Dev Workshop Part 4: Hotfix 18.13.2 information & more!

[Myscho]

10 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Hyekka Masters: 

For now this is as simple as fixing the Hyekka Master’s Ignis dealing damage through walls.

Good, but how about the enemy do the same thing like are Scorch, Napalm and Bombard ??? Especially Bombard fire rate at higher level is just ridiculous and i dont mention his homing missile which can chase us through whole map

[Vastarov]

10 hours ago, shyguyk said:

[...]Trinity change is too, but solo players are going to give you hell about it now.

Nah, we still have Link.

[Demitsorou]

10 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

A Tenno with a keen ear

What about tenno who have hearing impairment? What about tenno suffering from tinnitus? What about tenno that just don't play with sound on?

Just make it like in Mass Effect and have it leave an indicator.

[Drufo]

I actually think that the old Blessing mechanics were better. I mean, as many already stated, this change will incentivize people to alway keep blessing active mindlessy. IMO the problem was the self damage, that combined with Quick thinking allowed 99% DR in total safety. If you revert the changes (not speakin of the range, which is ok) to pre-18.13 and make so that self-damage doesn't contribute to the DR (like it already happens with Iron Skin, iirc), you would open 2 tactics: use Blessing as soon as it's needed without caring for DR always keeping mates alive, or wait to heal mates to get the most DR risking to let them die (or die yorself)... A more active and less mindless gameplay IMO

 

As about Ballistas telegraphing, I hope it will be something visual, like a laser sight a la Opticor, since they often are too distant and/or hide from sight to make a animation/sound actually useful

[Emeki]

Main trinity player here.
I don't understand the changes on trinity again.

- Add more range to Bless. WE NEED IT, 50m is not enough. Should we camp and stick together everytime to keep at range? This is what you want ? Moreover a lot of players are playing in Pickup/Random team, and eveyrone in it is running everywhere. Don't make the support gameplay frustrating by not having teammates in range all the time

- Remove the Damage reduction from Bless. That spell should only heal.
- Buff Link and make it affect all the team. (75% reduction)

- Rework Well of Life. That spell is kind of useless

- Nerf EV or rework it. That spell is boring as hell. I want to heal ! i want to do support ! I don't want to spam EV because this is BORING.

Don't forget we need cool gameplay ! We need fun, for all, random player and pro team or whatever.
The actual trinity is not cool for random player like me.
Before the nerfs i was playing Trinity in ALL possible missions. That was cool. For exemple now i can't play Tri in Surv anymore (in random team)

Edited June 1, 2016 by Emeki

[Ziegrif]

54 minutes ago, ViS4GE said:

Yea I was thinking the same. Just 1 is basically nothing and not even worthy of announcement.

They're just poking fun at Draco farmers.

It's a joke, a gag. Nothing to take too seriously.

[p3z1]

About Grenades - It'll be useless, unless a "grenade marker" exists (one that shows in the HUD, like some/most FPS games), because the game is too fast paced. I also suggest that shooting the grenade just disables it, since the former might make enemy cheesing easier.

About Ballistas - Again, the wind-up should be obvious (like having a laser with increasing intensity) because of swarming enemies and fast paced gameplay.

About Hyekka Masters - That is not cheesy, that is a bug and should have been fixed before. WAAAY before.

About Trinity's Blessing - Just make Blessing scale on lowest HP like before, but make it something like 1% DR per 1% HP lost, so it feels like the old blessing. Keep the 75% cap.

About Valkyr's Hysteria - No comment, seems fine as is.

[(PSN)iDrBz]

capped at 75% and using strength mods?

if you are willing to satisfy the community then go to reddit and read the comments for more ideas :"D

[Tsoe]

1 hour ago, residente said:

Chroma having no real passive at all, Oberon taming dumbf*ck wildlife AI, Nekros gaining 5hp per enemy dead in 10m or Equinox gaining 2hp per energy orb and 2mp per health orb sounds equally useless for me.

necro is actually kind of ok though 7hp would be better

[residente]

10 minutes ago, Tsoe said:

necro is actually kind of ok though 7hp would be better

When you can get 25 per enemy in a 60m range with a Desecrate build? Redundant passive, it's like DE ran out of ideas and just wanted to rush and end the passives dilema.

Edited June 1, 2016 by residente

[4R4N631]

One Forma? I've (and i guess many other Players too) invested several Forma on Frames that you changed in a way that i don't have fun using them anymore.

Why couldn't we get all the Forma back that we've invested into these frames? It wasn't the fault of the players that these frames had to be changed, but everyone who invested Forma, ressources and time is paying the price now? Especially the ones who bought the Formas for Plat lol.

Next time i'll just take all my forma and put them all into D polarities for my kubrow >_>

[Tsoe]

21 minutes ago, residente said:

When you can get 25 per enemy in a 60m range with a Desecrate build? Redundant passive, it's like DE ran out of ideas and just wanted to rush and end the passives dilema.

having a chance of spawning a shadow when ennemie is killed would have been better maybe

 

but the hp from dead still mmake sense for necro and allow new builds knd of

 

maybe... attracting 20m around health orbs would have been better

Edited June 1, 2016 by Tsoe

[Paul_Pianoff]

So, still no percentage-based damage re-added to Polarise and Discharge's meaningless damage cap removed.

[Sannidor]

ONE. FREE. FORMA.

In a game where obtaining few BPs and crafting froma a day is a norm, leveling weapon without using it once requires 15 minutes...

Omg, this will make me totally forget about the awful direction this game is going!

Sarcasm aside, no amount of free stuff made any game better or shot community's criticism.

You Canadian Devils want to go even more fremium, don't you?

[ButterLutter]

Is Trinitys 75% DR-Buff now always there regardless of HP actually healed or is the nice self damaging trick still necessary to get the DR? (so basically like it used to be but with a 75% cap)

[OliverW02]

Can we please get a Chroma buff and Effigy bug fix? Effigy currently just distracts enemies and deals no damage (I think). I think that it also just straight does not show up sometimes (Either that or it is invisible). And while i am not a Chroma veteran, I find him somewhat underwhelming. His first seems... useless. While I cant properly use his second or third, they still seem pretty ineffective. I probably just don't have the right mods though.

[--Nef-Anyo--]

Yes seen this many times, i bullet jump over and are behind said enemy and i am still pulled down. Really stupid mechanics considering you've dodge it already but auto aim bots seem to be justified. 

[HopeFrayorl]

Another Trinity main here. The 50M flat blessing range is absolutely horrid.

Want proof, play a raid or do an excavation, or even some interceptions. For example, doing the Gas giant interception, as Trin I have to be on A or D point. D is hell on earth for a frame with only weapons as offense. Which leaves A, which is often taken by someone else trying to use long range abilities. Meaning we loose someone on a point. Remember most people are in casual pub groups, which makes this more of an issue than in a pre-mades.

Lots of areas are far bigger than 50M and the group is often very split up. See excavation and parts of the raids

As Trin I don't want to waste my time trying to make sure all my team mates are within a tiny radius of me. That's not fun and means I have less time for shooting and having fun. The core of warframe is fluid movement, and a flat 50m is the antithesis of that.

Personally I'd suggest, shift the damage negation effect from blessing to well of life and make that ability about increasing the DR of people around said enemy, and have it scale with the enemies it's cast on. That way people can have their EV/bless spam Trin's (high range and efficiency), and then have link/reworked well of life Trins to replace the old duration blessing Trin's. Since duration would be king for long well of life + link use

TL:DR remove or increase blessing range. oh and re-work well of life

[Sajochi]

3 minutes ago, OliverW02 said:

Can we please get a Chroma buff and Effigy bug fix? Effigy currently just distracts enemies and deals no damage (I think). I think that it also just straight does not show up sometimes (Either that or it is invisible). And while i am not a Chroma veteran, I find him somewhat underwhelming. His first seems... useless. While I cant properly use his second or third, they still seem pretty ineffective. I probably just don't have the right mods though.

Why don't you give this a read. 

It's a rework idea for Chroma that I've been asking for the community to help improve. Chroma needs some love besides bugfixes. Not saying it has to happen this next hotfix, but a workshop dedicated to other warframe reworks and changes sometime in the future so we can collect our ideas and present them.

Also, nullifiers should be looked at soon as well. They're not really making us change tactics, they're a nuisance. The bubble needs a damage threshold instead of a set amount of hits so it breaks when we pass that threshold, scaling with level so higher level nullifiers can remain dangerous. Punchthrough should go through all barriers like nullifier bubble, frost eximus bubble, and shield lancers. It will give us incentive to use punchthrough mods.

Speaking of punchthrough mods, or mods in general, we should have system that rewards using a weapon more than others. Right now, ranking a weapon is going through motions, while we just use the ones with the best overall stats.I'm following a thread that got buried in the forums which offers a system that rewards time.

Thanks again for taking into account community suggestions DE. I know you guys can't implement everything we ask for, and I know the suggestions you take need time to implement.

[BBOTAA]

10 hours ago, (PS4)CrackFoxLegend said:

One forma? I'm speechless, thank you sooo much

Amazing isn't it? =)
 

[Shreiko]

     I have a few helpful suggestions on the topic of enemy balance. In this post I will be discussing some of the enemy cheese pointed out in Rebecca's post among others that were not highlighted either. I will try my best to also offer feedback when there is criticism. Unfortunately I might not be able to suggest good alterations for every issue but at least I will be able to shed light on cheese the dev team might be unaware of.  

Plasma Grenades

     When grenades are thrown next to the player the UI should let the player know that they are close by. It is a common feature in well designed games to have attacks from enemy units which deal devastating damage to have very blatant and telling telegraphs. Games like Destiny up above and Uncharted do this well.

 

Ballista and Snipers

     Aside From revealing the snipers location amidst the chaos that can arise from gameplay the laser also helps inform the player if they have been acquired as a target. This would be a nice balancing addition to Ballista's and other sniper units. In addition the laser sight can widen in thickness in the period between the enemy unit having locked-on to the player and the unit making the shot.  This would be another design cue notifying the player that they have been chosen as a target when the beam is on them and once it thickens if the player hasn't shaken off the sniper they will get shot. 

     Coupled with other design elements to inform the player a shot is being readied like an audio cue from the gun or the enemy unit, it would help justify high damage output from these enemies. In Destiny there is a wind-up sound distinct for each enemy sniper unit that plays above the clamour of gunfire to let you know a sniper is being charged. I can see this working for corpus units with their projectile based weapons but the wind-up sound seems like it wouldn't fit hitscan grineer weapons and their theme.

     Now how do we balance this? How can you still make the sniper units pose a credible threat, and still not make it cheesy with all these mechaincs screaming at the player to move? By finding that sweet spot in between enemy target-acquisition and the enemy firing. Look at this interval as the time you are giving the player to react to the information given and do a couple playtests. In addition to the time you are  giving the player to take action to evade the sniper you also have to consider what sort of action is required from the player to actually cancel the enemy target-acquisition. Will a simple roll be enough? Or will it be a slide and a bullet jump?Or maybe the player will have to break line-of-sight with the enemy by taking cover? Possibly a combination of all these with each having varying levels of effectiveness in either forestalling the enemy unit's shot or cancelling it's acquisition entirely.

 

Enemy AOE Ignoring Cover

     This is a recurring issue in the game, very often taking shelter behind objects or terrain seems pointless because many enemy projectiles straight up ignore them. Biggest offenders are the grineer ignis users(Hyekka and Scorch), others include but are not limited to: 

• Flame Bombard: This unit utilises a napalm shot that literally has tracking on it that can't be outmaneuvered, doesn't travel in an arc and has a 10m detonation radius while leaving a pool of fire that does DOT with an extremely high chance to deal a fire proc(might be a 100% chance not sure). As a cherry on top of the cake it ignores cover and you can still have damage dealt to you through a closed door. Extra helpings of cheese on this beauty right here.
• Heavy Gunner: This enemy is inconsistent with it's ability ignoring cover and recognising it.
• Bombard: Ground-slam and rockets from this unit ignore cover as well. It's tracking on its rockets is just as bad as the flame bombard, that is to say its to good. Projectiles with tracking shouldn't the freedom to maneuver with such dexterity. 

There are probably more enemies with this issue I just can't list them off the top of my head.

 

Eximus Units (Specifically ones with Auras):

     These units need to have the radius of their influence more visually discernible, so that players can actively avoid pushing into a distance where their abilities take effect. The amount that they spawn in and the way the different effects can stack can be too debilitating at times. Along with an update to the visual range of their auras I also believe the area of influence should be brought down to 10 meters. If the range is brought down as a compromise the auras could gain an increase in potency with a players increased exposure to it. That is to say that the longer a player spends within an aura's radius the deadlier it becomes until it the potency of that aura reaches a hard cap set by DE. If this addition is made to this unit a balancing act  would be needed to bring them in line, an addition like limiting the amount of eximus units that can be present at any given time would be a good way to position these enemies as high value targets that are extremely lethal up close.

 

Bandaid Mods:

It is becoming a common theme in DE's mod design is to use mods to compensate for flaws in core game mechanics. Most telling mods are bodycount and Harkonar scope with the former being the biggest offender. The entire mechanic of the combo counter on melee weapons is null and void without equipping the bodycount mod. Without the mod the timer on the combo counters decay is approximately 3 seconds which is just pitiful that this mechanic has been in the game since update 13 but couldn't be used effectively until you released this mod. Even worse is the fact that you released a mod for this instead of outright fixing the mechanic and problem with the weapon archetype. Same goes for Harkonar scope and Depleted reload, a mod whose reason for existing is solely because of the Vectis prime. Yet there are many more examples of this recurring theme in your efforts to balance, we have covert lethality for daggers and a list of warframe augments. This doesn't seem like a healthy way to address issues in the game and I hope it stops in the future.

 

Shameless Excalibur Plug:

Excalibur is my favourite frame and after the initial rework I was acutely aware of how the waves from his exalted blade more or less made it unlikely that a player would ever use the combos coupled with the ability's stance. The recent change was warranted but I am of the opinion that the waves needed to be hit harder if not removed it all. Currently he doesn't feel very melee oriented because this ability causes the player to be more reliant on the blade waves than the actual blade to deal damage, making combos pointless. This is rightfully so, excalibur is a very squishy warframe which requires the player to spam his radial blind very often to stop himself from taking much damage. That still doesn't stop lifestrike from becoming a staple in his builds. There are issues with some of his abilities and I will sound them off below

• Slash Dash: This ability's activation and animation are currently to sluggish and the movements often seem buggy and too sticky.
• Radial Blind: The line-of-sight on this ability is still inconsistent on occasion. Sometimes you have a squad of enemy units approaching you and you activate the ability but an enemy in the center or behind the squad remains unaffected. This forces you to use the ability once more in order to blind that one stray enemy in this group and it makes using the ability unreliable at times. This can only be improved with further refinements to the line-of-sight and awareness code employed in the game.
• Radial Javelin: This ability is pointless and redundant, it's damage output is mediocre and it's crowd-control capabilities pale in comparison to radial blind. Coupled with the wonky line-of-sight in the game this makes for an ability that rarely ever gets a cast by me, with the players who want to build around this ability having to sacrifice the utility and efficiency of every other ability to make it viable. I propose that this ability gets replaced by a more defensive ability solidifying excalibur's place as a well-rounded starter warframe. My suggestion for a 3rd ability is a rotating wall of swords that would be used to deflect some enemy projectiles to a level of effectiveness slightly below zephyr's turbulence. The ability will only be able to deflect bullets but not any AoE projectiles(ignis, rockets, etc.) or sniper bullets. To compensate for the durability this provides excalibur the waves can be removes from Exalted blade or have their range greatly reduced.
• 

 

That is all for now, if I remember any more issues I will make sure to add them to this post.

EDIT HISTORY:

• last edit made additions to sniper changes.

 

Edited June 3, 2016 by Shreiko

[Circle_of_Psi]

16 minutes ago, Shreiko said:

I have a few helpful suggestion on the topic of enemy grenades and Ballistas.

Plasma Grenades:

When grenades are thrown next to the player the UI should let the player know that they are close by. It is a common feature in well designed games to have attacks from enemy units which deal devastating damage to have very blatant and telling telegraphs. Games like Destiny up above and Uncharted do this well.

 

[Cytobel]

I look forward to refinements to Volt.  He's gonna need some real work done still, and it's likely that Electricity damage is a large part of the issue.  That, and a perennial lack of Ball Lightning.  Seriously, what master of electrical death leaves home without this handy skill?

I cast stones in the direction of Electricity just because it faces the full effects of Shields, Armor, and Health, all of which scale infinitely on our foes.  Worse, it's not particularly useful against any of these.

I've been considering a potential solution:  partial bypass of Shields and Armor.  If Electricity bypasses these to the tune of, say, 30% each, then you have that much more of Volt's damage hitting health pools.  Please note, I'm not suggesting that anything has weaknesses or resistances modified AT ALL, nor should the stun and/or chaining fall off.  I'm just trying to consider something to let Volt be somewhere near as viable as any of the other elemental 'Frames.

And yes, that 30% bypass was off the top of my head.  DEFINITE playtesting needed for something like that.  Then again, electrical current is funny in what it will flow through and what will stop it (it's not like Grineer armor is properly insulated and grounded, plus they have metal limbs and implants).  A partial mitigation bypass feels both like what high voltage might really do, and it could help Volt be have more potential against foes that he's not otherwise hurting.

Please help poor, useless Mag.  Scaling is crucial in this game, and she lost something vital there.  In exchange we got that bubble and...  well...  it's made of hate and will kill us at random...

I could care less about things not Volt, but Mag's case is particularly sad.

 

Edited June 1, 2016 by NovusNova
Removed off topic comment

[Sajochi]

I'm actually happy with the Mag rework. I know she needs some tweaks here and there before we can say she's done in regards to a rework, but overall I'm happy with the first phase of changes. She fits better in a support role, which is usually something with a lot of CC or team oriented CC potential. Only tweak I would like to see is on polarize, whether giving it percent-based scaling with power strength, or granting more shield growth for the team overall. 

Edited June 1, 2016 by CrazyCortex
No longer needed expansive post

[DxAdder]

No Changes to Polarize ? DE really things this power is ok where it's at now ?