Is Enemy Density The Answer? What Do You Guys Think?

[Evanescent]

The other day I was running some missions on the star chart when I realised a problem with them.

I'm running through entire rooms without encountering enemies. 

Even when I face some, they're so few they don't even pose a threat.

 

Then I ran a Ceres exterminate and in the first room BAM! 20 enemies, generously reinforced with Heavy units like Bombards and such. They drove me back and I had to change my approach into dividing them before I could kill them.

 

They were doing enough damage and posed enough of a threat to put me in danger of losing.

 

Which got me thinking-if alarms are set off, should we see a huge enemy density in the tilesets? 

The Tenno would be class A level threats right? It's obvious for them to start throwing enormous numbers of enemies at us with ther strongest and finest mixed in. What they lack in level they can make up for in numbers.

 

So, ladies and gentlemen. My questions to you:

Is increasing the enemy density and heavy unit spawn the answer to spicing up regular missions? Would it pose a threat to you to have obscene numbers thrown at you if alarms are triggered? Do you think it would make the missions more challenging? Please let me know your opinions below!

[Plushy]

More killing equals more fun!

 

 

 

 

 

Right?

[Neah]

Not necessarily, you can always decimate an entire room with a single 4 button press. While I agree a slightly higher density is necessary, the composition of enemies is equally as important.

 

In a semi-related situation, current invasion missions which involves Grineer tends to spawn massive amounts of units (~30) with up to 8 heavy units in a single room (instead of a steady stream of mobs), which is ridiculous and should be looked at (8 Napalms firing at you in a small room is NOT fun at all).  *Note : this is on Solo 

 

Massive amounts of heavy units is not really a good thing, for newer players it would be a bit too brutal for them to handle 4-5 heavy units at once, (as if the game isn't hard enough on newbies already). Besides, heavy units are supposed to be few in numbers so that players can focus them down as a large threat. If the enemies scale with the number of players that'd be fine, but scaling in Warframe tends to be really wonky at times. 

Edited July 21, 2015 by Neah

[Xamuswing]

Wait, you get more enemies that are also more difficult in higher level planets? Who would've guessed.

 

Having more enemies spawn doesn't increase difficulty, it just makes them more time consuming to take out. This won't translate well at the beginning of the game either. Newbies can't just handle 40+ Bombards in one room. They'll get slaughtered. "Lol git gud" even though they can't with those crappy weapons at the beginning.

[(XBOX)ShapelessHorr0r]

No, first and foremost, a singular molecular prime from Nova could have killed all of them. Warframe must be built with teamwork in mind.

Secondly, the starchart should stay as painless as possible because completing it is already a chore.

[-HAKUNA-YOUR-TATAS-]

More killing equals more fun!

 

 

 

 

 

Right?

 

Why is it always about the killing?  XD

[[DE]Momaw]

The thing with increasing spawn counts across the board, aside from the obvious performance aspect, is this:  The more enemies you have on the screen, the less interesting they get to be.  Warframe is already a game where we rarely get to see the full range of the AI's special abilities or reactions on an individual unit basis, because once you're out of the hand-holding gameplay levels and have some upgrades on your equipment, you're either nuking or gunning down armies or crowd controlling the entire map quadrant etc. There is little incentive or need to approach most combat tactically or with any real consideration to movement or integrating parkour and fancy melee. Either the enemies die trivially en masse or they're too high level to crowd surf.

 

Reducing enemy spawns can help with that. If there's only three instead of thirty enemies on the screen, then each one gets to be more interesting because the player isn't having their attention drawn so many ways.   For example consider the grineer shield lancer.  You kill it with punchthrough or AOE or stun with an ability, all of which are going on anyway, so shield lancers never become interesting as other enemies hide behind them or when they charge you or anything. They might knock you down occasionally but you really aren't engaging with them.  Contrast: If it was just a shield lancer and his one friend, we could afford to make them less trivial: Punchthrough doesn't go through their shield, the shield blocks all abilities and AOE from the front, and their head hitbox gets smaller so you can't shoot over their shield. Now you have to use flanking movement to get around the shield and attack from a vulnerable direction and the shield lancer is an interactive threat instead of just one of the glob of aggro in front of you.

 

But warframe doesn't really seem to be headed in that direction.

[AdunSaveMe]

no

[(XBOX)ChantingSheep]

At first I wanted to disagree with you, but when I thought about it, I realized that some of the most fun and intense moments I've had with Warframe the last few days have been running missions with a friend and being pinned down by huge spread out mobs of Corpus or Grineer (I can't remember which planets/nodes we were on, we were just messing around leveling up new weapons and frames). The other posters make really good points about why more would be bad, but I can't deny how much fun it was to have to carefully and tactically dismantle a whole batallion of badguys.

[AdunSaveMe]

Reducing enemy spawns can help with that.

I disagree.

 

Mowing down hordes of enemies is part of the game. Even the devs think so.

It's more fun to face a hundred stupid dudes than ten smart dudes.

Edited July 21, 2015 by AdunSaveMe

[eastonasasin]

All the more experienced players in this thread seem to have lost their minds. Just because you have all the meta mods and can "press 4 to win" on mercury or something. Doesn't mean newer players will be able to handle the difficulty increase. Also de has enough trouble programming spawns as it is your going to make glens head explode.

[Alphafox]

I disagree.

 

Mowing down hordes of enemies is part of the game. Even the devs think so.

It's more fun to face a hundred stupid dudes than ten smart dudes.

That's really debatable. It's so satisfying to take down mini bosses, smart enemies etc. I don't feel any kind of accomplishment by killing a mere Grineer Lancer or even a Heavy gunner, smarter enemies would surely enhance my gameplay.

There is no gratification in beating a stupid enemy .

[ravend]

More doesnt equal better in this case. personally i would like to see the Ai get better and different types and the use of tactics and differnt abilities the higher the enemy. Right now we got bullet sponges and frankly not very fun. Low lvls a lancer walks around and attacks the tenno. higher lvl he starts to us cover more, use grenades, different ammo types, flanking, using the sheild grineer like the spartans. Use the sniper as a long range hard to see enemy on the bigger open maps. the infested coming from everywhere and maybe the use of hit and run tactics.

[Terrence_Knight]

  My own personal preference is to bring on as many enemies as a cpu can handle without the game melting down or somethin. To me not much is more satisfying then being thrown into a giant massacre and by the time its all said and done I'm surrounded by a pile of dead bodies and loot -everywhere- to feel like a real combat monster. I would love nothing more than to be able to set enemy spawn rates before I enter a mission, honestly like adjustable difficulty settings to adjust enemy levels on the map, heavy density and just plain ole mob density.

[magusat999]

I don't think enemy density is the problem - I'd like to a lot of enemies; but it's the TYPE of enemy that concerns me. Sure, bring on mobs of Crewmen, Lancers, Leapers, - but I don't want to face gobs of Flux Riflemen, Nullifiers, Eximus whatevers, Parasitic whatevers (WAY TOO MANY OF THEM BTW), Venomous whatevers, Fusion Moas, Swarm / Toa, Tat tut or whatever the hell those annoying dookey-spitting Moas are called, Bombards and theo Air Rocket Flying misslie shooting m**********rs... Keep the special units special, and low in number.

 

I went to Draco recently and as soon as we stepped off the elevator we were mobbed by what seemed like a hundred Grineer - including a whole lot of Bombards. Wiped the whole team out in nothing flat - and we were not n00bs. Just way too many heavy / special units in that density, where it should be 95% fodder and 5% Special units its more like 60% special Units and 40% fodder - and that isn't even including the surprise visits from one of the assassins or the Death Squad.

 

So I would welcome more units - or a higher unit density - but not if those units are high damage, heavy or special units. And abilities like Molecular Prime cant help if you have no energy to cast it because your engulfed in Parasitic / nullifying enemies...

Edited July 21, 2015 by magusat999

[4MostlyHarmless2]

It would be an interesting challenge, but a greater enemy density could result in an even higher reliance on nuker/ CC powers and crowd-clearing weapons. It may end up skewing the development of future enemies and Warframes into two categories: either future enemies will simply have too many anti-CC gimmicks to the point of being annoying/ frustrating, or new Warframes will be developed with either ultimate nuking or anti-CC in mind. 

 

Here's a bit of an old archived topic that I always look back to when I think about the enemy AI (https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/238581-forget-better-ai-we-need-better-dumb-enemies/). The guy who made the topic doesn't post as frequently anymore, but when he did he made some really good points. 


 

[[DE]Momaw]

Mowing down hordes of enemies is part of the game. Even the devs think so.

It's more fun to face a hundred stupid dudes than ten smart dudes.

 

And that's the kind of thinking that brings us the current gameplay, where the most efficient way to play is

* Press 4 To Win because the horde of trash poses no threat at all, until enemies stop dying from it, then switch to

* Crowd Control To Win because you cannot survive any amount of interactive combat with enemies that kill you instantly and fill the air with projectiles

[BrazilianJoe]

We need *better AI*. NOT in the sense of " enemies which take cover and fight intelligently" . 

 

But we need fraking AI which does not freeze in place waiting to be decimated, or keeps walking as if nothing happened when a comrade is slashed to pieces in front of him, both of which happen all too often. 

 

AI NEEDS BUGFIXES. And to be have its aggressive level tuned. THis will go a long way making the game more fun.

[420degreequicksopeswag]

Less spawns?

Tougher enemies?

Smarter AI?

Players need to think to take down enemies?

 

Lol change the name to ME3 multiplayer then

 

Because that's what it would be

 

 

I say quintuple the spawns.

[4G3NT_0R4NG3]

Enemy density solves NOTHING! If we want more challenge, we need to scale back the ridiculous killing power of our weapons and make energy actually valuable so we can't spam nuking abilities.

 

If you want to see one of the many problems that increasing enemy density creates, just look at the current state sniper rifles are in.

[(PSN)KaxMcc]

I don't think that raising the spawn rate will do the challenge any good. Rather the current spawn rate and enemy numbers are already high enough to cause a number of issues.

 

-High spawn rates from a number of directions can make taking cover obsolete as a method of damage mitigation. And taking cover is the only type of inherent damage mitigation that currently exists due to enemy accuracy being heavily RNG based.

 

You could argue that CC spam makes up the vast majority of damage mitigation but It isn't really implemented in such a way that facilitates engagement with enemies of any sort. Not to mention that it probably wasn't even intentional.

 

-Single shot rifles(or anything with a slow fire rate)are inherently at disadvantage in an environment which contains a high number of enemies. Slowing the fire rate actually slows the rate at which you can kill each individual enemy. Even if the weapon does enough damage to kill everything in a single shot, if the rate of fire is less than the rate of enemies spawning the number of enemies will continue to rise until the player can no longer take cover or run away effectively if they need to.

 

-High spawn rate also creates too many individual enemies that require player attention. And while each enemy only requires maybe a second or two to kill, with high damage weapons, this still causes the player to be preoccupied by fodder almost constantly. As in the time it takes to kill a single enemy two or three more will spawn. This issue only increases more as enemy levels increase.This would be fine if players actually had the capability to engage with the maximum number of enemies at high level without CC, but that currently isn't the case.
 

 

I disagree.

 

Mowing down hordes of enemies is part of the game. Even the devs think so.

It's more fun to face a hundred stupid dudes than ten smart dudes.

 

From what I understand, the overall intention of the game is supposed to focus on a few Tenno vs a large army, but that is supposed to be offset by heavy units and mini-bosses that provide a more significant challenge and thus require a greater degree of attention.

 

The current state enemy spawns creates a situation in which players constantly have fodder enemies requiring thier attention, due to their increasing number and firepower, and as such heavy enemies cannot take up more than an extra second or two to deal with. Otherwise the player will become overwhelmed by small arms fire during their engagement with any heavy unit and be forced to constantly disengage to survive. Essentially, as enemy levels increase every enemy becomes a priority target, which goes against the core design direction.

 

Of course, none of this matters once CC comes into play but, unfortunately, CC is implemented in such a way that every enemy, including heavies, become negligible and thus eliminates the possibility of engaging those enemies in the first place.

 

If the intention was to create a large number of enemies that players can tear through to feel powerful and a select few that are challenging, CC and especially CC spam would be hindering the capability to provide combat engagement through those heavy units.

 

 

Overall, my point is that Warframe isn't even designed very well around the current number of enemies and the current spawn rate. Increasing the spawn rate at this point would only make things worse before they could get better.
 

Edited July 22, 2015 by (PS4)KaxMcc

[Rorgal_Sina]

Enemy density vs. Room clearing Tenno abilities

 

Both require each other too much.

[Me.Greedy]

it wouldn't solve any real issues .. but i do feel the same way that sometimes the enemies are just way to sparse .... i'd like to see them atleast doubled.

[Edgarhighman]

The other day I was running some missions on the star chart when I realised a problem with them.

I'm running through entire rooms without encountering enemies. 

Even when I face some, they're so few they don't even pose a threat.

 

Then I ran a Ceres exterminate and in the first room BAM! 20 enemies, generously reinforced with Heavy units like Bombards and such. They drove me back and I had to change my approach into dividing them before I could kill them.

 

They were doing enough damage and posed enough of a threat to put me in danger of losing.

 

Which got me thinking-if alarms are set off, should we see a huge enemy density in the tilesets? 

The Tenno would be class A level threats right? It's obvious for them to start throwing enormous numbers of enemies at us with ther strongest and finest mixed in. What they lack in level they can make up for in numbers.

 

So, ladies and gentlemen. My questions to you:

Is increasing the enemy density and heavy unit spawn the answer to spicing up regular missions? Would it pose a threat to you to have obscene numbers thrown at you if alarms are triggered? Do you think it would make the missions more challenging? Please let me know your opinions below!

Density is good. DE soundly did wrong in REDUCING INFESTED on mobile defense missions. IT WAS LIKE THE FLOOD. I was too low rank to enjoy understand it at the time, some mr 18/19's invited me when I was like mr4-10 or something. By the time I realised how FUN IT WAS. Nerf. DE... You make sour spots fairly often :'(

 

There is little challenge for MR 15+ right now. By the time Enemies hit lvl 70-110 my team is either dying, dead, or wants to extract/leave.  When it gets fun, all the choobs want to quit.

Edited July 22, 2015 by Edgarhighman

[(XBOX)ChantingSheep]

Tat tut or whatever the hell those annoying dookey-spitting Moas are called

I'm pretty sure "dooky-spitting Moa" is their official name.