Poll Results-86.9% Of Players Want Rollers Tweaked/removed

[nullCassielle]

My only problem with that poll is that it was only advertised in a thread that specifically catered to people who already had a predisposition against Rollers. It was not advertised in an impartial way, and that may or may not have skewed the numbers in an unrealistic way. The poll was, to my knowledge, not advertised in a thread that was already in favor and good standing with Rollers as a comparison.

 

It would be the same as if I went to a Boston Pub and asked everyone if they loved or hated the New York Yankees. Of course I'll get a majority siding with dislike for them Yankees. But that's not a proper poll for whether or not America as a whole likes or dislikes the Yankees.

 

Please read the thread. OP stated that he did NOT advertise the poll in that thread, it was just posted on the Wiki without much fanfare.

[bosstnt]

should make it that when a roller hits u, it explodes and takes 50% of u'r shield. That way people will learn how to take them out much faster.

[Blatantfool]

I think Rollers are fine. They've never been much of a problem, although they can occasionally be a pain on Defense maps if they are out of view because of their small size.

[Second_Measure]

I think Rollers are fine. They've never been much of a problem, although they can occasionally be a pain on Defense maps if they are out of view because of their small size.

 

I think that some loadouts are very bad at dispatching Rollers because of their quick and unpredicting nature of how they move. Can't say that you are able dispatch them easily with a Paris/Lex loadout, for instance. Or in general with weapons that have a limited magazine size and aren't 'spray and pray'.

[MoonicusMaximus]

Please read the thread. OP stated that he did NOT advertise the poll in that thread, it was just posted on the Wiki without much fanfare.

 

By merely stating in that thread that he was making a poll advertised that poll to all of the players following that thread. It would take less than a minute to peruse the wiki and find that poll, but only a thread dedicated to removing/nerfing Rollers was informed of its existence. The poll link was also posted several times, but not directly by Madotsuki.

 

It was not seen on the forum outside of that thread until now, to my knowledge.

Edited May 14, 2013 by MoonicusMaximus

[Tsukinoki]

I am of the opinion that rollers don't even need to be tweaked that much, besides making have to attack to stun and maybe *adding* things to their abilities.

I would much rather see the broken mechanic that they rely on fixed.  The stun mechanic is broken because it allows for two things to happen:
Enemies to indefinitely stunlock players
Players to indefinitely stunlock enemies and bosses.

Neither of those should be possible if the mechanic was actually working properly.  If DE would fix the stun mechanics, perferably by adding diminishing returns to stuns, then people wouldn't complain at all about rollers.  It would also prevent charger stun lock as well as prevent players from cheesing a boss by stunlocking them, which I have seen happen.

[PaperAlien]

Although I agree that the poll's accuracy is quite questionable, I am still astounded by the manner in with elitists/sadomasochists think that players need to be "punished" for making mistakes in this game, not by any reasonable mechanic, but by taking away their control, arguably the least fun thing you can do in a game. And their solution? "Aim better." I'm sorry that I made the mistake of being a casual gamer and not having pro skills, I guess I totally deserve to be punished by being stunlocked. I can't really back any comment on Nervos, since I never encountered them, but comparing an issue with a worse one does not make it balanced. Nervos were more annoying than Rollers, Rollers are still incredibly annoying.

 

If tweaking/removing rollers is "[dumbing] this game down to a point where a 5 year old could breeze through it," then there is already another problem. The implication here is that the entire difficulty of the Grineer faction is carried by one unit. That is already a problem. And for reference, a 5 year old probably couldn't breeze through this game, because if you actually play with no tactics and rush into enemy fire, you will get cut up. That is the only type of mistake (tactical, they made the choice to do it (you can't simply "choose" to aim better)) that should be punished, and even then, stunning is an unnecessarily frustrating method of enforcing that, simply letting bullets down people is enough.

"Play at a lower difficulty" is not a valid argument, as Rollers show up in a large range of levels, so a player that is otherwise capable of handling other enemies at much higher levels will be forced to play at very low levels to avoid this one enemy. This is partly due to the whole "rollers carry Grineer" thing mentioned earlier.

[PapaKicks]

Neither of those should be possible if the mechanic was actually working properly.  If DE would fix the stun mechanics, perferably by adding diminishing returns to stuns, then people wouldn't complain at all about rollers.  It would also prevent charger stun lock as well as prevent players from cheesing a boss by stunlocking them, which I have seen happen.

 

I've never been a fan of diminishing returns. I'd much rather see a stun debuff. After getting stunned you cannot be stunned for 1 or 2 seconds.

 

@original topic : If they were just easier to melee it wouldn't be an issue. They are very easy to miss unless you have an aoe slam weapon.

[Tsukinoki]

@PaperAlien
The worst thing about rollers currently?  If you are unlucky enough to have one spawn behind you while you are ducking behind a box to regen shields it can roll against your feet and stun you.  Since it is rolling against a wall it'll just sit there on your feet endlessly rolling forwards and endlessly stunning you without a chance to do anything.

Now, I am wondering how anyone can argue that the stun mechanic is not broken, and that you can just "lrn2play" when something like that happens.  That's just punishing me for being unlucky with a single spawn and in an incredibly disproportional way.  If situations like that can and do happen that means that there is something wrong.

@Akivoodoo
Either one would work, I am just from games that do the diminishing returns on a lot of things.  And a diminishing returns system also rewards players for speccing into stun chance for tougher enemies without making it possible to perma-stagger enemies.

And the problem with aoe slam attacks is that rollers can stun you out of your jump when you're coming back down.  One of their more annoying traits.

Edited May 14, 2013 by Tsukinoki

[LongDraw]

Okay, not that I disagree with the OP, but that poll only represents a small fraction of the players that are currently playing the game.  If the developers wanted more accurate results on a poll, they should put a poll section in game and maybe offer 1000 credits for participating.

[MoonicusMaximus]

That is the only type of mistake (tactical, they made the choice to do it (you can't simply "choose" to aim better)) that should be punished, and even then, stunning is an unnecessarily frustrating method of enforcing that, simply letting bullets down people is enough.

 

You cannot choose to aim better, but you can become better at aiming. It's a skill just like any other; it improves with practice and time.

 

If I don't shoot well in a game advertised as a 3rd person shooter, I shouldn't expect to perform well in the game itself until I can actually learn to shoot.

 

Most of the opposition levied against Roller's isn't that they are difficult to shoot, however, but that the disruptive effects they impart are too frequent and therefore disproportional to the unit as a whole, to which I agree with.

Edited May 14, 2013 by MoonicusMaximus

[Wojek]

2.      Give Rollers a proper “attack animation” that they can only deal damage and stagger during. For example, a Sonic-esque stationary spin-up (during which the Roller will be invulnerable and deflect bullets due to spinning speed) that is followed by a double-speed straight-line charge. If it hits a wall or prop during the charge, it will be counter-stunned and allow players to dispatch them easily, promoting using your environment in battle.

 

So... basically wheel skeletons, just in Warframe? I like it!

[Madotsuki]

By merely stating in that thread that he was making a poll advertised that poll to all of the players following that thread. It would take less than a minute to peruse the wiki and find that poll, but only a thread dedicated to removing/nerfing Rollers was informed of its existence. The poll link was also posted several times, but not directly by Madotsuki.

 

It was not seen on the forum outside of that thread until now, to my knowledge.

Oh i don't know, maybe it's because that was the only active Roller thread, and thus the only place relevant enough to "advertise" the poll would be on that thread, if by "advertise" you mean inform people of its existence and occasionally report the current results of the poll, and not taking into account the fact that there were also plenty of Roller Lovers just like yourself on that thread and not just anti-roller people?

[Cestus]

Create a poll for the Hek and let's see what happens.

[Madotsuki]

If tweaking/removing rollers is "[dumbing] this game down to a point where a 5 year old could breeze through it," then there is already another problem. The implication here is that the entire difficulty of the Grineer faction is carried by one unit. That is already a problem.

GENIUS. I'm serious, I can't believe I haven't seen someone make this argument before. Good job.

 

Okay, not that I disagree with the OP, but that poll only represents a small fraction of the players that are currently playing the game.  If the developers wanted more accurate results on a poll, they should put a poll section in game and maybe offer 1000 credits for participating.

Again, statistics 101. I don't want to repeat myself again, read my OP post. And I would like it if DE would make an official poll and put it on the Announcements section of the forums or the game screen or something so all Warframe players and not just wiki-goers would see it and vote, though i'm kinda "meh" on the 1000 credit reward for voting.

[BoogieMan82]

Reminder: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/7-community-rules/

 

 

Lets keep this thread on topic and constructive.  ATTACK posts are NOT allowed.

 

Thanks!

[MoonicusMaximus]

Oh i don't know, maybe it's because that was the only active Roller thread, and thus the only place relevant enough to "advertise" the poll would be on that thread, if by "advertise" you mean inform people of its existence and occasionally report the current results of the poll, and not taking into account the fact that there were also plenty of Roller Lovers just like yourself on that thread and not just anti-roller people?

 

That is advertising the poll, yes.

 

Doesn't change the fact that it was only advertised largely towards players already predisposed against Rollers. The poll was not advertised or ran on a random cluster of players, it was ran through a very specific mindset of players which may have skewed the polls. I'm not saying you were given equal opportunity to advertise the thread on both fronts of the issue (although you could have perhaps put a link to the poll in that "Make a Giant Roller Boss" thread and other threads of that ilk in which Rollers are celebrated, not berated), but that still doesn't make the poll results any less questionable and inaccurate as a result.

 

This coming from a person that voted Yes, because I believe changes can be made for the Roller to make it more fun while still keeping its stun and disruption abilities.

Edited May 14, 2013 by MoonicusMaximus

[Madotsuki]

Create a poll for the Hek and let's see what happens.

Create a poll for the Hek about what?? The falloff?

[ValhaHazred]

Rollers don't need to be removed, but they need a serious rework.

 

My suggestions.

No more stun on contact. They have to do their special attack for stun

Normal attack- their current bladed bounce animation, more damaging than it is now but with no stun

Special attack- the roller spins in place for a moment, building up momentum and glows red hot. It makes a gunning engine sort of sound as warning.

It then leaps, stuns and deals heavy fire damage.

Self Destruct- when brought below 50% health the roller begins to beep in warning and then charges at the nearest player. If it makes contact it explodes like a claymore, dealing massive damage with poor AOE.

[OoKeNnEtHoO]

I don't find rollers a huge enough problem to be removed completely.

 

However, I think that it should have somewhat of an inertia/slower speed such that if it misses you on an attack, it will stop for a period of time, maybe 1 to 2 seconds or more, before it can move and attack again.

 

Of course, the longer this time of exposure to attacks, the more hp it should have.

 

Ideally, I want rollers to be invulnerable until the time they stop due to missing you because you dodge. Then you have a few seconds to score one hit.  You have to hit it exactly 3 times before it is destroyed. So you will have to dodge it 3 times. It should have a slightly slower speed even though dodging it now isn't too difficult.

[LongDraw]

Edit: Because people apparently DON'T READ, I'll put this at the very top of my post. I DO NOT WANT ROLLERS OUTRIGHT REMOVED FROM THE GAME, I ONLY WANT THEM TO BE TWEAKED SO THAT THEY ARE CHALLENGING AND FUN WITHOUT BEING A FRUSTRATING NUISANCE STAGGER-FEST. IF, and only IF, THEY ARE TO BE REMOVED, THEY MUST BE REPLACED WITH SOMETHING BETTER IMMEDIATELY OR SOON AFTER THEIR REMOVAL. Now unrustle your jimmies and read the rest of the post.

 

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Enemies

 

After participating in a different Roller thread, I decided that my personal opinion and experience simply isn’t enough to persuade Roller Lovers that Rollers are poorly designed enemies that need to be properly adjusted. So I decided to resort to the scientific method and went and started up a poll on the official Warframe wiki to collect public opinion. And as the “Petition (Or Discussion!) To Remove Or Redesign The Grineer Rollers” thread hits a whopping 21 pages, my poll has finally reached 1000+ voters as of 14/5/2013, enough for us to reach a sound conclusion.

 

As you can see from the poll, 882 of 1015 voters want the infamous Rollers either tweaked or outright removed from the game. That is 86.9% of voters. I think it’s safe to say that public opinion has spoken, and that it’s time DE addressed the Roller problem.

 

Now, based on the responses by the Roller Lovers in the other Roller thread, some of you might say “1000 voters cannot possibly represent the entire playerbase!” To that, I say, “Learn some basic information about statistics and polling.” Most polling companies, and I mean actual companies that poll far more important things than whether an enemy in a video game is poorly designed, use sample sizes of 400-1000. A sample size of 1000 will give you a confidence interval of +/-3% 19 times out of 20 (95%). I won’t go into detail about what a confidence interval is, but the current poll is more than enough to accurately estimate the proportion of players who want Rollers tweaked, or outright removed.

 

Some others would say “The poll is not random! It’s biased!” And yes, you're right, it's not. It's a poll of people who browse the Warframe wiki, which means they do out-of-game research on their game. This means a much higher proportion of powergamers will be viewing the poll and providing input. How does this matter? Well, simple. Powergamers and people who spend time on videogame wikis are more dedicated gamers who will, because of that dedication, generally also be more skilled than your average gamer. The poll also will not catch players who have been frustrated by excessive overuse of stun mechanics and decided to quit. Literally everyone the poll excludes is far more likely to dislike Rollers than like them. In other words, the poll would be biased TOWARDS dedicated and skilled players. In such a situation, with 86.9% of voters wanting Rollers tweaked or removed, that’s saying something.

 

Rollers are frustrating, unfun, uninteresting, poorly designed enemy units and 86.9% of the Warframe playerbase would agree with me. So, how should DE tweak Rollers to make them acceptable enemies, if they decide to keep them and not outright remove them from the game like the infamous Nervos? Below are a few suggestions, including my own and others.

 

1.      Introduce diminishing returns to stuns and staggers around the board. Both players and enemies will be unable to stunlock each other by introducing a “stagger-immunity” period to both after being staggered.

2.      Give Rollers a proper “attack animation” that they can only deal damage and stagger during. For example, a Sonic-esque stationary spin-up (during which the Roller will be invulnerable and deflect bullets due to spinning speed) that is followed by a double-speed straight-line charge. If it hits a wall or prop during the charge, it will be counter-stunned and allow players to dispatch them easily, promoting using your environment in battle.

3.      Allow players to bat/smack away Rollers with their melee weapon by blocking in their direction. Smacking it into a wall briefly stuns it, smacking it into an enemy staggers the enemy. This gives the block ability a purpose and is also cool and fun as hell.

 

And if Rollers are to be removed from the game, something better must take its place of course. While I won’t go into detail on what it should be replaced with here, I started a little thread a while ago detailing options. Here is the link to that thread: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/30942-grineer-suggestions-for-new-units-squad-combos-better-ai-tweak-old-units/

 

Public opinion has spoken. Rollers need to be changed, and they need to be changed soon.

 

The poll is still up by the way, and will stay up in the foreseeable future for even larger sample sizes.

Okay, like our mod said, lets stay on topic and stop with the personal attacks.

 

My point was that your poll only included a small fraction of the current players and so has inherent inaccuracy.  I have quoted your OP so that you can prove to me where you made mention of an in-game poll which you or another player either suggested or the developers have begun/finished work on implementing.

[Motox831]

The reload thing drives me crazy cause I used two guns that take forever to reload. 

[DoctorBrookes]

Challenge and frustration are not the same thing. Rollers are anti-fun. 

[MJ12]

That is advertising the poll, yes.

 

Doesn't change the fact that it was only advertised largely towards players already predisposed against Rollers. The poll was not advertised or ran on a random cluster of players, it was ran through a very specific mindset of players which may have skewed the polls. I'm not saying you were given equal opportunity to advertise the thread on both fronts of the issue (although you could have perhaps put a link to the poll in that "Make a Giant Roller Boss" thread and other threads of that ilk in which Rollers are celebrated, not berated), but that still doesn't make the poll results any less questionable and inaccurate as a result.

 

This coming from a person that voted Yes, because I believe changes can be made for the Roller to make it more fun while still keeping its stun and disruption abilities.

 

So it was advertised largely towards players already predisposed against Rollers, i.e. "Players of Warframe"? How is this not legit? This is like making a poll on "is dying bad" and claiming bias because it was only advertised towards people predisposed to not like dying, like all of humanity.

 

Anyways, the main reason I want Rollers removed is that most of the ways to make them not-annoying will also trivialize them. This is approximately the only thing the opposition has gotten correct. You can't make Rollers not annoying without making them really easy.

 

Given this, why waste time salvaging something when you've already gotten use out of its animations and its model? (Seriously, look at Latchers.)

 

They do need to be replaced by something else. I'd replace them by making Heavies tougher and more maneuverable, give them better AI, and use them more aggressively to flush Tenno out of cover. In addition I'd make the Bombard explosion proximity airburst (so it won't be stopped by cover) and the Napalm one have larger AoE and higher DoT.

 

That, and make grenades easier to spot/avoid, higher damage with a larger radius, and thrown more accurately and somewhat more often. Hope you don't like hiding behind boxes!

[Cpl_Facehugger]

Im all for it mate, but do we have a topic with nearly 100 player's support saying that challenge needs to be added?

No.

Instead we have a topic with nearly 100 nabs which requests for the removal or redesign of an enemy that still offers some form of deviation from your constant "walk and shoot things in the face".

 

Well, yeah, because "what do you replace rollers with" is a separate question to "are rollers poor design and should they be removed because of it?"

 

The only real purpose Rollers serve in the Grineer OOB is to flush Tenno out of cover. So what we need is a unit that does the same task without being annoying to fight.

 

Personally, I'm in favor of a Grineer napalm trooper who's fast, aggressive, and has a flamethrower. I've seen other guys suggest a sniper with a gun that punches through cover ala Railgun moas. Or teleporting snipers who flank. Or simply replacing all rollers with flameblades. Though I like the idea of giving some lancers (more at high level of course) puncture mods so they can utterly ignore cover, because I have gut feeling that all the guys who are complaining that the game is too easy are playing a certain way, and preventing cover from being an instant pancea would completely rectify that - thereby finally giving the guys who want "harder gameplay" what they want.

 

 

I forgot that random polls, created in some other forums now represent a community....

They actually do. That's how statistics works. Good heavens, guys, are you seriously saying a sample size of 1000 warframe players isn't enough?

 

Anyway, one thing I've found interesting is the notion that rollers carry the Grineer. I kind of disagree with that (having died more to getting cornered by a bunch of Lancers than by trollers), but if that's the case, that's not an argument against removing Rollers, it's an argument for tweaking everyone else.

Edited May 14, 2013 by Cpl_Facehugger