Anyone Else Remember A Stalker Encounter Being Fun? (Long, Sorry)

[DeckChairVonBananaCamel]

(please make sure you read the whole thing before posting comments, thankyou)

just had the stalker appear for me in the new event. he killed me before i even saw him (i didn't see where he spawned in) so i'm sorry if this seems a little ranty

 

i remember when the stalker was a nice drawn-out encounter; it was a tense, difficult fight, but it was still possible to kill him with lower end gear if you were SKILLED enough.

 

then the monster-guns came out, the soma and brakk for example, and all of a sudden he became extremely easy

 

so DE's response was to make him harder, a somewhat understandable decision

(they also at one point or another made your powers useless against him to avoid abuse)

 

these changes had two effects

A. Rendering support effects ineffective may have increased difficulty against the likes of trinity, rhino, valkyr ect

    however, this rendered other support based warframes utterly useless... trinity may not be able to apply damage

    resist during the encounter, but she can still heal everyone back to full. rhino can rhino-charge around to try and

    buy time (same with valkyr's ripline, to a lesser extent). A frame like loki, on the other hand, not only will NONE of his 

    powers work against stalker, but loki is inherently fragile and is killed very quickly (even when not OHKO'd by dread)

B. Buffing the stalker himself, however, just made super-build weapons the only really viable option, it was no longer

    "have an epic showdown" but instead it's "use mega-gun x to kill him in that split second between him

    becoming shootable and him 1-hitting you with his dread", which now that i think about it, feels a bit like a glorified

    quick-time event with rng thown in (are you lucky enough to have the stalker attack only when you are equipped

    with your rank 30, potatoed penta?), both of which are, according to internet reveiws and these forums, the

    cardinal sins of videogame design

 

now i have a few ideas to try and remedy this:

1. Drop his damage output, simple as that

2. Keep his crowd control immunity but remove his immunity to powers, HOWEVER, make him cast an ability the

    moment his actual spawn cloud appears that debuffs players and PREVENTS use of powers for the duration of the

    encounter. This will bring most warframes down to the same level of usefullness during the fight, but will allow for

    preparation beforehand:

    Trinity can heal up the team

    Oberon can heal/place hallowed ground ***

    Ember can place fire on the ground via flame blast ***

    Frost can place a snow globe *

    Hydroid could start tentacle swarm ***

    Loki's decoy could distract him for ~2 seconds if it "shot" at him **

    Saryn's molt would distract him for ~2 seconds **

    Booben could use tesla and vortex (bounce and bastille would not work as stalker is immune to CC) ***

    Volt could place shields *

    Zephyr could place tornadoes ***

    Mag could replenish shields if they were depleted from the regular mooks

    * after they absorb X amount of damage from the stalker, he will use dispel on all defensive abilities still present

    ("You can't hide!")

    ** after being distracted for more than 3-4 seconds collectively, stalker will dispel all decoys/molts that are still active

    ("No more lies!")

    *** after reaching X% health the stalker dispels all damaging abilities still in play ("You fight with dishonor? You die

    with dishonor!")

3. Set a cap on the amount of dps a player can do to the stalker, this will ensure that the stalker is still threatening for

    a hexuple-forma'd-amprex-wielding-closed-beta-badass whist also remaining possible for an unforma'd-karak-

    holding-january-joiner. Each player's dps cap would then be divided by the number of players currently in the

    session, meaning that if there are 4 people in the level, then you will need all four players to take down the stalker

    in the same amount of time as a solo player (but the solo player will still find it more difficult as they wont have allies

    to distract the stalker, nor will they have the help from their pre-encounter ability uses outlined in point 2's spoiler

    section). This dps cap would not apply to the offensive abilities outlined in point 2 (allowing them to actually make a

    difference), however, also outlined in the spoiler of point 2, once down to x% of health, the stalker would deactivate

    any present offensive ablilities, the rest of the fight being up to the skill of the players.

4. in the state that it is currently in, the stalker's accuracy is so high that he might as well have death-vision, if he can

    see you , you gon' get hurt. what i suggest is that his accuracy cone expands out to an angle relative to your

    current change in velocity and then affected by various multipliers (small increases like x1.1, x1.2, x1.3 ect) for

    rolling, sliding and being airborn. So, if you are running in a straight line at a constant speed, because there is no

    change in velocity he has a lock on you. if you then slide, your sudden change in velocity plus the multiplier for

    sliding, his cone will momentarily expand, causing him to miss a one or two shots with despair before the cone

    contracts again as you keep sliding. If instead you performed an instant 180 turn, slid, flipped and then dragon-

    kicked? All those changes in velocity in such a short space of time (plus the multipliers for sliding, being airborn and

    being airborn whilst sliding) would push his cone out quite wide and he might not hit you at all in the 0.5 or so

    seconds it would take for the cone to constrict again

 

now that i think about it... #4 could be applied to all enemies actually, with varying effectiveness (robotics would have almost no loss in accuracy and humanoids with standard loss)

 

what do you guys/gals think? if you disagree, id like to hear your own ideas! <--- (totally not being a #$&%, id really

                                                                                                                                 like to hear them)

[XenosInfinity]

    * after they absorb X amount of damage from the stalker, he will use dispel on all defensive abilities still present

    ("You can't hide!")

    ** after being distracted for more than 3-4 seconds collectively, stalker will dispel all decoys/molts that are still active

    ("No more lies!")

    *** after reaching X% health the stalker dispels all damaging abilities still in play ("You fight with dishonor? You die

    with dishonor!")

He teleports out of nowhere, uses fear tactics, attempts to decapitate us for instant death, can teleport around during the fight and uses absorb as cover. I don't think telling us we fight dishonourably is ever going to stick.

 

That said, I would like him to be more of a challenge WITHOUT being an ungodly powerful invulnerable monster that cannot die and one-shots us the instant he gets a hit in. He needs to be more challenging without being more dangerous. That means the fight with him needs mechanics to it other than an all-out duel to the death, and given that he can spawn in any tile in any tileset other than assassination boss rooms (I'm pretty sure every other tile appears outside assassinations, which are the only missions in which he cannot spawn), that's not easy to set up.

 

If he were treated more like Corrupted Vor - a genuinely dangerous opponent but one who can be outwitted and outmaneuvered if you know what you're doing and keep a clear head - I would probably enjoy the fight much more.

[Axeroix]

To be honest he should be more bullet sponegy and do less damage

IMHO

Edited June 20, 2014 by Axeroix

[Taranis49]

It'd certainly be better than the current Stalker. As-is, the fight's unrewarding as all get-out regardless of whether you win or not - it's like a duel between 1 hit-point wonders.

 

Incidentally, yeah, I remember when the Stalker fight was fun and it was when he wasn't chock full of gimmicks. Back when the player had actual options for how to deal with him, e.g. by luring him into a room that could decompress and blowing out the windows from outside the room to trap him in there until he died, making yourself scarce so his fate went down as "presumed eaten by the locals", etc. One of my most memorable encounters with him was in a T3 Void back in U8, whereupon he was led straight into a roaming pack of Level 90+ Corrupted Heavy Gunners and devoured.

 

The more garbage DE added to his arsenal, the more they took away from the fight :-(

[-skimmer-]

The problem here is not the difficulty of the stalker but the fact that we have those overpowered weapons around. I mean, I would complain he is way too weak(oh the SHOCK!) because I can take him down in mere seconds and he cant even scratch paint on my 1k armor Valkyr if I let him have a few hits at me. He doesnt even cause missions to fail because everyone can simply revive, nobody is using those on anything else anyway. Really, how do you balance an encounter when even levels of your equipment doesnt match up and there is a good chance you have a guy with maxed out penta on your team?

Edited June 20, 2014 by -skimmer-

[piece5]

Meh, he just needs invulnerability from the point he spawns in, till he stands and begins fighting. Then he woul be fun. A he stands now, he can be killed the moment anyone with a soma/brakk/similarly OP weapon sees him. Let him actually start the fight, then see if he is still as under powered as he is now.

[Tali]

I remember where shade could cloak one and let stalker get ganked by a large group of infested, where his braton vandal wasnt to much use :3

[Beas7ie]

I agree except for his casting debuff preventing you from using powers.  I hate that S#&amp;&#036; and it goes against the whole point of playing a super powered space ninja.  It's also cheap and poorly thought out.  "HEY IM STALKER I JUST WAVE MY ARMS AROUND AND YOUR POWERS NO WORK BECAUSE F*** YOU!"  NO NO NO!  That S#&amp;&#036; has GOT TO GO!  It's cool if he has a special targeted ability in which if he hits you that it cancels your powers or drains your energy, like ancient disruptors but this crap where an enemy has some skill that renders all your cool powers useless just because you're in the same area code is so lame.

 

It also takes away most of the fun and just keeps it into "Ok I have no powers, I better just unload my boltor prime into his head".  

 

I want FUN memorable encounters with the stalker.  Like I want to have a slash dash duel with him when Im using excal.  Just like in the movies and anime.  And then if you kill him like that he'll stand there for a second, and then fall.  

[DeckChairVonBananaCamel]

 

... Really, how do you balance an encounter when even levels of your equipment doesnt match up and there is a good chance you have a guy with maxed out penta on your team?

by placing a dps cap (as outlined in my post). If you could not do more than, as an example, 5000 damage per second then all weapons that dealt more than 5000 dps would become equal to one another.

this would reduce the margin of effectiveness between players that use a weapon solely because its extremely powerful (maxed penta) and players who use a weapon simply because they enjoy using it (kraken... *shudder*)

 

I agree except for his casting debuff preventing you from using powers.  I hate that S#&$ and it goes against the whole point of playing a super powered space ninja.  It's also cheap and poorly thought out.  "HEY IM STALKER I JUST WAVE MY ARMS AROUND AND YOUR POWERS NO WORK BECAUSE F*** YOU!"  NO NO NO!  That S#&$ has GOT TO GO!  It's cool if he has a special targeted ability in which if he hits you that it cancels your powers or drains your energy, like ancient disruptors but this crap where an enemy has some skill that renders all your cool powers useless just because you're in the same area code is so lame.

 

It also takes away most of the fun and just keeps it into "Ok I have no powers, I better just unload my boltor prime into his head".  

 

I want FUN memorable encounters with the stalker.  Like I want to have a slash dash duel with him when Im using excal.  Just like in the movies and anime.  And then if you kill him like that he'll stand there for a second, and then fall.  

A valid point, but the only problem is that with powers usable in the fight, you have to stop the buffs that would ruin the encounter (hysteria, rhino skin an blessing's damage resist to name a few), or else you have a stalker who is no threat at all to warframes that can make themselves invincible or buff their damage through the roof.

And of course you have to rule out crowd control, as a stalker that can be affected by rhino stomp, bastille, crush ect. can be rendered helpless and therefor challenge-less

You could not let him be distracted by decoy/molt as they dont need much energy to use and therefor can be chained, stopping stalker from ever causing harm.

Being free to cast snowglobe and shield without a means of the stalker countering them would break him too, if you can stop the stalkers attacks indefinitely, how could he possibly be a threat?

After compensating for all that (like it basically is at the moment), you end up with frames that cant use their powers and some that can, and why would DE punish a player for choosing banshee, for instance? banshee is useless against stalker atm, sonic boom does not knockdown/stun him and it does a pitiful amount of damage, sonar and silence do nothing to him because of dispel, and soundquake is a death sentence as he can just kill you whilst you are using it. Excalibur on the other hand can still use slash-dash just fine (and he still cant be hit by the stalker whilst using it, so chaining it allows for a bit of a shield recharge), super jump can be used in conjunction with ogris/penta so that you can get a big hit on stalker (without endangering yourself) and radial javelin, although ineffective in solo due to the significant cast time, can be used to score a cheap hit on him (though its more effective to use high-tier guns) if someone else has aggro. So if you are going into a mission with 3 others, all with death marks, why would you ever choose banshee over excalibur?.

 

Dont get me wrong, if a player chooses to solo the pluto dark sector defence, with an unranked loki, armed with nothing but an unmodded lato, then they deserve to be punished. But players should be free to choose warframes and weapons based on their personal preference knowing that they are not going to be punished for no good reason other than chance

[Whytee]

I always am worried whenever a plane passes in front of the sun. That split second of darkness. Damnit, Stalker, you ruined me. 

[Otakuwolf]

As i keep saying, i would also remove his Shuriken and Pull abilities because those are "homing" and as such can get you anywhere anytime, rather give him a "kill player" switch considering the damage those deal too.

There is no challenge whatsovever trying to dodge a random homing attack, you can't do anything about it and you can't do anything to predict it, it's stupid.

 

As side note: I met him twice today, and guess what, got oneshooted both the times, once as Nova (understandable since she's squishy) and once with Valkyr (considering i equip a maxed Vitality, redirection, and Steel fiber, that was pure BS, literally, a total of 1110 Hp trown out of the window in one hit).

Stalker is not HARD, that would be if you could actually fight him (and i mean FIGHT him, not "Gun him down before he tryes anything" as OP sayd) and have a true challenge, he is CHEAP, which is different since oneshooting you as very first move doesen't pose a challenge by any meaning and leaves you no choice but eighter A) Always carry a "monster-gun", see where he's going to spawn and r@pe his face  before he tryes anything, or B) hit Alt-F4. That or die.