Why Damage attenuation feels bad

[Cerikus]

It's the numbers on the screen. It's psychology and the way humans perceive things.

There's a large amount of games where there are bosses, assassination targets, etc. that are bullet sponges. Some MMOs are a great examples of that. It's something that many players have zero issue with. If the enemy looks like it can take millions of damage, it should take millions of damage and it's ok that it takes a lot of time to kill the enemy.

But attenuation is not that. It's not an enemy with a ton of health. It's a system that lowers our damage and we can see that in the UI. My weapon that deals "many millions" deals only "many thousands" when I point it at a boss with DA. That feels bad and it's the reason why players perceive attenuation as a bad thing.

Player shouldn't know (by default - it should be possible to enable that in the options) that their damage is being altered. No intelligent player will expect to one shot The fragmented one and when that player can see they are still dealing millions, but this enemy can take it, because of course it can, it feels good, but seeing the altered number breaks the illusion and makes the experience feel bad.

tl;dr UI shouldn't display real attenuated numbers (by deafult). It should display unattenuated numbers, because that would be perceived better.

 

[kadlis12]

Ewww, this sounds great in theory, but in reality, it would totally mess up the feedback "I have a wrong weapon for this". If all weapons show "everything is fine", while half of them are plain wrong picks, then the system would be bad.

For player A the boss would have a billion HP, for player B it would be a trillion. Players with the same shown DPS would take radically different times to kill the boss.

[Stormandreas]

UI isn't the issue with attenuation.

It's how attenuation works that's the issue.
Give enemies DR, sure, whatever, but don't give me an enemy that has a 20% DR and then, UH-OH, Looks like it suddenly has a 99% DR. Nothing about that feels good, by any measure, especially when we can just look at the healthbar and see what we're doing is practically futile.

MMOs use bullet sponges because they have mechanics, roles and stakes. This is where bullet sponges work, when you have mechanics you must interact with, so you're not just sitting there pressing 1 button over and over until it's dead with zero consiquences.
What I just described is the Infested Oni and the Murmur Fragmented bosses. At the very least the Oni has the halfway point where you have to deal with the shrine offerings, but both before and after, are just giant health pools with 0 interactions.

MMOs also utilize team roles to make this more interesting. DPS have to focus on dodging while pumping out damage as that is what they are best at.
Tanks focus on maintaining aggro to keep their team alive, all while ensuring they aren't taking too much so as not to overwhelm their healers.
Healers/supports focus on keeeping everyone topped up with health and buffs, which often plays cruical roles in boss fights for sustains.
None of what I just described is required in Warframe. The closest you can get to these "requirements" is Eidolons and Profit Taker, but those are both extremely solo-able as well.

Attenuation in Warframe doesn't just lower our sustained damage output, it also caps our burst damage. This means our weapons that do short instances of huge amounts of damage, are basically no more powerful than the more middle of the road weapons, which also feels terrible. This is a direct cause of us as players, getting around the horrific attenuation on Archons with things like the Kuva Hek.
Because of this, DE didn't decide to overhaul the system, but instead cap it, and just make it a little less aggressive (but still insanely aggressive).

 

In a game like Warframe, I'd rather they have mechanics I interact with to give me openings against the boss, and moves that are well telegraphed for me to dodge and counter. If everything must be solo-able, at least make things interactive. (and not just invincibility timers e.g. Captain Vor)
Bullet Sponges and Damage Attenuation in games like Warframe are not interactive.
 

 

Edited 2 hours ago by Stormandreas

[WindShadow970]

1 hour ago, Cerikus said:

UI shouldn't display real attenuated numbers (by deafult). It should display unattenuated numbers, because that would be perceived better.

18 minutes ago, Stormandreas said:

It's how attenuation works that's the issue.

The issue for me is how attenuation isn't consistent, it oscillates unpredictably making it very difficult to properly tell if a weapon is up to the task or not. Say like my Noctua alt fire does 20k one second, 50k the next, 6k the next, 250k the next; what conclusion about my setup am I to draw from this?

[LittleLeoniePrime]

I agree with OP, I'd much rather they give those enemies billions of HP than some wonky DR that makes their actual EHP fluctuate in wild and unpredictable ways