Humble feedback on health tanking and maybe a way to let it keep up with gating all the way

[kerozen666]

35 minutes ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Eh... I don't see this as an issue at all - I mean if we're comparing it to shield gate "abuse" then it's exactly the same. It just provides reaction time and avoids one-shots - that's the whole point really, it's not about being immortal it's about not being one-shot, I don't see how that's "useless". The only other way I can think of to take hp & armor into super high content would be to just provide more health - instead of hp-gates give 50k hp - same philosophy (avoid one shots) just not as fool-proof because some big damage might happen.

Like you can make these same arguments you're making about shields - ''you can't regen shields while invul, or if you can it would be abused.' People don't die as soon as the shield gate timer expires though - they react.

what makes shield gate work is the fact shields don't instantly regen by themselves, ther eis a delay. Health on the other hand, regen start as soon as you are missing hp. if health gating would work the exact same as shield gating, just slapping rejuvenation on for that 4 hp regen would make you invincible, as at that .3 second mark, you'd already have 1 hp, this allowing for gating to work again, repeating the cycle. but if you prevent that by putting a hp threshold. then you need to make sure every frame can get those hp back by themselves. Sadly, health gating just isn't possible, it's why i went straight at the source of the problem. After all, you can't be one shot if you can build yourself to sustain those hits. it's why i looked at capping, and also why i'm also strongly supporting a mod that would give scaling damage attanuation to player (with probably a dactivation of gating, to make sure it's made to tank, not to gate)

[Redrigoth]

3 hours ago, kerozen666 said:

what makes shield gate work is the fact shields don't instantly regen by themselves, ther eis a delay. Health on the other hand, regen start as soon as you are missing hp. if health gating would work the exact same as shield gating, just slapping rejuvenation on for that 4 hp regen would make you invincible, as at that .3 second mark, you'd already have 1 hp, this allowing for gating to work again, repeating the cycle. but if you prevent that by putting a hp threshold. then you need to make sure every frame can get those hp back by themselves. Sadly, health gating just isn't possible, it's why i went straight at the source of the problem. After all, you can't be one shot if you can build yourself to sustain those hits. it's why i looked at capping, and also why i'm also strongly supporting a mod that would give scaling damage attanuation to player (with probably a dactivation of gating, to make sure it's made to tank, not to gate)

Maybe health gating mechanic can work like "you cant lose more than 700 hp per hit from bullets and melee attacks and 1200 from eximus abilities". That way only big health frames can get one gate and inaros can get multiple gates. You get 1 second invincibility when a gate happens

[kerozen666]

8 hours ago, Redrigoth said:

Maybe health gating mechanic can work like "you cant lose more than 700 hp per hit from bullets and melee attacks and 1200 from eximus abilities". That way only big health frames can get one gate and inaros can get multiple gates. You get 1 second invincibility when a gate happens

that basicly doing damage scaling cap but the boring wa. at one point you just end up with lancers doing the same damage as bombards. 

[CrownOfShadows]

17 hours ago, kerozen666 said:

what makes shield gate work is the fact shields don't instantly regen by themselves, ther eis a delay. Health on the other hand, regen start as soon as you are missing hp. if health gating would work the exact same as shield gating, just slapping rejuvenation on for that 4 hp regen would make you invincible, as at that .3 second mark, you'd already have 1 hp, this allowing for gating to work again, repeating the cycle. but if you prevent that by putting a hp threshold. then you need to make sure every frame can get those hp back by themselves. Sadly, health gating just isn't possible, it's why i went straight at the source of the problem. After all, you can't be one shot if you can build yourself to sustain those hits. it's why i looked at capping, and also why i'm also strongly supporting a mod that would give scaling damage attanuation to player (with probably a dactivation of gating, to make sure it's made to tank, not to gate)

I see what you're saying but I don't like the idea of attenuation as a solution. It seems like that erases the point of levels and scaling in the first place. It would be like effectively capping enemy levels at 250 or something (depending on the exact math ofc). This is the whole reason DE uses attenuation in the reverse situation - they're trying to erase OUR scaling to even the playing field on our side for the enemy. If we do that in the opposite direction it would erase enemy scaling and level the playing field. See what I mean? - it would be the same as just not having scaling as a mechanic at all.

[kerozen666]

18 hours ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Eh... I don't see this as an issue at all - I mean if we're comparing it to shield gate "abuse" then it's exactly the same. It just provides reaction time and avoids one-shots - that's the whole point really, it's not about being immortal it's about not being one-shot, I don't see how that's "useless". The only other way I can think of to take hp & armor into super high content would be to just provide more health - instead of hp-gates give 50k hp - same philosophy (avoid one shots) just not as fool-proof because some big damage might happen.

Like you can make these same arguments you're making about shields - ''you can't regen shields while invul, or if you can it would be abused.' People don't die as soon as the shield gate timer expires though - they react.

it's not the same. health can be regained without doing anything. Health regen start as soon as you are missing health. shield, there is a delay. it's why shield gating works and is now endorsed by the devs, because you need to take action when your shield brake. health gating? only rejuvenation and you're good to go. that's what i refer as abuse. it is that simple.

[CrownOfShadows]

11 hours ago, kerozen666 said:

it's not the same. health can be regained without doing anything. Health regen start as soon as you are missing health. shield, there is a delay. it's why shield gating works and is now endorsed by the devs, because you need to take action when your shield brake. health gating? only rejuvenation and you're good to go. that's what i refer as abuse. it is that simple.

Sure, so change it so that regen doesn't start until after the hp gate delay is over? Or better yet (because Wisp/Oberon/Trinity/Gloom exist and are a way bigger issue than the Aura) put the hp gates on a cooldown, so they only trigger every so often. Or if hp bars or gray health were used you could make it so only one bar could be healed. Lots of ways to fix a technical quibble like this.

Edited November 10, 2023 by CrownOfShadows

[kerozen666]

6 hours ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Sure, so change it so that regen doesn't start until after the hp gate delay is over? Or better yet (because Wisp/Oberon/Trinity/Gloom exist and are a way bigger issue than the Aura) put the hp gates on a cooldown, so they only trigger every so often. Or if hp bars or gray health were used you could make it so only one bar could be healed. Lots of ways to fix a technical quibble like this.

if you put a cooldown on the death prevention mechanic, you make it useless when it is needed the most. like, if you just get grazed after it deactivate you just die. Multiple hp bars and gray health would also just be overcomplicated to implement, as you only open up more spot that could be exploited, abused and bite you in the ass later. Tackling the issue at the source is just simpler and way better at futureproofing it

[CrownOfShadows]

1 hour ago, kerozen666 said:

if you put a cooldown on the death prevention mechanic, you make it useless when it is needed the most. like, if you just get grazed after it deactivate you just die. Multiple hp bars and gray health would also just be overcomplicated to implement, as you only open up more spot that could be exploited, abused and bite you in the ass later. Tackling the issue at the source is just simpler and way better at futureproofing it

Again we circle back to reaction. The idea is to give reaction time, the same as it is with shield gating. There are multiple ways of getting out of danger and back into the fight afterwards: shields (don't forget these health tanks DO still have shields AND shield gates), operator, overgaurd, a ton of helminth options and various abilities, arcanes, companions.

Um, multiple hp bars is not complicated. We don't need multiple PHDs to get that working. It's hard to find an older game mechanic than multiple hp bars in all of gaming history. These arguments have sounds but how exactly would it be exploited? How exactly would it be abused? How exactly would it bite you in the ass later? These sound like hand wave dismissals. I mean no matter what mechanic you introduce it always has a risk of being exploited. Unless you have a specific case in mind this argument feels empty.

Making warframes invincible is a much worse idea than building some one-shot safety into health imo, if that's what you mean by tackling it at the source. There needs to be some danger. In fact, I think we need a lot more danger in general, but we're talking mostly about level-capping in this thread, so we need to find ways of making tanks feel semi-immortal up to the top of the scale while still keeping the danger just as real and simultaneously not making regular content laughable. While on the surface attenuation seems like a good choice for this I don't think it is in reality because it's just erasing all the danger and equalizing it. Thus, once you get your frame above the threshold, you'd be invincible in any content. While that might sound like what you want (the same as shield gating), I really don't think it's healthy for the same reason I didn't think shield-gating abuse is/was healthy. Right now tanking feels good because you know your limits. As soon as you become invincible, it will stop feeling good to tank.

Ideally, I think it should be really, really hard to level cap with either shield gating or tanking, but possible. Currently it's relatively simple to shield gate to cap, and completely impossible to tank (unless you're cheesing somehow). Even the best tanks really start to struggle around Level 300 in my experience. So personally I'd find ways of first equalizing shields and tanks as much as possible. If the best tanks get one shot around 300, all shield builds should also start to tap out around then. If shields can cake walk to 9999, tanks should too, but cake walking isn't healthy.

For this reason I think it might be better to leave tanking as it is and instead emaciate shield builds until they hit the same thresholds, but for whatever reason DE hates that idea.

I'd be really interested to know what percent of the community actually goes to level cap (not in the circuit), and how often. I feel like it's probably less than 1% and that they only do it very rarely, and this is probably why DE doesn't care much about equalizing - they have to design for the masses. In which case... well, if you look at it from that perspective, maybe things are in a good spot xD

But whatever the ceiling is, it should be the same for both play styles imo.

[CrownOfShadows]

On 2023-11-05 at 1:33 PM, Drasiel said:

This might seem like a crazy idea but I actually wonder if might be viable to change Health only frames to take their damage in an "over time" format. So you get hit for the damage but instead of being applied instantly it drains your health at a certain percentage until all damage has been taken. it would give you the chance to react when you take damage that would have one shot you.

Hmmm the more I think about this the more I like it. I don't see any down-sides really.

[kerozen666]

12 minutes ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Again we circle back to reaction. The idea is to give reaction time, the same as it is with shield gating. There are multiple ways of getting out of danger and back into the fight afterwards: shields (don't forget these health tanks DO still have shields AND shield gates), operator, overgaurd, a ton of helminth options and various abilities, arcanes, companions.

Um, multiple hp bars is not complicated. We don't need multiple PHDs to get that working. It's hard to find an older game mechanic than multiple hp bars in all of gaming history. These arguments have sounds but how exactly would it be exploited? How exactly would it be abused? How exactly would it bite you in the ass later? These sound like hand wave dismissals. I mean no matter what mechanic you introduce it always has a risk of being exploited. Unless you have a specific case in mind this argument feels empty.

Making warframes invincible is a much worse idea than building some one-shot safety into health imo, if that's what you mean by tackling it at the source. There needs to be some danger. In fact, I think we need a lot more danger in general, but we're talking mostly about level-capping in this thread, so we need to find ways of making tanks feel semi-immortal up to the top of the scale while still keeping the danger just as real and simultaneously not making regular content laughable. While on the surface attenuation seems like a good choice for this I don't think it is in reality because it's just erasing all the danger and equalizing it. Thus, once you get your frame above the threshold, you'd be invincible in any content. While that might sound like what you want (the same as shield gating), I really don't think it's healthy for the same reason I didn't think shield-gating abuse is/was healthy. Right now tanking feels good because you know your limits. As soon as you become invincible, it will stop feeling good to tank.

Ideally, I think it should be really, really hard to level cap with either shield gating or tanking, but possible. Currently it's relatively simple to shield gate to cap, and completely impossible to tank (unless you're cheesing somehow). Even the best tanks really start to struggle around Level 300 in my experience. So personally I'd find ways of first equalizing shields and tanks as much as possible. If the best tanks get one shot around 300, all shield builds should also start to tap out around then. If shields can cake walk to 9999, tanks should too, but cake walking isn't healthy.

For this reason I think it might be better to leave tanking as it is and instead emaciate shield builds until they hit the same thresholds, but for whatever reason DE hates that idea.

I'd be really interested to know what percent of the community actually goes to level cap (not in the circuit), and how often. I feel like it's probably less than 1% and that they only do it very rarely, and this is probably why DE doesn't care much about equalizing - they have to design for the masses. In which case... well, if you look at it from that perspective, maybe things are in a good spot xD

But whatever the ceiling is, it should be the same for both play styles imo.

it's easy to say "make multiple bars and bring a one shot prevention", but the question still is, how exactly will you make that death prevention work? and how exactly would you implement it so that it doesn't turn into gating spam on crack? this is what i mean by abuse. Gating build  are acceptable because they are the warframe equivalent of a dodge/parry build. you sacrifice convenient survivability for complete damage mitigation, as long as you have the skills. Health gating would just let you redo that, but without the actual effort, as you would need to completly redisign how healing work and is accessed just to make it on par, and you'd be also removing any reason to build for hp. 

so again, how would you implement that gate? Prevent regen when it's active? you'd be making regen worthless as you can't rely on it while you need it the most. Health threshold? now you have to make sure everyone can have access to chunky healing without complex investment, otherwise people will just stay on shield since it's the same result but with more options. make the threshold proportional to avoid needing that much health? congrats, now people equip the health dragon key. put a cooldown on it? now it's just delaying the inevitable by a few seconds. How?

and that's why i look at adressing the damage intake instead, because you don't have to overthing and alter the flow of your game when you can siply take some numbers you already know and play around them until satified, and you already knowe your dos and don'ts. You feel like your average higher effort tank build start sweating at lvl 300? put your cap around that or set your attenuation to stay around those damage values.

[Fred_Avant_2019]

Game's not balanced around level cap.

Something as frail as Banshee can take on base steel path with health tanking. Hit vitality, hit Arcane Guardian, hit Adaptation and surprise surprise you can take a couple hits before dying.

The only content where it would seem reasonable to find level 2k SP enemies would be in steel path circuit, as enemy level rise up really fast there, and it's still going to take you a solid half hour to get there.

 

Now let's not take the piss here, health tanking isn't in such a great spot compared to other available tactics, obviously, but it still kind of works for the most part.

It's just that, for a space ninja themed game, the ninja stealthy part is kinda thrown out the window in today's meta. Not to mention commonly runned mission types not being stealthy at all.

[Drasiel]

On 2023-11-10 at 5:39 PM, Fred_Avant_2019 said:

Game's not balanced around level cap.

Something as frail as Banshee can take on base steel path with health tanking. Hit vitality, hit Arcane Guardian, hit Adaptation and surprise surprise you can take a couple hits before dying.

The only content where it would seem reasonable to find level 2k SP enemies would be in steel path circuit, as enemy level rise up really fast there, and it's still going to take you a solid half hour to get there.

 

Now let's not take the piss here, health tanking isn't in such a great spot compared to other available tactics, obviously, but it still kind of works for the most part.

It's just that, for a space ninja themed game, the ninja stealthy part is kinda thrown out the window in today's meta. Not to mention commonly runned mission types not being stealthy at all.

the lack of stealth has been a thing since day 1, or at least since open beta started. I've never really understood why they went with ninja, when I'm pretty sure they meant assassin.

Actually all archon missions spawn a very common enemy that can one shot every pure health tank. The narmer common unit's glowy energy attack has hit people for over 100k damage in a single shot. You only survive it if you have some form of gating ability or shield. Yeah it can be avoided for the most part, but it also can be cast behind you and outside the range of it's audio cue, so "dodge-able" mileage may vary.