Shields after Update 5.3

[MegatechBody]

Why not just kill everything instead? Lol @ implying this game needs to be played strategically.

It might be if regen was removed!

I'm loving the shield changes. It also makes using solely armor and health mods to survive as viable as shield stacking. The best thing about this change that I've noticed is how often I'm using powers now. I never used them in Pluto before and now I'm relying on them. It's a beautiful thing. Devs just need to make energy orbs shareable and possibly increase their drop rate a little and we'll be golden.

I'd say it's definitely not as viable as shield stacking especially if you step on Osprey bombs (which is a good thing) but yes I agree it has gone a step in the right direction and agreed on the points of energy orbs being more common and shared.

Edited January 11, 2013 by MegatechBody

[Aggh]

It might be if regen was removed!

I'd say it's definitely not as viable as shield stacking especially if you step on Osprey bombs (which is a good thing) but yes I agree it has gone a step in the right direction and agreed on the points of energy orbs being more common and shared.

Removal of regen would just mean that people would spam heals and shield restoration skills/items and play a lot more passively. The random manner in which mobs spawn would pretty much necessitate it.

Armor would become more viable, but only because shields would just be another bar of health that don't have armor modifiers applied to damage. All it would do is reverse the situation between armor and shield mods now.

Edited January 11, 2013 by Aggh

[MegatechBody]

Removal of regen would just mean that people would spam heals and shield restoration skills/items and play a lot more passively.

Armor would become more viable, but only because shields would just be another bar of health that don't have armor modifiers applied to damage. All it would do is reverse the situation between armor and shield mods now.

What why would you make armor modifications overpowered? I seem to be getting argued a lot on the basis of something else being OP. Well then nerf them both ya dingus because if you see them to be totally equal well then they're both overpowered equally and need to be tweaked to both not be overpowered. You're also oversimplifying the argument. You could still have two bars of damage, one that was higher and mitigated less (shields) and still required pickups or healing to replenish, and then a set of lower health that mitigated more using armor (health).

People actually having to heal instead of no one healing is a far better thing. It's using an additional tool. Not just sitting and doing nothing. Castable heals over time and direct heals are never a bad idea and they're lacking from shooters. In addition having healing "mines" are good as well so that players know there's always a go to spot to grab health during a boss fight should they need it.

If you really like regen that much how about having medkits as consumable all-warframe items and having players have to apply them to their allies? Each player starts with X medkits at the start of a mission and can pick up more during the mission.

Edited January 11, 2013 by MegatechBody

[Aggh]

What why would you make armor modifications overpowered? I seem to be getting argued a lot on the basis of something else being OP. Well then nerf them both ya dingus because if you see them to be totally equal well then they're both overpowered equally and need to be tweaked to both not be overpowered.

There's no way to make them equal if shield don't regen you dingus. Damage reduction will always be better than a little bit of extra health (which is what shields would be without regen). Shields would have to be significantly larger than health for them to even approach being worthwhile since armor allows a reduction of damage to health, which can be restored by skills, drops, and items. It would add an unecessary level of complexity and make solo play needlessly harder than co op.

Additionally, since you'd have to increase the size of shields to make them worthile in any way vs armor and health mods, you'd end up with a larger health pool than you have to give in a regen system. This means that coop would be much easier with the wider variety of restoration/healing since you could tank higher damage attacks that might have killed you more quickly if you had lower shields like you would in the current regen system.

Edited January 11, 2013 by Aggh

[MegatechBody]

There's no way to make them equal if shield don't regen you dingus. Damage reduction will always be better than a little bit of extra health. Shields would have to be significantly larger than health for them to even approach being worthwhile since armor allows a reduction of damage to health, which can be restored by skills, drops, and items. It would add an unecessary level of complexity and make solo play needlessly harder than co op.

Uh yeah make shield capacity mods give more shield than health capacity mods. It should be that way RIGHT NOW in fact. Armor mods shouldn't be the next OP thing to spam like shields as they are now. Encouraging co-op in an online game is the entire point. Go play Vanquish, Bayonetta, God Hand, DMC, etc. if you want to play this solo, seriously. They all do this game better than this game does without the co-op. "Oh boo hoo left 4 dead isn't as fun solo" well that's because it wasn't designed around solo play and it would ruin the game if it was.

Also solo players can still get drops and if you read my edits medkits would be useful as well. I and I'm sure the vast majority of the game's players would have no problem traversing levels with a bit of intelligence. Especially when the monsters and boss numbers/strength are scaled to the amount of people in a party

Edited January 11, 2013 by MegatechBody

[Aggh]

Uh yeah make shield capacity mods give more shield than health capacity mods.

No they don't :|

It should be that way RIGHT NOW in fact. Armor mods shouldn't be the next OP thing to spam like shields as they are now. Encouraging co-op in an online game is the entire point. Go play Vanquish, Bayonetta, God Hand, DMC, etc. if you want to play this solo, seriously. They all do this game better than this game does without the co-op. "Oh boo hoo left 4 dead isn't as fun solo" well that's because it wasn't designed around solo play and it would ruin the game if it was.

Armor mods would become OP without regen. That's just how it is. If you can't regen, then damage modifiers and health modififers are the way to go.

They wouldn't have included solo if it wasn't meant to be played :|

Also solo players can still get drops and if you read my edits medkits would be useful as well.

Yay! Spam pots! It's STRATEGY!

:|

[Naruchico]

Yay! Spam pots! It's STRATEGY!

:|

Unfortunently we have very little room for strategy with the current systems here is a current list of strategies.

cover and shoot.

run and shoot.

run and melee.

weave shoot and melee.

We lack.

any stealth element, aside from a few abilities (loki....wow one! ash has no stealth aside from one ability{rewrite your damn description})

any tactical utilities (grenades,throwing distractions, enviromental distraction"oh look that door opened waaah?!?!)

Hacking tactics (let me hack a robot to go spazz damn it!)

Subduing(why cant we just choke a guard out? "hey what this body doing here? gaaah ambush!")

we need more options.

[Tetsmeha]

I wish they didn't nerf shields until they put in the stealth mechanics.

[Sealgaire]

I'm not sure this is really even a nerf as much as fixing an exploit. They've stated that they never intended for you to be able to stack shields that high, it wasn't intentionally balanced that way.

[Wiawyr]

I'm not sure this is really even a nerf as much as fixing an exploit. They've stated that they never intended for you to be able to stack shields that high, it wasn't intentionally balanced that way.

Hey, so are you running a bot or something? It seems like every couple hours I look at the leaderboards and you have 4,000 more kills, day in and day out.

[MediocreHero]

While some people are stating good points this has gone a bit off topic. Shields were nerfed to support Co-op play as it seems, also adding some more "challenge" for the player. But the point is, from what I heard in the Dev diary videos they wanted this game to have a fast pace to it, but with this shield nerf its flow seems to be slowed down a bit. The shield nerf was bound to happen but this heavily causes players to end up in harder situations to face, i.e Pluto levels, Corpus completely demolish shields and taking cover or trying to rush usually ends up in overwhelming odds that end up facerolling you or causing some major ammo loss. While the shield nerf was a good idea for more Co-operative play(Player A Trinity heals Player B Rhino whilst Player C Loki sneaks around invis to cause some havoc). Thats all nice and fine but this game has an option for SOLO play, which means while the characters do not have real roles outside of their few skills they are basically the same. Which leads into how shields were an influential part of the game that spelt life or death in a boss fight that wouldnt end in a one hit kill or getting swarmed by other cannon fodder mobs mind you im talking about solo play still. In co-op this can easily be avoided if everyone just is mindful of each other and their health. But since this game has solo play this has started to kill some of its fun factor by putting in a cheap replacement for different mobs for nerfing aspects of the player character. Naruchico put up a good point about how this game limits our options to face a level, the stealth system is not that entertaining and seems quite bland, No real way to get around enemies besides lets kill everything and move on or lets run from this and move on. Stealth mechanics would be a great deal of help for those solo players. I could type more but thats the jist of what i wanted to say. If anyone can point out something wrong with this reply (game aspect wise) im open for discussion.

[Sealgaire]

Hey, so are you running a bot or something? It seems like every couple hours I look at the leaderboards and you have 4,000 more kills, day in and day out.

Yes, you've found me out. I'm actually an incredibly talented AI programmer trying to get a spot on the development team in a creative way. That was sarcasm.

Truth is I don't have much to do at my parents while on winter break, so I do basically nothing except play this game, work out, and hang out with friends. 4,000 every couple hours is a slight exaggeration, however. Almost all my kills these days are just from helping people farm blueprints on Hades or occasionally the other bosses. It's slowing down now that I spend so much time in game just talking to people and screwing around with weird builds.

Edited January 11, 2013 by Sealgaire

[Wiawyr]

Yes, you've found me out. I'm actually an incredibly talented AI programmer trying to get a spot on the development team in a creative way. That was sarcasm.

Wouldn't be hard really, play an infestation map, run in circles while meleeing constantly, it would rack up the kills. I guess it seems pretty advanced if you've never programmed, but it's basically just repeating three actions.

[MJ12]

If you've ever played a game like Blood you would know the magic of well placed health pickups that move with the flow of the level. You would also know about the magical concept that is health management and picking off strategic opponents. Oh wait you can't just shoot whoever you want then hide and repeat. You actually have to pick a strategic enemy to remove from the game because you'll probably die if you don't take him down first.

That "magical concept" that is "health management" and "picking off strategic opponents"? I've clocked hundreds of hours in Doom, Quakes 1-4, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, UT2k3, UT2k4, and you know what "health management" meant? It meant not picking up health pickups when you were at full health and making a note of exactly where they were so I could backtrack to them whenever I took a boo-boo. It meant slowly creeping around trying to fight only one guy at a time, never using any weapons that exposed me to risk. It meant memorizing the respawn timers for health pickups.

Basically, regenerating health is fun. It is also easy to balance encounters around (Especially important in a game without many scripted encounters) because you can expect players to have the same health status per encounter. It eliminates 'hopeless situations', like "you have 5 health left and there is an enemy with an instant hit weapon that does 5 damage". Hopeless situations are very unfun.

Non-regenerating health... breaks gameplay flow, reduces the pace of the game, forces you to scrounge for healing items in every nook and cranny... it is not a coincidence that the only modern first/3rd person games with health that doesn't regenerate are considered 'survival horror games' (Resident Evil, STALKER). Even many of those have regenerating health. FEAR3, a shooter with horror elements, has health regen. Metro 2033 too, and so on. And in STALKER, at the very least, healing items are extremely prevalent so that you're not really at a practical worry of running out. The main problem is that you can die very fast in STALKER, so it really doesn't count much.

I mean I guess you're gonna cite Devil May Cry and God of War, except DMC actually does have a regen mechanic (Devil Trigger) outside of the highest difficulty level that you can recharge relatively quickly via combat, and also is built like an old-school 3rd person beat-em-up, continues and all. Like God of War, both games also give you the ability to avoid any incoming damage and the enemies telegraph their attacks and only a few will attack at a time. You could cite Half-Life 2, but the game is specifically designed to give you health drops and ammo drops if you're low on either, which means it's basically a game with "hidden" regenerating health and ammo.

But on topic, the shield nerf is a bit extreme for solo playthroughs. Especially at lower levels with low-level mods and limited mod slots. +8 shields? Seriously? What am I going to do with a whopping +8 shields? The curve needs to be flattened and shield mods should probably be slightly increased, with low-level mods giving, say, +25 shields and high-level ones giving, say, up to 100-120. That would allow you to be relatively tanky... if you literally filled every mod slot with max-level shield mods, and the grind needed to get to that point is going to basically make it impossible. I know some people enjoy games with arbitrarily high difficulty but it's easier to get frustrated than it is to get bored.

In general, a good rule of thumb is that if a game's a little bit too easy, people won't notice much because they'll just play more sloppily (due to the game allowing it). If it's a little bit too hard, people will notice very quickly.

[Ced23Ric]

I would suggest, instead of screaming bloody murder and bolding words like seriously, taking the recent changes to shields as a step towards a goal, not the last word in shields. Now we have shields that make sense. They stack additive, they have flat values over precentages. Good job. Now, are they too low? Maybe. Observe, put them through the paces, then write concise feedback that does not seem as if you are watching a game of football and that IDIOT just dropped the ball like a total TOOL! Holy HELL, what a douchebutt, how could he do that!?

You catch my drift.

[Suikast]

I had 10k shield. and now i have 560 or somthing. Seriously. Why would i put alll shield capacity mods if its gonna be "just" 560?. If u go for hp, you re going to have crazy hp. or for melee dmg or armor. Anything!... Mods makes the difference. But 10k to 560. thats funny!. If this was gonna happen, i wouldnt delete all other mods and go for shield capacity. My warframe looks so noob now.. =" I ..Im gonna die like bug .. and im not feelin like playin today..

[Ced23Ric]

I had 10k shield. and now i have 560 or somthing. Seriously. Why would i put alll shield capacity mods if its gonna be "just" 560?. If u go for hp, you re going to have crazy hp. or for melee dmg or armor. Anything!... Mods makes the difference. But 10k to 560. thats funny!. If this was gonna happen, i wouldnt delete all other mods and go for shield capacity. My warframe looks so noob now.. =" I ..Im gonna die like bug .. and im not feelin like playin today..

You had 10k shields because every new shield mod would amplify all prior shield mods in a crazy cross-over calculation. The formula was broken. That has been fixed, we are at additive levels now. If the game is now hard and not just an invincible roflstomp, good. If it is too hard, formulate concise feedback - "I want 10k shields back." is not concise, by the way.

[Suikast]

You had 10k shields because every new shield mod would amplify all prior shield mods in a crazy cross-over calculation. The formula was broken. That has been fixed, we are at additive levels now. If the game is now hard and not just an invincible roflstomp, good. If it is too hard, formulate concise feedback - "I want 10k shields back." is not concise, by the way.

Yeah, i agree 10k was a bit too much. I never rlly died. lol..but if it makes only too little difference noone would put it as a mod. 8x 30lvl mod = 560 shield? yeah sure

[b00zy]

If you've ever played a game like Blood you would know the magic of well placed health pickups that move with the flow of the level. You would also know about the magical concept that is health management and picking off strategic opponents. Oh wait you can't just shoot whoever you want then hide and repeat. You actually have to pick a strategic enemy to remove from the game because you'll probably die if you don't take him down first.

you do know the health orbs despawn right ? so health managment such as not picking up hp items doesn't actually work

[Ced23Ric]

Yeah, i agree 10k was a bit too much. I never rlly died. lol..but if it makes only too little difference noone would put it as a mod. 8x 30lvl mod = 560 shield? yeah sure

Wonderful, so we now have time and space for diverse builds and not just stacking shield. Good job, DE.

[MegatechBody]

Pluto is still a breeze, even more so on solo playthroughs where everything is scaled down. Not sure why people are complaining other than people who just want to faceroll content.

Edited January 11, 2013 by MegatechBody

[Suikast]

Wonderful, so we now have time and space for diverse builds and not just stacking shield. Good job, DE.

nothings wrong with stacking it = ) as a sniper i thought it was the best. rather than having hp, powers, meele dmg and such ^^

[Aurores]

This is very good change in my opinion because it was a bit too easy with those 1.4k+ shields

Now the gameplay is much more challanging and good team play is a must for hardest missions

Perfect change for me personally

[FanaticGamer]

This update gave a serious but much needed nerf, it was way too easy to steamroll and farm Pluto/Hades on your own.

Now you actually need a team to do it.

[Bundii]

this like this very bad. we ask for the old one back