Grineer Rollers

[Webly]

I honestly feel the best way to fix these, without making them a worthless enemy, is to make their default health so low they are nearly a one-shot kill for every weapon.

Then they will still ruin the unprepared/panickers but not be stupidly annoying to people who can react.

[Elhazzared]

If the grineer balls are nerfed then the grineer don't have anything at all to offer a challenge.

[WingsOfGryphin]

Best suggestion.

Don't stand there like a newbie. Seriously.

Just run around and use "Karate kick" W+Shift -> Space -> CTRL. [Hold]

They can't touch you airborn. And you can easily reload while being in flying kick position no matter how high you are jumping and falling it won't trigger roll.

Also that's the reason why +Reload Speed beats Magazine size.

[Fscreams]

Rollers are perfectly fine. I don't have any issues with them at all, shoot them, or chase them. It's not that hard to do, see a roller, shoot it.

[Elhazzared]

I think one day this game will have to have 2 difficulty settings. One for the half of the comunity that feel the real lack of challenge in the game and a second one where enemies just stand around not attacking you for those who just want to run through the levels without any kind of opposition.

[Nightwielder]

all im saying is, if you cant handle them the problem isnt with the game. and dont give me "challenging but fun" bullS#&$, it's either one or the other.

Seriously? smh.

The Grineer Rollers aren't that bad until you get a swarm of them in a defensive mission. The definition of a defensive mission gives them the advantage since you can't dictate the battle to them. So you can't move a lot to avoid them. Also it seems like the collision detection on them is kind of bugged anyway. Even if I dodge them it seems like they still knock me around.

[Nyxcha]

Seriously? smh.

The Grineer Rollers aren't that bad until you get a swarm of them in a defensive mission. The definition of a defensive mission gives them the advantage since you can't dictate the battle to them. So you can't move a lot to avoid them. Also it seems like the collision detection on them is kind of bugged anyway. Even if I dodge them it seems like they still knock me around.

agreed. and to support what you said. a repost of this video with ~40 or 50 rollers at once

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIoeGEG2aHM

[Elhazzared]

So about that vid lol. In first place the 2 players were clearly having no problems with a high number of rollers to start with. Also yeah, there is that many cause the boss does spawns them and it's the only boss who does so. Then we cleearly know that you really need no more than one person DPSing the boss, the otehr can be for the most part just on roller duty, that means, that person clears them out making the boss fight much easier for the other guy. Lastly and by no means least, the player was on an ember, at least one of them. Notice how he didn't even bothered to keep energy for the world on flames? He could, if there was too many use it and clear all the rollers out, plain and simple isn't it? But the fact is, it's not even needed, even when you don't even botther clearing most of them out at all. If anything that vid showed one thing. There is nothing really wrong with the rollers. There is just some people who like autowin buttons.

[calgon]

Its maybe only me, but I don't really see those "Rollers" fitting into this game concept .. They're more amusing, then synergizing with the grineer design/look.

Maybe a fast Grineer drone with dual-mg's would be more fitting? What do you guys think?

Theyre not a problem for me gameplaywise, but I see them as one of the most boring enemies and worst idea for this game.

But I'm "ok" with the "small" version of it, the little ball of the Grineer Grenade launcher- thingy, which sticks onto yourself.

Whats your opinion on this concept?

Edited April 8, 2013 by calgon

[Nyxcha]

So about that vid lol. In first place the 2 players were clearly having no problems with a high number of rollers to start with. Also yeah, there is that many cause the boss does spawns them and it's the only boss who does so. Then we cleearly know that you really need no more than one person DPSing the boss, the otehr can be for the most part just on roller duty, that means, that person clears them out making the boss fight much easier for the other guy. Lastly and by no means least, the player was on an ember, at least one of them. Notice how he didn't even bothered to keep energy for the world on flames? He could, if there was too many use it and clear all the rollers out, plain and simple isn't it? But the fact is, it's not even needed, even when you don't even botther clearing most of them out at all. If anything that vid showed one thing. There is nothing really wrong with the rollers. There is just some people who like autowin buttons.

ok first off, i was the ember. the frame was nto equipped with world in flame at the time because i didnt have an open spot for it.

2nd off. i joined after my friend(the banshee) ran out of ammo and noticed that there were over 40 rollers. at some point he said that the rollers stopped obeying thier AI and instead started to break down (aka half would stop in the middle of the room while the other half kept going) so the sheer number of htem sharing 1 ai messed them up.

3rd, the reason the rollers didnt prevent me from killing the guy was i had secounds of invulnerbility after i respawned, i was on objects. or there were so many rollers that their ai was imploding (take your pick. notice what some rolelrs were doing)

for soloers that many rollers is overkill. only reason my friend got the boss so low on his own was he found a spot where the rollers couldnt get him and the boss was easy to avoid. so there needs to be a limit

shooting a roller is annoying, specially when it takes 3 shots to kill them. it would be better if they die after hitting a player 3 times, or get shot once.

now i have a stable connection with my friend which is why we were able to zig zag avoid rollers when i was fighting the boss. that isnt a very possible stratagy once the rolelr stusn you and the other enemies shoot you.

and in most cases the rollers hit you even whe nyou zig zag or dodge. or even when they jsut close to you. so their hitbox needs to be looked at.

i used this as an example to show what its like to have so many rollers.

in normal missions we wont have this many and thier ai will work properly. aka 5 of them will be surroundign you perm stunning you.

now then, until you come up with a valid reason for why they are fair(oh..w8 you can't. they kill the whole point of soloing) well that ends that sentence.

[Elhazzared]

They are harder for soloing, that is a fact and that boss is probably the only boss that requires a minimum ammount of strategy to deal with. They are certainly not impossible to deal with and I've had 3 rollers going for me with lots of grineer attacking me and I was alone (It wasn't a solo play but my friend was up ahead). I dealt with it all on my own and by your own words. Your friend only needed you because he ran out of ammo. It's not that he couldn't have done it himself, he just ran out of ammo, it happens, especially if you don't bring a box of extra ammo with you (I don't before you start to say anything). I also have to say that it wasn't just because of your respawn invunerabillity, for the most part you can avoid the rollers by climbing to the right spot most of the times. Even if the boos knocks you down every now and again you can climb back up.

So coming up with a valid reason why they are fair? Well, what is so unfair about them? Do they deal a lot of damage? No. Are they hard to kil? No. So what do they do? they stagger you every now and again which is annoying, it prevents you from reloading or attacking for a very brief moment. A few of them can be hard to deal with if there is other troops with it shooting at you? Yes, but hard to deal is hardly a valid reason to nerf or even remove them. So what if you are hit by 3 disruptors and a horde of other infested? Shields go down, they constatly stagger you as well, even the dogs can stagger you pretty damn reliably. Do they need a nerf? No. Are they hard to deal with? Yes. Is there something wrong with it? No. Another example. 3 blue MOAs constantly staggering you while hordes shoot at you. WIth some luck had some yellow MOAs for the knockback.

Is it so hard to compreend that all 3 faction can do exactly the same and that you can always deal with the situation even if it's hard? Will you die sometimes. Well, of course you will, no one just always overcomes every challange, we all have derpy moments. the game isn't being unfair in any way. they all throw stagering at you as a way to try and make the game more dificult.

Again stop asking for an autowin button. I've said it many times. I can deal with them well enough. It's a pain in the &#! sometimes but I can and hey, I'm not even such a great player myself. I do ok, if this had PVP I'd more likelly than not have my &#! kicked 6 or 7 out of 10 times and yet. I still manage to deal well with what the AI throws at me. If there is inbalance is in fact in how easy the game actually is.

[Lysserd]

From what I've noticed, the big problem is the stun-locking. You get enough at close range and they make it so you literally can do nothing and just die, with no way out. That's the real problem here. Their design is annoying and they're hard to hit. Good! It breaks up the Grineer combat a bit. But when you get stuck in a circle of Rollers chanting the hymn of death and can't do anything the whole time? Not good.

Why not add on about 1 second of immunity to their stun. Only their stun. Only the stun, not immunity to their damage. Then you at least have the window to use an ability, or jump, or anything to break away and try to clean the buggers up!

[Nyxcha]

blue moa's easy enough to kill since they stand still.

you can outrun infected with ease.

and 3 rollers, which can outrun you, can stagger you perm.

and how do you think he ran out of ammo, he had a latron. trust me its pretty dam hard to run out of ammo with that gun.

1 secound immunity sounds good. also their damage is irrelivant. once you perm stun locked you as good as dead.

[Elhazzared]

If the blue MOA are permastun you you don't shot either do you? Worse yet you may even have the yellow moas kncoking you down. Dodging is tricky when permastuned. We could even add those flying shield buggers to the mix just to be very inconvinient.

You can outrun infected? Not with ease since dogs are slightly faster than you with sprint but it is possible yes, however what about when you go down a corridor and suddenly start seeying red dots by the ton pouring from both sides? Good luck running anywhere. Even putting aside the awefully convinient situation which happened to me a few times already and sometimes I dealth with, sometimes I didn't. Infested have an aweful tendency of coming from multiple directions, you are fighting a big wave from the front and you didn't even noticed that suddenly another came from behind or the side.

3 rollers outrun you? Are you serious? They are relativelly fast but they are only slightly faster than your normal speed, if you sprint you are faster no matter what.

As for the latron. High damage, low DPS. I realise high DPS weapons require a closer range to the target but even then you can make it work. Again I'm not saying soloing that boss is by any means easy, but aside that boss fight it isn't that hard to deal with the balls solo and if you want to take that boss as the sole example then i'll simply call it the end boss of any TPS in a game where it's supposed to be hard as hell to win though it is possible.

Also permastun = death. Well obviously, but again, all factions can do it to you and the situations where it arises are rare and more often than not because you let yourself into such position. A boss fight is a boss fight, it's supposed to be hard, especially if you're soloing it.

Edited April 8, 2013 by Elhazzared

[Nyxcha]

If the blue MOA are permastun you you don't shot either do you? Worse yet you may even have the yellow moas kncoking you down. Dodging is tricky when permastuned. We could even add those flying shield buggers to the mix just to be very inconvinient.

You can outrun infected? Not with ease since dogs are slightly faster than you with sprint but it is possible yes, however what about when you go down a corridor and suddenly start seeying red dots by the ton pouring from both sides? Good luck running anywhere. Even putting aside the awefully convinient situation which happened to me a few times already and sometimes I dealth with, sometimes I didn't. Infested have an aweful tendency of coming from multiple directions, you are fighting a big wave from the front and you didn't even noticed that suddenly another came from behind or the side.

3 rollers outrun you? Are you serious? They are relativelly fast but they are only slightly faster than your normal speed, if you sprint you are faster no matter what.

As for the latron. High damage, low DPS. I realise high DPS weapons require a closer range to the target but even then you can make it work. Again I'm not saying soloing that boss is by any means easy, but aside that boss fight it isn't that hard to deal with the balls solo and if you want to take that boss as the sole example then i'll simply call it the end boss of any TPS in a game where it's supposed to be hard as hell to win though it is possible.

Also permastun = death. Well obviously, but again, all factions can do it to you and the situations where it arises are rare and more often than not because you let yourself into such position. A boss fight is a boss fight, it's supposed to be hard, especially if you're soloing it.

wow...your stupidity actually gave me a headache. ok you just said the game was to easy. now you saying bosses are hard.

ok infected, and yellow moas both knock you back. they dont perma stun you (yellow moas have a cooldown and infected have other attacks. they dont spam knockdown)

blue moas dont come in the numbers rollers do. and again they are easy to hit since they keep thier distance at range .so it also easy to put an object between you and it.

now then. i off to find something for this headache. thanks alot -.-

[MoonicusMaximus]

I think Rollers are perfect the way they are. Currently, when you fight Grineer, 95% of their damage can be avoided by just running around some cover. Rifleman Grineer don't advance, and melee Grineer are incredibly easy to deal with. Rollers force players to break out of their safe-zone by making it unsafe to stand around; Warframes have to react to rollers or risk being overwhelmed by slowly advancing enemies. Shoot them if you're skilled enough, blow an AoE ability if you just desperately want them gone; how rollers are dealth with is dependant on the players level of skill.

It's a great addition to the current combat blend, and while I agree they are incredibly annoying, I agree moreso with the reasons why they exist and why they should remaing in the game as they are.

[Elhazzared]

My stupidity? Alright, if that's what you want to call your lack of reasoning.

I said the game is easy and it is for the most part. That boss is actually the hard thing about the game and only if you solo it, cause if you don't he's easy just as well. one guy kills it, another hits the balls. Instand candy.

Stand next to any ancient. Just in attack attack range. Any attack staggers you. Have 3 and if worst of it all they are disruptors, you're dead. Now add being surrounded by dogs. GG. Again it's avoidable but so are the grineer rollers.

Blue MOAs don't come in numbers? Usually that's true, but balls don't usually come in packs of 3 or more as well. And just as I found packs of 3 or more rollers, I've find packs of actually 4 blue MOAs, rare but it happened, there was also one or another yellow, the knockback has a cooldown but the blue MOAs are firing pretty consistently, the yellow ones are just somewhat of an extra for you growing headache. Again, can you avoid them? of course you can, but so can you avoid rollers.

[adaroe]

It would be nice if they had to build up momentum instead of instantly jetting to and away from you. about the turn radius, seems to have a pretty decent turn radius to me, and when there 6 of them it's ample.

[Mbgunsling]

I haven't evolved to the stage of grineer rollers. But this is already a huge problem with most infested and shockwave MOAs too. They wail on you, without the chance to get up and respond.

Unlike what rollers appear to be like, infested chargers have a tight turning circle. So tight that they can sit next to you and Constantly run you down.

Most ancients can use their rubbery faphand to constantly stager you by themselves. This can be fixed by slowing the attack speed.

Two shockwave MOAs can easily take down a solo player or several usually distracted players without competition.

The main solution to this is to change the way players recover from knockdown. Whether they retaliate with a getup attack or roll and jump away to disorient the enemy, anything other than getting up like a non-ninja-power-ranger would be a solution.

[DigitalMaster]

basically, let's not have more than 4 rollers at a time, but even then 4 rollers could lock you in if you're not so good at taking them down.

but really if you let rollers heap up this happens.

people keep giving exaggerated numbers and the only thing i'm seeing is, you didn't even try shooting the bloody things, because its not that hard.

[Aggh]

Rollers are perfectly fine. I don't have any issues with them at all, shoot them, or chase them. It's not that hard to do, see a roller, shoot it.

^This so much. Also, why can't anyone be bothered to use their actual name?

[parkel]

How about this: don't remove any rollers, don't do anything to their move speed and numbers, just play around with their AI?

Let's say they hit you once. They will then move (roll) away from you then spin up on the spot (a good distance away from you) for maybe 3-5 seconds so that you get a chance against them.

After that 3-5 second window if you don't manage to kill them, they'll come for you again and repeat the pattern until you kill them while they're spinning up and building momentum.

Edited April 8, 2013 by parkel

[Aggh]

How about this: don't remove any rollers, don't do anything to their move speed and numbers, just play around with their AI?

Let's say they hit you once. They will then move (roll) away from you then spin up on the spot (a good distance away from you) for maybe 3-5 seconds so that you get a chance against them.

After that 3-5 second window if you don't manage to kill them, they'll come for you again and repeat the pattern until you kill them while they're spinning up and building momentum.

That's practically what they do most of the time anyways. Maybe not 3-5 seconds (which is ages in a shooter) but they still roll for quite a while after they hit you most of the time.

[holdenagincourt]

However people attempt to (inexplicably) rationalize it, game mechanics that take control of the character away from the player persistently should by default be regarded with suspicion. Chain stagger has always been a cheap enemy behavior since the dawn of gaming...nothing's changed about that.

Two not very drastic changes that could make a big difference:

1. They shouldn't stagger you out of the air when rolling...on the ground. It looks ridiculous and really takes away from the player what seems like should be a logical counter, the AOE jump melee.

2. They should time out after 30 seconds and explode of their own accord. Then a single Grineer Seeker on the opposite side of the map can't just deploy them the instant the alarm sounds, and have them follow you around for the entire mission at a faster speed than some characters can sprint. I have played missions in which I saw a dozen or more Grineer Rollers over the duration, and not a single Grineer Seeker that could have produced them.

[Madotsuki]

However people attempt to (inexplicably) rationalize it, game mechanics that take control of the character away from the player persistently should by default be regarded with suspicion. Chain stagger has always been a cheap enemy behavior since the dawn of gaming...nothing's changed about that.

Two not very drastic changes that could make a big difference:

1. They shouldn't stagger you out of the air when rolling...on the ground. It looks ridiculous and really takes away from the player what seems like should be a logical counter, the AOE jump melee.

2. They should time out after 30 seconds and explode of their own accord. Then a single Grineer Seeker on the opposite side of the map can't just deploy them the instant the alarm sounds, and have them follow you around for the entire mission at a faster speed than some characters can sprint. I have played missions in which I saw a dozen or more Grineer Rollers over the duration, and not a single Grineer Seeker that could have produced them.

1. I agree with you on that

2. Rollers don't spawn from Seekers, they spawn on their own individually