A collection of thoughts.

[lamiadomina]

Over the course of the last several days and patches, my wingman Ballistic Pigeon and I have been playing almost daily and discussing the design direction of this game quite a lot. Just finished with a few solo runs and have a handfull of thoughts that I had been meaning to post - so, uh, I'm doing that.

"Invasion" events, wherein a second faction attacks the ship in the middle of a mission - these were a neat idea, and in principle I do hope that they stay in the game. The present implementation however can be deeply frustrating. I'd been trying to level my Snipetron on Saturn earlier, in hope that with some levels and good mods it might actually reclaim its status as a fairly nice gun for higher level Grineer missions, eg, Earth (more on which in a moment). My efforts were confounded when the ship was invaded by Corpus. I should not need to detail how terrible a situation being blindsided by Corpus wielding a Snipetron is - it was basically game over.

I think the biggest problem with the present implementation of cross-faction invasions is that their AI doesn't seem to change very much - suddenly instead of Grineer all searching the ship for you, it's Corpus all focusing on your position, and if we're to believe the Corpus where originally there to invade the Grineer that seems kind of silly (the balance issues of getting jumped by another faction who your build functions far worse against notwithstanding). It seems to me that programming distinct invasion-mode AI would answer both problems very nicely - if the Corpus (/infested/whatever) were focused on the Grineer as their original objective, and behaved as if, you know, they didn't have access to the ship's security systems and didn't have the Grineer's ability to track your position and continuously dispatch reinforcements to you, then avoiding situations you were badly equipped for might actually become a viable strategy to salvage the mission in a way that it just isn't at present. It would make the event feel a lot more atmospheric, too.

Vis a vis atmosphere - will we at some point be recording audio to announce the invasion event, the way there presently is to inform you the objective has changed? Just hearing "Corpus walkers inbound" instead of "Grineer strike team inbound" doesn't really do the event justice. It would be cool if invaders were spawned on top of defenders more often so that you find yourself walking into firefights between them instead of just getting a random squad of one or the other room by room, most times - make the battle taking place around you actually visible. Maybe even cause chaos like sections of the ship losing power/lights or starting fires? I particularly like that enemy AI seems to very notably change in dark rooms. It would be cool if there were more events that killed the lights so we could get to see more of it. Or even have some areas suddenly lose pressure as fire from enemy ships damages the hull. Tying too many features to invasion events would definitely significantly change the gameplay during these events, and I guess it's the devs' call whether they feel that would be a good or a bad thing. I'd enjoy it a lot, personally. Adding chaos to the environment that way would potentially be a valid way to balance the decrease in difficulty from having two factions focused on fighting each other instead of on you (as above, if a lot more of that actually happened. I'd like that).

Speaking of Corpus: The present behavior of Corpus security systems is -immensely- frustrating. My wingman informs me that the reason we so often see security systems activate even with no cameras in line of sight is that cameras will now aggro if they have LoS to any hostile mob, not only the PC. This is a terrible idea and it needs to stop immediately. Camping for ten minutes in front of a laser gate because somewhere around a corner a crewman is hiding in front of a camera is frustrating, flow breaking and doesn't need to happen. Neither does turrets opening up on your back because a mob triggered a camera in the next room, which is impossible to even shoot at from your position.

In fact, turrets opening up on your back after you've cleared the room just doesn't need to happen period. It's an unfair scenario that the player has no reasonable way to prevent even if they're careful to destroy cameras everywhere they find them, since turrets will apparently aggro if -any- camera aggros. This doesn't even make any logical sense - how can a turret target you based on a camera that doesn't even have line of sight? This is all compounded by the fact that turrets appear to be invincible until they aggro, so clearing them off of the ceiling before proceeding to the next room isn't even an option either. Corpus missions would be hugely more fair and less ragequit-inducing if turrets were tied only to cameras in the same room as themselves. And if cameras only went aggro on players, not hostile mobs. Seriously, that was a terrible idea. Get rid of it.

Speaking a little further on Corpus: Those robot chutes. You know the ones. The moa walkers they spawn appear to be invincible until they've fully exited the chute and begun firing, and that sucks. A lot. Please, please, fix this so that firing into the chute as it opens can kill them before they're on top of you. The invincibility frames are flowbreaking and have screwed Pigeon and I too many times to count. In fact, it would be nice if the chutes themselves were destructible. While getting blindsided by moa spawning out of them is a situation you can -generally- avoid by not rushing into a room until you're sure it's clear, it seems unreasonable that the player can't identify them as a threat and take them down preemptively the way we can with security cameras. We've both had a number of incidents in which they stopped spawning after a room was cleared but then dropped a huge wave of moa on our backs once we moved to the next room, although I'm not certain if this just represents the same patterns by which giant squards of Grineer will somehow appear out of nowhere in a room I'd already cleared, even if it was a dead end. This is likewise something I wish would just stop happening, but I can live with it if it's Grineer who at least respond to suppression fire or Infested who I take for granted will involve some melee hairballs regardless. Against a swarm of highly aggressive Corpus moa, where it is absolutely necessary I be able to give ground and retreat to cover until I've thinned them, it's just unacceptable. Seriously. Stop spawning enemies right on my six as soon as I turn my back. It's not a threat that the player has any reasonable ability to plan for or protect themselves from and a threat like that that doesn't involve any actual decision points is not a "challenge." It's just an arbitrary frustration feature.

If you're going to continue doing this, at least give the player some reasonable way to protect themselves. Supposing you let us hack doors to lock them behind us?

ed: Regarding my Snipetron, and the way difficulty scaling in this game is handled - grinding for better mods so my gun will do enough damage to negate the enemies' higher HP seems asinine. It would be nice to see a move toward difficulty scaling that actually changes the gameplay instead of creating a mutually-negating arms race of higher stats on both sides. That, and the game would be a lot more interesting if so many weapons that I liked in the opening game didn't start to feel so useless in the endgame. Increasing number and variety of Grineer heavy spawns is a pretty nice start - can we see more of that, and less of the same enemies but with more HP?

Edited January 18, 2013 by lamiadomina

[[DE]Steve]

Very much agreed, the camera, turret and spawning is on the surgical table. Corpus are very cool but there are few things that absolutely need fixing.

[Matter]

Lots of great ideas man, i never thought of the idea of hacking doors to lock enemies out. Great idea! Definitely worth a look into! I agree with you on many leaves and i'm sure they'll be fixing a lot of it as time goes by! great post!

[Zakalwe]

I should not need to detail how terrible a situation being blindsided by Corpus wielding a Snipetron is - it was basically game over.

Sorry to pick this one out, but I love fighting Corpus iwth my sniptron... with the right mods it's beastly against them. What do you find to be so difficult about the match?

I find Infected to be the hardest to use my snipetron against. Too many boss types and the squishes swarm too quickly.

Cropus and Grineer - Snipetron

Infected - Braton

My preference, at least!

-

I love the idea of being able to destroy the MOA bays before deployment.

I completely agree with them making more of an event of the invasion situations, especially about focusing AI.

Good stuff!

[lamiadomina]

Sorry to pick this one out, but I love fighting Corpus iwth my sniptron... with the right mods it's beastly against them. What do you find to be so difficult about the match?

The fact that moa are extremely fast and aggressive and that Corpus AI seems to heavily revolve around crazy aggressive rushes so long as they have moa and shield osprey support, such that fighting Corpus largely depends on your ability to take down moa and shield ospreys. The snipetron is awkward to work with at the ranges that moa prefer to engage from and seems really ineffective to use on the run - which I generally am while fighting moa, as they're one of the only mobs willing to abandon cover in order to outflank the player's. That, and I don't have my snipetron's damage to the point that it can one shot Corpus crewmen with a body shot, and I lack the ninja skills to reliably hit the weak spot on their helmets (my hat is off to the peopple who claim they can actually do this). Sniping Corpus might be slightly less painful with a fully modded rifle - I tend to find that the Snipetron encounters unacceptable sustain issues if you need more than one bullet per target. Really, it wouldn't be so bad if I at least had a sidearm better equipped for Corpus like my Bronco or even Afuris or Aklato, but I'd been trying to level my Bolto at the same time and it's been my experience that the Bolto likewise suffers a lot against any target that isn't Grineer. I just absolutely love it versus Grineer if I'm maining my Snipetron or Latron.

Builds like Snipetron/Bolto kind of highlight my problem with invasion events in their present form, really. I redid the mission with Latron/Afuris and survived, as both of those are somewhat more versatile weapons, but I really don't like the idea of invasion events creating a metagame where guns like the Bolto that only really thrive against one faction just stop being a valid part of any build. It seems to me that the most reasonable solution would be to significantly scale back the part that the "wild card" faction plays in invasion events - keep most of the fighting against the faction you came prepared for, and change the invader AI to focus on the home faction more and the player less. That should serve to rebalance these events so that players who came in with a specialized build don't get screwed so badly when they're forced to play off-spec. Plus dodging the crossfire in large-scale firefights just feels epic. Maybe if they get chaotic enough it could even effect the AI's permanency on the player and have the enemy lose track of them if they're able to sneak through the chaos? That would be pretty cool too.

Also, note to devs re: Snipetron - I maintain that most of the people complaining about it are wrong (Its DPS is amazing and the reload speed shouldn't matter if you're at sniping range) but if someone were to adjust its ammo to to maybe 60-75 that would be remarkably awesome of you. At present I can usually manage to just-barely finish a mission without running dry if the rng is feeling kind, -if- I can one-shot the enemies. Having to double tap makes it extremely difficult to even finish missions with it.

At the very least let me mod its max ammo? I've tried that but the mods don't appear to work on it.

Re-edit: Read and experimented more - so apparently the deal with Fire Blast is that it's an AoE nuke then persists as a damage zone around only its perimeter? It's an interesting ability but I'm finding it pretty difficult to use - it would still be nice if the initial AoE tagged targets within its area with the same DoT burn targets sitting right in the perimeter get. Also confirmed my max ammo mods do not seem to work on the Snipetron, although ammo seems more frequent since a few patches ago. So that's been nice.

Edited January 20, 2013 by lamiadomina