How do you actually make a "difficult fight" for end game players in this game?

[TheArmchairThinker]

8 hours ago, Cody said:

 

There's a reason why characters in other games are weak to "encourage" teamwork where DPS can't brute force through enemy stats (defense, armor, whatever) while support (CC, buff/debuff) doesn't have enough damage output even with all of their ability use. Not to mention the need to micromanage everything from energy consumption to ability timing

[Silligoose]

On 2022-09-19 at 8:16 AM, AzureScion said:

Without damage reduction/limiting options/mods/arcanes what have you? With the most high end equipments and stuff players are able to survive LEVEL 9999 enemies with 200% modifiers while instakilling them with infinite scaling weapons and abilities.

Gimmick mechanics can only go on so far, people are already able to 6x3 eidolons on a daily basis, so that wouldn't be considered difficult either, at least for them.

Ropalolyst was also fun, but people got used to it fast anyway. 

Exploiter orb and profit taker fights are hated by many.

So how does one make an actual difficult fight to satisfy end game players? The newest content archon fights which were meant to be difficult got cheesed anyway in less than 5 minutes. I honestly can't really think of what would be engaging. 

The power we have in our hands is basically limitless.

 

The only thing I can think of is.. if you cannot make an enemy powerful enough to fight us, the only answer is to let us fight ourselves, aka PVP. Not Conclave either because that "restricts options", but a full blown PVP with all weapons, frames, and other gears maxed to oblivion plus arcane and stuff. I can't tell how many times I have to actively keep in mind and avoid other players whenever radiation proc comes in play because there's a high chance they wouldn't pay attention and starts barraging everyone with rad proc on. 

So yeah, the only thing powerful enough to fight a tenno is a fellow tenno.

TheArmchairThinker gave the solution in the very first reply to this thread: Time to use the nerf hammer.

Exceptional outliers in performance need to be addressed. The game needs better balance.

[AzureScion]

18 minutes ago, Silligoose said:

TheArmchairThinker gave the solution in the very first reply to this thread: Time to use the nerf hammer.

Exceptional outliers in performance need to be addressed. The game needs better balance.

But look at the backlash they got from addressing two lol. Wukong and AoE were very obvious outliers that needed to be addressed. 

I also think balancing this game is beyond hope at this point, the only way forward is to double down on increasing the power instead of sinking them down. 

Maybe that's why they wanted a shot at Soulframe, I sure hope that game has better power balance.

But when it comes to Warframe, I don't really think a truly challenging content is possible at all, because any semblance of difficulty would rise dissatisfaction from one side, while the other side keeps complaining because the game is too easy. 

I feel bad for DE, I truly do. lol.

[(PSN)Yagshemesh]

You make them fight an archon boss with a full 4 stack of Kahl's.

[Maen3]

You need movement based challenges like the jackals grid wall, combined with high hp pools that demand a certain gear level to get past.

You could also add teambased challenges where 2 or more teammates have to complete tasks at the same time.

[Skoomaseller]

mix nihil mechanics and Damage Attenuation™ 

real talk tho, doesn't need to be hard just needs to be fun. warframe is an ezpz game at its core anyway. more bosses like nihil or reworked jackal please

[Jarriaga]

On 2022-09-19 at 2:51 AM, (XBOX)Lady Ukita said:

I'd say a fight that rewards mechanical skill more than anything, something that makes us utilize parkour and aiming to win. Kinda like Nihil.

Which is also a very hated boss fight in these forums because "your arsenal is invalidated". People want to one-shot bosses. They want 15-second boss-fights.

I don't like or agree with that approach. If I can take down Godzilla just as fast and effortlessly as a cockroach then I would hardly feel it is a boss fight or even worth of its inclusion in the game.

 

On topic: There is no answer that doesn't incorporate any form of damage mitigation, damage gating, invulnerability phases or arsenal restrictions. We are simply too powerful and the design of the battle is tailored around the intended experience and goal. For example:

"Is the battle meant to last 2 minutes for the average player? If so, how do we make it so it lasts 2 minutes for the average player considering that by this point in the game they have access to ABXYZ gear, abilities, mods, arcanes, and combinations?"

The realization then dawns on the expectation of 2 minutes for that level of firepower necessitates absurd damage pools.

 

[cute_moth.npc]

You don't, but you did. You made a fight that would feel good if you had some defenses, then players stand in front of it with Inaros or Revenant and get bored. They probably don't really want to turn around and start giving the bosses attacks that do % based health damage or ignore immunities because the players choosing to face tank the boss just want the shinies and will probably just get upset?

So you just do the best you can to make something that's fun for people who actually want fun, there's such a strong crowd of people that just want the shinies that they will work harder to bypass or cheese whatever you made than they would ever try to actually fight it for fun. You can't help those people. They will find a way to make anything they can as fast as possible and just strip the joy out of it.

Boreal is actually really fun if you choose voluntarily to fight it without resorting to cheese levels of defenses.

I do feel like they could still improve on trying?

Amar needs more mechanics he just feels like fighting a big charger lol

I think they could stand to reconsider No self Revives honestly, it pushes players into the obvious "use a tank frame" solution which instantly makes the fight dull and limits options. That is, unless they're willing to add proper telegraphs to every enemy in the encounter and rebalance their damage so that a player using an average Warframe with decent defensive mods that can engage with the archon itself and have fun won't then just be one shot by one of the crazy overtuned things like the Narmer mask shot? Things inside of the instance itself are way out of scale with each other.

[ShogunGunshow]

These are a few ways I see to make boss encounters:

1) Make them primarily a mechanics check. Attenuation can still exist, but in a reduced form, and bosses may have vulnerability phases where it's reduced even further/removed. Would also likely consist of lots of buff stripping during large AoE damage phases, %-based health damage, etc. in order to make sure a player can't fully cheese mechanics. 

2) You can limit players' access to their arsenal for the encounter in some way. For instance, to get to the boss arena you have to abandon your warframe, transfer through a void portal, and possess something on the other side; or its an encounter provided via simulation by Simaris, and he can determine what you use, etc. This has potentially the tightest tuning available and no attenuation required, because DE knows exactly what you have and can tune boss EHP accordingly.

3) Completely overhaul the game/go back in time and slap their hands away from the keyboard before they allow triple digit % damage boosts to even be a thing. Set cap of most multiplicative damage boosts to be +25%. Establish a band of power and potential DPS that weapons are expected to operate in and stick to it. Now you have a relatively accurate idea of what players can do and can design boss encounters without attenuation while allowing players to have near full access to their (much more limited in power) arsenal. (Hint: they'll never do this, it would be a massive undertaking and the backlash would be awful.)

[Achlevius]

On 2022-09-19 at 2:59 AM, PublikDomain said:

Look at the mechanics players use to cheese things and stop letting them use those mechanics to cheese things? The player can't cheese things if you don't let them cheese things.

The first part is simple: DE has given players some tools that are just too powerful. For example, an Operator sitting in Void Mode is completely invincible to all forms of damage, so there goes every fight like Kela or Ambulas or Jackal that relies on damage to move the player around. Why dodge Jackal's laser walls or Kela's missile barrage or Ambulas' ship lasers when you can AFK in the Void for minutes at a time? So stop letting players do that. This could stop being an issue if the Operator was only invisible in Void Mode, not invisible and fully invincible. If a tool is creating a problem, fix it.

The second part is also simple: if the player's power can be anywhere from 0 to ∞, what do you target the content to? Closer to 0 or closer to ∞? Well, you don't balance it to anything, because you can't. You will always pick the wrong answer. Whether it's picking the numbers for AotZ's initial quest or the Wolf's stats, DE has always picked numbers that have only worked for a scant few players and no one else. And of course they have, because no one can pick the right numbers because they don't exist. The only actionable option left is to make the player's power not matter. Then it doesn't matter how overpowered or broken the players are, because none of that makes a difference anyways. You can take their power away and give every player the same items (like in TWW, TNW, the Glassmaker fight, Break Narmer missions, and the upcoming Duviri Paradox) or take away their mods (like in Grendel missions) or make them use specific items (like any fight requiring an Operator or an Archgun) or make enemies that resist the player's tools (like proc resistances in Deimos or beefed up enemy stats in Railjack) or use gimmicks and mechanics (like weakpoints, invincibility phases, Overguard, and fight mechanics) or average the player's power away so the range of 0 to ∞ collapses to some specific value X (like damage attenuation).

But just think, if every player is consistently balanced and can be expected to deal around X damage right from the start, and not infinitely more or infinitely less, then you could skip all of those issues! If you know the player can do X and you make sure that they can't do too much more or too much less than X, then you can just balance the "hard" content to be able to stand up to 2X damage, or whatever it is that feels right, and be done with it. Then there's no need for gimmicks or gear limitations or attenuation, because the problem necessitating their use doesn't exist anymore. And then those things can be used as regular mechanics just to pepper in some variation, instead of being relied on as a crutch. But that means balancing the player, and that means more things like the AoE nerfs. So we get to pick: accept that game balance is necessary, or get attenuated anyways.

This is an excellent response to the question, and was mostly what I was thinking.

However, I still disagree with the notion that it cannot be done.

I believe there is a way, but we have to get away from the traditional "boss fight" type of difficulty; we have to think outside of the box because Warframe is not the same as, say, World of Warcraft.

trst makes a good point:

On 2022-09-19 at 3:46 AM, trst said:

I'd say by making the fight itself not the focus but use it as a distraction from objectives.

Literally just what release solo Railjack was where you have multiple objectives you need to progress. But working on one created more with hull breaches, boarding parties, and needing resources for Revolite. And the longer you take the tighter you are on breach timers and the more you'll need to fight ships for resources to craft more Revolite.

Each step itself is trivial to the player but forcing them to balance all of them, especially when they're objectives that aren't influenced by your stats, puts emphases on how fast and efficiently you can manage each objective.

And while that all is technically a pile of gimmicks it's not front loading them onto the enemies themselves. No ridiculous builds to avoid attenuation, no real need to be immune to damage/CC, and more dynamic than just running from point A to B. Just regular enemies serving as just enough of a road bump to cause your focus to need to be diverted elsewhere.

It's not worded as well as I'd like, but the principle here is to get away from "shoot big bad with enormous amounts of health until dead".

Probably one of my favourite boss fights ever was the final gauntlet in Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

Basically, there was no single boss you had to defeat; instead, you had to defend a missile launch by keeping enemy units away from the silo.  You had to do this by driving around a map, using the grav gun to attach mines onto the striders, and then detonating it with your firearms:

Warfarme should be aiming to do something along these lines.

The good news is, the new Void Flood / Cascade / Armageddon modes feel like they are a step in that direction, as is the aforementioned Railjack missions.  (Kuva) Assault is another good example.  DE just needs to take those ideas and iterate on them.  Take the elements of Warframe that make it unique and fun and use those to create the difficult / endgame fights.

[Achlevius]

On 2022-09-19 at 3:41 AM, KitMeHarder said:

Otherwise, you'd have to do something like this. A rouge-like raid where you start out with almost nothing (akin to the Grendel missions) and you progressively get more and more of your power back.

So, you're suggestion for challenge is to make the player start with a new account? 😅

No, just, please, god, no.  There are so many fun, creative, amazing rogue-like games out there.  If you want a rogue-like experience, go play them.

[(XBOX)THE NTT]

If they want difficult end game all they need to do is post a multiple choice opinion question in the mission and require agreement among the 4 players.

 

Nightmare mode would be 8 players.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

On 2022-09-18 at 11:16 PM, AzureScion said:

Without damage reduction/limiting options/mods/arcanes what have you? With the most high end equipments and stuff players are able to survive LEVEL 9999 enemies with 200% modifiers while instakilling them with infinite scaling weapons and abilities.

Gimmick mechanics can only go on so far, people are already able to 6x3 eidolons on a daily basis, so that wouldn't be considered difficult either, at least for them.

Ropalolyst was also fun, but people got used to it fast anyway. 

Exploiter orb and profit taker fights are hated by many.

So how does one make an actual difficult fight to satisfy end game players? The newest content archon fights which were meant to be difficult got cheesed anyway in less than 5 minutes. I honestly can't really think of what would be engaging. 

The power we have in our hands is basically limitless.

 

The only thing I can think of is.. if you cannot make an enemy powerful enough to fight us, the only answer is to let us fight ourselves, aka PVP. Not Conclave either because that "restricts options", but a full blown PVP with all weapons, frames, and other gears maxed to oblivion plus arcane and stuff. I can't tell how many times I have to actively keep in mind and avoid other players whenever radiation proc comes in play because there's a high chance they wouldn't pay attention and starts barraging everyone with rad proc on. 

So yeah, the only thing powerful enough to fight a tenno is a fellow tenno.

They did make it. The problem is the community always has an immediate walkthrough guide the very second anything new comes out. Content creators get a head start so they rush to be the first to hold everyone's hands. No one calls that out but everyone yells at DE. Having a literal video walking the world through a challenge on the first day or two is incredibly stupid and impossible to work around. What's worse is those handheld players then come here to complain about how "easy" the content is. Both Pablo and Scott pointed this out in interviews and even Brozine lowered his head in guilt. Views are more important I guess.

Second, I'm not talking about the hardcore dudes. Those 20 players will always find a way to trivialize something. No game will stop that. The archon fights were EXCELLENT, leaving hints of damage attenuation, weaknesses, how to mod better for the next attempt (if any), how to squad up, etc. Instead, players tried to blow through it, got wrecked and then came here to whine without even trying to learn the boss! Then, hands were held while DE had to deal with those tears of players not even trying. 

If we want harder stuff, then please let's all shut down the whining for once and let DE push forward with this series of enemies and events. It's different, refreshing and is offering a challenge to a great chunk of the player base. So, let's push back against the rushframe groups, the "more rewards faster" groups and the overly dramatic players that rely too much on one frame and weapon. Let's just freaking TRY IT.

[Achlevius]

On 2022-09-19 at 6:16 AM, CrownOfShadows said:

Another possibility would be hard to do but rewarding - mix in tailored responses to specific abilities. As an example, if the boss detects a Mag 2 being used on them, they can have a specific response to that. Or if they detect a Mesa 4 being used, they can have a specific response to that, like throwing up obstacles or an assistant that takes all the fire. This is hard because you would need to do this for a huge number of 'problematic' abilities, but it would be rewarding because you could still do damage, and you could even design it so that other players could help you do damage by removing or dealing with the response.

Yet another useful thing would be to create boss abilities that have no answer. For example, knockdown can interrupt a lot of abilities and would be a useful tool for a boss, but we're immune to it. You need to give bosses tools to deal with tenno. You need to think like the boss. You have a Saryn trying to poison you every few seconds. So cleanse. You have a Banshee marking your weaknesses, so trick her. Drain the tenno energy. Drain the tenno health.

Another mechanic I've never seen used but that would be interesting is ability reflection. What if the boss could reflect your abilities at you? That would be terrifying. What if you're in a Mesa 4 and suddenly all your bullets are flying back at you, or your whole squad? Guess you better get out of your 4 then right? What if you're a banshee trying to mark the boss and suddenly your whole squad is marked?

Armor strip the tenno. Rip the tenno shields away and put them on yourself. Poison the tenno. CC the tenno.

Tons of awesome possibilities for bosses. I could go into fully creative mode and come up with a few if you guys want me to, but it's been my experience that doing that doesn't make anyone happy

The general gist of your post is good, and I agree that difficult challenges in this game are possible, but many of the ideas you posited here are...not good.😬

Many of the suggestions you make here will either just frustrate the player, or make the whole concept of having a Warframe obsolete.

If the boss throws up obstacles when Mesa uses her 4, then why would I ever bring Mesa to the fight?  Any game mechanic that defeats the whole point of having a Warframe should not be in the game (I'm looking at you, Eximus Rework 😠).

If the boss does a damage reflect, then you're asking the player to do zero damage, which is completely at odds with what the rest of the game asks you to do.

Poisons, energy drains and armor rips are also frustrating, particularly when they are unavoidable.  The Tenno don't have much health / armor / shields to being with, so removing defenses will only encourage players using tank frames.  And energy drains are just another way to make Warframe abilities useless (because now instead of the enemy being immune to an ability, you just don't have the energy to cast the ability).

The boss self-cleanse is a good idea, though.  We can do that with the likes of Rolling Guard and many other abilities, so why not the boss?

 

17 hours ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

There are plenty of games like WoW and Final Fantasy built for raiding and "challenging" content. But it's not actually challenging, as the only challenge is finding competent healers and tanks to carry everyone else. And if you're a good support role, you're stuck playing that as a second job because all the casuals wanna be the big shot dps.

I actually prefer tanking and healing, so role selection is not an issue for me.  And to be frank, I think the "most players just want to DPS" is an over exaggeration.

The problem with WoW (not played FF) is community management.  You basically have to get lucky to find a guild that suits your playstyle and goals while Blizzard keeps building systems designed to encourage players to play solo. 😕

[PublikDomain]

1 hour ago, Achlevius said:

However, I still disagree with the notion that it cannot be done.

I believe there is a way, but we have to get away from the traditional "boss fight" type of difficulty; we have to think outside of the box because Warframe is not the same as, say, World of Warcraft.

I guess I should clarify: it's not that I think it can't be done, I think that it can't be done well without relying on additional systems like attenuation or phases (or "think outside of the box"). You can't create a boss fight in Warframe that's just a blob of health with some special abilities, or it's going to get trivialized. That's been as true for the new Angels as it has been for bosses like the Sargent and Phorid and Raptor. You can't make a boss/enemy sturdy enough that the players on top can't trivialize it without creating an unenjoyable damage sponge fight for everyone else. Instead you need to redirect the player into other things like shooting weakpoints or pressing the button at the right time or solving the puzzle or whatever, and this is the direction the game's big fights have been going for years.

But if the player is balanced and consistent you can make fights that don't require thinking outside of the box or getting away from shooting the big bad. You can still use other mechanics, obviously, and that just makes things more interesting and varied which is a good thing, but if every interaction the player has needs to be redirected away from their immense, girthy power then maybe that immense, girthy power is causing a problem. And I very much think that solving the problem of the player's immense, girthy power is an attainable thing without too much trouble, and can be done in ways that enrich much more than just our interactions with enemies.

[Achlevius]

22 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

And I very much think that solving the problem of the player's immense, girthy power is an attainable thing without too much trouble, and can be done in ways that enrich much more than just our interactions with enemies.

You're extremely optimistic on this point.

DE has had a terrible couple of weeks since they dropped the recent "nerfs" to AoE...and all they really did was reduce Primed Firestorm / Fulmination to 44% (from 66%) and require players pick up ammo more frequently.

Imagine if DE actually balanced (read: nerfed) player / weapon power.  The forums would probably have to be shut down for a week or two due to all the hate threads that would pop up. 😅

[ShogunGunshow]

19 minutes ago, Achlevius said:

You're extremely optimistic on this point.

DE has had a terrible couple of weeks since they dropped the recent "nerfs" to AoE...and all they really did was reduce Primed Firestorm / Fulmination to 44% (from 66%) and require players pick up ammo more frequently.

Imagine if DE actually balanced (read: nerfed) player / weapon power.  The forums would probably have to be shut down for a week or two due to all the hate threads that would pop up. 😅

Yeeaaaaah. Would almost need to start over. 

Wiping the slate clean is one of several reasons why Soulframe is even a thing. 

[PublikDomain]

32 minutes ago, Achlevius said:

You're extremely optimistic on this point.

DE has had a terrible couple of weeks since they dropped the recent "nerfs" to AoE...and all they really did was reduce Primed Firestorm / Fulmination to 44% (from 66%) and require players pick up ammo more frequently.

Imagine if DE actually balanced (read: nerfed) player / weapon power.  The forums would probably have to be shut down for a week or two due to all the hate threads that would pop up. 😅

Extremely optimistic that it's doable, extremely pessimistic that it will actually be done :)

Being realistic, what'll probably happen is just more of what's already been happening. DE will continue to create content that "isn't Warframe", like Veilbreaker and Duviri, that focuses on things other than our accrued power. Their highly visible but ultimately ineffectual and self-undermined balancing changes like AoE will continue to happen, players will continue to complain about every perceived slight, and DE will continue to nerf players anyways behind the scenes through things like Attenuation.

[Silligoose]

9 hours ago, AzureScion said:

But look at the backlash they got from addressing two lol. Wukong and AoE were very obvious outliers that needed to be addressed. 

I also think balancing this game is beyond hope at this point, the only way forward is to double down on increasing the power instead of sinking them down. 

Maybe that's why they wanted a shot at Soulframe, I sure hope that game has better power balance.

But when it comes to Warframe, I don't really think a truly challenging content is possible at all, because any semblance of difficulty would rise dissatisfaction from one side, while the other side keeps complaining because the game is too easy. 

I feel bad for DE, I truly do. lol.

Yeah, one can look at the backlash from the recent update, but don't just focus on backlash pertaining to Wukong and AoE nerfs. Look at the backlash regarding Archons, the associated damage attenuation, the various invulnerabilities the Archon has, making the fights rather one-dimensional (shoot Boreal, shoot weakspot of whatever invulnerability ability was activated, shoot Boreal again). Look at the backlash regarding Break Narmer. One can go back further. Look at the backlash regarding Overguard. Look at the backlash regarding TNW, which was in-part due to the challenge being too great for some and players being trapped in the quest, in-part due to DE having to nullify progression in order to present more challenging play etc.

It is no secret that there is a wide spectrum of demographics playing this game regarding what level of challenge they are looking for, with the two ends being vastly different from one another: On one end, we see players who are basically looking to become gods via progression that can't be challenged and easily destroy everything. On the other end, we see players who also want to become gods via progression, but they want their godly power, their greatest setups and the skills they've acquired, to be challenged by enemies of goldy power themselves.

This isn't a unique problem only DE has to deal with - this problem has been presented, and solved, by devs across multiple titles, for decades: There is a reason games have various levels of difficulty. There is a reason games have various types of missions/dungeons etc. There is a reason games have different optional play modes. It is to satisfy as many within the spectrum as possible, but DE does not want to do that. Instead, they want to smash everyone within the spectrum together and do as little work as possible to appease these demographics just enough to keep them playing and they don't seem to care what they sacrifice in the process, be it progression, be it the game's depth or even the game's balance.

They've had ample opportunities to address root problems whilst mitigating negative sentiment. They still have those opportunities, but they apparently don't want to do it. They want to take short cuts. They want to avoid doing the work that needs to be done. They want to instead present gameplay pivots that spits in the face of player progression via Break Narmer and Duviri Paradox.

One of the biggest opportunities was SP - a new mode that was slated to be hard mode. A place where a new precedent could be set. A playground for their balance team to do what needs to be done, whilst not having to affect those who are not interested in hard mode. What did they actually do? You bet your ass they didn't address root imbalances. Oh no no no. Instead, they took yet another shortcut: they slapped on some poorly thought-out durability modifiers for enemies, not giving a damn about how imbalanced it makes enemies in relation to one another, or how it affects the viability of different mechanics, threw in some cd's on certain consumables, upped the enemy spawn rate and -level and threw in mini-bosses. Wow, an hour's worth of ideas, if even that. The experience, especially upon release, was a disappointing, imbalanced disaster and it really didn't look like they put any sort of passion or care into it. Instead, it looked like they put in as little effort as they thought they could get away with.

The fixes are simple, because the groundwork is already in place - DE simply needs to start balancing numbers and ratios. It not exactly complex and given how much they can accomplish when they have a goal (open worlds with bosses, new enemies, new gear etc, or RJ, or Zariman, or in just a few months, Veil Breaker), it should not take them long at all.

No need to feel sorry for them. They could mitigate a hell of a lot of backlash if they were willing to put in the work. They could even be praised for their fixes. They could fix it if they wanted to. It doesn't seem as though they actually want to.

[CrownOfShadows]

35 minutes ago, Silligoose said:

One of the biggest opportunities was SP - a new mode that was slated to be hard mode. A place where a new precedent could be set. A playground for their balance team to do what needs to be done, whilst not having to affect those who are not interested in hard mode.

They could mitigate a hell of a lot of backlash if they were willing to put in the work. They could even be praised for their fixes.

I agree SP was a golden opportunity to bring in a new well balanced standard, but I don't think they were thinking that far ahead when they did it, and I don't think they ever expected it to become such a dominant part of gameplay.

At this point though, seeing the recent backlash, I can guarantee you that no matter how much good DE does they will always be criticized for it, people have no chill.

[CrownOfShadows]

2 hours ago, Achlevius said:

The general gist of your post is good, and I agree that difficult challenges in this game are possible, but many of the ideas you posited here are...not good.😬

Many of the suggestions you make here will either just frustrate the player, or make the whole concept of having a Warframe obsolete.

If the boss throws up obstacles when Mesa uses her 4, then why would I ever bring Mesa to the fight?  Any game mechanic that defeats the whole point of having a Warframe should not be in the game (I'm looking at you, Eximus Rework 😠).

If the boss does a damage reflect, then you're asking the player to do zero damage, which is completely at odds with what the rest of the game asks you to do.

Poisons, energy drains and armor rips are also frustrating, particularly when they are unavoidable.  The Tenno don't have much health / armor / shields to being with, so removing defenses will only encourage players using tank frames.  And energy drains are just another way to make Warframe abilities useless (because now instead of the enemy being immune to an ability, you just don't have the energy to cast the ability).

The boss self-cleanse is a good idea, though.  We can do that with the likes of Rolling Guard and many other abilities, so why not the boss?

 

I actually prefer tanking and healing, so role selection is not an issue for me.  And to be frank, I think the "most players just want to DPS" is an over exaggeration.

The problem with WoW (not played FF) is community management.  You basically have to get lucky to find a guild that suits your playstyle and goals while Blizzard keeps building systems designed to encourage players to play solo. 😕

It sounds like you are assuming instant and universal responses, which is not how I was imagining it at all. If Mesa throws up her 4, the boss MIGHT respond to it immediately, but only if it wasn't taking aggro from everyone else. And even then, if she is identified as a potent threat that needs to be dealt with, the boss might wait until it escalates to the point that is MUST be dealt with. Fights are all about threat management, especially when it's 1v4.

Like if you're fighting a sister are you worried about the hound attacking you? Sure, but are you going to deal with it right that instant? Maybe, maybe not, depends how much it pisses you off, how far away the sister is, how many other people your with, etc, there's a lot of factors.

I agree if every time Mesa went into her 4 the boss just instantly redirected it - then no reason to do ever do it and no reason to take Mesa in the first place. That's bad boss design imo. All you need is a POTENTIAL response to it, a tool to deal with it when it gets out of hand or becomes worrisome. A way to make sure players can't do it all the time non-stop brrrrrrrrrrrrrr to the end. This sort of tempered response allows the player to do actual damage with ANYTHING, but prevents the boss from being helpless to it also. Thus, this is not just boss immunity by another name, quite the opposite, it's total arsenal usage with actual counters.

Are health drains annoying? They can be. But it also forces you to worry about healing instead of attacking. Is energy drain annoying? Yes, but it sure cracks down on your ability spam doesn't it? I would never have a boss spam these (or any tool), but delivering them occasionally forces some rethinking and adapting, which is healthy.

 

[Joezone619]

IMO? You dont, you make bullet sponge battles.

Combat systems in warframe gave grown so out of control, any new AI for enemies would be wasted in 1-2 shots. Things would have to be reworked from the ground up, which is not only something DE would never do, even if they did players would freak out and just leave spiteful, as we see with this AoE "nerf", when the biggest they did is tweak a single mod, that doesn't even affect damage.

Armor, health, shields, damage, elements, status, and crit would all have to be rethought as well as enemies density and map sizes, all of which would take an obsurdly long time to do, so why bother when players are already satisfied with what we got.

[Toa_Ignika]

I did not read everything but while I agree that making the Bosses more involved by using multiple different mechanics to the fight, more akin to a Gimmick fight than a DPS one.

Tho it can backfire by either being really confusing in what it ask you to do, and people could easily hate it more (I remember seeing a lot of hate about the Exploiter Orb, Ropalolyst and Nihil fight at their release).

But I sure would love to see how it could be done.

 

An idea I had about the damaging part of the fight (I read something similar somewhere here on the forum), would be to keep the adaptative damage attenuation but tweating how it's done. Basically it would be done in 2 main phases (that could be repeated). The idea would be close to the Angel of Zariman.

You'd have a Shield breaking phase (that fully protect the Health part) at 1st with no damage attenuation at all.

Breaking that shield would then activate the damage attenuation to the Health (also give some invulnerability for the transition). That attenuation would be based on the damage dealt to the Shield and the time that it took to break it.

That way if you break the Shield in 1 tap, you should have a more durable Health portion, and with the opposite the Health would be easier to dealt with if the Shield took long.

I don't know if it could work nicely tho, but on paper a system similar would balance the discrepency between facing a pure Bullet Sponge and something that is being 1 tap.

[CrownOfShadows]

1 minute ago, Toa_Ignika said:

I did not read everything but while I agree that making the Bosses more involved by using multiple different mechanics to the fight, more akin to a Gimmick fight than a DPS one.

Tho it can backfire by either being really confusing in what it ask you to do, and people could easily hate it more (I remember seeing a lot of hate about the Exploiter Orb, Ropalolyst and Nihil fight at their release).

But I sure would love to see how it could be done.

 

An idea I had about the damaging part of the fight (I read something similar somewhere here on the forum), would be to keep the adaptative damage attenuation but tweating how it's done. Basically it would be done in 2 main phases (that could be repeated). The idea would be close to the Angel of Zariman.

You'd have a Shield breaking phase (that fully protect the Health part) at 1st with no damage attenuation at all.

Breaking that shield would then activate the damage attenuation to the Health (also give some invulnerability for the transition). That attenuation would be based on the damage dealt to the Shield and the time that it took to break it.

That way if you break the Shield in 1 tap, you should have a more durable Health portion, and with the opposite the Health would be easier to dealt with if the Shield took long.

I don't know if it could work nicely tho, but on paper a system similar would balance the discrepency between facing a pure Bullet Sponge and something that is being 1 tap.

I can dig it, although people would probably then just save their big damage for when the shield is gone.

Honestly, I'm pretty curious if we'd be quite so triggered by the attenuation if it wasn't possible to cheese it. Simply removing the ability to cheese it would, I think, be healthier than leaving it as is - could simply introduce a burst cap in addition. Like I don't know that attenuation is completely evil. It makes your weapons feel kinda bad, but we all kinda expect that out of bosses anyway. They always have some major DR of some kind. It's like, do you want a boss with no DR and 10 trillion hp, or do you want a boss with 10 million hp and DR...

[(PSN)Unstar]

On 2022-09-18 at 11:16 PM, AzureScion said:

How do you actually make a "difficult fight" for end game players in this game?

Broadly speaking, you don't.  There is simply too much unchecked variation of what a player could come to the table with.  If you wanted to, you could make a fight that was difficult for, say, a specific Chroma build, and that build is the only thing you can use for the fight.  But when you could be Chroma or Vauban or Limbo or Octavia, all bets are off.  Warframe isn't like an MMORPG where all the numbers and abilities are strictly balanced and tidied up into roles; it's the wild west out here.  You cannot make difficult content, you can only make tedious content.

THAT SAID, while some players say they want difficult content, what most players want is engaging content.  And that's something DE is capable of making.  Is the Ropalolyst hard?  No.  Is it engaging?  Yes.  Will players eventually adapt to it so it becomes second nature?  Of course, and the same would be true if the fight was more difficult as well.

 

On 2022-09-18 at 11:16 PM, AzureScion said:

if you cannot make an enemy powerful enough to fight us, the only answer is to let us fight ourselves, aka PVP.

This makes the false assumption that Warframes are in any way balanced against each other.  You would find that just like balance against PvE enemies, this is not the case.

Regardless, PvP isn't the answer, because that's not what most Warframe players want.