Can DE fix overguard already? And Gas damage too?

[trst]

1 hour ago, Traumtulpe said:

You are talking out of your ass. DE literally buffed Mesmer skin to include invincibility periods because eximus units were "making the ability useless" due to not getting stunned by it and thus depleting the charges fast. It of course still absorbed the specified amount of hits, it just didn't stun them to prevent quick charge loss. They said this straight up.

CC frames are affected far worse - their stuns don't work either,, but they absorb zero hits. Overguard makes their abilities 100% useless. Only difference here is, DE needed to sell Revenant Prime at the time (they were really pushing him hard, they even gave him an exclusive 50% ability strength mod - which most other warframes would love to be able to use).

Eximus effectively worked as a nullifier only vs Revenant due to how Mesmer works. Between that and his Prime release of course it was something worth addressing specifically.

 

As for "CC frames" it doesn't affect them because "CC frames" haven't been reliant on their CC for years now with the plethora of options on offer. For squishy frames you can either nuke the room, use DR mods/subsumed abilities, rely on shield gating, Vazarin's protective dash, or some combination of all or parts of these options.

Sure you can't solely rely on CC anymore but that's something you could only do by intentionally omitting all other options and intentionally using bad weapon builds. While also being the absolutely least efficient option to do any content with.

[Traumtulpe]

19 minutes ago, trst said:

Eximus effectively worked as a nullifier only vs Revenant due to how Mesmer works. Between that and his Prime release of course it was something worth addressing specifically.

 

As for "CC frames" it doesn't affect them

That is horsemanure. Mesmer Skin didn't stun eximus because of overguard, it still did exactly what it said on the tin: Absorb a number of hits. But because it didn't stun exminus units, DE instead made Revenant invulnerable - specifically and explicitly to compensate for eximus units no longer getting stunned.

Well guess what, CC abilities also no longer stun eximus. And warframes who's defense is CC - just as Revenant's defense is Mesmer Skin - did not get any invulnerability. Why? Because money. It's that simple.

1/2 of Revenant's ability stops working: Oh no, this will lose us money. Quick make him invulnerable!

100% of many other warframe abilitys stop working: Working as intended!

[trst]

1 hour ago, Traumtulpe said:

That is horsemanure. Mesmer Skin didn't stun eximus because of overguard, it still did exactly what it said on the tin: Absorb a number of hits. But because it didn't stun exminus units, DE instead made Revenant invulnerable - specifically and explicitly to compensate for eximus units no longer getting stunned.

Well guess what, CC abilities also no longer stun eximus. And warframes who's defense is CC - just as Revenant's defense is Mesmer Skin - did not get any invulnerability. Why? Because money. It's that simple.

1/2 of Revenant's ability stops working: Oh no, this will lose us money. Quick make him invulnerable!

100% of many other warframe abilitys stop working: Working as intended!

Except even if it was doing what it was supposed to do one overguarded eximus effectively disabled the ability entirely as if they were a nullifier. It was the same as if Nyx was unable to cast Chaos because one enemy with overguard is in range, Mesa's Shatter Shield turning off if an Eximus walked into the stun range, or Eximus always one-shotting Rhino's Iron Skin. And being an issue that's very specific to Mesmer Skin that alone justified the change regardless of his Prime release.

Simply put: other frames with CC didn't need specific changes because overguard didn't disable their abilities vs other enemies like it did to Mesmer Skin.

Edited July 21, 2023 by trst

[Traumtulpe]

21 minutes ago, trst said:

Except even if it was doing what it was supposed to do one overguarded eximus effectively disabled the ability entirely as if they were a nullifier. It was the same as if Nyx was unable to cast Chaos because one enemy with overguard is in range, Mesa's Shatter Shield turning off if an Eximus walked into the stun range, or Eximus always one-shotting Rhino's Iron Skin. And being an issue that's very specific to Mesmer Skin that alone justified the change regardless of his Prime release.

Simply put: other frames with CC didn't need specific changes because overguard didn't disable their abilities vs other enemies like it did to Mesmer Skin.

Again, this is utter nonsense. Mesmer Skin typically has >18 charges (you can get a lot more!), meaning Revenant was perfectly immune to 18 shots of an eximus unit before he got buffed. Any CC frame in the game is long dead getting shot 18 times by an eximus.

So by your own logic, acting as if eximus units simply "dispelled" Mesmer Skin instantly, these very same eximus units would "dispel" the life out of any CC frame instantly. You contradict yourself very, very clearly. Hypocrisy 101.

Edited July 21, 2023 by Traumtulpe

[Silligoose]

On 2023-07-19 at 1:15 AM, Tiltskillet said:

And DE even uses these strategies in some instances.  Bosses get reduced CC duration with repeat applications; a few abilities like Bastille and Tornado apply a slow to targets immune to their main CC.

I do recall Pablo saying they looked into decreased duration and effectiveness, but that it didn't make enough difference.   I can see some truth in that, but I feel they didn't look hard enough or are leaving some key parts of the story out.

The sad part is what you touch on: there is a precedent in the game! Overall the mechanics put in place to mitigate cc, even before Overguard, is pretty poor as a whole and quite inconsistent: Ensnare can incapacitate Demolishers, but Demolishers give the (slowed) middle finger to Avalanche, Rhino Stomp and Bastille. So Khora's 2 maintains the ability to incapacitate, but various frames' 4's can't maintain their mechanic to incapacitate at all? Poor balance and bad design. Magus Lockdown, which is essentially is extremely cheap to cast given Operator energy economy, works on Demolishers, so anyone can cc Demolishers essentially free in the same way, but make sure cc frames have their abilities, like, ironically, Tether Coil, be completely ineffective. More poor balance and bad design. That's not even mentioning Magus Lockdown not being negated by something like a Demolisher's nullifying pulse, whilst other abilities are. No, arbitrarily deciding certain cc-abilities simply shouldn't work against enemies such as Demolishers, Acolytes etc is simply the result of poor decision making and bad design.

I'm not all negative - there are glimpses of hope: Someone at DE at some stage put some thought into cc-mitigation that would address the power associated without completely negating the option, as seen with Ensnare's interaction with Demolishers: We've got initial cc duration reduction. Ok, good. We've got cc-duration reduction due to repeated use, discouraging mindless spam via a cc-adaptation mechanic. Good. The reduction is % based, leading to duration builds still having value. Good. With Demolishers specifically, the nullifying pulse even encourages timing of the ability and ensures an upper hard cap. Annoying, but good within the context of Demoslishers being a rare, specialized enemy that has the primary goal of getting somewhere. We have mechanics in which hard-cc is converted to soft cc. A precedent that could be looked at in combinaiton with cc duration reduction mechanics. Tweaking the mechanics and combining them for Eximus (or indeed other enemies) can result in a system that address the OP nature of cc, while ensuring it still has value.

I followed DE's discussions regarding Overguard in last year, but I don't recall them stating they looked into decreased duration and effectiveness, especially not in the sense of testing it to any decent extent. I don't listen to everything, so I may have missed it, but the closest thing to that is them saying they looked into how often Overguard grants cc-immunity, as well as them tested Overguard without cc immunity and essentially Overguard's impact went essentially unnoticed in their testing. In the video above linked, they also mention into looking into options such as having Overgaurd take damage from cc, or having Eximus only in higher levels of play. Neither idea is good at all.

I agree with you in that if they actually did test decreased duration and effectiveness iterations, they somehow didn't test it well enough, or they are leaving out crucial parts of the story. There is no way that implementing something like an initial duration reduction of 50 - 80% essentially has no impact and there is no way combining that with cc-adaptation has essentially no impact, unless the testing is done poorly, such as being done in an environment where enemies are getting one-shot with massive AoE weapons.

[Turboameeba]

I absolutely agree with Gas needing something to even hope to be relevant again. This game is getting increasingly more, and more unpopulated irrelevant, outdated systems. Nightmare missions, Kuva Siphons, Syndicate missions.. All the bugs and UI issues.. Soon Circuit is about to start withering away, after people have all the incarnons from there.. Digital Extremes doing extremely poor job about doing something about the sepiling up issues, will eventually cause the downfall of this game as well. Players will at some point have enough. This game could easily have another 10 years ahead of it, but at this rate we are lucky to have even couple. Something absolutely needs to be done to these piling up issues.. But we have asked for this, FOR YEARS.. Yet nothing happens.. So I dont really expect that to be the case now either. Lets enjoy it while it lasts..

[Traumtulpe]

34 minutes ago, Turboameeba said:

Something absolutely needs to be done to these piling up issues.. But we have asked for this, FOR YEARS.. Yet nothing happens..

Exactly this. The bugs and issues keep piling up, but DE just moves on to the next hype. "Oh we have no time to fix these bugs and rework these broken systems, we're too busy making a new open world with 17 different species of cactuses for you to collect (which will come with even more bugs we'll never fix! And we'll bring some old bugs we actually did fix for a change back too, yay!). Also you'll be able to raise Tamagotchis in Warframe, isn't that great?"

"Also we have no money for deciated servers (we're making good profit though!), we can't be bothered to use the test servers or pay people to playtest our patches either! Yay!"

"And don't forget to buy Soulframe when it comes out since we're kinda done with Warframe! ;D"

Edited July 21, 2023 by Traumtulpe

[AegidiusF]

il y a 31 minutes, Silligoose a dit :

'm not all negative - there are glimpses of hope: Someone at DE at some stage put some thought into cc-mitigation that would address the power associated without completely negating the option, as seen with Ensnare's interaction with Demolishers: We've got initial cc duration reduction. Ok, good. We've got cc-duration reduction due to repeated use, discouraging mindless spam via a cc-adaptation mechanic. Good. The reduction is % based, leading to duration builds still having value. Good. With Demolishers specifically, the nullifying pulse even encourages timing of the ability and ensures an upper hard cap. Annoying, but good within the context of Demoslishers being a rare, specialized enemy that has the primary goal of getting somewhere. We have mechanics in which hard-cc is converted to soft cc. A precedent that could be looked at in combinaiton with cc duration reduction mechanics. Tweaking the mechanics and combining them for Eximus (or indeed other enemies) can result in a system that address the OP nature of cc, while ensuring it still has value.

I totally agree with you.

There are also some CC that have some "special" interaction with overguarded enemies : Gyre 2nd, Zephyr 4th and Vauban 4th will slow down OG enemies instead of totally CCing them, working a bit like Cold procs. Their efficiency is reduced, but not negated, and they are still a bit useful to fight Eximus.

[trst]

42 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Again, this is utter nonsense. Mesmer Skin typically has >18 charges (you can get a lot more!), meaning Revenant was perfectly immune to 18 shots of an eximus unit before he got buffed. Any CC frame in the game is long dead getting shot 18 times by an eximus.

So by your own logic, acting as if eximus units simply "dispelled" Mesmer Skin instantly, these very same eximus units would "dispel" the life out of any CC frame instantly. You contradict yourself very, very clearly. Hypocrisy 101.

Any Eximus with automatic weapons (nearly every one that isn't a melee unit) effectively disabled it instantly given their fire rates. But that's not the point, the point is that the whole mechanic uniquely affected Mesmer Skin unlike any other ability.

Again the interactions between Mesmer or any CC ability would only be the same if the presence of an Eximus prevented the ability from working on other enemies.

[Silligoose]

On 2023-07-19 at 3:30 AM, trst said:

You'd be correct in a vacuum, but given the reality of CC being able to indefinitely disable enemies it makes sense to take extreme measures to manage extreme mechanics. And the inability to CC some enemies in a mission is irrelevant regarding frame durability when every frame has access to survivability mechanics outside their base stats and abilities.

As for alternatives to outright immunity reduced effectiveness doesn't matter when we'd still be able to manage an indefinite uptime on the abilities. Adaptive immunity doesn't do anything without a considerable durability buff as Eximus still die too quickly. And AI improvements don't work as there'd be no meaningful decision an AI could make vs abilities that cover entire rooms and their very short life expectancies; running into a room and firing at the nearest target is the best decision they can make.

 

The only problem with the entire thing is that CC immunity came several years too late. But that doesn't excuse the potential design problems CC creates.

The real solution would be entire mechanic overhauls but now we're talking about a full game rework.

The extreme measure used to address extreme mechanics are overboard, unnecessary and needlessly decreases depth.

• Had the extreme mechanic been excessive damage from a weapon, is a good solution to simply make certain, fairly often encountered enemies in all missions immune to damage from that weapon? No. The mechanic of damage is not the issue. It being excessive is.
• Had the extreme mechanic been excessive durability due to stats/ability, is a good solution to simply make certain, fairly often encountered enemies in all missions one-shot regardless said stats/ability? No. The mechanic of durability is not the issue. It being excessive, is.
• The extreme mechanic of excessive cc is an issue. Is a good solution to simply make certain, fairly often encountered enemies in all missions immune to c? No. The mechanic of cc is not the issue. It being excessive is.

When there are issues stemming from a mechanic being excessive are cuases for imbalances, then the excessive nature of the mechanic needs to be addressed. I believe it to usually be best for the mechanic to be addressed directly (ie nerf the mechanic to directly by reducing damage output of the OP weapon), but sometimes, for variety in enemy encounters, addressing the mechanic indirectly (ie give an enemy more health so it lives longer against the OP weapon) is a better calling.

The inability to cc Eximus is not irrelevant due to other survivability mechanics available. CC-focused frames generally give up either damage or durability in their innate kits. It is (generally) part of the trade-of for balance. Negating that part of the kit is impactful and relevant and at the very least DE acknowledges that, even if their response sadly boils down to "oh well it is too hard to do this well.".

You are identifying issues regarding the extreme nature of both our cc-capabilities and damage potential, but you don't seem to want to address the issue. If the problem is, as you identify, indefinite uptime on cc, then that is to be addressed. Don't negate cc completely, but rather address the issue of indefinite uptime. If the issue is even with adaptive-cc the enemies get blown up too fast, address the cc duration and address enemy durability. AI can used to enable enemies to evade cc ie if they see their allies getting sucked into a Vortex at a certain point, then don't run past that point. You are right though - AI doesn't work if there is no meaningful decision that can be made, so how about the developer address mechanics and AI to enable enemies to make those meaningful decisions.

There is no full rework required to address cc. Cc's power can be curbed directly (via stat changes to power, duration, max range, max effected enemies etc) and indirectly by way of enemy mechanics that reduce (but don't need to completely negate) cc. This doesn't even need to be done at all levels of play, so that those who don't really care, or quite enjoy, imbalances in their favour, can continue to enjoy it.

[Silligoose]

1 hour ago, (NSW)AegisFifi said:

totally agree with you.

There are also some CC that have some "special" interaction with overguarded enemies : Gyre 2nd, Zephyr 4th and Vauban 4th will slow down OG enemies instead of totally CCing them, working a bit like Cold procs. Their efficiency is reduced, but not negated, and they are still a bit useful to fight Eximus.

I agree they are still useful and I believe there is a place where turning hard-cc into soft-cc has merit under certain conditions, but I believe repeated use of said hard-cc should be one of the conditions - first address the duration via cc-adaptation, then address intensity. I've actually suggested systems that incorporates the idea. Some of it floats around on the forums, some were deleted along with the thread, instead of addressing a bad apple or two's post. That's just how it goes with these forums I guess.

Edit: I can also see an argument for very, very select cases in which certain forms of hard-cc gets downgraded to a form of soft-cc or another form of hard-cc, for very specialized enemies eg a boss can't get ragdolled, but may be stunned in place, or DE comes up with a support enemy unit that is called in to help when enemies are getting hard-cc'd eg someone's playing Khora and enemies are welcomed to the Strangledome very often, so the enemy faction calls for an ally that can actually pull their allies out of the Strangledome. This could mean that they get caught up in the Strangledome, but they don't get ragdolled, enabling them to save their allies, or they get pulled in at a slowed rate. Something similar for enemies in Bastille/Vortex. There are a lot of creative things DE could explore.

Edited July 21, 2023 by Silligoose

[Traumtulpe]

1 hour ago, trst said:

Any Eximus with automatic weapons (nearly every one that isn't a melee unit) effectively disabled it instantly given their fire rates. But that's not the point, the point is that the whole mechanic uniquely affected Mesmer Skin unlike any other ability.

Again the interactions between Mesmer or any CC ability would only be the same if the presence of an Eximus prevented the ability from working on other enemies.

No this is simply not true. At all. In any way, shape, or form.

Enemies that have been stunned by Mesmer Skin do not get unstunned. You complain that Revenant's ability got turned off after getting shot 18 plus times. Any CC frame is long dead before having gotten shot 18 times. At which point all of their abilities are tuned off permanently. Because their are dead.

Look, I'll make this really easy for you - so you have no excuse:

Revenant is playing along, stunning enemies being untouchable. Oh no, an eximus showed up! The eximus rapidly shoots Revenant! 6 shots in rapid succession! Revenant is still immune! 6 more shots in rapid succession! Revenant is still immune! 6 more shots in rapid succession! Revenant still hasn't taken any damage! 6 more shots in rapid succession! Revenant's shield gating saved him! Revenant is still alive, quickly cast Mesmer Skin again!

CC frame is playing along, stunning enemies being untouchable. Oh no, an eximus showed up! The eximus rapidly shoots CC frame! 6 shots in rapid succession! CC frames shield gating saved it! 6 more shots in rapid succession! Oh, you are dead!

Edited July 21, 2023 by Traumtulpe

[trst]

28 minutes ago, Silligoose said:

The extreme measure used to address extreme mechanics are overboard, unnecessary and needlessly decreases depth.

• Had the extreme mechanic been excessive damage from a weapon, is a good solution to simply make certain, fairly often encountered enemies in all missions immune to damage from that weapon? No. The mechanic of damage is not the issue. It being excessive is.
• Had the extreme mechanic been excessive durability due to stats/ability, is a good solution to simply make certain, fairly often encountered enemies in all missions one-shot regardless said stats/ability? No. The mechanic of durability is not the issue. It being excessive, is.
• The extreme mechanic of excessive cc is an issue. Is a good solution to simply make certain, fairly often encountered enemies in all missions immune to c? No. The mechanic of cc is not the issue. It being excessive is.

When there are issues stemming from a mechanic being excessive are cuases for imbalances, then the excessive nature of the mechanic needs to be addressed. I believe it to usually be best for the mechanic to be addressed directly (ie nerf the mechanic to directly by reducing damage output of the OP weapon), but sometimes, for variety in enemy encounters, addressing the mechanic indirectly (ie give an enemy more health so it lives longer against the OP weapon) is a better calling.

The inability to cc Eximus is not irrelevant due to other survivability mechanics available. CC-focused frames generally give up either damage or durability in their innate kits. It is (generally) part of the trade-of for balance. Negating that part of the kit is impactful and relevant and at the very least DE acknowledges that, even if their response sadly boils down to "oh well it is too hard to do this well.".

You are identifying issues regarding the extreme nature of both our cc-capabilities and damage potential, but you don't seem to want to address the issue. If the problem is, as you identify, indefinite uptime on cc, then that is to be addressed. Don't negate cc completely, but rather address the issue of indefinite uptime. If the issue is even with adaptive-cc the enemies get blown up too fast, address the cc duration and address enemy durability. AI can used to enable enemies to evade cc ie if they see their allies getting sucked into a Vortex at a certain point, then don't run past that point. You are right though - AI doesn't work if there is no meaningful decision that can be made, so how about the developer address mechanics and AI to enable enemies to make those meaningful decisions.

There is no full rework required to address cc. Cc's power can be curbed directly (via stat changes to power, duration, max range, max effected enemies etc) and indirectly by way of enemy mechanics that reduce (but don't need to completely negate) cc. This doesn't even need to be done at all levels of play, so that those who don't really care, or quite enjoy, imbalances in their favour, can continue to enjoy it.

Except the major problem with addressing the issue itself is now the community and DE's own approach at a "power fantasy".

I mean just look at any nerf targeted at players and you'll see the problem. The community freaks out every time a nerf is directed at them (even when it has a near net zero impact on gameplay) and most often to the point that DE pulls back on the change. Or DE's own approach in not fully committing to nerfs to the point of actually solving the problem, eventual powercreep additions that're far stronger than pre-nerfed gear, or their continued nerfs/removals of enemy mechanics.

Rebalancing player mechanics simply isn't a valid approach for DE. At least not without them willing to take some major risks while also clashing with their own ten years of design. And even if they did want to take that risk just how many times could the game survive massive backlashes and continually angering/alienating the playerbase they curated?

 

5 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

No this is simply not true. At all. In any way, shape, or form.

Enemies that have been stunned by Mesmer Skin do not get unstunned. You complain that Revenant's ability got turned off after getting shot 18 plus times. Any CC frame is long dead before having gotten shot 18 times. At which point all of their abilities are tuned off permanently. Because their are dead.

Mesmer Skin can't stun enemies and stops protecting Revenant when an Eximus dissolves all of its remaining charges. All other abilities still affect every non-overguarded enemy in range regardless of how many there are with overguard in said range. A nearby Eximus doesn't make Chaos have a shorter duration, prevent Ensnare from pulling in more enemies, nor do they lessen the effectiveness of Iron Skin/Warding Halo.

Also it's irrelevant how much a bare CC frame survives vs Revenant. Revenant is designed to specifically face tank damage, CC frames are not. And Hek the steady powercreep of survivability is mostly due to squishy frames struggling to survive on their own even back when CC immunities were far more rare. CC has simply never been a reliable method of survivability except for when squads of CC frames was the meta. Thus more enemies with limited immunity isn't even changing the status of such frames.

[Traumtulpe]

5 minutes ago, trst said:

Mesmer Skin can't stun enemies and stops protecting Revenant when an Eximus dissolves all of its remaining charges.

How slowly do I have to say this? You have to get shot, a lot, for all charges to get dissolved. A CC frame getting shot even half as much is stone cold dead, disabling all of it's abilities and weapons. It's not hard, is it? A child should be able to understand this.

[Silligoose]

9 hours ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

Does Eximus CC immunity really reduce squishy frames' survivability to the depth you're speaking though? Not even close, IMO. In fact, one could argue that those very few squishy CC frames....wait, which squishy frames are we even talking about? I honestly cannot think of a frame that is so fragile that they can't target the few only moving enemies and take them out. If a player cannot take on 1-3 moving enemies then that player really needs to improve. 

Second, you guys keep talking about a.i. improvements as if you don't even understand what you're looking at when you shoot. The enemies look for cover, gather near nullifiers, strafe, toss well placed grenades try to disarm you, etc. Do you even understand you are a lightning fast moving monster with insane powers and wide ranging weapons that can wipe an entire map in an instant. I swear, that has ALWAYS been the weakest talking point guys come up with. Good luck to the enemies trying to "dodge" a map wide Frost avalanche, Mag's pull, Zephyr's tornados, a massive freakin bursting glass wall, a meteor shower that targets you, etc. 😂

Finally, you mentioned eroding gameplay depth. Dude, it's the opposite. That's exactly why you're complaining about it. Because of the Eximus units, we now have to look for strong auras, listen for ability cues and learn their weaknesses and patterns to counter. Enemies taking less damage? CC them, hunt down the shield sharing dude and bust his head open...THEN destroy everybody. Fire blast dude acting up? Roll through it and nail him. This is increased depth: more thinking, better timing needs, smarter shooting, rethinking loadouts, reserving heavy attacks and less "E" spamming. So, what is this madness you speak of?

Yes, it does really reduce the depth of the game and while you seem to focus on times when there are only one or two Eximus or enemies with Overguard, you should account for the fact that there can be more than just two and, in some missions, that number extends well past double digits at the same time. You should account for players at lower levels of progression that do not have access to the myriad of durability options players at higher levels of play have and can't overcome the innate discrepancy in durability of different frames. You should account for that massive discrepancy in innate relative frame durability when considering different frames and how much easier it is for a tank to deal with high level encouraged content (up to rot C on SP) than a squishy frame due to cc-immunity mechanics via Overguard and how that pushes players into choosing tanks, or pushes them into either broken OP durability options (eg Protective Sling), or a heavy emphasis on durability for squishy frames, effectively turning them into tanks anyway, because their utility for survivability is completely negated against some of the toughest, hardest hitting enemies in the mission. You should account for the overall balance in survivability and how this change affects it - though they don't seem interested in actually addressing this issue, DE at least acknowledges it. I have no issue with cc's upper limits of power being addressed but make no mistake: complete negation of various forms of cc via Overguard has led to greater imbalances in frame survivability and reduced depth overall to too great an extent, as it reduces the variety in impactful, viable choices to too great an extent.

I believe it is good for the game to have priority targets. It is good that DE implemented mechanics that allow for Eximus to be priority targets. As you highlight, it increases the need for focus and thus player engagement, but complete cc-immunity to the extent Overguard grants was not needed to attain that goal and while it may be one of the ways to encourage tactical adaptability, it decreases the amount of viable loadouts and tactics against Overguard enemies to a greater extent, leading to a loss of overall tactical depth. The same can be said for Arbitration drones: The mechanics at play does result in Arbitration drones becoming priority targets, but again it comes at the cost tactical depth to a large extent, because there are very few tactically viable options in dealing with that mob. That extreme is not needed and it boils down to bad design and a shortcut taken in lieu of proper balance.

To highlight how ridiculous cc-immunity is, we can replace "cc" with another mechanic that leads to players not prioritizing targets, such as durability: Some frames simply are too durable by way of health, armour and DR abilities to give a damn about Eximus. Would it be a good design choice to let the Eximus completely ignore the mechanics that grant durability by way of health, amour and DR abilities? Just as with cc-immunity mechanics that lead to them being more dangerous, this will make them priority targets as well. Just as players try to claim cc-frames should just rely on other survivability tools, one can argue tanks can just rely on other survivability tools as well. Instead of cc or durability, we can take another mechanic: AoE damage. Due to massive AoE damage options, Eximus aren't really that much of a priority target. Would it be a good design choice for Eximus to completely ignore AoE damage, so as to force players to actually target them? This notion that complete negation of a rather foundational mechanic against an enemy that is found in pretty much every mission is short-sighted and absolutely ridiculous.

Finally, even though we disagree on the matters above, I actually think, much like you it seems, Warframe's AI gets a bad rap. There are some questionable moments for sure, but as you highlight, enemies do look for cover. They do adapt to players by throwing grenades if players are a little too stagnant. They do use formations. That is all well and good, but I believe there is room for improvement and I believe improved AI can help curb some of the power cc has: Enemies may not be able to dodge Mag's pull, or Frost's Avalanche, but they can see when their allies get lifted by Bastille, get yoinked by Vortex, get stopped by Cataclysm, get plucked by Strangledome. No need for them all to rush to their deaths - let them take note of the perimeter and adapt - it may mean decreased accuracy for some, but at least they aren't idiotically dying. DE can go a little further, by creating enemies more adept at dealing with cc as mentioned above: DE comes up with a support enemy unit that is called in to help when enemies are getting hard-cc'd often eg someone's playing Khora and enemies are welcomed to the Strangledome very often, so the enemy faction calls for an ally that can actually pull their allies out of the Strangledome. This could mean that they get caught up in the Strangledome, but they don't get ragdolled, enabling them to save their allies, or they get pulled in at a slowed rate. Something similar for enemies in Bastille/Vortex. There are a lot of creative things DE could explore.

Finally, when you speak of abilities or weapons with large ranges that nuke maps - that's a stats issue, not an AI issue and it should be dealt with accordingly, even if only in an optional mode which would be aimed more at players that get bored with how easy the game gets at lategame due to poor balancing. As for Warframe moving fast... some enemies can as well. They could make more of an appearance in the optional mode too.

 

[Psianide73]

2 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

No this is simply not true. At all. In any way, shape, or form.

Enemies that have been stunned by Mesmer Skin do not get unstunned. You complain that Revenant's ability got turned off after getting shot 18 plus times. Any CC frame is long dead before having gotten shot 18 times. At which point all of their abilities are tuned off permanently. Because their are dead.

Look, I'll make this really easy for you - so you have no excuse:

Revenant is playing along, stunning enemies being untouchable. Oh no, an eximus showed up! The eximus rapidly shoots Revenant! 6 shots in rapid succession! Revenant is still immune! 6 more shots in rapid succession! Revenant is still immune! 6 more shots in rapid succession! Revenant still hasn't taken any damage! 6 more shots in rapid succession! Revenant's shield gating saved him! Revenant is still alive, quickly cast Mesmer Skin again!

CC frame is playing along, stunning enemies being untouchable. Oh no, an eximus showed up! The eximus rapidly shoots CC frame! 6 shots in rapid succession! CC frames shield gating saved it! 6 more shots in rapid succession! Oh, you are dead!

At some point, Mesmer Skin was changed so that each "bullet" removed one stack of skin. That's fine with regular units that are stunned by the hit, but when Eximus units were given cc invulnerability, and had rapid-fire weapons, all stacks were stripped in an instant. This effectively broke Mesmer Skin Vs Eximus. It needed to be constantly refreshed.

That's why it was changed.

Edited July 21, 2023 by Psianide73

[Traumtulpe]

1 hour ago, Psianide73 said:

At some point, Mesmer Skin was changed so that each "bullet" removed one stack of skin. That's fine with regular units that are stunned by the hit, but when Eximus units were given cc invulnerability, and had rapid-fire weapons, all stacks were stripped in an instant. This effectively broke Mesmer Skin Vs Eximus. It needed to be constantly refreshed.

That's why it was changed.

Yes exactly. Mesmer Skins function was greatly diminished by eximus units (especially heavy gunners), but it wasn't entirely negated. There are three issues here; 1) DE overbuffed Mesmer Skin to protect their profits (at the time Revenant Prime's Prime Access was fresh for sale), 2) DE entirely ignored the diminished viability of CC frames whose survivability beyond shield gate is now functionally zero, and 3) the person I was talking to pretending that Revenant was uniquely far more affected by overguard than CC frames - when the exact opposite is the case.

2) and 3) are self-explanatory and -evident, so I'll explain 1) a bit further; Why do I consider Mesmer Skin overbuffed?

Well put simply, a lot of people are calling shield gating overpowered, despite it's destinct weaknesses, high energy cost, and the high engagement nessecary to use it. Mesmer Skin is functionally around 2 dozen shield gates (depending on build, 2 dozen equals 24 by the way) with none of the drawbacks of actual shield gating. No high engagement, just one button press and you're good for anywhere between 24 seconds and several minutes (depending on incoming fire). No status effects can get through. Toxin damage can't get through. The energy cost is vastly lower. And while Mesmer Skin is up, your actual shield gate recovers without you doing anything as a bonus.

Mesmer Skin is completely perfect 100% invincibility at the press of a button. With infinite duration. In fact it only needs one stat; Ability strength, meaning there isn't even an opportunity cost - you can put Roar on Revenant and have perfect invincibility plus perfect damage.

And then DE gave Revenant another 50% ability strength mod nobody else can use (50% ability strength without downside is a mod every single warframe wanting any strength at all would use). Oh and it also gives the entire team 5 shield gates because why not.

So to recap, DE at the very same time both A) reduced the survivability of a vast number of warframes to "shield gate or death", and B) made one warframe (that they wanted to sell at that time) the most perfectly invincible warframe ever, making Rhino look like a twink.

Edited July 21, 2023 by Traumtulpe

[Psianide73]

38 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Yes exactly. Mesmer Skins function was greatly diminished by eximus units (especially heavy gunners), but it wasn't entirely negated. There are three issues here; 1) DE overbuffed Mesmer Skin to protect their profits (at the time Revenant Prime's Prime Access was fresh for sale), 2) DE entirely ignored the diminished viability of CC frames whose survivability beyond shield gate is now functionally zero, and 3) the person I was talking to pretending that Revenant was uniquely far more affected by overguard than CC frames - when the exact opposite is the case.

2) and 3) are self-explanatory and -evident, so I'll explain 1) a bit further; Why do I consider Mesmer Skin overbuffed?

Well put simply, a lot of people are calling shield gating overpowered, despite it's destinct weaknesses, high energy cost, and the high engagement nessecary to use it. Mesmer Skin is functionally around 2 dozen shield gates (depending on build, 2 dozen equals 24 by the way) with none of the drawbacks of actual shield gating. No high engagement, just one button press and you're good for anywhere between 24 seconds and several minutes (depending on incoming fire). No status effects can get through. Toxin damage can't get through. The energy cost is vastly lower. And while Mesmer Skin is up, your actual shield gate recovers without you doing anything as a bonus.

Mesmer Skin is completely perfect 100% invincibility at the press of a button. With infinite duration. In fact it only needs one stat; Ability strength, meaning there isn't even an opportunity cost - you can put Roar on Revenant and have perfect invincibility plus perfect damage.

And then DE gave Revenant another 50% ability strength mod nobody else can use (50% ability strength without downside is a mod every single warframe wanting any strength at all would use). Oh and it also gives the entire team 5 shield gates because why not.

So to recap, DE at the very same time both A) reduced the survivability of a vast number of warframes to "shield gate or death", and B) made one warframe (that they wanted to sell at that time) the most perfectly invincible warframe ever, making Rhino look like a twink.

Indeed and agreed.

Revenant is my "lazy frame". He took over from Inaros in that dubious role.

I enjoy diversity of play, so it's a shame what CC has become with Eximus.

Diminished duration or something might have been better than flat-out nullification of (most/many) CC abilities.

Edited July 21, 2023 by Psianide73

[AegidiusF]

Il y a 1 heure, Traumtulpe a dit :

Well put simply, a lot of people are calling shield gating overpowered, despite it's destinct weaknesses, high energy cost, and the high engagement nessecary to use it. Mesmer Skin is functionally around 2 dozen shield gates (depending on build, 2 dozen equals 24 by the way) with none of the drawbacks of actual shield gating. No high engagement, just one button press and you're good for anywhere between 24 seconds and several minutes (depending on incoming fire). No status effects can get through. Toxin damage can't get through. The energy cost is vastly lower. And while Mesmer Skin is up, your actual shield gate recovers without you doing anything as a bonus.

Perfect explanation. I totally agree. Shield gating needs at least a specific build, but even an unmodded Revenant can survive better with just Mesmer Skin.

Last year, we had many threads about Mesmer Skin. I've opened one, using an euphemism, saying that Mesmer Skin as "a bit" unbalanced :

 

Edited July 21, 2023 by (NSW)AegisFifi

[Traumtulpe]

41 minutes ago, (NSW)AegisFifi said:

[...]

I wanted to give your thread a like, but it already had one from back then. ;D

Though I have an even better suggestion: 1) Revert Mesmer Skin to how it was before the buff (no invincibility). 2) In addition to the sleep, it also applies 1 second of -100% accuracy, which only bosses are immune to.

This would elegantly solve the eximus issue while at the same time restoring Mesmer Skin to it's original function.

[nslay]

On 2023-07-18 at 4:19 PM, (XBOX)Rez090 said:

No it didn't 

Did so. It's inconsistent, but it seems a single damage instance that can ordinarily one-shot an enemy without Overguard can cause the enemy to become alert when Overguard first depletes before it finally kills off the enemy completely.

It's most prominent with stealth kills with ranged weapons, but can uncommonly happen with melee stealth finishers too. You can use a finisher on an unalerted Eximus, successfully kill it in one shot and still lose your 5x affinity multiplier as a result... In other words, the game counts it as killing an alerted enemy even though - and without using any special ability or augment - you were given the prompt to stealth finish the enemy under completely normal stealth gameplay conditions.

Edited July 21, 2023 by nslay
Somehow got double posted?

[Tiltskillet]

13 minutes ago, nslay said:

Did so. It's inconsistent, but it seems a single damage instance that can ordinarily one-shot an enemy without Overguard can cause the enemy to become alert when Overguard first depletes before it finally kills off the enemy completely.

It's most prominent with stealth kills with ranged weapons, but can uncommonly happen with melee stealth finishers too. You can use a finisher on an unalerted Eximus, successfully kill it in one shot and still lose your 5x affinity multiplier as a result... In other words, the game counts it as killing an alerted enemy even though - and without using any special ability or augment - you were given the prompt to stealth finish the enemy under completely normal stealth gameplay conditions.

I think both of these are due to sequencing and damage resolution, multishot in the case of ranged attacks, stealth finisher combos in the case of melee.   In both instances, if the first projectile/move isn't enough to 1HK the target, it'll be alerted and the stealth affinity bonus lost.  Even if it's subsequently killed by the rest of that attack's damage payload.

Overguard did raise eximus EHP, so we do need higher single instance damage versus a given level eximus to overcome the issue.  But mechanically the issue has been around since I started playing, and probably long before that.

edit: I retested this just recently, prompted by different conversation about Incarnon charging. 

On 2023-06-12 at 12:15 PM, Tiltskillet said:

... I also checked the stealth affinity thing earlier, 0 multi Daikyu vs  ridiculous ~60 multi Twin Rogga.  Both one shot everything, but the Daikyu had no trouble getting and building the affinity buff, and the Rogga was pretty hopeless at it.  Even though it has about 4x the damage up close.

Edited July 21, 2023 by Tiltskillet

[nslay]

7 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

I think both of these are due to sequencing and damage resolution, multishot in the case of ranged attacks, stealth finisher combos in the case of melee.   In both instances, if the first projectile/move isn't enough to 1HK the target, it'll be alerted and the stealth affinity bonus lost.  Even if it's subsequently killed by the rest of that attack's damage payload.

Overguard did raise eximus EHP, so we do need higher single instance damage versus a given level eximus to overcome the issue.  But mechanically the issue has been around since I started playing, and probably long before that.

edit: I retested this just recently, prompted by different conversation about Incarnon charging. 

Shotguns and similar are definitely gimped at stealth in general due to the multishot, but even a modless single projectile weapon like a bow can break stealth affinity multiplier when one-shotting an Eximus... and yes, the damage is well above Eximus EHP... did you even try to reproduce this? Do you not know what it means to one-shot an Eximus? That means the damage done is well above its EHP.

Yes, Stealth with Overguard is actually broken. And it's very annoying!

[Tiltskillet]

20 minutes ago, nslay said:

Do you not know what it means to one-shot an Eximus?

Yes.  And sorry, I left out a line at the end which is that I use stealth finishers a lot and don't have trouble maintaining stealth affinity bonuses versus eximus...but I'm using weapons built with finisher damage in mind.

I just ran a very  quick test and confirmed this again against 4 different eximus/overguard targets.   In each case I added a stack to the affinity bonus.   When I have more time later I'll do the opposite: confirm that a poor finisher weapon has trouble with this. 

[nslay]

2 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

Yes.  And sorry, I left out a line at the end which is that I use stealth finishers a lot and don't have trouble maintaining stealth affinity bonuses versus eximus...but I'm using weapons built with finisher damage in mind.

I just ran a very  quick test and confirmed this again against 4 different eximus/overguard targets.   In each case I added a stack to the affinity bonus.   When I have more time later I'll do the opposite: confirm that a poor finisher weapon has trouble with this. 

The majority of my MR30 tour was spent using Loki in Sedna Spy (not even SP) to max a lot of the melee weapons though stealth finishers. All of those weapons were built with, among others, Finisher mods and they had no problem one-shotting everything, including Eximus! But uncommonly, even stealth finishing an Eximus would cause me to lose the affinity multiplier... my hypothesis for this is as written above. 

But what do I know? I can't even understand EHP and one shotting or using finisher mods like you. I am just some chump idiot maxing a lot of the melee weapons though stealth finishers in the game over hundreds of hours. I am just imagining Eximus stealth kills uniquely breaking stealth affinity multiplier.