Ultimates, Invulnerability And Their Animation Durations - "time Dilation"

[Enot83]

Recently discussion has come up concerning the Banshee's ultimate, and the removal of the inulnerability.  Prior to this I had already had this idea, however, due to ultimates making the warframe invulnerable the necessity seemed rather mute as a reduction would be seen negatively as these skills often times were used at the express purpose of allowing shields to recharge.

 

I agree with the idea of no invulnerability status during any of these uber skills, unless for example Nyx's ultimate which is designed with the express purpose of redirecting this damage. Considering the reach for many of these skills Banshee's ultimate being the extreme case, 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.  Other situations take advantage of things like Mag's or Frost's other crowd control to enemies caught in the sphere of the attack, protecting them from the enemies they have "captured" while still being exposed to those outside their reach, again making positioning key. Something like Excalibur's or Saryn's ultimate 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 an immediate solution that existed/exists, there are knockdowns, cloaking techniques, positioning, personal/team skills, etc that can be utilized to avoid leaving a warframe in the open during the use of there ultimates.

 

However, lets examine continuity, or the notion behind it.  This is the suggestion, allow 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 rank3, the use of this mod would reduce the 7 seconds by 30% for example if it follows continuity %, reducing it essentially to the 5 seconds even at rank 3.  Allowing for the same damage application in less time.

 

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.

 

This would give players another choice for mod selection, either from the current making the use of continuity more appealing even to frames that don't have many or any skills they would want a duration extension associated with but would gain the benefit of skills being used faster (less animation time).

 

The other reason, or idea behind this, polarity of continuity V.  For many skills the use of focus which shares the same polarity may be worthwhile, while in other cases either the skill is already going to kill, or wont with the use of focus. On the other hand, it may do next to "nothing" for the warframe.  This allows for in those warframes and warframes in the future with this particular polarity, where focus is seen as less than useful, suddenly has an additional viable/optional use. 

 

What this then allows, is future choice for the V polarity slot, and in some cases making it a useful polarity rather than a negative, at a minimum it gives the choice to players.  It also addresses to a degree the none invulnerability on ultimate skills by shortening the window in which the warframe is vulnerable and allowing for faster application of damage.  In other cases it continues to behave as it does, extending the duration of things like Miasma to increase the damage it deals.  The mod could be renamed to something like "Time Dilation" or something that is more applicable to both reducing the time of skills and extending the time on others.  In this way, we gain usefulness out of the V polarity, and are less vulnerable during ultimates, but at the cost of mod allocation.

 

This thread is not about the discussion of if we should or should not have invulnerability on skills, it is only mentioned as these are the current mechanics, but not as a point of discussion here.  Please take the discussion regarding that to the other thread.

Edited May 21, 2013 by Enot83

[Kynian]

I like this idea quite a bit. As I was reading this I instantly thought of my Excalibur Prime and his extra V slot. On him, specifically, it hurts more than helps, since continuity is no good for any of his skills aside from Radial Blind. So I Use a mod of another polarization there, and that costs me mod capacity.

Shortly, as it is right now, mods whise, regular excalibur is a bit better than prime because of this. If, however, continuity gets changed, or a new mod with the description you did gets added, then that's a whole other matter.

I approve. +1.

[Beelzebubbles]

This is a very interesting suggestion--remove invulnerability but give us a way to shorten animation time (and increase DPS really).

 

The only problem I see with this is that it would make it even easier to spam ultimates.  We'd have to start having the conversation about cooldowns again.

 

edit: I think though, that you're really describing a new Mod that would be perfect for V polarity, rather than a change to Continuity.  A "Fast Cast" mod, if you will. It also fits in well with the concept of "skill", as it could be stated that as a warframe levels, the Tenno gets better at using its skills efficiently.

Edited May 20, 2013 by Beelzebubbles

[Enot83]

This is a very interesting suggestion--remove invulnerability but give us a way to shorten animation time (and increase DPS really).

 

The only problem I see with this is that it would make it even easier to spam ultimates.  We'd have to start having the conversation about cooldowns again.

 

edit: I think though, that you're really describing a new Mod that would be perfect for V polarity, rather than a change to Continuity.  A "Fast Cast" mod, if you will. It also fits in well with the concept of "skill", as it could be stated that as a warframe levels, the Tenno gets better at using its skills efficiently.

 

I agree with the concern for spamming of certain ultimates, the % tunning may alleviate this a bit.  I would think to argue that most "spammable" are already close to having that capability.

 

Keep in mind, a skill like the Banshee's at a flat 30% time reduction at r3 would go from 7 to 4.9 seconds.

 

Where as something that is for example a 1 second animation would still be .7 seconds, so the animation difference is quite small.

 

Another approach of course for examining the spamming of skills could look at retaining all or a portion of the original animation time in regards to the re-use of the skill.

 

This may do 2 things, the first obvious, prevents undesired spamming if this is a concern once the % has been evaluated, the 2nd it still allows for other skills to be used, so in some cases rather than simply using a single skill repeatedly regardless of its animation cycle, a player can combine other skills immediatly after to allow for some power combinations.  For some frames this could mean nothing, while others could take full advantage of this style of play, utilizing mod skills as a method of dealing more damage if a following skill is used.

 

Another idea would be to shorten the animation and original time which becomes the cooldown, so the animation is reduced 30%, but the reuse would be 15%, using Banshee...

 

7s second animation becomes 5s (4.9)

7s second to reuse becomes 6s (5.95)

 

Obviously a couple ways to handle this, I hate to even mention the possibility of just a global, if below 1 second it is a minimum reuse of 1 second as an example, but I know many who dislike the notion of global cooldowns.

Edited May 20, 2013 by Enot83

[Report_For_Feeding]

I like this idea quite a bit. As I was reading this I instantly thought of my Excalibur Prime and his extra V slot. On him, specifically, it hurts more than helps, since continuity is no good for any of his skills aside from Radial Blind. So I Use a mod of another polarization there, and that costs me mod capacity.

Shortly, as it is right now, mods whise, regular excalibur is a bit better than prime because of this. If, however, continuity gets changed, or a new mod with the description you did gets added, then that's a whole other matter.

I approve. +1.

 

Actually, continuity extends the duration of slash dash, meaning you cover more distance. But yeah, besides that, pretty useless.

[Enot83]

Actually, continuity extends the duration of slash dash, meaning you cover more distance. But yeah, besides that, pretty useless.

 

I suppose this is an excellent example, continuity(changed) or this new mod would make travel between point A and B of slash dash take less time, while stretch (previously reach) should correctly extend the range/spread on the charge.

 

Instead of treating a skill like Slash dash as a durational skill for why you go x distance, its perhaps more appropriately a fixed value that you should travel x distance, allowing the correct mods to act on it more accurately.

 

In short I'm saying that in addition to making the change to continuity, or adding a mod this change may also begin to encompass the changing and modification of how some warframe mods are applied, to both more correctly work as they state and add additional function.

 

Which of course could mean this is a bigger undertaking than just simply throwing a new mod or changing an existing mod.

Edited May 20, 2013 by Enot83

[finaLfrontier]

I second this notion. +1

 

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

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/47584-going-back-is-not-the-answer/

[MJ12]

The pathological hatred some of you people have for anything involving invulnerability frames is depressing.

 

Instead of using a simple solution that works (Ultimates provide invulnerability during their animation so you can have a reasonably long and cool animation for them without killing the player and also providing the player a method to use them defensively in bad situations) you propose a complete and total recoding of a mod and how skill cast times work.

 

What's the reason for it? Because you don't like invulnerability frames? Is that it?

 

Because right now Ultimates are best used in extremely high-risk situations. Their current lack of invulnerability frames is what makes them largely useless, because the situations where they're best used in are situations which kill you in one second flat. And surviving to get into optimal position is already a tactical challenge, going "BUT POSITIONING!" doesn't change much.

 

Making players invulnerable for limited durations is a very powerful tool with many, many potential game benefits, and categorically denying that it should ever have a place in a game is a terrible idea. Why are you doing so?

[Enot83]

The pathological hatred some of you people have for anything involving invulnerability frames is depressing.

 

Instead of using a simple solution that works (Ultimates provide invulnerability during their animation so you can have a reasonably long and cool animation for them without killing the player and also providing the player a method to use them defensively in bad situations) you propose a complete and total recoding of a mod and how skill cast times work.

 

What's the reason for it? Because you don't like invulnerability frames? Is that it?

 

Because right now Ultimates are best used in extremely high-risk situations. Their current lack of invulnerability frames is what makes them largely useless, because the situations where they're best used in are situations which kill you in one second flat. And surviving to get into optimal position is already a tactical challenge, going "BUT POSITIONING!" doesn't change much.

 

Making players invulnerable for limited durations is a very powerful tool with many, many potential game benefits, and categorically denying that it should ever have a place in a game is a terrible idea. Why are you doing so?

 

 

 

 Prior to this I had already had this idea, however, due to ultimates making the warframe invulnerable the necessity seemed rather mute as a reduction would be seen negatively as these skills often times were used at the express purpose of allowing shields to recharge.

 

I'm not opposed to invulnerability.  I thought that line made it clear.  Doesn't change that I agree its an easymode excuse for invulnerability in the case of ultimates.  That also doesn't mean if they brought it back that I would be appauled, just acknowledge that they are making the game easier. 

 

So no, to answer your question, it's not because I don't like invulnerability, I just don't think its necessary to make the game so easy because of the numerous benefits you described. 

 

Also, I didn't recommend the current invuln change along with the mod change, I recommended the mod change (or addition) now that it is more appropriate now with no invulnerability.  If they did change it back, the usefulness would be arguably diminished to such a degree since as you stated with your pointing out of benefits, you would then be limiting the invulnerability duration, chance for more shields to recharge, teammates to show up etc as so many used the skills in these fashions just as they used some of them to dive into the middle of a group and annihilate it, which frankly most skills are capable of doing relatively safely, since a number of the longer animation skills like crush, avalanche etc have some kind of immobolize or CC effect with them to prevent taking damage from the enemies you are about to kill (or hurt).  Most others are short enough as it is, that the change really left them almost unaffected.

 

Frankly we can go back and forth, I could tell you to pro up, you could tell me to stop being such a hard head, or we could both say we disagree about invulnerability being or not being a necessity for skills/ultimates, thats unproductive, and not what this thread is about.

 

Basically I'm saying lets remove the argument of if we want or don't want invulnerability, and focus on the actual subject here. The link to the other thread that you've voiced your opinion in there is the perfect place for that discussion to unfold.

 

So I suppose actually my questions to you.  If they continue to keep the removal of invulnerability, are you opposed to something like this being added?  Also, if they bring back the invulnerability, would you be opposed to something like this as well?

Edited May 21, 2013 by Enot83

[Botein]

  It baffles me as to how DE could implement such drastic nerfs to these warframes without realizing that it would make these skills completely useless. If anything, warframe damage abilities should be buffed, not nerfed. I mean, what's the point of using "ultimate" skills anymore when my guns are much safer and actually out damage them significantly in most cases?

 

They should just put abilities on cooldowns and get rid of the $&*&*#(%& energy system. If abilities were on separate cooldowns there wouldn't be anymore "spamming" problems and people might actually use "useless" skills like radial blind or radial disarm for once. They could easily replace high energy on the caster warframes with faster cooldowns and change Flow mod to reduce cooldowns and Streamline to reduce casting speed, everyone wins.

Edited May 21, 2013 by Botein

[finaLfrontier]

They should just put abilities on cooldowns and get rid of the $&*&*#(%& energy system. If abilities were on separate cooldowns there wouldn't be anymore "spamming" problems and people might actually use "useless" skills like radial blind or radial disarm for once. They could easily replace high energy on the caster warframes with faster cooldowns and change Flow mod to reduce cooldowns and Streamline to reduce casting speed, everyone wins.

 

That "useless" ability, Radial Blind? I like how I use that useless ability around 80% more than other abilities on defenses, to keep things off the pod if needed. I also like how useless it is against tough enemies, stunning them, so that I can burn them down when an ultimate wont work, or to keep my distance against Toxic Ancients for example.

 

People don't use their other abilities not because of the energy system, but because they are so used to smashing one button, and it's been working for them up until now.

 

Perhaps a CD system would work well, but I just don't see that happening. Plus they'd have to change so much. A veritable re-haul of the entire game, e.g. combat system, mods, artifacts, every single ability...

[CheeseHasLeafs]

Isn't Banshee's Ultimate a DOT thing? Reducing the duration would have a direct impact on its effectiveness.

[Beelzebubbles]

The pathological hatred some of you people have for anything involving invulnerability frames is depressing.

 

Instead of using a simple solution that works (Ultimates provide invulnerability during their animation so you can have a reasonably long and cool animation for them without killing the player and also providing the player a method to use them defensively in bad situations) you propose a complete and total recoding of a mod and how skill cast times work.

 

What's the reason for it? Because you don't like invulnerability frames? Is that it?

 

Because right now Ultimates are best used in extremely high-risk situations. Their current lack of invulnerability frames is what makes them largely useless, because the situations where they're best used in are situations which kill you in one second flat. And surviving to get into optimal position is already a tactical challenge, going "BUT POSITIONING!" doesn't change much.

 

Making players invulnerable for limited durations is a very powerful tool with many, many potential game benefits, and categorically denying that it should ever have a place in a game is a terrible idea. Why are you doing so?

 

Why do people on forums use so much dramatic hyperbole?

[Kyte]

Why do people on forums use so much dramatic hyperbole?

Frustration.

[Enot83]

Banshee to my knowledge is not a dot, otherwise continuity would extend the duration, similiar to saryn.

 

This is not a discussion about invuln on skills, this sparked the reason now that it was removed to see what people thought when they didn't have the luxury.

 

This is a discussion regarding the addition of a new mod or the inclusion of an existing mod to provide certain benefits.

[Botein]

 By "useless" skill I meant a skill that people don't use often because they're afraid to waste energy on it. Excalibur is all about maximizing energy efficiency, he has some of the best damage abilities in the game but he's also restricted by a very small energy pool, you cant just go and use radial blind whenever you feel like it simply because you're energy is better spent elsewhere in 90% of cases.

 

I was just saying that it would be awesome to gain the full utility of the class by having the freedom to use his damage abilities in conjunction with his utility skills without having to worry about whether it was a good use of your energy or not.

[gopher]

On topic, I like this as a concept for a new mod, because as someone else said, adding this function to continuity would be pretty hard code-wise.

+1

[Carcharias]

Intesting idea. Out of the frames mentioned I have only played Banshee. Problem I have with your idea is you have to get in the middle of the fray to get max kills from sound quake and after you hit the button it takes a few seconds for it to "wind up" in which time all mobs have a free for all hitting you while you stand still locked into your skill which hasent started to go off yet. The invulnerability during the skill allows your shields to recover from the pounding they took to get your skill off in the first place. So if you want to shorten duration, remove invulnerability and up damage (which I'm fine with) you would also HAVE to make the skill start immedentaly instead of having a wind up of any kind. That would be a pretty big detail if your suggestion was implemented. At least in the case of sound quake.

[Enot83]

Intesting idea. Out of the frames mentioned I have only played Banshee. Problem I have with your idea is you have to get in the middle of the fray to get max kills from sound quake and after you hit the button it takes a few seconds for it to "wind up" in which time all mobs have a free for all hitting you while you stand still locked into your skill which hasent started to go off yet. The invulnerability during the skill allows your shields to recover from the pounding they took to get your skill off in the first place. So if you want to shorten duration, remove invulnerability and up damage (which I'm fine with) you would also HAVE to make the skill start immedentaly instead of having a wind up of any kind. That would be a pretty big detail if your suggestion was implemented. At least in the case of sound quake.

 

Keep in mind the invulnerability, if it is there or not is not the portion of this discussion, there is another thread regarding that subject, that I believe was linked to already.

 

You bring up an excellent point with the banshee animation, my friend brought this up as well as a problem with the skill in general that unlike a number of others that either cause a status prior to the hit, or deal damage immediatly.

 

The idea with the mod would for example result in the whole animation time being shortened, so even without a change to the skill animation and dealing damage immediatly, the time "ramping up" would be reduced along with the time for dealing damage.  So in a sense helping alleviate the problem you pointed out.