Could Enemy Variety Be A Replacement To Enemy Numbers?

[DSpite]

TL;DR - Drop enemy number from spawns, and simply make more units that need at least a small amount of tactical approach to eliminate. Would this make the firefights in the game more interesting?

 

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It would seem right now that all the enemies are "vulnerable" to a single thing, which is direct line of sight DPS. Even if they are aiming directly at or towards you, any weapon, even ones with a spread pattern, will just whittle away at shields, health, and kill them, with ones that also apply correct procs being more efficient.

 

The only example that don't fit exactly are few. The Frost Eximus, and the mobs with the immunity to anything but the correct element being examples.

 

I'm not saying this a bad thing, but because of this, the only thing that DE seems to see as a way of killing us is to up their level and stats, and throw more of them at us, and this just turns into combats that simply mostly stall when our damage output can't clear the field fast enough to be swarmed.

 

If the mobs gradually acquired something else other then more health and more damage, as they climbed in levels, would it not make the fight dynamic change?

 

Even if they just rolled in heavy weapon emplacements, like a mounted minigun with a deploy-able blast shield, or mini-frost shielded, self deployable turrets, or an Arc-Mine launcher (yea, we'd love that one), players would have to micromanage the battlefield more, and allow players that enjoy weapons such as sniper rifles to have a more active role then simply pick off mobs that survive while a Soma or Boltor Prime user missed at long range while having to reload.

 

It would seem more fun all round if we actually had to build Frames and guns for utility, rather then damage. If simply putting out 10K DPS in a straight line is no longer needed or "optimal", and accuracy, proximity, flanking, stuns, knockdowns etc etc become something that is needed more then simply high levels of damage, even against high level waves, we could finally stop with the "rainbow builds" and add some flavor to builds.

 

I guess, in a way, I miss the kind of fights we used to get in Borderlands, where it was fun to surgically dismember Loaders, and try to get elusive Tail shots on Spiderants with Sniper Rifles. Even though the enemy numbers were far lower, there was always a tendency to be very careful, while here is far more gun and run.

 

I'm not suggesting that we slow the game down, I'm just wondering on whether if we did have more interactive enemies, but less of them, to balance, the game flow would remain, but the combats would be more interesting.

 

 

[VKhaun]

The problem is lack of structure. There's no difference between the coolest, smartest best designed mob being awesome for 0.8 seconds before it dies, and a dumb mob derping around for 0.8 seconds before it dies.

 

We either need more of this PvE conclave stuff so the devs have a gear quantifier to balance against, or we need HARSH gameplay. Like the regular shield ospreys. Imagine if their shield buffs were invincibility buffs so you had to either use procs, toxic or kill the shield drones first. It has to be that rock solid or else it won't make sense in front of both level-appropriate/minimum gear and in front of Boltor Prime.

[Executor_Aeternus]

Brilliant, brilliant post. Making combat feel more dynamic is definitely a good idea. The Event mission on Europa is a positive step towards this as the terrain is constantly different all throughout the map, making players consider more carefully what to do. If the enemies were more varied and would add/change tactics as time went on, things would definitely get more interesting. I like combat becoming reactive. These days, combat pretty much isn't. :l

[direcyphre]

Yeah, advanced AI, or attempting to add some sort of 'tactical approach' doesn't change the lifespan of your average cannon fodder. If you're saying make every enemy a boss, that still wouldn't solve the problem.

[dragonboss]

We need the DE Steve and DE Scott to go and play and study Ninja Gaiden 2 and Tekken Tag 2 for a looong time, especially NG2.

 

Observe the skill requirement, the way enemies behave and the mental option select for each attack encountered.

 

Combat would most likely improve by leaps and bounds after this, hell, even BL2 had you slagging first then doing elemental combos but in warframe, just potato and forma your boltor prime and you're good.

 

Depth in warframe should be more than what mod combination does more damage in my op weapon. It should be based on the players actual skill, not sheer numbers. Half the time I play warframe, I'm hardly paying attention(usually watching something), cause what I'm doing requires such little thought or even reflexes all I have to do is aim occasionally, click and press 2 or 4.

[DSpite]

The problem is lack of structure. There's no difference between the coolest, smartest best designed mob being awesome for 0.8 seconds before it dies, and a dumb mob derping around for 0.8 seconds before it dies.

 

We either need more of this PvE conclave stuff so the devs have a gear quantifier to balance against, or we need HARSH gameplay. Like the regular shield ospreys. Imagine if their shield buffs were invincibility buffs so you had to either use procs, toxic or kill the shield drones first. It has to be that rock solid or else it won't make sense in front of both level-appropriate/minimum gear and in front of Boltor Prime.

 

I'm not saying that they have to be "smarter". A Spiderant in BL2 is not "smart". What they have is frontal dermal armor that is immune to bullets. If they take a missile to the face, they stun, and spin around confused, then you shoot them in the vulnerable backside and they explode, or you can simply shoot them through the legs when they rear up or use a vantage point to get a bead on a more vulnerable place.

 

Take a Grineer Shield Lancer. You can shoot them in the feet and top of head which is exposed. It should not be THAT exposed. If they see someone aim at them. bunker them down behind that shield. It's pointless anyway, because a Bow or Boltor without punch through still takes them out. The shields just stop "normal" bullets. I just explode a Glaive in front of them and they die. I would have to AT LEAST explode it above them or behind them.

 

Yeah, advanced AI, or attempting to add some sort of 'tactical approach' doesn't change the lifespan of your average cannon fodder. If you're saying make every enemy a boss, that still wouldn't solve the problem.

 

They don't live long because they have almost no damage mitigation OTHER then the built in shield/armor/health bars. They need mechanics that force us to at least do something more then point and shoot. Exactly the reason DE gives some bosses "invulnerability" stages. They have no other interesting way to keep them alive long enough.

 

Stalkers in BL2 were one of the scariest enemies ever. They cloak, are fast, have massive shields, have range attacks, and come in groups. The shield is electrically generated, so weapons that use Shock (like we have Magnetic) drain it quickly, then they un-cloak, and a vulnerable to other attacks. They are not "smart" they simply need a particular approach to kill.

 

I've had, by accident, Frost Eximus'es do this http://imgur.com/DkGnb9O I almost got clobbered. That's me sitting in behind things at an angle that makes them all miss me. I was using, as you can, a Vectis. I waited until the shield dropped, then did this http://imgur.com/QvBIZSZ at range.

 

If that frost shield had stayed up, and a couple of more mobs were behind it (notice the Ballista) it would have been an interesting problem, as I had to cross that bridge. I could of just run there and murdered them by hand anyway because of how weak mobs are atm, but if they were to hit harder, I would have probably peeked out and did a wallrun to the right, (assumption on being harder to hit when not moving in a straight line towards the enemy) and found a better spot to flank from.

 

I'm just saying that the game takes it far to easy on us. I could have gotten killed on that bridge and I would have chalked it up to good AI positioning for the day and a lack of team support, and it still would have been a fun mission run. I just wish more missions were like that.

Edited August 30, 2014 by DSpite

[DSpite]

We need the DE Steve and DE Scott to go and play and study Ninja Gaiden 2 and Tekken Tag 2 for a looong time, especially NG2.

 

Observe the skill requirement, the way enemies behave and the mental option select for each attack encountered.

 

Combat would most likely improve by leaps and bounds after this, hell, even BL2 had you slagging first then doing elemental combos but in warframe, just potato and forma your boltor prime and you're good.

 

Depth in warframe should be more than what mod combination does more damage in my op weapon. It should be based on the players actual skill, not sheer numbers. Half the time I play warframe, I'm hardly paying attention(usually watching something), cause what I'm doing requires such little thought or even reflexes all I have to do is aim occasionally, click and press 2 or 4.

 

I imagine that if it was as easy as changing a few minor things, the mobs would have been "smarter" already. I have never understood why we got ignored by just sitting on top of boxes, I simply assumed that if we are not in the "pathing" then we might as well be sitting inside a wall. We should not (easily) be safe anywhere on a map.

 

Once the infested get some long range ability, life will be a lot harder, as it should be.

[dragonboss]

Once the infested get some long range ability, life will be a lot harder, as it should be.

 

I'm guessing that's what someone was thinking when they decided to give the ancient disruptor of all enemies that 360 no scope, direct health damage if poison, hit-scan, cross-map, hook that is annoying as hell.

 

I don't mind if Healers or or even Toxics have the hook, but Disruptors? That's going too far.

 

That's like making the Mishimas EWGF unblockable and take 90% life on hit. Simply unfair.

[Vastaren]

I think this is very well illustrated by the current event, Cryotic Front.

 

A number of players have mentioned here and there that the Grineer missions are noticeably harder than the Corpus one on Europa. When we look at it, the composition of the Grineer faction has way more variety in terms of what players need to adapt to than the Corpus. Lightly-armored Scorpions with pinpoint accurate grappling hooks, trash mobs with a high chance to inflict status effects, heavies with punishing suppressive hitscan fire and largely-feared explosive/fire weapons sounds like a great deal more variety than Crewmen with radiation hand cannons, projectile-based plasma fire, and negligible damage mitigation on their (really unfit) bodies, accompanied by pretty much the same medium-distance robotics with only a few close-up knockdown units. Even the admittedly limited 'range' of Grineer enemies, when compared to the Corpus, make a fair difference when we're given a chance to compare them on equal footing as in the event.

 

Another example that I'd like to use to agree with the OP is Survival mode.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not for removing it as a whole cause survivals on Apollodorus through to Elara with newbs are what I live for. But the basic idea is that you get to go in and treat everything you see as a trash mob, fulfilling power fantasies and generally using it as an opportunity to play it by kills and numbers (pssh, teamwork!) until it gets to the point where the game literally forces you to continue that unsustainable rampage against enemy quantity and scaling even when you realise you can't treat the mobs as half-second popups any more and have to leg it to extraction. This mindset of actively encouraging players to trivialise enemy design (and AI) is, while admittedly kinda fun for me, not really in the spirit of good game design ideas given that we really don't have much enemy variety to present as a counterweight to the endless point-and-click gameplay that people in T4D/I/S rightfully build for.

 

So I totally agree with the statements presented in the OP and the conclusions they've drawn from that. Warframe does in my opinion need more than just numbers to keep up with ever-increasing player strength or innovative weapons we use only because they kill faster, not because their mechanics are uniquely suited to a particular mob or whatever. It makes for stagnating gameplay whenever numbers try to compensate for tactics.

 

And because no thread is complete without an obligatory notionphil reference, here we go :D

Edited August 30, 2014 by Vastaren

[DSpite]

I'm guessing that's what someone was thinking when they decided to give the ancient disruptor of all enemies that 360 no scope, direct health damage if poison, hit-scan, cross-map, hook that is annoying as hell.

 

I don't mind if Healers or or even Toxics have the hook, but Disruptors? That's going too far.

 

That's like making the Mishimas EWGF unblockable and take 90% life on hit. Simply unfair.

 

 

I don't see why enemies have to be fair. They would have to get EXTREMELY unfair even to put up a slight fight right now. The single only reason they can pose a threat right now is to survive enough bullets to get into our faces while we reload, based on how fast we are wiping them out.

 

As far as I can tell DE has only given them those abilities because it seemed the only way to make us pay attention, as they obviously could not tweak the AI enough to make them do it another way.

 

Would a new mob that uses a Penta be unfair? They would just run back into optimal range and then fire. Bit of a difference from the usual "run directly into bullet fire" routine. What about a cloaking sniper unit? Get on field, go to a pre designated cover spot while invisible, aim, fire. That unfair? It's not unfair is what they SHOULD be doing, if not immediately, then in later waves.

 

The Solar map is more or less fine as is, all DE would have to do is add more Tactical Alerts scenarios, and throw all the "unfair" stuff in there. I'm sure we will adapt.

[dragonboss]

I don't see why enemies have to be fair. They would have to get EXTREMELY unfair even to put up a slight fight right now. The single only reason they can pose a threat right now is to survive enough bullets to get into our faces while we reload, based on how fast we are wiping them out.

 

As far as I can tell DE has only given them those abilities because it seemed the only way to make us pay attention, as they obviously could not tweak the AI enough to make them do it another way.

 

Would a new mob that uses a Penta be unfair? They would just run back into optimal range and then fire. Bit of a difference from the usual "run directly into bullet fire" routine. What about a cloaking sniper unit? Get on field, go to a pre designated cover spot while invisible, aim, fire. That unfair? It's not unfair is what they SHOULD be doing, if not immediately, then in later waves.

 

The Solar map is more or less fine as is, all DE would have to do is add more Tactical Alerts scenarios, and throw all the "unfair" stuff in there. I'm sure we will adapt.

 

Difficulty =/= unblockable attack or oneshotting.

 

Did you know the enemies in Ninja Gaiden 2 are fair? Dark Souls also has fair enemies. Why do these games known for their difficulty have fair enemies?

 

Because they have defined patterns and attacks with fixed properties. You also have all the tools to avoid or counter all attacks. the difficulty in those games is your ability to use those tools to get around enemy attacks and kill them.

 

In Warframe, you most definitely do not have all the tools, other than using sheer damage numbers. Evasive moves like rolling or flipping dont dodge anything, not to mention the 100% accuracy enemies have.

 

No, enemies with pentas that shoot from afar would only be unfair if they were not easily visible/the grenades didn't have trails/they moved around very fast etc.

 

I was actually going to create a post about a sniper revamp, because as it is sniper units don't snipe, they just stand 2 feet away like melee units or occasionally take cover 3 feet away and snipe. Invisible snipers are never unfair, provided they have a tell just before they shoot/aiming lazer trail. Invisi-snipers are a staple of Halo and even Destiny has some(because Bungie).

 

Syndicate has some of the most aggressive A.I. I have ever come across, and they aren't necessarily smart or anything, but they have tactics. They flank and flush you out of cover with grenades and have snipers posted to kill you when you come out.

 

Could not tweak the AI or don't know how to make good AI? They are two different things.

 

If you think enemies like the Ancient disruptor are fair because you one-shot them with whatever OP primary you've formaed a billion times, then yes they are fair.

 

They have a knock down and one hit that drains all your shield, energy and have the added bonus of an aura that turns other enemies into disruptors. Couple that with the fact that if 2+ healers and 2+ disruptors spawn together their stacking auras can make mobs immortal.

Edited August 30, 2014 by dragonboss