For those who enjoyed it for fun, Why couldn't DE add Undertow as a hold option for tidal surge? like they did with bastille?

[(PSN)Hopper_Orouk]

I never liked Undertow before because it was the only thing Hydroid can do to kill high level enemies.

but now that he has a lot of tools at his disposal, why couldn't they add undertow in Tidal surge? it could've been very fitting, and would keep hydroid's ability to transform into water, now he only just turns into a small tidal wave, the rest aren't transformation abilities.

 

it seems a bit surprising, considering that they preserved every Vauban ability before rework.

instead of completely removing vortex for orbital strike, they added it to his bastille...making Vauban much more fun and versatile, having multiple ways to handle the game.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

only a small minority really liked that ability; for most people, being a puddle was incredibly boring...

 

[Stormandreas]

From what we heard on the recent devstream, we can summise they didn't keep undertow because Pablo doesn't like it really.

The main thing he said addressing it was "It's a meme", and that's pretty much it. No clear information, no actual reasoning, just "it's a meme" and "it's hard to maintain" (WTF DOES THAT EVEN MEAN!?)

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

Because the ability sucks feels like people are inhaling copium thinking it was any fun or useful.

They mostly preserved Vauban's abilities because they were salvageable.

[Stormandreas]

1 minute ago, (XBOX)C11H22O11 said:

Because the ability sucks feels like people are inhaling copium thinking it was any fun or useful.

They mostly preserved Vauban's abilities because they were salvageable.

Scaling damage, is very useful.

I loved it, my community loved it, many others loved it (as is apparent in teh feedback forums). Puddle would be amazing in hydroids new kit. All he'd need is a grouping ability and he's completely set

[quxier]

4 minutes ago, (XBOX)C11H22O11 said:

Because the ability sucks feels like people are inhaling copium thinking it was any fun or useful.

They mostly preserved Vauban's abilities because they were salvageable.

Being useful is of course debatable. However fun is subjective. It wasn't "wow, I have so much fun *screams*" but I've usually tried it with different abilities when new frames comes.

[Tiltskillet]

https://www.youtube.com/live/xvMNLZQnkvU?si=ErFfoqeMzfPwQCJo&t=2016

Starts around 33.35.  Basically he doesn't think it's worth the ongoing upkeep costs to maintain the function in some form.  I'd guess a fuller explanation might go something like "Not enough people care about it to justify continuing to maintain the old form in some way along with the new one, especially when it was maybe more prone to breaking things and unintended consequences than most."  But that's a lot of reading into things on my part, and not necessarily correct.

11 minutes ago, Stormandreas said:

No clear information, no actual reasoning, just "it's a meme" and "it's hard to maintain" (WTF DOES THAT EVEN MEAN!?)

There wasn't a lot of reasoning given, and certainly nothing that will satisfy someone who loved Undertow.   As far as what he meant by "maintain", I think it's simply that every feature in the game takes some maintenance to keep working and to bugfix, and can complicate updating and bugfixing other features, including the addition of new ones. So holding on to a feature that's been replaced is a decision that needs to be justified by value, popularity, compatibility with their vision for the game, and / or other reasons.

I'd love to hear from somebody like @Packetdancer or @Naroxas44 about this though, since I'm only speaking as a consumer of games, not as somebody who works in the industry.

[taiiat]

if i were to guess, the main reason really why it's removed is because it was basically an AFK Ability, less than that its usefulness was questionable.

[Rakosta_Kai]

For my part, I never saw a way DE would meaningfully buff Hydroid and leave Undertow intact as it, imo, was quite likely the strongest Warframe skill in the game.
A soft taunt, scaling damage, and an i-frame on demand of user determined length (short of the few abilities that could turn it off) creates a scenario where DE would have had to balance the frame around that one ability which is why it felt practically mandatory to use to me.
Put simply, I think that if you didn't like Undertow you weren't going to like Hydroid.

Given DE's penchant for not removing iconic skills though I honestly figured they'd have tried buffs that locked out the use of undertow as an option instead.

That can't have been an easy decision for DE and I know many Hydroid mains and fans aren't happy with the loss of the skill.

I like the new Hydroid a great deal but hate that other folks main got snarled up like that to appease the majority. That's happened to me a few times over the years in various games and it thoroughly sucks.   
 

[(XBOX)Hellsteeth30]

You wanted a rework, you got one.  Fun is not permitted.

[Tiltskillet]

19 minutes ago, taiiat said:

if i were to guess, the main reason really why it's removed is because it was basically an AFK Ability . . .

And consequently more prone to the kind of cheeseploits that trigger DE.

[Nekomian]

10 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

I'd love to hear from somebody like @Packetdancer or @Naroxas44 about this though, since I'm only speaking as a consumer of games, not as somebody who works in the industry.

The main reason I heard that undertow was scraped as a whole was that it doesn't fit the pacing of the game, since it forces the player to sit as a puddle and rely on external damage (or internal DoT ticks). There are reasonable uses for it I'm sure, but it was probably more efficient from a dev standpoint to just scrap the ability as a whole and make one that functions a lot simpler and is less restrictive to playstyles (straight buffs in a kit almost always helps).

It might seem like scrapping an already existing ability that had that effort and time put into it is wasteful, but consider it:

• Applied an invuln state to hydroid, which all damage types now need to respect
• Removed most parkour & other abilities from Hydroid in this state, and prevented energy regen
• Applied an "untargetable" effect if the wiki is correct, meaning enemy AI focus was deprioritized or removed from Hydroid (reading more, it looks like they just applied the "invisible" state to him, which makes sense)
• Captured enemies inside it, requiring the need to both cull the enemy model (including all of the effects it produces) and store the data associated with the enemies, and apply the "knockdown" state
• Treat the puddle object as a damage proxy, and distribute to all enemies inside (they seem to struggle with this, even in Zephyr's tornados too), with regard to keeping persistent status effects and debuff timers paused until enemies are no longer in Undertow, tracking each of them individually
• Calculate % damage that stacks while submerged, meaning max HP & individual timers per enemy per time submerged needs to be tracked to apply the damage growth per second
• Allow the player to target enemies and pull them in with a water tendril
• Track player movement / positional data in regards to velocity to account for energy drain (points per meters moved)
• Needs to respect cc-immune enemies or specific situations; the bugs section of the wiki shows some bosses (sargus ruk) were able to be submerged and could cause griefing, as well as downed bursas counting as alive since they're not a "corpse" from the game perspective, meaning lots of exceptions may need to be coded specifically to this skill as new content is added, adding technical debt due to its complexity

Keep in mind it also needs to do some of these in reverse, like know when to release enemies / free them up / re-enable all the players' disabled stuff, and also synergize with abilities like tidal surge (which tbf that one is just performing some velocity adjustments if the rest from undertow above is applied, since they'd get grouped in the puddle immediately anyways).

A lot of these foundations were probably used for something in the future like grendal's feast mechanic, but as a whole the ability itself has so many moving parts and points that changes could break it and they'd have to maintain and do upkeep on it constantly to account for new enemies, damage conditions, mods, etc. and it was likely deemed too much of an investment to maintain. That's not to say devs can't be ambitious and make things like this, but the game has evolved and changed so much from when this was first introduced that a lot of it likely does not account for or work with newer mechanics or features correctly and it seems needlessly complicated in comparison to some of the other skills we have.

From a technical perspective they could add it in as a hold mechanic for tidal surge (anything is possible given enough time and coding effort), but likely chose specifically not to because of the investment that would take and the considerations above.

[Psianide73]

I wonder if the banter in yesterday's Dev stream was a hint that removed powers might return as Helminth abilities?

[(XBOX)DShinShoryuken]

Same reason for the changes to Hydroid....vocal minors that did not know how to play the frame made newer players that had no idea how to play the frame complain the frame did not have any big EXPLODY type moves

Hydroid was about styling and wrecking with the know how if a pirate ninja. Yes, they could have given him his puddle as a hold button but DE (Pablo more than others) was terrified of the true power of Undertow- casting it at mission end would make Hydroid become a tiny frame. That terrified Pablo that tiny Hydroid would slip into his place at night and drown him....or so the legend goes

[Loza03]

Probably its trolling potential and encouraging of low-effort gameplay. Whilst I can't really say if either was the main appeal of Undertow, it's likely a reason why they decided it was more trouble than it was worth.

[Reitrix]

On 2023-10-28 at 8:20 AM, (PSN)Hopper_Orouk said:

I never liked Undertow before because it was the only thing Hydroid can do to kill high level enemies.

but now that he has a lot of tools at his disposal, why couldn't they add undertow in Tidal surge? it could've been very fitting, and would keep hydroid's ability to transform into water, now he only just turns into a small tidal wave, the rest aren't transformation abilities.

 

it seems a bit surprising, considering that they preserved every Vauban ability before rework.

instead of completely removing vortex for orbital strike, they added it to his bastille...making Vauban much more fun and versatile, having multiple ways to handle the game.

My entire playstyle with Hydroid was based on that puddle, Genuinely sad to see it gone. 

And because I know full well what people expect the puddle to be used for, Thats not how i utilized it. 
Pretty sure I've posted in one of the Hydroid reworks about it before, But i basically used it in a similar way to Valkyr popping Hysteria. 
Blasting through the hordes until my health was threatened, slide into the water for a moment to let the augment heal up and trigger shield recharge, then jump out of the puddle into a heavy slam to continue the carnage. 

Hydroid was basically unkillable even though i only ever spent a few seconds in puddle form at any given time. Occasionally i used the tentacle to pull a high value target into range for the subsuquent slam but mostly i used it as a moment of recovery and easy AoE knockdown whenever i got in trouble. 

I would absolutely be on board with Pablo returning the puddle to us as a Hold toggle for Tidal Surge. 
However, I would have all of the secondary aspects to the ability removed. 
All it should do is transform him into a puddle, be immune to damage and let him pick a target to yeet with the tentacle. 
Then have the old healing augment effect return, attached to the the Tidal Surge augment to bring back that old squad support option he used to have. 

If you really wanted to, You could even have it synergize more with his new kit by having it apply Corrosive stacks to anything standing on top of the puddle. 
That way you could Surge a pile of mobs, terminate the movement by turning into a puddle and beginning to apply Corrosive stacks then pop up, Plunder the stacks and Barrage them. 
It'd actually be great pirate flavor too, effectively being an ambush. 

But eh, I can dream. I like new Hydroid as well. Just miss playing in puddles.  

[Skoomaseller]

On 2023-10-28 at 5:48 AM, (XBOX)C11H22O11 said:

Because the ability sucks feels like people are inhaling copium thinking it was any fun or useful.

They mostly preserved Vauban's abilities because they were salvageable.

it is actually useful though, I mean people meme about it "lole he turn into puddle" but it had its uses

any unarmored enemy dies in a few seconds due to the scaling damage, and hydroid is invulnerable in it, giving time to recharge shields or escape death or whatever. 

with his new passive and plunder, there was really no real reason to wipe it off the table entirely. would've synergized supremely well with his new kit. even better if undertow was changed to do scaling corrosive damage instead of impact.

Edited October 30, 2023 by Skoomaseller

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

On 2023-10-27 at 5:30 PM, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

only a small minority really liked that ability; for most people, being a puddle was incredibly boring...

 

Ok and why did they have to remove it? There was literally no reason to remove it. That's like saying that de should have removed grendel's ball.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

11 hours ago, Reitrix said:

My entire playstyle with Hydroid was based on that puddle, Genuinely sad to see it gone. 

And because I know full well what people expect the puddle to be used for, Thats not how i utilized it. 
Pretty sure I've posted in one of the Hydroid reworks about it before, But i basically used it in a similar way to Valkyr popping Hysteria. 
Blasting through the hordes until my health was threatened, slide into the water for a moment to let the augment heal up and trigger shield recharge, then jump out of the puddle into a heavy slam to continue the carnage. 

Hydroid was basically unkillable even though i only ever spent a few seconds in puddle form at any given time. Occasionally i used the tentacle to pull a high value target into range for the subsuquent slam but mostly i used it as a moment of recovery and easy AoE knockdown whenever i got in trouble. 

I would absolutely be on board with Pablo returning the puddle to us as a Hold toggle for Tidal Surge. 
However, I would have all of the secondary aspects to the ability removed. 
All it should do is transform him into a puddle, be immune to damage and let him pick a target to yeet with the tentacle. 
Then have the old healing augment effect return, attached to the the Tidal Surge augment to bring back that old squad support option he used to have. 

If you really wanted to, You could even have it synergize more with his new kit by having it apply Corrosive stacks to anything standing on top of the puddle. 
That way you could Surge a pile of mobs, terminate the movement by turning into a puddle and beginning to apply Corrosive stacks then pop up, Plunder the stacks and Barrage them. 
It'd actually be great pirate flavor too, effectively being an ambush. 

But eh, I can dream. I like new Hydroid as well. Just miss playing in puddles.  

It's funny because it's like Limbo or Nyx without emptying your energy pool or making your entire team hate you. 

There was an actual reason to use it, even if you could just use operator mode... 

 

But at least we still have Wisp 2.

[Dunkelheit]

Devs: Here is one of the best reworks of Warframe ever. We need to get rid of puddle, because we had problems with it gametech wise. We really tried to do our best, we feel there is not much left to complain about.

Players: Hold my beer....

[Tsukinoki]

They probably removed it because it was largely used as an AFK tool.

Just puddle, sit there practically forever with no effort and no need to do anything as you're 100% invulnerable and killing enemies....and alternatively slowing down survivals because you're eating all the spawns.

 

DE doesn't want abilities where you just cast them and can sit in them literally forever with no downsides and zero risk.  Especially ones that make you invincible and kill things for you with zero player input.

[TARINunit9]

On 2023-10-27 at 2:32 PM, Stormandreas said:

"it's a meme" and "it's hard to maintain" (WTF DOES THAT EVEN MEAN!?)

"it's a meme"  (in this context "memetically terrible") means it's so notoriously terrible players see no genuine value in the ability on its own, and its lack of value has become so infamous that its very name has become a punchline or otherwise a byword to indicate terribleness. It also often means players have taken to ironically pretending it has value for laughs. 

"Hard to maintain" is much more literal: it's difficult to keep the ability both active and useful. There is some ambiguity whether he means difficult for the player to actively maintain in a firefight, or difficult for the devs to maintain in the game without it being too glitchy and useless

Edited October 29, 2023 by TARINunit9

[Psianide73]

Hydroid is a much better frame now, and part of the reason is losing the puddle.

It was a non-ability, the Warframe equivalent of music stopping on a packed dancefloor (ex-dj, it's the best analogy I could think of). It brought gameplay to a screeching halt.

 

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

I think the power of nostalgia would be the only (not good) reason to keep it. The New kit is great and shouldn't have a, now, weird ability on the mix.

[(XBOX)zThulsaDoomz]

Maybe a Vauban comparison wasn't the best to make...