Don't Nerf Greedy Pull - Buff It And Add Cooldo... No, Power In Use.

[IronRoby]

Edit: Apparently "cooldown" is a dirty word, so lets make it "power in use", which is totally different. We can even add a secondary effect to Greedy Pull that would last after casting and would stop recasting for a while. Like a constant Carrier-like pull, but on a much more limited range than the normal Greedy Pull, for example, or anything else. 

 

 

As I understand, there are two issues people have had with Greedy Pull Mag:

 

1) It allows the team to stay in a fortified position without leaving, making some missions easier as than they "should be".

 

2) It enslaves the GMag to constantly spam only one ability, making the game decidedly not fun to them.

 

 

Now, the first issue just seems to be "haters gonna hate". Why is it somehow illegitimate to stay in fortified position in a defensive mission and get rewarded for good team play, with everybody playing their role?

 

The second issue, I have to acknowledge has some legitimacy.

 

Which is why I offer a potential solution. The issue is not that Mag has to often use a certain ability, so do most frames, but that she can't do anything else.

 

So give the Greedy Pull part of the Pull, the one that brings items 100%, a cooldown power in use, but make it more powerful at the same time for distance of the loot traveled towards you, so that one or two Greedy Pulls would be enough to bring the current wave pickups to your team.

 

Even with 10-20 sec cooldown, a Mag can play "normally" when the Greedy Pull part of the Pull is on cooldown, while eliminating the need to spam the ability because it will normally take many castings to Pull the items towards you. So in the mean time, she can use the normal pull, other abilities or simply shoot - whatever constitutes as normal play for those who like Mag.

 

Instead of a constant dribble at the cost of poor GMag's spamming, there would be regular waves bringing in the pickups. The same ultimate result with 200% less Mag unhappiness.

 

The pulling speed for enemies would stay the same, but Greedy Pull already separated the enemies and loot into different pulling categories, so there is no reason why the distance traveled couldn't be different too, especially if pickups are of course much lighter than the enemies, making it lore compliant too.

 

 

And no, I'm not saying Mag would be dead without that, or something. This is exactly what would benefit the "real" Mag players. You would get invited because you have a valuable role to offer to the team, but that role would not preoccupy all your efforts, you could play as you want most of the time. You get invited, you offer good value to team and you can play how you want most of the time. Win-win-win.

 

And even without doing that, Draco farm, for those who hate that, will continue with Trinity, Limbo and restores anyway, because it's done mostly for XP and rep, not loot. 

Edited July 8, 2015 by IronRoby

[MagPrime]

DE stated they will not put a cooldown on Greedy Pull.

[DeMonkey]

A) DE said they would never do cooldowns,

B) Slippery Slope leading to other frames getting cooldowns.

[Epicagemo]

What about % pull chance instead?

Rank 3 mod around @ 25%, then it requires some str instead of the blind pulls of Negative str.

Edited July 8, 2015 by Epicagemo

[Scytze]

No cooldowns
 

What about % pull chance instead?

Rank 3 mod around @ 25%, then it requires some str instead of the blind pulls of Negative str.

 

^ Spam spam spam and orbs will rain.

Edited July 8, 2015 by Scytze

[IronRoby]

Yeah, like Cooldowns are not already in game with "power in use" that you can't switch off.

If I cast tentacles with Hydorid in a certain place, then that power is not "in cooldown", right? I just can't use it again until a certain amount of time has passed, which is a totally different thing.

How about we make it "Greedy Pull will be "power in use" for 15 seconds".

Is that semantically kosher enough?

Edited July 8, 2015 by IronRoby

[Mcl_Blue]

 

No cooldowns

[(PSN)Ub3rM1k3]

Yeah, like Cooldowns are not already in game with "power in use" that you can't switch off.

If I cast tentacles with Hydorid in a certain place, then that power is not "in cooldown", right? I just can't use it again until a certain amount of time has passed, which is a totally different thing.

How about we make it "Greedy Pull will be "power in use" for 15 seconds".

Is that semantically kosher enough?

 

The power in use message simply says that we can't have more than one active instance of a power in use by a frame at a given time, so you have to wait for the currently active instance of the to resolve before it can be cast again. Hydroid's tentacles are constantly in use for their entire duration, and there is no cooldown before you can recast it once the duration has expired. Mag's pull has no duration and resolves immediately. In that case, the only excuse for a 15 second long power in use message is 15 straight seconds of pulling.

[IronRoby]

The power in use message simply says that we can't have more than one active instance of a power in use by a frame at a given time, so you have to wait for the currently active instance of the to resolve before it can be cast again. Hydroid's tentacles are constantly in use for their entire duration, and there is no cooldown before you can recast it once the duration has expired. Mag's pull has no duration and resolves immediately. In that case, the only excuse for a 15 second long power in use message is 15 straight seconds of pulling.

 

If I cast the Hydroid tentacles at some useless place (like the power often unintentionally happens), then I can't use it again for a while. That is effectively a cooldown.

 

And if semantics is that important, you can give Greedy Pull some less powerful side effect after activation, that would make it last 15 sec and keep it from being the dreaded "cooldown".

[(PSN)Ub3rM1k3]

If I cast the Hydroid tentacles at some useless place (like the power often unintentionally happens), then I can't use it again for a while. That is effectively a cooldown.

 

And if semantics is that important, you can give Greedy Pull some less powerful side effect after activation, that would make it last 15 sec and keep it from being the dreaded "cooldown".

 

If you cast the tentacles somewhere useless, then they're still being used. That hasn't changed.

 

Even if that were the case, what would it solve? So instead of spamming the ability button to collect each item as it drops, you're gathering massive piles all at once periodically. To me, it sounds like the abuse would increase rather than decrease, seeing how much less energy the ability would be using throughout a mission. The only way the cooldo- sorry, "secondary effect" would sufficiently nerf Greedy Pull is if the "secondary effect" lasted minutes at a time, which is blatantly ridiculous, thoroughly unreasonable, and would actually piss the greedy pull abusers more than the solution that DE has already implemented.

 

tl;dr Greedy pull is exactly the kind of ability that cooldowns would not work for, because how much you can grab with it increases as time goes on.

[MagPrime]

If we're calling "Power in Use" a cool down, then Greedy Pull already had it.  No matter how fast you hit that button, it wouldn't let you recast the ability until the animation was finished.  Same thing for normal Pull.  The only way to put a significant "Power in Use" cooldown on Greedy Pull would be to increase the animation time. 

 

I still think DE should have just made it so that Greedy Pull didn't pull Energy/Health orbs.  Someone made a thread about it, and I agree with the concept.  Greedy Pull wouldn't be able to effect Health/Energy/Affinity orbs because they weren't metallic. 

[IronRoby]

If you cast the tentacles somewhere useless, then they're still being used. That hasn't changed.

 

Even if that were the case, what would it solve? So instead of spamming the ability button to collect each item as it drops, you're gathering massive piles all at once periodically. To me, it sounds like the abuse would increase rather than decrease, seeing how much less energy the ability would be using throughout a mission.

 

It would solve a lot of the frustration of GMag players, I don't consider it having an ability that makes it attractive to bring along and encourages teamwork to be "abuse".  A lot of powerful and useful abilities don't take a lot of energy.

 

 

If we're calling "Power in Use" a cool down, then Greedy Pull already had it.  No matter how fast you hit that button, it wouldn't let you recast the ability until the animation was finished.  Same thing for normal Pull.  The only way to put a significant "Power in Use" cooldown on Greedy Pull would be to increase the animation time. 

 

 

Or add a secondary effect that would last after casting and would stop recasting for a while. Like a constant Carrier-like pull, but on a much more limited range than the normal Greedy Pull. 

 

 

I still think DE should have just made it so that Greedy Pull didn't pull Energy/Health orbs.  Someone made a thread about it, and I agree with the concept.  Greedy Pull wouldn't be able to effect Health/Energy/Affinity orbs because they weren't metallic. 

 

I'm not sure I would be happy with it, but it would certainly be better than the current resolution, at least.

[MagPrime]

It would solve a lot of the frustration of GMag players, I don't consider it having an ability that makes it attractive to bring along and encourages teamwork to be "abuse".  A lot of powerful and useful abilities don't take a lot of energy.

 

 

 

 

Or add a secondary effect that would last after casting and would stop recasting for a while. Like a constant Carrier-like pull, but on a much more limited range than the normal Greedy Pull. 

 

 

 

I'm not sure I would be happy with it, but it would certainly be better than the current resolution, at least.

The argument I keep hearing for keeping Greedy Pull as is would be that she eases farming by gathering loot/ammo to the team.  She would still be able to do that, but the rest of the team would have to either run for their energy/health or, utilize restore pads.