We need the CC immunity talk. Again

[Lewdcifer]

I honestly didn't want to rant about it when previous patch dropped even knowing that certain cc options we have left against the really "fun" overguard mechanic was gutted because it wasn't documented and could totally be unintentional. So imagine how deep I wanted to put my head in the wall when reading this patch.

This is an old topic at this point, just one absolutely worth dragging up from the goddamn pits:

IT'S NOT FUN TO HAVE YOUR KIT JUST NOT BE ABLE TO INTERACT WITH A STUPIDLY COMMON MECHANIC.

That is the bottom line. And beyond just this is the cascading effect pushing people toward the "just bash your head against the wall with the thickest helmet you can get" gameplay of spamming shields, spamming vaz, god forbid f*cking REVENANT, in the hopes of just tanking damage. Is this the kind of intended gameplay you want for this game?

And here's another old point to bring up now in case some nutwad think this is about "just let us disable your strongest unit lul": CC RESISTANCE has been a thing LONG BEFORE OVERGUARD. AND IT WORKED AS INTENDED. Player can interact with heavy units with their CC abilities, just dont hope it'll work for very long or twice. Even JUST a little bit of CC enabled is enough to improve this stupid ooga booga gameplay loop we're pushed toward with the very, VERY obvious increase in both eximus and overguarded enemy in new content.

_please

Edit for clarity about cc resistance since it hasnt been relevant for a while: this is a long standing mechanic exclusive to a few enemy, notably infested juggernaut, which severely cuts down cc duration and diminish it more on repeated casts. That is to say, resistance, not immunity. This mean this mechanic is built into the game already and surely (lol) can just be reused for overguard

Edited April 5 by Lewdcifer

[Zahnny]

I don't think I've really put my thoughts out publicly but yeah Overguard in relation to CC has been weird in general.

Crowd Control has been on the decline in Warframe for a long time before Overguard, as pure damage has reigned supreme and instead of making CC viable or helping CC oriented frames, it feels more like they took a shovel and whacked CC on the head as punishment for not being as good as pure damage.

 

I understand the mentality of wanting certain units not be able to be permanently locked in stasis, but the alternative is high level Eximus (or just enemies with innate Overguard) are able to barrel in and punish CC based Warframes like Banshee (who is already very squishy)

[Drachnyn]

I want to add to this that there is a possible modifier in the deep dive that gives every enemy overguard.

[RedRiot14]

I wouldn't mind CC being meaningful again, but I can remember when a few Heavy Gunners were scary enough to wipe out a squad. So maybe my opinion is too dusty to count.

The current gameplay loop is indeed all about rapidly turning as many enemies into paste as possible while having enough defense to mitigate however much damage is necessary to consistently and comfortably complete missions. But this has been how things were since well before overguarded enemies were a thing.

But there are a couple bright spots. There are forms of CC that still work on overguard, after a fashion. Magnetize works great for example. I think having partial exceptions like that certainly makes those players feel good. Might be worth adding more things like that. "WHERE IS YOUR OVERGUARD NOW, SINNER?"

Edit: if they do add in means/methods of circumventing overguard, they should be pretty darn special and uncommon. Currently my answer to overguard is just play Trinity. Going for yet another nerf.

Edited April 4 by RedRiot14

[UnstarPrime]

I don't think about it often since my reaction to overguarded enemies has just been to play tanky frames and mostly abandon CC, but you're right: this is a topic worth talking about.  Because it is a bit of a bummer that CC becomes 100% useless on Eximus.

DE is trying to solve an age-old problem: status effects are powerful, and they can absolutely ruin boss-like enemies that would otherwise be difficult.  So for decades, it's been common for bosses in video games to be immune to most status effects.  This is the unsatisfying but effective solution that Warframe currently has.

So I'll weigh in with one of my favorite games that I think has solved this problem in a much better way: Monster Hunter.  I'm going to oversimplify this a bit in the name of brevity and readability, so if you're hardcore for Monster Hunter's systems then please bare with me.

While many games determine whether an enemy gets afflicted with a condition via RNG that's rolled on each attempt at applying the condition(for example, status chance), Monster Hunter instead gives each enemy what is in effect a health bar for every possible condition.  Every time I hit a monster with a weapon that applies "paralyze", their "paralyze health bar" decreases by an amount associated with my weapon, and when the monster's "paralyze health bar" is depleted, BAM!  They're paralyzed.  And how long does that paralyze last?  Depends on the monster.  And once the status ends, their "paralyze health bar" is reset to max (and increased a bit, so status effects have diminishing returns), and will have to be depleted again in order to invoke further paralysis.

What's great about this system is that it makes it easy to apply status to "fodder" enemies because they have tiny "status health bars", while it takes much more intentional effort to apply that same status to a large "boss" monster.  It also creates a spectrum where some boss monsters can be considered strong or weak against certain statuses just by varying the size of their status health bars.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this system with my fellow Tenno because I think it demonstrates one possible option that isn't just "status effects and CC don't work on these enemies".  If tough enemies were resistant to CC but could eventually succumb to it, that would be pretty cool.  Or if they just broke out of the CC earlier, that could be another way to do it.  I'd love to see DE explore this a bit.

Edited April 8 by UnstarPrime
fixed a typo that was surely bugging everyone XD

[Emwue]

1 hour ago, RedRiot14 said:

Magnetize works great for example.

In that it doesn't work. At all. Magnetize is a compound ability that has a bullet attractor portion and movement affecting CC portion and the CC part doesn't work on overguarded enemies. It also doesn't work on non-overguarded murmur fliers, hollow vain, gruzzlings, necramechs, tusk tumpers... mostly, it just doesn't work.

Saying that "Magnetize works great" is in the same ballpark as saying that Xaku's void bubbles are a "great example of CC that works", since that's the only part of Magnetize that actually works. ;)

[ShogunGunshow]

"50% of health given as overguard" as a Deep modifier in particular feels like a real f you. Especially if you're one of those people still trying to rep Limbo. 

[HonorGuard2074]

1 hour ago, Zahnny said:

I don't think I've really put my thoughts out publicly but yeah Overguard in relation to CC has been weird in general.

Crowd Control has been on the decline in Warframe for a long time before Overguard, as pure damage has reigned supreme and instead of making CC viable or helping CC oriented frames, it feels more like they took a shovel and whacked CC on the head as punishment for not being as good as pure damage.

 

I understand the mentality of wanting certain units not be able to be permanently locked in stasis, but the alternative is high level Eximus (or just enemies with innate Overguard) are able to barrel in and punish CC based Warframes like Banshee (who is already very squishy)

The fun thing about Overguard, It was originally meant to make damage abilities have a harder time but instead has been made to nullify CC making the options of dealing with Overguard to just use a high damaging ability (Ironic, ain't it?) 

So we got CC that was already not the king or meta at that time just getting hampered & harmed EVEN MORE 

[Lewdcifer]

2 hours ago, UnstarPrime said:

I don't think about it often since my reaction to overguarded enemies has just been to play tanky frames and mostly abandon CC, but you're right: this is a topic worth talking about.  Because it is a bit of a bummer that CC becomes 100% useless on Eximus.

DE is trying to solve an age-old problem: status effects are powerful, and they can absolutely boss-like ruin enemies that would otherwise be difficult.  So for decades, it's been common for bosses in video games to be immune to most status effects.  This is the unsatisfying but effective solution that Warframe currently has.

So I'll weigh in with one of my favorite games that I think has solved this problem in a much better way: Monster Hunter.  I'm going to oversimplify this a bit in the name of brevity and readability, so if you're hardcore for Monster Hunter's systems then please bare with me.

While many games determine whether an enemy gets afflicted with a condition via RNG that's rolled on each attempt at applying the condition(for example, status chance), Monster Hunter instead gives each enemy what is in effect a health bar for every possible condition.  Every time I hit a monster with a weapon that applies "paralyze", their "paralyze health bar" decreases by an amount associated with my weapon, and when the monster's "paralyze health bar" is depleted, BAM!  They're paralyzed.  And how long does that paralyze last?  Depends on the monster.  And once the status ends, their "paralyze health bar" is reset to max (and increased a bit, so status effects have diminishing returns), and will have to be depleted again in order to invoke further paralysis.

What's great about this system is that it makes it easy to apply status to "fodder" enemies because they have tiny "status health bars", while it takes much more intentional effort to apply that same status to a large "boss" monster.  It also creates a spectrum where some boss monsters can be considered strong or weak against certain statuses just by varying the size of their status health bars.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this system with my fellow Tenno because I think it demonstrates one possible option that isn't just "status effects and CC don't work on these enemies".  If tough enemies were resistant to CC but could eventually succumb to it, that would be pretty cool.  Or if they just broke out of the CC earlier, that could be another way to do it.  I'd love to see DE explore this a bit.

Definitely cool avenue for potential status cap rework (this thing is terrible too, but we'll put that rant aside), but for the cc topic at least for the sake of practicality cc resistance is already in the game so its a bit easier to convince DE to do something about it (I clarified on this system with an edit above). And honestly it works, I dont really see needing more complexity to it, the game is already kind of a mess of systems.

On the status cap tangent: demolisher actually already have attenuation on status much harsher than on damage. Maybe they could tweak that instead of kneecapping status entirely as they do right now on capped enemies

Edited April 5 by Lewdcifer

[HonorGuard2074]

So I am curious, what would everyone think about damage abilities getting effected by overguard like how CC currently is but let CC bypass (At least that way it makes it so you have these hard targets that needs some attention rather than just the old "Pour more damage into it" we have now) 

[_Anise_]

tell me if this would be a good/bad idea, how about overguard resisting a CC eats a percentage of the overguard? so its actually like it becomes a resource and has a cost for protecting the bearer from a CC?

Edited April 5 by _Anise_

[GPrime96]

3 hours ago, HonorGuard2074 said:

The fun thing about Overguard, It was originally meant to make damage abilities have a harder time but instead has been made to nullify CC making the options of dealing with Overguard to just use a high damaging ability (Ironic, ain't it?) 

So we got CC that was already not the king or meta at that time just getting hampered & harmed EVEN MORE 

Overguard was definitely made for Eximus to not instantly die but also came with a property that hurt one thing than the main thing it’s trying to be a bigger barrier of. 

[Berzerkules]

I knew the few cc methods that worked vs. overguard were going to get "fixed" eventually, it still sucks though. 

DE keeps finding ways to make me alt+f4 and find other things to do with my time.

[trst]

The whole problem with CC is that it's overpowered while also being completely unnecessary due to our damage. As without CC immunity (even resistance only does so much in this regard) any enemy that's meant to pose a threat simply can't as CC would be the catch-all solution to defeating them should raw damage fail.

The problem isn't overguard, CC immunity, nor CC abilities themselves. It's that so many, if not all, of Warframe's underlying systems are so bloated with power and mechanic creep that there is no real situation in which there can be threatening enemies and no immunities.

DE has designed themselves into a corner and can't do much to get out of it as all the obvious escape routes are massive gauntlets filled with players holding knives up to DE. Thus they have to attempt to tunnel their way out with things like Overguard which is just putting them in a deeper corner overall.

[PrideB4TheFall]

I'd say rework all cc's to something effective, but nerfy in regards to overguard, But honestly that's a lot of work and DE would never do it.

[Greysmog]

I can't say I agree that Overguard should translate to CC resistance, keeping enemies immune to CC by default is kind of the whole reason they even work as a threat. Do you even notice that Sentients have their own form of CC resistance before they get evaporated?

What would make more sense to me is making CC weaken Overguard in some way, whether that's removing a set amount of it based on the effect, maybe shutting off Eximus defense abilities for the duration (since Silence doesn't actually affect them), increasing damage to Overguard specifically so you can more easily remove it, things like that. 

That way, CC actually does something instead of just feeling like a waste of a cast. It still has its current function, but there's better counterplay for Warframes more focused on CC and more CC that actually works (at least partially). You might also want to look into more enemy types that basically ignore ability damage, 

[Lewdcifer]

1 hour ago, trst said:

The whole problem with CC is that it's overpowered while also being completely unnecessary due to our damage. As without CC immunity (even resistance only does so much in this regard) any enemy that's meant to pose a threat simply can't as CC would be the catch-all solution to defeating them should raw damage fail.

The problem isn't overguard, CC immunity, nor CC abilities themselves. It's that so many, if not all, of Warframe's underlying systems are so bloated with power and mechanic creep that there is no real situation in which there can be threatening enemies and no immunities.

DE has designed themselves into a corner and can't do much to get out of it as all the obvious escape routes are massive gauntlets filled with players holding knives up to DE. Thus they have to attempt to tunnel their way out with things like Overguard which is just putting them in a deeper corner overall.

It's "overpowered"... okay, then what? What does it matter that we player can use an "overpowered" mechanic in a PvE game? Do you suppose that Revenant literally not able to die isn't OP? Mag and Garuda with infinite gates and damage scaling? Loki, ash, octavia being untargetable? Felarx doing millions dps? Should they just neuter all these "overpowered" tools? 

Yeah, you're right, if players ""abuse"" these ""OP"" mechanics there's no situation where enemies are threatening. And thats the point of the player power fantasy and loadout-building aspect of the game. All cc immunity does is reduce the variety of options you can use.  

Even with all my yapping about variety or viability or whatever I'll say the bottomline again: having a tool you can't use just feel bad

Edited April 5 by Lewdcifer

[UnstarPrime]

7 hours ago, Greysmog said:

What would make more sense to me is making CC weaken Overguard in some way, whether that's removing a set amount of it based on the effect

I like this idea.

[trst]

7 hours ago, Lewdcifer said:

It's "overpowered"... okay, then what? What does it matter that we player can use an "overpowered" mechanic in a PvE game? Do you suppose that Revenant literally not able to die isn't OP? Mag and Garuda with infinite gates and damage scaling? Loki, ash, octavia being untargetable? Felarx doing millions dps? Should they just neuter all these "overpowered" tools? 

Yeah, you're right, if players ""abuse"" these ""OP"" mechanics there's no situation where enemies are threatening. And thats the point of the player power fantasy and loadout-building aspect of the game. All cc immunity does is reduce the variety of options you can use.  

Even with all my yapping about variety or viability or whatever I'll say the bottomline again: having a tool you can't use just feel bad

I'm not going to begin to explain why balance matters in a PvE game and especially why it always matters in a "power fantasy".

Regardless DE intended to make enemies more threatening (that was the whole point of the Eximus rework) and it's something a considerable amount of players, if not most, want more of in the game (as evident by past surveys DE has done and pointed out themselves). But exactly that can't exist when enemies can just be turned off the moment they're on screen. As well DE has also been pushing for ways to out scale our absurd damage to avoid having to tackle that beast (which the moment they have to it'll be the biggest backlash the game has ever seen). Or as we've seen with Circuit and now with Archimedea side stepping the issue with loadout restrictions needing to become more common.

Technically if you do value variety, viability, and being able to use the tools you want then you should be pushing for balance. Otherwise more things like CC need to be circumvented on top of powercreep making things, like CC, not even viable due to how much it underperforms other powercreep.

[Greysmog]

1 hour ago, UnstarPrime said:

I like this idea.

There's that and then the idea of just more enemy types that actually specifically counter DPSframes but that are easily countered through CC. Make them a little less limited to specific game modes or mission types.

If DE sort of recycled the whole "only damaged from a weakpoint" idea, which they kind of already did with the new Severed Warden enemy with the Murmur, you wouldn't have much of an issue balancing them. You just have to make the weakpoint big and/or numerous enough for regular weapons to deal with easily. Since CC would work just fine but DPS abilities wouldn't you'd already make people switch up their style.

Edited April 5 by Greysmog

[BlackjackMKV]

One of the solutions I've tossed around is to keep Overguard, but flip it around a little bit. It still acts as extra HP and all, but (on enemies) provides zero CC resistance or immunity. Instead, it provides a 95% damage resistance against ability or AOE-based damage. We'll just call it 'nuke resistance' for the sake of simplicity. Despite this, they would take bonus damage(We'll say 50%, but that number could be changed to whatever) from single target weapons. This would mean that CC frames like Banshee or single target gear like snipers would now be super useful since there would be consistently stronger enemies that are worth using them on. I say this as someone who frequently plays a LOT of nuker frames like Ember too, as it would make me have to think and play around certain units rather than just pressing two buttons to instantly kill everything like how most nuker frames currently play. Weapon platform builds(to a lesser degree), CC builds, and single target weapons that have been looked over would become greatly more useful without really damaging anything in the process.

Just an idea of course, but one that I've grown fond of. It's been a hot minute since stuff like snipers, bows, etc... were useful, and the only frame that can really meaningfully affect eximus units right now is Limbo, as he can freeze their gunfire. Not them, but he can at least make them relatively harmless. It would be nice to see other frames be more useful. Banshee especially needs a buff, and this change would let her stop Eximus units and combo with a sniper to instantly wipe them, giving her an actual place in the game again.

[HonorGuard2074]

On 2024-04-05 at 1:12 PM, Greysmog said:

There's that and then the idea of just more enemy types that actually specifically counter DPSframes but that are easily countered through CC. Make them a little less limited to specific game modes or mission types.

If DE sort of recycled the whole "only damaged from a weakpoint" idea, which they kind of already did with the new Severed Warden enemy with the Murmur, you wouldn't have much of an issue balancing them. You just have to make the weakpoint big and/or numerous enough for regular weapons to deal with easily. Since CC would work just fine but DPS abilities wouldn't you'd already make people switch up their style.

would also enjoy modes that don't incentive Killing outright but more stuff akin to interception (Prevent enemies from capturing in any way you can) vs a mode like the netracell (You need to get enemies in this circle to than kill, where slowing CC harms you as a example) 

[K4RN4]

43 minutes ago, HonorGuard2074 said:

would also enjoy modes that don't incentive Killing outright but more stuff akin to interception (Prevent enemies from capturing in any way you can) vs a mode like the netracell (You need to get enemies in this circle to than kill, where slowing CC harms you as a example) 

There are Mob Def, Interception and Mirror Defense, which would be plenty, if there was any replayability in them. But the rewards just aren't there. If you habe a fissure on these, then it's back to needing to kill and otherwise there is no need to do any of these modes.

[BlackjackMKV]

I just would love to know why anyone thought nerfing CC frames by added the current version of Overguard to enemies was a good idea. And yeah, I know the 'git gud' people are going to come in here wailing about how broken CC is since you can just disable whole rooms at a time sometimes, but, as a reminder, the current best version of CC is dead. There's a million ways to room nuke consistently with no threat to yourself. And, again, I say this as someone who plays a lot of nukers too. Sure, allowing Equinox to sleep a whole room allows you to entirely avoid the threat posed by them. What stops me from just using Gyre, Ember, Tenet Envoy, etc... to just delete the room and therefore also ignore the threat posed by them? The only thing that really changes as the level goes up is what kind of gear you have to use to do it too, so even claiming "well, you're just not playing at a high enough level" isn't valid. Just let the CC frames do their thing, DE. Fix overguard to not outright castrate them, please.

[trst]

26 minutes ago, BlackjackMKV said:

I just would love to know why anyone thought nerfing CC frames by added the current version of Overguard to enemies was a good idea. And yeah, I know the 'git gud' people are going to come in here wailing about how broken CC is since you can just disable whole rooms at a time sometimes, but, as a reminder, the current best version of CC is dead. There's a million ways to room nuke consistently with no threat to yourself. And, again, I say this as someone who plays a lot of nukers too. Sure, allowing Equinox to sleep a whole room allows you to entirely avoid the threat posed by them. What stops me from just using Gyre, Ember, Tenet Envoy, etc... to just delete the room and therefore also ignore the threat posed by them? The only thing that really changes as the level goes up is what kind of gear you have to use to do it too, so even claiming "well, you're just not playing at a high enough level" isn't valid. Just let the CC frames do their thing, DE. Fix overguard to not outright castrate them, please.

As I pointed out multiple times now it's because an enemy that isn't immune could never pose a threat. Which is exactly something DE has been trying to add into the game since the Eximus rework. Even if damage can trivialize things well before CC ever matters that's an issue DE has been trying to tackle with other means like random modifiers, RNG loadouts, and plain old higher level content. But that also doesn't eliminate the potential issues CC can create.

If they just outright removed CC immunity then CC becomes the catch-all fall back for anyone lacking damage. And that solution remains for all content down the line that continues to lack immunities. Inevitably requiring different solutions than outright immunities.