Make The Game Harder Without Impacting Players Playing 'properly': Cover Ignoring Attacks

[PhoenixMercurous]

Not everyone is a fully modded level 30 rhino or frost. Some of us, well all of us actually, had a level 1-29 warframe with minimal mods and low survivability. This may be applicable for the end-game ub3r player, but not everyone can take an infinite amount of hits. Lets take a frame mostly used for sniping, banshee for example. Have you ever played as a banshee outside of cover? probably not. if you did, you died. She has low defense, average mobility, and few ways to increase survivability. while cover isn't necessary if you have 800+ shields, even while moving you will be hit.

There is a think call scaling difficulty. It means you probably shouldn't be leveling up your lv1 frames in locations ment to be run with lv30 supercharged monstrosities.

Your next point is actually just support for MJ's point. Lethality is to damn high. We need enemies that are less lethal in the open to promote fast gameplay and enemies that are more lethal to cover camping players to discourage that.

You seem to be missing the point with the revive example. MJ wants a system where you can take cover for a few seconds to regen your shields, but you can't camp one good cover spot and wait for everything to come to you. He's said this frequently enough in this thread that the only explanation I have for you not getting it is that you're willing ignorant.

Anyway, I'd get behind less stagger and more cover ignoring attacks iff we get some changes to enemy lethality and the block and dodge systems. Block was rather clunky the one time I tried it and wasn't very effective. Dodging is possible, but not that effective. Tone down the base damage scaling so we can survive out of cover without overheat or snowglobe, reduce the staggerlock, add cover busting attacks, and generally make the enemies smarter.

Edit: I don't want to be playing Gears of Halo Effect: FTP edition, I want to be playing something like a blend of Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect. In that vein, I'd like a few more ninja and parcor moves to go with the cover busting enemies.

Edited May 27, 2013 by PhoenixMercurous

[Cpl_Facehugger]

Infested on the gripper hand, would either have a new enemy type or upgrade an existing one with a grenade power that creates toxic smoke at the point of impact. So they throw it towards you when you're in cover, and the toxic smoke gives you a choice of ducking out of cover to avoid taking damage, or waiting the smoke out if you're huge and have huge guts. Like toxic smoke in general, it doesn't stun, and it doesn't knockdown.

I dunno, man, I've never seen anyone camp cover in an infested mission, on account of infested charging you in huge zerg rushes. (High aggression is something grineer flamethrower and shotgun guys can use more of, albeit more intelligently too.)

What infested really need is a convenient way to kill someone who stands on top of a box. Maybe give ancient healer tentacles the scorpion's grabber. Or make leapers prioritize targets above them like that, if there are any.

[CosyPigeon]

Considering the Tenno are always out numbered, I don't think you'd need absurd enemies with wall etheric lasers to encourage Tenno to move around more. Simply updating the AI to use flanking and flushing people out with grenades would be better, hell if grenades did more damage and actually knocked you out of cover, people would pay more attention to them instead of just ignoring them and hugging their preferred wall for dear life. 

 

Hiding behind the same piece of cover for an entire fire fight is only effective in this game because the enemies aren't aggressive enough and don't use effective tactics. Give them effective and dangerous grenades, and make them use fire and maneuver tactics and they'd be allot more dangerous without any other buffs or additional enemies. 

[ScribWere]

Honestly, I think this is just well, stupid. The game is a cover based shooter. Why? Because there's cover. That's the way games work. Fact is, DOOM is played by using cover. There's a difference between 'cover' and 'using a button to latch onto a wall'. Cover is inherent to all FPSes besides truly frantic ones like Serious Sam or the original Wolfenstein.

 

This is the difference between using your environment, I.E. Quickly hiding behind a box, and using a Cover System. The best way to discourage the use of cover is to make abilities like wallrun and the like more reliable and less reliant on combinations of buttons. Why? Because people will have ~fun~ being fast, agile and finding new and interesting ways of moving about a level.

 

Honestly, I think a solution would be to reward players for things like not getting hurt.

 

Mind you, I DO think enemies should take advantage of you hiding behind a wall for extended periods of time. Like flanking more intelligently, or perhaps spawning in ~reaction~ to your tacctics. I.E. If you're camping down a single spot for a long time, perhaps spawns will just speed up, and more heavy units will appear, purposefully trying to 'flush you out'. I.E. Maybe Grinneer would deploy a crapton of rollers to try and flush the players out. (also, said spawns would decrease in drop possibility, preventing just sititng down and farming forever)

Edited May 27, 2013 by ScribWere

[Whackhat]

Edit: I don't want to be playing Gears of Halo Effect: FTP edition, I want to be playing something like a blend of Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect. In that vein, I'd like a few more ninja and parcor moves to go with the cover busting enemies.

I'm not exactly sure how you play assassin's creed, but for every single one of their games, i used excessive amounts of cover and moved slowly, unless apprehending a criminal or chasing a boss.

[Second_Measure]

To be honest, I kind of was expecting to see a cover mechanic in this game when I heard the first time of Warframe.

I was a little disappointed when that wasn't the case.

[PaperAlien]

So how is cover-cheesing going to be improved by this change? Where you would originally be forced to take cover by ridiculously strong enemy fire, you'd simply die here. Oh, go back to a lower difficulty? So I suppose you guys would like to play Warframe as a purely twitch-based shooter where you have to nail every AI enemy before they can shoot you? I'm sorry for being so cliche but go back to CoD. That is the exact mentality used in CoD: shoot the other guy before he shoots you, no taking cover, nothing along the lines of tactical play, just click on the other guy as fast as you can.

The very fact that most maps have crates, walls, pillars and railings would show that taking cover is an aspect of the game intended by DE. Oh, you thought DE didn't intend for players to reach for cover when their shields were down? Well you're wrong, that's not me talking, that's the game design talking.

[Countess_Hapmuhr]

Summary of suggestion:

 

I like running into bullets and have never been pinned down by +20 corpus in a hallway on higher levels.

Therefore everybody should be able to do without cover, because every frame has perfect armor.

 

Honestly OP, did you REALLY think this suggestion all the way through?

[Vaskadar]

I'd say incentivize using advanced movement instead of punishing slow movement.

I.E. reduce enemy accuracy whilst wallrunning or sliding.

Edited May 27, 2013 by Vaskadar

[MJ12]

Not everyone is a fully modded level 30 rhino or frost. Some of us, well all of us actually, had a level 1-29 warframe with minimal mods and low survivability. This may be applicable for the end-game ub3r player, but not everyone can take an infinite amount of hits. Lets take a frame mostly used for sniping, banshee for example. Have you ever played as a banshee outside of cover? probably not. if you did, you died. She has low defense, average mobility, and few ways to increase survivability. while cover isn't necessary if you have 800+ shields, even while moving you will be hit.

 

Not everyone is playing on Pluto. Yes, I am aware this increases the difficulty of the game. That is the intention. If the difficulty increase is too significant you can tone down enemy damage to pre-Update 7 levels. Again, removing the ability to hide behind boxes forever playing a shooting gallery is necessary to even out the difficulty for users of melee or close-range weapons (like the Boar/Bronco/Dual Broncos) with the difficulty for anyone who hides behind a box 100m away.

 

I recently built and leveled an ash, and attempted to do what is suggested in this thread. I had on only movement increasing mods and skill mods. I died. Epically. I wound up rushing because i could not survive an encounter with constant wall runs, jumps, somersaults, etc, and i'd argue that i'm a pretty good shot.

 

So you didn't slot in any survivability mods and died? Well, those mods do exist. You also have smokescreen. I've had little trouble using smokescreen and movement to survive tough encounters.

 

I was a tribes (and legions, global agenda, beta'd for firefall, and the game most like this one: Genesis A.D. [Check videos, similar gameplay]) player for a long time. I understand the importance of movement. However, all of those games still use cover prominently. In some, cover was much larger, like an entire building or fortress, others had normal old rocks and crates. But all of them had cover.

 

Think of if you, as a tenno, had x-ray vision and a gun that shoots through walls. The first letters out of anyone's mouth would be "OP."

 

No, I'm pretty sure nobody would go 'OP', because you could actually do that pre-Update 7. Puncture was never a real problem even with 10m and a rapid-fire weapon (you could get X-Ray vision by spraying a wall and seeing when damage numbers popped out). More importantly, Tenno have ways to deal with cover, because enemies are intentionally designed so they can't take full cover and are thus shootable without waiting for them to pop out to fire.

 

Tenno are not. Frankly, this is silly because something OP in player hands may not be OP in AI hands, and something OP in AI hands may not be OP in player hands.

 

This idea is terrible because it takes any tactics out of this game. It would just be a whole bunch of people running around chaotically spraying in every which direction.

 

"Any tactics"? I think this is a hilarious overestimate of what 'tactics' actually are. No, cover takes any tactics out of the game. If you intentionally attempt to minimize your use of cover, you start learning things like target prioritization, how to break contact, how long it takes for your shields to drop and what enemies can be dodged, what enemies can be safely meleed, and more.

 

Whereas if you play it like Gears of Warframe, you find a nearby box. Hide behind the box. Shoot guys from behind the box. Win the game.This isn't even counting the increased lethality that comes from everyone claiming the game is too easy while using cover extensively, which makes melee increasingly difficult even as melee's power isn't buffed. There's a reason the melee attack in Call of Duty has a very long range and is an instant kill against just about any enemy, because it's so hard to use (this is a death knell for a game where melee is relatively far weaker yet just as risky). Cover is more detrimental to the pacing and tactical gameplay here than not using it.

 

Now, yes, snipers are accurate while moving. But i enjoy my skill shots. like a Grineer leg through a gap in the staircase on the opposite side of the room. I know, i know, "Go back to COD you f*g."... but there is a place for it in this game.

 

So you can't make skill shots while moving? Or you can't stand still for half a second, shoot, then move? Fire and displace is entirely fine. Fire and hide behind the box again, not at all fine. Notice all these enemies are intended to be slow. They punish you for hiding behind a box for more than a few seconds. They don't instantly pierce everything and murder you.

 

Let me ask you this:

 

What do we do if we are almost dead?

we have no cover, enemies can shoot at us through walls, our only option is to attempt to run faster.

So I die.

 

My teammate sees me down, attempts to revive me. HE HAS TO REMAIN STATIONARY TO REVIVE ME.

Dead.

 

So two of us are down, i bleed out, dead.

 

Okay, you are almost dead. You retreat. Preferably you retreat before you are almost dead because you know you can't guarantee your survival by hiding behind a box. If you didn't plan your retreat well enough, well, that's your problem. Alternatively, your teammate can pop some defensive power or clear the area and revive you. Or maybe use a power like Pull to get you out of there. Or he can just recharge his shields and tank the fire for a bit in the open. Alternatively your teammate can break contact and cut his losses, instead of foolishly rushing into a dangerous situation (ME3MP's revive chains are absolutely lol). Yeah, it sucks to be abandoned but sometimes you have to cut your losses rather than risk mission failure. You're acting like 'being able to revive someone in combat no matter what you play as' is a necessity. I would argue that it is not.

 

Look, tactics. Suddenly, instead of the only tactic being 'hide behind a box' and revive someone now you have a ton of difficult decisions to make. That's actual tactics, not 'do I hide behind this box or do I hide behind that box'.

 

Movement is necessary as it stands. if you stay in the same place, enemies move to shoot you. But it is balanced at the moment, between movement and cover.

 

You take hits, you hide to let your shields regen. Enemies move to try to kill you again, you move.

 

I like the meta as it is (stealth needs help), and so do many other people.

 

Movement is necessary? Because I played a few missions using cover. I could hide behind a box forever and kill everything without taking damage. This is broken. Giving enemies avoidable attacks that can pierce cover makes the game less broken because cover is no longer 'at-will Iron Skin without energy costs'.

 

If you still insist it is a good idea, try it. I dare you.

 

Run up to every enemy, don't ever go behind a wall or cover, and try to eliminate all the enemies.

 

That is basically how I play. It's extraordinarily fun, you should try it sometime.

 

This is not Gears of Warframe, but it also isnt Warframe : Ascend.

 

No it's Gears of Warframe and it should be Warframe: Ascend. Have you actually seen the open beta trailer? Or all the trailers in general? None of them involve cover. Ever. They involve guys moving really fast, using powers a lot, and not taking cover. As such, the game should be about moving really fast, blocking or dodging fire, using powers a lot, and not taking cover. I have said, in other threads, I am in favor of:

 

1. Making energy regain more reliable (on-kill/on-damage energy regen as an innate)

 

2. Making enemies easier to dodge and having attacks be better telegraphed

 

3. Making everything move somewhat faster.

 

4. Giving enemies attacks that ignore your cover.

 

This is a sum total, not something to be taken individually. The game should be about extensive ability use, dodging, blocking, evasion, movement, and not taking cover.

[MJ12]

Summary of suggestion:

 

I like running into bullets and have never been pinned down by +20 corpus in a hallway on higher levels.

Therefore everybody should be able to do without cover, because every frame has perfect armor.

 

Honestly OP, did you REALLY think this suggestion all the way through?

 

I have been attacked by 20ish corpus in a hallway on higher levels. The solution to that is to retreat and wait until they spread out. Notice that I repeatedly mention that doing so would require reliable energy regain, better block mechanics, and enemies being less accurate against dodging foes as well as possibly giving everyone a damage nerf (maybe even down to pre-Update 7 levels).

 

It's just that there are a lot of changes ancillary to this that would take a ton of time explaining and the main change is 'enemies now have guys who will shoot you happily through walls'.

 

So how is cover-cheesing going to be improved by this change? Where you would originally be forced to take cover by ridiculously strong enemy fire, you'd simply die here. Oh, go back to a lower difficulty? So I suppose you guys would like to play Warframe as a purely twitch-based shooter where you have to nail every AI enemy before they can shoot you? I'm sorry for being so cliche but go back to CoD. That is the exact mentality used in CoD: shoot the other guy before he shoots you, no taking cover, nothing along the lines of tactical play, just click on the other guy as fast as you can.

The very fact that most maps have crates, walls, pillars and railings would show that taking cover is an aspect of the game intended by DE. Oh, you thought DE didn't intend for players to reach for cover when their shields were down? Well you're wrong, that's not me talking, that's the game design talking.

 

Yes, there's all this cover that the enemy uses. Meanwhile, Tenno have never been given any animations for cover, despite the fact that we know DE has tons of them available, thus implying cover use is a low priority in general. DE has given us tons of melee weapons, implying that melee is pretty important. How is cover-cheesing going to be improved by this change? Instead of being able to trivialize encounters by hiding behind a box forever, you die. Also, lol, "go back to CoD", "this is the exact mentality used in CoD". No, CoD is a cover shooter. You run from cover to cover and shoot pop-up targets. This is the utter antithesis of CoD.

 

You are entirely correct that this would emphasize defensive abilities, dodging, and other things besides cover use. This would also probably require blocking to be buffed to provide 100% deflection for its limited duration and energy regain to be made reliable. None of this is a problem, as it gives blocking and acrobatics a use, allows a combat style which is extremely ability heavy without being based on luck, and generally improves the synergy of things like 'powers', 'movement', and 'fighting'.

 

And you can still take cover. Just not for extremely long periods of time. If you hate hate hate the idea of being in the open, move from cover to cover to flank enemies. If you spend a few seconds hiding behind one thing, then sprint to another, well, you won't be too badly off.

[Guest]

these are exquisite ideas which I would love to see in-game!

[MJ12]

Basically, just to clarify what the idea is here, it's to discourage taking cover behind the same thing and using a supergun to kill everything, not eliminating any cover use ever which is what some people think I want to do.

 

If you don't hide at all (COVER IS FOR THE WEAK) you're completely unharmed and may actually become more capable of negotiating high level content due to the ancillary changes (reliable energy regen, better block and dodge, possibly weaker enemy damage).

 

If you take cover sometimes to regenerate shields, but not for more than a few seconds at a time and spend a fair bit of time in the open, you should end up mostly even. You'll be more vulnerable in cover but less vulnerable out of it, so it should even out.

 

If you hide behind a box/on top of a box like a coward you will die a lot more often because you're playing like a Grineer Marine, not a Tenno. And everyone here knows how fast Grineer Marines die.

 

If you think there are problems with the implementation of cover discouragement which make #2 or #1 unviable, that's one thing. But I'm getting a lot of posts which are saying 'this is a terrible idea because I want to take cover', which is kind of the point. You shouldn't 'want' to take cover inherently, it should be something you have to think about in a risk-reward fashion. There should be some thought, rather than planting your butt behind the nearest crate or wall.

Edited May 27, 2013 by MJ12

[Magmahunter]

ooh, the Grineer have plenty of things to drag you out of cover (Bombardeer, Grineer rollers, Gunner's blast, ...)

 

as for Corpus, backstabbing Shockwave MOA's...

 

even infested runners are enough to blast you away from walls if needed.

[MJ12]

ooh, the Grineer have plenty of things to drag you out of cover (Bombardeer, Grineer rollers, Gunner's blast, ...)

 

as for Corpus, backstabbing Shockwave MOA's...

 

even infested runners are enough to blast you away from walls if needed.

 

Most of the current 'anti-cover' enemies are either most easily dealt with by cover, ironically enough or ridiculously goddamn annoying stunlock bots. It would be significantly easier to give them enemies with attacks specifically designed to be weak out of cover while extremely strong against enemies in cover. This is why I'm asking for enemies which are specifically designed to make cover not impenetrable, because right now DE's enemy design when they try anything in this vein (outside of Scorchers, which are the exception that proves the rule) are unfun stunlock bots which make not taking cover even worse.

[Xylia]

Solo Missions are already nearly impossible without the best crap in the game and having the best Warframes (only a few are good at it).

 

Without cover, you get *destroyed* in solo missions because they throw too many stinking mobs at you at once.

 

Trying to build my Gorgon, I did a LOT of E Prime runs (Earth Capture). It is a Corpus Map.

 

I can't count the number of times it gave me that stupid big room (not the capture room, but another similar one) and I walk in there and my Enemy Radar turns the entire minimap RED. There are mobs EVERYWHERE and most of the playing field turns blue and my 900 Shields goes down in less than 10 seconds if I stand out in the open.

 

Taking cover IS MY ONLY OPTION.

 

Try to retreat out into the previous room? You might get 1-2 of the closest Moas to follow you. The rest stay there and wait for you to go back into the room which is really what you're forced to do.

 

Your only option is to run in, kill a couple and run back out of the room.

 

For the game to function like you want it to, we need LESS STINKING MOBS.

 

Also, in Multiplayer, I've never seen anybody "Hiding Behind Cover". Given that when you Rez someone they come back with full health and shields, nobody hides behind cover in a 4-player game, almost never in a 3-player game and when my Friend and I go at it, one of us takes Frost or Rhino and the other a good damage Warframe and we have no trouble rezzing each other without the use of cover. Only very rarely do we need cover (Grineer Heavy Gunners....).

 

Cover is for Solo Play when YOU SIMPLY MUST DO IT TO SURVIVE unless you have really uber crap. Not everybody has maxed Redirection Mods (the amount of mods/cores/credits to do this is simply ridiculous), not everybody has Rhino or Frost on 30, not everybody has awesome Lv30 guns.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

Taking cover IS MY ONLY OPTION.

MJ's suggestion doesn't eliminate cover use, it merely makes it so you can't camp behind cover for extended periods.

Edited May 27, 2013 by Cpl_Facehugger

[ValhaHazred]

MJ, you rock. Keep fighting the good fight :)

[Kyte]

Solo Missions are already nearly impossible without the best crap in the game and having the best Warframes (only a few are good at it).

 

Without cover, you get *destroyed* in solo missions because they throw too many stinking mobs at you at once.

 

Trying to build my Gorgon, I did a LOT of E Prime runs (Earth Capture). It is a Corpus Map.

 

I can't count the number of times it gave me that stupid big room (not the capture room, but another similar one) and I walk in there and my Enemy Radar turns the entire minimap RED. There are mobs EVERYWHERE and most of the playing field turns blue and my 900 Shields goes down in less than 10 seconds if I stand out in the open.

 

Taking cover IS MY ONLY OPTION.

 

Try to retreat out into the previous room? You might get 1-2 of the closest Moas to follow you. The rest stay there and wait for you to go back into the room which is really what you're forced to do.

 

Your only option is to run in, kill a couple and run back out of the room.

 

For the game to function like you want it to, we need LESS STINKING MOBS.

And with these changes DE could dial down the ridiculous damage/spawn rate and make solo viable.

[taiiat]

honestly, there's some times when there's 15 or 20 lv40+ grineer shooting at me. and not really the ability to get quite far enough away to get rid of some of those bullets. at those times, i do use cover from time to time to recharge shields. but i run out and start shooting them and smacking them with my lightbulb sword, so they usually do get destroyed. 

 

but the point being, sometimes there are literally just that many enemies for a person and / or frame to need to take cover. punishing someone for taking cover once every 20 minutes is preposterous. we already can't shoot from cover, so it serves little purpose as it is other than to avoid taking fire to recharge shields. 

 

i'm all for more enemy types, it makes warframe more interesting. but i'm not looking to get punished for hiding behind cover when 3 lv50+ heavy gunners are shooting at me. no way i'm running into that headlong and asking to get turned into meat soup. i'll take that situation slower and eliminate them in a safe manner. 

 

 

(you're suggesting that tenno are the most powerful dangerous things to ever fly the seven seas, and nothing can ever touch them, not even a million bullets. this is clearly not actually the case, so players should not be punished for something that isn't true).

 

at the end of the day, more than gameplay improvements, this sounds like you're hearing stories of people not playing the game the same way you are, and you want to tell on those people to the teacher because you don't like them. 

i agree that cover should (and already is) be discouraged, but this doesn't mean beat everyone up that doesn't do it. what about a new player that has chosen Loki? most new players seem to -_- and they get wrecked because it's more of an expert frame, not a good beginners' training wheels. so, those people with 75/75 health/shields shouldn't be hiding? they should run out like rambo and get turned into meat soup? i think not. let people learn to play the game before you beat them up for doing it wrong. 

Edited May 27, 2013 by taiiat

[MJ12]

honestly, there's some times when there's 15 or 20 lv40+ grineer shooting at me. and not really the ability to get quite far enough away to get rid of some of those bullets. at those times, i do use cover from time to time to recharge shields. but i run out and start shooting them and smacking them with my lightbulb sword, so they usually do get destroyed. 

 

Okay, let me make this clear. I am also for improving the tools, such as dodge and block, which would let you engage these enemies in the open to some extent if you move quickly and precisely. I should note that 20 Lv40+ Grineer shooting at you should, in fact, be a bad situation.

 

but the point being, sometimes there are literally just that many enemies for a person and / or frame to need to take cover. punishing someone for taking cover once every 20 minutes is preposterous. we already can't shoot from cover, so it serves little purpose as it is other than to avoid taking fire to recharge shields.

 

Except first off, you can shoot from cover. Right hand advantage is a thing, and it's quite easy to use in Warframe. Just make sure your gun sticks out of cover and you can shoot from cover all you want while being invulnerable. Secondly, nobody is saying punishing you for taking cover for a few seconds at a time once in a while. Not even the OP. It is saying 'punish people for camping behind a box until everything is dead because that ruins the game for everyone else'.

 

i'm all for more enemy types, it makes warframe more interesting. but i'm not looking to get punished for hiding behind cover when 3 lv50+ heavy gunners are shooting at me. no way i'm running into that headlong and asking to get turned into meat soup. i'll take that situation slower and eliminate them in a safe manner.

 

So use powers, block, move so they can't all shoot you, use concealment, run past them. Or you know, take out the enemies with cover-ignoring attacks first, so you can hide to avoid the Heavy Gunners. Aren't those tactics? It means the correct response isn't automatically 'plop your butt behind a box for ten minutes taking potshots' but you have more things to consider.

 

Which yes, makes the game more difficult but it's an interesting, not cheap, kind of difficulty.

 

(you're suggesting that tenno are the most powerful dangerous things to ever fly the seven seas, and nothing can ever touch them, not even a million bullets. this is clearly not actually the case, so players should not be punished for something that isn't true).

 

Um, what? Look at the trailers. All of them. Wherein Tenno basically have zero fear of the enemy and the proper response to someone with a machine gun is to charge them and chop them in half. This is what you should be doing, not hiding behind a box. What I'm suggesting is what the game actually suggests, that Tenno are fearsome one-man wrecking balls which can destroy battalions of Grineer while standing out in the open not giving a crap about them because they can cut bullets out of the air and turn invulnerable.

 

And the first step to making that trailer true would be making it so that playing that way is given incentives over hiding behind a box so your gun peeks out and shooting things.

 

at the end of the day, more than gameplay improvements, this sounds like you're hearing stories of people not playing the game the same way you are, and you want to tell on those people to the teacher because you don't like them.

 

Man what? I'm not hearing stories of people not playing the same way I am and wanting to 'tell on those people to the teacher because I don't like them'. I'm seeing those people going 'oh look, this game is awesome now that the enemies kill you in one second in the open, I now have to take cover all the time'. These people keep talking about how the game needs to be harder and enemies do too little damage. They're directly responsible for the massive lethality buffs to enemies on high-level planets (and this is after they were adjusted, before single Grineer Lancers on Pluto had like... only 1000 dps or so). Oh, and those guys love Rollers and Scorpions because they don't hurt them nearly as much.

 

This is massively detrimental to a game with no cover animations for player characters, enemies that are easily cheesed with right hand advantage, and a melee system players like and the developers want to emphasize. Basically, the lack of punishment for using cover (and the enemies which do attempt to punish cover use punishing players not using cover even more) is directly IMHO responsible for a ton of bad game mechanics which this game overly relies on.

 

Since punishing players for excessive use of cover is something DE wants to do, wouldn't it be simpler to stop beating around the bush and specifically make anti-cover enemies, then balance the game so evasion, defensive maneuvers such as blocking, and movement allow you to survive out in the open? I think it'd be way more fun.

 

i agree that cover should (and already is) be discouraged, but this doesn't mean beat everyone up that doesn't do it. what about a new player that has chosen Loki? most new players seem to -_- and they get wrecked because it's more of an expert frame, not a good beginners' training wheels. so, those people with 75/75 health/shields shouldn't be hiding? they should run out like rambo and get turned into meat soup? i think not. let people learn to play the game before you beat them up for doing it wrong.

 

IIRC that may be due to the spawn system having been broken in one of the updates, a base Excalibur has 100 health/shields, is slower, and identical armor, and I managed to rambo Mercury with one in an okay fashion. Of course that was when weapons passively leveled up too, so. Anyways, if you teach people bad habits from the start, like 'you should be hiding', they'll end up carrying those bad habits throughout the game. So instead of going 'no enemies that ignore cover' the ideal solution would be 'the spawn mechanics are somewhat more spread-out in Mercury'.

[Tsukinoki]

Overall I really like this idea. It would allow DE to make the enemies able to be faced in melee and would allow them to greatly improve the melee mechanics of the game.

Simply because then they wouldn't have to worry about everyone yelling that the game was made too easy. They would be making swordplay a viable alternative to gunplay.

This game is not a cover shooter and shouldn't be one.

A friend and I, in non-maxed gear and mods, went through a Tower III exterminate. It was hard but hell of a lot of fun. Especially with the *limited* cover in most of the rooms that we ran through. We had to split up and run around the room like crazy trying to take out level 80-115 enemies in level 20 frames. We had to use cover from time to time but we couldn't afford to sit there too long.

It was a very exciting map to go through and with the traps and such cover wasn't always viable. It just made it more entertaining and fast paced. I think that more maps should be like that where cover can be negated. Not the straight up lethality of the units that happens at those levels but the overall excitement of not being able to duck behind cover for more than a short time.

The players can still use cover to sneak around if they haven't been seen, but they shouldn't be able to hide behind a box for as long as it takes to slowly wipe out every single enemy in the room without a challenge.

If DE can remove the benefit of sticking in cover forever they can then lower the lethality of enemies while you're out in the room. In order to make the game hard/lethal for people who are sticking in cover you have to make it nearly impossible for the people who want to run around and use acrobatics to get close to the enemies at the higher levels.

Hopefully they do throw in enemies who make cover not as useful to encourage faster and funner gameplay.

[Xylia]

I don't mind us tweaking the mob density or their attacks/damage to make Solo viable, I'm just saying as it stands right now, the suggestion of being punished for taking cover "too long" (what exactly is "too long"?) is a bit ridiculous unless things are made Solo-Viable for the average playerbase.

 

No, no, I'm not talking about Mr. Pro who can do Pluto Solo without taking cover.

 

I'm talking your average guy who struggles to survive against Lv20 stuff, the guy who's missing lots of essential but rare mods, etc.

 

Solo is a bit ridiculous, especially Infested at times. Some mechanics just should not exist in Solo (Stalker being one), OR they should be tweaked to be more fair if there's only 1 player in the game (Stalker, again, could be scaled down a bit for solo players). Also, things like Disruptors, Roller Balls, Scorpions, and Corpus Tech mobs should function a little differently in Solo Play because their abilities were clearly designed around 3-4 people being there to deal with the stuff they do.

 

Techs pop out way too many of those stupid shield ospreys for the solo player to handle very well, esp higher levels.

 

Disruptors taking away 100% shields and energy is almost guaranteed death, or if you're lucky, only losing about half of your health before you can get away from it.

 

Roller Balls? Yeah being staggered every few seconds is fair when there's 10+ mobs shooting at you...

 

Scorpions? Yeah, something that can throw a rope through a wall and pull you into another room while 20+ Grineer promptly make swiss cheese out of you is a nice way to say "Screw you, Solo Player".

 

Balance some of these things for solo play FIRST and THEN can talk about people "hiding in cover".

Edited May 28, 2013 by Xylia

[Cpl_Facehugger]

Balance some of these things for solo play FIRST and THEN can talk about people "hiding in cover".

All of those things exist precisely because people hide in cover. Rollers, scorpions, etc were all clearly introduced because a number of players were hiding behind cover instead of actually playing the game. You have to do something about people hiding in cover first before you can deal with them, because otherwise those selfsame players will whine about how you're "removing content" or "making the game too easy."

[Tsukinoki]

@Xylia

As long as difficulty has to be balanced around hiding behind a box it will just be harder for solo players and people who run and gun. Otherwise the people who hide behind boxes yell and scream that the game is far too easy.

If you remove the ability to hug a box for 10 minutes to clear a room then you can balance around people playing how they should be playing and you can fix a lot of those issues.

All the issues you mentioned exist BECAUSE people hide behind boxes all the time.

Edited May 28, 2013 by Tsukinoki