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

[Altair_Flame]

On 23-2-2016 at 10:01 PM, 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.

I've recently been playing with friends of mine who only joined the game two weeks ago, and have a running start because I've been playing for nearly two years with a good (maybe obscene) amount of money put into Warframe, having played some Corpus missions, the first time I encountered a Bursa outside of event missions, was a regular 20 minute Jupiter Survival, I was interested at the fact I started seeing a bursa, thinking 'well that's new.'.

This quickly turned into: 'This is not good.'
The guns I brought, fully forma'd, fully modded, did take care of the Bursa in about 15 seconds, which was decent. But I had two guys below MR3 at the time with me. They didn't have the mods on their guns to deal with the Bursa.

Not only is there the problem of the spam knockdown they can cause. Someone new to Warframe will be put off by enemies which simply are too hard to deal with with their current equipment. Even when someone who's 'God-tier' due to their extensive playtime has trouble with these enemies, and they're supposed to fight them with mk-1 bratons, paris and bos? Without a maxed Serration or Hornet Strike?

Also, the Tactical Alert: Divine Will's endurance run (and after that, the normal run too). Every. Single. Corpus. Proxy. Bursas, Sapping Ospreys, Leeching Ospreys, Nullifiers, Combas, Hyenas. If I want a disco I would bring Mirage. If I want lockdown I'll purposedly shoot the reinforced glass. But don't force that kind of stuff on people who have only just started to figure out the current starmap.

tl;dr:

The current version of the Bursas are too much to handle for people who are still discovering how the enemies even work.

PS:

Spoiler

I've seen more Bursas than I have Manics when an alarm goes off in a mission. It's been a long time since I've had the pleasure of introducing a Manic to the business end of a shotgun, outside of the Trials and hunting Tyl Regor.

 

[Volkovyi]

On 2/25/2016 at 11:03 PM, Anzoken said:

+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

 

I have noticed the increase spawn rate since writing this letter, that is a factor I unfortunately overlooked. Since writing this letter, I have been actively avoiding Corpus missions if I can help it. I agree with everything you say good sir, the Bursa are unrewarding, and overly difficult for the sake of just being difficult. I wish they would revert to a single Riot Moa as I have designed them, and made them as rare and as unique fight as the Manic and Juggernaught.

As for your last comment, yes that may sound cheesy but I agree. I don't write all of this out of contempt, or hatred that my design hasn't been implemented exactly how I envisioned, but rather I also love Warframe and I want to see it be even better. That's my motivation for everything I do in the community.

[Volkovyi]

On 2/26/2016 at 5:17 PM, Himodor said:

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 enemies 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.

While I welcome you warmly to the game of Warframe, I am also very sorrowful to hear your first few days new to the game have been so difficult. It is unfair, and these new enemies are a problem to everyone. But younger players such as yourself who do not have the same level of modifications that older players have, it is the most victimizing to experience. I still have difficulties fighting them, and that is with all my maxed weaponry and mods. It isn't fair. I do hope you find your way, and I do hope that the issue with the Bursa Moa, that is my Riot Moa, is addressed ASAP for the community.

[Himodor]

On 29/02/2016 at 11:50 PM, Volkovyi said:

While I welcome you warmly to the game of Warframe, I am also very sorrowful to hear your first few days new to the game have been so difficult. It is unfair, and these new enemies are a problem to everyone. But younger players such as yourself who do not have the same level of modifications that older players have, it is the most victimizing to experience. I still have difficulties fighting them, and that is with all my maxed weaponry and mods. It isn't fair. I do hope you find your way, and I do hope that the issue with the Bursa Moa, that is my Riot Moa, is addressed ASAP for the community.

So do I, and thank you for your welcome. I am still enjoying the game despite that unit. I have faced the maniac on Phobos and the Juggernaut on Eris since, and I'll tell you I would face 10 of them than the 2 Bursas I fought on Jupiter. I mean I'm 43 and have not great health so my gaming reflexes are not the best any-more, but if I'm able to handle the other stuff I should be able to handle one unit. Nop

And I'm currently trying to get through Neptune (I just hate not being able to get to places when I see alerts and stuff) and the thing is - its complete impossible to progress. In one direction is a capture mission, which would be hard enough without Bursas spawning in every 40 seconds, and oddly you are too busy chasing the target to go and turn off alarrms. On the other direction is a Mobile defence - and guess what spawns on that? Yep, a Bursa. I've just done a mobile def mission in solo mode, and the very fact that I have to try and stun the thing with EV (which does not always work) and empty all my Shotgun shells into it means that I'm ignoring everything else which are busy killing me... And I'm still only barely scratching it. I tried to run away from it and get to the other consoles, but nope it followed, and I only had 30% of its health gone before I ran out of revives.

And the thing is, I'm stuck. No-one is playing Neptune missions because they are high level Corpus and high level Corpus means high level Bursas and no-one wants to fight the flipping things, so I cant team up with Pugs because pugs are not there. So its basically, in my view, completely messed the game up for people. I had no problems waiting for people on the Grineer planets.

I don't mind failing missions that I'm not able for yet. I am enjoying the trinity I build, and I seem to be able for the other corpus stuff. But the second a Bursa shows up my game turns to S#&$e.

And I can see the value of your original design. But not this monstrosity.

Anyway thanks again. And I'm not blaming you for it :)

[Cyriann]

Let's hope this makes DE think back on the Bursas.

[Volkovyi]

By the luck of RNG, we have been given the task to hunt Denial Bursa Moas for the final sacrifice of the Inaros quest-line. I only knew they were Denial Bursas because my clansmates have informed me ahead of time, otherwise the symbols would have no way to show you which Bursa you need. Which is strange, considering that you can hunt any of the Manic variations, or Juggernauts, and it counts.

We went to use Nekros for Spy Vaults, purposefully tripping alarms to summon a random Bursa for this task. It was an absolute nightmare when an Isolator Bursa spawned instead of the Denial Bursas which I needed. They sticky grenade, nulling bubbles? (For lack of a better name) was quite annoying. The grenade rolls around, in all the fuss it is hard to locate and destroy to halt any nullifying abilities. When summoning my Shadows of the Dead to keep the Bursas off me, touching the small Nulling bubble would instantly kill all of my minions WHEN none of my minions touched the bubble itself. Next to the Bursa, the Nullifier, and now Scrambus that all have different weapons to halt, null, and interrupt Warframe powers, this is getting to be too much.

I believe that for nullification, the effect should only take place on NEW abilities to a certain extent. (That means for abilities where it is logically applied) For example it would halt the Warframe from using new powers or summoning new minions, or rumblers, or what have you. However if you already have the Shadows of the Dead summoned and out, merely touching the bubble shouldn't kill all of your minions instantaneously. I have had instances where the nulling bubbles would fall on top of me from a ledge of some sort, and Nekros's shadows would die as they are being summons during the animation. Wasted energy, wasted effort.

But mostly, I wanted to include this small update to use this reaction image that perfectly encompasses my thoughts on recent Corpus missions.

[\spoiler]

[BlackCoMerc]

Like everything else about the Corpus faction, these things are horribly designed. DE has no idea how to implement challenging enemies in light of warframe powers. Instead, they add increasing levels of annoyance. knockdown spam; screen fuzz; robbing us of energy; nullifiers; now these things.

Honestly, missions above Rank 20 arent even entertaining any longer. They are more frustration than challenge. 

[(PSN)Lord_Gremlin]

2 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Like everything else about the Corpus faction, these things are horribly designed. DE has no idea how to implement challenging enemies in light of warframe powers. Instead, they add increasing levels of annoyance. knockdown spam; screen fuzz; robbing us of energy; nullifiers; now these things.

Honestly, missions above Rank 20 arent even entertaining any longer. They are more frustration than challenge. 

Warframe by design is a game of stats, not skill. Like an rpg or MMO. So once you level proper things enough everything is easy. It can only be hard if it's broken. Like a knockdown attack ignoring knockdown immunity because it's bugged or lvl 20 enemy dealing damage of lvl 80 enemy.

Please keep warframe easy, it's an easy game by design. 

[BlackCoMerc]

As long as killing every group of enemies gives us back more energy than we need for casting, the game will never achieve real, genuine challenge through good AI and enemy tactics. It simply cannot. Although, the Night Watch Grineer were a nice change; glass cannon enemies were fun. It felt like everything on that map was deadly dangerous, from the Tenno to their adversaries. Just because people could cheese it with Loki and Nyx doesnt mean it was not good design.

The simple truth is that some frames are hopelessly broken in terms of their power level. Nyx, Loki and to a lesser degree Nova come to mind. Those three frames tilt the battlefield so far in favor of the Tenno that it is absurd. Much as I love playing all three, the game would be a better place if those frames were overhauled to only allow their CC to hit small areas at any one time. Then the game could be rebalanced with the lack of hard CC in mind.

[YasaiTsume]

Yea DE should really just make Riot MoA the way it should have been, as a boss battle tank.

These guys we have right now could each be the Riot MoA's babies which aids the big daddy Riot MoA in battle.

 

Spoiler

And replace Ambulas with these guys, so people can't farm Excal anymore. (hue hue hue)

 

[Ollnozz]

Thank you so much for the points you've raised, I've encountered these problems far too often when I play.

When I was a newbie going through the Proxy Rebellion tactical alert with the mindset that "Rhino's Iron Skin is OP", I met, for the first time in my life, an Isolator (beige/grey) Bursa. It was the worst fight I ever had in Warframe. The riot Moa charged at me, knocked me down and rendered me helpless for around 7 seconds. I could feel the need for changes right there and then. I died, by the way.

I feel that the red Denial Bursa is somewhat balanced, so it's more or less ok.

The Blue Drover Bursa just... fires and forgets. He shoots barrages of missiles, sapping bombs, charges at you and slams the ground non-stop AND is the fastest of the three Moas when it scoots around. Not very fair, in my opinion.

The beige Isolator Bursa... that bastard. I can't stand it. Every time I see one, I run away and leave it to the rest of my squad. It's not enough. It needs to be fixed urgently, especially its slams. They knock a Warframe down for HUGE amounts of time. Also, the nullifier bubbles that stick to you can be shook off, but then they just start GROWING like jelly-babies and flood the whole room with a "screw-you aura". It's very unfair to fight more than one of these candy-dispensers at once.

In addition, I am actually someone prone to motion sickness and epilepsy. Every game I meet a Bursa in... is usually my last game because of the face-splitting headache I get from fighting one. I have to run around a speeding scooter that is spamming random explosives at me, and it actually hurts in the real world. Once I nearly passed out during a Sortie when I got surrounded by 3 Bursas. 

That said, I personally love the designs, and the initial concept of the Riot Moa. Great job on that, Volkovyi! (and I hope DE makes some changes to the Bursa)

 

[Furry_Wolf_Knight]

+1 i would have to agree with this, DE plz fix bursa's, they sound like a fun idea. I was doing a sortie before the hotfix that made bursas not spawn when there was no alarm, every 30 seconds a new bursa appeared and the enemy count kept rising, but we couldn't clear the way with all the sapping, knockdown and tugging. Even running with tank classes like valkyr didn't help. Even running solo they can be a pain if you don't kill one before another spawns, and the fact they move almost as fast as you means you can't shake'em. I feel bad for someone trying to lvl a weapon or warframe and get caught in a bursa barrage. Currently they kill momentum, and not in the good way.

[LifeNine]

I completely agree with you. The current iteration of the Bursa/Riot Moas aren't hard to fight against. They are just annoying and very frustrating. In a solo exterminate mission on Neptune, I spent around 75% of the time just killing Bursas and Scrambus/Comba enemies.

The Bursas have an infinite amount of CC with the tools/abilities they were given, can one shot you at level 30-40 if you get close to mid range (the red one can kill you from much further away because the rockets home into you), and the moment you jump over the Moa to shoot the back, it has already turned around to face you. The only real option I had was to sit very very far away where it can't one shot me and slowly chip away at it, but the fact that it can regenerate thousands or even tens of thousands of shield points in a very short amount of time makes it nearly impossible to kill. I leave it for 10 seconds or so and all the health it lost has become shields and all the shields it lost are now full. I can spend all 555 shots of a fully modded Latron Prime and still not kill one of them if I'm just trying use brute force and kill it from the front. If I didn't have Mag removing all of it's shields every time it regenerated it's shields and Bullet Attractor to keep me safe and help me do enough damage to its back panel, I probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere in the mission.

Then there's the problem with the respawn rate of these Bursas. It takes me so long to kill one by myself sometimes, that a second Bursa would spawn or it would spawn a Scrambus/Comba enemy because apparently these two types of enemies are on respawn timers and are not part of the number of enemies in a mission. Almost every time I kill a Bursa, it would just spawn another before I can even get to the next room. Killing the last Bursa on the map and waiting for it to die so I can extract will spawn another Bursa or Scrambus/Comba. Thus forcing a never ending exterminate mission if I don't kill them fast enough.

Hopefully these issues gets addressed soon because these units aren't hard to play against, they are just frustrating. The only real option right now is to use hard CC to completely stop them and shoot a few clips into the panel.

Image of fighting two Bursa near extraction in exterminate mission:

Spoiler

 

[Evan-0-matic]

On February 25, 2016 at 11:17 AM, Himodor said:

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.

As a Warframe vet who has over 2 years and more hours in game than I'd like to admit. This... This is what disgusts me most about Bursas. New players simply not being able to deal with them. It's not a case of 'get good and come back later', it's the fact that they won't be able to even clear the solar system because of one unit. Sure they could get friends to help them, but that's not the point. No single enemy should stop a new player from progressing in what is the closet thing we have to a WF campaign!

Even as a vet, like many mentioned before me, I still have trouble dealing with Bursas. And every time I do a Corpus mission (which is increasingly rare now) as soon as that alarm is tripped, I run like a bat outta hell to cancel it. For fear of a bursa ruining my fun and turning a 5-10 minute mission into a 20-25 one. 

 

Your orinigal concept was fantastic, OP. And it could still be great in game, but DE has to stop playing favorites and killing player's fun. I know for a fact that if I was a new player and ran into Bursa units as often as I do now... I would have quit this game in a matter of days. That's the truth. 

I love you, DE... You built an amazing game and have progressed so much! But when you love something you tell it the truth, and the truth is your implementation of the Riot Moa has been like watching a mentally challenged monkey trying to have sex with a football. 

Edited March 16, 2016 by Evan-0-matic
Can't say a certain word apparently.

[Necrius]

On 02.03.2016 at 7:03 PM, Cyriann said:

Let's hope this makes DE think back on the Bursas.

Nope. are their pet faction.

[achromos]

16 hours ago, Evan-0-matic said:

As a Warframe vet who has over 2 years and more hours in game than I'd like to admit. This... This is what disgusts me most about Bursas. New players simply not being able to deal with them. It's not a case of 'get good and come back later', it's the fact that they won't be able to even clear the solar system because of one unit. Sure they could get friends to help them, but that's not the point. No single enemy should stop a new player from progressing in what is the closet thing we have to a WF campaign!

Even as a vet, like many mentioned before me, I still have trouble dealing with Bursas. And every time I do a Corpus mission (which is increasingly rare now) as soon as that alarm is tripped, I run like a bat outta hell to cancel it. For fear of a bursa ruining my fun and turning a 5-10 minute mission into a 20-25 one. 

 

Your orinigal concept was fantastic, OP. And it could still be great in game, but DE has to stop playing favorites and killing player's fun. I know for a fact that if I was a new player and ran into Bursa units as often as I do now... I would have quit this game in a matter of days. That's the truth. 

I love you, DE... You built an amazing game and have progressed so much! But when you love something you tell it the truth, and the truth is your implementation of the Riot Moa has been like watching a mentally challenged monkey trying to have sex with a football. 

 

I'll admit that Bursa's 'ARE' a bit of a issue, but some warframes are oddly well equipped to deal with them.  However, I do think they shouldn't remove the Bursa's as is.  It's a good challenge... for people who are equally equipped.  People who have been playing for 2 or 3 years have a chance, however...  It's counter intuitive to the new player experience to have these things even show up early-on.  The way Bursas are right now, new players barely even get a chance to fight them on a remotely equal level in addition to how often they spawn off of one single alarm. 

Even if a new player manages to kill one of these, which should be a rewarding experience...  there are more and more flooding in.  At least in early planets I feel like it should spawn much weaker variants, or limit the spawns per mission (1-2? non-endless... 1 every 5 minutes or wave in endless) just early-on.  Between Mag melting nearby enemies, and then shield polarize directly melting them... I "Personally" find no issue with them, and other warframes can deal with them too, Vauban's vortex, being another among several skills that can help shut down the bursas.  I do understand how newer or not as well equipped players can feel when faced up against a enemy like this and I believe it should get looked at again.

 

 

[Dreddeth]

This and other cheese is the reason why I vastly prefer fighting Grineer and Infested to the Corpus. Sure the Grineer are absolute damage sponges, but they can be outmaneuvered and dealt with, so all in all they feel like the most honest match up. Infested are a bit gimmicky at times with their auras, but as an almost purely melee faction it's actually reasonably balanced.

With the Corpus, it feels like I'm fighting a hacker or someone using cheat codes, and unlike enemies which are meant to be soil-your-pants-terrifying, like the Stalker, this faction-wide, huge AoE, disabling, knockdown, draining nonsense with every new Corpus unit feels entirely tacked-on.