Veilbreaker: Launch & Hot Topics

[(XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom]

4 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

Needing 4 throws instead of 1 only makes it 20 seconds longer at worst, which is still an absurdly low time for a boss fight.

You'd need 10x more throws without the bugged interaction here, at which point Void Strike would also be long gone. So yea, bad example. If you want to illustrate a point, don't use bugged interactions. Use something that is actually intended.

[taiiat]

5 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Yep, also don't want 15 second fights, so onward we quest to solve the million damage excitement vs. bosses.

yep, i don't really either, just saying that if the measure can reverse the gear ladder of the game, it's not working. 
and that with a gear ladder established, Players with more stuff will expect to feel more effective than before they got all of that stuff. :)

[Erra]

7 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Yep, also don't want 15 second fights, so onward we quest to solve the million damage excitement vs. bosses.

Have you tried mapping the player's damage to a curve with diminishing returns (slowly flattens out) at higher damage values?

[TuxedoCatfish]

Have you considered just normalizing player damage across the board, instead of constantly escalating an unnecessarily complex damage attenuation formula that cannot possibly handle all the game's thousands of edge cases and weird exceptions, making optimal play harder and harder to discover (because it's based on finding the one magical exception to the rule) while simultaneously making it more and more mandatory (because playing naively means getting hit with harsher and harsher penalties)?

The reason you can't balance boss fights is because a veteran player can do hundreds of thousands of times more damage than a new player. There is no way to balance that unless you wanted to go full Diablo 3 and make all (relevant) content in the game scale infinitely and under the player's control.

[Horactius]

Will Clem ever meet with Khal in the future? 👀

[Uhkretor]

7 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Yep, also don't want 15 second fights, so onward we quest to solve the million damage excitement vs. bosses.

... Oh yeah... providing damage bonuses to final damage instead of the base damage isn't the way.

I don't know, I feel like you guys should start there.

[Zext]

On the topic of damage attenuation… the first thing would be to look for and actively squash the stranger interactions. Reduce the way things multiply with eachother, what types of damage bonuses exist etc. You can’t create an appropriate amount of health/DR for the end game player base as long as all those stranger interactions exist. 

[LillyRaccune]

14 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Yep, also don't want 15 second fights, so onward we quest to solve the million damage excitement vs. bosses.

What if instead of taking away the "million damage excitement", you give the Archons a flexible amount of health? It would be the inverse effect of Damage Attenuation.

In the vunerable phase everyone in squad attacks as best they can, all the damage information is collected > but not applied. Then you use the invulnerability phase to calculate and reach average damage potential for the squad. Then you give Archon enough health to last 20-25 minutes (when combined with their superpowers and invulnerability mechanics).

The result is that the solo players and low-damage/non-meta squads will take approximately the same time to beat the Archon as the meta squad that is doing millions-upon-millions of damage.

Is that do-able? Archons are the closest we've gotten to "tough raid style" bosses in a long time. It would be good to have a variable stats feature that adjusts to the squad composition.

[CrusaderTheFirst]

I have a few things to say:
I'm kinda disappointed we have to wait a full week in order to play more kahl missions. Sure we get another syndicate rank after a mission is complete, it just seems a little bit inconvenient for people who don't have much patience. Especially for people who want full access to kahl fashion.

Will we get a weapon select for kahl? I mean not choose the weapons we have, more like choose other normal grineer weapons like the hind, sobek, hek, etc.

Will arch-guns get arcanes like primaries and secondaries? They don't seem to be as powerful because of this.

Will we get an option to play as a crewman in the future in place of kahl? Nothing against the legend himself, I just like corpus stuff in general.

 

And lastly a suggestion:
Getting max standing with kahl should unlock lancer/crewman railjack crew options.

 

Overall this update was short but sweet. 

P.S. Here's a tip against the archon missions. Use corrosive/puncture elements. Sentients though they adapt to elements in general are weak to corrosive weaponry and their grineer narmer minions aren't too resistant to it either. What I did was use a corrosive tigris prime, got close to boreal, and shot him in the big owl head. Took small but respectable chunks out of his health.

[(XBOX)Darkskytzo]

the update is amazing!
the only issue i have is with the ammo changes,revert them back to the way they were.
it sucks running out of ammo and not having ammo pads and even with the pads it's not sufficient ...enemies really don't drop ammo as much after the update and that pushing players to melee.
that's why the glaive is king / no reason to nerf kill melee again,just put ammo where it was and call it a day.

thanks for the update and info.

[TuxedoCatfish]

14 minutes ago, Erra said:

Have you tried mapping the player's damage to a curve with diminishing returns (slowly flattens out) at higher damage values?

That's exactly what damage attenuation does, but also exactly why it causes massive problems. There is no single variable that actually expresses the player's "damage" in terms that affect all weapons equally.

If you try to calculate DPS from the player's arsenal stats, that fails to account for semi-auto weapons not dealing their theoretical maximum (without a macro). If you try to calculate the damage received by the boss in real time and gradually scale the penalty up based on that accumulated number, players will (correctly) scramble to find ways to deal lethal damage all at once, since the first hit effectively isn't penalized.

If you include critical hits in the formula you're probably going to end up applying an averaged-out penalty to what is, in reality, a random effect. But if you DON'T include critical hits then critical hit weapons become insanely privileged vs. bosses (which is the current state of affairs for most damage attenuated bosses, by the way).

Now multiply that by every other form of damage multiplication in the game (including all the ones that are unique one-off frame abilities or quirks of one particular gun). Trying to play whack-a-mole with exceptions to damage attenuation is both pointless -- the game's just too complicated -- but also kind of garbage even when it works, because "fixing" the exceptions usually means player-invalidating decisions like "fine, we'll just make them completely immune to Banshee Sonar."

It's also probably why they don't publicize the formula -- if people knew exactly how it worked they could find the seams much more easily. But the formula being this complete unknown means that the boss battle, as a skill challenge, is testing you on information you don't know and can't realistically learn. And that sucks if your primary motivation for playing is "I want to get better at the game."

[Monolake]

Thanks for reverting the recharging ammo rates - those weapons didn't deserve any nerfs.

 

 

[Dioxety]

20 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Yep, also don't want 15 second fights, so onward we quest to solve the million damage excitement vs. bosses.

Why not then balance around max loadouts with galvanized mods? I mean this is supposed endgame content. Players have 8 years worth of content to go through, while us veterans have 0 of endgame content.

Focus these around those maxed out builds. Right now I can use any mediocre build because it just limits your damage anyways and feels unrewarding.

[Brexit-When]

Hey, u guys know this New War game break bug? before final boss fight, after kill 3 crystals?

[Valthryn]

45 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

P.S As an example & for transparency, here is what Archon Fights look like without any damage formulas. If we increase their health so Glaives don't one-shot them, they become near unkillable with other weapons. It'll be a tough problem to solve, but for perspective, this is what we don't want either. 

I'm glad the archon wasn't this easy on release. Better to be too time consuming or difficult than a joke. Having said that, I think the problem with damage attenuation is that it feels very arbitrary and makes it difficult to figure out which weapons can actually damage the boss effectively. When I face an enemy with damage attenuation, like a kuva lich, it feels like the game developers are replacing my ammo with nerf darts and hershey's kisses just so the fight takes longer, because I know that my weapons are exponentially stronger against other opponents, i.e. a bow headshot that normally deals 500,000 damage only dealing 500 damage against a lich.

 

If the goal is to make the fights take longer, would it be possible to have the evolving damage reduction be concerned only with the amount of health the boss loses, rather than the amount of damage it takes from each attack? This way, it could be set to allow a certain % of maximum HP loss/interval of time instead of adjusting the damage of weapons individually based on their calculated DPS. This is also easier to explain in-game, as a "shielding" visual effect could be applied to the boss and start out with 0 opacity, becoming more opaque as the HP loss/interval approaches the cap, and ramping up to 100% opacity as the the cap is reached. I don't know how realistically this could be applied in Warframe, but it's an idea.

[Tiltskillet]

1 minute ago, Dioxety said:

Why not then balance around max loadouts with galvanized mods?

There are max loadouts and there are MAX LOADOUTS.  And huge gaps between them. 

 

[Makuta_Nazo]

I am sympathetic to not wanting Boreal to be too easy, but the Attenuation on him is TOO aggressive and not a mechanic that we as players can interact with positively. I believe pushing the archons to be really mechanically deep fights, like Exploiter/Ropalolyst/Zeloid Prelate etc. would do better to serve their difficulty than loads of damage reduction. If you'll humor me, I have some ideas that admittingly take a lot of work, but I believe would be worth it in for the long run to give the archons a true home at the 'endgame' of warframe without feeling unfair.

TL;DR: Boreal (and other archons) deserves a multi-stage boss fight that requires mechanics to proc his additional health bars.

First, I would start with reducing attenuation on him by a lot, maybe down to 10%. It's fine as a lower level of damage reduction, but Sentients already have a fantastic way to reduce damage and that's Adaption. If Boreal had hyper aggressive adaptation, that would encourage players to swap in and out of our operators we spent so much time on, and really take advantage of the new transference speed you guys spent so much time on.

Additionally, health gates would do wonders on Boreal, much like the Angels/liches/sisters have. If Boreal's health bar was broken up into 4 health gates, you could add a puzzle mechanic in between those gates to keep players engaged without needing to 'stand and shoot gun' all the time, which is especially good for Boreal as he already has some of these puzzles built into his kit.

At the first damage gate (3/4 hp) Boreal becomes invincible and can summon his pyramid of protection. While he is in the pyramid, he should be charging up a 1-shot-kill screech attack to really make the players rush to destroy the pyramids corners and make him vulnerable, while also making him feel like a threat that can total party wipe and fail the mission. Should the pyramid be broken, instead he would do his regular screech attack to try and heal up, which if interrupted, starts the next health 'chunk' of the fight. (Additionally, making the pyramid only vulnerable to archgun damage could make those weapons relevant.)

At the second damage gate (1/2 hp) Boreal becomes invincible, summons 2-3 Aerolysts, and starts charging his insta-kill screech again. If the Aerolysts are defeated, once more it's just his regular screech, and if that is interrupted the fight moves onto stage 2 like normal where players must hunt down the Deacons.

At the third damage gate, (1/4 hp) Boreal could use a new mechanic here, maybe summon deacons, or conjuring his pyramid AND Aeroylsts together (It would be kind of funny for him to summon a Teralyst or Ropalolyst here, but I realize the magnitude of work needed to perform that.) but the process is the same, make the players do something to make him vulnerable before he uses his screech to end the fight, then interrupt his weakened screech attack. For the last leg of the fight, Boreal should become desperate, and it could be interesting play space for him to generate Overguard and/or Eidolon shields to prevent getting 1 shot and require that players whip out their operators.

Overall, as the fight goes on and archons health gets lower, they should attack more often and more aggressively, sort of like Eidolons, to really make the fight feel like it's ramping up and that the archons are being pushed into a corner.

Finally, if the archons do have massive damage reduction, with minor Attenuation and major Adaption, then it should be fair that some warframe and armor stripping abilities do apply to them but make it a back-and-forth process where Boreal can refresh armor and clear abilities/status effects when he uses his screech. Possibly if Archons are taking too much damage, instead of reducing that damage, maybe force them to summon a bunch of enemies to scale with the damage they are taking, such as a number of Condrix's? It would divert players damage away from them, so that they don't die to a bunch of steel path sentients around them.

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

Wow, it's almost like choosing the right tool for the job can make things much easier in a game that is all about having the right tool for the job.

Seriously, though, Attenuation is not the problem. Attenuation so strong that damage buffs turn into damage nerfs is the problem.

I saw a streamer set up a 4-man squad to fight the boss, with each frame having some way to buff the damage of the squad (Volt's shield, Roar, Eclipse, etc.). The fight took forever, and so part way through they tried just shooting the boss without all the buffs, and it did more damage than with. So I was very worried going into it solo, thinking that it would be an awful slog.

Instead, the boss went between phases ~15 seconds apart.

Clearly, the combination of the level of Attenuation you are using plus the health buffs from the squad size are causing issues. It should not be easier to fight something solo compared to co-op, with the possible exception that Boss AI can always wind up making things harder in a boss fight due to the boss's attention being split. But the moire direct mechanics, like Attenuation and health scaling, should not be making the fight harder when you do it with friends. And Attenuation should never, ever, be making a damage buff a damage nerf. Ideally, damage buffs in fights with attenuation should still apply a meaningful change top the length of the fight. Bringing Chroma, Rhino, Volt, or any other damage buffing ability or frame should make the fight shorter, and to a degree that it doesn't make the time spent investing in that ability or frame feel like a waste of effort. Even if each buff only applies 15% more damage after Attenuation, that's still enough to feel like it's worth the investment. As it is, it feels like you are better off just bringing a frame that doesn't die and doing the mission solo. I used Octavia, who is both very survivable and has a damage buff, but I basically never used the damage buff.

Overall, you missed the mark. I understand your concern about not including attenuation (though I disagree completely), but you need to re-tune it at the very least.

[AegidiusF]

il y a 55 minutes, [DE]Rebecca a dit :

P.S As an example & for transparency, here is what Archon Fights look like without any damage formulas. If we increase their health so Glaives don't one-shot them, they become near unkillable with other weapons. It'll be a tough problem to solve, but for perspective, this is what we don't want either. 

Please, don't take me wrong : I love Warframe and I love the Team, but I really don't understand how are you doing these last fixes :

 ->AoE was a problem : so you make changes that affect every single ranged weapon in a very bad way.

 -> Glaives (with Chroma's Vex Armor ???) are a problem on Archon Hunts : so you make changes that affect every single weapon and warframe in the game.

 

If Glaive+Chroma was taken as the base to the changes made to the Archons, now you've created a single and unique way to fight Archons : Glaive+Chroma is now the only right way to do it.

 

How about nerfing immunity to self-stagger instead of ammo ?

How about preventing some abilities multiplier to work on Archons ? How about fixing Chroma's Elemental Ward making tons of damage when used alongside with Xata's Whisper infusion ?

How about fixing some Glaives that are too overpowered, instead of nerfing every single weapon's damage capacity with Archon DA (in addition to DR) ?

[xcrimsonlegendx]

I tried to today's sortie, specifically the bows only mission. Picked my Nidus with proboscis cernos. Ran out of ammo on the first excavator, had no weapon until I got to the second because no ammo dropped. Got one more arrow from the second excavator. Didn't get any more until the 3rd. Honestly it felt pretty bad.

[-Bv-Psykiik]

1 hour ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

We are continuing to review under the structure of:
- Is something too dominant (am I ‘playing wrong’ for not using it)?
- Is something allowing truly automated play?
- Is something disrupting others from playing in their playstyle?

really happy to see this and i totally agree with this approach and i assume the majority of warframe community agree with these questions 

we asked for a solution about AOE weapons and wukong afk meta for long time but what you did is you nerfed so many weapons no body ever complains about and most of them are not even OP or that very good 

the answer to these questions above is: AOE only, but you hammered so many weapons with it 

we will wait for next week update and hopefully you reconsider these changes 

 

Quote

However, we want to take a moment to discuss the way bosses are handled in Warframe. In truth, there is no one way we approach these. And that can be confusing. It is worth stating that we currently do not have a perfect solution on single-target bosses for a game with such variety in player loadouts and experience, but we are intending to improve them based on our collective experience as a community and developers -- this process will take many weeks of further iteration and testing.

throwing some idea here , what about the exploiter orb fight mechanic ??? for this boss you can use an warframe or any weapons even unmoded to win this fight because high dmg or abilities doesn't work or help to end the the fight early 

[Lutesque]

On 2022-09-09 at 7:22 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

 

On 2022-09-09 at 7:22 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

However, we want to take a moment to discuss the way bosses are handled in Warframe. In truth, there is no one way we approach these. And that can be confusing. It is worth stating that we currently do not have a perfect solution on single-target bosses for a game with such variety in player loadouts and experience, but we are intending to improve them based on our collective experience as a community and developers -- this process will take many weeks of further iteration and testing.

Great...so While you guys are Doing that... We are Stuck with That Boss in the State that it is in now 🤔 ?

On 2022-09-09 at 7:22 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

 

Between damage attenuation, certain exploits, or bugs causing instant damage, and more, we will be prioritizing our gameplay and feedback review to make this boss fight experience better. There is a chasm between people who find them too easy and those who find them impossible, and trying to balance this divide will inform parts of our plans. We want to make the bosses we want to fight. We are all on the same page on the quest for the right balance. 

Or you can Simply Change how to Obtain the Shards and Leave The Boss exactly the Way it is.... Some Players Like It when Bosses Take no Damage.... Is it Really Fair to Deny some users what they want ? Aren't they Entitled To Have The Boss continue to be Unkillable For Their Satisfaction ? If I can get my Shards without Having to Be lumped in with this Lot Then you honestly Don't Have to Change Anything.

Just Something to Think About 😉...

On 2022-09-09 at 7:22 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

We are continuing to review under the structure of:
- Is something too dominant (am I ‘playing wrong’ for not using it)?
- Is something allowing truly automated play?
- Is something disrupting others from playing in their playstyle?

Is there a Reason why you aren't Evaluating the Enemies and missions themselves ?

-Are there Too Many Enemies ?

-Is Killing the only Way to Make Progress ?

-why Don't Enough Enemies Spawn even When players Split up in a Survival Mission ?

I Mean.... I think those Are Equally Valid Questions it but that's Just My Oppinion....

On 2022-09-09 at 7:22 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

P.S As an example & for transparency, here is what Archon Fights look like without any damage formulas. If we increase their health so Glaives don't one-shot them, they become near unkillable with other weapons. It'll be a tough problem to solve, but for perspective, this is what we don't want either. 

You Do Realise Many Players have Phorid and The Sargeant as their Favourite Bosses Right ?

Are they as Well Designed as the Sword Saint from Sekiro or The Nameless King From Dark Souls III ? probably not.... But If you can't Make them Fun.... Atleast Make them Short....

 

[BR31]

Guys, i'm glad that you respond fast. Just don't overdo it in either direction.

And i hope you will balance based on stats, not on someone's complaints.

Ingame surveys might be helpful.

[CanOfCraig]

56 minutes ago, LillyRaccune said:

2) There were some damage immunity parts to Boreal that I didn't understand. Like the spinning pyramid thing... Not sure how to actually fight back while he is invulnerable.

This turned into a major issue for me in my ~half hour 1V1 Yareli VS Boreal death match. It forced me to change weapons - sacrificing my damage reduction. It seems the immunity isn't only ability based, but selective weapon based too. 

[Lutesque]

26 minutes ago, LillyRaccune said:

What if instead of taking away the "million damage excitement", you give the Archons a flexible amount of health? It would be the inverse effect of Damage Attenuation.

In the vunerable phase everyone in squad attacks as best they can, all the damage information is collected > but not applied. Then you use the invulnerability phase to calculate and reach average damage potential for the squad. Then you give Archon enough health to last 20-25 minutes (when combined with their superpowers and invulnerability mechanics).

The result is that the solo players and low-damage/non-meta squads will take approximately the same time to beat the Archon as the meta squad that is doing millions-upon-millions of damage.

Is that do-able? Archons are the closest we've gotten to "tough raid style" bosses in a long time. It would be good to have a variable stats feature that adjusts to the squad composition.

So if I Simply Gimp my Damage Output on Purpose I can Breeze through the Rest of The Fight ?

Quite Frankly I'm Dissapointed all those Things even Exist.... I Made a One Shot Build Specifically Because that What I like.... Why is my Play Style Any less Valid than Someone who Wants To Bullet Hose a Boss for 10 Minutes Straight ? 🤔....

Telling you Right now.... There's no right Solution for this Problem because it's Always going to boil down Forcing A Specific Play Style on People who don't want to play that way....

And you know ... You just have to Accept that One way or Another someone is Simply not going to Be Able to Play the Way they want for Arbitrary Reasons about the "Right Way To Play".... I've Made my Peace with That....