Bored? Blame The Npcs

[blackhalo321]

A few months back there was constant *@##$ing about this and a lot of the core forum contributor's seemed to have moved on, unsurprisingly.  I always check in on devstreams just for the random chance DE's priorities will change and they'll start caring about the player experience but it doesn't look like it's going to happen.  Fun/replayability has never been a priority in Warframe.  They never address the player experience.  They never actually act on the ton of community feedback (that has come and gone) about how to make nightmare mode, missions, enemies and gameplay in general more exciting.  Melee 2.0 is a decent update but for me, too little too late.  If DE really in reality, cared about it's audience, they would go out of their to way to acknowledge that grind is a poor rationale for a game and they would do something about it.  But you will never hear them address the pink elephant in the room.  So I enjoy dropping by for the occasional rant.  Thanks for letting me share.

 

I'm kinda new so haven't sat through the waves of ignored feedback... but that's S#&$ty to hear... like from what I've seen the devs have been doing tons of stuff to fix up and improve the game, patches tend to be full of changes... they even did add in a few new enemies to fight (persecutors/commanders).

 

But you're totally right... nothing I've seen them do has actually made combat more lasting...

I  mean there's still time, but damn, that's unfortunate, good read though.

Warframe could be so much more than grinding walking loot bags with guns.

Edited May 1, 2014 by blackhalo321

[blackhalo321]

Someone sneaked an mp3 of this on his iPod:

 

 

So random, but that song always makes me laugh.

[alocrius]

 

"Warframe could be so much more than grinding walking loot bags with guns."

Hard to believe DE doesn't agree.

[blackhalo321]

Hard to believe DE doesn't agree.

 

Their new topic on 'help us make an NPC' seems nifty... just a lil short of a good idea.

Infested is the only race I am pretty much fine with as is.

They zerg, they get aoe grinded, it's their deal I'm fine with that.

 

But when it's all that corpus and grineer also do... eh, that's just repetitive.

They each need their own feel to fight, something that keeps fights from feeling extremely repetitive... pushing for actual squads of enemies and more of role based weapons seems like a fine way to go about it.

Edited May 5, 2014 by blackhalo321

[ScarletDial]

AI is difficult and doesn't make money. It's sad, but don't expect Halo Legendary or F.E.A.R tier AI coming at any time.

[blackhalo321]

AI is difficult and doesn't make money. It's sad, but don't expect Halo Legendary or F.E.A.R tier AI coming at any time.

 

Yeah, definitely.

I program a bit in my downtime. I hate AI. 

Any practical fix will have to avoid big changes to it.

 

That's why what I suggested involve as minor a change to AI as I could.

What I said was mainly changes to what abilities NPCs have, them being spawned in groups or sitting around in a group (depending the mission type) instead of being aimlessly scattered around the map and trickling in.  That and a few tweaks to what weapons can do.

Edited May 5, 2014 by blackhalo321

[ScarletDial]

Having them move together as groups with a distinct leader would be nice. Having Grineer take cover effectively instead of showing half their hunch would help too. Give corpus crewmen a minimum distance and the moas all try to approach at once to give the effect of them actually sending out their robot proxies first instead of themselves as cannon fodder. Reduce the amount of armour scaling they're getting at higher levels and simply make them more accurate. Drop enemy accuracy if you're doing something acrobatic (wall shooting, jump shooting, slide shooting, etc.) by a little bit to make these maneuvers have a use during firefights. Remove the godawful knockdown on half the stuff Grineer in general do. Have enemies charge you when you run away to restore shields. Have them throw grenades more often when you sit in cover. Have them run back to the nearest large squad after they're the last couple standing in their original one. Nothing that requires huge pathfinding sweeps or anything. Just little nuances to make them APPEAR more intelligent and less reskinned punching bags. Also try having them actually attempt to melee you instead of doing point blank rifle fire since it's actually more effective most of the time and gives parrying a place and time to shine.

[XRAY0128]

The issue with grenade throwing (at least in my experience) the AI seems to be able to hit with their grenades regardless of distance. That, and the grenades are both hard to spot and detonate almost instantly.

[ScarletDial]

The issue with grenade throwing (at least in my experience) the AI seems to be able to hit with their grenades regardless of distance. That, and the grenades are both hard to spot and detonate almost instantly.

That's a fair point. Honestly all that needs to fix it however is an aftertrail on the grenades and a second before they detonate, because as is, if you see the guy @#&$ his arm back and run the INSTANT he does, you still don't avoid the damage half the time.

[blackhalo321]

Having them move together as groups with a distinct leader would be nice. Having Grineer take cover effectively instead of showing half their hunch would help too. Give corpus crewmen a minimum distance and the moas all try to approach at once to give the effect of them actually sending out their robot proxies first instead of themselves as cannon fodder. Reduce the amount of armour scaling they're getting at higher levels and simply make them more accurate. Drop enemy accuracy if you're doing something acrobatic (wall shooting, jump shooting, slide shooting, etc.) by a little bit to make these maneuvers have a use during firefights. Remove the godawful knockdown on half the stuff Grineer in general do. Have enemies charge you when you run away to restore shields. Have them throw grenades more often when you sit in cover. Have them run back to the nearest large squad after they're the last couple standing in their original one. Nothing that requires huge pathfinding sweeps or anything. Just little nuances to make them APPEAR more intelligent and less reskinned punching bags. Also try having them actually attempt to melee you instead of doing point blank rifle fire since it's actually more effective most of the time and gives parrying a place and time to shine.

 

I was aiming for something a bit more lasting.

 

Like it'd definitely switch up how the game is played, and give more polish to do things like letting the corpus hide behind their machines, and improving how AI uses cover and making AI switch to melee.

 

But the game has allot bigger issues, at least imo, and the reason there are so many knockdowns is part of it.  The devs are struggling to make the game challenging so are just chucking in more enemies with more stats and more CC... which isn't all that fun.

Instead if they did something like make enemies more organized and have better supporting abilities to use on each other as you got up to higher ranks pushing for Tenno to work together more... that would be far better.

Edited May 6, 2014 by blackhalo321

[Dequire]

Good sir, you have my vote. NPCs need an overhaul hard core.

[blackhalo321]

I mean, I can't see anything better for the game and no one has said otherwise, but the topic doesn't seem to be super popular...

 

I dunno, maybe most people kind of like more and more of a focus on 'just grind your gear'...

:/

[XRAY0128]

^

Yeah it does seem that way

 

 

Instead if they did something like make enemies more organized and have better supporting abilities to use on each other as you got up to higher ranks pushing for Tenno to work together more... that would be far better.

Oi, don't forget solo players.

[blackhalo321]

^

Yeah it does seem that way

 

Oi, don't forget solo players.

 

I think DE forgot about solo players long ago... some mission types are downright impossible to solo for most frames.

Anyways, fixing that is as easy as it's always been, scale stats based on how many people are in the game.

[blackhalo321]

Tweaked the main post to be more clear ;)

[blackhalo321]

Any interest?

Any other ideas, or is it not that important to other people?

Edited May 11, 2014 by blackhalo321

[blackhalo321]

Good sir, you have my vote. NPCs need an overhaul hard core.

 

The game could be so much more fun if they just scrapped allot of the NPC setup they have atm and seriously started pushing for organized groups  of enemies... so much more fun and lasting.

[Acino]

The game could be so much more fun if they just scrapped allot of the NPC setup they have atm and seriously started pushing for organized groups  of enemies... so much more fun and lasting.

This +10!

 

Why not create a squad based AI, which could be led by those eximus units. And eximi (dunno if correct form) should totally have their own unit type instead of just pre existing unit with fancy power, more like zanukas/hyenas for corpus and something lech krillish (dunno lol) for grineer. Hopefully something new tho.

 

Prosecutors are actually pretty decent since they really scram up survival. (Sad aspect is that you actually want to encounter them)

 

GIVE US AN ENEMY WE WOULD FEAR TO ENCOUNTER (make it drop tail wind).

[blackhalo321]

This +10!

 

Why not create a squad based AI, which could be led by those eximus units. And eximi (dunno if correct form) should totally have their own unit type instead of just pre existing unit with fancy power, more like zanukas/hyenas for corpus and something lech krillish (dunno lol) for grineer. Hopefully something new tho.

 

Prosecutors are actually pretty decent since they really scram up survival. (Sad aspect is that you actually want to encounter them)

 

GIVE US AN ENEMY WE WOULD FEAR TO ENCOUNTER (make it drop tail wind).

 

Yeaah... the big thing I like about what I'm suggesting, like prosecutors are close but not quite there, to keep fights interesting enemies and mission layouts should be causing different ways of handling fights.

You always handle persecutors the same, dps them down first. 

No intense acrobatics, few clutch plays... just dps.

Sure they are a curveball, but not a well made one.

What this game needs the most are really well made NPCs that can keep the focus on action packed constantly interesting combat.