Grinner Rollers, Way Too Annoying?

[Starforsaken]

I'm okay with enemies that are fast. With those that are hard to hit. With enemies that stagger you. I'm okay with enemies rushing you. Okay with melee enemies that comes in groups. I am not in agreement however, to all of this put togheter. The problem with grinner rollers is just, as title says, they are way too annoying, it takes away the fun. If 2 of them come togheter they can "perma-stagger" you, and this just annoying by itself, when you finally get out of that, you find that you just can't hit them, because they move too fast and in a very close range to you, and then it's when you bring out all the rage and use your Slash Dash to dispatch a simple roller. I want to know if my fellow Tenno feels the same way. I think that this should be "fixed" somehow, maybe by making them stand still for some seconds after they attack you, or making them go further away after a hit. Anyway, what do you think?

[MoonicusMaximus]

I think they are fine as they are. Making them slow down or stop at any time would make them trivial and not even worth having in-game, and I think they provide much-needed diversity to Grineer.

 

Have you tried running back some when you face Grinders? They will, at longer distances, travel towards you in a straight line; it's at this time when they are easiest to shoot. Also, try carrying something made for dealing with fast, weak enemies, because you'll be hard-pressed to kill Grinders with a Paris compared to, say, a Furis. You can, as always, just improve your aim. They aren't impossible and deal with, and they are quite easy to avoid if you devote some thought to it.

[holdenagincourt]

I was going to say inb4rollerfanclub but I'm too late.

 

In short, stunlocking enemies are never a good addition to a game, and usually only exist to paper over deficiencies in the faction's overall competence by creating a facade of difficulty. In reality, it's just cheapness.

[gell]

I'd rather fight 100 Chargers than 1 roller. Rollers are obnoxious and any solution for dealing with them assumes you have the luxury of said strategy (can back up, can get to higher ground, etc). Of course, I just don't like them because I melee primarily and they are a huge pain to melee. :P

 

Stunlock (and some poor animation event timing) is an issue that occurs in many places in this game, and Warframe could use some work there.

[MoonicusMaximus]

I was going to say inb4rollerfanclub but I'm too late.

 

In short, stunlocking enemies are never a good addition to a game, and usually only exist to paper over deficiencies in the faction's overall competence by creating a facade of difficulty. In reality, it's just cheapness.

 

I see a lot of this "stunlocking is bad" and "taking control away from the player is bad" malarky, but nobody ever seems to be able to give a reason beyond "I don't like it", let alone a solution. Being hit by a stun is a punishment for not reacting quick enough, and it's a harsh one, but is entirely avoidable if you've the skill to deal with the elements being thrown at you.

[DalaiLlama]

A lot of people been talking about this.

 

I'm kind of partial towards rollers; they never drove me insane. yet I never enjoyed their presence in the game.  But I honestly don't think the rollers add much to the game.  Heck, their sole purpose is to harass and piss of Tenno to make them easier targets for Grineer.  Sure, they do their jobs well but...

[fuiseh]

I like rollers for what they add to the grineer, but I hate them ten times more for stunlocking. Nothing should stunlock. Soloed a rescue + spy mission, had to rush hack a holding a cell for cover as I couldn't clear the room quick with my semi rank lato. Try letting a roller, then another squeeze their way in the cell while you're busy shooting. Nothing is worse.

[confuseray]

So what's an alternative then? What should rollers be doing?

[MoonicusMaximus]

I like rollers for what they add to the grineer, but I hate them ten times more for stunlocking. Nothing should stunlock. Soloed a rescue + spy mission, had to rush hack a holding a cell for cover as I couldn't clear the room quick with my semi rank lato. Try letting a roller, then another squeeze their way in the cell while you're busy shooting. Nothing is worse.

 

Sounds like a situation to use some of that energy you've saved up.

 

I was just in a sabotage map where 3 rollers came at us from an opposing hallway. I was able to kill 2 of them with my Paris because of their tendency to travel in a straight line when not right up on top of you, and my friend killed the other with a jump attack. This allowed us to focus on the rest of the room. It was rather disappointing, because usually Grinders at least get one leap on me, but I did feel good about my ability to pick them off, annoying as they are.

[Sophax]

I was going to say inb4rollerfanclub but I'm too late.

 

In short, stunlocking enemies are never a good addition to a game, and usually only exist to paper over deficiencies in the faction's overall competence by creating a facade of difficulty. In reality, it's just cheapness.

 

Exactly this.

[Smoke39]

I see a lot of this "stunlocking is bad" and "taking control away from the player is bad" malarky, but nobody ever seems to be able to give a reason beyond "I don't like it", let alone a solution. Being hit by a stun is a punishment for not reacting quick enough, and it's a harsh one, but is entirely avoidable if you've the skill to deal with the elements being thrown at you.

 

Ideally you'd always see them coming and always be able to dodge and dispatch them, but everyone makes mistakes, and it's incredibly frustrating to feel like you don't even have a CHANCE to recover from an error.  You know what else is punishing for mistakes?  Simply taking damage.

 

If a grinder were to hit a player and take a chunk out of their shields and then a grineer finishes them off with their gun, they're likely to think something like "S#&$, I should've taken cover sooner."  As it is now if a grinder hits a player and a grineer finishes them off while they're staggering, it's more like "that's not fair, I couldn't even move!"

 

Taking control away from the player isn't necessary for creating challenge, it's just a really frustrating way to do it.  I'd take a damage increase over all the stupid stunning attacks in this game any day.  Or they could jerk your view and screw up your aim or something, but having control completely taken away from you is incredibly frustrating.

[fishworshipper]

I see a lot of this "stunlocking is bad" and "taking control away from the player is bad" malarky, but nobody ever seems to be able to give a reason beyond "I don't like it", let alone a solution. Being hit by a stun is a punishment for not reacting quick enough, and it's a harsh one, but is entirely avoidable if you've the skill to deal with the elements being thrown at you.

Not being able to move at all until you die because 8 rollers locked you into a room isn't punishment.

It's the game being cheap as F***.

[DalaiLlama]

Not being able to move at all until you die because 8 rollers locked you into a room isn't punishment.

It's the game being cheap as F***.

Still not as scary as the time I accidentally closed myself off in an elevator with 3 rollers with all my shields down and health down to 80.

[fishworshipper]

Still not as scary as the time I accidentally closed myself off in an elevator with 3 rollers with all my shields down and health down to 80.

Oh GOD.

[CloudPies]

Long as they don't hit you while you're in the middle of a jump, they add diversity to enemies. But when they somehow do AOE to airborne targets, then I better see an increase in the attack ranges of all melee weapons...

[Dancingfirefly]

At the very least, a frost mod should slow a roller down when you shoot it.

[Karosu]

for the most part i dont mind them, maybe make them a little slower would be nice, hard to snapshot them when u got a few on you, which happens sometimes.

 

only other situation i got frustrated in was i was behind cover next to a wall and one rolled around the corner to where i was standing and got stuck under me, so i got stunchained by one ball for about 30 seconds til my spacebar spam let me jump and it thankfully got unstuck.

[GeoffFromAccounting]

agreed. Rollers are far too frustrating, espicially when online and even more so on solo, I'll get to the online part first, one time I was playing with a friend on a Mobile Defence mission (which I accidentaly brought my Boar, bad choice) and there were 6 FREAKING ROLLERS!! anyway, my friend was down, and I couldn't get to him in time due to the stagger effect of the Rollers disabling my movement (including when I was sprinting) meaning he died (this happened 2-3 times aswell). Now to part B of this: Playing Solo, usually when you make a mistake you have a chance to recover from it with the penalty being either death, or low health (mostly the latter) which usually makes you think "DAMN! should've done [insert action here]" but in terms with Rollers, if you make a mistake, it's always (near) INSTANT DEATH!! due to the stagger effect, which always makes me think "GOD DAMMIT!!! what was I supposed to do!?I COULDN'T MOVE!!!" thus, wasting a revive, and since you always respawn where you died (another thing the devs should fix) the Rollers are bound to be there, thus more near INSTANT DEAT!! wasting all your revives unless you forfeit on the first death

Edited April 18, 2013 by Ninjaboy00

[Dirtyfouts]

I think rollers should be removed from the game honestly lol. Or changed drastically. They literally add nothing to the game besides annoyance. It's not challenge - it's Annoyance

[rhoenix]

The Rollers being annoying really fits the Grineer's playbook, in my eyes.  Yes, they're tremendously annoying and cheap, and that's likely exactly why the Grineer like them.

 

Melee strikes can dispatch them if you're fast enough, as can shooting them as they try to close on you.  I would not suggest removing them entirely, but instead making it so they cannot stagger you if you jump over them.  This would allow you to dispatch them with a jump melee, and at least add another option to destroying them if they've closed.

[Tetsmeha]

Every faction needs a knockdown/stunlock. Corpus had shockwave moas and infected have runners and now chargers. Why wouldn't grineer get any love?

 

jk everyone complained about stunlock. Why add an enemy with a mechanic people complain about rather than giving people a way to deal with it?

[Xevious]

The trick to fighting rollers is to chase them, not let them chase you. Really works.

[smithf]

The trick to fighting rollers is to chase them, not let them chase you. Really works.

 

how about bringing a full team with sentinels all with maxed out warrior?

[Starforsaken]

I see that must of us got the same problem, it's all about being annoying! It's true, it reaally fits on Grinner, but that doesn't mean it fits in the game. What do you think about this: invulnerability after being stun. Lets say, 5 seconds till you can stun again. Or if you're stunned 3 times in less than, for instance, 10 seconds, you become invulnerable to stun for another 10 secs. Or something like that

[Tsukinoki]

There are two big issues with grinders:

1) Their actual damage area is much bigger than their hitbox/visual size.
Why is this an issue?  Because you think your safe when it jumps by you but then without warning you start to stagger.  That just leads to frustration because you were outside of its reach, but not the size of its invisible stagger and damage AOE that it uses as its real attack.  If they actually had to touch you to damage/stagger you that would be a lot better than they are currently.

It also means that they can counter you out of the one attack you have to counter them easily: the ground slam.

2) Removing control from the player is always a bad design choice. Especially when it can be done permanently.
This one should be fairly obvious.  If it isn't then let me bring up another thing that was similar in older RPGs, especially JRPGs.  Charm.  What would that do? Take control of one of your units for the enemies so they become another enemy until it wears off/you dispell it.  In some they gave that ability to a boss...and the boss could spam it on your entire group, charming them all and then you had to go get a drink or something while your party killed itself with no chance of you doing anything to fix it/retaliate.
Why did I bring this up?  You get more than 2 roller attacking you at once and you are going to be perma-stunlocked.  All you can do is watch as you stagger everywhere while being shot to death and unable to do anything but watch.  The one thing that makes perma-stagger from grinders worse than charm is that at least in those RPGs charm could fail...where here if it hits you, you are going to spend precious seconds staggering around and hoping that it wont hit you again, or a second one wont show up.

The final thing with them is that people for them say that it flushes you out of cover, that it pushes you against the main grineer troops to keep this game from being cover based.  Honestly for me and most of the people I play with it does the opposite.  If there is a grinder we crouch near the biggest pile of small cover we can find simply so the grinders get stuck on them due to pathing and we can take them out.  The best strategy for dealing with them ironically is find more cover.  And it is *never* good game design to have an enemy that the best counter for them is abusing pathing issues, or AI issues with them occasionally just stopping dead once you hop onto a box somewhere.