate. You could basically remove the spam problem in one fell swoop by putting in a minimum 5 second fire rate for the spam weaponry.

Just think you are holding Bramma/Zarr/Ogris etc. etc. and you fire a grenade rocket and then... 1 second... 2 seconds... 3 seconds... 4 seconds... 5 seconds... and now you can fire another grenade/rocket. That is not a spam anymore, now is it. And no need to change anything else (damage, range mods etc.).

And if you really want to fix it, just re-introduce self-damage on top of this. You could even double the damage of AoE weapons, because there will be no more spam. As long as you apply the same rules to any clone, specter or crewmate (including self-damage).

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

my thoughts:

they've made the issue far too complicated

all that needed to happen was reverting self-stagger back into self-damage

[bobojoeho]

I think single target weapons can be capable of killing enemies quickly if they get a buff to fire rate.  Nataruk is a good example.  When there are hordes of SP enemies, and you need to kill them all, a couple of shots with Zarr or Bramma takes care of it.  Nataruk requires you to aim, charge, release for every enemy.  Snipers like Chackkhurr have too slow of a fire rate to be able to effectively kill a lot of enemies.  SP survival, like someone mentioned above, takes about 100 enemies a minute to maintain life support.  Chackkhurr, with critical delay, can shoot 54 shots a minute.  Assuming you are shooting as fast as possible, and ever shot one-shots an enemy, thats 54 kills a minute.  That means, at max, Chackkhurr is only capable of getting 1/2 of the life support needed.  Of course, there are warframe abilities too, but this is why AOE is so popular.

[bobojoeho]

44 minutes ago, Graavarg said:

Well, I agree. Nerfing headshots and nerfing range mods is completely wrong, since that will affect players using "single-shot" AoE more than the spammers (the spammers will just spam even more). The problem is the spamming of grenades/rocket etc., not the damage from a single grenade. And the easiest way to stop that spam is to change mag sizes/reload times/fire rate. You could basically remove the spam problem in one fell swoop by putting in a minimum 5 second fire rate for the spam weaponry.

Just think you are holding Bramma/Zarr/Ogris etc. etc. and you fire a grenade rocket and then... 1 second... 2 seconds... 3 seconds... 4 seconds... 5 seconds... and now you can fire another grenade/rocket. That is not a spam anymore, now is it. And no need to change anything else (damage, range mods etc.).

And if you really want to fix it, just re-introduce self-damage on top of this. You could even double the damage of AoE weapons, because there will be no more spam. As long as you apply the same rules to any clone, specter or crewmate (including self-damage).

Honestly, I would love self damage.  Slap down Chroma's 3, hit yourself until you get the max damage buff, then recast whenever time is close to running out so the dmg buff never goes away.  Now Chroma = new #1 dps frame

[ThommiX]

1 hour ago, Llympack said:

Good day to you, and thank you for your answer.

Indeed, during the devstream, they indicated why such changes are to be expected, and I agree with the principle. Both examples speak for themselves, but two things.

The first, people who have this type of gameplay make its strategy, this strategy is not funny and can always be adapted with a power of Warframe for example.

Second point, he won’t get anything more to do this kind of thing, he won’t get any better rewards and won’t get a faster farm. This type of gameplay in no way harms the other player and therefore for me no problem.

 

Then you indicate that for the majority of players spam is not funny except for those who use them. Off, in my first post, I read that more players use this type of weapons, which makes me think that this argument is misplaced.

Second, I think that AoE spam is by no means, a non-face to play game, the principle of the game is a mission to be accomplished with large numbers of enemies to destroy, apart from its weapons completely fulfilled this function.

For the fact that some players find it bad to have one that destroys everything and they do nothing except go to the exit. I agree, I’ve been through this myself. I think my solution of offering an AoE or non-Aoe matchmaking sort would solve this problem and allow those who just want to finish a mission quickly or do it in a very simple way not to be frustrated.

I think and maintain that a pure nerve is a bad thing (this remains my opinion).

I look forward to your response in order to have a constructive debate.

They explained it, its not how they intend the game to be played. AoE isnt getting a leadpipe nerf to be useless, it just will become more logical in its use. Currently this meta is removing ALL other types of playing from the game which is bad in every single way imaginable.

Also a lot of players hate the blinding aoe these weapons bring,making you unable to see anything to even run through the mission, which is how majority uses them.

AoE-spam has no strategy involved at all. They said they see it detrimental to team play and hurting other peoples playing. Majority dont want to just run through the mission without even shooting a single enemy or seeing one,as it is boring. Extremely boring.

So no, having extra button for aoe or non-aoe wont work,simply because the game isnt meant to be played in this way.

A lot of players,new specially,follow the meta and its builds,thus adding to the problem. I dare say it is not fun to the majority at all.

AoE-spam also completely makes everything in the mission irrelevant,thus being bad for player retention as i dare say most will become really bored for it.

Im excited to see how these nerfs change and add more ways to complete the missions and add more frames and equipment to use, instead of just kuva bramma/zarr. That will be good for the game. It never is good for one weapon type dominate completely.

Thats all there is to say about this.

[Llympack]

I

[Llympack]

il y a 24 minutes, ThommiX a dit :

They explained it, its not how they intend the game to be played. AoE isnt getting a leadpipe nerf to be useless, it just will become more logical in its use. Currently this meta is removing ALL other types of playing from the game which is bad in every single way imaginable.

Also a lot of players hate the blinding aoe these weapons bring,making you unable to see anything to even run through the mission, which is how majority uses them.

AoE-spam has no strategy involved at all. They said they see it detrimental to team play and hurting other peoples playing. Majority dont want to just run through the mission without even shooting a single enemy or seeing one,as it is boring. Extremely boring.

So no, having extra button for aoe or non-aoe wont work,simply because the game isnt meant to be played in this way.

A lot of players,new specially,follow the meta and its builds,thus adding to the problem. I dare say it is not fun to the majority at all.

AoE-spam also completely makes everything in the mission irrelevant,thus being bad for player retention as i dare say most will become really bored for it.

Im excited to see how these nerfs change and add more ways to complete the missions and add more frames and equipment to use, instead of just kuva bramma/zarr. That will be good for the game. It never is good for one weapon type dominate completely.

Thats all there is to say about this.

I understand your opinion and respect it.

Personally, I do not share your observation and I think that this change will be counterproductive. As indicated above, there is no need to waste our energy, we will see in the future what will be. 

I want to thank you for the small debate between us, and the future will show whether my opinion or the votes will be taken into account and will be the right choice.

[ThommiX]

8 minutes ago, Llympack said:

I understand your opinion and respect it.

Personally, I do not share your observation and I think that this change will be counterproductive. As indicated above, there is no need to waste our energy, we will see in the future what will be. 

I want to thank you for the small debate between us, and the future will show whether my opinion or the votes will be taken into account and will be the right choice.

Thanks, but i can tell you they wont even consider your suggestion. No game wants to separate their players like that and it would do nothing to the actual problem. They already listened to players wanting the aoe meta changed,thats why they doing it.

Its not just my observation however, its the game developers observation also. And their word counts much more than any of us here.

Have fun playing the game!

[mycroft_]

This thread should be merged into this one, which is older, bigger, and still active.

However, another thread that was merged into that one , "DE, pls, fix and balance all we have in this game at this moment. Make time for it", SHOULDN'T have been, so who knows whether DE will do things right.

[Venus-Venera]

vor 54 Minuten schrieb bobojoeho:

Honestly, I would love self damage.  Slap down Chroma's 3, hit yourself until you get the max damage buff, then recast whenever time is close to running out so the dmg buff never goes away.  Now Chroma = new #1 dps frame

then you should get it ALONE too.
because why ruin gaming fun for 99.99% of the players?

[Llympack]

il y a 24 minutes, ThommiX a dit :

Thanks, but i can tell you they wont even consider your suggestion. No game wants to separate their players like that and it would do nothing to the actual problem. They already listened to players wanting the aoe meta changed,thats why they doing it.

Its not just my observation however, its the game developers observation also. And their word counts much more than any of us here.

Have fun playing the game!

I think you are "unfortunately right" and that DE will make this choice. I think, however, that DE’s decisions are not always the right ones. The best case that comes to mind are the universal medallions that are unusable to mount the PvP. 

Wait and See ^^

[Llympack]

il y a 26 minutes, mycroft_ a dit :

This thread should be merged into this one, which is older, bigger, and still active.

However, another thread that was merged into that one , "DE, pls, fix and balance all we have in this game at this moment. Make time for it", SHOULDN'T have been, so who knows whether DE will do things right.

Good day and thank you for taking the time to respond.

The subject you are proposing seems to show that my opinion, or at least part of it, does not seem to be completely false. Thank you, I will take the time to read it;)

[Tyreaus]

I do believe they ought to focus on why low-effort metas come about - things like rewards, grinds, intrinsic valuse, and mission structures that promote certain playstyles - rather than squishing them one at a time. At the same token, there isn't really a way to address any of that without stepping on someone's toes. If we tried to play the danmaku game of "don't harm anyone's investment", and let people have the "powerful, cool" stuff, we'd get nowhere.

Just for example, consider changing up mission structures to tone down the mass murder side of the game - something that really feeds the AoE meta. We dunk on things like Defense and Exterminate to curtail the need for AoE and, tada, no more AoE meta. Except people who invested in AoE find their stuff isn't as useful as before, and the people who liked getting rewards from the mass murder lose out too.

Everything is going to bother someone.

[mycroft_]

1 hour ago, Llympack said:

I will take the time to read it;)

Good luck, it's about to hit 35 pages

[kinoko_takenoko]

Instead of adjusting all missions the same way, it would be better to give variations with minor differences.
"Defence and Exterminate in (name of location) will remain the same." 
"Defense and Exterminate in (name of location) will fight only a smaller number of stronger enemies."
There is no need to adjust the enemy content uniformly for all missions.

[DrakeWurrum]

While I personally FULLY support the idea of moving away from the AOE meta.... I'm a bit concerned with exactly how they're viewing and thinking about things from a design perspective.

Quote

Warframe is a game full of very powerful tactics, but problems arise when players feel ‘forced’ to use specific choices. The top 5 most popular weapons are all AoE, accounting for 47% of all weapon usage at high Mastery Rank AOE usage stats. In situations where efficiency is important, some would say you aren’t playing ‘correctly’ if you’re not utilizing these choices, which some players don’t necessarily find fun.

Have they at all considered that it's not that AOE weapons are TOO efficient, but that non-AOE weapons aren't efficient enough? I agree that AOE weapons could be reduced in power some, but... a lot of non-AOE weapons just flat-out feel too weak to get the job done. As an extreme example: There's a reason I only ever use bows if I'm intentionally playing solo and stealthy.

Quote

A majority of sessions are played co-op, so ideally everybody gets a chance to play. We’ve reached a point where players are asking us to change these weapons, because they leave so little for others to do.

This is an problem that pops up even without AOE weapons. I'll go in with a loadout specifically avoiding the AOE meta, or I'll just focus 100% spamming my melee attack as I bullet jump to every enemy I can see...
And I end up with 75%+ of the damage/kills, if the group isn't using more efficient methods. If I'm actively choosing to just... go ham, kill as many enemies as I can, even if it means I "steal kills" from a guy on the team who can clearly handle himself... I can easily do the work of a 4-man squad by myself.

Have they considered dramatically increasing enemy spawn rate for groups with 4 players? Have they considered that, with this game being a looter shooter grindfest of mass slaughtering low-tier enemies, that we need MORE enemies for them to at all be able to keep up with our power creep?

[PublikDomain]

19 minutes ago, DrakeWurrum said:

Have they at all considered that it's not that AOE weapons are TOO efficient, but that non-AOE weapons aren't efficient enough? I agree that AOE weapons could be reduced in power some, but... a lot of non-AOE weapons just flat-out feel too weak to get the job done. As an extreme example: There's a reason I only ever use bows if I'm intentionally playing solo and stealthy.

Yes, isn't that why they're buffing headshot damage?

20 minutes ago, DrakeWurrum said:

This is an problem that pops up even without AOE weapons. I'll go in with a loadout specifically avoiding the AOE meta, or I'll just focus 100% spamming my melee attack as I bullet jump to every enemy I can see...
And I end up with 75%+ of the damage/kills, if the group isn't using more efficient methods. If I'm actively choosing to just... go ham, kill as many enemies as I can, even if it means I "steal kills" from a guy on the team who can clearly handle himself... I can easily do the work of a 4-man squad by myself.

Have they considered dramatically increasing enemy spawn rate for groups with 4 players? Have they considered that, with this game being a looter shooter grindfest of mass slaughtering low-tier enemies, that we need MORE enemies for them to at all be able to keep up with our power creep?

They can't increase the spawn rate infinitely, there's a limit to what the engine (and the physics and mathematics of networking four computers communicating together) can support. This is why Railjack has its spawning issues and why DE came up with Taxijack. And while they can increase spawns up to SP, these number of enemies doesn't even matter when AoE gets involved. It doesn't matter if it's 10 enemies standing in a group or 100, the same AoE can kill them all at the same speed.

[Neon_Violet]

The day they nerf AOE weapons will be the day I quit for real I have occasionally taken breaks here and there and come back and enjoy each major update, but if they nerf the weapons I spent days farming leveling and upgrading I will not even bother to come back for the veilbreaker update.

All of those hours wasted for nothing.

I truly hope they think of something better.

Also for those that say others hate it well sorry to burst your bubble because I play solo and enjoy playing alone.

[ThommiX]

3 hours ago, Llympack said:

I think you are "unfortunately right" and that DE will make this choice. I think, however, that DE’s decisions are not always the right ones. The best case that comes to mind are the universal medallions that are unusable to mount the PvP. 

Wait and See ^^

PvP is completely irrelevant and never meant a thing in this game. Its by design you cant use universal medallions to that standing,as they come from PVE side,not PVP. Kinda removes the whole point of even doing PvP,you see.

Well they already said they will do this nerf and continue further if these changes are not enough. Entirely subjective whether one thinks its right or wrong. In my opinion,everything that promotes more than one playstyle is always right and correct choice. Now people have to play actually the game, not just afk farm.

[Krion112]

30 minutes ago, DrakeWurrum said:

Have they at all considered that it's not that AOE weapons are TOO efficient, but that non-AOE weapons aren't efficient enough?

The other side of this question is also, are Enemies too tanky or uniquely immune to things that nullifies alternatives, which thereby makes AoE, or other Metas, too necessary to actually be effective in gameplay?

As well, I see this argument a lot from... 'Pro-overpowered AoE', the whole 'why not just buff everything else?', but seriously, what direct buff would you give something like the Lato or Burston, or even higher 'tier' like Tiberon Prime', to make them at all as efficient as Kuva Bramma, Zarr, or otherwise? And how much harder would that solution be to find by comparison to solutions involving nerfs?

 

Really, the current issue with AoE Weaponry is just a symptom of a much greater, persistent problem, one that straight up cannot be solved without nerfing to both sides, which in its own way could create buffs.

Game balance is called as much because sometimes you have to take away to give to something else; the only way to buff certain things is by nerfing others.

[DarkSkysz]

3 hours ago, Venus-Venera said:

because why ruin gaming fun for 99.99% of the players?

Since when DE care about ruining the game? They even said a lot of people use aoe's and enjoy it. Still, they are nerfing it.

[Artekkor]

At first i wanted to be a contrarian, but then i realised that you're sort of correct. There's not enough enemies for people either way.
But spawn rates isn't it, even if for performance / game stability issues alone.

I propose a solution i offer every once in a while, like every 4 months or so - reduce amount of players from 4 to 3.

This would simultaneously solve a whole variety of issues.

• Too much team firepower, leaving someone with no game to play
• Increases overall difficulty of the game across the board
• Saves some performance, as i remember 4th player in particular causing me a big hit to FPS in the past

Of course some mechanics would need a 2nd look - like the whole fissure system, at the very least (gotta increase those drop chances), RJ will need to be touched (again), but other than that - i genuinely believe that this simple change could improve average pub session health by a mile.

4 tenno is just too much. I know that L4D set the standard to 4, but how about we try something different and see if it works?

[(XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom]

So with AoE bracing for incoming changes, can the size of AoE radii be a bit more homogenized?
We see this happen with melee. The upper end of melee range is roughly 2.5x as long as the short end.
AoE has variance like one gun getting 1.7m, while others get 7m.

AoE could be much the same. Set the bottom range to be 2-2.5m, and the upper end to be 6-7m. Make the blast radius mods be a flat value, like what you did with Reach and Volatile Quick Return. Base blast radius mods could be +1.5m, Primed could be +3m, just like Reach (after Veilbreaker) and Primed Reach.
The top end of AoE range is now the same/lower than before, and the bottom potentially has a more appreciable AoE component now.
Shotguns could also use blast radius mods, be it a new mod (pls no) or just changing the classification of Firestorm to be "Primary".

Make falloff scale with range. Example: A 3m AoE has 30% damage falloff. Add Primed blast radius mod (+3m) and the range goes to 6m, but falloff increases to 60%.
Now the smaller AoEs can make use of blast radius mods while the big ones don't go from big to huge.

The only potential issue I see is that current small AoE "balanced" (need a few more quotation marks there I think) by the fact that they're small get to be strengthened too much by flat range, to which the response is this: shift more of the AoE damage into the direct hit. But this isn't an issue I feel, besides a few outliers like Laetum.

TL;DR make range mods flat, set a lower range for AoE size, Nerf big AoEs by extension.

[gamingchair1121]

you know... what if that happened to firestorm and non aoe weapons could get aoe that would be cool. 3m of aoe for my soma prime would be nice