Gameplay Roles Need to be Looked At

[Joezone619]

I don't know about you, but when i hear "gameplay roles" i immediately think about equinox, ember, saryn, nova, mesa, all sorts of DPS and Damage frames clearing a room in 1 ability, and that's fine. There is nothing wrong with Damage or DPS frames, not by a long shot. The problem is with every other gameplay role, crowd control, support, tanks, etc, there is no variety anymore. DPS & Damage doesn't need to be nerfed, CC, suport, and all the other roles need to be buffed, made worth using.

For a better idea of what I'm talking about, check out Triburos's video "Loki and The Death of Crowd Control"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3DnrWuVdMM

 

 

In his video he explains how not just loki, but all CC frames have been neglected and/or discouraged over the years. He highlights many aspects about the game that encourage DPS frame usage as well as discouraging CC. This got me thinking, we essentially don't have gameplay roles at all anymore.

Almost every new frame has some sort of tank ability, massive AoE damage, and instantaneous room clearing capabilities. In his video Triburos mentions how when pablo was recently asked about a potential loki rework in the future, pablo automatically leaned into turning loki into a dps frame. I respect pablo and all his reworks, but this just highlights the issue further, his first reaction to "will loki get a rework?" was "loki doesn't look good as DPS." (which i agree with).

Now i don't have any immediate fixes to this issue, i mostly wanted to give it more attention as the lack of gameplay roles is a massive problem in warframe and one that only seems to get bigger, causing the game to feel stale. I highly recommend people check out Triburos's video, he explains all this in far more depth then i ever could.

[KitMeHarder]

1 hour ago, Joezone619 said:

not just loki, but all CC frames have been neglected and/or discouraged over the years.

Except for the places it hasn't. The biggest/best example of this is Mirror defense. But everyone forgets it or hates on it, and rightfully so. It is unbelievably boring and unengaging. And that's how "CC focused stuff" is for players at large, which is to say very boring and bland 99% of the time.

CC should never be the main focus of anything IMO, it should always be supplemental to something, mainly DPS. Which that's how it is in the game currently, and very meta in that role. I mean look at Gloom and how much undeserved hate it gets. Or look at Disruption/Void Cascade/Archon Hunts, where people like to use cold or CC to better DPS the VIPs.

But the days of wanting to CC entire rooms of mobs just to do nothing but watch them not move (like in the LoR raid) are basically long gone, and they should stay gone IMO.

1 hour ago, Joezone619 said:

support, tanks

Very meta, just look at frames like Wisp or Revenant. The difference is that compared to DPS frames, all supporting and all tanking feels the same on a relative scale. So most people only pick the best/easiest frame to get the job done. Where as even if a frame like Gyre is weaker than Saryn, she still feels fun and unique to play.

Not to mention these roles can struggle to be fun in PvP games, let alone a PvE one.

Edited March 27 by KitMeHarder

[Birdframe_Prime]

The roles are absolutely fine.

DE has just taken the wrong direction with the enemies and objectives that counter Ability spam, because those counters all hurt CC disproportionately too much when compared to how much they hurt DPS.

What we need is to have the DPS abilities curtailed harder by the things that are supposed to counter them, while the CC abilities are then the things that help the DPS abilities have a little more time to do their thing.

Example: Nullifier bubbles take damage from... a lot of DPS abilities, and not others, incredibly inconsistently, but will hard-stop every CC ability if they even so much as brush the thing. Limbo's 4 literally cannot be run at high range on any Corpus map, because a Nullifier will spawn, somewhere out of sight, and touch the edge of it to pop it entirely and prevent you casting it in that same spot until there are no more Nullifiers in that area.

Example: Overguard units take damage from almost all DPS abilities, but will negate all but basic Slow functions from CC abilities and decoy effects from Irradiated enemies around them. Basically, for enemies with Overguard, you might as well bring a secondary Primer with Cold and Radiation on it to slow everything and distract it, rather than rely on a CC ability.

And we need to have objectives in the game that are not directly hampered by CC functions, too. We've all seen how a Slow Nova on Defense can just... ruin everyone's experience of getting through it fast. Meanwhile having a CC on something like Disruption can actively harm your progress as Demolyst units actively take less damage if you have them CC'd.

I'm not saying to completely change Defense, but look at Mobile Defense as a concept; in that you can take CC because the only thing you're doing is running down the clock on the defense objective, you're not forced to kill everything and can approach it however you actually want to.

Imagine if, instead of a Nullifier or Demolyst simply running up to Limbo's Cataclysm, just meant that they passed inside without any hindrance. The Nullifiers had to have their bubbles popped, and then everything they're protecting is in the Rift too. The Demolysts could not be paused by his time stop, but they are in the Rift without taking down the bubble so Limbo can get his damage boost from Rift Torrent on them.

DE have just... gotten too far out there trying to put in things that can actively try and make our Abilities not always the first thing we go to for nuking things, and actually try to make us use weapons, Abilities and all our auxiliary functions together.

They need to take a step back, and change out what they're actually targeting. Instead of hard-stopping CC functions on the enemy, just make it a little harder for the DPS frames to damage the enemies that are supposed to counter DPS abilities.

[Gorbihn]

On 2024-03-26 at 3:59 PM, CosoMalvadoNG said:

Well in general the fact that the cc does not directly affect the eximus or special enemies is not a big deal (except for limbo), just kill them first.

 

 

Which is all well and good outside of the fact that on higher level missions, they're typically the only thing left in the room. I don't think people want CC to overtake DPS, but as Triburos stated in his video, everything seems to be actively punishing or ignoring CC, which is frustrating, because it has relegated CC into a very particular Niche that seems to grow smaller every mainline update. Something else Triburos mentions, is that every thing that is made so you can't defeat it by throwing some DPS at it, is defeated by throwing more DPS at it.

On 2024-03-27 at 6:56 AM, Birdframe_Prime said:

The roles are absolutely fine.

DE has just taken the wrong direction with the enemies and objectives that counter Ability spam, because those counters all hurt CC disproportionately too much when compared to how much they hurt DPS.

What we need is to have the DPS abilities curtailed harder by the things that are supposed to counter them, while the CC abilities are then the things that help the DPS abilities have a little more time to do their thing.

Example: Nullifier bubbles take damage from... a lot of DPS abilities, and not others, incredibly inconsistently, but will hard-stop every CC ability if they even so much as brush the thing. Limbo's 4 literally cannot be run at high range on any Corpus map, because a Nullifier will spawn, somewhere out of sight, and touch the edge of it to pop it entirely and prevent you casting it in that same spot until there are no more Nullifiers in that area.

Example: Overguard units take damage from almost all DPS abilities, but will negate all but basic Slow functions from CC abilities and decoy effects from Irradiated enemies around them. Basically, for enemies with Overguard, you might as well bring a secondary Primer with Cold and Radiation on it to slow everything and distract it, rather than rely on a CC ability.

And we need to have objectives in the game that are not directly hampered by CC functions, too. We've all seen how a Slow Nova on Defense can just... ruin everyone's experience of getting through it fast. Meanwhile having a CC on something like Disruption can actively harm your progress as Demolyst units actively take less damage if you have them CC'd.

I'm not saying to completely change Defense, but look at Mobile Defense as a concept; in that you can take CC because the only thing you're doing is running down the clock on the defense objective, you're not forced to kill everything and can approach it however you actually want to.

Imagine if, instead of a Nullifier or Demolyst simply running up to Limbo's Cataclysm, just meant that they passed inside without any hindrance. The Nullifiers had to have their bubbles popped, and then everything they're protecting is in the Rift too. The Demolysts could not be paused by his time stop, but they are in the Rift without taking down the bubble so Limbo can get his damage boost from Rift Torrent on them.

DE have just... gotten too far out there trying to put in things that can actively try and make our Abilities not always the first thing we go to for nuking things, and actually try to make us use weapons, Abilities and all our auxiliary functions together.

They need to take a step back, and change out what they're actually targeting. Instead of hard-stopping CC functions on the enemy, just make it a little harder for the DPS frames to damage the enemies that are supposed to counter DPS abilities.

This is pretty much the point Tribuna was making in his video. DPS doesn't need to be destroyed, but it would be nice to be able to make a difference playing CC, rather than feel useless when the only things living are Eximus or Bubbles.

[Lunastune]

I think part of the problem is that "roles" are less defined in modern warframe than like 10 years ago, "DPS" frames used to not really have much in the line of in kit survivability and have been slowly getting survivability buttons which then means they start to blur the line between "tank" frames and "damage" frames, it's not necessarily bad, but then modern support frames also get damage slapped on so they aren't just fully reliant on others. Does that mean some older frames like trinity really feel this pain, for sure.
 

In efforts to make these roles feel more engaging or relevant i do think current warframe isn't much about those roles anymore outside a general direction, just having survivability doesn't feel fun, nor does only having support in most cases i feel. With current survivability what even constitutes as a "Tank" warframe anymore? someone with death protection? I do think in part the content is also making these roles less desirable since wf doesn't care about the "party composition" for challenging content really there's no mmorpg esq need for other roles regardless of the content you do. It's usually how fast can you kill the enemies, no real mechanics just killing the enemies, nothing that would need healing or tanking, so people tend to gravitate towards what works / feels the best, usually a mix of damage and speed. If Eximus run around and deny CC until the Overguard is popped and more spawn in the longer a mission goes people would rather just one shot the Eximus and then move on. Like i will say a few enemies have my favorite implementation of Overguard which is the Nox, you break the helmet and the Overguard is gone, i wish Overguard had more enemy reliant methods to deal with them besides brute force.

Part of the Roles is need, feel and the elephent in the room that is warframe's inconsistant and exponential damage scaling where nobody can really accurately where a player's damage should be at any given time. If you need CC and it's not handled well then death becomes the best CC(in almost any game this tends to be true) or it becomes boring where you are forced to just hold things down because you are disincentivized for killing them. I like Mirror Defense as a concept but it feels a little bit lacking in the gameplay. I don't think DE can fix the CC dilemma without finding a way to standardize damage progression in a more predicatable way instead of the infinitely wide margins we have.