shield gating and the shieldgate meta: a simple rework.

[Mazifet]

But why even rework it? Why make the game unnecessarily harder for non-tanks/invisibility frames? I've said this before in other threads regarding the exact same topic, but shieldgating is purely beneficial to the player, and increases diversity in Warframe selection. Since I main Limbo, shieldgating is one of the methods I have to use to stay alive. I have to constantly be managing my shields as not paying attention to them for a second means instant death. Additionally there is a bug right now where shieldgating just doesn't refresh so it isn't reliable. Meanwhile with a frame like Nezha, throw on vitality and adaptation, cast your 3rd, and you pretty much can't die for hundreds of levels.

[TARINunit9]

19 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

You can't reasonably nerf shield gating while you have Warframes with invincibility, invisibility, 95% damage reduction, thousands of armor, extra health bars, etc running around.

I mean, you can, but then people will just stop using the Warframes that can't protect themselves. I can stop using shield gating and instead play Revenant Prime for permanent complete invincibility, how does that improve the game?

At this point you're touching on a much wider question: would you rather rebalance the entire game? Or would you rather keep janky and overpowered things in while only nerfing the most egregious and (this is a critical word) overcentralizing spikes? DE chooses the latter

[Traumtulpe]

52 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

At this point you're touching on a much wider question: would you rather rebalance the entire game? Or would you rather keep janky and overpowered things in while only nerfing the most egregious and (this is a critical word) overcentralizing spikes? DE chooses the latter

I'd rather have rebalanced the entire game years ago. Not to be pessimistic, but I don't see any fundamental changes in Warframes future - DE isn't even in a situation to implement basic bug fixes, apparently.

Shield gating works and is making the game more diverse. Instead of breaking what little is still functional in this game, I'd suggest DE try and fix stuff that isn't functional, that is bugged or outdated. Instead of adding more "non-Warframe" things like Kahl, get "Warframe" working properly - because it very much isn't. It's falling apart at the seams.

[AegidiusF]

Le 24/11/2022 à 11:33, SDGDen a dit :

#1: oneshots are definitely prevented, this part works entirely as intended and players have been enjoying it ever since.

Toxin still exists and so does Magnetic status.

Le 24/11/2022 à 11:33, SDGDen a dit :

#2: improving shields. this is where it starts falling flat. sure, having shields in general is improved by shield-gate but the shields themselves are still quite weak.

#3: incentivising building for shields. this is where shield-gating currently fails miserably as it achieves the opposite, the only way to build into shield gating is by NOT building into shields. in fact one of the most popular tricks even listed on the wiki is to run a decaying dragon key to lower your shields.

This is a lack of shield mods problem. Many players would love to have more than some aura, specific damage types or Adaptation to improve shields resistance.

Why should we increase our shield amount if one hit can totally deplet it, no matter if it is very high ? Hildryn and Harrow will lose their entire shields and overshields with just one shot...

The Dragon key is not a problem at all : it's a consequence of a problem : shields are bad designed, so players are using it to stay alive. It's a band-aid solution and the Devs are aware of that, but they won't change anything till they don't have something better to propose.

The Dragon key method, in my opinion, is a waste of time. I play sometimes with players shield gating with Dragon keys and very often they die. Shield gating is not OP at all : everybody that shield gates know that very well.

The only way to solve the actual bad state of shields is to rework damage reduction and shield mods : rework the way armor works (at least make it scale better), create DR Mods for shields (like Shock Absorbers, but more efficient).

Shield gate has 1.3 seconds duration, when shields are fully depleted they won't recharge for 4 seconds. Augur Set Mods, Brief Respite Aura and some abilities can recherge the warframe shields, but you'll have to cast : Rolling Guard can protect you for 3 seconds. This needs a total control of your warframe and its movement : a shield gating build need High energy amount, Magnetic Resistance, Rolling guard, knockdown and stagger resistance, Brief Rispite and/or Augur set and/or a shield recharging ability (Pillage, as an exemple), casting speed : in other words almost every single mod on your build will be used to keep your warframe alive. You can't stand still, you need to move all the time, and be very fast to roll or cast within the 1,3 second window and then make it all over again all the time... but surviving isnt' all, you'll need to kill, to hack, to activate doors... I really can't see why people keep saying shield gate is OP : it's not, even with the Dragon key. It's just a band-aid fix and we'll have it in the game till they make another armor, and DR rework (as they did on update 27.2 on 2020, the same update that introduced shield gating, by the way).

This only reminds me of players (here and on Reddit) talking about the Hildryn+Dragon Key immortal build, that is the worse build for Hildryn and do not make her immortal at all...

And even Rebecca made a little joke on Twitter :

https://twitter.com/rebbford/status/1434923441442918405?s=20&t=DBHc9kXBepW29ewyx5Pmyw

[Drachnyn]

For most of the content in the game, tanking with eHP of armor, HP and damage reduction is a whole lot less effort. Who cares how the game breaks in lvl cap runs. That is completely irrelevant to game balance.

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

On 2022-11-24 at 6:44 AM, Traumtulpe said:

You can't reasonably nerf shield gating while you have Warframes with invincibility, invisibility, 95% damage reduction, thousands of armor, extra health bars, etc running around.

I mean, you can, but then people will just stop using the Warframes that can't protect themselves. I can stop using shield gating and instead play Revenant Prime for permanent complete invincibility, how does that improve the game?

This point is very strong

8 hours ago, L3512 said:

Shield gating as a survival mechanic allows pretty much every frame in the game to do any content but requires a lot more from the player than simple armour/ability/health tanking.

Along with this

 

Its a different way to play the game. You can make the game less attention demanding and add shield, armor, health, etc or make it more demanding and drop all of those things, using a purely reflex driven way to play the game.

Its good, its how mods were meant to be, creating different ways to play the game.

 

I do think a longer shield gate duration the more shields you have is a good idea though. It can still create some interesting gameplay, as you desperately try to replenish those shields in the short invulnerability window.

[SDGDen]

On 2022-11-25 at 1:22 AM, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

*snip*

thanks for the well thought-out response!

part of the idea *is* to make shield-gating less "spamable", which means that the ease of use is (in practice) lowered. Basically flip the way people build into shield-gating on its head (high shields = better rather than low shields = better). The idea of frames with over 800 shields getting multiple shield gates at 0, 800, 1600, 2400 etc would be quite neat and give frames that do overshield-based buffs a very strong incentive. 

I used 800 shields as a median because generally you can get past 800 shields on any frame using just one mod, and imo, the "average" recharge being 15 seconds seems pretty fair and balanced. Obviously, the number could be 600, 400 or something else. Maybe it'd be better to take the shield values for all warframes (discounting hildryn and valkyr for being abnormalities in terms of how much base shields they have) and average them to get the true "average shield value". especially since the 4 second recharge delay exists. 

the main concept is actually quite simple, but as you've pretty much mentioned, there's *a lot* of edge cases that don't have clear answers yet. this is (annoyingly) the case with pretty much everything since the game is so massive.

effectively: shield gate now resets at X shields, if you have less than X shields it will continue counting up in the background once your shields are full until it reaches X

 

On 2022-11-25 at 1:55 AM, Tyreaus said:

We need a more comprehensive player durability rework than this.

For one, like Tramtulpe says, we'll just drop frames relying on shield gating to survive. I think there are ways to tweak gating so that it's both more purposeful and encourages higher shield values (scaling gate time based on max shields / shield mods e.g.), but given shield gating is considered "overpowered" here, I feel like that wouldn't fly.

For two, I want to point to one particular line:

This is what they call a "big red flag". You're building in a system to keep the player from getting one-tapped? Hold up: clearly getting one-tapped is a problem in this context (contrast say Super Meat Boy), so why is that not getting addressed?

I quite like shield gating, janky as it is. How it's a more interactive form of survival that is in active response to being dealt damage, in lieu of total AI shutdown (death or CC or otherwise). At the same token, it sure seems something's broken that was never fixed. Maybe we ought to look at fixing that first instead of trying to adjust the band-aid.

"why is that not getting addressed" well, because imo, *both* things need to be addressed. at the level "endgame" is balanced around, only a few attacks should reasonably be dealing that much damage (think certain eximus or telegraphed boss abilities). However, this topic is about shield gating since as i have stated before, a full analysis and rework of enemy damage output is going to take me A LOT more time. i'll make one eventually though!

 

On 2022-11-25 at 2:54 AM, Berzerkules said:

Do you even use shield gating in content where it is beneficial? Why push for nerfs of things that you obviously don't use and has zero effect on your game play?

i solo archon hunts without needing to use arcanes or galvanized mods, does that answer your question?

"you want to nerf a thing so you must not know how to use it" or maybe i'm well aware of how it works and how it's overpowered?

 

On 2022-11-25 at 4:11 AM, L3512 said:

 

With no idea of your background but reading a sentence like this,

It's not a far reach to conclude that either you have no practical knowledge or experience of which you speak or you have intentionally overplayed a perceived negative issue to bolster your arguments.

It's the old, create a problem and sell the solution.

Shield gating as a survival mechanic allows pretty much every frame in the game to do any content but requires a lot more from the player than simple armour/ability/health tanking. Unlike the many nerfs DE has done in the name of balance, the arrival of shield gating and subsequent use of the decaying dragon key has mostly levelled to playing field in terms of a frames ability to survive, even better is that this requires skill and attention from the player.

it has certainly leveled the playing field... it has leveled the playing field to "every frame can survive with ease well beyond any reasonable level of gameplay". 

if every warframe is nearly invulnerable, does that make them balanced against eachother? maybe. but it sure as hell doesn't make the game balanced. 

On 2022-11-25 at 4:31 AM, AntifreezeUnder0 said:

*snip*

why do you continue to bring up level cap runs? that's COMPLETELY irrelevant to game balance as the game is DEFINITELY not balanced around level cap or anything close to it.

the highest level you could argue the game is balanced around is level 160 steel path since that's the highest level you can get from any non-endless mission. but the game isn't balanced around steel path, it's not supposed to be because steel path is a bandaid on the power creep problem. it's the solution anti-nerf players have been stating for years: "don't nerf our gear, buff the enemies". well here's enemies with 100 extra levels and 3.5x armor, health and shields. 

[SDGDen]

On 2022-11-25 at 5:05 AM, Mazifet said:

But why even rework it? Why make the game unnecessarily harder for non-tanks/invisibility frames? I've said this before in other threads regarding the exact same topic, but shieldgating is purely beneficial to the player, and increases diversity in Warframe selection. Since I main Limbo, shieldgating is one of the methods I have to use to stay alive. I have to constantly be managing my shields as not paying attention to them for a second means instant death. Additionally there is a bug right now where shieldgating just doesn't refresh so it isn't reliable. Meanwhile with a frame like Nezha, throw on vitality and adaptation, cast your 3rd, and you pretty much can't die for hundreds of levels.

"why make the game harder"

because... 99% of content is stupidly easy with shield gating? because the way in which shield gating works right now is completely overpowered and prevents DE from ever creating any form of challenging content? because it's a "one size fits all" solution that you generally don't need to build into much? because different frames are SUPPOSED to have different amounts of survivability as a form of trade-off (for example, limbo has survivability through his manipulation of the rift, he's a caster not a tank)?

On 2022-11-25 at 8:49 AM, Traumtulpe said:

I'd rather have rebalanced the entire game years ago. Not to be pessimistic, but I don't see any fundamental changes in Warframes future - DE isn't even in a situation to implement basic bug fixes, apparently.

Shield gating works and is making the game more diverse. Instead of breaking what little is still functional in this game, I'd suggest DE try and fix stuff that isn't functional, that is bugged or outdated. Instead of adding more "non-Warframe" things like Kahl, get "Warframe" working properly - because it very much isn't. It's falling apart at the seams.

the game does need a full-scale rebalance, close to 10 years of powercreep, unchecked for many years, have caused a fundamental lack of challenge at the high-end. the very fact that people are doing level cap runs is proof of that. level cap was meant to be completely impossible, it was once deployed as AN APRIL FOOLS JOKE. 20 minutes of level cap corpus survival for a bronze mod. 

shield gating is part of that rebalance, but it is only a piece. damage resistance needs changes, the energy economy needs to uh... exist, enemies need to be re-scaled and DE needs to decide which level the end-game players should be balanced against. weapons need.... well a lot of things.

it's a mountain that honestly? is quite difficult to climb because of just how complex the game is. It'd possibly be easier for them to just make warframe 2. 

I hope to see more changes in the future. the AOE changes and potential return of self-damage suggest that DE is starting to become more critical of game balance, and one rework at a time we'll limp over to a game state that is much more balanced than we had 6 months ago.

 

[AntifreezeUnder0]

47 minutes ago, SDGDen said:

because... 99% of content is stupidly easy with shield gating? because the way in which shield gating works right now is completely overpowered and prevents DE from ever creating any form of challenging content? because it's a "one size fits all" solution that you generally don't need to build into much? because different frames are SUPPOSED to have different amounts of survivability as a form of trade-off (for example, limbo has survivability through his manipulation of the rift, he's a caster not a tank)?

Game doesnt revolve arround shieldgating. Atleast at current low lvl enemies. 

 

 

[Champagne_23]

Sure, let's brainless facetank. That's a lot better, right?

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

1 hour ago, SDGDen said:

because... 99% of content is stupidly easy with shield gating?

Im all for making things harder but not impossible. I feel like making shieldgates at 800 shield brings back that impossible feeling of getting 1 shot out the blue for squishy frames. Gotta go hide behind a wall with your tail inbetween your legs, lame vibe as opposed to being in the middle of all the action, defelecting bullets, cating abilities, dodging attacks. Ill only be down for things supporting the fast pace feel of gameplay right now, no more camping and hiding

 If you can purpose more ways to counter attacks, and punnishments for failing to counter, that'd be cool, but trying to make more room for people to get unfairly 1 shot i cant get behind. 15 seconds is a heck of a long time considering how much gunfire we stay under 24/7. Theres times where my shield gets instantly depleted right after i fully restored them with 1 ability cast, it be so quick that i be thinking i brought the wrong build because i didnt even get to see me gain any shields after the cast.

 

[Silligoose]

On 2022-11-25 at 6:05 AM, Mazifet said:

But why even rework it? Why make the game unnecessarily harder for non-tanks/invisibility frames? I've said this before in other threads regarding the exact same topic, but shieldgating is purely beneficial to the player, and increases diversity in Warframe selection. Since I main Limbo, shieldgating is one of the methods I have to use to stay alive. I have to constantly be managing my shields as not paying attention to them for a second means instant death. Additionally there is a bug right now where shieldgating just doesn't refresh so it isn't reliable. Meanwhile with a frame like Nezha, throw on vitality and adaptation, cast your 3rd, and you pretty much can't die for hundreds of levels.

 

On 2022-11-25 at 11:41 AM, Drachnyn said:

For most of the content in the game, tanking with eHP of armor, HP and damage reduction is a whole lot less effort. Who cares how the game breaks in lvl cap runs. That is completely irrelevant to game balance.

Unchecked upper limits of potential power/performance within mechanics tend to cause problems for the game and the devs down the line when they decide they want to introduce content that presents a higher level of challenge within encouraged content compared to what is already provided within current encouraged content. It isn't simply about whether a mechanic breaks the game at lvl cap, but rather that it breaks the game, how it breaks the game and how it can prevent any sort of increased challenge. It is an imbalance with various negative effects that eventually leads to a game's depth and viable competitive variety decreasing, leading to the game becoming stale.

Warframe already demonstrates what happens when power creep is left unchecked with many setups and loadouts looking very similar. Additionally, we also see the content becoming less creative and more monotonous, with the devs simply invalidating the very mechanics that helps give this game depth, eg most forms of cc not working against the stronger enemies/bosses in the game, or simply creating content islands in which progression is negated (eg Break Narmer) in order for the devs to present a level of challenge they envision. In terms of shield gating, enemies will hit harder in the future and build diversity for squishier frames will decrease to the point where one builds for shield gating, or one doesn't use the squishy frames. Best address the imbalances before that point is reached.

On 2022-11-25 at 10:51 AM, (NSW)AegisFifi said:

The Dragon key method, in my opinion, is a waste of time. I play sometimes with players shield gating with Dragon keys and very often the die. Shield gating is not OP at all : everybody that shield gates know that very well.

I used shield gating extensively for level cap runs. It is OP AF and let's be honest: While it is more demanding and interactive than some other options for survivability within the game, it is not nearly as high skill as some would try to make it out to be. I'd argue it is easier to stay alive at endgame via shield gating than it is to stay alive in early to midgame when not power-leveling.

On 2022-11-24 at 12:33 PM, SDGDen said:

So, we've had the shield gate meta for... a bit now. I'd like to look back at what shield gating was supposed to do, what it actually did and what could be done to the system to get it closer to its intended function.

 

first, what was the point of shield gating?

#1: preventing one-shots. people didn't like getting one-tapped and shield gate was created to solve that

#2: improving shields, before shield gate, shields were just worse than health on most frames (with the exception of frames that revolve around shields)

#3: giving incentive to build into shields. 

of course, this was all supposed to be achieved without making it overpowered.

 

now what *actually* happened?

#1: oneshots are definitely prevented, this part works entirely as intended and players have been enjoying it ever since.

#2: improving shields. this is where it starts falling flat. sure, having shields in general is improved by shield-gate but the shields themselves are still quite weak.

#3: incentivising building for shields. this is where shield-gating currently fails miserably as it achieves the opposite, the only way to build into shield gating is by NOT building into shields. in fact one of the most popular tricks even listed on the wiki is to run a decaying dragon key to lower your shields.

on top of that, it is safe to say shield gating is incredibly spamable which has resulted in it being quite overpowered.

 

so, why is that?

the problems mostly stem from how shield-gate is regained. shield gate is restored when your shields are completely full. this means that the quicker you can fill your shield bar the better. this means having as little shield as possible is best, as shields regenerate at 5% per second + 15 per second. resulting in a logarithmic increase in time to regain your shield gate capping out at 20 seconds theoretically while at fastest (valkyr + decaying dragon key) its about 1.2 seconds (in both cases excluding recharge delay)

 

this means investing in shields makes your shield gate capabilities worse by effectively increasing the cooldown on it, not to mention the longer it takes to regain your shields the more likely you are to take damage, adding more time to the shield regeneration. 

on top of this, it means that if you can get your shields low enough, you can have near-complete uptime on your shield gate, which is just free invulnerability.

 

I'd propose the following very simple change:

instead of resetting when your shields are full, shield gate resets after 800 shields regenerated. if you have less than 800 shields itll just keep counting up while your shields are full.

this creates a situation where you are no longer looking to minimize how long it takes to regen your entire shield bar, but just 800 shields. if you have 800 shields this will take around 15 seconds without speccing into shield recharge speed mods, however those mods and shield mods themselves will be hugely beneficial to shield gating since the higher your total shield capacity, the faster you'll get 800 shields back. at 1600 shields it'd be down to 7.5 seconds ish and at 4000 shields shieldgate comes back in 3.7 seconds (before factoring in shield recharge speed mods)

this also gives even more power to abilities that grant shields as they count toward shield-gate resets.

lastly this means high-shield frames reset their shield gate before their shield is full. EG hildryn resetting her shield gate at 20% of her shields depending on your build.

 

for the valkyr from earlier, it means that with her 19 shields total, she'd spend 50 seconds to regain shield gate as the worst case scenario. making the dragon key an actual demerit and making low shield count no longer important. of course valkyr will be fine. she's a health-tank after all. thats why her shields are so low.

 

because you now need to invest mods into getting a fast shield-gate regeneration speed, its considerably less overpowered since you are giving up other things to get that (or running a 101-20 second ish shield gate)

I'd also like to add one more thing:

improved physical damage resistance on shields. slash, puncture, impact. maybe crank those to 50% resist instead of 25% to give shields a bit more strength in general. currently shields behave like health with 100 armor, imo it can behave like health with 300 armor instead when it comes to IPS. maybe even 75% ips resist (same as 900 armor)

 

i believe that with these two changes, building into shields would be greatly incentivised and shield-gating becomes a tool to build into, rather than the current "slap on a decaying key and pray" meta.

As you probably remember, I'd simply prefer for DE to address the imbalances/vast discrepancies regarding relative durability of different frames. Once that is done, DE can address enemy damage output properly and balance it accordingly, eliminating the need for the band-aid that is shield gating, or at the very least change it to no longer grant health invulnerability for as long as it currently does, in the way it currently does. They can do as per the suggestion you've made, or by making the shield-gating invulnerability time dependent on the amount of shields one had prior to shields being depleted completely again, or some other way.

I believe this to be wishful thinking on my part though - judging by DE's statements and actions over the years decent balance, especially at lategame/endgame, just isn't really a priority. On the rather rare occasions in which it seems DE does place priority on balancing, especially more recently, they fail miserably in my opinion, since they continue to opt for band-aids and erosion of the game's depth in lieu of properly addressing the core imbalances, which, to be honest, I'm not sure they can actually do even if they wanted to (based on the conversations they've had on their streams this year).

As a side note, I'm not trying to discourage the community from discussing these issues or giving feedback to DE regarding imbalances. I believe it can be valuable to them, but they simply do not seem to be all that concerned about mechanical balance.

[--END--Rikutatis]

3 hours ago, SDGDen said:

the game does need a full-scale rebalance, close to 10 years of powercreep, unchecked for many years, have caused a fundamental lack of challenge at the high-end. the very fact that people are doing level cap runs is proof of that. level cap was meant to be completely impossible, it was once deployed as AN APRIL FOOLS JOKE. 20 minutes of level cap corpus survival for a bronze mod. 

I agree with you that a complete full-scale rebalance would make a much better game and one I'd much rather play than the janky frankestein of power creep and bloated systems we have now. However being 100% honest here, I see zero chance of that ever happening. Even if the devs wanted to and were willing the monetary risk of doing it, it might even be impossible due to the 10-year old spaguetti code. The fact they're branching into Soulframe to start from scratch is even more proof of that.

Warframe will continue to be what it is, although I think it's been in a better direction this year with Rebb and Pablo at the helm. At least they're giving the game a few more constraints and boundaries within the craziness of the power creep and billion-digits dmg numbers. Like the eximus rework, AoE launcher nerfs, new game modes that don't boil down to AoE nukefests, the upcoming bosses rework etc. I think that's a good compromise. 

And quite frankly I think making level cap runs more accessible was very good to the game IMO, as much as I was bummed when they heavily nerfed enemies eHP. It gives those craving an endgame activity something to do in the form of endurance runs. You could still do level cap runs before the enemy nerfs and shield gating, except you were severely limited in loadout choices. Solo, it had to be 8h+ long runs with ivara and a covert lethality dagger, or maybe octavia on a corpus run, or doing a full squad with crazy synergies camping a single room or corridor, etc. Now you can do it solo with any frame in around 2-3h in the new game modes - disruption, cascade, flood. Heck, some people are doing it in less than 90 min. And no need for camping. While I think there's room for minor tweaks in how the dragon key works, I think overall the cheesiness of shield gating is benefitting the game a lot more than detracting from it.

[Drachnyn]

vor 20 Stunden schrieb Silligoose:

 

Unchecked upper limits of potential power/performance within mechanics tend to cause problems for the game and the devs down the line when they decide they want to introduce content that presents a higher level of challenge within encouraged content compared to what is already provided within current encouraged content. It isn't simply about whether a mechanic breaks the game at lvl cap, but rather that it breaks the game, how it breaks the game and how it can prevent any sort of increased challenge. It is an imbalance with various negative effects that eventually leads to a game's depth and viable competitive variety decreasing, leading to the game becoming stale.

Warframe already demonstrates what happens when power creep is left unchecked with many setups and loadouts looking very similar. Additionally, we also see the content becoming less creative and more monotonous, with the devs simply invalidating the very mechanics that helps give this game depth, eg most forms of cc not working against the stronger enemies/bosses in the game, or simply creating content islands in which progression is negated (eg Break Narmer) in order for the devs to present a level of challenge they envision. In terms of shield gating, enemies will hit harder in the future and build diversity for squishier frames will decrease to the point where one builds for shield gating, or one doesn't use the squishy frames. Best address the imbalances before that point is reached.

I used shield gating extensively for level cap runs. It is OP AF and let's be honest: While it is more demanding and interactive than some other options for survivability within the game, it is not nearly as high skill as some would try to make it out to be. I'd argue it is easier to stay alive at endgame via shield gating than it is to stay alive in early to midgame when not power-leveling.

As you probably remember, I'd simply prefer for DE to address the imbalances/vast discrepancies regarding relative durability of different frames. Once that is done, DE can address enemy damage output properly and balance it accordingly, eliminating the need for the band-aid that is shield gating, or at the very least change it to no longer grant health invulnerability for as long as it currently does, in the way it currently does. They can do as per the suggestion you've made, or by making the shield-gating invulnerability time dependent on the amount of shields one had prior to shields being depleted completely again, or some other way.

I believe this to be wishful thinking on my part though - judging by DE's statements and actions over the years decent balance, especially at lategame/endgame, just isn't really a priority. On the rather rare occasions in which it seems DE does place priority on balancing, especially more recently, they fail miserably in my opinion, since they continue to opt for band-aids and erosion of the game's depth in lieu of properly addressing the core imbalances, which, to be honest, I'm not sure they can actually do even if they wanted to (based on the conversations they've had on their streams this year).

As a side note, I'm not trying to discourage the community from discussing these issues or giving feedback to DE regarding imbalances. I believe it can be valuable to them, but they simply do not seem to be all that concerned about mechanical balance.

If all they can think of in terms of difficult is 'enemy hit hard' then nothing of value was lost. The level of challenge they envision sucks because there is 0 mechanical depth to archons or kahl missions. We need to put the term challenging to rest. It has become a fool's errand into bullet sponges. What we need is engaging content first. But DE is so scared of us cheesing missions that they refuse to get creative at all. Which predictably backfires.

[gioMisterio]

Shield-gate should be reworked only when >90% damage reduction in late-game stops being a mandatory to survive for bigger half of the warframes.

[Silligoose]

6 hours ago, Drachnyn said:

If all they can think of in terms of difficult is 'enemy hit hard' then nothing of value was lost. The level of challenge they envision sucks because there is 0 mechanical depth to archons or kahl missions. We need to put the term challenging to rest. It has become a fool's errand into bullet sponges. What we need is engaging content first. But DE is so scared of us cheesing missions that they refuse to get creative at all. Which predictably backfires.

If they are concerned with players cheesing creative missions, they should fix the cheesing potential. DE doesn't get creative because they do not want to fix the balance of this game properly, so here we are.

No need to put the term challenging to rest Part of what keeps players interested in games, which leads to greater retention (rather important for GAAS games like Warframe), is some form of challenge - no need to put that term to rest at all. 

[Berzerkules]

On 2022-11-26 at 3:01 AM, SDGDen said:

99% of content is stupidly easy with shield gating?

99% of content is stupid easy with or without shield gating.

In all honesty, most content it easier if you don't even bother with shield gating. Shield gating is really only useful for like 1% of the game when you are beyond the point that normal armor, heath, damage reduction and healing start to fall off. Why bother with gimping all other forms of survival for a 1.3 sec invulnerability phase? That's like running co/br/ww on normal star chart. 

Besides, there are so many other things that are totally broken in the game. Look at Gloom, 95% slow and like 15% life steal on all weapons and damage abilities. Slap Gloom on near any frame with a basic tank build and now enemies basically stand still and every damage instance heals for 15%. You might as well go play in the simulacrum at that point. 

On 2022-11-24 at 8:53 AM, SDGDen said:

valkyr was an example of a frame that currently works really well with shield gating when based on her design (passive health tank + immortality on demand + life steal) she really has no business being a shield tank. that's the whole point of her having 600 armor but only 75 shields. she's not a shield-based frame. why is shield-gating specifically so powerful on her? makes no sense.

This right here shows you have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to shield gating. 

Valkyr is terrible at shield gating. Look at her abilities, Her 2 is not recastable so it can not be used to reliably shield gate, her 3 dumps her shields below max reducing invulnerability phase to .3 seconds and her 4 stores incoming damage that is dealt to her upon deactivation and that damage bypasses shield gate.

That leaves her 1 as the only ability in her kit that you can use to reset shield gate. Can you imagine using ripline to reset your shield gate? Probably not, because you don't actually use shield gating.