Improve Enemies

[CrownOfShadows]

Just a general design rule of thumb I think DE should seriously consider:

Every time you buff warframes, buff enemies too.

[Nekomian]

They already scale up to level 9999 and can one-shot frames easily if you're not careful (or don't have shields / immunity), I'm a bit confused what this rule of thumb would solve. Striking a balance of power is important to make a game feel fun yet not too easy, but generic wide-sweeping statements or rules don't tend to accomplish that well.

It might help to give examples of what you mean, and areas you think could be improved. As an example, we could make enemies deal x1000 more damage, but it wouldn't matter if their AI can't hit players or if the enemies die so quickly they can't deal damage. Just saying "buff enemies too" is too vague IMO.

[quxier]

37 minutes ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Just a general design rule of thumb I think DE should seriously consider:

Every time you buff warframes, buff enemies too.

So, frame does +10 more damage, enemy can take +10 more damage. We have not changed anything.

[(NSW)Greybones]

 

Don’t quit your day job

[Voltage]

2 hours ago, quxier said:

So, frame does +10 more damage, enemy can take +10 more damage. We have not changed anything.

That's not necessarily what OP could be asking. The post is vague and comments like yours rightfully spring up, but I do think DE should consider creating situations where the power ceiling that has just been raised gets challenged in some way when that ceiling is raised. That's easier said than done, but let's be honest, it's pretty rare that we see enemies added or changed that really change how we approach missions or test our loadouts a little more. We have bits and pieces like Necramechs in Iso Vaults, or these new Murmur enemies coming, but those are always watered down later to lower the barrier to entry for new players who DE feels need an accelerated experience to catch up to everyone else.

It does question the treadmill of new gear if you're farming like 200 duplicates of new Melee Arcanes and reapply Forma for an Exilus mod when you're still just mostly one-shotting the same lower level trash mobs that you always do.

Edited November 26, 2023 by Voltage

[quxier]

1 hour ago, Voltage said:

3 hours ago, quxier said:

So, frame does +10 more damage, enemy can take +10 more damage. We have not changed anything.

That's not necessarily what OP could be asking. The post is vague and comments like yours rightfully spring up, but I do think DE should consider creating situations where the power ceiling that has just been raised gets challenged in some way when that ceiling is raised. That's easier said than done, but let's be honest, it's pretty rare that we see enemies added or changed that really change how we approach missions or test our loadouts a little more. We have bits and pieces like Necramechs in Iso Vaults, or these new Murmur enemies coming, but those are always watered down later to lower the barrier to entry for new players who DE feels need an accelerated experience to catch up to everyone else.

They have done it with Archon and I don't like it, at all. It's not like it creates any challenge. You just waste time to grind some "+X damage" stuff, optimize your build (or pick meta) and do same old stuff. Those are called Bullet sponges. I've not tried Archons with new damage authentications but previous version were horrible.

1 hour ago, Voltage said:

It does question the treadmill of new gear if you're farming like 200 duplicates of new Melee Arcanes and reapply Forma for an Exilus mod when you're still just mostly one-shotting the same lower level trash mobs that you always do.

That's a lot of enemies are just same old with just more stats. Same goes for our gear.

DE focusing on power (Eximus - just use more power, different levels - more damage etc, frame doing automatic damage)) and banning interactions (frame lack synergies and/or identity(aka boring abilities), cannot cast other abilities when using other abilities etc) then we will have boring and unoriginal stuffs (look at 2 new melee - 2handed nikana and grand Scythe, They just look fancy).

[CrownOfShadows]

To clarify, I mean instead of just blindly giving new suites of abilities and powers to warframes without even touching enemies is not satisfying. I'm not specifically asking to calculate the damage increase and give enemies corresponding EHP to balance it, or the reverse - although damage and EHP are big factors in how we interact with enemies and should definitely be considered.

Create a new warframe? Nice. Why not create a new enemy type at the same time? Create a new system like archon shards? Nice. Why not create a few new shiny enemy abilities at the same time? It feels like warframes go through about 50 power evolutions while enemies remain completely static. How many years did it take to get the new eximus, for example.

Now, there have been new enemies it's true. Some really good ones like the ones that came with the Zariman and may be coming with Whispers - unfortunately, these are content island enemies, and once we're done with the content island, well, when are we going to encounter them again? I'm not saying that we need to erode the identity of the content islands either by moving all their enemy types into main content, although there is some potential for that (infested for example, all those creepy crawlies from Deimos - not a single one of them shows up in infested missions).

What I am saying is that when we get like 10 new warframes, 10 new helminths out of that, an archon shard system, overguard, and archon shard system 2.0, melee arcanes, other melee buffs, etc etc and you take all that and jump into regular content with the same old grineer and the same old corpus and the same old infested... it just doesn't feel great. It would be much nicer if our enemies evolved with us, because evolving enemies = evolving gameplay. Gameplay is very static. This is 50% due to a lack of game mode originality and 50% due to a lack of enemy development. So this suggestion is more about variety than it is necessarily about power. It's a suggestion to spend a little creative dev time on the enemies we actually play against in our daily content.

4 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Don’t quit your day job

Hey Greybones. Good to see you're still as cordial and intellectual as always. I'll put you in for the Forum Bully of the Year awards later - which i guess is your day job, which you should quit.

[(NSW)Greybones]

36 minutes ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Hey Greybones. Good to see you're still as cordial and intellectual as always. I'll put you in for the Forum Bully of the Year awards later - which i guess is your day job, which you should quit.

Oh sorry, let me clarify my vague, almost inane statement:

It’s not as simple as “When you raise Warframe stats, you raise enemy stats to keep up”. It’s part of the picture, but due to how the game is designed around the various builds we can make from the modless baseline, ways to combine builds into loadouts, and levels of skill (which plenty of players build certain ways to trivialise the game because they need the help and the game gives them that chance to still play), all combined with the oft-overlook ingredient of what content is being done, just boosting some stats isn’t going to be sufficient.

Plenty of times even, players pride themselves on just how trivialised the game can be made even when they don’t need the leg up, which puts them very much at odds with any sort of attempts to make the game harder. Typically though they’ve got the sense to identify what they’re building for and when they would want to use it versus when the build wears out its welcome for doing what it was designed to do in the content it’s taken to

Edited November 26, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones

[CrownOfShadows]

3 hours ago, Voltage said:

That's easier said than done, but let's be honest, it's pretty rare that we see enemies added or changed that really change how we approach missions or test our loadouts a little more.

It does question the treadmill of new gear if you're farming like 200 duplicates of new Melee Arcanes and reapply Forma for an Exilus mod when you're still just mostly one-shotting the same lower level trash mobs that you always do.

Exactly

3 hours ago, Voltage said:

We have bits and pieces like Necramechs in Iso Vaults, or these new Murmur enemies coming, but those are always watered down later to lower the barrier to entry for new players who DE feels need an accelerated experience to catch up to everyone else.

This is true too - new content is almost exclusively made for the widest possible audience, but I will give DE props for tailoring some of their recent SP versions of things like they have been doing recently - getting a special version of missions or enemies just for being in the SP is a better reward to me than the actual rewards (SE), it's like a little nod to veterans from DE, and I'd appreciate more of that even.

[Voltage]

11 hours ago, quxier said:

They have done it with Archon and I don't like it, at all. It's not like it creates any challenge. You just waste time to grind some "+X damage" stuff, optimize your build (or pick meta) and do same old stuff. Those are called Bullet sponges. I've not tried Archons with new damage authentications but previous version were horrible.

That's a lot of enemies are just same old with just more stats. Same goes for our gear.

DE focusing on power (Eximus - just use more power, different levels - more damage etc, frame doing automatic damage)) and banning interactions (frame lack synergies and/or identity(aka boring abilities), cannot cast other abilities when using other abilities etc) then we will have boring and unoriginal stuffs (look at 2 new melee - 2handed nikana and grand Scythe, They just look fancy).

When I mean "challenge", it's not to add difficulty or make it hard, it forces the player to progress their power to clear the mission. You're describing it like most players do who think they should never really be improving gear and somehow get adequate completion of anything they add. That's why Steel Path has now failed. When Steel Path released, it rewarded those who actually progress their gear and should have encouraged people not there yet to improve theirs. What happened is people complained that it didn't serve their mediocre builds, and DE added more powercreep in the form of Galvanized Mods and Arcanes. Now years later, Steel Path is really no different than the normal star chart if you know how to build, Archons included.

The fact you feel like you need to use meta equipment to do Archons tells me that you're not in a position to really handle that content as it is.

"Bullet Sponge" is such a bad angle in any discussion. Every enemy in the game is a sponge if you want to boil it down, some just don't hold as much damage as others. There's nothing wrong with an enemy that doesn't immediately die in the blink of an eye. If you feel like an Archon is a massive sponge that takes 15 to 20 minutes to kill, that's because your builds are bad, not because of the Archon.

Edited November 26, 2023 by Voltage

[quxier]

11 hours ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Now, there have been new enemies it's true. Some really good ones like the ones that came with the Zariman and may be coming with Whispers - unfortunately, these are content island enemies, and once we're done with the content island, well, when are we going to encounter them again? I'm not saying that we need to erode the identity of the content islands either by moving all their enemy types into main content, although there is some potential for that (infested for example, all those creepy crawlies from Deimos - not a single one of them shows up in infested missions).

What I am saying is that when we get like 10 new warframes, 10 new helminths out of that, an archon shard system, overguard, and archon shard system 2.0, melee arcanes, other melee buffs, etc etc and you take all that and jump into regular content with the same old grineer and the same old corpus and the same old infested... it just doesn't feel great. It would be much nicer if our enemies evolved with us, because evolving enemies = evolving gameplay. Gameplay is very static. This is 50% due to a lack of game mode originality and 50% due to a lack of enemy development. So this suggestion is more about variety than it is necessarily about power. It's a suggestion to spend a little creative dev time on the enemies we actually play against in our daily content.

I agree with general idea of Evolution so our enemies are not the same. However we haven't evolved that much. We have frames that does the same things (e.g. increase crit) but in some different way (e.g. Dagath passive, Citrine 4th crystal crit - not sure if it was damage or chance, but whatever). We are very limited sometimes so there is hardly any evolution. Just different flavor.

45 minutes ago, Voltage said:

12 hours ago, quxier said:

They have done it with Archon and I don't like it, at all. It's not like it creates any challenge. You just waste time to grind some "+X damage" stuff, optimize your build (or pick meta) and do same old stuff. Those are called Bullet sponges. I've not tried Archons with new damage authentications but previous version were horrible.

That's a lot of enemies are just same old with just more stats. Same goes for our gear.

DE focusing on power (Eximus - just use more power, different levels - more damage etc, frame doing automatic damage)) and banning interactions (frame lack synergies and/or identity(aka boring abilities), cannot cast other abilities when using other abilities etc) then we will have boring and unoriginal stuffs (look at 2 new melee - 2handed nikana and grand Scythe, They just look fancy).

When I mean "challenge", it's not to add difficulty or make it hard, it forces the player to progress their power to clear the mission. You're describing it like most players do who think they should never really be improving gear and somehow get adequate completion of anything they add. That's why Steel Path has now failed. When Steel Path released, it rewarded those who actually progress their gear and should have encouraged people not there yet to improve theirs. What happened is people complained that it didn't serve their mediocre builds, and DE added more powercreep in the form of Galvanized Mods and Arcanes. Now years later, Steel Path is really no different than the normal star chart if you know how to build, Archons included.

Then I slightly disagree with your opinion. I mean, it's fine to have stronger, more durable or harder hitting enemies. However when enemies are just like this and our option is just put "better" gear, even worse if we have to farm something new, then it becomes boring. It's ok to do that "power transitions" few times but at some point we are just doing same old things with just different numbers. That's, in my opinion, not how game should be make. When watching about Metroidvania games (I've not played myself) you could see characters getting certain power (-ups). For example (from the wiki) player can turn into chicken, allowing them to pass through low-height corridors.

It's not that player don't need new gear. It's opposite. However, in my opinion, the farther you are in game, you ask questions like "how do I do X" instead "how much damage/ehp I need".

59 minutes ago, Voltage said:

The fact you feel like you need to use meta equipment to do Archons tells me that you're not in a position to really handle that content as it is.

It's not I couldn't handle it. It's just it doesn't give me any sort of achievements (intrinsic reward) for beating it. I just have to use X, Y... Z. What's worse I may have to grind something for a long time. First time beating Angel or New war Drifter Archons were challenging. Post new war Archons are not.

1 hour ago, Voltage said:

"Bullet Sponge" is such a bad angle in any discussion. Every enemy in the game is a sponge if you want to boil it down, some just don't hold as much damage as others. There's nothing wrong with an enemy that doesn't immediately die in the blink of an eye. If you feel like an Archon is a massive sponge that takes 15 to 20 minutes to kill, that's because your builds are bad, not because of the Archon.

Bullet sponges are not just "bigger guys". They are just your old enemies with more ehp or something similar. Fighting Corrupted heavy gunner at level 1, level 100 or with +9999999 armor/power/etc is very similar. It doesn't change how enemy attacks/moves/etc. Sure, you can 1-shot level 1. Sure, level 100 will do more damage so you need either avoid or tank it (more ehp, shield etc). Level 100 still do the same stuff. +9999.... version would be similar but every attack would kill you (minus shield gating).

Post new war Archons are bullet sponges. They hardly have any challenging part. Even DE said something like this about "one shooting archons so they put damage reduction". If the answer to enemy is just "more power" then it's definition of bullet sponge.

[Voltage]

26 minutes ago, quxier said:

I agree with general idea of Evolution so our enemies are not the same. However we haven't evolved that much. We have frames that does the same things (e.g. increase crit) but in some different way (e.g. Dagath passive, Citrine 4th crystal crit - not sure if it was damage or chance, but whatever). We are very limited sometimes so there is hardly any evolution. Just different flavor.

Then I slightly disagree with your opinion. I mean, it's fine to have stronger, more durable or harder hitting enemies. However when enemies are just like this and our option is just put "better" gear, even worse if we have to farm something new, then it becomes boring. It's ok to do that "power transitions" few times but at some point we are just doing same old things with just different numbers. That's, in my opinion, not how game should be make. When watching about Metroidvania games (I've not played myself) you could see characters getting certain power (-ups). For example (from the wiki) player can turn into chicken, allowing them to pass through low-height corridors.

It's not that player don't need new gear. It's opposite. However, in my opinion, the farther you are in game, you ask questions like "how do I do X" instead "how much damage/ehp I need".

It's not I couldn't handle it. It's just it doesn't give me any sort of achievements (intrinsic reward) for beating it. I just have to use X, Y... Z. What's worse I may have to grind something for a long time. First time beating Angel or New war Drifter Archons were challenging. Post new war Archons are not.

Bullet sponges are not just "bigger guys". They are just your old enemies with more ehp or something similar. Fighting Corrupted heavy gunner at level 1, level 100 or with +9999999 armor/power/etc is very similar. It doesn't change how enemy attacks/moves/etc. Sure, you can 1-shot level 1. Sure, level 100 will do more damage so you need either avoid or tank it (more ehp, shield etc). Level 100 still do the same stuff. +9999.... version would be similar but every attack would kill you (minus shield gating).

Post new war Archons are bullet sponges. They hardly have any challenging part. Even DE said something like this about "one shooting archons so they put damage reduction". If the answer to enemy is just "more power" then it's definition of bullet sponge.

I feel like fundamentally you're looking to play a game that isn't Warframe. This game in nature for as long as I have been playing (atleast 8 years) is fighting large groups of rather trash mobs, but the reward and enjoyment is all the loot, power, and options you farm to alter the way you approach content. Warframe has never had a deep and rich experience with enemy encounters. My original comments here aren't asking to try and make Warframe enemies complex, but merely consider introducing changes and additions within content to reward players with their knowledge when they raise the power ceiling. You can accomplish this through objectives added or content like Operations where the player needs to collaborate with others and create synergies within the mission.

You're fine to dislike grinding for a long time through the power levels and reward tiers of the game's gear, but that is basically the entire point of the game...

You mention another game adding something that allows your player to tackle a specific objective (chicken and player height), but Warframe also does exactly that. Just recently in Plague Star, players have been using Magnetize to target any head that is open on the Hemocyte, or Savior Decoy to teleport them across the entire map. In Spy and Rescue, Wormhole, The Rift, Invisibility, Switch Teleport, Smoke Shadow, Metronome, and Prowl are all options to complete the mission with severely more ease. 

The challenging part of Warframe's gameplay resides in the Arsenal. You're often never in a situation where the enemy, boss, or objective is hard or challenging to finish. All those obstacles are within the arsenal. It's up to you as a player to build-craft around the situation. Learning mechanics and overcoming them through modding is where Warframe rewards you for knowing about what you're playing the most. Kuva Liches and Sisters of Parvos are not hard VIPs to kill, but there is strategy and considerations to be made within the Parazon mods and which weapons you bring to kill them based on their resistances and weaknesses.

What Warframe has been struggling with for years now is allowing the continuation of players approaching new content the exact same, and the only alteration in the content added is the time-gating for rewards. Players aren't forced outside their comfort zone, and it creates the very mentality you present where you find it boring when you're expected to optimize your gear for specific content which may be different between different missions.