Going "back" Is Not The Answer

[finaLfrontier]

8) ... and Banshee? What about her Sound Quake?

 

I believe the damage Sound Quake now does is working as intended... but being vulnerable during the casting animation is problematic. Will inform and suggest invulnerability be returned. 

 

 

Not to sound mean, but I hope this suggestion gets dismissed. There are other ways around blatant invulnerability...

 

Introduce reverberating staggers to enemies while casting, would make sense given the awesome animation

 

Make it possible to move, and break the effect after the first wave hits

 

Also, people could use it as an actual attack, rather than an, "omg need invulnerability nao" In other words, either take cover first, or get backed up by a Snow Globe, Heal, you know teamwork... If you don't have any friends or soloing, then don't Sound Quake in a pinch... Try Shock Wave... Really, people just give up too easy.

 

C'mon DE, we're making progress, don't turn back now.

 

We can figure this out

[Vyaldyn]

To be honest, the damage is fine as long as you don't host. If you do, you can't kill anything with it. And the invulnerability missing is only a problem in infested as it's basically a suicide button while any ancients are around.

[Kynian]

I agree that invulnerability there is probably bad. I'm all in for damage reduction though. If you want to be picky about it, think of it - Sound Quake must be one heck of a pain for those who hear it. While experiencing it you won't be able to focus and use your all. I imagine it must be like rush hour stale traffic sounds, amplified by 1000, and being played, in loops, right at your ear. Ears and brains bleeding. Yeah, you'll hit whoever's doign that to you weaker alright, you can barely hold your weapon. But you will indeed try to hurt the one doing this to you, and if you connect a hit, you expect it to hurt.

Btw, I was thinking of a grineer Bombardier while writing this.

Edited May 20, 2013 by Kynian

[Enot83]

To be honest, the damage is fine as long as you don't host. If you do, you can't kill anything with it. And the invulnerability missing is only a problem in infested as it's basically a suicide button while any ancients are around.

 

I was curious of this, not to derail from the original intent of the thread too much, but it appears that whenever I'm the host enemies are left alive, and someone else who connects is always able to kill the same mooks.  This is with full damage etc on my own frame (unsure of if others have modded for it as well)  Which just feels pointless, since if it isn't going to kill with it, and when it does kill, it can do it without it...

 

To the OP, I agree with non invuln status during many of these uber skills.  Considering the reach for Banshee's ult, finding locations to be out of the line of fire, or using it as a set of spawns are incoming rather than already ontop of you seems the more likely manner this skill should be used in.  Something like Excalibur's ult on the other hand is a fast "in the fray" kind of skill which may be better suited if you're looking for that kind of playstyle.

 

As was suggested, if you are that attached to banshee, there are other skills that can be used in scenarios that you've already been overrun and are wanting to use the skill.  There are knockdowns, cloaking techniques etc that can be utilized to avoid leaving banshee in the open during the use of her ultimate.

 

About the only thing I could see being changed is the duration, either being reversed so that it is 7 seconds unranked, and 5 seconds at rank 3, indicating a higher proficiency at using the skill both in damage and application of that damage.

 

Alternatively, examination of how the continuity mod works (or addition of a new mod!) so that skills that have a ramping up period, like sound quake, avalanche, even skills like blade storm would have their duration reduced by the mod value, meaning the same damage in less time for these skills.

 

This would mean if sound quake was left as is, the use of this mod would reduce the 7 seconds by 30% for example if it follows continuity, reducing it essentially back to the 5 seconds even at rank 3.

 

Of course this mod would have to leave other skills durations that one would want enhanced by continuity alone, hence why I originally suggested it be part of continuity, that this mod be changed to be "smarter" since extended duration on some skills (or in the case where it does nothing to prevent extending skills that are not desired to have the animation extended) is a bad idea, instead now it would extend duration on things such as iron skin, snow globe, miasma, etc but reduce animation durations on things like sound quake, blade storm, avalanche, crush... etc.

 

To keep discussion on the original topic, discussion of the mod idea can be found here:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/47611-ultimates-and-their-animation-durations-time-dilation/

Edited May 20, 2013 by Enot83

[finaLfrontier]

I agree that invulnerability there is probably bad. I'm all in for damage reduction though. If you want to be picky about it, think of it - Sound Quake must be one heck of a pain for those who hear it. While experiencing it you won't be able to focus and use your all. I imagine it must be like rush hour stale traffic sounds, amplified by 1000, and being played, in loops, right at your ear. Ears and brains bleeding. Yeah, you'll hit whoever's doign that to you weaker alright, you can barely hold your weapon. But you will indeed try to hurt the one doing this to you, and if you connect a hit, you expect it to hurt.

Btw, I was thinking of a grineer Bombardier while writing this.

 

Damage reduction wouldn't be a bad idea. I'd like to expand on that thought a bit more: Here is how I see it.

 

If these abilities are going to provide damage reduction, or even invincibility, what exactly is the lore behind these effects? There would need to be some kind of ingame description, even animations to warrant damage reduction or invulnerability during these ultimates. Having said that, it would still be extremely difficult to justify flat out invulnerability. Damage reduction is way more conceivable.

 

About the only thing I could see being changed is the duration, either being reversed so that it is 7 seconds unranked, and 5 seconds at rank 3, indicating a higher proficiency at using the skill both in damage and application of that damage.

 

Alternatively, examination of how the continuity mod works (or addition of a new mod!) so that skills that have a ramping up period, like sound quake, avalanche, even skills like blade storm would have their duration reduced by the mod value, meaning the same damage in less time for these skills.

 

This would mean if sound quake was left as is, the use of this mod would reduce the 7 seconds by 30% for example if it follows continuity, reducing it essentially back to the 5 seconds even at rank 3.

 

Of course this mod would have to leave other skills durations that one would want enhanced by continuity alone, hence why I originally suggested it be part of continuity, that this mod be changed to be "smarter" since extended duration on some skills (or in the case where it does nothing to prevent extending skills that are not desired to have the animation extended) is a bad idea, instead now it would extend duration on things such as iron skin, snow globe, miasma, etc but reduce animation durations on things like sound quake, blade storm, avalanche, crush... etc.

 

Great ideas. However, I'm going to say something of which I have absolutely no intention of insulting the developers in any fashion:

 

So far, while playing this game, I've made an observation, and have come to a conclusion that may or may not be true.

First, so much of the games actual coding techniques look like they are painfully simple. This shows in the terrible UI of pretty much everything in the game, and the simple-to-code flat out damage immune effects of certain abilities in the game. Some of these have been changed, like ultimates and Iron Skin. However, another observation in regards to these changes: Instant problems with Sound Quake, especially Iron Skin arise.

Sound Quakes effects can't be broken, meaning you are locked in place for full duration. Simple fix was to just turn invincibility off, which they did. but to further change characteristics of the ability, requires a lot more code

 

Iron Skin:

I had a funny feeling they may mess this one up, and I was right. It appeared to me anything in the game that had invincibility, also had CC immunity, and this appeared to be a byproduct of not taking any damage, not any fancy coding. So when they removed god mode from IS, no more CC immunity... The actual code to negate effects like energy drain just isn't there. In realty, this "bug" really is just incomplete code. Not even a bug at all... (They really should have waited until it was complete before releasing any changes)

 

Why didn't Link get changed at all? Well probably this:

Link, if it was to work more reasonably, would have to provide some degree of damage reduction, while transferring the rest to nearby enemies. Not only that, but have DR and CC immunity turn off when no enemies are near, but able to turn back on if an enemy is near again. That's an awful lot of math and parameters to fulfill, especially when so many other ability's code seems to be a mere 'on' and 'off' coding technique.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if there are only 1-3 guys doing all the coding for this game. And if indeed the programmers are relatively new at this, well, no harm done. It's all good. They will get better, everything will be fine. Let's practice some patience.

 

TL;DR

In summary, and response to your quote, there's a lot of math going on there, and it's beautiful, but rather complicated to code for. Things get a little hectic when scripting a similar effect to decrease or increase under certain conditions. e.g. Continuity increasing some durations, while decreasing others. I think we are going to have to sit tight for a bit on that one.

 

Patience e're one, patience

[Enot83]

Agreed finalfrontier, I think that a change like I suggested would be a larger undertaking especially if rolled into a single mod, it could take some time to go through and see which skills should be treated in which manner.

 

I think that's why even a seperate mod, while not the desired solution could still be valuable to look at by the devs.

 

I'm ok with sitting tight, especially for something like this, since there are a number of skills that may end up requiring some reworking.  As was brought up elsewhere Slash Dash, continuity increases is range, due to it being treated as a duration for establishing how far you go (like volts movement skill) rather than, each rank moving you X meters.  Where stretch would more appropriatly effect the skill.

 

All of which to say, the removal of invulnerability is a step in the right direction.  How they address this change could give us some other good changes to the game as well.  So don't go backwards, it used to be ridiculously easy, now at least there are hints of having to make decisions about where and when you use the ultimate, not just "good there are lots of guys I will hit".

[Mbgunsling]

The title of this thread accurately describes how the Iron skin noob situation should be handled.

HavEn used sound quake, but from my understanding, the invincibility is to prevent death glitches. I cant think of an adequate workaround.

[MJ12]

So basically this thread is going 'okay there's a simple solution that works and we can instead create a far more complex situation that may have more bugs just because I really dislike the idea of having invulnerability in anything, so please don't use a simple, working solution'? There is this depressing pathological hatred of invulnerability frames in western gaming that is often massively detrimental to the game itself (ex: how useless dodgerolling is in this game) simply because people don't like the word 'invulnerability'. So instead of actually making someone invulnerable for a few moments now there have to be weird workarounds to get the same effect but with ten times the effort.

[DAWGUNITALPHA]

I will never understand the hatred of invincibility among this community. It makes the game a boring slog. Oh what ancient swarm? Well have fun dying as soon as you revive because you don't get even a few seconds of invincibility.

[MJ12]

I will never understand the hatred of invincibility among this community. It makes the game a boring slog. Oh what ancient swarm? Well have fun dying as soon as you revive because you don't get even a few seconds of invincibility.

 

It's apparently because in a videogame where you can kick the floor so hard that time stops or throw a black hole grenade (note: a black hole with an event horizon as large as Vauban's vortex would have to mass as much as Mount Everest) being able to turn invulnerable for 2 seconds is totally silly and immersion-breaking.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

The title of this thread accurately describes how the Iron skin noob situation should be handled.

Other than the fact that reverting IS invulnerability and then nerfing its energy cost and duration is, in fact, the way forward.

 

It's apparently because in a videogame where you can kick the floor so hard that time stops or throw a black hole grenade (note: a black hole with an event horizon as large as Vauban's vortex would have to mass as much as Mount Everest) being able to turn invulnerable for 2 seconds is totally silly and immersion-breaking.

No way man, it's all about the peasants who can't learn to play, duh.

Edited May 21, 2013 by Cpl_Facehugger

[Enot83]

Nah you missed I think the point, its not the immersion for some, its just boring and bland.  Oh noes I'm in trouble push 4 and I'll be fine.

 

Pretty easy mode game mechanic.

 

As to the suggestion I had, you missed that one too, it wasn't just to alleviate some of the problems some would face with the loss of invulnerability.  It was actually more or less dealing with the fact that, in the case specifically of sound quake, let me hit the skill, brb grabbing beer from the fridge while I wait for the skill to finish.  Though as already pointed out there is a thread for that to be discussed.

 

Rather boring.

Edited May 21, 2013 by Enot83

[RealityMachina]

Nah you missed I think the point, its not the immersion for some, its just boring and bland.  Oh noes I'm in trouble push 4 and I'll be fine.

 

Stop playing in Mercury with your over leveled for that area Warframe then.

 

EDIT: I mean, even if we assume that Warframe's current usage of invulernability frames is crap, that doesn't mean it is impossible to implement invulernability frames in a proper way that doesn't take away fun from the game.

 

I mean, ME3 Multiplayer has entire class builds set up around the invulernability frames of certain powers (Novaguard, melee slayer, etc), and yet, those classes manage to remain fun with those set ups because of exactly how the powers work in conjunction with the rest of the game's mechanics.

Edited May 21, 2013 by RealityMachina

[DAWGUNITALPHA]

Nah you missed I think the point, its not the immersion for some, its just boring and bland.  Oh noes I'm in trouble push 4 and I'll be fine.

 

Pretty easy mode game mechanic.

 

As to the suggestion I had, you missed that one too, it wasn't just to alleviate some of the problems some would face with the loss of invulnerability.  It was actually more or less dealing with the fact that, in the case specifically of sound quake, let me hit the skill, brb grabbing beer from the fridge while I wait for the skill to finish.  Though as already pointed out there is a thread for that to be discussed.

 

Rather boring.

As oppose tod "oh let me press four to kill this one guy, because that's all its good for now. Oh wait one guy walked into the room and now he's shooting me to death and there's nothing I can do. This is excellent gameplay." ? I'd rather have a "boring" emergency button over a useless suicide button any day.

[MJ12]

Nah you missed I think the point, its not the immersion for some, its just boring and bland.  Oh noes I'm in trouble push 4 and I'll be fine.

 

Pretty easy mode game mechanic.

 

As compared to 'if one single enemy decides to attack me while I'm casting welp that's it I need to burn a revive'? Yeah, I'd prefer a not-frustrating mechanic over one that's simultaneously frustrating and pointless.

 

 

As to the suggestion I had, you missed that one too, it wasn't just to alleviate some of the problems some would face with the loss of invulnerability.  It was actually more or less dealing with the fact that, in the case specifically of sound quake, let me hit the skill, brb grabbing beer from the fridge while I wait for the skill to finish.  Though as already pointed out there is a thread for that to be discussed.

 

Rather boring.

 

Your suggestion is trying to fix a problem that you made up out of whole cloth with something that causes even more problems, i.e. you now need a Rare mod upgraded to a significant degree to use your ultimates. Yes, sound quake is a channeled skill that takes a while. Didn't people ask specifically for Ultimates which did things other than 'press 4, everything nearby takes 1000 damage after a 2 second animation'?

[finaLfrontier]

As oppose tod "oh let me press four to kill this one guy, because that's all its good for now. Oh wait one guy walked into the room and now he's shooting me to death and there's nothing I can do. This is excellent gameplay." ? I'd rather have a "boring" emergency button over a useless suicide button any day.

 

What I'm taking away from this logic, is that you want button 4 to solve all your issues, and that there should never be circumstances where you might have to deviate from #4 spamming all your problems away...

 

Well you have your opinion. We have ours.

[RealityMachina]

What I'm taking away from this logic, is that you want button 4 to solve all your issues, and that there should never be circumstances where you might have to deviate from #4 spamming all your problems away...

So strawman argument, we meet again.

 

(Alternative joke: So lack of reading comprehension, we meet again. )

Edited May 21, 2013 by RealityMachina

[DAWGUNITALPHA]

What I'm taking away from this logic, is that you want button 4 to solve all your issues, and that there should never be circumstances where you might have to deviate from #4 spamming all your problems away...

 

Well you have your opinion. We have ours.

Nice fallacy you got there. No, I don't want my ultimate ability to be a useless suicide button that allows even a basic grineer marine to murder me if the game bugs out like its want to do and decides not to stun someone who was in range. It's 100 energy at base and it's supposed to be a big fancy ability. As it is post-nerf they're nearly useless, not unlike shield polarity even and that works maybe 50/50 if the planets aligned with sun and Poseidon is especially happy that day. Which is a big problem with abilities. DE has said they don't want guns to overshadow the warframe abilities, but then they keep making the abilities S#&$.

[finaLfrontier]

So strawman argument, we meet again.

 

(Alternative joke: So lack of reading comprehension, we meet again. )

 

Mmm, perhaps, you should work on your comprehension skills

 

Nice fallacy you got there. No, I don't want my ultimate ability to be a useless suicide button that allows even a basic grineer marine to murder me if the game bugs out like its want to do and decides not to stun someone who was in range. It's 100 energy at base and it's supposed to be a big fancy ability. As it is post-nerf they're nearly useless, not unlike shield polarity even and that works maybe 50/50 if the planets aligned with sun and Poseidon is especially happy that day. Which is a big problem with abilities. DE has said they don't want guns to overshadow the warframe abilities, but then they keep making the abilities S#&$.

 

That's funny, because I still see Banshees quaking it up and rocking the meters as is. I've even jumped on mine and played around with it. I just, you know... don't use it when surrounded by ancients...

[Enot83]

I've solo'ed gold and platinum using novaguard, it was rather ridiculous and I got bored playing novaguard because it took any difficulty out of the game. 

 

As to your example as well, it was terrible, people on the ME3 forums hated this and thought it was ridiculous there, thats not really helping the argument here.  Especially since in this example it was really only a couple classes that could blatantly ignore all game mechanics other than sync kill.  Rather than here where we are discussing something more across the board.

 

Frankly I think it makes the game easier by returning the invulnerability and similar to what finaLfrontier said, I think you want a 1 button solves all your problems instead of, this might, but it may also lead to your death while trying to do so.

 

I don't need the game to be that easy, and find the new mechanic more enjoyable.  If they brought it back, it will be just that much easier to annihilate things.

 

Stop playing in Mercury with your over leveled for that area Warframe then.

Sadly the outter areas are just about as easy, the difficulty of this game is kinda a joke. 

[RealityMachina]

I've solo'ed gold and platinum using novaguard, it was rather ridiculous and I got bored playing novaguard because it took any difficulty out of the game. 

 

As to your example as well, it was terrible, people on the ME3 forums hated this and thought it was ridiculous there, thats not really helping the argument here.  Especially since in this example it was really only a couple classes that could blatantly ignore all game mechanics other than sync kill. 

I like you think I can't just go to BSN and pop off a few searches, revealing that A) Complaints seem to be centred around people who had no idea how to use novaguard properly and kept dying because they had no idea how to use it at all, and B) Complaints about it becoming a quickly outdated class on Gold/Platnium compared to things like the Murder Train or the Batarian Brawler.

 

So either my internet connection is giving me fake results or maybe you're just bullS#&$ting me.

 

EDIT:

Frankly I think it makes the game easier by returning the invulnerability and similar to what finaLfrontier said, I think you want a 1 button solves all your problems instead of, this might, but it may also lead to your death while trying to do so.

Yes, because being invulernable for an animation totally means I never have to worry about mistiming, misjudgement of how many enemies there were for the game to register or the power of my mods relative to the level of enemies, etc etc...

 

Wait. No. That's not what being invulernerable for animation gives me.

Edited May 21, 2013 by RealityMachina

[fishworshipper]

Might just be that I'm a scrawny, weak nerdy kid IRL, but I actually like being able to effortlessly plow through thousands of enemies...

[Mikaru_Y]

I've found out that on multiple occasions when I used sound quake to get crowds getting too close to a point I needed to defend (everyone else was getting everything elsewhere so I was kinda stuck in a sense doing that), I found out that gettign shot while trying to do your part against enemies your primary weapon isn't leveled enoug hor doing enough damage to kill isn't fun. I'm not saying that we should have 100% invincibility because it does dumb down gameplay to a point of "press 4 now", but what I think we should do is probably come up with a way to increase armor during its duration so you DO take less damage instead of everything pointed at you. That way we can still pull off ultmates at a time of need or as a desperation move, without a high chance of dying because you can't move or protect yourself.

[Enot83]

I like you think I can't just go to BSN and pop off a few searches, revealing that A) Complaints seem to be centred around people who had no idea how to use novaguard properly and kept dying because they had no idea how to use it at all, and B) Complaints about it becoming a quickly outdated class on Gold/Platnium compared to things like the Murder Train or the Batarian Brawler.

 

So either my internet connection is giving me fake results or maybe you're just bullS#&$ting me.

 

EDIT:

 

Yes, because being invulernable for an animation totally means I never have to worry about mistiming, misjudgement of how many enemies there were for the game to register or the power of my mods relative to the level of enemies, etc etc...

 

Wait. No. That's not what being invulernerable for animation gives me.

Nah, they are inside most of those threads, there are people complaining how ridiculous they are at just zipping around with no care etc, most of the threads of course concerning it are toward the release of the game prior to people finally accepting that nothing was going to be changed about it.

 

If you're worried about mistiming or misjudging ultimates that's fine, speaking from my own experience its never been an issue, those things are pretty simple to account for.

 

Like I said before, bringing it back will just make it easier, you've as much as admitted that.

Edited May 21, 2013 by Enot83

[MJ12]

What I'm taking away from this logic, is that you want button 4 to solve all your issues, and that there should never be circumstances where you might have to deviate from #4 spamming all your problems away...

 

Well you have your opinion. We have ours.

 

Or maybe he rightfully thinks that if you're using a power with the intended role of 'high cost panic button' as a high cost panic button you might want it to work as a high cost panic button? Even if Ultimates always instantly killed all enemies in range with total invulnerability per cast, you wouldn't be able to '#4 spam all your problems away' because of this thing called energy that it uses. You think that because a power makes you invulnerable it is OP by default and this invulnerability should always be removed even when it breaks the power because it's dependent on that invulnerability to be worthwhile. This is hilariously and demonstrably wrong.

 

Because even with invulnerability using Ultimates could very quickly get you killed. You see, the best way to use them is against a ton of enemies, which means you're charging out against a ton of guys in the open to toss your Ult. Which can get you killed or badly mauled very fast. See, that's tactical. Now there's no reason to do that, it'll just get you killed. Instead, you only use the Ultimate while 'safe', which is boring as hell. Good job at removing the risk-reward calculation for Ultimate use because of your pathological hatred of invulnerability.

 

 

I've solo'ed gold and platinum using novaguard, it was rather ridiculous and I got bored playing novaguard because it took any difficulty out of the game. 

 

As to your example as well, it was terrible, people on the ME3 forums hated this and thought it was ridiculous there, thats not really helping the argument here.  Especially since in this example it was really only a couple classes that could blatantly ignore all game mechanics other than sync kill.  Rather than here where we are discussing something more across the board.

 

Man what. Novaguard is generally considered underpowered on Gold. The Slayer and Cabal, the other Vanguard classes who are most dependent on invulnerability frames for their viability have tons of people who do not consider them Gold viable due to the fact that, well, they're relatively fragile in the opean and dependent on invulnerability frames and thus have a very high skill floor, because you need to constantly be invulnerable while under fire.

 

Frankly I think it makes the game easier by returning the invulnerability and similar to what finaLfrontier said, I think you want a 1 button solves all your problems instead of, this might, but it may also lead to your death while trying to do so.

 

I don't need the game to be that easy, and find the new mechanic more enjoyable.  If they brought it back, it will be just that much easier to annihilate things.

 

If a power 'might' solve all your problems and 'might' lead to your death while trying to do so, it better cost next to nothing. You're acting like the ultimates were ridiculously OP before they accidentally removed their invulnerability because you could regain maybe 100 shields during their cast (which is like half a second of guys shooting at you in a medium-level planet). I'm telling you they were not, and mistimed Ultimate use was generally the fastest way I died.

 

They were already high-risk high-reward due to almost all of them being point-blank AoEs and thus requiring you to charge out in the open for an extended period of time against a large amount of enemies to get in range to use them effectively. The current setup makes them high-risk no-reward, because against anything where using the Ult is efficient, you're going to die in the middle of the animation.

 

So yes, they're a one button solves all your problems power. Assuming you get in range. Assuming you have a good concentration of enemies. Assuming you have saved enough energy to use one. Those assumptions and requirements to make good use of them stack up.

 

Sadly the outter areas are just about as easy, the difficulty of this game is kinda a joke.

 

So you're one of those players who is significantly better than most other people playing? Yet you think that the game should exclusively balance towards your super skills? Please understand that not everyone can or wants to have to play at your exalted level of skill and balancing the game with the idea that everyone is as good as you is a very good way to kill it dead.