Press 4 To Win

[vaugahn]

You need LoS to activate Soul Punch. That's both targeting needed and LoS in nature.

 

How does this provide diversity? How does this provide good diversity?

 

Soul Punch can hit targets through thin surcafes. The problem is that even doors are thick enough to block it due to terrible range, among other problems with its targeting mechanic. 

 

Also, LoS doesn't mean you have to look at an enemy for the ability to work. Just so we're clear on that.

 

it was a broken LoS system.

 

Apply that To Saryn, and how does that make any sense?

 

Apply that to Frosts Avalanche, and how does a Snow Storm not damage things simply because they are behind a pillar? I'm creating an elemental storm around myself, a box shouldn't provide you safety from a snow storm when you're not even inside the box, you're standing on one side of it.

 

This still provides no sense of good diversity. Nor is it something that I can actually say is a good change because it is, yet again, whacking on people who like to use their powers.

 

Did I not say "Obviously not every skill would get LoS"? (Exact quote)

 

And the kind of LoS I'm advocating for isn't the same LoS on Radial Javelin and Radial Blind, which you admitted above is and was broken. I'm looking for a softer approach, with only terrain and hard cover blocking things. 

 

And of course, certain abilities wouldn't get it. You could even do different things with abilities, like have Miasma flow and spread like an actual cloud of gas, or have Avalanche check LoS from the top of the map instead of from the player's position. 

[AlphaHorseman]

STOP

 

Have you used accelerant in high waves?

 

Have you used saryn? That with fire pretty much sums it up.

 

Have you used a decently modded weapon in high waves? Imagine that x7 for fire damage.

 

Are you going to use 250% <Unmodded boost> As your only example? Are we going to pretend weapons dont dominate enemies through 50 and accelerant pushes that further easily?

 

If youre an ember that didnt mod for fire its kinda your fault

 

Saryns power is limited to 15/23/35 meters. Excaliburs is something like 58 at max

 

Are you purposely going to ignore that? How about Mesas 50 meter play the game for me button or Mesas 70 meter kill everything on cerberus farm.

 

You seem to be going far off topic with this saryn LoS thing

Yes, I've used Ember in T4, TRUST ME I know what modded it does. IT STILL only affects Fire powers, it does not, however help out the majority of the rest of the damage types.

 

Weapon damage, IF IT ISN'T FIRE, isn't going to be helped. Accelerant gives you the Stun/Blind duration that helps out with higher wave enemies. It still provides very little scale ability to the rest of her kit. Or are you telling me the hundreds of threads about Ember needing a buff/rework are false?

 

I'm not ignoring anything, you seem to be forgetting that these are the limitations placed on them. Players can mod to help out with these limitations, they have the freedom to do so. You can also mod for a guns' effectiveness on the field, so don't tell me you can't do that.

 

 

 

Soul Punch can hit targets through thin surcafes. The problem is that even doors are thick enough to block it due to terrible range, among other problems with its targeting mechanic. 

 

Also, LoS doesn't mean you have to look at an enemy for the ability to work. Just so we're clear on that.

 

 

Did I not say "Obviously not every skill would get LoS"? (Exact quote)

 

And the kind of LoS I'm advocating for isn't the same LoS on Radial Javelin and Radial Blind, which you admitted above is and was broken. I'm looking for a softer approach, with only terrain and hard cover blocking things. 

 

And of course, certain abilities wouldn't get it. You could even do different things with abilities, like have Miasma flow and spread like an actual cloud of gas, or have Avalanche check LoS from the top of the map instead of from the player's position. 

What kind of LoS? I'm still against it, as it limits players ability to use these effectively. It's going to have to take a Hek of a lot to make someone like me think this is a good idea.

 

LoS from above with Avalanche can still be cumbersome, as the enemies could be below me under a bridge, but still not be seen from above.

Edited January 13, 2015 by AlphaHorseman

[vaugahn]

What kind of LoS? I'm still against it, as it limits players ability to use these effectively. It's going to have to take a Hek of a lot to make someone like me think this is a good idea.

 

LoS from above with Avalanche can still be cumbersome, as the enemies could be below me under a bridge, but still not be seen from above.

 

Limiting players is kind of the whole point, you know.

 

The difference between LoS and other limiters like ability-resistant enemies or hard caps on various attributes is that LoS can be overcome through intelligent play. 

[Azawarau]

Yes, I've used Ember in T4, TRUST ME I know what modded it does. IT STILL only affects Fire powers, it does not, however help out the majority of the rest of the damage types.

 

Weapon damage, IF IT ISN'T FIRE, isn't going to be helped. Accelerant gives you the Stun/Blind duration that helps out with higher wave enemies. It still provides very little scale ability to the rest of her kit. Or are you telling me the hundreds of threads about Ember needing a buff/rework are false?

 

I'm not ignoring anything, you seem to be forgetting that these are the limitations placed on them. Players can mod to help out with these limitations, they have the freedom to do so. You can also mod for a guns' effectiveness on the field, so don't tell me you can't do that.

Apparently you did something wrong because even without affecting all of the weapons damage she outdoes any damage buff except banshees

[AlphaHorseman]

Limiting players is kind of the whole point, you know.

 

The difference between LoS and other limiters like ability-resistant enemies or hard caps on various attributes is that LoS can be overcome through intelligent play. 

That's why I'm against it. Limiting players for the sake of it isn't something we should be doing. BEFORE anyone starts spewing "balance" at me, anyone with maxed out mods can make the boltor prime into a meat grinder in the highest tiers of content. Same with my Soma Prime, same with my Paris Prime, Dread, etc.

 

We can still introduce skill without directly hurting our player base. For example, introduce into the Corpus a deploy able shield, one that is only one way facing, but can block incoming damage. Not only that, but also buffs outgoing energy weapon damage. Imagine the shield works like how the Promethian Knights had those flying drones that deployed shields in front of them. Thus, players would have to not approach this from the front, but have to maneuver around the shield to eliminate the threat. You can think of it like a Corpus prototype of what Volt has (complements of Alad V's tinkering). Should an AoE ability be cast, the shield can become resistant to it's affects and provide some respite for enemy units closely behind it. Nullifiers represent pretty much the Eximus unit of this. I'm even advocating for enemies that are resistant to CC abilities, as I feel that's a better solution than making it where you can't CC something simply because they're behind a crate.

 

Now you can say that this doesn't give LoS to powers, well, that's because for me I don't think it's a solution. I'd rather have enemies with smarter mechanics, harder to fight, are interesting to encounter than hurt the players. Enriching the experience through expanding on its mechanics, rather than limiting them, sounds like a better solution that hurting the players for playing how they want to play. After all if you want players to be smarter, I think it would be better to give them more interesting challenges to overcome, rather than giving them less to work with.

 

Apparently you did something wrong because even without affecting all of the weapons damage she outdoes any damage buff except banshees

Oh that quote on the damage buff is debatable, ask some Ember and Banshee players for that. It doesn't affect non-fire weaponry is why. It makes it more situational, but it could be workable with a certain setup.

[MechaKnight]

This still provides no sense of good diversity. Nor is it something that I can actually say is a good change because it is, yet again, whacking on people who like to use their powers.

The answer to this is summed up simply in one line being seen across the forums.

"It's not abilities that are the problem, it's ability spam that is the problem."

 

Abilities are okay, all of them. However there is no excuse trying to justify how destroying entire rooms indiscriminately with the push of a single button constantly and eternally throughout an entire mission is balanced. There is no longer any reason to walk or shoot throughout an entire mission if there is no limiting factor on us spamming one single ability constantly.

 

Abilities are fine. Radial nukes are okay with some applied restriction even though they kill things in a spherical area of 4*pi*r^2 . However having this ability able to be spammed without limitations or having them able to be spammed within a perfect spherical radius without any concern for walls or objects is extremely abusive.

 

Various game developers have decided on the matter of passive agency-removing abilities by either limiting their frequency of use, applying a limitation to the player while the ability is in use, or both. In a typical RPG, the only abilities allowed to be given a radial of considerable range are tank aggro abilities, and healer abilities. Whenever there is a damage dealer (sorcerer usually) that deals in area-of-effect damage, the limitations are generally a combination of higher-than-average energy cost, cooldowns, and being completely vulnerable while stuck in an animation. Most developers understand quite well that anything that can be considered a "magic demolition button" has to be limited in at least some form.

 

Even in shooter games, developers generally understand that explosives have to be limited or else they trivialize the entire game. Ammunition carried within/availability of ammunition, effective range of explosion, line-of-sight blocking if the target you're trying to hit is hiding behind cover, etc.

 

Here's a bit of commentary from Valve when they were creating Team Fortress 2.

In case the link doesn't direct you to the appropriate time, skip over to 4 minutes and 3 seconds in.

 

"...one of the main changes between Team Fortress Classic and Team Fortress 2 was the removal of thrown grenades. ... Team Fortress 2's focus on unique class roles led us to notice that a standard hand grenade was a more powerful combat decider than some of the primary weapons. This made the classes more similar in combat--not a desired effect. ... Two cases were particularly problematic: that of players throwing grenades repeatedly through doorways hoping to kill an enemy who might be there, and players on the verge of death throwing all of their grenades in rapid succession, hoping to get a kill... removing standard hand grenades made the game more fun almost immediately ... when we examined the class specific grenades we found similar problems. Eliminating them from playtest gave us yet another boost making the game more fun. Once we decided on removal, we analyzed each class to see what capabilities might have been lost as a result of this decision."

 

How does the above quote apply to Warframe? Well, one point is how classes became too similar due to the use of grenades of any kind. Comparing nuke builds, one really doesn't see much different between Excalibur's Radial Javelin, Saryn's Miasma, Oberon's Reckoning, Mag's Crush, Rhino's Stomp, and some other damage abilities, besides what damage type they dealt and how much range they had. Grenades in that game's beta tended to heavily diminish the importance of guns in that game. In our game, we have a more extreme case where our nukes remove the agency of gunplay completely until the enemies are level 35 grineer covered in armor, at which point you just use the same ability twice in a row. We kill enemies anywhere from 35 to 59 meters in a spherical area through walls, ceilings, and floors, and don't have much that resembles an ammo limitation or cooldown since we don't have cooldowns and energy in this game is plentiful alongside our unlimited energy pack usage. In general, availability of our nukes also removes all of the skill from the game when you can just stand still and be top score on any team. Our mod min-maxing for abilities is more important than our weapons or gameplay, at which point we may as well be playing a trading card game. Putting a limitation on our radial nukes or if need be, replace them, would make the game more fun to play as well as differentiate our Warframe characters by the different variety in their other three abilities... or the new one. Of course, the developers are aware this can change gameplay so the game will get a bit of patching done on the side to make sure the flow of gameplay is unimpeded.

 

There you have it, very basic game design that for so long after the release of corrupted mods, Warframe has failed to implement into the game. It's just fine however as being in beta phase, this game has time to right this mistake and fix our ability system to be more balanced, fun, and engaging. Even past release, change for the better is still recommended whenever a path for improvement is recognized.

Edited January 13, 2015 by MechaKnight

[MechaKnight]

Limiting players is kind of the whole point, you know.

 

The difference between LoS and other limiters like ability-resistant enemies or hard caps on various attributes is that LoS can be overcome through intelligent play. 

 

That's why I'm against it. Limiting players for the sake of it isn't something we should be doing. BEFORE anyone starts spewing "balance" at me, anyone with maxed out mods can make the boltor prime into a meat grinder in the highest tiers of content. Same with my Soma Prime, same with my Paris Prime, Dread, etc.

 

We can still introduce skill without directly hurting our player base. For example, introduce into the Corpus a deploy able shield, one that is only one way facing, but can block incoming damage. Not only that, but also buffs outgoing energy weapon damage. Imagine the shield works like how the Promethian Knights had those flying drones that deployed shields in front of them. Thus, players would have to not approach this from the front, but have to maneuver around the shield to eliminate the threat. You can think of it like a Corpus prototype of what Volt has (complements of Alad V's tinkering). Should an AoE ability be cast, the shield can become resistant to it's affects and provide some respite for enemy units closely behind it. Nullifiers represent pretty much the Eximus unit of this. I'm even advocating for enemies that are resistant to CC abilities, as I feel that's a better solution than making it where you can't CC something simply because they're behind a crate.

 

Now you can say that this doesn't give LoS to powers, well, that's because for me I don't think it's a solution. I'd rather have enemies with smarter mechanics, harder to fight, are interesting to encounter than hurt the players. Enriching the experience through expanding on its mechanics, rather than limiting them, sounds like a better solution that hurting the players for playing how they want to play. After all if you want players to be smarter, I think it would be better to give them more interesting challenges to overcome, rather than giving them less to work with.

 

 

 

No weapon, not even penta can kill every enemy in 35 to 60 meters without aiming to hit them behind all walls and give guaranteed stun.

 

We already gave grineer shield lancers a shield, and abilities are still problematic: abilities have infinite punchthrough past any object and in any direction. Most weapons can not kill through their shield without using mods to do so. Abilities always kill through shields. Having an enemy with a shield that blocks abilities is okay, but our playerbase is already finding ways to trivialize and defeat nullifiers rapidly. Attaching a limitation to an obstacle that can be quickly defeated is not the right way to implement limitations since they are easily defeated.

 

I would also appreciate new smart enemies, but the developers really can't implement them due to how we savagely kill and stun them with our abilities. You can check notionphil's enemy thread for more details.

Edited January 13, 2015 by MechaKnight

[AlphaHorseman]

 

The answer to this is summed up simply in one line being seen across the forums.

"It's not abilities that are the problem, it's ability spam that is the problem."

 

Abilities are okay, all of them. However there is no excuse trying to justify how destroying entire rooms indiscriminately with the push of a single button constantly and eternally throughout an entire mission is balanced. There is no longer any reason to walk or shoot throughout an entire mission if there is no limiting factor on us spamming one single ability constantly.

 

Abilities are fine. Radial nukes are okay with some applied restriction even though they kill things in a spherical area of 4*pi*r^2 . However having this ability able to be spammed without limitations or having them able to be spammed within a perfect spherical radius without any concern for walls or objects is extremely abusive.

 

Various game developers have decided on the matter of passive agency-removing abilities by either limiting their frequency of use, applying a limitation to the player while the ability is in use, or both. In a typical RPG, the only abilities allowed to be given a radial of considerable range are tank aggro abilities, and healer abilities. Whenever there is a damage dealer (sorcerer usually) that deals in area-of-effect damage, the limitations are generally a combination of higher-than-average energy cost, cooldowns, and being completely vulnerable while stuck in an animation. Most developers understand quite well that anything that can be considered a "magic demolition button" has to be limited in at least some form.

 

Even in shooter games, developers generally understand that explosives have to be limited or else they trivialize the entire game. Ammunition carried within/availability of ammunition, effective range of explosion, line-of-sight blocking if the target you're trying to hit is hiding behind cover, etc.

 

Here's a bit of commentary from Valve when they were creating Team Fortress 2.

In case the link doesn't direct you to the appropriate time, skip over to 4 minutes and 3 seconds in.

 

"...one of the main changes between Team Fortress Classic and Team Fortress 2 was the removal of thrown grenades. ... Team Fortress 2's focus on unique class roles led us to notice that a standard hand grenade was a more powerful combat decider than some of the primary weapons. This made the classes more similar in combat--not a desired effect. ... Two cases were particularly problematic: that of players throwing grenades repeatedly through doorways hoping to kill an enemy who might be there, and players on the verge of death throwing all of their grenades in rapid succession, hoping to get a kill... removing standard hand grenades made the game more fun almost immediately ... when we examined the class specific grenades we found similar problems. Eliminating them from playtest gave us yet another boost making the game more fun. Once we decided on removal, we analyzed each class to see what capabilities might have been lost as a result of this decision."

 

How does the above quote apply to Warframe? Well, one point is how classes became too similar due to the use of grenades of any kind. Comparing nuke builds, one really doesn't see much different between Excalibur's Radial Javelin, Saryn's Miasma, Oberon's Reckoning, Mag's Crush, Rhino's Stomp, and some other damage abilities, besides what damage type they dealt and how much range they had. Grenades in that game's beta tended to heavily diminish the importance of guns in that game. In our game, we have a more extreme case where our nukes remove the agency of gunplay completely until the enemies are level 35 grineer covered in armor, at which point you just use the same ability twice in a row. We kill enemies anywhere from 35 to 59 meters in a spherical area through walls, ceilings, and floors, and don't have much that resembles an ammo limitation or cooldown since we don't have cooldowns and energy in this game is plentiful alongside our unlimited energy pack usage. In general, availability of our nukes also removes all of the skill from the game when you can just stand still and be top score on any team. Our mod min-maxing for abilities is more important than our weapons or gameplay, at which point we may as well be playing a trading card game. Putting a limitation on our radial nukes or if need be, replace them, would make the game more fun to play as well as differentiate our Warframe characters by the different variety in their other three abilities... or the new one. Of course, the developers are aware this can change gameplay so the game will get a bit of patching done on the side to make sure the flow of gameplay is unimpeded.

 

There you have it, very basic game design that for so long after the release of corrupted mods, Warframe has failed to implement into the game. It's just fine however as being in beta phase, this game has time to right this mistake and fix our ability system to be more balanced, fun, and engaging. Even past release, change for the better is still recommended whenever a path for improvement is recognized.

 

 

We do have limitations, as powers have limited range, even when modded, limited damage, even when modded, and are limited overall in their nature. I can't use a Loki's Radial Disarm to "nuke" an area, though it does give some good CC with pure utility. The limitations also come in duration, moddable, and power strength, also moddable. Nuke abilities also have those limitations, though I find that you all dislike nukes outright. Players have the capacity to use their guns or their powers, whichever is more appealing to them, that's their choice to use or not. I think Radial Blind can't go through walls anymore (I think). Though this actually kills some of Excal's utility and scale ability. They buffed his Radial Javelin as a result.

 

If you're just in one room, that would be a Defense objective. Or even if you ROFLCopter to another room, the very nature of the power limits it, players can only adjust the aspects of that power, but they cannot change its nature. Some things may shine through (i.e. damage output and efficiency, which I think is what everyone on the other end of the argument is trying to get at), but the very nature of a power itself acts as a perspective of use, but also it's limitation.

 

We do have high energy costs, but we can mod to mitigate it. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it is a possibility that players can go for if they want to go for higher usage of powers. And yeah, we are vulnerable during the animation casts, especially the lengthy ones like Nekros SoTD, Mag's Crush, or Frosts Avalanche. Cooldowns...well you know my stance on that.

 

We aren't all jumping into a room and ROFLStomping everything. Sure, some people do that, but that's them. Nor are we all just using our powers haphazardly for trivial purposes. The thing is, when you remove a players ability to cast, it greatly hinders their availability of these mechanics. How we have it now is that we can cast our powers whenever available, limited by energy cost. The effectiveness of said powers are determined by the very nature of the power, and how they are modded. I will admit, some act as "grenades", while if you look at it each power acts as a different "grenade" than another. But, at their core, I can see how you can think of these straight damage abilities as "grenades".

 

We have the freedom to choose guns and/or powers, I don't think people would want to play a certain way if the game forced them to. How we have it now is that we can choose either path or intertwine them. Top Tier guns can out DPS most powers in the game, even the infamous ROFLStomp. We also have ammo restores and enemies drop far more ammo than they do energy orbs. I'm not saying that guns shouldn't be powerful, but that we shouldn't limit the use of powers for a fear that people may want to use powers.

 

Even still, you know my path on Corrupted Mods, they offer their benefits and detriments, if they are "worth it" is dependent on the player who uses or doesn't use them.

 

No weapon, not even penta can kill every enemy in 35 to 60 meters without aiming to hit them behind all walls and give guaranteed stun.

 

We already gave grineer shield lancers a shield, and abilities are still problematic: abilities have infinite punchthrough past any object and in any direction. Most weapons can not kill through their shield without using mods to do so. Abilities always kill through shields. Having an enemy with a shield that blocks abilities is okay, but our playerbase is already finding ways to trivialize and defeat nullifiers rapidly. Attaching a limitation to an obstacle that can be quickly defeated is not the right way to implement limitations since they are easily defeated.

 

I would also appreciate new smart enemies, but the developers really can't implement them due to how we savagely kill and stun them with our abilities. You can check notionphil's enemy thread for more details.

 

I'd argue that even some powers couldn't do that. My Frosts Avalanche can't do that, neither can my Mag's Crush because of its lackluster damage. It is all dependent on enemy health, armor, and shields. Still, a gun like the Penta and the Boltor Prime, or the Paris Prime, or the Syanoid Gammacor, can out DPS most any "nuke" power in the game.

 

Remember that grineer shield lancers are also overcome using punch through mods on weaponry, also allowing you to clear entire squads whose sole person in view is the squad mate in the front. No need for LoS, but kill that one guy with a Boltor Prime and he'll kill all the enemies behind him while he ragdolls to the wall. Same for Bows, and pretty much anything else that has punch through. Remember also that not all abilities have infinite punch through in any direction, Radial Blind's current iteration can attest to that. Not to mention the nature of the power itself limits its capability. Abilities dont always kill through shields, that is dependent on how you've built your powers and, again, the nature of the powers themselves.

 

To refine the idea, the shield could be shaped as how Alad V's one is in his Mutalist iteration, but be larger. Said shield could block powers and guns, but cannot move once placed. Thus, players can vault over the shield or slide around it in order to get at the enemies behind it. Think of it as a Semi Circle defensible position shield. Those enemies within the Semi Circle could be resistant to powers CC and introduce skill on how players can deal with the situation. Of course you can use your guns and start smashing apart the shield, just like with Nullifiers and Eximi.

 

You can savagely kill enemies with a gun too. I'm not saying it's wrong, because that's how some people mod for, and that's how some people play. Oh I've read notionphil's stuff, I like his work, doesn't mean I can't stand to argue my position.

 

I've got to give you credit Mecha, you're really good at presenting your points with manners and continuing to defend your position. Even if it's against my position, I applaud you for your mettle. Still, I wouldn't feel that putting LoS on powers is the avenue for improvement.

[Azawarau]

Oh that quote on the damage buff is debatable, ask some Ember and Banshee players for that. It doesn't affect non-fire weaponry is why. It makes it more situational, but it could be workable with a certain setup.

Theres a thig about that

 

By comparison Banshees buff is better than any other for weapons (some affect powers so they have that)

 

At the same time the extra power can clash with Banshees build

 

She gains incredible power for her 4 but loses the long term stun

 

Her silence becomes costlier and less efficient as well as her push

 

Then theres the clash of overextended utility for getting more targets per power (Including sonar) or just sticking to power in a smaller range

 

Since ember is a more mobile run and stun she can kind of avoid that and go purely for power

 

Her issue is shell either have to try to balance around losing a few things (Mostly range) for WoF or just not use WoF at all so her other powers are more efficient

 

The clash of mods hurts banshee more than ember in this case specifically

[Vitalis_Inamorta]

If anyone SERIOUSLY thinks P4toWin is a problem, they don't play very much endless.

 

Defense:  P4toWin?  Those abilities will get you to perhaps wave 30, even in a T1 or the non-void equivalent.  Past that point, you'll have to absolutely mod for the 4 to the detriment of all other abilities to get to wave 40ish, and probably not even that far.  The only exceptions are those that are purely, or mostly utility.  Trinity will still keep you alive with a well-done Blessing.  Banshee will still allow revives by locking up the room with Sound Quake.  Limbo and Loki will still keep your pod safe, especailly in combination with a Vauban.  All of the damage ults, with possible short CC?  They basically don't do any noticeable damage at this point.  If your team is running 4x CP (which it should be, in virtually all endless missions) you might be able to stretch those 4s out to wave 60 (probably not though) but only with particularly good planning, such as Max Power built Banshee with a Savage Silence augment in combination with Ash's Bladestorm to amp the damage way up.  It's far from P42W in endless if you actually go there for a challenge, as opposed to an easy and repeatable grind.

 

Interception:  It's pretty much impossible to mod any 4s to take all 4 points into account.  You might be able to figure heavily into 2 points at most, but apart from Trinity's blessing, none of the 4s in game will effect this mode much at all, and it's about as anti- P42W as it can get, even for Trinity who has the option of either trying to defend a node and eagle-eye the health bars at the same time while developing epic reflexes and predictive skills, Natural Talent firmly in hand, or to actively try to take as much damage as possible as fast as possible herself, Flow and Quick Thinking firmly in Hand, and superior reflexes also prepped, as well as as much duration as she can possibly muster.  In short, Interception really doesn't have P42W problems, because you really can't win with that tactic, at all, on the overall scale, even in the short term.

 

Survival:  This mode is somewhat similar to Interception, with the sole difference that, if you have a Nekros and got a good map draw, you might be able to find and camp in one spot almost indefinitely like a Defense.  The same things apply as to defense, once 60 minutes roll around, pretty much only frames that do important things with their ults other than damage will still even be thinking about their 4s.  If you REALLY want a challenge, then FRICKEN STAY LONG FOR THE DARN CHALLENGE, otherwise, quitcherbisshin.

 

As for non-endless missions, DE is moving somewhat towards adding extremely high leveled areas, with the advents of Dark Sectors and etc.  With luck they will eventually add missions versus the Sentients (I swear... they are probably cephalons...) in the Oort Cloud or in another system (Sentient home-system FTW?).  That have level ranges of 50-100, at which point pretty much EVERYONE is going to have a really hard time of it.

 

What I'm saying here, is that difficulty really isn't the problem here, rather, well-geared players (MR 18 anyone?  I'm so close...) being mixed with low or no-geared players (MR0s that I go and play with with my Banshee, casting only 2 and 3 fairly often to give them pointers on the game and spread the Banshee love when I take them to rip apart AladV and Zanuka with their bare skanas), then comes the 4 spamming by people who pretty much just want to killwh*** and don't give a shizz about other people's gameplay.  Again, it's not a problem of 4s being strong or easy (they aren't unless you're seriously overgeared) but a problem of high leveled people (trolls, intentional or otherwise) coming back to less difficult areas and intentionally getting into games with lower leveled people.

 

All the talk you've talked about warframe abilities being heavily synergistic?  Many of them ALREADY ARE, but people either don't realize it, don't take time to think it through, or have never even gotten around to trying it, being too busy playing T4D/S/I to round/wave/minute 25-30 and then quitting.  For example:

 

Banshee + Excalibur.  Radial Blind + Silence.  You know the stun at the beginning of silence that lasts for a couple of seconds?  Well with this combination, you get the same stun, only for the full duration of the abilities.  It's pretty much the ultimate defense combo, considering Silence is continuous in an AoE and RB can be spammed.  Yes, removal of LoS injured this, but it just means you need a Limbo or Zephyr or Frost or something to have a bit of defense on the pod to stop those stray shots every now and then.  The reason this is the best is because this is the most mobile.  As long as the Banshee and Excalibur stick together, they can run all over the place with little to no resistance.

 

Better known, but less ridiculous, Loki + Vauban.  Radial Disarm and Bastille or Vortex?  Heck yes.  No shots fired, no enemies moving under their own power.  Combine a Nova with range and power to make it even easier to defend, as enemies don't even come into range quickly any more.

 

Zephyr + Loki or Saryn?  Set up a Decoy or Moult and put Zephyr on top of it with an AoE melee (Try out the Orthos Prime/Tipedo/Serro with blast and amped status) and just have her spam turbulence and lay waste to anything that comes in range.  Everything comes for the decoy, and nothing can hit it, or the pod, or the team.

 

Frames like Limbo, Loki, Vauban, Trinity, Zephyr, Excalibur, Hydroid, and Nyx that have either heavy utility, or one ability with epic utility (R.I.P. Excalibur) are the ones that lend easily to epic combos of epic.  And the combos are virtually always creative combinations of pre-existing powers.  There are several combos I didn't cover here, and probably many that I haven't even though of (Many with Limbo, who is buggy and I don't have a good intuitive understanding of yet).  Banshee for example is particularly epic with frames that create point-explosions (Ember, Nova, Saryn?{spores}) due to explosions automatically hitting the exposed point that would take the most damage (Sonar weak spots).

[Azawarau]

You just said you could stretch it to 60 with trinity and thats actually not true

 

With energy restores you dont even need trinity

 

Just throw a limbo for the free energy and pod defense along with some energy restores

 

Mirage on cerberus

 

Gain 4 points and keep them via 4 spam

 

For survival you can easily hide behind a wall and spam all day with just a loki going for LS

 

Its not hard at all

 

Synergy isnt the issue here

[AlphaHorseman]

Hold up. Those of you against nuking, what skills are you talking about? What is the context to which these skills are used, specifically? Are you talking about these skills unmodded or modded? Specifics helps to clarify whatever issue you guys are having, well for me anyways.

Edited January 13, 2015 by AlphaHorseman

[MechaKnight]

If anyone SERIOUSLY thinks P4toWin is a problem, they don't play very much endless.

 

Defense:  P4toWin?  Those abilities will get you to perhaps wave 30, even in a T1 or the non-void equivalent.  Past that point, you'll have to absolutely mod for the 4 to the detriment of all other abilities to get to wave 40ish, and probably not even that far.  The only exceptions are those that are purely, or mostly utility.  Trinity will still keep you alive with a well-done Blessing.  Banshee will still allow revives by locking up the room with Sound Quake.  Limbo and Loki will still keep your pod safe, especailly in combination with a Vauban.  All of the damage ults, with possible short CC?  They basically don't do any noticeable damage at this point.  If your team is running 4x CP (which it should be, in virtually all endless missions) you might be able to stretch those 4s out to wave 60 (probably not though) but only with particularly good planning, such as Max Power built Banshee with a Savage Silence augment in combination with Ash's Bladestorm to amp the damage way up.  It's far from P42W in endless if you actually go there for a challenge, as opposed to an easy and repeatable grind.

 

Interception:  It's pretty much impossible to mod any 4s to take all 4 points into account.  You might be able to figure heavily into 2 points at most, but apart from Trinity's blessing, none of the 4s in game will effect this mode much at all, and it's about as anti- P42W as it can get, even for Trinity who has the option of either trying to defend a node and eagle-eye the health bars at the same time while developing epic reflexes and predictive skills, Natural Talent firmly in hand, or to actively try to take as much damage as possible as fast as possible herself, Flow and Quick Thinking firmly in Hand, and superior reflexes also prepped, as well as as much duration as she can possibly muster.  In short, Interception really doesn't have P42W problems, because you really can't win with that tactic, at all, on the overall scale, even in the short term.

 

Survival:  This mode is somewhat similar to Interception, with the sole difference that, if you have a Nekros and got a good map draw, you might be able to find and camp in one spot almost indefinitely like a Defense.  The same things apply as to defense, once 60 minutes roll around, pretty much only frames that do important things with their ults other than damage will still even be thinking about their 4s.  If you REALLY want a challenge, then FRICKEN STAY LONG FOR THE DARN CHALLENGE, otherwise, quitcherbisshin.

 

As for non-endless missions, DE is moving somewhat towards adding extremely high leveled areas, with the advents of Dark Sectors and etc.  With luck they will eventually add missions versus the Sentients (I swear... they are probably cephalons...) in the Oort Cloud or in another system (Sentient home-system FTW?).  That have level ranges of 50-100, at which point pretty much EVERYONE is going to have a really hard time of it.

 

What I'm saying here, is that difficulty really isn't the problem here, rather, well-geared players (MR 18 anyone?  I'm so close...) being mixed with low or no-geared players (MR0s that I go and play with with my Banshee, casting only 2 and 3 fairly often to give them pointers on the game and spread the Banshee love when I take them to rip apart AladV and Zanuka with their bare skanas), then comes the 4 spamming by people who pretty much just want to killwh*** and don't give a shizz about other people's gameplay.  Again, it's not a problem of 4s being strong or easy (they aren't unless you're seriously overgeared) but a problem of high leveled people (trolls, intentional or otherwise) coming back to less difficult areas and intentionally getting into games with lower leveled people.

 

All the talk you've talked about warframe abilities being heavily synergistic?  Many of them ALREADY ARE, but people either don't realize it, don't take time to think it through, or have never even gotten around to trying it, being too busy playing T4D/S/I to round/wave/minute 25-30 and then quitting.  For example:

 

Banshee + Excalibur.  Radial Blind + Silence.  You know the stun at the beginning of silence that lasts for a couple of seconds?  Well with this combination, you get the same stun, only for the full duration of the abilities.  It's pretty much the ultimate defense combo, considering Silence is continuous in an AoE and RB can be spammed.  Yes, removal of LoS injured this, but it just means you need a Limbo or Zephyr or Frost or something to have a bit of defense on the pod to stop those stray shots every now and then.  The reason this is the best is because this is the most mobile.  As long as the Banshee and Excalibur stick together, they can run all over the place with little to no resistance.

 

Better known, but less ridiculous, Loki + Vauban.  Radial Disarm and Bastille or Vortex?  Heck yes.  No shots fired, no enemies moving under their own power.  Combine a Nova with range and power to make it even easier to defend, as enemies don't even come into range quickly any more.

 

Zephyr + Loki or Saryn?  Set up a Decoy or Moult and put Zephyr on top of it with an AoE melee (Try out the Orthos Prime/Tipedo/Serro with blast and amped status) and just have her spam turbulence and lay waste to anything that comes in range.  Everything comes for the decoy, and nothing can hit it, or the pod, or the team.

 

Frames like Limbo, Loki, Vauban, Trinity, Zephyr, Excalibur, Hydroid, and Nyx that have either heavy utility, or one ability with epic utility (R.I.P. Excalibur) are the ones that lend easily to epic combos of epic.  And the combos are virtually always creative combinations of pre-existing powers.  There are several combos I didn't cover here, and probably many that I haven't even though of (Many with Limbo, who is buggy and I don't have a good intuitive understanding of yet).  Banshee for example is particularly epic with frames that create point-explosions (Ember, Nova, Saryn?{spores}) due to explosions automatically hitting the exposed point that would take the most damage (Sonar weak spots).

 

As a person who fills their daily syndicate point cap with purely endless missions, I've done plenty of endless and while I understand your concerns, they can be fixed alongside a reduction of ability spam.

 

Remember a long while back when enemies scaled extremely rapidly and a good way to take them out was repeat viral stacking on a Grakata? Now enemies don't scale to such obscene levels so we don't need viral stacking (hence its removal), and other elements can finally get some use.

 

The game's endless content does devolve into pressing 4 to do everything but with fine tuning, both systems can be streamlined so players are not forced into spamming 4 to stay in the mission.

 

The problems you describe are scaling problems, at which point we're struggling against scaling and finding ways around the struggle by using enemy AI against itself. Damage abilities only seem weak when every source of damage feels weak. Players would still choose to spam 4 simply because they hit more enemies with more damage than their weapon could, and stun, which is something a weapon can not do unless it was a high status weapon with impact, electric, blast, or radiation. We only tend to take radiation out of all of those but with corrosive projection we'd be better off using viral, fire, and slash.

 

That said, even past a point where scaling becomes cruel, pressing 4 is still the better way to go. It's still a problem across the game, although it manifests differently since enemies are actually able to survive us at this point and hit like trucks. When enemies scale this high, they spawn in huge masses, yet each of them can take tons of damage. Neither our guns or abilities do much damage, but because our abilities have utility in stun they're still more favorable. We'd only use our guns to conserve energy within the rain of spam.

 

For most cases of scaling, it's usually Nova. I'm not going to say Banshee is bad--her scaling on the hitpoints can multiply damage to be greater than 10x. it's just that Nova slows them by 75% and makes them vulnerable by 100%. This is a 75% reduction in damage per second, stun recovery, and movement speed. Nyx can use Chaos to make them attack themselves. You can take any damage dealing Warframe to help kill the dazed and vulnerable crowd. Of course, Trinity can grant us energy but we have plates for that.

 

If it's defense, Frost, Limbo, and Banshee are all good candidates to prevent enemies from reaching the pod. Nyx can also work out well with Absorb, but the explosions from bombards now tend to make splash damage a challenge.

 

If you're speaking Interception, I'm assuming the void one but in general we're talking about playing interception normally instead of indefinitely suspending it to farm. That said, for some maps players have learned how to farm there effectively, and progressing within those particular maps wave-to-wave will eventually be about guarding those terminals from enemies when we've run in to capture them again. Banshee is still good here, as is Nova and Nyx. Loki won't stop them from touching a console but he'll make them easier to funnel on paths.

 

Survival, the crowd favorite. It's got all the challenge of infinite scaling with none of the concern of protecting a miscellaneous object. It's simply the same thing except we're protecting ourselves, not objects. We're usually more mobile. We keep the good support frames that are mobile, and Nova's still top-pick because her support is also damage.

 

So we know how infinite content works. It's more balanced to play infinitely than in short missions, but because the game is mostly about short missions and farming/grinding, "Press 4 to win" is still an issue because it trivializes most of the game to become almost nothing. The solution is to fix enemy scaling alongside our ability spam reduction, especially how insane grineer armor is. Popular endless content is for the most part balanced by unique challenges like...

 

Infested: Disruptors, Healers, Parasitic eximi. The new mutalist enemies are really just a movement incentive to keep us from getting close and standing still, but for the most part this faction balances us by draining our energy at an increasingly high rate, outright stealing it, and healing damage done. The disruptors also mitigate damage.

 

Corpus: Nullifiers. Other than having enemies that could deal decent damage with their guns, there wasn't really a challenge before nullifiers. They balance us by shielding their kin from attacks and abilities.

 

Grineer: Their main challenge is their armor scaling. The new enemy which steals guns from us can occasionally surprise us, but it's generally quite rare. Due to the lack of ability inhibition in their faction, they are the new farm fodder.

 

All of the above can actually be toned down alongside an ability spam reduction, and most examples have to. It's clear the developers are trying to find examples in their old magnetic eximus insta-drain, and our new nullifiers, but this is just them working around the problem of nuke availability. These enemies should simply have a lower spawn rate and lower effectiveness when considering a reduction is #4 spam. Also, grineer armor scaling for infinite content should definitely be investigated because they're much more durable than their corpus counterparts.

 

Alternatively, we can have a difficulty system put into the game. I do infinite content constantly but I don't like waiting that long to get my challenge and rewards. It would be better if we can select a difficulty that challenged us and granted equal or better quality rewards for taking the challenge.

 

The problem with "Press 4 to win" is that it's trivializing over 95% of the game's missions globally, and only feels okay when you're 70 minutes into T4S or wave 60 in T4D. Ability spam is too deeply engrained into this game, and the game itself is imbalanced all over the place. Ability spam needs to be reduced, as does enemy scaling. We also need a difficulty system so I don't have to wait an hour into endless content to feel anything, and it must have great rewards or else it will be just as ignored as Nightmare Mode.

 

Yes, the problem is mostly our lack of separation in the playerbase with new players and old players. A difficulty system would satisfy new players going back to revisit old content. The developers can also consider a dynamic scaling system so I don't feel bad when I party with new players. For example, the way you play Banshee around new players. That's the right way to introduce them. A lot of players however have to drudge back there for some void keys, and feel impatient enough about being in this low-level zone to rush with their maximally powered builds.

 

Abilities are fine. Ability spam is the problem. So is infinite scaling, and so is the fact that new players and old players collide so frequently with such different amounts of power.

[AlphaHorseman]

 

As a person who fills their daily syndicate point cap with purely endless missions, I've done plenty of endless and while I understand your concerns, they can be fixed alongside a reduction of ability spam.

 

Remember a long while back when enemies scaled extremely rapidly and a good way to take them out was repeat viral stacking on a Grakata? Now enemies don't scale to such obscene levels so we don't need viral stacking (hence its removal), and other elements can finally get some use.

 

The game's endless content does devolve into pressing 4 to do everything but with fine tuning, both systems can be streamlined so players are not forced into spamming 4 to stay in the mission.

 

The problems you describe are scaling problems, at which point we're struggling against scaling and finding ways around the struggle by using enemy AI against itself. Damage abilities only seem weak when every source of damage feels weak. Players would still choose to spam 4 simply because they hit more enemies with more damage than their weapon could, and stun, which is something a weapon can not do unless it was a high status weapon with impact, electric, blast, or radiation. We only tend to take radiation out of all of those but with corrosive projection we'd be better off using viral, fire, and slash.

 

That said, even past a point where scaling becomes cruel, pressing 4 is still the better way to go. It's still a problem across the game, although it manifests differently since enemies are actually able to survive us at this point and hit like trucks. When enemies scale this high, they spawn in huge masses, yet each of them can take tons of damage. Neither our guns or abilities do much damage, but because our abilities have utility in stun they're still more favorable. We'd only use our guns to conserve energy within the rain of spam.

 

For most cases of scaling, it's usually Nova. I'm not going to say Banshee is bad--her scaling on the hitpoints can multiply damage to be greater than 10x. it's just that Nova slows them by 75% and makes them vulnerable by 100%. This is a 75% reduction in damage per second, stun recovery, and movement speed. Nyx can use Chaos to make them attack themselves. You can take any damage dealing Warframe to help kill the dazed and vulnerable crowd. Of course, Trinity can grant us energy but we have plates for that.

 

If it's defense, Frost, Limbo, and Banshee are all good candidates to prevent enemies from reaching the pod. Nyx can also work out well with Absorb, but the explosions from bombards now tend to make splash damage a challenge.

 

If you're speaking Interception, I'm assuming the void one but in general we're talking about playing interception normally instead of indefinitely suspending it to farm. That said, for some maps players have learned how to farm there effectively, and progressing within those particular maps wave-to-wave will eventually be about guarding those terminals from enemies when we've run in to capture them again. Banshee is still good here, as is Nova and Nyx. Loki won't stop them from touching a console but he'll make them easier to funnel on paths.

 

Survival, the crowd favorite. It's got all the challenge of infinite scaling with none of the concern of protecting a miscellaneous object. It's simply the same thing except we're protecting ourselves, not objects. We're usually more mobile. We keep the good support frames that are mobile, and Nova's still top-pick because her support is also damage.

 

So we know how infinite content works. It's more balanced to play infinitely than in short missions, but because the game is mostly about short missions and farming/grinding, "Press 4 to win" is still an issue because it trivializes most of the game to become almost nothing. The solution is to fix enemy scaling alongside our ability spam reduction, especially how insane grineer armor is. Popular endless content is for the most part balanced by unique challenges like...

 

Infested: Disruptors, Healers, Parasitic eximi. The new mutalist enemies are really just a movement incentive to keep us from getting close and standing still, but for the most part this faction balances us by draining our energy at an increasingly high rate, outright stealing it, and healing damage done. The disruptors also mitigate damage.

 

Corpus: Nullifiers. Other than having enemies that could deal decent damage with their guns, there wasn't really a challenge before nullifiers. They balance us by shielding their kin from attacks and abilities.

 

Grineer: Their main challenge is their armor scaling. The new enemy which steals guns from us can occasionally surprise us, but it's generally quite rare. Due to the lack of ability inhibition in their faction, they are the new farm fodder.

 

All of the above can actually be toned down alongside an ability spam reduction, and most examples have to. It's clear the developers are trying to find examples in their old magnetic eximus insta-drain, and our new nullifiers, but this is just them working around the problem of nuke availability. These enemies should simply have a lower spawn rate and lower effectiveness when considering a reduction is #4 spam. Also, grineer armor scaling for infinite content should definitely be investigated because they're much more durable than their corpus counterparts.

 

Alternatively, we can have a difficulty system put into the game. I do infinite content constantly but I don't like waiting that long to get my challenge and rewards. It would be better if we can select a difficulty that challenged us and granted equal or better quality rewards for taking the challenge.

 

The problem with "Press 4 to win" is that it's trivializing over 95% of the game's missions globally, and only feels okay when you're 70 minutes into T4S or wave 60 in T4D. Ability spam is too deeply engrained into this game, and the game itself is imbalanced all over the place. Ability spam needs to be reduced, as does enemy scaling. We also need a difficulty system so I don't have to wait an hour into endless content to feel anything, and it must have great rewards or else it will be just as ignored as Nightmare Mode.

 

Yes, the problem is mostly our lack of separation in the playerbase with new players and old players. A difficulty system would satisfy new players going back to revisit old content. The developers can also consider a dynamic scaling system so I don't feel bad when I party with new players. For example, the way you play Banshee around new players. That's the right way to introduce them. A lot of players however have to drudge back there for some void keys, and feel impatient enough about being in this low-level zone to rush with their maximally powered builds.

 

Abilities are fine. Ability spam is the problem. So is infinite scaling, and so is the fact that new players and old players collide so frequently with such different amounts of power.

 

 

You don't have to "Fix" ability spam. Again, that's how some people play, so let them play like that. We can continue using our guns and our powers in conjunction, and they can continue playing as they want to play.

 

The games endless content devolves into enemies who are bullet sponges, I'll agree to that, but pressing 4 isn't going to help you with that, even repeatedly. A Paris Prime can go leagues farther damage wise than a "nuke" in the game. Go full crit build and you can smash anything out of your way in T4 until it gets too bullet sponge prone in the later half hour. Powers damaging, pffft, even a maxed damage build isn't going to be enough to hold a candle to a Paris Prime, Dread, or Boltor Prime when it comes to damage output and the ability to continue to deal high damage to enemy units.

 

My Paris Prime can out damage most anything in the game with one arrow hitting 40,000 with a good head shot. Even without it I can still whack up to 10,000 for body shots. Factor in Red Crits with the Dread and you can do some serious damage. Throw in a Banshee and anything weak spot I aim at becomes a death sentence. "We'd only use our guns to conserve energy within the rain of spam." are you kidding me?! If my bow can one shot enemies my powers cannot, I'm going to strum that thing like Carlos Santana and wipe the floor clean with the bodies of my enemies. I'm not going to stand in one spot hitting a button that isn't effective.

 

If you don't want to press 4, you don't have to press 4. Simple.

 

Nova's good because her powers work outside of simple damage. That slow allows you CC and utility, which allows you to deal with threats. "You can take any damage dealing Warframe to help kill the dazed and vulnerable crowd." I mean you could, but if your powers aren't doing the trick, then what's the point? No, you're going to use your guns, that Boltor Prime you maxed out or that Paris Prime or that [insert weapon name here] and BLOW THE LIVING HELL out of them because those suckers still do massive amounts of damage!

 

People use the endless mission types to farm xp, mods, resources, and parts, that's literally what we all use them for, inside or outside the void.

 

The game play isn't mostly about short missions, it is about grinding though. You can message DERebecca or even look through the posts she has made, but you'll see that the majority of the player base goes through the endless mission types when they play the game. Those are the most played missions because they offer the biggest rewards in xp, mods, or parts, or resources.

 

My Boltor Prime can "trivializes most of the game", should it be nerfed? No, it shouldn't because it isn't the guns fault that it's good. I made it good to be able to swat a Grineer heavy gunner to a wall with a squeeze of the trigger. The jist of what I'm saying is that YOU CAN BUILD IT UP, POWERS OR GUNS, to be powerful tools. When and where you use those tools is entirely up to you. OF COURSE you're going to "trivialize" the content in lower level content because you've made and brought your tools for end-game content. That's literally how it is for any other video game that gives you replay ability.

 

Again, you don't have to use your powers if you don't want to, nobody said you had to. Telling people that they shouldn't be able to do that though, isn't right. My gun can "trivialize over 95% of the game's missions globally", should it not also be nerfed with your suggestions then?

 

Difficulty selector to ensure we don't have to do easy stuff, sure, I'd like that, so long as the rewards are good and the system isn't just another layer of enemy armor and hp/shield buffing.

 

Abilities aren't fine, not all of them anyways, many lack in scale ability due to lack of CC and/or Utility. If you don't want to use your powers, don't use them. Infinite scaling, meh, it's a work in progress. That's the point of being new and old, you're going to have "such different amounts of power." If new or old players had the same amount of power, there wouldn't be a very actual way to progress.

[AlphaHorseman]

Now, BEFORE you respond, what abilities are you talking about? What mechanics about them bug you? Why these abilities? Because pressing "4" isn't always the case with some frames.

Edited January 13, 2015 by AlphaHorseman

[MechaKnight]

Now, BEFORE you respond, what abilities are you talking about? What mechanics about them bug you? Why these abilities? Because pressing "4" isn't always the case with some frames.

To talk about the problem, let's talk about where the problem is most obvious. Also, where it is least obvious.

 

It's definitely least obvious deeper into endless content. The abilities are not killing everything, and you're definitely going to use your guns, strategy, and teamwork increasingly more as time goes on.

 

The most noticeable problem areas are things like Exterminate, Deception, Mobile Defense, Sabotage, and Spy.

 

Assassination is usually a problem of bad boss design, and sometimes even weapon power. Some bosses do scale off conclave, so they can resist a bit longer at least. Mostly it's just the bad design of making these enemies clam up to be untouchable. We're seeing a growing number of these kinds of bosses who don't do anything special, but seal themselves away from all damage.

 

Capture is fun and strange. There are potentially many enemies to kill and the capture target can be pretty sturdy, but the goal is really just to capture him. The speed at which we kill enemies in the map isn't helping this goal or hurting it.

 

Most of the game where we walk through levels to get from point A to point B to reach the objective tend to feel stale really. It's a combination of nuke spam erasing combat and coptering erasing travel and obstacles that makes it all feel... unmemorable. I suppose it's because after a while, we recognize all the tile sets too. Enemies as well.

 

Hive is the only game mode that feels okay with abilities regardless of how many you have and how dispensable. They all keep flowing into melee combat so quickly, any option is fine. Guns, melee, powers. It's all fine there. What makes the game feel amazingly dull in most other places and most other game modes is when the proper build instantly wipes up every enemy and removes the point of attacking them. There's nothing there after you cast the ability, so you're going to another room. it's easy enough to kill that room with one button too. Certain abilities in a radius like Radial Disarm don't feel terrible. The enemies are converted to melee and you still fight them. Nova's Molecular Prime is a bit more annoying because while the enemies are still there, the game just became incredibly easy. Although rare, a max range Banshee soundquake build can prove to be incredibly annoying by simultaneously removing enemy combat as well making you find every enemy on the map just to slay it since it's not moving.

 

For the most part, the problem is radial damage nukes. The ones that take a map full of enemies, and demolishes them. it's way less of a problem in scaled content far down the line but when immediately starting, there's zero game to play. There is nothing in the room, in every room. We just crush it all that quickly with one button there's no shooting, no hiding behind cover. No enemies being able to reach alarms to call in reinforcements. Radial nuke builds crush the whole game effortlessly early on, and as of currently we have no difficulty selection to make this not a thing.

 

It's also really bad when in a group where somebody is less-than-prepared. We just wash away their fun and leave them clueless. To them, the game is just walking behind us going through empty rooms we just cleared.

 

Then that's a problem with stealth in this game. To cope with our ability to wipe enemies quickly since we have the occasional chore of doing easy content, enemies have to flood in from every closed door, regardless of whether or not we were just in that room. It helps give us more things to fight, but this makes stealth impractical for anyone but invisible warframes, because there is no strategic room clearing. This expectation should only apply to one-time missions where there's an end goal, but as of currently enemies were made to be this easy so we don't have a reason to be stealthy.

 

A difficulty system can make this all possible. Higher difficulty makes the enemies stronger and smarter. We would no longer destroy them instantly. They can also stop spawning continuously in non-endless missions so players have a reason to use stealth. Maybe Banshee would be more popular in a game where stealth can be this useful.

Edited January 13, 2015 by MechaKnight

[AlphaHorseman]

 

To talk about the problem, let's talk about where the problem is most obvious. Also, where it is least obvious.

 

It's definitely least obvious deeper into endless content. The abilities are not killing everything, and you're definitely going to use your guns, strategy, and teamwork increasingly more as time goes on.

 

The most noticeable problem areas are things like Exterminate, Deception, Mobile Defense, Sabotage, and Spy.

 

Assassination is usually a problem of bad boss design, and sometimes even weapon power. Some bosses do scale off conclave, so they can resist a bit longer at least. Mostly it's just the bad design of making these enemies clam up to be untouchable. We're seeing a growing number of these kinds of bosses who don't do anything special, but seal themselves away from all damage.

 

Capture is fun and strange. There are potentially many enemies to kill and the capture target can be pretty sturdy, but the goal is really just to capture him. The speed at which we kill enemies in the map isn't helping this goal or hurting it.

 

Most of the game where we walk through levels to get from point A to point B to reach the objective tend to feel stale really. It's a combination of nuke spam erasing combat and coptering erasing travel and obstacles that makes it all feel... unmemorable. I suppose it's because after a while, we recognize all the tile sets too. Enemies as well.

 

Hive is the only game mode that feels okay with abilities regardless of how many you have and how dispensable. They all keep flowing into melee combat so quickly, any option is fine. Guns, melee, powers. It's all fine there. What makes the game feel amazingly dull in most other places and most other game modes is when the proper build instantly wipes up every enemy and removes the point of attacking them. There's nothing there after you cast the ability, so you're going to another room. it's easy enough to kill that room with one button too. Certain abilities in a radius like Radial Disarm don't feel terrible. The enemies are converted to melee and you still fight them. Nova's Molecular Prime is a bit more annoying because while the enemies are still there, the game just became incredibly easy. Although rare, a max range Banshee soundquake build can prove to be incredibly annoying by simultaneously removing enemy combat as well making you find every enemy on the map just to slay it since it's not moving.

 

For the most part, the problem is radial damage nukes. The ones that take a map full of enemies, and demolishes them. it's way less of a problem in scaled content far down the line but when immediately starting, there's zero game to play. There is nothing in the room, in every room. We just crush it all that quickly with one button there's no shooting, no hiding behind cover. No enemies being able to reach alarms to call in reinforcements. Radial nuke builds crush the whole game effortlessly early on, and as of currently we have no difficulty selection to make this not a thing.

 

It's also really bad when in a group where somebody is less-than-prepared. We just wash away their fun and leave them clueless. To them, the game is just walking behind us going through empty rooms we just cleared.

 

Assassinations, ugh, I wish our bosses were more than just bullet sponges with invulnerability periods.

 

Hive is fun, I do like that game mode. For the rest of that paragraph, you must realize though that players can build their guns to do exactly the same. They raise their sights and unload, and give it a few seconds and the room is gone. Difference is you can cast that ability (if the frame has such an ability and has built for it) and the same result applies. The tools are different, but the result is the same. You also have the choice to use whichever tools you want to achieve said result. We also have to remember that, if a player is that powerful, they're walking into that situation with end-tier builds that do massive amounts of damage, weapons or guns. It wouldn't matter to the enemy which they'll be hit by first, they'll die from either thanks to our power we've built up in our gear and our Frame.

 

Please clarify this for me, because I may be getting this wrong, but when you say "immediately starting, there's zero game play to it." Do you mean that a new player who has little understanding of the games mechanics starts a mission, or when an experienced player starts the mission with their end-tier gear? You can still shoot, you know, unless the person your playing with ROFL copters and uses guns or abilities to kill everything in that room and continually flies ahead to do so.

 

Difficulty settings, sure, I like that. So long as it isn't just enemy stats beefed up and they actually do have interesting mechanics, it could be fun and/or challenging for some among the community who dare to try it.

 

For your last bit, it really depends on that players perspective. They could be like "dude that was cool, how'd you do that?" And, if the player who used said powers or guns is nice, they could give said player some intel on their builds and why they build. At the same time, you are right when someone could go "Why did you do that? What am I supposed to do?" and that can happen. Said experienced player could be a jerk and say "you get good or you get lost" and I'd say that dude's rude. It could go either way, or many other ways. Some might enjoy it, and gain some intel, others might not, and get irritated. Such is the nature of PUBs. There are other systems in place, like going to recruit players who play like you, or playing with friends, or clans of the like. You get some apples you like from PUBs, and some you don't. It's just how it is, not only in the game, but in life.

 

Solving it, for me, would be to have adjustable difficulty settings, as you proposed, where players who choose different difficulty settings don't run into players who don't choose the same difficulty settings. That way, players can play as they will, enjoy the game as they would, and find challenge that they find rewarding.

Edited January 13, 2015 by AlphaHorseman

[MechaKnight]

Assassinations, ugh, I wish our bosses were more than just bullet sponges with invulnerability periods.

 

Hive is fun, I do like that game mode. For the rest of that paragraph, you must realize though that players can build their guns to do exactly the same. They raise their sights and unload, and give it a few seconds and the room is gone. Difference is you can cast that ability (if the frame has such an ability and has built for it) and the same result applies. The tools are different, but the result is the same. You also have the choice to use whichever tools you want to achieve said result. We also have to remember that, if a player is that powerful, they're walking into that situation with end-tier builds that do massive amounts of damage, weapons or guns. It wouldn't matter to the enemy which they'll be hit by first, they'll die from either thanks to our power we've built up in our gear and our Frame.

 

Please clarify this for me, because I may be getting this wrong, but when you say "immediately starting, there's zero game play to it." Do you mean that a new player who has little understanding of the games mechanics starts a mission, or when an experienced player starts the mission with their end-tier gear? You can still shoot, you know, unless the person your playing with ROFL copters and uses guns or abilities to kill everything in that room and continually flies ahead to do so.

 

Difficulty settings, sure, I like that. So long as it isn't just enemy stats beefed up and they actually do have interesting mechanics, it could be fun and/or challenging for some among the community who dare to try it.

 

For your last bit, it really depends on that players perspective. They could be like "dude that was cool, how'd you do that?" And, if the player who used said powers or guns is nice, they could give said player some intel on their builds and why they build. At the same time, you are right when someone could go "Why did you do that? What am I supposed to do?" and that can happen. Said experienced player could be a jerk and say "you get good or you get lost" and I'd say that dude's rude. It could go either way, or many other ways. Some might enjoy it, and gain some intel, others might not, and get irritated. Such is the nature of PUBs. There are other systems in place, like going to recruit players who play like you, or playing with friends, or clans of the like. You get some apples you like from PUBs, and some you don't. It's just how it is, not only in the game, but in life.

 

Solving it, for me, would be to have adjustable difficulty settings, as you proposed, where players who choose different difficulty settings don't run into players who don't choose the same difficulty settings. That way, players can play as they will, enjoy the game as they would, and find challenge that they find rewarding.

 

The smallest damage nuke range in the game is 15 meters, which is usually extended by stretch to be 21 meters. Nyx's Absorb reaches 10 meters, but doesn't scale much off strength so Overextended is generally a must-include to reach a similar range. Regardless, no gun in the game will instantly kill every enemy within 21 meters within a second. Enemies also drop energy orbs at a rare similar to ammunition drops. So no gun in this game will instantly destroy every enemy within a spherical radial distance of 21 meters for only 1 magazine worth of ammunition.

 

So no, no weapon in this game ever approaches the killing power of radial nukes in this game. The result is not the same because at least within the amount of time the player is firing their gun, they are actively aiming and having fun, and it gives others a chance to join in on the fun. When using a nuke, everything can die within a second of time with no aim or effort. There is no effort, and fun is diminished.

 

For "immediately starting," I meant it being applied to endless missions like survival. For the first few minutes there's no difference between survival and other missions. You can kill everything with your ability nuke up until a point where the game scales enough that the game no longer crumbles from our abilities.

 

Yes, difficulty settings. Ones where the game can be different and rewarding for the challenge and experience.

 

Yes, that's what abilities and weapons do. Sharing builds and such is fine, giving advice, sure. However nukes are still more of an offender than guns usually. The only time I think I felt guns were as bad is when you get the one defense map on corpus maps with bridges, and shooting down that bridge removes all the agency from players to actually do anything since you hit them first. However, while narrow paths in this game are rare, a radial nuke can destroy those bridges as well as entire rooms, regardless of the geometry and cover to hide behind within it.

[AlphaHorseman]

The smallest damage nuke range in the game is 15 meters, which is usually extended by stretch to be 21 meters. Nyx's Absorb reaches 10 meters, but doesn't scale much off strength so Overextended is generally a must-include to reach a similar range. Regardless, no gun in the game will instantly kill every enemy within 21 meters within a second. Enemies also drop energy orbs at a rare similar to ammunition drops. So no gun in this game will instantly destroy every enemy within a spherical radial distance of 21 meters for only 1 magazine worth of ammunition.

 

So no, no weapon in this game ever approaches the killing power of radial nukes in this game. The result is not the same because at least within the amount of time the player is firing their gun, they are actively aiming and having fun, and it gives others a chance to join in on the fun. When using a nuke, everything can die within a second of time with no aim or effort. There is no effort, and fun is diminished.

 

For "immediately starting," I meant it being applied to endless missions like survival. For the first few minutes there's no difference between survival and other missions. You can kill everything with your ability nuke up until a point where the game scales enough that the game no longer crumbles from our abilities.

 

Yes, difficulty settings. Ones where the game can be different and rewarding for the challenge and experience.

 

Yes, that's what abilities and weapons do. Sharing builds and such is fine, giving advice, sure. However nukes are still more of an offender than guns usually. The only time I think I felt guns were as bad is when you get the one defense map on corpus maps with bridges, and shooting down that bridge removes all the agency from players to actually do anything since you hit them first. However, while narrow paths in this game are rare, a radial nuke can destroy those bridges as well as entire rooms, regardless of the geometry and cover to hide behind within it.

If a player is building for a nuke, then I would guess that yes, stretch is a power to use. But for your Nyx Absorb example, realize that Overextended does diminish its damage output, but the damage output of the Absorb is dependent on how much damage is inflicted to it by weapons. So its strength and "nuke" ability draws from weapons inflicting damage upon it. Thus, we can see these two systems used in tandem with one another. How much damage an Absorb can inflict is directly based off of how much damage it takes from weapons. So in essence, yeah, the damage output of a gun's magazine can destroy a Hek of a lot in the time span of a second.

 

I gave you an example of how my Paris Prime can crit for 40k yellow on a head shot. No power in the game can inflict 40k damage outright (barring Absorb because of its nature). Guns can out DPS literally any power in the game if they've got good stats and are built for powerful damage. The effectiveness of an AoE nuke (i.e. its damage output) also depends on how many targets are in the area. You can cast it for that one enemy on the field, but it was kinda moot since you could've raised your gun and finished him off too. Their decision though on how to deal with the threat. A gun can automatically ensure that the target it hits receives all of that damage. Factoring in armor, health, and shields, weapons can still out damage powers for single-target DPS. You also get indirect CC and additional damage output with not only multishot, but punch through.  How people are having fun is determined by the players themselves. People who use their powers will have fun being able to use their powers and using them. People who use guns will use their guns and have fun using them. Fun isn't something that can be calculated or defined across different players, because different people find different things fun.

 

Your last paragraph is something we could debate all the time. People argue about Boltor Prime taking away the fun and enjoyment in their game because the person using it just ROFL copters from room to room and kills everything before the squad can get there. Same goes for other weapons who have high performance. We're aruging right now about nukes, and how you think they take away the fun and enjoyment in your game. Who it offends depends on who you're talking to. I'm not saying either are bad, I'm saying they are tools that we use to achieve our goals, and that they are both paths that can be tread and intertwined, or they may not be, depending on player to player.

 

Throughout this thread I hope you've noticed I never asked for guns to be nerfed. Well that's because I feel it's a stupid way to make things in this game more challenging. We shouldn't be nerfing our guns to be able to make enemies more interesting to fight or better, they should have interesting mechanics and ideas and dynamic traits that make them interesting to fight against using our guns. Our powers too. DE has given us these tools, and it's our choice to make them powerful, now all that's left to do is give us challenges that allow us to use these tools.

 

In essence, I believe they're doing so. From Eximus units to Nullifiers, as you've mentioned. Grineer armor, well I hope they get something else too once we've gotten through tweaking Nullifiers. We now have T4, and are getting more mission types and enemy variety as time goes on. I just hope that these enemies won't just be bullet sponges, because powers or guns, they'll be whacked real quick. They're throwing 8 man raids at us, I can only imagine what kind of hell that's going to be if we need 8 Tenno to tackle it. Smarter AI can make a difference, if enemy units aren't just bullet sponges. If they have innate resistances, shields like how I suggested, ways to mitigate damage, your difficulty system, enemy units can possess smarter AI and better mechanics to utilize such intelligence, and thus we don't have just more dumb enemies, but more smart enemies with dynamic mechanics as well.

 

To sum it all up, it's me saying that your guns are powerful weapons, and you have the right to use them. Your powers are powerful weapons, and you have the right to use them. However you find your enjoyment in using these tools, so be it, and enjoy it. However others find enjoyment in using these tools, so be it, let them enjoy it. We have no right to tell the other side that they're doing things wrong, and need to be changed to make it right, because right is a perspective from person to person. You think abilities need changing to make them less spammable, I think we should let the players play how they play. Both of us think we're right, and both of us have been going at it to prove why our side is right.

 

When it comes down to it though, we both have to realize we shouldn't force the other to do things they wouldn't want, because they wouldn't enjoy it. That's why I like the difficulty slider, and the ideas for more complex enemies, and more dynamic situations, because they present a way for the game to be more dynamic and enjoyable, without some players having to be hindered to make it enjoyable for some others. If the field of battle challenged us in a way that could be difficult for any of us, but still achievable either way, or through teamwork, we can actually enjoy it without one needing to tell the other that they need to change how they play to better suit how others play.

 

How we can achieve this, without one side hurting the other, is how we should be looking at it. Not out of want for one thing to be better than the other, but because we can all play how we want to play and enjoy the game.

[MechaKnight]

Simple response: there isn't a single gun in this game that can kill everything in 21 spherical meters radius in one click without aiming for only 2 or 3 ammo pickups. Said weapon will not kill, give guarantied stun, go through walls with infinite punchthrough, and do so with a reload speed of only a second. The developers had a point implementing line-of-sight. It was to make abilities more similar to guns.

 

The fact that Nyx's Absorb is taking the damage from one weapon and multiplying it onto many targets in a massive radius without the absorbed damage multiplier being dependent on power strength behind all walls and cover does not mean the weapon that applied the damage to Absorb is too powerful, it means Absorb itself is powerful. It took damage from a gun being fired in a single direction and spread it across a 21 meter sphere.

 

Yes guns can out-damage most abilities, but you do so by aiming at enemies one-at-a-time. That engages the player shooting, and allows other players to take part and have fun. The nuke version of this doesn't allow players to have fun unless it doesn't kill, at which point guns can be used. However, an alternative is that players can just cast abilities and overlap them until all targets in the area die.

 

Yes, guns can be powerful too, but at least it will take much more time to clear a room with guns compared to an ability, depending on whether or not endless scaling was involved. That still doesn't mean it's fair to have a Penta that doesn't harm the player and has a blast radius of 21 meters with infinite punchthrough.

 

The problem with smarter AI currently is that enemies do not really survive attacks by players, or tend to get stunlocked before they can act. The smartest thing enemies do as of now is choose to throw grenades at us.

 

I never said abilities were bad. I said ability spam was bad. It's also the fact that abilities generally tend to hit way more targets effortlessly than weapons can. Whether or not we win the game using only ability spam depends on whether or not the enemies are scaled to survive it. Hence why a difficulty system can help.

[Temmron]

I just thought of something :D

Go ahead nerf the 4 of every frame :D

ill just play corpus and void with my mag muahahahahahha

 

 

No but seriously 4 th ability is not a problem and a press 4 to win doesnt exist outside of farming

[MechaKnight]

The problem with "press 4 to win" is it's the easiest way to hit everything in the map constantly. The problem with the game on a larger aspect is that we have so much ability, yet no place to challenge us except infinite missions. We would play on higher level planets, but other than Dark Sector participation for credits, there is no incentive to play on higher level planets except for the rare alert or syndicate mission. The most rewarding locations for gameplay are in the void, and a good nuke build will carry you through all tiers unless you're in unlimited missions such as defense, interception, and survival.

 

In short, the game is press 4 to win because there's not much else to do except grind easy content where any hit from us is lethal to all enemies. Higher level nodes and Nightmare modes don't get much use for obvious reasons.

 

For more difficult content, we have to persistently stunlock to survive. At which point, we don't win when we press 4--it's practically necessary to stun enemies to survive.

 

Then, "press #" also presents an issue of "you only have one good ability, don't bother with the rest." Some warframes just don't get to use their kit due to efficiency of playstyle. Although Mag can get away with only losing one ability (Bullet Attractor), other warframes that neglect duration can lose all function of augments and abilities except for their best.

 

All of the above summarized: it wasn't a good idea to give us lazy passive abilities like this in the first place, then gear the game to constantly cater to it and at times force us to play like this in order to play well. Between the hyper-easy gameplay we have in most content, and the hectic stunlocking we have to perform in infinite content, the entire game is designed around the poorly planned prospect of spamming radials constantly. It's a fundamental flaw that reaches very far.

Edited January 13, 2015 by MechaKnight

[Thaumatos]

If anyone SERIOUSLY thinks P4toWin is a problem, they don't play very much endless.

Sit down, I've got a story for you.

 

Once upon a time, DE said endless wasn't balanced content.

 

The end.

 

Edit:

 

P. S.  The sequel is here.

 

Pay attention, the plot twist comes where DE_Steve says the thing about...

Letting Homer's bird play for you.  AKA P42W

Edited January 13, 2015 by Thaumatos

[Nighttide77]

I hope I don't have to quote anyone to make this point, but...

 

Rifles can take down large numbers of enemies in a cone.  I pretty much always use punch through on all my weapons primarily because it just feels like there's something missing without punch through.  With that said, I can almost prove that using something like a Boltor P or Latron P can wipe out more enemies faster than a person can nuke given the proper conditions.

 

This thread has been going on for so long I've forgotten the main point the anti-P42W guys are trying to make.  Are we talking only nuking abilities?  Or are we also talking any power that pretty much allows the team to win?  Cuz, to me, Nyx's Chaos is an "I Win" power.

 

I honestly have to say that I don't spam my nuke abilities.  I primarily use Rhino, Ash, and Limbo, of which Rhino Stomp has a cool down, Ash has an amount of time that Blade Storm is working of which players can still take down Blade Storm targets, and Limbo doesn't have any ability to nuke, whatsoever.  I've used Frost and Volt, too, but Frost's nuke has no utility so it makes him vulnerable to any enemies that survived, and Volt's nuke has great utility but isn't very powerful except with the right environment.

 

Someone anti-P42W please answer my questions this time.  I even underlined it.  None of my questions are rhetorical, and I still would like a player who left to weigh in on this topic, and whether they'd come back if nuke powers were nerfed.

[Nighttide77]

-snip-

 

Sooo...apparently the Viver incident was more recent, and during the time I had no machine.  Would you or someone please provide a synopsis of what the Viver incident was all about?

 

Really, I'm not for or against P42W.  I'm for the choice to choose how you play.  Nerfing nukes won't change my full stealth Ash, my Iron Shrapnel 100% ragdoll, or Limbo in any way.  If nukes had more utility than damage, it would just mean that players have to shoot a little more, which doesn't really seem to change gameplay from what I've witnessed in myself or other players.

 

Again, however, if players are going to want the game to nerf all powers because the game got too easy after they finally obtained gear, frames, and mods that are pretty much endgame material, then the problem isn't the game, it's the attitude of the player.  If you've got max'd equipment and then go run mid-tier missions, it's supposed to be a cakewalk :-P