Paris Prime Has 30 Arrows?

[MrStrangerPL]

I sold Angstrum, because I personally hated it. Never knew that Castanas use sniper ammo. I wasted quite a lot of time and resources for New Loka, only to get useless weapon. Sorry, but Electric elemental ain't all that helpful, and this sniper ammo is a joke. Even famous Rakta Ballistica would be better than those.

 

Launcher ammo was a thing, then they decided to shrink the pool so that launchers and arrows and snipers all use the same ammo pool.  I've had a problem with this for months, when I tried to bring my Angstrum and Vectis into the same match.  Drew was in that thread, I think there was more than one mention that it's "not a bug, it's a feature."

Well, crap. Sounded like a good idea. ;/

Edited March 2, 2015 by MrStrangerPL

[Odadda]

[...] Drew was in that thread, I think there was more than one mention that it's "not a bug, it's a feature."

 

I gave up at that point.  The developers have clearly indicated that this decision is the one they're going with, so I bring two different weapon types, and basically don't use explosive secondaries.  If I do, it's in conjunction with an automatic rifle or shotgun, just to be sure. :/

 

[...]

 

This is what actually nails the whole thing. DE shows caring in revamping weaker frames and weapons with augments and buffs, then destroys some weapons combination without really giving some sense in that.

 

What is it, snipers and bows suddenly become stronger if you have an explosive secondary?

[TargetDummy]

The logic may be a juice box with a finite max volume suddenly has two straws drawing from it's contents instead of one - so we split the contents evenly. 

This doesn't have sense. Because folowing by this it is like tenno decided to NOT take ammo for one of  those weapons. Like: I use braton and furis; technically they use the same bullets; nah, I'm to lazy to take any ammo for furis, I'll just use some braton magazines for it.

[climatiseur]

The logic may be a juice box with a finite max volume suddenly has two straws drawing from it's contents instead of one - so we split the contents evenly. What currently stands is it is by design - if you disagree with this, that's fine, but remain respectful and understanding that a design decision can be debated, but may not change.

All things considered, at least in my experiences, ammo capacity is a system that can be actively 'defeated' with the use of restores, mods, and the active slaughter of enemies and collection of the rather abundant ammo drops.

 

This is no logic, it's misleading. The metaphor is poor.

 

Both weapons' ammo cap are represented by the drawer, while the ammo pick up should be represented by an external jar.

 

When I have excessive juice, I can pour the juice in either one of the drawer, but the drawer size wouldn't shrink, at all.

 

another metaphor.

 

I am using 2 revolvers(in real life).  Each revolver can store 6 ammos.

 

Now both revolvers are empty in the beginning, and I just picked up 6 ammos.

 

I can fill either one of them full, or I can split them even to make them both have 3 ammos.

 

BUT the ammo storage of them won't suddenly become 3, ALL TOGETHER when I shoot either one of them, the total ammo reduced to 2.

 

This system actually gives us half of the ammos we should have.

 

__

 

Also, I am interested to know the reason, why weapons of different types should use the same ammo?? (Not the system behind, but why implementing this idea) because they are obviously very very different weapons.

[Teqnologyque]

Ammo Mutation.

 

There I just solved both problems.

 

You want a few? I have plenty of spares to go around.

[doomagent13]

Given the variety of weapon types each ammo type covers, they should be condensed.  Maybe not to just primary and secondary, but Physical, Energy, and Explosive could work.  Then give each weapon its own conversion rate of pickup-to-ammo, along with its own ammo storage.  Or each pickup could provide a certain amount of units out of a maximum total carried, with weapons drawing from the appropriate pool with weapon-specific conversion rates.  Regardless, if some primaries and secondaries are going to share an ammo pool, which pool they share should make sense.  Rocket = arrow only makes sense with Thunderbolt.  I suppose Thunderbolt could be removed, with all arrow-firing weapons gaining its effects...

 

Alternatively, rename Sniper ammo to Miscellaneous or Heavy ammo, or some other more appropriate name.  Cause it sure is not only for snipers. (Miter/Panthera/Ogris/Penta/etc.)

[GhostSwordsman]

Okay, so after reading through what everyone who has posted in this thread so far has to say, I have a few opinions I feel I need to voice.

 

First of all, the sniper ammo drops in Warframe (purple ammo drops) appear to me to play the role of 'special ammo' that you will commonly see in other games. This would explain not only the ammo's rarity in drop rate, but also why it gives so little compared to other ammo drops, respectively speaking.

 

This explanation would lead to the reasoning given behind the sharing of the ammo pool for both bows/snipers and explosive secondaries.

 

The metaphor used by DERebecca, was poor, there is just no way of putting it nicely. If you sit and think about it, it does make sense, to an extent(there seems to be some breaks in the logic, pointed out by other players such as two straws in the same juice box should not equal a juice box half the size of the original), but it was not worded in a way that conveyed their line of thinking well. If two weapons draw from the same pool, then the max capacity of the two should combine, like others have said already, you will still drain ammo quickly as each shot fired from the bow/sniper drains one ammo from the overall pool, meaning that you use one ammo for the weapon you fired and one ammo for your secondary as well and vice versa.

 

I also think the max ammo count on weapons like castanas and angstrum is fine too, 30 spare ammo is reasonable, but having the bows/snipers share that same max ammo count is not. Realistically, the ammo max for bows/snipers should combine with the ammo max for special type secondaries, and I believe that would only amount to a total of 102 spare ammo. I don't see how having 102 spare shots for your angstrum is over powered if you are 1. drawing from a pool of ammo that does not drop often and does not give you more than 10 when you receive a pick-up, and 2. it is still much less than the 210 ammo max that it used to have. At the same time, if you are not using your secondary often, then when you do switch you will likely not have 102 spare ammo, but rather what ever spare ammo count you had from using your primary weapon.

 

I still disagree with the decision(though I don't use this type of weapon combo ever, so I never encounter the issue. it's a playstyle thing), as I think a much better solution would have been to just create a new ammo type for explosive primary and secondary(or special type) weapons.

 

If you think about it, carrying a grenade launcher, you would not expect to be able to carry many spare grenades for your weapon. However, the amount of spare grenades you carry should not hinder the amount of arrows or bullets you can carry for your bow or sniper rifle, as the two(three) ammo types are completely different. The issue lies within the way the game handles ammo and the reason behind the launcher ammo change was because players could run an entire mission using something like the penta only, because it had 540 spare ammo(drawing from the rifle ammo pool). This should not be the case as when carrying a grenade launcher as a primary weapon(due to its size) you would really be utilizing it as a secondary weapon(due to the limitation of spare ammo one can carry). DE was in the right to address this issue and change how much ammo can be carried for explosive type weapons but the flaw that has created this issue, is when they decided to go with their 'special ammo' drop(read sniper ammo) as the pool for which to have explosives draw from.

 

As for this lower ammo pool being a 'feature', I recall that on the dev stream right after the explosive ammo nerf, a few of the devs spoke on this exact issue, as it was really hot forum topic at the time because nobody knew whether or not to classify it as a bug. I remember that one dev, Geoff I think, spoke on it, and I believe he said(paraphrased) that the sharing of ammo between bows/snipers and special secondaries(angstrum, castanas, etc.) was more of an oversight than actual intended design. Now, since then they might have come up with the reasoning given to us just now by Rebecca, but at the time of the change it was at least viewed as an oversight.

 

Lastly, I think that this issue should be put higher on the priority list. As can be seen by this thread, and the threads I have read through in the past on this, it is not common knowledge that using castanas or angstrum with a bow or sniper will deplete you max ammo capacity. The amount of thread that I've seen on this exact topic(bow/sniper + explosive secondary) in the past 6 months or so tells me that it is something that needs to be looked at again, and likely should be reworked so this does not continue to happen. This results in threads such as this clogging up both the bugs and feedback forums because it is not commonly known by everyone that it was unintentionally designed by the devs to behave in this way. Otherwise, the forums will always have these threads popping up(like those excal prime threads and others like it) constantly and taking up space in the feedback and bugs sections that should be for other issues both unknown and in-need of a rework/re-look.

 

 

Edit: I thought of a metaphor that I think works better.

 

Say you have one bag of white chocolate chips, and one bag of milk chocolate chips. These two types of chocolate chips are different, in taste and color, one being white, one being cocoa colored. But if I put both of these bags of chocolate chips into one bowl, I would still have one bag's worth of white chocolate chips and one bag's worth of milk chocolate chips.

 

(This is where I, and others, think DE's logic breaks. Instead of still having one juice box, they instead cut that juice box in two so each box technically has one straw in it, except it doesn't. Due to the wonky ammo mechanics, and for lack of a better analogy, you still somehow have two straws per juice box, or the straws are still linked. You should still have one juice box, the only difference being that the contents within is drained more quickly.)

 

Continuing with the chocolates metaphor, if I have someone who only likes milk chocolate eat out of the bowl(lets say for the sake of the metaphor that said person doesn't like white chocolate so they will not eat any of the white chocolate chips), then if said person ate out of the bowl, I would only end up with the milk chocolate chips missing, still having all the white chocolate chips in the bowl. You can vice versa this as well.( I would say that this is akin to having a bow/sniper + pistol or a rifle + special type secondary weapon)

 

However, if you look at the bowl as only being full of chocolate chips(because both white and milk chocolate at their base are chocolate), then you could have someone who just likes chocolate(for the sake of the metaphor, any type of chocolate) eat out of the bowl, you would end up with the bowl missing both milk and white chocolate chips.

 

Each time that person eats out of the bowl you will be losing some chocolate. Because both bags are chocolate, putting them in the same bowl amounts to more chocolate than if I kept them separate. So if the devs are going to look at each weapon pulling from the same bowl of chocolate chips, then the only logical solution here, I think, is to have the max ammo count of both types of weapons combine.

Edited March 3, 2015 by GhostSwordsman

[Psycomet]

atm sniper ammo is the only victim of this crime-by-design and considering it is largely considered the weakest of the 4 ammo types, i feel that beating on the lil guy just isnt right...

 

why for example do the shotgun-esque sidearms not use shotgun ammo? u can bring a hek and a bronco into a mission and have no conflicting ammo type/pool problems, but if you bring the castanas and a bow or a sniper, yer eff'd? there is no good reason for this

 

ok design decisions whatevs, but this is a real problem with the communication gap between DE and the players, you guys are incredibly inconsistent, if you are gimping the players by design, then those design decisions should be across the board, not randomly here or there

^This right here.

 

In case you read this thread again dear Lotus, let's talk mono-e-mono: We understand you and the rest of the guys creating what this awesome game and giving it your life and then somebody who had a bad day (or not) comes and bashes you guys because of a teeny tiny problem... we get how frustrating that can get; especially when you as community manager have to take all that crap head on.

 

But you gotta understand that most of us (if not all), speak from a place of love. Imagine how much we fun we actually have playing this game and how much we wanna play it when we come and complain here because we couldn't kill a bunch of enemies and had to run around looking for ammo pickups when we should have been shooting at the gigantic horde that's threatening to wipe our very existence from the face of the void!

 

I am a big fan of design but when it's hurting a majority of the players it's trying to make the game enjoyable for, I think we should take a second look at that design.

 

Philosophies aside, when the change hit, I played a lot of missions with my existing set-up: a sniper and castanas which is my usual. It hurt so bad that I have literally stopped using castanas, one of my most fav. weapons at the time (and still is but alas! :(( ).

 

That's really weird, though. The juicebox should stay the same size no matter how many straws are stuck in it. It shouldn't magically shrink when you stick a second straw in.

 

If they want to share ammo pools, it seems like they should rework how ammo is counted. Like this: say your "base" sniper ammo pool is 72 units. A Paris Prime uses a single sniper ammo unit to create one arrow, so at full ammo your Paris Prime reads 72 rounds. Your Castanas, however, use 2.4 sniper ammo unit to create a single castana, so when you equip Castanas at full ammo your ammo count read 30 rounds.

 

If you fire one Castana, that uses up 2.4 sniper ammo units, reducing your Castanas ammo readout to 29. If you switch back to Paris, you'll see you have 69 arrows (technically 69.6, but I'd expect to round down). Fire one Paris arrow, and you'll go down to 68.6 arrows or 28.3 Castanas.

 

QED. No more mysteriously shrinking juiceboxes.

Check this out, probably the best solution, even though not logical and may be hard to program but works 100%.

[Dogoframe]

It still looks to me the development team is stuck with this "feature" due to hardcoding... Because I really cant think of any sort of balance coming from restricting your choice of primaries when using a launcher secondary.

[(PSN)IkariWarrior83]

This is what actually nails the whole thing. DE shows caring in revamping weaker frames and weapons with augments and buffs, then destroys some weapons combination without really giving some sense in that.

 

What is it, snipers and bows suddenly become stronger if you have an explosive secondary?

Would be nice, but it still doesn't explain why the primary weapon's ammo caps at the secondary's level.  In my experience, it's not an average, but simply the smaller Max-ammo is the variable used for available ammo.

 

Ammo Mutation.

 

There I just solved both problems.

 

You want a few? I have plenty of spares to go around.

Your sarcasm not withstanding, this would be a band-aid fix at best.

 

It still looks to me the development team is stuck with this "feature" due to hardcoding... Because I really cant think of any sort of balance coming from restricting your choice of primaries when using a launcher secondary.

I'm inclined to agree with this logic.  They don't want to say "Oops we goofed on the ammo" or "wow, we messed this up so bad we can't fix it" so they just say "we decided it."

[weirdee]

eh, this is a pretty gross and inconsistent decision compared to the entire rest of the game

 

full auto weapons don't share pools, shotgun secondaries don't use shotgun ammo, etc

 

overall, you will either have to revamp the entire ammo system to have this make sense (which may or may not be a horrible decision because you haven't actually tested it outside of the live game that people put money into!!!), or you are basically saying, these weapons, they do not deserve to be good, in a game that limits us to just three weapons, so we reach that point where you are going to start picking off anything that doesn't fit in your distorted view of the game from raw statistics in order to create.....just another shooter. csgo will eat your creation alive at that point and toss you into the bin with destiny and titanfall.

 

the weapons are good because of THE WAY THAT WARFRAME IS DESIGNED, not because the weapons are at fault. please do not punish the people who use them any further. all you had to do was trim the ammo pool to, like, 72 for all of them (except angstrum, which by its very nature should have something on the order of 125). this was what people were asking for, but you decided to go farther even though you don't experience as much of the game as thousands of your customers do because you cannot possibly do so physically. but to have them share ammo types is in of itself entirely wrong and a further blow to consistency in a game barely keeping it together from all of the recent, game twisting changes which are largely incongruous with each other

 

you're turning a game that was fun because it didn't care about balance, to a game that's trying to be all about balance but doesn't know how, which actually worsens the problem you were presumably attempting to solve

Edited March 4, 2015 by weirdee

[Jinryusai]

Little feedback then for what this Beta Tester's opinion is worth.

 

That is some illogical and bad design choice. It gives the impression the developing team has no idea of how to even fix it.

And the expression that they have no idea what they are doing and using future updates as an excuse to procrastinate.

[MrStrangerPL]

And this is how it died. :/ Players pointing out the error (several times), receiving no response.