Power Immunity: A Development Crutch that Needs to Go Away

[Misgenesis]

First we need to balance the cause, which is frames. Energy economy as well.

[Sneering_Viper]

Im Still pissed about that Bubble buff, 

From where on gods green earth did they get the idea that nullifiers arent annoying enough... we know lets supercharge their nulli-bubbles and make them the ultimate annoyance of the Tenno.

Doesnt even make sense lore -wise or any-wise for them to be able to cancel physical world powers like Frost and Limbo.

Limbo for the love of god doesnt even exist in the same dimension, why do nullifiers kick him out of the Rift?

Edited July 25, 2016 by Sneering_Viper

[DeMonkey]

21 minutes ago, Tymerc said:

Oh, another one of these threads. Nullifiers and other enemies capable of nullifying powers are fine. They're not hard to kill at all. 

Read the thread. The very first line is directed at you.

1 hour ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Disclaimer: This isnt a thread about Challenge. Real or perceived. If your immediate response is "but Nullifier/Comba/Scramba/Simaris Scans/Capture arent hard: please...take it elsewhere. I'm NOT claiming they ARE hard. So your auto response to these topics will in fact be off topic. Thanks. Seriously. 

 

[Circle_of_Psi]

3 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Read the thread. The very first line is directed at you.

 

I don't kown what's more Ironic, this hole topic, or the fact that OP made that disclaimer, telling that the Nullys are not hard, as off-topic, even tho the topic IS about them..

[BlackCoMerc]

34 minutes ago, Tymerc said:

Oh, another one of these threads. Nullifiers and other enemies capable of nullifying powers are fine. They're not hard to kill at all. 

I am afraid you completely missed the point of the thread.

Please read the OP. This is not and never was about whether the enemies are hard. Because we already KNOW that they ARE NOT hard. That is neither the issue nor the point of the discussion.

The point is they are unfun, and lead to extremely repetitive missions full of situations where we find ourselves doing the same thing every mission, every time. They are boring, repetitive and unfun. That they have also completely failed to introduce any semblance of the challenge they were intended to create is beside the point in this instance.

[Jukantos]

1 hour ago, LegionCynex said:

Just going to put, this as the TL,DR, if I was you OP, as alot of people won't read all of it. However all Im going to say is, there is no need to fix something, if its not broken, I have my share annoyances with Nullys, but they are understandable.

Edit: As "fixing it", as in what your pertty much disrupting is by removing the Nullys, from the game fully, as them it will make all warframes stupidily OP, even Mag OP, so hate to break it to you OP, but its not killing the fun, its quite the opposite 

Warframe is a game about being OP. It's a Power Fantasy game, it's THE power fantasy game. You get to go at scifi enemies with gigantic axes or shotguns or bows that toss them across the whole room. And changing the game to "be carefull and get out or get killed" was a huuuuuge mistake. Being able to (pardon my language) f*** s*** up in magnificent looking ways was one of the core selling points of the game. And this new approach of making things challenging by adding extra bullet sponginess in the form of golden bubbles while completely bypassing the power system that made warframe warframe in the first place (to stand out vs other third person action shooters like Orion or The Division) was a mistake.

I can pretty much only agree with OP that nullifiers arent fun. If anything they should be melee enemies and forced to charge at the player, instead they one-shot snipe with a bloody lanka across half the map which is clearly ridicolous for something that takes so much effort to take down (not to mention they COMPLETELY ruined bows, my favourite weapon to use in the game)

[BlackCoMerc]

14 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Read the thread. The very first line is directed at you.

 

Thanks again, Monkey!

[Circle_of_Psi]

11 minutes ago, Jukantos said:

-snip-

So, you want to endlessly kill everything in pertty much Godmode?, I agree with the OP, they do need "Fixing", due to they are slightly OP due to how fast they can spawn and the fact they can one shot you with their sniper-rifle. The Scrams and Cobra's on the other hand are nothing but a fly in the house. Removing them from the game whuold be pertty much allowing anyone to win the game without hesitation.

The Nully's and others are here to provide us some fun in the game and even annoyances , if something is too easy, or you have a OP power you can just go in and kill, and be done with the mission whuold be boring, I can not honestly see where this topic wishes to lead, The Nulls are here to stay, nothing more.

There is a few ideas I have in mind, that can keep the Nullys in, but make them more appropriate for the flow of the game 

Edited July 25, 2016 by LegionCynex

[Nurmetya]

A single nullifier or even two or three doesn't normally present much an issue itself its when the game goes full douchebag mode (usually the sorties) and stacks several on top of each other +  X number Ice eximus nullifiers (these guys just suck since you now have 2 seperate shields to chew through and a slowing effect that stacks with any other ice eximi sometimes dropping your movement speed into glaicial speeds) + any number of corpus units (usually consisting of several techs, ospreys and a random # of crewman) with it. That is where the fun goes to die... seriously I watch lots of players charge into crap like that and die horrible deaths cause myself and maybe the other two players aren't dumb enough to follow. Now I don't really want to see nullifiers removed they did get added to keep us from going all maniacal with our powers but they do need adjustments and less "fun murdering buffs" maybe apply the same mechanics that the comba and scrambus have, if you aren't sure what that is next comba you see steal his ugly lil' hat and watch what happens.....yeah thats right he'll lose his abilities to do whatever he had to stop/slow/generally be annoying to you.

[Shifted]

Nullifiers were created because we CAN spam our abilities 24/7, either with ridiculously overpowered efficiency mods, or energy restores.

They're a bandaid.

Same with armor scaling.

Sadly DE refuses to fix the problems at its' core, instead they just create those bandaids.

Edited July 25, 2016 by Shifted

[Zyrgi]

Only thing in support of your argument that I will mention, which is pretty humorous in an of itself is that Corpus while being advanced enough that they can manufacture portable equipment that nullifies tenno and their warframe's powers(probably the most powerful and influential faction in the known universe.) and are able to deploy thousands if not millions of units with such equipment, yet they are unable to equip their transportation and other vehicles of significance with them. It would only have made sense to equip the territory they already have in their control with such technology before wasting resources in disposable military units.

Not to mention what I have said time and time again, that Nullifiers totally break the game by making certain weapons inferior, block sight and generally ruin the fun of being a badass space-whatever. Comba and Scrambus might be fine as they don't make the warframe you're playing irrelevant every time you encounter them and don't favor certain types of weaponry.

[NinjaKitsune56]

1 hour ago, BlackCoMerc said:

So we get what we have now:

-Grineer: Constant knock down and grapple spam, and more bleeding than the Season Finale of ER. 

I like how you phrased that, heh heh...

But in regards to the rest of your post, I agree... There are 'Frames needing nerfs.

I can't say I agree overmuch on Loki, as irradiated or not, his Disarm won't stop the enemy from simply bludgeoning you to death if you get too close.

Vauban's Bastille isn't perfect, even with the repelling augment it can't stop everything... and if there're ranged enemies in the pile-up behind the energy net, expect to get shot.

Nova's Molecular Prime, 9 outta 10 times she's requested in recruitment, has been configured to speed enemies up, rather than slow them down, thus the Speed Nova permutation hasn't gone away since her initial release.

Nyx's Chaos is, again, imperfect. While it's effectively Irradiating Disarm with less disarming, the risk of getting shot up or bludgeoned to death is still a non-zero chance, whether you're too close or not.

Lastly, Frost's Avalanche... I can see having it switched over to a cone, but the power behind it isn't the be-all you're trying to portray. Even with a pure-Strength build, there are always enemies who survive even repeated castings of Avalanche.

[DeccanTraps]

Comba and scrambus at least feat like an attack! not 'Nully says no'.

Id far rather, I'll say it again, as I have before, an across the board rebalance.
Take a proper, holistic look, at frames, at damage, at weapons, mods and mobs.
With the end goal of Tenno having no powers so potent they need to be constantly denied to us,
Nor needing them to survive.
It'd amount to a whole other game, but it'd be a better, cooler game than what we have now.

[Pizzarugi]

Here's the problem: There's a reason nullifiers were added into the game as a means of countering warframes that use powers which can turn the entire fight around in their favor. If we were to remove them, something else would need to be done to still address the problem and why they were added in the first place.

I don't know about you folks, but given DE's habits of nerfing certain things into the ground, I'd rather keep the nullifiers over something that could be far more hampering.

[Kurnuttaja]

Im afraid nullifiers and all similar enemies are a necessary evil. People demanded for more challenge but are afraid of nerfs so DE went and added nullis, ability immunity is the only way to add challenge without nerfing anything.

[LSG501]

The 'nullifier' buff pretty much put me off playing corpus unless I have to (I like using nezha), it's not like they don't have sapping ospreys etc to 'lower our defences'.  I don't mind nullifiers stopping powers activating but deleting active ones is going too far. 

Then there's the bugged flame based grineer which are a pain in the *, the shield guy that has a shield made from some insane material that we bounce off and snipers that can fire bullets at right angles to the gun nozzel....

I don't mind the lack of ability affects on capture targets, would make it too easy although I do wish they would run a little slower at times, seriously when a warframe at 1.3 speed rating can't keep up with bullet jumping there's an issue in my view.... and at the same time my Sunika kubrow (the one to capture the target) can't keep up making it pointless to use.  

And then theres things like Helios, for some reason they're not allowed to give you dna scan, so what's the point of using Helios as it has no benefit to it over the carrier. 

Then there's events where the team is completely unbalanced in terms of skill/MR or high level mods meaning only one person really does the work as they're considerably more powerful than others.  (I'm a newer player for reference)

There's a LOT of things that need to be 'balanced' and it's not an easy job as in some cases it will mean adjusting warframe powers in a negative way (I don't want avalanche changing for example)

Mind you... I was under the impression that the tenno were supposed to be the 'ultimate' warrior etc so there shouldn't be anything that 'can't be beaten' with 'ease' (I'm not suggesting 1 shot everything)

 

Edited July 25, 2016 by LSG501

[BAD9eR]

2 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

I agree completely with this. In fact I just posted in another thread that I have a feeling a nerf hammer is coming for some frames around about Damage 3.0. I envision something like the following:

-Frost: (This one pains me): Avalanche will no longer Freeze over time. Or it will no longer deal damage. One of the two needs to go. I LOVE Frost Prime (a long time favorite frame, was Frost, even before the Prime version) so this is hard. But yeah...Avalanche is a game breaker. At the VERY least, it needs to have Radius removed and instead be a forward cone, which for an avalanche makes more sense. If this change were made, I could see it keep BOTH freeze and damage. 

-Loki: Dsiarm will become Radial Jam. Guns are jammed and melee enemies staggered briefly. Like a much better, more widely affecting version of Shooting Gallery. Irradiate will likely be replaced with something else, as it infringes on the territory of both Nyx AND Oberon. But it also makes sense for a Trickster frame.

-Nova: Molecular Prime will lose either its damage buff, or its Slow. One of the two. Probably the buff, but it could be the Slow down.

-Nyx: Chaos will once more become non-recastable while active. Affected enemies might or might not still have a small chance of disarm. Now, we will need to tactically keep affected enemies alive to interfere with new spawns, as opposed to this being just a glorified stun.

-Vauban: Bastille is not recastable. The radius is increased, and Repel is built in (as it should have been). The Augment now adds Razor Wire, to slash repelled and captured enemies while active. Or some such. Maybe electrified fence. 

 

Whatever happens - whether it bears any resemblance to the above or something else entirely - we NEED some frames nerfed. Because the simple fact is, Devs will always design enemy encounters for a "worst case" scenario when trying to add challenge. And right now, "Worst Case" is our shutting down the map COMPLETELY. For minutes on end. 

So we get what we have now:

-Corpus: Power Shut down around every corner, all the time

-Grineer: Constant knock down and grapple spam, and more bleeding than the Season Finale of ER. 

 

Like it or not, the Nerf hammer IS coming for some frames. And I am okay with that, because I want to PLAY the game, not watch it play itself. 

i really hope this dont come to pass ! were sick of our frames being nerfed . all these changes will surley kill the game ( unless a complete and total balance pass was made ?) and the fallout would make vivergate look like a teaparty , surley DE wouldnt alienate this may players at once ....... 

Edited July 25, 2016 by BAD9eR
lowered sodium level ;)

[Pizzarugi]

2 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

I agree completely with this. In fact I just posted in another thread that I have a feeling a nerf hammer is coming for some frames around about Damage 3.0. I envision something like the following:

-Frost: (This one pains me): Avalanche will no longer Freeze over time. Or it will no longer deal damage. One of the two needs to go. I LOVE Frost Prime (a long time favorite frame, was Frost, even before the Prime version) so this is hard. But yeah...Avalanche is a game breaker. At the VERY least, it needs to have Radius removed and instead be a forward cone, which for an avalanche makes more sense. If this change were made, I could see it keep BOTH freeze and damage. 

-Loki: Dsiarm will become Radial Jam. Guns are jammed and melee enemies staggered briefly. Like a much better, more widely affecting version of Shooting Gallery. Irradiate will likely be replaced with something else, as it infringes on the territory of both Nyx AND Oberon. But it also makes sense for a Trickster frame.

-Nova: Molecular Prime will lose either its damage buff, or its Slow. One of the two. Probably the buff, but it could be the Slow down.

-Nyx: Chaos will once more become non-recastable while active. Affected enemies might or might not still have a small chance of disarm. Now, we will need to tactically keep affected enemies alive to interfere with new spawns, as opposed to this being just a glorified stun.

-Vauban: Bastille is not recastable. The radius is increased, and Repel is built in (as it should have been). The Augment now adds Razor Wire, to slash repelled and captured enemies while active. Or some such. Maybe electrified fence. 

 

Whatever happens - whether it bears any resemblance to the above or something else entirely - we NEED some frames nerfed. Because the simple fact is, Devs will always design enemy encounters for a "worst case" scenario when trying to add challenge. And right now, "Worst Case" is our shutting down the map COMPLETELY. For minutes on end. 

So we get what we have now:

-Corpus: Power Shut down around every corner, all the time

-Grineer: Constant knock down and grapple spam, and more bleeding than the Season Finale of ER. 

 

Like it or not, the Nerf hammer IS coming for some frames. And I am okay with that, because I want to PLAY the game, not watch it play itself. 

I used to main Nyx until the lategame when she couldn't recast her chaos until its duration has ended first. It saddened me, because I loved her ability to turn enemies against each other and sometimes shoot at you every now and then. After the advent of irradiated disarm, I moved to Loki as he filled the role of chaos without being limited to recast only when the duration ended. Plus I got invisibility, so more survivability that Nyx didn't have. I was happy DE removed that limitation when they buffed Nyx as it means I can finally go back to playing her instead of limiting myself only to Loki.

These nerfs would just chase me away from both frames, because they're no longer filling the role of effectively making enemies attack each other rather than making players a top priority.

I'd rather keep nullifiers if it means i get to keep using disarm and chaos, thanks.

[Knightmare047]

2 hours ago, Etharien said:

I agree with more or less everything you have said in your post, except the narrowing of which weapons/frames are used to run the capture targets. People tend to run the most efficient frame/weapon for the job. If they don't, these design crutches won't really change their minds about what weapon/frame they bring. That being said, it's a big statement at the end saying, "fix it". But i ask you, how might you go about fixing it?

Regarding the capture missions, I kind of think that the mode needs a rework. After playing the Archwing's pursuit mode, I kinda wished that the capture targets behaved like the courier ships. Like dropping mines to slow down the Tenno which will force them to take slight detours, calling in reinforcements for protection, and most importantly, ACTUALLY moving quickly to escape. I also wouldn't mind if they had some form of resistance to abilities that still makes him a competent target to chase down. Capture missions, for the most part, just end up as a race to the extraction point since we usually capture the target in like, the first 2 or 3 rooms. And perhaps instead of teleporting them away instantly, we'd handcuff him and escort him to the extraction point while his allies either try to silence him, or try and take him back from the Tenno.

Edited July 25, 2016 by Knightmare047

[BlackCoMerc]

4 minutes ago, Pizzarugi said:

I used to main Nyx until the lategame when she couldn't recast her chaos until its duration has ended first. It saddened me, because I loved her ability to turn enemies against each other and sometimes shoot at you every now and then. After the advent of irradiated disarm, I moved to Loki as he filled the role of chaos without being limited to recast only when the duration ended. Plus I got invisibility, so more survivability that Nyx didn't have. I was happy DE removed that limitation when they buffed Nyx as it means I can finally go back to playing her instead of limiting myself only to Loki.

These nerfs would just chase me away from both frames, because they're no longer filling the role of effectively making enemies attack each other rather than making players a top priority.

I'd rather keep nullifiers if it means i get to keep using disarm and chaos, thanks.

This is a tough situation. Nullifiers are awful, truthfully. But so is being able to turn off conflict with enemies entirely. 

On the other hand...as someone else said...casting Chaos does not eliminate the risk of enemies still choosing you as the target. So that one may not be as much of an issue as, say, Disarm.

 

On another Note:

I want to talk about power immunity in general here. Its easy, therefore, to get sidetracking onto Nullifiers. Which I think most of us agree are uniformly awful. 

But what about the Immunity as a Crutch issue itself?

Want to make Capture more challenging? I know: Make targets power immune.

Simaris scanning? Make targets power immune.

How about Bosses? Power Immune.

Rathuum Enemies: Power Immune.

 

As a development strategy...its robbing Warframe of its very identity. None of our powers work reliably against the game's toughest content. When we need them the most, very thing that makes Warframe most unique...is useless. Its a non entity. 

Bosses, Capture, Scanning, Nullifiers and Rathuum arenas...ALL of these turn Warframe into nothing more than a generic shooter with a sci fi skin and some cool movement. 

At a time when most of the market is presenting some sort of sci fi shooter...is this really such a good idea?

[Maicael]

I gotta wonder the same as someone that posted on another of your threads:

Quote

it seems you have a certain quota of complaint threads to make on some unknown timescale

I mean, two very similar topics not even a week apart now?

I'm much more okay with Power Immunity than the way some enemies/bosses are in other games where there is literally only one thing you do at a specific time to trigger an environmental effect that damages them, or they're not only able to block, but also counter-attack against most of your moves (like Janissaries from Assassin's Creed: Revelations).

 

As for power "immunity" several of the ones you've listed are not "immune," but "resistant" instead as described in the Dev Workshop "Immunity Vs Resistance." I don't use the Kinetic Syphon Traps on Simaris targets, I use my powers to disable them. It doesn't last as long, but it's enough for me. Rathuum enemies also aren't immune. The number of Bladestorm Ashes I thought would make that clear enough, or the Ivara/Sleep Arrow/Covert Lethality tactic.

Edited July 25, 2016 by Maicael

[MokutoBunshi]

" Never mind that controller players CANNOT swap from the trap to the scanner in time, ever. As in, its a bug that makes doing so impossible "

I always play keyboard and mouse and STILL cant do it.

 

3 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

I agree completely with this. In fact I just posted in another thread that I have a feeling a nerf hammer is coming for some frames around about Damage 3.0. I envision something like the following:

-Frost: (This one pains me): Avalanche will no longer Freeze over time. Or it will no longer deal damage. One of the two needs to go. I LOVE Frost Prime (a long time favorite frame, was Frost, even before the Prime version) so this is hard. But yeah...Avalanche is a game breaker. At the VERY least, it needs to have Radius removed and instead be a forward cone, which for an avalanche makes more sense. If this change were made, I could see it keep BOTH freeze and damage. 

-Loki: Dsiarm will become Radial Jam. Guns are jammed and melee enemies staggered briefly. Like a much better, more widely affecting version of Shooting Gallery. Irradiate will likely be replaced with something else, as it infringes on the territory of both Nyx AND Oberon. But it also makes sense for a Trickster frame.

-Nova: Molecular Prime will lose either its damage buff, or its Slow. One of the two. Probably the buff, but it could be the Slow down.

-Nyx: Chaos will once more become non-recastable while active. Affected enemies might or might not still have a small chance of disarm. Now, we will need to tactically keep affected enemies alive to interfere with new spawns, as opposed to this being just a glorified stun.

-Vauban: Bastille is not recastable. The radius is increased, and Repel is built in (as it should have been). The Augment now adds Razor Wire, to slash repelled and captured enemies while active. Or some such. Maybe electrified fence. 

 

Whatever happens - whether it bears any resemblance to the above or something else entirely - we NEED some frames nerfed. Because the simple fact is, Devs will always design enemy encounters for a "worst case" scenario when trying to add challenge. And right now, "Worst Case" is our shutting down the map COMPLETELY. For minutes on end. 

So we get what we have now:

-Corpus: Power Shut down around every corner, all the time

-Grineer: Constant knock down and grapple spam, and more bleeding than the Season Finale of ER. 

 

Like it or not, the Nerf hammer IS coming for some frames. And I am okay with that, because I want to PLAY the game, not watch it play itself. 

I am okay with this.

 

]\'[

[Hemmo67]

i guess OP never played when u could lock down whole maps (not kidding) with 1 push of a button

^that is waaaaaaay too easy EVEN if we are these super-ninja-soldiers

[PopGligor]

1 hour ago, BlackCoMerc said:

The point is they are unfun, and lead to extremely repetitive missions full of situations where we find ourselves doing the same thing every mission, every time. They are boring, repetitive and unfun. 

How is removing their power immunity going to make them more interesting when the only interesting thing about them is their power immunity? Without it, they become generic enemies with slightly more HP. This power immunity forces you to engage the enemy in a *different* way than other enemies. That's all it is. I think Warframe has a huge issue with enemies - all of them require similar approach, and enemies themselves are not designed around current warframes' mobility. They can't keep up.

Compare Warframe's enemy design to a shooter like Serious Sam. Or even an action RPG like Diablo II - in Diablo, you had to prioritize. The game taught you this early on, introducing the shamans that would resurrect the demons you kill... Warframe doesn't really have this. The only exception is when a nullifier steps on the field and becomes immediate priority. Enemy design needs a serious rework.

[johndlnord]

Things will be fine. Put away the fixing tools and just give it a little push
DOWN THE BASEMENT FULL OF CORRUPTED ANCIENT HEALERS, MOEHAHAHAHAHA
...
You know, most of the times it isn't a matter of "you can't fight, "yo mamas lazy", or "this is spartarframe",
playstyles, as reasons, tend to differ for each and every one, although we're all seemingly playing the same game.
A few DEVstreams back there was talk about giving the players more choice as to how we play the game,
and there was something about expanding options for or on missions.
So, most likely soon(TM) we'll all be able to costumize the snickers out of most, if not every mission.
Everybody happy and on time for Married with Children.