Nullifier's Bubble Isn't Affected By Damage, And Here's Proof

[dragonkingdx]

Making damage the sole factor would make the equation more fair by far due to the fact that most weapons that are at least moderately equal to the challenge of certain portions of the game are not equal in how they apply damage insomuch as they are equal(or nearly so) in DAMAGE.

 

Thus the only factor that is capable of equalizing said weapons is the overall output. Additionally critical hits must be factored into the equation otherwise there will continue to be a discrepancy favoring High ROF weapons/opticor over bows.

 

This then favors high single shot weapons over ROF. the shield itself is meant to shrink so it differs from frost eximus shields. Damage based is not the way to go and breaks the nullifiers use/point. Among that its near impossible to balance properly to effect all weapons equally. Due to the massive amount of variables that needs to be put in to make the nullifier work on all lvls. Such as lower lvled ones having shields effected differently than higher lvl ones so that people with weaker weaps dont have to expend like 5 clips to down a shield.  Crits shouldn't be allowed because of their massive damage output even if said shield had allowed it what would the outcome be? It would mean weapons that are capable of red crits become monsters on the shields taking them out instantly if damage based. (overall favoring bows)

 

its current setup does take a min of 6 hits from slower firing weaps. the only thing I could suggest would be allowing slower firing weaps to have a min of 4 to destroy it to be slightly more friendly. (and even then im sure people will still complain) However since it still has some concept of damage that needs to be scaled a bit more. Its a very complex situation and no 1 solution would fix it.

[Althran]

This then favors high single shot weapons over ROF. the shield itself is meant to shrink so it differs from frost eximus shields. Damage based is not the way to go and breaks the nullifiers use/point. Among that its near impossible to balance properly to effect all weapons equally. Due to the massive amount of variables that needs to be put in to make the nullifier work on all lvls. Such as lower lvled ones having shields effected differently than higher lvl ones so that people with weaker weaps dont have to expend like 5 clips to down a shield.  Crits shouldn't be allowed because of their massive damage output even if said shield had allowed it what would the outcome be? It would mean weapons that are capable of red crits become monsters on the shields taking them out instantly if damage based. (overall favoring bows)

 

its current setup does take a min of 6 hits from slower firing weaps. the only thing I could suggest would be allowing slower firing weaps to have a min of 4 to destroy it to be slightly more friendly. (and even then im sure people will still complain) However since it still has some concept of damage that needs to be scaled a bit more. Its a very complex situation and no 1 solution would fix it.

 

No it doesn't, because high RoF weapons don't just have high RoF going for them, they also have an insane amount of damage and DPS.  What other scenario nerfs high RoF weapons anyway?  I mean you're already discouraged from using single RoF weapons.

[plznohurtme]

The problem with this idea is that they shrink when ANY damage is applied. Why I say this is a problem is that the shrinkage being applied by any damage is the problem currently. Thus making weapons that can apply damage consistently per second much more efficient whereas weapons that rely solely on that burst style of application(large amounts in one shot) are being far outpaced by the damage over time variants.

 

Making damage the sole factor would make the equation more fair by far due to the fact that most weapons that are at least moderately equal to the challenge of certain portions of the game are not equal in how they apply damage insomuch as they are equal(or nearly so) in DAMAGE.

 

Thus the only factor that is capable of equalizing said weapons is the overall output. Additionally critical hits must be factored into the equation otherwise there will continue to be a discrepancy favoring High ROF weapons/opticor over bows.

 

The only thing I could see them do to rectify this without the damage being the core effective trait for neutralizing the shields would be a purely time based shrink mechanic that was triggered with ANY damage source.

 

Meaning that once a damage source is applied to the shield it starts a shrink that will complete over time with a single hit to the shield. The only problem I see with this is that it then becomes a fire and forget enemy that can still be neutralized with little or no challenge.

Which is I think the crux of the situation. How to balance weapon utilization without trivializing the challenge they potentially bring to gameplay?

 

You don't appear to understand what I was saying... Your last two paragraphs are exactly what I was saying... Their shield should just shrink at a set rate after taking damage. They can add a bit of time to the shrink animation and solve the whole thing. Nullifiers are already getting killed as fast as the animation goes for high damage autos which is part of the current problem.

 

No it doesn't, because high RoF weapons don't just have high RoF going for them, they also have an insane amount of damage and DPS.  What other scenario nerfs high RoF weapons anyway?  I mean you're already discouraged from using single RoF weapons.

As long as shields are not affected by critical hits a pure damage mechanic is not fair.

[Rehero]

The problem is that a lot of people who play this game do not understand the mechanics and you are spreading incorrect information.  They really are affected by damage and there's simply no denying it and it does take a Braton 36 shots to get through the shield versus 9 for the Marelok there's no denying that either.  I agree with you completely that the mechanic isn't fair, but it's not broken and it is clearly working like they want it to.

 

It most certainly does matter that you're using incorrect information, because people who don't know better believe that it's simply broken.  Given that you clearly aren't an idiot you should be able to understand that people come to the forums for information because they're not necessarily interested in finding out how things work for themselves.  You should be spreading accurate information and explaining what you'd like to see changed accordingly rather than just going around saying how things "should" work and how "damage doesn't affect shields".

The value of ammo on many of the slower firing weapons weighs much harder than the high rate of fire. It takes roughly 6.6% of the total 510 ammo of the unmodded braton to take out while it takes the fully modded marelock roughly 4.3% of its 210 ammo to take out. I seriously doubt it is intended for it to weigh this heavily on number of hits when the 0 mod bratons percentage ammo consumption is this similar to that of a fully modded weapon of any kind. Ontop of that when you consider how valuable ammo is to snipers/bows it makes even less sense.

 

With that said I do agree with a complete mechanic change. I said it in a few other threads but I feel like if the shield mechanic needs to stay it would be far easier to balance if they just assigned a value to each weapon taking into account how many shots can be fired over x period of time factoring in reload as well as fire rate and have that value subtract from the nullifiers set in stone, unscaling, shield health pool. This way the rate of decay should be similar across all weapons. I would prefer if it just didn't block gunfire and instead reduced the damage dealt to enemies inside by a %.

 

On an unrelated note Opticor max ammo is kind of outlandish, didn't even occur to me how hilarious it is until earlier this morning.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Rehero

[dragonkingdx]

No it doesn't, because high RoF weapons don't just have high RoF going for them, they also have an insane amount of damage and DPS.  What other scenario nerfs high RoF weapons anyway?  I mean you're already discouraged from using single RoF weapons.

You missed the point entirely. having shields based solely on damage ruins the point of them. It would turn them into eximus shields, easily destroyable. The nullifiers mechanic is to have a shield that shrinks (while the other point being negating warframe abilities to anything inside behind the shield) Having the shield effected by damage ruins that mechanic. As it would be destroyed by slower firing weapons because those opt for more damage per shot over ROF. (IE trading CC/sustained dps for destructive single shot kills) They are meant to shrink and have a set shrink time otherwise the higher ROF weaps would take it down instantly.

 

As well as the point that if they are allowed to be taken down by damage they would go down within a second for most overused weapons and hardly present a challenge. Turning nullifiers into fodder enemies not worth too much of a challenge. Essentially killing one of the nicer points of their existence.

[Brynslustafir]

I have the perfect solution... hold on to your butts.

 

What if we REMOVE NULLIFIERS COMPLETELY?

 

Nobody asked for them, and so far I've seen nothing but negative feedback about them, so why even keep them?

[Brynslustafir]

You missed the point entirely. having shields based solely on damage ruins the point of them. It would turn them into eximus shields, easily destroyable. The nullifiers mechanic is to have a shield that shrinks (while the other point being negating warframe abilities to anything inside behind the shield) Having the shield effected by damage ruins that mechanic. As it would be destroyed by slower firing weapons because those opt for more damage per shot over ROF. (IE trading CC/sustained dps for destructive single shot kills) They are meant to shrink and have a set shrink time otherwise the higher ROF weaps would take it down instantly.

 

As well as the point that if they are allowed to be taken down by damage they would go down within a second for most overused weapons and hardly present a challenge. Turning nullifiers into fodder enemies not worth too much of a challenge. Essentially killing one of the nicer points of their existence.

I don't know about you, but I think that it should be pretty easy to break through a bubble sheild if I'm using a giant laser cannon. 

[NalkorRN]

I have the perfect solution... hold on to your butts.

 

What if we REMOVE NULLIFIERS COMPLETELY?

 

Nobody asked for them, and so far I've seen nothing but negative feedback about them, so why even keep them?

Probably because like when Interception was brand new and on a required node for the old Starmap for new players to progress, DE devs were acting all excited that new players would have to experience the challenge, not getting that many new players were finding that Interception mission so awful that they were quitting, often because they lacked enough damage and survival mods due to all the heavy units and such that would appear.

 

DE just doesn't get it I guess, it's kinda shocking that they'd keep such a loathed enemy in the game, one which serves no purpose other than to screw over ability users and those who favor alpha damage weapons like the Vectis, Opticor, Stug (the bubbles just bounce right off even and do no damage).

[DSkred]

As well as the point that if they are allowed to be taken down by damage they would go down within a second for most overused weapons and hardly present a challenge. Turning nullifiers into fodder enemies not worth too much of a challenge. Essentially killing one of the nicer points of their existence.

 

Funny you should mention that, because the most overused weapons already turn them into fodder enemies which hardly present a challenge, and make their existence pointless. For weapons like the Boltor Prime, Soma Prime, and Synoid Gammacor, the shield adds a extra second or so to the time it takes for them to murder everything they point at.

 

They've failed to be a challenge at all, but succeed at making the best weapons in the game even better than they've ever been.

[SandwitchPrime]

yea, this is just logic. not a complaint something that makes total sense, but here come to comments about how u need skill to kill them. EX. why dont u just slide inside the bubble and kill them.

when most of the time inside there are 2 bloody bombards, 5 lancers, and 3 heavy gunners? jesus crist some mad skill you got there

[geninrising]

 

You don't appear to understand what I was saying... Your last two paragraphs are exactly what I was saying... Their shield should just shrink at a set rate after taking damage. They can add a bit of time to the shrink animation and solve the whole thing. Nullifiers are already getting killed as fast as the animation goes for high damage autos which is part of the current problem.

 

As long as shields are not affected by critical hits a pure damage mechanic is not fair.

Ah I see my mistake in calling you out for it. Also you are definitely correct in the statement of ignoring critical hits. I think the constant shrinkage could work as a mechanic as long as it was a complete shrink from any single damage source over X time frame.

 

However, I am still at a loss as to how that would not trivialize said enemies existence.

[plznohurtme]

Ah I see my mistake in calling you out for it. Also you are definitely correct in the statement of ignoring critical hits. I think the constant shrinkage could work as a mechanic as long as it was a complete shrink from any single damage source over X time frame.

 

However, I am still at a loss as to how that would not trivialize said enemies existence.

 

Right now if you have anything Braton Prime damage (fully modded) or higher the shield will break in 9 shots no matter what so autos already break the shield in minimum time.  That's why I think the whole thing should be based on the shrink animation rather than damage done to the shield.  It's basically already this way for a certain subset of weapons, so that seems like a good place to start from but just change the numbers.  No matter what as long as Nullifier shields block bullets and Warframe abilities they won't be a trivial enemy so long as the shield shrink is not too fast (and obviously not punishingly slow).

Edited January 21, 2015 by plznohurtme

[Althran]

when most of the time inside there are 2 bloody bombards, 5 lancers, and 3 heavy gunners? jesus crist some mad skill you got there

he was not saying that HE deals with them with ease(although he could, I won't assume anything), but was rather making a comment about how people are going to POST how you can just slide in there with melee and quickly kill them

[VDeorsum]

he was not saying that HE deals with them with ease(although he could, I won't assume anything), but was rather making a comment about how people are going to POST how you can just slide in there with melee and quickly kill them

i'm curious to see, really. With a weak frame like Loki maybe...

[Althran]

i'm curious to see, really. With a weak frame like Loki maybe...

 

it's been done, and I've seen it happen firsthand.  If you're loki, or really any frame that isn't really tanky, and you happen to slide into a nullifier bubble with bombards in it, it's an insta death.  I revived the guy like 5 times over the course of the mission, which was T4 survival.

Edited January 24, 2015 by Althran

[NalkorRN]

You know what would be awesome? If you could use a high damage-per-shot weapon like say, the Opticor, Dread, Ogris, etc and if on a direct hit, the Nullifier's shield would shrink so fast that he'd be chunked.

[tris1]

yer its kinda silly I like to use a sniper a lot and with a vectis well its kinda stupid yes I can use a secondary but the game isn't made for any gameplay with using all the weapons for different purposes

[Filas312]

Personally I think that the problem lies in the fact that the game favours automatic weapons a lot, and with Nullifiers favoring the automatic guns went even further.

[Metacilla]

Have you tried the Torid ? It's effective against that bubble but i haven't tried it in the t4 yet.

[notHunky]

Today I just tried running a level 20 syndicate mission with nullifiers in it. My potatoed and Forma'd Hek with scattering justice and everything but the kitchen sink in it was doing only slightly more damage to their shields than my sentinal's deth machine rifle... This problem is compounded by the Hek's low magazine capicity and needing to reload.

 

My Hek which does about 6030 damage per blast should not be struggling to keep up with a Deth Machine Rifle deals around 10 damage per round! This is unacceptable. Also, an arctic eximus in the same level spawned, yet the Hek was able to take his snow globe down in 1 shot. I don't understand why I have to dump 3 magazines on one nullifier bubble just to get it's shields down.

Edited January 24, 2015 by notHunky

[geninrising]

Have you tried the Torid ? It's effective against that bubble but i haven't tried it in the t4 yet.

Torrid is magnificently effective. Hit the ground in front of them and watch them die instantly once they walk into the cloud or with firestorm on it watch them instantly die no matter where you hit near them.

[Althran]

Today I just tried running a level 20 syndicate mission with nullifiers in it. My potatoed and Forma'd Hek with scattering justice and everything but the kitchen sink in it was doing only slightly more damage to their shields than my sentinal's deth machine rifle... This problem is compounded by the Hek's low magazine capicity and needing to reload.

 

My Hek which does about 6030 damage per blast should not be struggling to keep up with a Deth Machine Rifle deals around 10 damage per round! This is unacceptable. Also, an arctic eximus in the same level spawned, yet the Hek was able to take his snow globe down in 1 shot. I don't understand why I have to dump 3 magazines on one nullifier bubble just to get it's shields down.

 

this is another perfect example of how the shield is broken.  and you did say it was a syndicate mission, so that means normal nullifiers are broken as well, not just corrupted...  

[geninrising]

Today I just tried running a level 20 syndicate mission with nullifiers in it. My potatoed and Forma'd Hek with scattering justice and everything but the kitchen sink in it was doing only slightly more damage to their shields than my sentinal's deth machine rifle... This problem is compounded by the Hek's low magazine capicity and needing to reload.

 

My Hek which does about 6030 damage per blast should not be struggling to keep up with a Deth Machine Rifle deals around 10 damage per round! This is unacceptable. Also, an arctic eximus in the same level spawned, yet the Hek was able to take his snow globe down in 1 shot. I don't understand why I have to dump 3 magazines on one nullifier bubble just to get it's shields down.

This is a perfect example of how a shotguns damage is calculated on a per trigger pull variant of the formula rather than a per pellet one. However it amounts to the same thing as what Althran has stated multiple times that damage really counts for squat.

 

I also had a funny thing illustrated for me today that clearly shows that damage is not a factor. I was using my Amprex which is modded for red crits. The weapon deals 0 damage to the shield (due to crits not affecting objects) and yet the shield still falls rapidly.

[[DE]Rebecca]

 

-snip-

 

Incoming explanation for how shield destruction works at this time:

 

The Nullifier shields are destroyed based on a series of calculations performed based your weapon's damage (enhanced/mitigated within a formula) per frame and the 'shrink rate' of the Nullifier Shields. 

 

Every frame a sample is taken of damage done to the Nullifier Shield.

 

Step 1) If the amount of damage is less than 100, it is set to 100. If the amount of damage is greater than 400, it is set to 400. 

Step 2) Divide that amount by 100 and multiply the default shrink rate (6% of max size for Corpus, 4% of max size for Corrupted) by that value.

 

If you're keen on the calculations and know a thing or two about math, click the spoiler for the real 'under-the-hood':

 

 

 

Example 1 - You hit it with a Braton and do 18 damage.  Step 1 indicates anything less than 100 is set to 100, so we perform that. Then, divide that value by 100 == 1.0. Then, we multiply the default shrink rate by that value. So for a Corpus Nullifier its 6%, which equates to:

0.06 * 1.0 = 0.06. We then shrink the shield by that amount.

 

Example 2 -  You hit it with something stronger, doing 150 damage. 150/100 = 1.5 * 0.06 = 0.09 == shrink the shield by 9% of the max size.

 

Example 3 - You hit the shield for 1000 damage. That's greater than 400, so I set it to 400. 400/100 = 4.0 * 0.06 = 0.24. So the shield is shrunk by 24%

 

And those values are based on the current size of the shield, not always max size. So the shield starts at a 1.5x scale, and if the first shot is multiplied by 4x to drop it by 24%, it will now decrease to 1.15x scale. The next shot will decrease it to a scale that is 24% less than 1.15, which is around 0.87.

 

So there are some diminishing returns there as the shield is damaged. 

 

Another thing to consider - the shield responds to damage per frame. So if you shoot it with a weapon like the Hek that hits it with multiple pellets in a single frame, it's the cumulative damage of those shots that is considered. So hitting it with 3 pellets at once, each doing 1000 damage really isn't any different than hitting it once for 1000 damage. Since in both cases, that damage is normalized down to the max multiplier of 4x.

 

However, there would be an impact if you are using a weaker weapon that does less than 400 per pellet! 

 

Now, clearly to me it's the mitigation within the formula that has all of our Arsenals at a loss on the 'best way' to deal with this enemy- but if you are a Corpus you say 'Yes, our Damage Reduction system technology is working quite well'. If you fire with your 4x Forma'd Dread and expect your usual damage output to be reflected, it won't.  This leads us to where we are today with our Nullifier feedback and experiences. 

 

Even if the enemy isn't perfect, they're different, and a change of tactics is a welcome addition in principle to me. I am playing a variety of games right now that have 'that one enemy' that when appears sets me on a different course of action. Definitely open to more discussion and thoughts here. Thanks for your patience while this reply was put together (with details from the dev team). 

[CaptainJohnson]

-snip-

 

This makes a lot of sense. I think that lead to a lot of the confusion seen around the forums, and I hadn't even thought that it might work that way under-the-hood. However, maybe the values are just too low for veteran players, because I feel like I don't have too many weapons that have sub-400 damage per shot, barring some with extremely quick fire rates. Overall, the weapons that were useful on Nullifiers before will continue to be effective on them now, damage or no, which I think is the critical issue here. The way this works is that it actually further limits the number of weapons that work well on Nullifier bubbles, as opposed to expanding the number. As it stands, there are just very few weapons that hold up well against it and it discourages variance on loadouts.