Damage 2.0 Is Deep, Interesting, And Well Done. But Pointless.

[WhiteCopain]

I love damage 2.0. I'm a vet who's played since Closed beta and I just sat down today to really mess with it and learn it. And man is it really well done. It's awesome, and I love it! It's balanced with a series of of benefits and sacrifices, ensuring no gun is able to just easily get bonus damage on everything (well, easily anyway, I'm sure there's certain people out there who have found a "just right" combo).

 

 

But it's pointless because of Rhino and Nova.

 

 

Why? Because they walk into a room, press 4, and everything dies. I can spend hours trying to get the exact points I want on my weapon, but it's pointless as long as these frames exist. Nova presses 4 and not only does it make me only need to kill one target in a room for everything to start exploding and killing each other, but it also makes the target slower (unable to fight back basically) and take more damage. The same goes for Rhino. Stomp deals inane damage and CC's forever.

 

And these abilities don't even have a real CD aside from energy, which with Energy Siphon and some mods for lower cost, higher totals, isn't a real issue.

 

 

To test this I did some survival runs (T2 mostly) and when I wasn't Nova, we got to about 20 Minutes before we started feeling cautious on T2, 25 is around where we would need to go. With Nova, we were easily going to 30+ minutes because we'd just have to kill one thing in the room for everything to die. Any fear we had of something surviving was mitigated because Rhino would press 4 with Nova and so anything that lived, was CC'd.

 

 

This is absurd. It's not fun or challenging. It takes the gameplay and makes it stand around and wait for more spawns, not shoot and slash through hordes of enemies while playing smart. There's nothing difficult about this.

 

 

 

And "Don't take those frames along" is not a good excuse for them to be so powerful. There's no reason I shouldn't take them along, I don't get extra drops because I didn't bring Nova or something.

[ChaliceSoul]

Not this again.

[WhiteCopain]

Not this again.

 

Heaven forbid someone wants the game to be interesting.

[ChaliceSoul]

Heaven forbid someone wants the game to be interesting.

 

There are already threads on this, and I feel its just a matter of choice and perception. What you find not fun, some other people do.

 

 

But that's not to say that you should be denied of it either.

Edited February 14, 2014 by ChaliceSoul

[OptimumBow0]

Well, couple things: 

 

1) Nova + Rhino are just two amongst a score of frames. Not everyone uses them.

2) Nova's M Prime and Rhino's Stomp can only be effective for so long; damage becomes meaningless, and the CC + debuff, well

3) There comes a point when your CC and weapons start to become ineffective as well.

 

But, if you want to "fix" it, convince DE to switch Nova's M Prime damage from Blast to Gas. The most common enemies in the Void, corrupted Lancers and Crewmen, possess the highest resistances to gas out of all Corrupted foes.

[WhiteCopain]

Well, couple things: 

 

1) Nova + Rhino are just two amongst a score of frames. Not everyone uses them.

2) Nova's M Prime and Rhino's Stomp can only be effective for so long; damage becomes meaningless, and the CC + debuff, well

3) There comes a point when your CC and weapons start to become ineffective as well.

 

But, if you want to "fix" it, convince DE to switch Nova's M Prime damage from Blast to Gas. The most common enemies in the Void, corrupted Lancers and Crewmen, possess the highest resistances to gas out of all Corrupted foes.

 

The best fix without causing everyone to say they're going to quit would be to atleast spread the power of Nova to the other skills (such as making the first one also make them take bonus damage, but not the ult).

 

 

And if your group can't handle things that are lifted (can't fight back), taking vastly increased damage, auto killing small enemies, and super slowed.... Then you can't handle anything with anyone by that point.

 

 

 

There are already threads on this, and I feel its just a matter of choice and perception. What you find not fun, some other people do.

 

 

But that's not to say that you should be denied of it either.

 

And I can see that some people might find that fun, but that doesn't make the game 'better'. I can see a lot of different arguments, but the argument still stands regardless that why put all the time and effort into making a deep system like damage 2.0 when it amounts to nothing when either of these frames are involved?

Edited February 14, 2014 by WhiteCopain

[OptimumBow0]

The best fix without causing everyone to say they're going to quit would be to atleast spread the power of Nova to the other skills (such as making the first one also make them take bonus damage, but not the ult).

And if your group can't handle things that are lifted (can't fight back), taking vastly increased damage, auto killing small enemies, and super slowed.... Then you can't handle anything with anyone by that point.

1) What doth thou mean by "Spread the power of Nova to the other skills"?

2) At some point, no one can handle stun-locked enemies, even with a 200% damage boost; enemies will eventually have too much armor, health, or shields to the point that your weapons barely put a dent into them. It just takes more time to get there than with Ash or Excalibur.

[WhiteCopain]

1) What doth thou mean by "Spread the power of Nova to the other skills"?

2) At some point, no one can handle stun-locked enemies, even with a 200% damage boost; enemies will eventually have too much armor, health, or shields to the point that your weapons barely put a dent into them. It just takes more time to get there than with Ash or Excalibur.

As in remove the Slow component from ult, put it on her first ability. Remove the increased damage from ult, put it on second ability. Making every enemy that dies explode and cause chain reactions to other things on it's own is insanely powerful. And nobody uses the first two abilities as they pale in comparison to the ult and the portal, they have no use. Why deal next to no damage to a few enemies when you can make them unable to move or fire (much anyway, since they're so slow), take increased damage, and only have to kill one to kill a whole room?

[Raiithe]

Sorry but which rhino are you referring to? the one i know stomps and grineer over lvl30 fall over and then get up again, and thats with power strength mods.

 

I can't speak for Nova, as i rarely use her.

 

Only thing i can think of is that you are doing relatively low-mid level missions and getting annoyed when fully leveled frames are able to annihilate everything. I'd wager that the same would be for volt and any frame with large scale AoE, fact is however that after a certain level the abilities of most frames become a support rather than the 'Go-To'. So might i suggest either playing the high level missions, or going with a group that don't spam ults.

[LordofTibera]

I hear you in the sense that I want balance because game balance is an essential part of development. However ive had my eyes opened lately that NOBODY really wants that here. The majority of this god forsaken player base wants overpowered weapons, samey missions, and grind because. "Doing 20 missions on Kappa gets you all the Oxium you need" and that should be okay for some reason.

This thread is pointless. Im sorry, but its true.

[OptimumBow0]

LordofTibera, on 14 Feb 2014 - 12:09 AM, said:

I've had my eyes opened lately that NOBODY really wants that here. The majority of this god forsaken player base wants overpowered weapons, samey missions, and grind because. "Doing 20 missions on Kappa gets you all the Oxium you need" and that should be okay for some reason.

Yes, I really want to grind 600 Oxium to build Zephyr. I like doing the same mindless missions every time I play this game. I don't hate the Karak or Galatine, they are efficient.

That's a fricking lie; I love variety between Survival, Defense, and Extermination, I'd pick the Glaive or any Ether Weapon over the Galatine, and 600 Oxium sounds like a Rukking nightmare. Not only that, but people clamor for nerfs to obviously overpowered weaponry, like that whole fiasco over the Akmagnus having double damage, and they also continually advocate for new mission types. Also, have you seen how many complaint threads in the past few days alone have been made over Zephyr's material & time costs?

(I saw that very same "doing 20 missions on Kappa" post today, and that kid is not someone to base the entire community of Warframe off of, and a somewhat offensive generalization at that.)

But that's all completely besides the point, so why bring those issues to a thread about Damage 2.0 and how Rhino + Nova allegedly make it ineffectual?

Edited February 14, 2014 by OptimumBow0

[WhiteCopain]

Sorry but which rhino are you referring to? the one i know stomps and grineer over lvl30 fall over and then get up again, and thats with power strength mods.

 

I can't speak for Nova, as i rarely use her.

 

Only thing i can think of is that you are doing relatively low-mid level missions and getting annoyed when fully leveled frames are able to annihilate everything. I'd wager that the same would be for volt and any frame with large scale AoE, fact is however that after a certain level the abilities of most frames become a support rather than the 'Go-To'. So might i suggest either playing the high level missions, or going with a group that don't spam ults.

Ignoring the fact that I went over this, Rhino's stomp and Nova's ult are still some of the best CC/debuffs. Even if something lives from stomp and Nova ult (they won't in anything but def/survival), they're CC'd for a super long time for easy pickings. They can't fight back.

 

 

I hear you in the sense that I want balance because game balance is an essential part of development. However ive had my eyes opened lately that NOBODY really wants that here. The majority of this god forsaken player base wants overpowered weapons, samey missions, and grind because. "Doing 20 missions on Kappa gets you all the Oxium you need" and that should be okay for some reason.

This thread is pointless. Im sorry, but its true.

I don't consider Zephyr's ult that bad, balance wise. The Tornado's knock down distance is a bit large, but for the most part, it's just four and there's gaps, and they're hard to shoot up there. Rhino CC's everyone in a room, hurts them for roughly the same instantly, and keeps them in place. I don't like the 3 skill being semi god mode, but it's way better then old Iron skin or Snow globe.

[Nagisawa]

At a hundred energy a pop, it's not something my Rhino can do all day every day.  Especially solo, and if the enemies decide not to drop orbs for whatever reason (Earth.)  And some of us don't have that aura that gives energy.  And even then, it takes a while to constantly charge up.

 

I have no idea about Nova.

[XxSonicTheEdgeLordxX]

Rhino, nova, trinity, loki and vauban are OP because they are both balanced and scale very well into endgame (that being up to level 100 enemies).

The issue should not be to nerf frames which are useful throughout early and endgame but to buff every other frame up so that they are, by comparison, an equally viable choice to play as.

[Ezren]

And as we all know, this entire game is entirely people running Rhino and Nova combos. Every mission. Everywhere forever.

 

Or, wait, they're not, but complaining vocally, repetitively, and in thread after thread, this is the only thing that makes some people feel smart.

[(NSW)Omgwtfl9lbbl]

As in remove the Slow component from ult, put it on her first ability. Remove the increased damage from ult, put it on second ability. Making every enemy that dies explode and cause chain reactions to other things on it's own is insanely powerful. And nobody uses the first two abilities as they pale in comparison to the ult and the portal, they have no use. Why deal next to no damage to a few enemies when you can make them unable to move or fire (much anyway, since they're so slow), take increased damage, and only have to kill one to kill a whole room?

 

If you do any really long Survivals or Defenses, MPrime's damage becomes a joke. The 100% extra damage debuff and slow on it becomes far more valuable than any of the damage you get from its chaining damage.

 

On the flip side, Antimatter Drop is ridiculous. It may take too long to use properly on lower level stuff where they all die instantly to some random guy and his Soma spray, but when things start getting 100k+ hp, MPrime's damage is like a tickle, while Antimatter Drop is amazing.

 

Even Rhino's stomp becomes lackluster when it starts taking a long time to actually kill things, assuming you don't have some sort of ridiculous nuke like Absorb or Antimatter Drop. You can't recast it as long as something is still in stasis, and when things are super beefy and you don't have that nuke, all Stomp will do for you is suspend one chunk of enemies as a billion more flood in, not caring at all.

 

Then again, most people can't or don't have the patience to wait for enemies to scale up that high.

Edited February 14, 2014 by omgwtflolbbl

[Ezren]

So this thread is not at all about Damage 2.0, it's entirely for whining about Rhino and Nova. And it's in PC general feedback and not Warframe Feedback because...?

[WhiteCopain]

At a hundred energy a pop, it's not something my Rhino can do all day every day.  Especially solo, and if the enemies decide not to drop orbs for whatever reason (Earth.)  And some of us don't have that aura that gives energy.  And even then, it takes a while to constantly charge up.

 

I have no idea about Nova.

 

Except if you're half decent you'll be running efficiency so it cost less. And Energy Siphon, which most decent people run, giving you 2+ Energy a second with a good group of it.

 

 

And as we all know, this entire game is entirely people running Rhino and Nova combos. Every mission. Everywhere forever.

 

Or, wait, they're not, but complaining vocally, repetitively, and in thread after thread, this is the only thing that makes some people feel smart.

You're basically arguing that people who go in and afk a full mission while others do all the work is a fine thing that should never have been addressed by the staff because not everyone did it.

 

...You're also arguing that the game is perfect and they never need to rebalance it ever or make any changes.

 

 

So this thread is not at all about Damage 2.0, it's entirely for whining about Rhino and Nova. And it's in PC general feedback and not Warframe Feedback because...?

 

It's about how pointless the entire system is regardless of how interesting and deep it is. And it's here because I wanted it to be. I'm so sorry I put this in a different feedback spot then you wanted.

 

 

If you do any really long Survivals or Defenses, MPrime's damage becomes a joke. The 100% extra damage debuff and slow on it becomes far more valuable than any of the damage you get from its chaining damage.

 

On the flip side, Antimatter Drop is ridiculous. It may take too long to use properly on lower level stuff where they all die instantly to some random guy and his Soma spray, but when things start getting 100k+ hp, MPrime's damage is like a tickle, while Antimatter Drop is amazing.

 

Even Rhino's stomp becomes lackluster when it starts taking a long time to actually kill things, assuming you don't have some sort of ridiculous nuke like Absorb or Antimatter Drop. You can't recast it as long as something is still in stasis, and when things are super beefy and you don't have that nuke, all Stomp will do for you is suspend one chunk of enemies as a billion more flood in, not caring at all.

 

Then again, most people can't or don't have the patience to wait for enemies to scale up that high.

And if enemies scale that high your options are... Rhino and Nova basically for the vastly increaesd damage, slow, and CC for days on top of antimatter's nuke? I suppose at that point you could argue Nyx becomes King, but we're talking REALLY down the line, more then most go, and that's so far down that you have to have enemies fight eachother to kill any.

Edited February 14, 2014 by WhiteCopain

[Phoenix86]

Heaven forbid someone wants the game to be interesting.

 

Strange to hear that being said by a Frost's user (if the avatar reflects your favourite frame) and while i might agree about Nova i'm not about Rhino.

 

I wont spend much words on MP because it has been spoken about it countless time but Rhino... Rhino is the most balanced and well done frame ever atm... he's balanced in everything, can do everything and do it well without exceeding in anything to become OP, point is: Rhino is VERY good at everything and not OP in a single side... but being good at everything looks like being OP as far as i can see from your PoV

 

PS: title is deceiving... you pretend to talk about dmg 2.0 and yet this looks like a QQ thread about Rhino and Nova.

Edited February 14, 2014 by Phoenix86

[(NSW)Omgwtfl9lbbl]

And if enemies scale that high your options are... Rhino and Nova basically for the vastly increaesd damage, slow, and CC for days on top of antimatter's nuke? I suppose at that point you could argue Nyx becomes King, but we're talking REALLY down the line, more then most go, and that's so far down that you have to have enemies fight eachother to kill any.

 

Rhino's use comes boiled down to Roar and emergency stomps after that point. Iron Skin becomes worthless and Stomp becomes sort of unreliable.

 

If you still want to take a guns approach, Banshee becomes a lot more useful, what with Sonar provide a ridiculous buff assuming you can aim, and Sonic Boom, while not an 8 second stasis like Stomp, is a lot more spammable.

 

When it comes to CC, Nyx and Vauban, especially if combined with Loki, far outclass Rhino. And Nyx even doubles as a great nuking beast as well if you set up properly.

 

And Trinity is a lot more broken than any of that. Literal invulnerability. Even if you don't cast fast enough or in a safe spot and you go down before you finish your animation, you still give invulnerability to everyone else and still have it when you get up. On top of that, she's pretty CC resistant, and there are some places in the game where Link is flatout broken.

 

The thing is, literally everyone and everything is pretty much broken status for the standard content. Our weapons are way too powerful, so most of the time if you have a good weapon, it doesn't matter what frame you're using. And the AI is simply not what you'd call fantastic or challenging, either. I've been leveling my Vauban as well as some unranked weapons up via pure Tesla spam in Kappa, and I've discovered that I can outdamage most of the MPrime and Stomp spammers pretty easily, even though I practically don't move. There literally is no real teamwork required for the current standard content because we're individually able to be too strong. The only content now that really requires any semblance of strategy and teamwork is if you really want to go on long survivals and defenses, and even that is kind of questionable because that typically boils down to repeating X actions for 2 hours.

 

What DE really needs to do is bring either all the frames up to the levels of our weapons, or bring our weapons down to the level of our frames. I don't mean a base stats nerf, I mean through major changes to the mod system. The current power of the mod system pretty much breaks the game. The damage that weapons do scale far, far harder than the damage any of our frame abilities do thanks to mods, and the damaging frame abilities that DO scale into very late games either have some type of % scaling or scale with our enemies (ex. Shield Polarize), or they can scale off of our weapons (ex. Absorb, AMD).

[USIncorp]

The thing is, literally everyone and everything is pretty much broken status for the standard content. Our weapons are way too powerful, so most of the time if you have a good weapon, it doesn't matter what frame you're using. And the AI is simply not what you'd call fantastic or challenging, either. I've been leveling my Vauban as well as some unranked weapons up via pure Tesla spam in Kappa, and I've discovered that I can outdamage most of the MPrime and Stomp spammers pretty easily, even though I practically don't move. There literally is no real teamwork required for the current standard content because we're individually able to be too strong. The only content now that really requires any semblance of strategy and teamwork is if you really want to go on long survivals and defenses, and even that is kind of questionable because that typically boils down to repeating X actions for 2 hours.

 

What DE really needs to do is bring either all the frames up to the levels of our weapons, or bring our weapons down to the level of our frames. I don't mean a base stats nerf, I mean through major changes to the mod system. The current power of the mod system pretty much breaks the game. The damage that weapons do scale far, far harder than the damage any of our frame abilities do thanks to mods, and the damaging frame abilities that DO scale into very late games either have some type of % scaling or scale with our enemies (ex. Shield Polarize), or they can scale off of our weapons (ex. Absorb, AMD).

I have to agree with these points, with the addition that it would be a lot better if DE were to do some massive downscaling of the players. To be completely honest, the enemies are fine enough as it is. The problem lies, as you mentioned, that we are too powerful. It's gone on for far too long, so long that if DE were to do so, everyone would complain and rage for days that their crutch weapons and warframes arenot crutches anymore and that they have to rely on skill and being awake to survive.

 

Just my 2¢ though

[MEGASHAFT]

Honestly I think they need to find a way to scale abilities better. They're often too strong at lower levels, and not strong enough for the really high wave defense/survival. Everyone would be happier if warframe abilities scaled consistently across enemy level. You could make the abilities of all the frames viable across the widest variety of content.

[OblivionNecroninja]

Here's what's going on:
Fleeting Expertise is a broken-&#! terrible terrible mod that DE should be ashamed of making.

It lets Rhino and Nova cast their ults for 25 energy. 25!

And (because Molecular Prime is inexplicibly unaffected by Power Duration), Nova doesn't even suffer any penalties from it! At all!

[Ganpot]

I would just like to pop in and give a dissenting opinion about damage 2.0.  In my mind, it isn't actually very well-done, and it certainly isn't deep.  Convoluted and complicated, yes.  But not deep.  Elements are insanely unbalanced, and the different enemy surface types are so random that players tend to just mod against a faction as a whole, while ignoring any outliers.  Gaming the system is pretty straight-forward. 

 

1. Grineer

a. Viral - its bonus applies to every Grineer unit except for Rollers and Latchers (which don't have much health anyway). 

b. Radiation - increases damage to elite Grineer units and all heavies except for Commanders and Heavy Gunners.  This includes all Grineer bosses. 

 

2. Corpus

a. Magnetic - deals extra damage to both shield types. 

b. Toxin - possesses bonus damage against flesh and boss shields, at the expense of slight damage reduction against machinery.  The negative typically doesn't matter due to the low health of robotic units. 

 

3. Infested

a. Corrosive - deals bonus damage to disruptor and toxic ancients. The lack of bonuses towards smaller infested is near meaningless due to their low health. 

b. Blast - grants more bonus damage to disruptor and toxic ancients, but at the expense of less damage towards healers.  

c. Heat -  gives bonuses towards all normal infested, and doesn't have any negative multipliers against healers.  Switch this out with Blast based upon personal preference. 

 

You get the idea.  The different damage and resistance types worked in Mass Effect 3 because the game gave players longer time to think (due to the cover system and fewer enemy units), it was far more elegant (only 4 resistance types shared across all factions), the resistance types were actually balanced (armor clearly has the advantage in Warframe), and because enemies didn't scale to infinity. 

 

All damage 2.0 accomplished was confusing the hell out of new players, and creating a system so complicated that many (most?) players do everything they can to avoid it. 

 

*Edited for momentary stupidity.* 

Edited February 14, 2014 by Ganpot

[J-Pax]

Heaven forbid someone wants the game to be interesting.

 

 

I believe what he was saying was not a groan at the player's concern, but more on the fact that there's a billion and one threads along these same lines.

 

As it goes I agree with the OP, functionality tweaks need to be made - carefully - so as not to break these warframes.