Hard Mode Suggestion: Energy Scarcity

[Caiman]

In the face of easily usable, wide AoE, high damage ults (and Chaos, don't forget Chaos) proper, well-balanced challenges are very difficult to achieve. (Yeah, I've been reading a lot of those "NERF 4-SKILLS" threads. This is NOT one of them.)

No matter how many enemy units get new and devious abilities, every enemy that isn't a 2000+ hp bullet sponge will die instantly without doing anything. Or run around like a headless chicken, steal some kills, and then die, if you used Chaos. It doesn't matter if they're level 1 or 50. They're either instantly one-shotted or they're boring bullet-sponges.

 

To make content challenging, we need to (intelligently) limit the most powerful skills, not just blindly throw more and higher level enemies at players.

 

_______Skip to hear the actual suggestion instead of why AI improvements / fancy new enemy abilities WILL NOT WORK on their own:

No amount of strategy, tactics or abilities on the part of the AI is going to help if nearly every unit within 15m (or more) of a Nyx, Saryn, Mag, Ember, Banshee, Frost, Volt or Vauban can be instantly neutralized.

Instantly neutralized whenever things start to look even mildly inconvenient, if you have a 30 frame modded for energy efficiency, or simply have more than one of the 8 listed frames on the squad.

 

Only outright immunity or near-immunity to ults and Chaos/Bastille can stop entire rooms of enemies from being neutralized for as little as 60 energy - and how is making a skill outright useless any fun at all?

 

It's better to limit how often you can use these skills (while leaving other skills untouched) than indirectly nerf them.

_______You've skipped it! Please don't try to tell me about how much better AI/enemy abilities would be unless you can directly address this issue with a clever solution.

 

I propose to do this in a "Hard Mode", completely optional and separate from existing gameplay, where energy availability and skill cost is scaled relative to skill utility instead of the order they appear on your skill bar (among other adjustments).

 

Skill balance would be achieved by:

- Reducing energy drop rates.

- Significantly increasing base energy cost for "ult" class skills to 150~200, and halving Streamline's effect (so you only get a 2.5~15% energy cost reduction). Some tentative numbers:

  200 energy: World on Fire, Sound Quake, Vortex

  200/150 energy: Miasma, Crush, Overload, Avalanche, Chaos

  150 energy: Bastille, Snow Globe

  150/100 energy: Radial Javelin, Radial Disarm, Blade Storm

  100 energy: Blessing, Rhino Stomp, Absorb (lol)

 

Yeah, Snow Globe, Chaos and Bastille too. Their utility in Defense and other missions are ridiculous, even when stacked up against top-tier map-wipers. At 50/75 energy, they virtually guarantee victory as long as you just remember to keep casting them when they wear off. They should be periodic defensive maneuvers, not a constant effect.

 

Blessing and Absorb are spared because of their limited utility and the fact that they can't be used to instantly incapacitate or neutralize enemies en masse, which is the problem I'm trying to address here.

 

Can't use your ult every time there's more than 4 mobs if you can't recoup the energy cost.

Maintaining the existing energy cost for other skills will make smart use of lower-tier skills more attractive, and combined with scarcer energy, far more effective over the course of a mission. Ults will be a reluctant panic button once again.

 

Now, I'm not suggesting energy scarcity alone would solve all the problems. But it would be a hell of a lot easier to balance the game if you didn't have to account for players routinely erasing everything on the map whenever things get slightly inconvenient.

 

EDIT:

Adjusted energy tiers because not all casters have 200+ energy at rank 30 unmodded.

Also added a paragraph section (uuugghhh) just to emphasize my point that improving AI and coming up with new enemy types won't provide a challenge unless 4 skills aren't limited somehow.

Edited June 16, 2013 by Caiman

[Dantal]

I'm gonna disagree with this post and say that for hard mode they need to focus on creating new units (also better AI) and other challenges that force players to deploy teamwork and not rush headlong into everything with guns blazing, instead of directly limiting what a player can do. If you really want to reduce a players ability to spam their skills, then create some units that perform that role. An example would be a Grineer unit that locks a player out of using abilities for a short time (or jams ability usage within a small proximity). In this instance players have the ability to actually fight the ability blockage instead of being forced into it.

 

Other examples:

 

Mobs shooting cryo rounds at players

Leech mob that latches on to a player, slowly leeching life, and has to be shot off by teammates (not in solo obviously)

A tank mob that can redirect bullets into itself and takes little damage from the front

A mob that can root a player

Mobs that are immune to player abilties

[Cleesus]

energy scarcity is already in the game, its called wave 10+ defense lol

[Caiman]

I'm gonna disagree with this post and say that for hard mode they need to focus on creating new units (also better AI) and other challenges that force players to deploy teamwork and not rush headlong into everything with guns blazing, instead of directly limiting what a player can do. If you really want to reduce a players ability to spam their skills, then create some units that perform that role. An example would be a Grineer unit that locks a player out of using abilities for a short time (or jams ability usage within a small proximity). In this instance players have the ability to actually fight the ability blockage instead of being forced into it.

 

That's the thing, though - being able to instantly kill everything completely ruins any potential influence that such new and interesting enemy types can have on player tactics.

 

If its ability needs to be activated, I can and will kill it before it ever gets the chance to activate it, no matter how powerful the ability, whether by gun or by ult.

Passive abilities? Gun 'em down. How long does an Osprey or Toxic Ancient survive in your matches? Because usually it's impossible to tell who killed it because everyone instantly fired off their supercharged guns at it the moment they saw it.

 

You can't reduce the effectiveness of an ult unless you:

A) Prevent it from being used, or

B) Protect most or all of the enemies in the area from being affected

 

Even if an enemy had the insanely powerful passive abilities tailored to do so, non-ult abilities would suffer massively, and its very existence would be a big red bullseye. And if any enemy tries to protect it with shields or bullet attractor or whatever, it's going down first.

 

Even if there's a makeup of enemy units that can suppress or shield from abilities AND shield the anti-ability guy from gunfire for more than 5 seconds, they'd need to be in literally every group of enemies to reliably suppress usage of ults.

 

And everyone will continue to steamroll ahead.

 

I'd like it if enemy variety alone could fix the balance issues, but I doubt it could.

My entire argument is based on the observation that I regularly wipe out any significant group of enemies before they have a chance to use any special ability, whether by gun or by ult, and I stand by that.

 

You can't stop a player from rushing in guns blazing just by occasionally having a few enemies that make it harder to do so.

You need to make it so players are inherently unable to instagib every interesting enemies they encounter (without just making them all bullet sponges) to make a challenging, interesting Hard Mode a reality.

 

energy scarcity is already in the game, its called wave 10+ defense lol

 

I always find myself at full energy and knee-deep in uncollected energy spheres at Wave 10 or 15 (or 25 when I can muster the patience), even in Palus or Outer Terminus. All it takes is conservative use of ults, and ideally one or more teammates that can also toss out an ult every now and then, to get more energy orbs than you spend; Streamline / Energy Syphon are just icing on the energy surplus cake. Hence this topic.

[CloudPies]

- Significantly increasing base energy cost for "ult" class skills to 150~200, and halving Streamline's effect (so you only get a 2.5~15% energy cost reduction). Some tentative numbers:

  200 energy: Miasma, World on Fire, Crush, Overload, Avalanche, Sound Quake, Vortex, Chaos

  150 energy: Rhino Stomp, Radial Javelin, Radial Disarm, Blade Storm, Bastille, Snow Globe

  100 energy: Blessing, Absorb (lol)

MAX ENERGY AT RANK 30 (unmodded):

Miasma (Saryn): 150

World on Fire (Ember): 150

Crush (Mag): 150

Overload (Volt): 150

...

and so forth.

You're suggesting their skills should cost more than the maximum energy they could have on their frame if not equipped with a flow mod. So either you expect nobody should be able to cast anything unless they have maxed their frame AND acquired the Flow mod, or you're pulling numbers out of thin air.

If you want to gimp yourself to make it more "fun", go mod-less. If you want to spoil someone else's fun, kindly kiss my shapely posterior.

Edited June 16, 2013 by CloudPies

[Caiman]

You're suggesting their skills should cost more than the maximum energy they could have on their frame if not equipped with a flow mod. So either you expect nobody should be able to cast anything unless they have maxed their frame AND acquired the Flow mod, or you're pulling numbers out of thin air.

If you want to gimp yourself to make it more "fun", go mod-less. If you want to spoil someone else's fun, kindly kiss my shapely posterior.

 

Like I said, the numbers are tentative, and yes, I pulled them out of thin air - my ideal would have been to effectively halve the maximum cast frequency for the most powerful abilities, and I overestimated the unmodded-rank-30 energy pool. 150 might be fine for frames other than Ember/Banshee/Vauban (225 max energy rank 30 unmodded, btw), but only in combination with reduced energy drops.

 

But as a general statement, Modded Rank 30 is a perfectly fine target to balance against, since we're talking about a Hard mode. Something to do after you're pretty much too powerful to be challenged by normal content, and would need to "gimp yourself" and let half the things you spent the game working towards rot on a virtual shelf for being too good if you want to set yourself up for a decent challenge in normal mode (also, try to find a less juvenile/ableist word next time).

 

Also, I didn't think I'd actually have to point this out, but I'm making suggestions for a "Hard" mode, not a nerf. All those caps to emphasize that I'm talking about an alternative Thing that would exist in addition to normal gameplay. I'm not spoiling anyone's fun with harder options. If you have a suggestion of your own for making the game challenging for a Hard mode without "spoiling your fun" - challenging for an endgame frame that can wipe rooms on a whim due to the game's mechanics - by all means, post it. Until then, have "fun" aiming with your radar instead of your reticule. It got old quick for me.

[Synxxx]

The problem isn't ults, snow globe, or even chaos; it's the awful AI. When you have AWFUL AI there's really not much you can do to make enemies more challenging besides just making them huge bullet sponges, ramping up their damage to ridiculous levels, or artificially gimping players like you suggested. None of those "fixes" are any fun for players, and their current strategy of over-saturating the game with stagger/knockdown spamming enemies instead of completely re-working the AI has already worn thin.

[OoKeNnEtHoO]

I prefer enemies that have better AI and mechanics than bullet sponges.

 

By gimping ourselves and making weapons and skills harder to use, we simply are just dragging out the fights.

 

It's difficult, yes. Challenging, no.

 

The same strategy of modding out your weapons to have the "highest possible DPS and modding your frames to have the highest survivability possible" will still apply and there will still be no skills required, just number-crunching and min-maxing.

 

Thus, I have to disagree with you.

 

 

 

On a side note:

 

Creating a challenging enemy does not require the enemy to have high survivability at all.

 

Look at Lech Krill, just the first phase only, you can have the highest DPS weapon but still can't damage him if you don't have the skill to aim and shoot him at his weakspot on the back and then trick him into freezing himself.

 

Krill is by far the ONLY enemy that has had an improvement via improvement in mechanics and maybe a little AI (actually not much AI, he seems to still be somewhat dumb - eg. shooting at the Snowglobe a Frost pulls out for a pretty long time and not just charging in to score a hammer hit as soon as he realizes shooting just doesn't work).

 

The Stalker is also an interesting enemy since Tenno powers don't work against him so you can mod your frame to be the highest DPS in terms of skills (spells) and still lose if your gun play skills are just bad.

 

However, he isn't really a good example though since he is just your regular bullet sponge so "modding out your weapons to have the highest possible DPS and modding your frames to have the highest survivability possible" will still means you beat him.

Edited June 16, 2013 by OoKeNnEtHoO

[Caiman]

The problem isn't ults, snow globe, or even chaos; it's the awful AI. When you have AWFUL AI there's really not much you can do to make enemies more challenging besides just making them huge bullet sponges, ramping up their damage to ridiculous levels, or artificially gimping players like you suggested. None of those "fixes" are any fun for players, and their current strategy of over-saturating the game with stagger/knockdown spamming enemies instead of completely re-working the AI has already worn thin.

 

I'm not suggesting energy scarcity alone would solve all the problems. But it would be a hell of a lot easier to balance the game if you didn't have to account for players routinely erasing everything on the map whenever things get even slightly inconvenient.

 

Smarter AI won't protect them, because they can't "protect" themselves from existing within 15m of my frame unless they hide in the locker room and hope I didn't bring Enemy Radar.

 

Only outright immunity or near-immunity to ults and Chaos/Bastille can stop entire rooms of enemies from being neutralized on the cheap - and how is making a skill outright useless any fun at all?

 

Better limit how often you can use these skills (while leaving other skills untouched) than indirectly nerf them.

 

Creating a challenging enemy does not require the enemy to have high survivability at all.

 

Look at Lech Krill, just the first phase only, you can have the highest DPS weapon but still can't damage him if you don't have the skill to aim and shoot him at his weakspot on the back and then trick him into freezing himself.

 

That's immunity to abilities (not to mention guns). If enemies like that were the norm, all abilities would be devalued and effectively nerfed to dust - except maybe Decoy, Invis and the like. And if Kril were a standard mob with 1000-2000 hp and no special ability/mind-ability immunity, he would still be instantly neutralized by Chaos, Miasma, Bastille...

 

_____

 

FFS people, please don't respond with a rephrasing of "we just need better AI / enemy variety" if you haven't given 2 seconds thought to the actual implications and results of improving enemy AI / adding enemy variety if ults are left alone.

 

It sounds nice, and really "improve AI/variety instead of reducing player capabilities" is a nice rule of thumb for game design in general, but it WILL. NOT. WORK IN THIS SPECIFIC SITUATION. If you don't somehow limit the ability to vaporize every other room you walk through, it just will not change anything.

 

_______________

 

Also, are you suggesting it's "unfun" to simply limit how often you can use ults in a perfectly organic manner? How did you even slog through the ult-less early-mid game? Did you start with a Mag and get power-leveled in Kiste until you could rattle off Crushes on your own?

Edited June 16, 2013 by Caiman