De, It's Time To Let Go: Enemy Armor Has Failed.

[OblivionNecroninja]

The current paragdigm for enemy armor (armor reduces damage) is simply not working. It makes it harder for players to understand the effect of their elements in damage 2.0 and interacts in a highly negative way with the brute force numerical scaling of high-level enemies. And these problems keep flaring up periodically. It's time for a change.

I propose that ENEMY armor function in the same way as enemy shields: an additonal health bar, with different resistances than their 'main' health. Warframe armor would still reduce damage, of course.

Edited December 14, 2013 by OblivionNecroninja

[BlackbirdSR71C]

I second this change. Every god damn RPG shooter with armor that tries to do this fails in terms of balance and/or scaling. Look at Mass Effect 3 and you'll see the exact same picture.

[MagpieOAO]

I think it can still be salvaged, it just needs to scale right. It doesn't scale right when every single enemy of a faction has armor, or when the majority of weapons are reduced to peashooters. That being said though, damage 2.0 allows them to tweak things as needed.

[HomeyCDawg]

I second this change. Every god damn RPG shooter with armor that tries to do this fails in terms of balance and/or scaling. Look at Mass Effect 3 and you'll see the exact same picture.

 

Actually he's proposing a system similar to Mass Effect 3.

[skorge]

I agree too, armor should visually break off as armor hp goes down while shields would glow brighter and eventually break apart.

[se05239]

When enemies arrive at level 20-30, this scaling goes berserk. Its ridiculous. 

I believe it can be saved still, but I am sure as heck not doing anything high-leveled with armor anytime soon. Not worth it.

[Khranitel]

Yup. My 2 cents:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/147452-de-how-are-we-going-to-fight-grineers-now/?view=findpost&p=1753238

Also:

 

I second this change. Every god damn RPG shooter with armor that tries to do this fails in terms of balance and/or scaling. Look at Mass Effect 3 and you'll see the exact same picture.

Mass Effect 3 has just perfectly balanced damage types and resistances when compared to Warframe. Except Explosive ammo ;)

Edited December 14, 2013 by Khranitel

[Etsoree]

I second this change. Every god damn RPG shooter with armor that tries to do this fails in terms of balance and/or scaling. Look at Mass Effect 3 and you'll see the exact same picture.

 

NOTHING is wrong with ME3's armor system.

 

Honestly if you cannot adjust to a game then why bother playing it?

[BlackbirdSR71C]

Actually he's proposing a system similar to Mass Effect 3.

 

Not really. Just like in Warframe, some units didn't have health but armor in Mass Effect 3. And, just as in Warframe, Armor was the only HP/Defense that actually reduced all damage by a set percentage.

[CatScratch]

When enemies arrive at level 20-30, this scaling goes berserk. Its ridiculous. 

I believe it can be saved still, but I am sure as heck not doing anything high-leveled with armor anytime soon. Not worth it.

At lvl30 is ok, try killing heavy gunner lv 60 in void defense

[Paradoxbomb]

Personally, I'd be happy if armor simply didn't scale, period. Now different types of enemies could have different armor values, ie. normal Lancers could have 25% damage reduction and Elites could have 33%, but since health already increases, there's simply no need to make armor values increase too. All it does is make Armor Ignore a necessity once you reach a certain threshold, which was the core problem of damage 1.0.

 

I still would be able to get behind the idea of armor as a finite health bar though, something that still reduces damage dealt to flesh, but can be broken down with an anti-armor build until it becomes 0% and then you're dealing pure health damage at that point. I think combining the two would give us the best of both worlds.

[OblivionNecroninja]

Personally, I'd be happy if armor simply didn't scale, period. Now different types of enemies could have different armor values, ie. normal Lancers could have 25% damage reduction and Elites could have 33%, but since health already increases, there's simply no need to make armor values increase too. All it does is make Armor Ignore a necessity once you reach a certain threshold, which was the core problem of damage 1.0.

 

I still would be able to get behind the idea of armor as a finite health bar though, something that still reduces damage dealt to flesh, but can be broken down with an anti-armor build until it becomes 0% and then you're dealing pure health damage at that point. I think combining the two would give us the best of both worlds.

That would work too. Honestly, I just suggested the 'armor as health bar' thing because DE seems incapable of NOT scaling up every single number asscociated with enemies as they level.

[HumboldtZ]

They just need to reduce or eliminate armor scaling with enemy levels. Health scales with levels so there is no reason that armor needs to skyrocket along with it

 

I have thought about the "armor health bar" thing, but I don't like it

[VScipii26]

Make it so that each type of armor gives a different resistance to each type of element.

 

EG, Grineer armor significantly reduces slash and cold damage, but does little to nothing against piercing (Which is weird to me, as blunt damage is more effective against armor... but that's the way it is now), where as an Ancient and his turtle shell are more resistant to being stabbed, unlike the Grineer, and significantly weaker to the condition known as "On fire".

[OblivionNecroninja]

They just need to reduce or eliminate armor scaling with enemy levels. Health scales with levels so there is no reason that armor needs to skyrocket along with it

 

I have thought about the "armor health bar" thing, but I don't like it

Honestly, I would prefer non-scaling armor to my idea, but apparently DE is married to the idea that every enemy stat MUST increase as they level, or they would have eliminated Armor Scaling a long time ago

[gnat6]

I think that changing the armor system so that it reduces a flat non scaling percentage of incoming damage for both enemies and warframes would make it more simple to understand and balance as well as fixing most of the problems that come with high lvl enemies.

[kinghouse_51]

NOTHING is wrong with ME3's armor system.

 

Honestly if you cannot adjust to a game then why bother playing it?

agreed if there is no challenge then whats the point

Edited December 14, 2013 by kinghouse_51

[Otaiken]

Well, this is awkward... I just made the exact same suggestion in the Gameplay forum.

 

Might as well shamelessly promote myself here: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/148355-suggested-change-to-armor/

Edited December 14, 2013 by LocoWithGun

[Morgax]

i wouldn't mind tossing the armor scaling out, it was pain in the lower area since day one.

 

I'd like to point out though that Mass Effect 3 shield system wasterrible, single shot weapons suffered a lot from it until the appearance of certain ammo type.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Morgax

[Volume]

agreed if there is no challenge then whats the point

 

It's not that we don't want a challenge, it's that we want a real challenge, not something that requires 7 clips of our primary to be spent on one enemy.

[thejynxed]

It's not that we don't want a challenge, it's that we want a real challenge, not something that requires 7 clips of our primary to be spent on one enemy.

 

Yep, because bullet sponges a la Damage 1.0 are now here in 2.0, almost as if they planned it all along. Bullet sponges are not a challenge. Dumb AI shooting a gun is not a challenge. Enemies only having knockdown (several enemies), shielding (shield ospreys), toxin (toxic ancients), shock (electric crawlers), shield drain (one of the ospreys, forget which) and energy drain (ancient disruptors) as special abilities is kind of disappointing. Add in more enemy special abilities please.

 

Heck, the only enemy that still seems to have stagger is those silly rollers and I kill those with my Fang out of boredom.

Edited December 15, 2013 by thejynxed

[ClaymoreNo47]

give up people, DE is bad at numerical balance. By the time they attempt to balance anything numerically they would have introduced a mountain of new content that is not numerically balanced hense refreshing the never ending cycle of things that are infinitely numerically imbalanced. The worst part of it is, numerical balance is one of the easiest things to balance it's just a dam spread sheet. Most players who'ved played 400+ hours can probubly reasonably numerically balance everything in one sitting if given a spread sheet. Then subsequently reiterate and fine tune it the next day and repeat until everything isa polished balanced. Most players by now have a general idea of where everything stands in terms of strategic value and dps value its not rocket science (ironically rocket science isn't even concidered hard when compared to other sciences)

Edited December 15, 2013 by ClaymoreNo47

[HomeyCDawg]

Not really. Just like in Warframe, some units didn't have health but armor in Mass Effect 3. And, just as in Warframe, Armor was the only HP/Defense that actually reduced all damage by a set percentage.

 

Touche'

 

Actually now that I think about it, the system that OP is proposing is almost exactly like Mass Effect 2. (health under armor under shields)

[BadAimbot]

I think that Armor should reduce damage dealt to Flesh only by a non-scaling amount, and should not reduce damage done to Armor at all. That way, it functions like Shields, except it does not block 100% of damage.

 

Example: say Armor reduces damage by 75%. A damage type that is neutral to both Armor and Flesh (let's say... Cold) has 100 damage. Each hit deals 100 damage to the Armor and 25 damage to the Flesh.

[xBigbossx]

The more i use damage 2,0 the more i am starting to hate the game. I gave it a good run to try and get use to it but i can not stand it. I just want to get a gun out of my inventory and not worry about it not doing any damage to that kind of enemy.