A Concise Review Of The Riot/bursa Moa - A Letter Of Concern By Volkovyi

[Volkovyi]

Good day fellow Tenno,

          I wish to write a concise review of the recent Tactical Alert that includes the Riot Moa. Or Canonically known as the Bursa Moa.
I am the artist who conceptualized and made the Riot Moa during the contest, “Enemies of the Tenno” sometime before Gamescom 2014. The same contest that conceptualized the Manic Grineer, and Juggernaught infested.
      This event has largely been met with mixed responses from the gaming community. I have received several private message on the Forums; a number of players complaining to me. And still do since the 'False Profit' event.

      On one hand I am immensely proud and honored to have my design in game, and the community’s support. I am proud to be in DE’s good graces with my work. I am very grateful for that fact.
However with the way the Riot Moa has been implemented, and the lack of change since the False Profit event, I am becoming adamant about vocalizing the less-than-desirable way the Riot Moa has been implemented.

 

I have made a thread similar to this one in the past in review to the 'False Profit' even which can be viewed archived here: _https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/452302-a-concise-review-of-the-false-profits-event-and-riot-moa-a-letter-of-concern-by-volkovyi/

 

Since then many, many months have passed and I tentatively but hopefully rested easy with my belief in DE; that with the feedback from the False Profit even they will be able to fairly tweak and alter the Riot Moas for a better player experience in the future.

 

To my sorrow these Bursa Moa have returned exactly the same as they have since the False Profit event, and are just as flawed in functionality.

 

 

 

Here is the review which is more or less the same since they first were shown in the False Profit event in May of 2015:

 

  I feel the Riot Moa’s original design and thus its original purpose has been misapplied in its current iteration. I must honestly admit I am feeling sorrowful about its implementation and lack of positive change since last we've saw of it. Considering the positive introduction of the Manic Grineer, and despite initial bugs and balance tweaks, the Manic is a great feature on the battlefield and is exciting to fight every time. This left me in high hopes as you could imagine.

I believe the golden rule of designing enemies for gaming standards would be that each unit should have one thing they do very well. A unique feature, alongside an unique flaw. This balance is what potentially makes engaging and complex characters, encouraging the player to approach each unit in a different way, even if they all have a unifying theme.

 

The Riot Moa ideally was supposed to be a slow and solid stationary unit that impedes the player’s progress, assaulting him from afar occasionally with two weapons, and bonking him with his shields if they got too close. Bonking them once, with his body, sort of getting up from its crouching position.


      By contrast, the Bursa Moas are too much, simply said. It is true that overall their powers did hold the same theme: blockade. But their powers were scattered, and overwhelming in a frustrating sense. There was no need for three variations of the same unit either. Coupled with the way the event was designed, the player was particularly victimized by these haphazard powers of the Bursa over a longer period of time.

      The Bursa moved too quickly, they moved from Bunker to Walker mode very often, they cycled between attacks and behaviors just as often, it feels inconsistent with their visually heavy design. Fighting them, alongside Hyenas, its just visually overwhelming.
 

• The Orange Bursa was in my regard behaved the closest the original design, I was pleasantly surprised to see how well it navigated to doorways to set up its wall of lasers. It was well coordinated. However it moves too quickly when it is relocating. If the next doorway is far away [in the tileset] it sprints incredibly swiftly, far too fast for its visibly huge and heavy body.
   
• The Blue Bursa is downright unpleasant. Despite it’s shields and description, it was more aggressive and less defensive. Far too aggressive, the “shield ground pound” is simply put a completely unnecessary move. It is too quick, happens too often, and the Bursa is misusing its own shields. The spindly arms holding up the shields would realistically break under such usage, and it is visually obvious.
   
• The Beige/grey Bursa behaves in a way that I feel is completely opposite of its original intentions. It aggressively chases the player, to the point I could actively run in tight circles in the same room and it would follow closely. The nullifier bubbles are unnecessary to say the least, they do not belong at all. The nullifying effect in general feels like a cheap way to impede a Warframe’s progress, simply by removing their powers altogether.
   
• In conclusion, The Bursa in the current design are far too overwhelming from a game design point of view. It isn't behind the guise of "a challenging mini-boss" unit, it is simply frustrating for the player, perhaps even mentally tiring. Knockdown, spam, shockwaves, missiles, tethering ropes, shield nullifies, sticky nullifier bubbles, flash-bangs, all in attempt to impede the player and strip them of their powers as a Warframe (which is the entire fun of the game.) I only wanted them to do like a few things really well, back in time when the Corpus had no defensive units, now the Riot Moa is one of many annoying enemies.

 

I am honestly worried that such overwhelming visual stimulus could cause actual health discomfort for players who are sensitive to motion sickness, epilepsy, seizures, all possibly triggered by the immense amount of colors and lights on the screen from just the Bursa alone. Let alone the entire Corpus faction that could, in some instances I've experienced, stuff hundreds of Osprey bombs across floors and shield-sapping grenades enough to fill your entire screen with flashing lights and sounds.

 

This is a symptom of a recent trend in Corpus design as a faction, they are growing to become the most overwhelming and simply, truly annoying faction of enemies to fight. They are not difficult, or challenging from a game-play perspective, but as for the reasons mentioned above they are as a whole they are paralyzing. There are countless re-skins of the same ospreys, creating shields, bubbles, bombs, grenades, shield leechers, kamikaze explosions, Nullifiers that shield their allies, Combas that also scramble and null abilities alongside the Nullifiers, it is simply tiring for the player and not very fun anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many of you may be thinking, why bother with such technicalities? These points are only problems if you let it be a problem, you may say. You may say, don't get near the heavy units just shoot them from afar, use grenades, use CC abilities, use Iron Skin, use Rest, use Sleep Arrows, use Chaos. Basically, just get good.

 

I despise this argument because it invalidates any form of discussion over design flaws. If everyone behaved that way, almost no problems or issues will ever be addressed simply because you can 'ignore the problem' or avoid it or do something else altogether.

 

 

If you have a house, with two bathrooms, and one toilet in one bathroom gets clogged. Would you unclog that toilet and solve the problem, or would you tell the homeowner "Use your other bathroom? Just avoid the first."

 

 

Thank you very kindly my fellow Tenno, for taking the time to read this review.

 

 

P.S.

 

I also want to make a point that the Riot Moas were first renamed the Bursa Moas for the False Profit event where they were used as walking ATM machines. "Bursa" meaning "purse." Now the Bursa Moas appear in other missions as well at the sound of alarms to dispatch and block the Tenno - very much like the original desires I had for it. I would like to petition the Bursa to be renamed back into the Riot Moas as they are now more closely being used to halt aggressors very much like Riot Police after which they were designed. A player that is new, that has no idea about Nef Anyo and his False Profit event, would have no connection or understanding why the armored, shielded, Robotic unit is named after a purse in its current usage. Riot Police have big shields and are called in to stop aggressors, riots, and so are the Riot Moa.

[Stratego89]

+1 for everything here.

 

P.s. Really cool design. Bit of a shame to see them implemented in a way that is nearly harassing to players (imo their biggest problem is the way they SPAM their attacks relentlessly- as an example ground pounding for days even once the player is knocked away).

Edited February 16, 2016 by Stratego89

[p3z1]

"Concise"

 

All I see is a wall of text that is actually worth reading.

 

Can't have enough +1's for this

 

Edit: Post False Profit, I've yet to see a denial bursa actually deny entrance to the next room. Also, they are smaller than normal, making them just feel wrong.

Edited February 16, 2016 by p3z1

[Cyriann]

+1 from me as well.

Everything as been said I'd say.

[ir0nskin]

+ 1

[GinKenshin]

+1 for the whole thing, especially for the rename part. and I respect your opinions they much, since you came up with them and designed them and should have a part at developing them 

   but, after fighting them in normal mission, and yes, I agree. they can be a bit annoying to fight, but I really feel 'strong' when I finally kill one of them. I mean they fill that battle hunger I was feel in warframe. 

   they're very exciting to fight, and you can never know what type of a Riot Moa can spawn to stop your progress, and I love every single kind and feel they're doing their 'jobs' very well (Denial Roit Moa at denying, Isolater Riot Moa at isolating....etc). I even gave them nick names: ^^ 

Isolater-san
Drover-chan
Denial-Kun  

   what I'm trying to say is, from my point of view, and although they can be a pain to fight, they're doing their job very well, and I'm more than happy to kill and fight them. but I feel they should share the same rare drop table as the skiing human corpus units. since both are they 'elite' of the Corpus and very hard to fight and kill, so they should be rewarding. 

 

[TychusMechanicus]

Wonderful feedback! Thank you, once more, for your work in all of this.

 

(I still hope that your original Zephyr concept can appear in Warframe as a skin for our birdgirl <3 )

[Zoracraft]

I don't know why DE feels the need to slap nullification on everything, but I heavily agree with your point of enemies having one strong side and one weak side.

+1 to you, sir

[Spikey844]

Most definitely agree with this. Please DE read and adjust.

[War-Zone]

I completely agree as well. This has been the extent of the game design for a while now, it just feels like harassment/punishment than anything else. I think they have lost sight of what's fun and what's just downright annoying.

[ImNotJellyAtAll]

Bursa implementation feels lazy and rushed. Between the lazy (and ugly) palette swaps, and rehashed mechanics, it's abundantly clear that no effort was put into them whatsoever.

 

Sorry your baby was trashed. Gonna shamelessly plug my own Bursa thread here. https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/609907-bursa-feedback-too-little-butter-on-too-much-bread/

Edited February 16, 2016 by ImNotJellyAtAll

[Chroia]

Excellent post.

Have my +1, my support and my axe.

[Necrius]

All is true and I support this message of yours. Design is nice, mechanics are horrible.

 

As I said before: DE are an embodiment of Corpus, that's why the most op and unfair units go there. They just want their pet faction to always win.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Necrius

[Volkovyi]

Man, how about these new spiffy forums, so cool!

 

Anyhow, updating my previous thoughts to this topic, which still stand, I have just come back from a Corpus Sorties mission. 3rd Sortie in the day, Corpus Defense with augmented shields. The last wave, the last enemy, was an Isolator Bursa Moa. Just 1, the very last one, it was a clean level 100.

And it was indestructible.

Between its slamming shockwaves, tethers, and nullifier grenades that would roll around and refuse to be destroyed, my team was barely ever on our feet, trying to defend the Operative and pull it away from the objective. The Moa relentlessly slammed and attacked the operative, using everything it had, and it kept us from saving him. So I would say it did a good job doing it's mission. We revived the Operative over 7+ times just from this Bursa alone. The Bursa had regenerating health, and somehow was immune to all our weaponry. Chroma's Vex Armor buff over 700% and Kulstar, did 0 damage all over its body, same goes for Ignis, same goes for the Mag that cleared all the other waves of Corpus, same goes for the Opticor directly aimed at it. It was procc-ed in cold, blast, impact, and corrosion, it never staggered, it never fell, despite the procs and hits from a Jat Kittag combo tree.

After struggling with 1 single Bursa Moa between 10~15 minutes, longer than any Boss battle I have been a part of, the Bursa Moa cornered the downed body of the Operative, and somehow sped up its bleedout time. Before my eyes I watched the Operative have 12 seconds of bleedout time, if I had the chance to stand up I could walk over and revive him. But instead I watched the Bursa Moa slam him with his shield attack a few times, and instantly kill him and fail the mission.

 

I have never felt so cheated, so helpless, that despite our best efforts the very last enemy was just simply indestructible. Perhaps it was a bug, was the Moa supposed to have regenerating health? Considering the vast arsenal of the Bursa Moas, I suppose I can not be surprised anymore. However, if this was intentional, this is a set-up for failure. You can't expect to make something so futile it is discouraging to even play anymore. I wash my hands of the Corpus, and if I can help it I won't be playing anymore Corpus missions after this headache.

 

Unfortunately I have no video or recording to show this procedure, I realize it is kind of hard to document and prove these hassle of 15 minutes vs a single Corpus unit. All I have is this single screenshot. Take my words as you wish, and thank you for reading.

 

Edit: After attempting to beat the Sorties the next day, determined not to let this round go to waste, we've failed another 4 times over with the same results. Over Powered Bursa Moa, last wave, last enemy. Until I switched regions by chance, and we won by sheer luck of no Bursa Moa spawning in the last wave but were replaced with two Scrambus (previously missing from all 15 waves.) It appears that there are two theoretical lessons to be learned from this, either A) You can only win if there ARE NO Bursa Moa, or B) switching regions in PC somehow changes what spawns.

Edited February 23, 2016 by Volkovyi

[ImNotJellyAtAll]

Year 2: Bursa variants are still ugly, frustrating, and lazily implemented, along with the rest of the entire Corpus faction.

Edited February 23, 2016 by ImNotJellyAtAll

[EvilChaosKnight]

20 hours ago, Volkovyi said:

-snip-

Yea, I had to deal with Isolator Bursa lvl 100 too on that sortie.

Thankfully I was Frost, and we had 2 Tonkors (mine had toxins on so I bypassed the shield). So after about a minute of endless freezing and Tonkor bombardment we've killed the Bursa at last. It was probably the most durable non-boss enemy I've seen so far.

[LordBeeBrain]

This was well worth the read and honestly, I wholeheartedly agree. I remember when you came up with the concept for the Riot Moa and I thought it looked both interesting and challenging, but the way they had implemented it in game just made me dislike the Corpus even more. As you said, there were absolutely no reasons to add 3 variants of the Bursas; they're just lazy re-skins, as most of the Corpus enemies are and it just adds to the long list of overwhelmingly colorful Corpus enemies that already exist.

You get my +1, and I do hope they take  your views into consideration. 

[SoanoS]

+1.

The Bursas are just broken in their current iteration. And their regenerating health is just taking the piss. This makes some of the Sorties almost impossible to complete. Especially Exterminates when there are 3 or more bursas spawned at all times, and they freeze kill counter so everything killed increases the quota. And new Bursas appear before you can destroy them all, making many missions an exercise in frustration and futility.

[Volkovyi]

17 minutes ago, SoanoS said:

+1.

The Bursas are just broken in their current iteration. And their regenerating health is just taking the piss. This makes some of the Sorties almost impossible to complete. Especially Exterminates when there are 3 or more bursas spawned at all times, and they freeze kill counter so everything killed increases the quota. And new Bursas appear before you can destroy them all, making many missions an exercise in frustration and futility.

That sounds incredibly infuriating, I have not fought the Bursa yet in Corpus Extermination. It appears that so far in every mission version experienced, the Bursa are more of a negative experience than a positive challenge. And that's putting it lightly.

[Drasiel]

6 hours ago, Volkovyi said:

That sounds incredibly infuriating, I have not fought the Bursa yet in Corpus Extermination. It appears that so far in every mission version experienced, the Bursa are more of a negative experience than a positive challenge. And that's putting it lightly.

Running into them on a solo sortie excavation is a headache inducing nightmare. Not because they destroy the excavator fast (let's face it everything does) but because they lock down the player so hard, and they are sneaky, but it's a weird sneakiness. See if you have one bursa you are trying to deal with it just never shuts up with it's honks and screams and slams, you will never hear the second bursa sneaking up on you to one shot you with rockets from near point blank.

Not to mention the blast radius of the rockets, tempo of the slams, and various player disabling doodads just completely overwhelm on their own when they are not escorted by a small army because enemy spawn scaling. I spent 20 minutes getting 300 cryotic by running to an excavation dropping a globe then fleeing before the bursas caught up and hiding in Parkour accessible enemy blindspots. It'd take them about 1 minute longer than the excavator took to run out of power for the enemies to decide to kill it netting me 20 cryotic, then another 1.5 minutes before the next would spawn.

I'm sorry Volkovyi, your and silverbones juggernaut are my most hated enemies.

[Drasiel]

7 hours ago, Volkovyi said:

That sounds incredibly infuriating, I have not fought the Bursa yet in Corpus Extermination. It appears that so far in every mission version experienced, the Bursa are more of a negative experience than a positive challenge. And that's putting it lightly.

Running into them on a solo sortie excavation is a headache inducing nightmare. Not because they destroy the excavator fast (let's face it everything does) but because they lock down the player so hard, and they are sneaky, but it's a weird sneakiness. See if you have one bursa you are trying to deal with it just never shuts up with it's honks and screams and slams, you will never hear the second bursa sneaking up on you to one shot you with rockets from near point blank.

Not to mention the blast radius of the rockets, tempo of the slams, and various player disabling doodads just completely overwhelm on their own when they are not escorted by a small army because enemy spawn scaling. I spent 20 minutes getting 300 cryotic by running to an excavation dropping a globe then fleeing before the bursas caught up and hiding in Parkour accessible enemy blindspots. It'd take them about 1 minute longer than the excavator took to run out of power for the enemies to decide to kill it netting me 20 cryotic, then another 1.5 minutes before the next would spawn.

I'm sorry Volkovyi, your and silverbones juggernaut are my most hated enemies.

[DeMeritus]

Sorry to hear that the riot MOA implementation turned out the way that it did.

Your points do seem valid, although I'm surprised that you didn't bring up the utterly insane spawnrate they've been assigned.

[Anzoken]

+1

From your initial review the one thing I found myself immediately agreeing to was how fast they move for something you intended to be heavy, like a blockade. Not to mention they are incredibly annoying to solo if you use melee oriented frames because they always turn faster than it takes for you to get behind them. I really appreciate your concept and the thought you've put into creating something like this. It's also clear this isn't exactly how you intended them to behave and I agree that the Corpus do seem to be downright annoying at times with all their different types of mechanics stacking on top of each other.

What brought me here though, is the insane not to mention extremely buggy spawn rates, especially in exterminates which makes it all the more annoying. I was in a syndicate exterminate mission today and once the alarms got triggered everything went haywire, the exterminate count kept increasing until it was impossible to kill faster than it was increasing. For every one bursa I killed, another three would spawn in its place. As you can imagine, this made the mission quite impossible to complete. I tried it multiple times and had the same result, ended up quitting and crossing my fingers hoping I wouldn't get the same mission again tomorrow.

I agree with one of the posts above that said we should be rewarded in some way for dealing with something so difficult, although the only thing that could be rewarding enough could be parts of a warframe or something along those lines, that would make it a lot more bearable and I could see people trying to farm them, but in my opinion that's definitely not a long term solution. I also noticed that a lot of people compare this with the Manics and the Juggernauts especially since they were all created the same way, but we miss the most important point here, we barely see one or two of these every mission, exceptions being the Tyl Regor fight and probably some others I may have missed out, but the fact remains that they are still very rare. There's also only one type of them, only a single mechanic to watch out for when swarmed by a lot of enemies, all of these factors contribute to making them a lot less annoying to deal with.

I hope DE will take all this into consideration and come up with a solution, preferably less annoying and more fun. At the end of the day, we just love Warframe and want to see it at the best it can be. Sounds cheesy I know, but its late and I couldn't come up with anything better :P

 

[volatica]

On 2/15/2016 at 10:30 AM, Zoracraft said:

I don't know why DE feels the need to slap nullification on everything, but I heavily agree with your point of enemies having one strong side and one weak side.

+1 to you, sir

Yeah. So, someone wrote a thought piece on Destiny in regards to super energy. Bungie introduced a modifier called "trickle" that prevents super energy form charging pretty much. The point of the piece about Destiny though was to identify that this isn't a 'fun challenge,' it's concept that hammers a wedge in between fun game mechanics. And this is nullifier to a T. When you encounter it, it doesn't feel fresh or challenging necessarily, it feels unfun. And even beyond that, that's pretty much the bursa in total. I feel bad that this guys good idea was implemented in such a way. I was literally just in a level 28-30 mission, and an alarm spawned LEVEL 40 bursas. So, it's like... whelp, fun is literally over. It wasn't a challenge to finish the mission at that point, it literally became impossible and I quit. That shouldn't happen with missions in your level range when you have appropriate gear, and that's I guess what bothers me the most about the Bursa.

Edited March 29, 2016 by volatica
Adding a bit more and cleaning up the language to be constructive and less aggressive.

[Himodor]

I told my story about how 3 randoms in a defense mission on Jupiter ran into not one but 2 of these things on wave three and we all got ragdolled to hell and back before I twigged they were vulnerable to the sides and we all spent our time firing on them from 3 directions, and I very very nearly ran out of ammo before they died (I was sown to shooting with my pistol, which had one reload left)

And I have been playing for a week. I'm already at the point that if I saw one on an extermination mission I'd abort. I don't have that kind of DPS to take one (how would i? I've been playing A WEEK) and if I was solo I could not devide it attention to get to the sides to shoot it.

As I mentioned in the other post. the Mission counter should be static, so even of more enemies spawn you can still kill the same amount to complete the mission and you could extract even if enemoes are on the map. This would be a very easy workaround and would probably only take a day to code, if that.

Anyway, op, please receive my very first +1.