Not All Enemies Should Be Boring Fodder.

[Innocent_Flower]

Warframe has a few realy great enemies. The problem Is they're rare and on a lot of playthroughs you won't see any of them. 

 

Examples include; 

 

Seekers, that force you to roll to avoid exploding. 

Shield lancers, that require exceptional accuracy or flanking to kill. Kinda ruined by punchthrough. But still great for players. 

Oxium osprey (who are mostly only interesting when you want resources) who can be encouraged or discouraged to crash by player actions. 

The infested osprey. Who force players to move away from hazardous trails. 

Helions. Woo jetpacks! 

Ancients. 

Orbital strike drones. 

 

None of which are perfect. Seekers and OxOsprey do very little damage so getting explosive dust on your shiney warframe is all you need to worry about. Helions aren't fun when you can't get up with rocket spam and ancients tend to pull bullS#&$. 

 

 

But other than them, and some failed attempts to give us interesting enemies (Eximus) and some enemies that are unique but don't realy affect how the game is played (scorpions, runners) we've really just got mountains upon mountains of fodder that just need to be shot or whacked. 

 

Most enemies do nothing other than approach, take small amounts of your shields with hitscan projectiles, or melee you. Granted there's some variation in this; Some will come closer than others. But otherwise they feel no different. 

 

There's no problem with fodder, but they should be fodder for someone who isn't. Someone who's actualy got more depth to them than giving and taking damage. Something that encourages the player to dodge or manipulate or just change their tactics. We don't have that. We shoot whilst running forward or backwards, looking for pickups or cover for shields. That seems to be the only way I fight in warframe, and the game should have evolved from that at some point. 

 

Look at serious sam for example. If you haven't played serious sam; Do. The enemy in that game is art. 

 

Light enemies who run at you screaming a battlecry. Blowing themselves up for high damage when they get near you. The battlecry is excellently used to tell you how close they are, so they're both fair in being unable to sneak up on the player whilst scaring the crap out of him. 

Heavy machinegunners who have a distinct and easy to read pause between firing 

large bull-like enemies that charge nearly-straight through or past the player

characters who attack the player with easy to read and dodge leaps. 

Many characters with damaging but slow, dodgable projectiles. 

That guy who has large and slow homing projectiles you can't dodge, but can destroy. 

 

 

other mentions go to bioshock, halo, half life and killing floor. 

The brute chief has a hammer that when struck causes a shockwave that sends the players it doesn't directly strike through the air. He's capable of leaping to the player as well as running to him. Does anyone want to see a Melee Hellion or is that too space marines?

 

Both Rosie and bouncer big dadies have excellent gameplay mechanics. High health. Grenades, brutal melee dashes

, 

The fleshpound is a delightfull enemy from Killing floor. Good sized health pool. Slow when calm, terrifyingly fast when angered. Lots of damage. 

 

The antlion can not only charge to send the player flying. They can also throw dangerous environmental objects (there aren't physics props in warframe so we'll call these "grineer allies" )

 

The houdini can telleport and between rapidfire bursts of dodgable projectiles.

 

Halo has invisible soldiers who are difficult to see unless moving fast or very close. However you can see their muzzleflashes/swords. I think the way to do this in warframe would be to have an eximus unit who can render allies invisible, but not their muzzle flashes or energy colours.  

 

Halo also has grenades that stick to players and enemies. Now, perhaps something like this could be used in warframe, with rolling getting rid of the grenades. 

 

The spider splicer is a melee enemy can crawl along the ceiling before dropping down nearby to scare the crap out of you. Why oh why is there not such an infested enemy? 

 

Those with the spartan laser in halo create a thin laser when charging it, which after a fully charged then explodes into a big laser that can destroy a tank. Any enemy with such a weapon would ensure many warframes dodging. 

 

Halo hunters. Imagine huge guys with shields and something between a rocket launcher and a lanka. These are great actually. They pack a punch but find it very hard to hit you as they're slow. They're vulnerable after melee between the armour. 

 

The siren from killing floor emits a visible wave of sound that destroys grenades and affects the aim of players inside it. Could this not be applied to dispell player abilities? 

 

The needler is the most fabulous sci fi weapon ever. Weak slow homing projectiles that cause someone to explode once a few of them are in the same person. From a gameplay perspective it means the player is free to take a couple, but must ensure they don't take too many. You're not allowed to make the projectiles pink, but nor are you allowed to ignore the opportunity to put something functionally similar to this magnificent gun in the game. 

 

 

Eximus. Eximus, for the love of the Bo, Should never be able to negatively affect players without giving a player the chance to avoid the effect. Ways include giving a countdown before an effect takes place in which the player can kill the eximus unit or move out of it's range, to avoiding spell like projectiles or area of effect target markers (like the orbital strike drone's)  

 

Currently, eximus units are lackluster. The most interesting mechanic, the artic snowglobe, is defeated in less than seconds of fire. Preferably eximus should move away from just buffs and debuffs and become something that spices the game up. give them absurd powers like Old hek's clone ability. Giant moa shockwaves. teleport, necromancy, healing, Volt shields, Vor's bubble shield for different stages, turning all allies invisible. Turning all allies into fast moving explosives. Using weapons that aren't normaly used like the stug, penta, acrid, amprex and so on. 

Edited October 17, 2014 by Innocent_Flower

[Senketsu_]

we have three new enemies coming one for eahc faction, the infested Juggernaut, is coming as sort of a mini boss that spawns randomly in infested mission. The Riot Moa is coming for the Corpus. And the Manic Grineer is coming for those guys all are very unique enemy types and Im very excited for them.

[BabyKurama]

I would say wait and see for the new enemy's we are getting soon, I think we will get more annoyingly fun enemy's around U15

[CY13ERPUNK]

+9999 OP

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THIS SO MUCH

 

by far one of my biggest gripes with Warframe is the obnoxiousness of our insane powers and the flood of generic enemies that allow us to use basically zero thoughtful tactics and still just plow thru the game

 

every time i see a clip from Bioshock1/2 or Halo(any) or Destiny or Borderlands or any of a number of 1st/3rd person shooter games, they all have much more dynamic enemy types and AI, that incentivize the player to make more thoughtful actions

 

been asking for DE to PLZ work on this for almost 2 yrs now, but instead, we get Archwing, so =/ ya, i dunno

 

(not sayin Archwing doesnt look cool, but still...)

 

 

we have three new enemies coming one for eahc faction, the infested Juggernaut, is coming as sort of a mini boss that spawns randomly in infested mission. The Riot Moa is coming for the Corpus. And the Manic Grineer is coming for those guys all are very unique enemy types and Im very excited for them.

 

yes to this as well, tru there is more stuff coming down the pipe, just still sad that it has taken so long, but no doubt i am hyped to see how they turn out

Edited October 17, 2014 by CY13ERPUNK

[Wurdyburd]

Someone in a thread that was complaining about enemy AI and how 'stupid' the enemies are in Warframe commented that perhaps we don't need enemies with smarter [and thus slower] AI, perhaps we need more dumb mechanics. Mechanics like,

-don't stand there
-don't empty your clip into their torso, aim for a vulnerable spot

-shoot the shield generator instead of the guy it's protecting

 

Many other games have proven that it's possible to make enemies entertaining and unique, forcing you to change your playstyle once you come upon them, so it's not an excuse to say "well we're trying but it's hard". The problem is, that kind of play isn't what Warframe is ABOUT, currently.

We used to have far fewer enemies, dropping far fewer energy orbs, players rationing their abilities for when they truly needed them, and smarter AI.

We now have endless swarms of cannonfodder, that drop tons of energy, allowing spammable abilities and even ults, and weapons that can mow down hundreds of enemies with little to no effort.

 

Warframe needs to develop enemies with mechanics that suit it's current horde mechanics. Eximi is a start, as was buffing Infested to make being swarmed more dangerous.

But it's not enough to compare Warframe to, say Bioshock, where on average you're only fighting 2-3 enemies at a time, and a maximum of 8-10.

[notionphil]

 

But it's not enough to compare Warframe to, say Bioshock, where on average you're only fighting 2-3 enemies at a time, and a maximum of 8-10.

 

There's no reason we can't fight a hoard of fodder AND a legitimate challenge at the same time.

 

Think T4 Vor, but...a little less tanky. That light-heavy-eximus-elite("dumb mechanic") rhythm of combat should be a thing in more game modes than just one.

[merryfistmas]

You make an excellent point about fleshpounds. I'd lack to add that they are ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING. Seeing one charge always makes me think "It's very possible that I'll die here." No enemy in warframe does that, no enemy in warframe is so devastating that it requires you to completely focus your attention on it.

 

Halo's AI is what I think third and first person shooters should strive for.

Edited October 17, 2014 by merryfistmas

[Innocent_Flower]

we have three new enemies coming one for eahc faction, the infested Juggernaut, is coming as sort of a mini boss that spawns randomly in infested mission. The Riot Moa is coming for the Corpus. And the Manic Grineer is coming for those guys all are very unique enemy types and Im very excited for them.

Not enough, and the manic grineer is what one of the numerous near-identical grineer melee enemies should be. And even when we have these three new enemies... the eximus still suck. The melee enemies suck. The juggernaut can't be used in a lot of situations. 

 

Anyhow. About a third of the enemies suggested shouldn't be difficult to create (and I shan't even mention the porting of units to the corrupted)