What’s better; Invulnerability or Damage Attenuation?

[PublikDomain]

In the game we have today? Both, I guess. Consider Archons: they have Attenuation, but they also have invincibility phases. All three have a phase where they summon adds that need to be killed before the fight can continue, Nira goes invincible when she grapple hooks around, Amar has his clone phase, and Boreal has his triangle and succ. The invincibility phases ideally add some mechanical depth beyond just "shoot at bad guy" and make sure the fight as a larger whole doesn't end instantly, while the Attenuation ideally makes sure that the "shoot at bad guy" phase itself don't end instantly either. With just Invincibility, the combat phases end too fast or might just suck (like Vay Hek's tiny stupid face). With just Attenuation, there's nothing to do but stand there and shoot at the sponge.

Though neither should be necessary in the first place. Ideally Attenuation isn't needed anywhere at all because everything the player can do just works on the same level playing field. It shouldn't matter what weapon you use, or if you use an Archgun or an Amp or have a wacky pet build or just want to throw fireballs at people, all of that should be equally viable and kill things just as quickly. And that's what Attenuation is meant to fix! Maybe if everything wasn't so broken it wouldn't need to be fixed? Attenuation makes it so what the player uses doesn't matter as much, but what the player uses shouldn't matter much in the first place. Invincibility phases shouldn't be a requirement either. A simple "shoot the boss" fight like Phorid should be fine. We'd have a much better experience if a boss like Phorid could just have some plain old health and take plain old damage and still last however long a good boss fight should last. And surely DE would have a much easier time designing fights if they didn't all need some goofy new mechanic invented just to counter the latest insanity they've handed us.

[trst]

If it has to be one or the other then I'd say attenuation is better than invulnerability gimmicks. Since attenuation requires you to continually engage with the boss where invulnerability just requires you to wait it out doing nothing. That said some gimmicks can be done well, like PT's damage type shield, but there's still the problem where every time you're able to damage the boss directly it's over in seconds. Thus those fights are nothing but their one gimmick.

Also as a note I'd even say that the complaint players have of attenuation making your build worthless isn't even valid. As optimizing for bosses with other gimmicks means just optimizing for that gimmick while our damage is already overkill for the other phases. Really there's nowhere that an entire build is valued and some aspects/options are always invalidated.

Edited January 8 by trst

[(XBOX)zThulsaDoomz]

Funny thing is that you can still send bossess into the shadow realm with one shot, even through their DA if built correctly. 

But we know how this community reacts to anything involving either build knowledge or a bare minimum of skill.

If anything, damage attenuation makes bosses even more of a joke imo

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

Depends. 

There can be different types of attenuation and damage invulnerability phrases.

Then additional variables and context in any given situation. Like is this a boss that you will be fighting 10 times in a row to get rewards and materials, and then hardly ever face again, and if you do its more of a one off? Or are you only fighting them once for progression sake, or for one single reward, and then they are optional after? Or is this a boss that you will fight, potentially every week, as in they have a reward you can only get once a week. Are there a lot of different strategies and methods and different ways to beat the boss that compliment multiple different play styles and character or weapon choices? Or is there a more narrow and defined "meta" angle to them? 

Other replies and players have talked a little about some of them as well, as in bosses with invulnerability periods, but that being contingent on other gameplay elements, so players have other goals in the mean time, and accomplishing them can end the invulnerability period, which can be good for some, because they don't feel limited. In contrast some can have those periods, and you just have to wait. In some games though, that may be less of an issue, like if the boss has some really cool visual element, and is transforming or powering up. Or, if there is some other counter play at work. Like sometimes, we can get invulnerable periods, via certain tools, and so maybe its less egregious if bosses have similar, as long as it seems fair. Since sometimes we also need some moments in a boss fight, to heal up, buff, cleanse, etc so a bit of ebb and flow is okay. In some games though, thats not really a thing so... 

In Warframe? To be blunt, I often just think they just don't want us to destroy a new boss in less than 10 seconds. Which, we can have the tools to do... 400% power strength Roar, Madurai Void Strike, 12x Combo Heavy Strike Slash Build with a Companion Primer. The great thing about Warframe, is also a tricky thing with some downsides, in that, there game really wants the player to have options and develop their own play styles around their choices. You want to be a solo space ninja with a single enemy focused type bow, stealthing around getting skilled headshots against Corpus... you can. You want to have a huge AOE weapon, you use to blast 20 enemies at once, whilst you speed around with 3 other players doing similar? You can. You want to play as a mutated meat man, that collects up Infested with an ability then cut through them with a Nikana? You can. There are over 50 character types with hundreds of different types of weapons, hundreds of thousands of mods, then you also got Schools, and then the synergy between all those variables is immense... Most other games are much tighter with its balance. 

Personally, I don't tend to expect that much from Warframe bosses because of that. I mostly enjoy them, but. have some small preferences. Like I prefer the attenuation that doesn't limit maximum DPS to a set amount, but allows for larger bursts of damage with cooling off periods. Though specifically for bosses. So I preferred Archon bosses to say Steel Path Lephantis. Or alternatively, I preferred heavier stronger single shot weapons, with any Warframe, over having to pick Titania. Regular Lephantis is fine though too. I don't mind status as being limited/resistant as much as Crit. Though I prefer caps as opposed to complete immunity. I like Acolytes for example, because they are meant to be killed often and frequently. 60 Eyes Assassination was fun, but I wouldn't want to do it every week either, for a really great reward. 

If I could state a general preference. I like it, regardless of attenuation or invulnerability. There are things you can do, to make a boss more vulnerable, and I like when thats allowed with multiple different play styles, which is the tricky bit. So enemy may use attenuation or invulnerable stats, but say... they have a small weak point and if you target that, they are staggered and you can get bigger damage, and move its health bar a lot more. Then maybe they get really aggressive, so you have to get a bit more defensive, but its only temporary. Again, though, depends what sort of additional context there is, is this a one off or something they want you to do 20 times in a row or once a week for months?

[(PSN)robotwars7]

out of the two, I'd say DA is better since at least you can still do *something*, waiting for invul periods to end or having to do a tedious mechanic for it to end is no fun. there are good ways and bad ways of implementing it though, and I think we have a mixture of both in the game right now.

personally I'm thinking about power cancelling, like the "secret" SP boss can do, and also giving bosses an enraged state they can enter form time top time, during which the player has to focus more on avoiding attacks and being evasive/defensive until it ends, at which point they can counter-attack. the question then becomes "what stops us from hitting the boss while it's enraged?" well, maybe that's the part where damage attenuation comes in, but at least now it's only temporary, not constant throughout the fight.

ultimately though there is no magic bullet for this, because everyone has their own opinions on what makes a good boss fight. 

 

 

[TARINunit9]

In every single game I've played I prefer the invulnerability. "Attack it's weak point for massive damage" is a staple of video games for a reason, it just feels better

And after helping a clan mate deal with a lvl5 Lich, I can confidently say Warframe is no different. I would rather the Lich have invincible armor around most of its body, than to be vulnerable anywhere but the developers just arbitrarily tell me "no, you only deal 100 DPS now because your weapons are too good"

[TeaHawk]

I would like to be able to constantly deal at least some miserable amount of damage making boss fight duration expectancy only bounded by patience.

I would like to have dps phases, winch can be passed with only one tick of damage provided proper build. I would also like to be able to reduce attenuation phase duration or better even skip it with proper build/actions.

The game must reward both those who invest into their builds and active players using all the available boss-mechanics. Both categories suffer from long unavoidable time-gates no matter their nature. And both categories are actively supporting the online and deserve some love from DE.



One of my friends dropped the event because he did not like that he cannot do anything to kill the boss any faster. Tough he loved the other events which were less profitable and sometimes as tedious as seeing three dudes on one Angel in a random server. Personally I'm not that focused on this topic in particular. But it's just sad to have all these invisible time-gates here and there. It makes the result of your long going efforts and investments feel underwhelming.

Edited January 9 by TeaHawk

[Merkranire]

Give us a boss that is both engaging to fight and completely bypassable through how we build!

[SecksySeckstrain]

With how powerful we are now the only way there could be a boss without DA or invulnerability would be giving the boss 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 hp. This effectively would be no different than DA, but we’d still see our lovely big and juicy red numbers pop up. It isn’t possible to make a boss in Warframe right now unless they start nerfing us, which this community for the most part is strongly against.

[ECCHOSIERRA]

18 hours ago, ShogunGunshow said:

I'd like a way to do a mechanic in the fights with attenuation that temporarily loosens its bounds. Like a DPS phase. Not fully removed but allows you to do 2-3x more damage during the window. 

I'd also like it if they could unflatten the curve on attenuation slightly, just enough so that bringing damage-boosting frames doesn't feel anemic to the point of instead playing games with RoF and FPS being the ideal way to do damage.

Id like to at least try what if they actually gave bosses a stupid high amount of hp balanced around the idea wed be doing stupid cheeseball damage.