Enemies 2.0

[Solus_Ipse]

We all know enemies fall into three categories in Warframe: trash, annoying trash, and annoyingly rare trash

 

That is, for end-game players.

 

For newbies - and I had a little taste when I went with unranked everything into mercury survival - there's two categories: trash and cheap shots

 

Here are some random observations about the combat system:

 

- enemy melee units stun you when you melee, and only when you melee...making melee worthless when you can blow their heads off with a gun without staggering for 3 seconds

 

- enemy heavy units have two gimmicks - higher health and a knockdown ability

 

- enemies weren't designed with counters in mind; if they were then the counter is invariably "get a ranged weapon and shoot them from further away"

 

- there are many instances where you invariably must take damage; this is indicative of unfairness because any action game worth its salt imo will give you the necessary tools such that if you are badass enough you can avoid even having your paint scratched, be you Rhino or Loki

 

Now I just want to mention that the first three of the above work in tandem to make melee non-viable, and unless melee 2.0 really accounts for all of them, I actually still think it'll be non-viable. Flashy, but worthless. Except maybe the rare damage scaling for high level defenses and survival...nah, just use Nyx and Nova.

 

So what do to about it? What would make enemies better instantly?

 

- enemy melee units suffer less ranged damage (say 50%); they should be well armored and fast if they're going to run at me with a cleaver unless its to waste my bullets...but why would they then carry the very ammo I used to kill them with?

 

- enemy melee units should stagger you if you're trying to shoot them in the face and you miss; but if you pull out your sword you can go mano-a-mano and deal with them appropriately and trade without looking like an amateur wincing after getting tapped by a jab

 

- make blocking actually negate knockdowns (like 'resist knockdown' mods do right now); then you can keep those irritating scorpions/knockdown spells every heavy unit has, but otherwise they have NO COUNTER besides staying the heck away and sniping; I even tried jump kicking Grineer heavy gunners but they still finish their cast so closing the gap to do anything is a complete waste of time

 

- Bombards are cheap; make the rockets home or make them slow, and for the love of God stop the spam and just increase individual rocket damage, because what the rockets are doing is "zoning" i.e. denying us movement to or from a certain area, and they do it too damn well; the AOE goes through cover and is huge so dodging any rockets is simply so the smoke and explosion don't obscure my vision as I take down the annoyance

 

- Napalms are cheap; honestly I'd say these are the most effective enemy type in Warframe for killing (low-level) Warframes, and I applaud the design team for creating such a realistic enemy; resistant to death, obscures enemy vision, and generates high AOE damage with a DoT patch; in real life we want our military to have as many advantages and be as unfair as possible, but unfortunately this is a game and we're not looking for military genius, which is something the Grineer aren't even reknowned for anyways in the lore

 

What would make enemies better over the long run?

 

- enemy melee armor reduces ranged damage to 10% until removed via melee weaponry, corrosive procs can also remove the armor for ranged people or else you have to shoot 'weakspots' in the armor to kill them ranged as they attempt to rush you

 

- enemies with true roles; support grineer using smoke grenades to hide his comrades/repair their armor/heal wounded, anti-shield weapon users (but deal no damage except with melee), status specialists (e.g. knockdown/electric/freeze grenades that detonate after 2 seconds and not INSTANTLY), etc.

 

- heavies that actually possess a weakness rather than being simply superior in every way to their non-heavy counterparts; e.g. mortar Grineer with low mobility and low health who sets up on an elevated platform guarded by a trash squad firing high damage, low AOE, low fire-rate mortar rounds at you

 

- enemies that don't scale stats by level but scale in abilities they have; e.g. 1-9 can run and shoot like regular trash, 10-15 can sprint and roll to cover, 16-20 can deploy mini-volt shields that have set health, etc.

 

- acrobatic enemies that can close the distance to the player for melee; unarmored but can block bullets like warframes can to some degree, able to jump and flip around (or maybe reserve this as a separate 'melee mode' for the stalker)

 

- engaging enemies in melee increases rarity of drops based on 'chaining' i.e. comboing one enemy who may or may not die and continuing to melee on other enemies within 5 seconds; an arbitrary limit like doubled chance of rare items dropped for enemies killed with a 20+ chain could easily motivate players to use melee in defense/survival

[Drunken_Child]

Hmm, very interesting, I particularly like the proposed enemy scaling.

[Flatlander]

This is so needed.

 

Current Game Progression:

Grineer

1) Basic Melee and Ranged. Fine for a Start...

2) Harder Melee that had abilities (Grapple, Shields, etc), Harder Ranged that have Status Weapons that you can dodge (rocket launchers, flame throwers, high-damage rapid fire guns that have to wind up) Great! Adding Complexity!

3) Grab all the above units and give them more health and damage for infinity. No new challenges. Just takes longer to kill and is less forgiving.