Does anyone actually like damage attenuation in its current state?

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

3 hours ago, (XBOX)GearsMatrix301 said:

I feel like most of the answers here are “it’s fine because I cheese it anyways so it doesn’t matter”.

Meanwhile people like me don’t bother grinding for these cheese strats still have to suffer through its awfulness.

If a boss is going to take 30min to kill it better be one of the most fun and engaging boss fights in the history of gaming.

I'm not sure why you aren't cheesing it considering how far along the game a player should be just to attempt an archon hunts.

[Silligoose]

On 2023-01-04 at 10:23 PM, (XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA said:

"If we dont have damage attenuation, there are so many ways to boost damage to insane numbers that people will basically 1 shot archons/liches/bosses". 

In normal games the solution would be to buff boss health to a reasonable amount relative to the gear players have. 

But DE seems highly afraid to do that. And perhaps rightfully so. Theres gonna be a huge difference in deeps between an MR30 who reads the wiki every time he goes potty who has thousands of hours in the game and has every little min maxed advantage he can get and someone who doesnt even have a maxed hornet strike yet let alone understand synergies and optimal builds. (Yes i know mr=/= skill dont bust my chops)

 

But now we have this weird non intuitive damage mitigation thing where "too much" damage can actually be a detriment. 

And instead of there being a "LOL damage" meta every single time i go to fight an archon or a level 5 sister/lich i find myself thinking "well since it doesnt matter what weapon or damage set up i bring since its gonna get attenuated anyway i might as well say screw it and bring a frame that wont die and a weapon that wont run out of ammo since thats all that matters. 

Why bother bringing excal. Or chroma. Or rhino. If DE is gonna force me to chew on the boss for 5-10 minutes why should i care about anything but maximizing my chances of not dying since nothing else matters unless you find a cheese like kuva hek or something.

 

I feel like the face-tank-until-you-chew-up-the-boss like a literal chew toy meta is significantly less fun then the type of stuff we see with say, eidolons or even bosses like the Sargeant.

If i had to rank warframe bosses id say eidolons/ropalolyst/jackal2.0 > bosses like phorid or Sargeant > then archon bosses dead last.

 

Does anybody actually LIKE the current system?

 

Are there people who actually think this is more fun then the alternatives?

Lategame perspective:

When DA does work, it results in everything but bosses being relegated to super trash tier fodder, which is bad balance and when it doesn't work, it results in everything, including the bosses, being super trash tier, which is even worse balance.

DA is a band-aid for the bullet wound that is power creep and associated runaway damage. It is lazy, it confuses players, it doesn't work properly many a time and ultimately I feel it is a bit dishonest, as DE pretends a weapon/arcane/mod setup would result in, for example, 30% more damage than an old setup did, but in reality that 30% boost is only applicable against fodder where it doesn't actually matter, whilst it is far less against enemies where it would actually matter, such as bosses.

Edit: Just to be clear, I do not like DA. I do not like the inherent laziness behind it. I believe it is in opposition to the mechanics of progression within a progression-style game and I would much rather see developers of games address the root causes of problems, as opposed to trying to alleviate the symptoms of said root causes.

[0_The_F00l]

I absolutely hate the attenuation in its current form.

It is very clear DE has taken the easy and tasteless way out, rather than going back and actually balancing damage correctly (granted it's a monumental task , but is a problem of their own making) and goes against the concept of progression.

And it is convoluted enough that you don't even know if it's working thanks to all the other things also in play.

And the sad part is we can still bypass it with enough damage in the first shot.

So it doesn't even achieve its objective fully.

I would much rather DE squished the damage multipliers and then applied some DR mechanics that were universal , not based on your own DPS.

This is one of the most bullS#&$ mechanics DE has implemented.

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

Do you specifically mean with Archon Hunts damage attenuation? Damage attenuation isn't exclusive to Archons, the term just became more frequently used in regards to them, lots of the game and games, involve damage attenuation, reductions, resistances etc Lephantis, Liches etc as in there are different types of damage attenuation. So in that sense, I personally prefer the Archon or Sister Damage attenuation over say, Lephnatis type. 

Also I acknowledge you acknowledge that MR =/= skill, which is why it would be better to emphasis and frame knowledge instead of MR, as one is more accessible to those looking for it and who value it, and the other doesn't necessarily come with it preinstalled. Normal games also require perception and assumptions around variables, certain ideas may not be applicable, depending on that context. 

Depending on the type of damage attenuation, too much damage isn't counter intuitive, some people just ran away with exaggeration/hyperbole because they felt punished for doing "too much damage" triggering the attenuation, doing less follow up damage as a result. So some would conclude, that weaker builds, that don't trigger aspects of the attenuation as harshly, could maintain more steady damage or theories of that nature, but as best I can tell, this is inaccurate. Higher damage would lead to harsher fall offs, but not to the extent less damage is incentivised. Unless and this is important, you are dealing with peoples perceptions which can be flawed. Like if you have a person that instinctually likes/prefers to see smaller, slower, consistent upticks of damage, vs sharper, inconsistent instances of damage, may seem like you are doing more damage. Alternatively, if you are aware of the hidden timer, and are good at timing your shots better, you can better take advantage of the cool down around attenuation. 

Though the other issue, is that a certain amount of damage, multishot, etc very much incentivised, if you can stack enough of it to bypass attenuation. Even outside that though, too much damage isn't a detriment. Just doing solo runs with different types of weapons/builds etc and timing/testing demonstrates this. 

Another way to help understand attenuation here, is to imagine the Archons with a big Resident Evil red glowing eye thats a weak spot. If you do enough damage to the eye, it closes and boss stops taking maximum damage for a while. Then you have to wait a bit for the eye to open up and you can do more damage to it during that phase. If you can get the eye to close faster, that can feel like a punishment, but its still better than doing so little damage, that the eye only starts to close a little. 

Most of Warframe is created in a way where it doesn't matter what Warframes or weapons you bring are. For many thats a strength of the game. Would you want Warframe to force you to have to take Rhino into Index? Wisp only for Defections? Volt only for Eidolons? Screw it, I might was well take a Warframe I enjoy and like playing as... oh wait?! Mind you there are reasons for selections. If you are solo, Ivara is an excellent choice, because her Stealth comes with some gun buffs they will be useful in oneshotting Archons. Rhino for Roar. Any Warframe with access to Voidstrike. Harrow potentially. As far as speeding up the process. That being said, if one is worried about staying alive, then sure, picking for survivability, Revenant, Rhino, Nezha, Protea, Wisp etc but also if you aren't worried about dying, then whoever. Most people I do Archon hunts with, seem to just pick whoever they want/like. They bother because they want to, if you don't, then you don't have to. Its similar to Eidolon Hunts, if you want to do it faster, there are ways, if you want to be a team player there are picks, if you value surviving their are picks for that too. 

Preamble out of the way, I am personally fond of Archon Hunts. Though, they are basically just tougher Lich/Sister Hunts, which I have done a lot of and know the ins and outs of as far as mechanics there. Generally speaking when people understand the machinations and systems well, their general satisfaction/reactions will be more positive. If the system seems obscure, irrational, unintuitive, then they can be reluctant, hesitant to engage. My familiarity with Lichs/Sisters passed on to Archons. I also personally don't mind that we are incentivised to using the Kuva Hek. Again, comparisons to Eidolon hunting, which has the meta of Sniper Rifles/Rubico Prime. 90 of everything else in Warframe, those two weapons are off meta and cumbersome to use as effectively as most other guns. They have a solid niche as boss killers though. 

As far as rankings/comparisons. Well I do like Eidolons, but I can kill Archons much faster, even faster solo, and its not Warframe dependent. I'd feel obliged to pick Trinity or Volt to make the Eidolon fight go faster, plus I have already done way more Eidolons than I will ever do Archons. Jackal 2.0 is fun, but might be too easy/fast (if you view this in the lens of "replacement ideas"). Exploiter I like, but might be too slow. I prefer Archons to Lephantis. 

[AegidiusF]

Le 04/01/2023 à 21:23, (XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA a dit :

In normal games the solution would be to buff boss health to a reasonable amount relative to the gear players have. 

I think the best solution would be to give the boss the same mechanics as the Jackal or the Ropalolyst (the most popular bosses in the game, according to the community survey last year : https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1325376-warframe-bosses-community-survey-results/).

Another possible solution is to give bosses a cap to the amount of PV that they can lose by second. It's not damage attenuation, you can still do a lot of damage, but it will introduce a minimum amount of time needed to kill a boss, no matter what kind of stuff you are using.

 

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

9 hours ago, (PSN)jaggerwanderer said:

I'm not sure why you aren't cheesing it considering how far along the game a player should be just to attempt an archon hunts.

Don’t really feel like farming a Kuva Hek. DE’s stubborn refusal to allow Scattered Justice on it ruined any interest I had in the weapon.

Also I haven’t been keeping up with the archon meta so IDK if that weapon is still an optimal choice for them.

[pwnSacrifice]

I don't like it. I understand why it's there, but it feels worse than other ways to mitigate damage on the bosses. It's in place because the archons are not at all designed with difficulty in mind, just the illusion of it. Damage attenuation allows them to design the fights around including the widest range of players they reasonably can. 

In my opinion, the fights are tremendously lenient. We have very high dps uptime, very little in the way of incoming damage, and one mechanic to deal with every 20 sec? So in part, the fights themselves lend to needing a damage sponge mechanic for them to live long enough to do anything. Because they are designed to get as many people in the door as possible, DE don't want to optimize them for the kind of damage that higher end tenno can do as the less optimized tenno would absolutely find it impossible. So, damage attenuation is there so we're essentially equalized (in theory). 

The thing that bothers me about it, is it's a failure to be creative, or to apply even this system correctly. It would not have been hard to do a "heath bar in a health bar" mechanic where basically, we have normal no-attenuation "shell" and maybe a toned-down attenuation "heart".  Or do more to limit dps uptime, like casting those abilities (which i think are all fine by the way) twice as often. Or Health gates + invunerability phases, not the most creative but it's widely used in the game (common game language) and gives the archons a bit of a "punch-back" moment like jackal. When they throw their hands up and go "We don't know what else to do" I'm bothered because there are a lot of things you can do.

All that being said, I still enjoy the missions themselves, Still do my weekly hunt and hope that they learn some lessons from this for when we kill pazuul (and you know we will)

[Numerounius]

8 hours ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

Do you specifically mean with Archon Hunts damage attenuation? Damage attenuation isn't exclusive to Archons, the term just became more frequently used in regards to them, lots of the game and games, involve damage attenuation, reductions, resistances etc Lephantis, Liches etc as in there are different types of damage attenuation. So in that sense, I personally prefer the Archon or Sister Damage attenuation over say, Lephnatis type. 

 

There were tons of complaints about the attenuation system for liches/sisters and then again for archons when it was first introduced and the damage floors were immediately figured out. The harsh damage floors weren't a thing which is the most common problem with attenuation until mechs and the arquebex could be used to delete liches, which is where most of the complaints stem from. 

 

Lephantis I think is actually alright for attenuation except only with its original intent of being a level 40 boss with interesting mechanics. The increased Health of Steel Path or sortie just turns that fight into a sponge fest because of the damage attenuation in which it wasn't originally designed for these gamemodes. I think people forget that Lephantis and Zealoid bosses were part of the Derelict that turned into Deimos.  

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

13 hours ago, Skoomaseller said:

I'm not sure why DE keeps thinking more eHP = HALO 2 LEGENDARY DIFFICULTY

ah I miss oldschool Halo 2 Legendary

rather than focus on making Bullet Sponges

on Legendary Enemies became Smarter

Elites that become jackie chan when I try to stick a grenade to them

rolling in and out of cover constantly

kills based on skills, not dps

 

man... DE keeps saying they don't want to focus on AI because we kill them too fast to notice it anyway.... I say that's a chicken+egg problem. Maybe if we had smarter mobs we wouldn't kill them so quick and actually would notice that they have AI....

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

I like it because I actually have to do some thinking depending on the weapons I bring. Openings for attacks and then backing down to reposition as attention resets, is a nice boss fight pace for me. Some of you guys weird me out because I would never want a short boss fight. If DE can solve the multishot issue, then I think the fights would be even better!

[Berzerkules]

I find it very counterintuitive that you take good weapons/builds and they just underperform because the stats you built for are very good under normal circumstances but a detriment to very specific enemies. What makes it worse is I don't think that it's explained anywhere in game, you have to read the wiki, be told by other player or keep up on patch notes. Then there is the problem of having to disengage from the fight to reset their adaptive damage reduction. 

It just feels bad all around. Good weapons suck for no reason, you don't know why unless you go out of your way to figure it out and the only way to deal with it is cheese strays or running from the boss for awhile. I just don't think that it makes for interesting or engaging boss fights. 

[Cody]

There will always be a way to cheese boss fights like this, i think we need more mechanics like environmental hazards or boss AOE abilities you have to dodge, similar to razorback fight but way more depth so the fights more fun, this games movement to me has been equally as fun as the gunplay and abilities. and since 2 of them seem to be subject to insane powercreep it seems like implementing more movement based mechanics would be the go-to. https://imgur.com/a/2OykacA

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

I wish Damage Attenuation was more Transparent

display an overlay on health bars. similar to the Overguard indicator, and have it deplete/regenerate as we attack. Clearly showing How Much Attenuation is currently active.

-this way instead of just wasting ammo, I know that I should take a break before shooting again.

 

[OfPowerOfWant]

I 100% despise it in principle and design.

I do not interact with it at all, liches are annoying, i just shelve the weapons and haven't gained interest in the shards

I happen to be building and training a multi dimensional killing machine specifically for the purpose of wiping anything i cross paths with from the face of existence in split seconds.

I consider it meddling from the gods, find it disrespectful of my time and think that it encourages figuring out ways to cheese it, further deepening the player vs dev feelings instead of PVE. 

[PollexMessier]

Imo what attenuation should do is look at the fire rate of a weapon and based on that say "this is how much damage that weapon should do to me per shot" and any damage above that should apply a little bit of a bonus, even if only 0.5% of the excess. Then apply additional modifiers like crit, status, weaknesses/resistences exct. There should NEVER be a circumstance where you give your weapon more damage and it does less than it did before.

I don't know what it's doing.... but it's not that.

One time I went and got a damage blessing to fight these. and it nearly halved my damage against them. That's some real backwards math being used. And this is noticeable with ability buffs as well. There's a point at which if you go past it your damage just plummets, and that point shouldn't exist.

[Berzerkules]

3 hours ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

I wish Damage Attenuation was more Transparent

display an overlay on health bars. similar to the Overguard indicator, and have it deplete/regenerate as we attack. Clearly showing How Much Attenuation is currently active.

-this way instead of just wasting ammo, I know that I should take a break before shooting again.

 

Totally, DE could have just made it a part of the fight like the boss was building shields and and taking less damage. Then if you leave it alone you notice their shields are slowing going down.

It could totally be a visible indicator where an aura intensifies around it when it is adapting to damage or whatever. Have random npc give you a tip like "looks like they're adapting, you might want to let them cool off for a bit". Now it feels like part of the boss fight and players know wtf is going on. I bet people would have a totally different opinion of the whole situation if it felt like that's just how this boss works instead of a hidden feature. 

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

13 hours ago, XHADgaming said:

There were tons of complaints about the attenuation system for liches/sisters and then again for archons when it was first introduced and the damage floors were immediately figured out. The harsh damage floors weren't a thing which is the most common problem with attenuation until mechs and the arquebex could be used to delete liches, which is where most of the complaints stem from. 

 

Lephantis I think is actually alright for attenuation except only with its original intent of being a level 40 boss with interesting mechanics. The increased Health of Steel Path or sortie just turns that fight into a sponge fest because of the damage attenuation in which it wasn't originally designed for these gamemodes. I think people forget that Lephantis and Zealoid bosses were part of the Derelict that turned into Deimos.  

 

I am aware of those complaints, and participated in the threads around them. I disagree a tiny bit about the nature of complaints though, as the damage attenuation hit a lot of builds they were meta for Liches prior to Sisters, where the Railjack finale was introduced, where they preemptively addressed Necramechs/Arquebex by introducing such mechanics. Now if you want to characterise that as where most complaints stemmed from, sure, I just remember a lot of people bothered by older tried and true techniques being less effective, as much as the hypothetical damage they envisioned doing with Necramechs. That update also conveniently brought us the Kuva Hek, many people adapted and went in to hunt many Sisters and Liches. 

 

Sure, a lot of this is subjective, I still enjoy Lephantis, relatively less, but still. Regardless Lephantis Damage Attenuation, its type does punish damage, your weapons can't go past certain amounts. Yeah its not as bad depending on the level, but as far as people having issues and addressing issues, that is a fight that has the mechanic some people think Archons do. 

Steel Path version of Lephantis can still be done relatively fast, but I am not personally knowledgable on how much flexibility, and variety could be had, since I know it can take a long time with a less optimised build, I go with a Titania build specifically designed for the Steel Path version of Lephantis.

Personally I'd rather do an Archon a week than Lephantis (Steel Path or otherwise) a week. Again, just my preference. I can run way more different Warframes/weapons, and get a less monotonous experience. 

[Orokin]

On 2023-01-04 at 3:23 PM, (XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA said:

But now we have this weird non intuitive damage mitigation thing where "too much" damage can actually be a detriment.

We don't know exactly how it works, so that is a hard thing to conclude. For every other attenuation that we know how it works, that is not true.

 

In fact you can one-shot archons, so we know that is not exactly true. 

 

I do not know of anyone showing a braton outperforming a laetum for example.

[Orokin]

On 2023-01-04 at 3:23 PM, (XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA said:

But now we have this weird non intuitive damage mitigation thing where "too much" damage can actually be a detriment.

We don't know exactly how it works, so that is a hard thing to conclude. For every other attenuation that we know how it works, that is not true.

 

In fact you can one-shot archons, so we know that is not exactly true. 

 

I do not know of anyone showing a braton outperforming a laetum for example.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

13 hours ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

I wish Damage Attenuation was more Transparent

display an overlay on health bars. similar to the Overguard indicator, and have it deplete/regenerate as we attack. Clearly showing How Much Attenuation is currently active.

-this way instead of just wasting ammo, I know that I should take a break before shooting again.

 

I love this idea! This would fit right along with the new armor indicators and it looks like the sentients already have a version that could work for the attenuation enemies.

[Kaggelos]

Not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but i'd suggest DA be a bit more obvious, and also incorporated into actual gameplay mechanics during the boss fight.

Example;

First few attacks deal almost normal amounts of damage, then, make it visible that DA activates, have us deal with (things that are already part of the boss fights) either other enemies, or an overguard, or those orbs the Owl has, at which point DA has come down, rinse an repeat. 

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

1 hour ago, Kaggelos said:

Not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but i'd suggest DA be a bit more obvious, and also incorporated into actual gameplay mechanics during the boss fight.

Example;

First few attacks deal almost normal amounts of damage, then, make it visible that DA activates, have us deal with (things that are already part of the boss fights) either other enemies, or an overguard, or those orbs the Owl has, at which point DA has come down, rinse an repeat. 

I this wouldn't be as necessary. Just an indicator would cover this and create better risk/reward opportunities such as: "oh great, the attenuation is at a low point but the mob/special ability is starting. What should we do?" This is a welcomed sense of choice for a boss fight.

In fact, the indicator could be a great opportunity for DE to correct the multishot issue. Now that we would know when to best attack, there's no need to have a way to circumvent the fight. 

[Hayrack]

Does Unairu Caustic strike armor strip works on Achons? If people are trying to force through their Alloy armor with rainbow builds then they will feel every bit of dmg attenuation.

[sunderthefirmament]

4 hours ago, Hayrack said:

Does Unairu Caustic strike armor strip works on Achons? If people are trying to force through their Alloy armor with rainbow builds then they will feel every bit of dmg attenuation.

No.  No abilities affect them.  And that's just... not how damage attenuation even works.  Though I don't blame you for any confusion you might have, as it's a murky system.

 

Their complete disregard for Warframe abilities is why tank frames are basically the only choice here, especially with Amar's new "dispeleport" ability.  I was enjoying killing him leisurely with Ivara, but now he just teleports me right next to him and dispels my buffs whenever I go invisible.  

[Hayrack]

43 minutes ago, sunderthefirmament said:

No.  No abilities affect them.  And that's just... not how damage attenuation even works.  Though I don't blame you for any confusion you might have, as it's a murky system.

 

Their complete disregard for Warframe abilities is why tank frames are basically the only choice here, especially with Amar's new "dispeleport" ability.  I was enjoying killing him leisurely with Ivara, but now he just teleports me right next to him and dispels my buffs whenever I go invisible.  

Caustic strike is... operator's ability. But -- wow. WOW at it not working.

I know what is damage attenuation, but is it somewhere documented?