Power Immunity: A Development Crutch that Needs to Go Away

[TARINunit9]

Um, Simaris Targets, last I checked, have no power immunity whatsoever. Cast Well of Life on them once, and they're stuck there more than long enough to scan them

[PopGligor]

1 minute ago, TARINunit9 said:

Um, Simaris Targets, last I checked, have no power immunity whatsoever. Cast Well of Life on them once, and they're stuck there more than long enough to scan them

Well of life is an odd power, it seems to overwrite some immunities. I used it and will continue to use it to scan kavats. I found them to be ignoring many of my CCs. Even EV wouldn't put them in place. But Well of Life puts them to sleep, which is odd. They get suspended in the air for a sec, then glitch out and fall sleeping on the floor for the skill's duration.

[CrudShuzKong]

3 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

And this is the problem with Power Immunity. Not that it makes things more challenging. It demonstrably FAILS to do that. No. It makes things UTTERLY REPETITIVE. It sets up situations where very few frames and/or weapons are viable, or where some things are so strictly superior they become ideal. And then you repeat the same experience - the same EXACT experience - over and over again.

Thank you for putting this into words.

[Genitive]

I agree with the OP. That being said, I wouldn't have a problem with nullification if it was done right. What is right in my opinion? Isolator Bursas, who shoot their small nullifying projectiles. They are dodgeable and not immune to damage. I also don't have that big a problem wioth Combas because they don't spawn that often and you can shoot the helmet to remove their powers. 

But nullifiers? They should go. Their mechanics is outdated, tedious and annoying. Rendering powers useless is one thing, but weapons shouldn't suffer from that. On top of that bubbles obstruct view, which makes nullies even more frustrating to play against.

Also, spawning on top of you in a void fissure mission. No fun.

Edited July 28, 2016 by Genitive

[ProfessorLitmus]

I can't remember where I heard it but didn't the devs say that one of the things about dark sector that they didn't like was that they were forced to take out all the space magic and turn it into a third person cover shooter? because it looks to me like they are just doing the same to warframe with all the power immunity they keep introducing for enemies. 

Edited July 25, 2016 by ProfessorLitmus
incomplete sentence

[Mr.Lube]

I've made a post about the two sides of balance and come up with a "solution" from my perspective anyway.

It would help a lot of people could read it over and point out any flaws in my theory/idea so we can come up with a solution that works and keeps the majority happy.

P.S. Sorry Merc for the "self promo", I just felt it would be a bit much to write this all in a comment.

[(PSN)mr_chainsaw555]

1 hour ago, BAD9eR said:

and yet we don't see you offering intelligent discourse. Only memes and trolling ;)

because there isn't really a problem here to begin with, at least, not a very high priority one

nullifiers can be annoying (but nothing a full-auto weapon or a fast frame can't deal with), but they are a necessary evil, mainly for the reason that a vast majority of their units aren't exactly that hard to kill, and fits with the corpus theme of being a greedy AF corporation with brilliant minds in their R&D department, whose main tactic is use their advance tech and robotics to overpower the enemy, besides, this is war, if the tenno won't fight fair, why should they?

as for power immune capture targets, dude, if they weren't immune to warframe CC powers, they'll be flat on their butt faster than they could say "NOT YOU NOT YOU!", at least faster than they do now 

[Bibliothekar]

4 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Our powers cant slow these mysterious, magic identikit enemies with their blue glow...but this tiny little trap sure can.

Actually, that's not true. Synthesis targets have no immunity to abilities. I've used Well of Life as a poor man's trap multiple time, mind controlled them, accidentally poisoned them ...

4 hours ago, Momaw said:

Power immunity exists because players are too powerful.

Well, but who's fault is it this? DE chose to gave us corrupted and primed mods which double power strength (or weapon damage) or add enough range to affect the entire map - and make it last (almost) forever. And instead of saying "okay, that didn't work out" and toning down those mods or taking them away again, they decided to make enemies that are pure cheese.

 

[Futurehero]

What every single one of these threads boils down to (prove me wrong)

-I want the game to be more easy so I can get all the stuff faster.

-When I get all the stuff, I'll stop playing , or complain on the forums that the game is too easy , or I ran out of content.

 

[(PSN)The_Moustache]

If we could just shoot through the bubble, then Nullifiers wouldn't be as annoying.

[DeMonkey]

1 hour ago, Futurehero said:

What every single one of these threads boils down to (prove me wrong)

-I want the game to be more easy so I can get all the stuff faster.

-When I get all the stuff, I'll stop playing , or complain on the forums that the game is too easy , or I ran out of content.

 

Prove that you're correct first, then we'll see about refuting you.

Since you can't actually prove anything, why don't you simply refrain from posting and making yourself look like a fool. Cheers.

[KirukaChan]

I get what you're saying, OP. And I'm glad DE is dropping a hotfix today that's going to change Void Fissures. When the Fissures first came out, and there were Nullifiers spawning on top of me, you know what I did? Every time?

Picked Inaros (he doesn't need powers to tank), brought Supra (for high fire rate, decent damage and tons of ammo) along with its Augment (for big AoE damage that still fires off even if I'm inside a bubble), and Radiation damage (to proc Radiation in case the Nullifier is linked with an Ancient Healer). There was no reason for me to bring anything else.

[(PSN)Lord_Gremlin]

6 hours ago, DeccanTraps said:

Right there with you, its like watching a bad DM try to fix a Monty haul D&D game.

And it really breaks my immersion. We are Tenno! We are meant to be titans, the slayers of empires! baptized in the cold and light-less flame of the void itself.
We are meant to be the unstoppable enemy, the unbeatable killers. Something the Orokin never fully understood nor controlled hammered into a weapon against the greatest foe the origin system has ever seen before the bloody hilt slipped their grips and we ended them in turn.

We were so potent that just the detritus of our deaths could be wrought into something like the Zanuka.

And I have to wonder why exactly? I mean its pretty clear that the Corpus can turn off those empire slaying void powers as easily as I turn off a light.

Oh lore wise it's an absolute nightmare. Orokin had robots and technology vastly superior to Corpus. And Orokin got absolutely destroyed by tenno. Around ps4 launch year only 2 enemies could dispel warframe powers - stalker and zanuka. Mysterious assassin who could do what no other enemy could and a Frankenstein warframe monster that could do what no ordinary enemy could and possessed massive danger. You know, that's why zanuka lore made sense. It was an entity that could dispell warframe powers, most dangerous project ever.

Honestly, I'd prefer power nullification completely gone. Nullifiers are just bullet shields and comba/scrambas jam weapons. Power nullification hurts overall game impression. It should be something only stalker, zanuka and some big time sentient boss character can do.

Oh my lore... Like, why grineer can build a disruptor drone when they don't know what tenno powers are?

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

Capture missions are an interesting problem.  On one hand if they allow me to use molecular prime the mission is trivialized on the other hand if the target is power immune I am trivialized.  Having played both versions of the mission I find the non-immune targets more fun, not out of any sort of challenge but because it's fun doing bad things to them.  Using atlas to falcon punch them across the room was hilarious.  Now that they are power immune I can't do anything evil or interesting to them anymore.  They also are not any harder because I just use frost's freeze which still works because it inflicts a non power based status effect and then just burst them down.  It's the same thing just not fun.

Am I missing the point of capture missions?  Before capture missions were about choosing a kit that that effectively let you disable and capture the target.  What do you even need to kit for now in capture missions?  I use frost, but it's not necessary, nor is speed despite what OP says.  All you really need is a high fire-rate weapon in case they are a nullifier target and you just shoot em.  There is no strategy.

My solution?  Change capture missions, and reenable powers.  Make the mission about shackling the target rather than killing him which you must do three or four times.  After each shackle the target casts dispel and becomes more power RESISTANT(meaning the power strength and power duration of the skills used on the target are reduced, you could say the shackles interfere with void powers).  Shackles are applied by using special capture target only finisher attacks which can only be used when the target is under half health and in a finisher state.  These special finishers do not require a melee weapon.  The target goes back to full health after each shackle.  If they player does not bring a frame that can induce finisher states then dropping the target's health to 20% will induce a finisher state.  If the player misses the window of opportunity then the target will dispel, be healed to 30%, and resume fleeing.  If capture missions were changed like this then my powers would be respected, the target would not be a pushover, and there would be a point in bringing a specialized kit.

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

5 minutes ago, KirukaChan said:

There was no reason for me to bring anything else

That is the exact problem with nullifiers.

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

1 hour ago, Futurehero said:

What every single one of these threads boils down to (prove me wrong)

-I want the game to be more easy so I can get all the stuff faster.

-When I get all the stuff, I'll stop playing , or complain on the forums that the game is too easy , or I ran out of content.

 

All your reply proves is that you don't read the comments of others.  Nullifiers are broken because players must kit specifically for nullifiers and nothing else.  Bosses are not even that restrictive.  I am complaining because I can't use snipers or bows without dragging my team down since I'm usually the responsible one who preemptively hunts down nullifiers.

[RealPandemonium]

14 minutes ago, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

All your reply proves is that you don't read the comments of others.  Nullifiers are broken because players must kit specifically for nullifiers and nothing else.  Bosses are not even that restrictive.  I am complaining because I can't use snipers or bows without dragging my team down since I'm usually the responsible one who preemptively hunts down nullifiers.

I never kit around Nullifiers.  If I don't have high RoF weapons i jump in and melee them.  

If anything, high RoF weapons are too good against them.  I would nerf high RoF weapons (lower minimum damage) and buff slow-firing weapons (increase maximum damage) so that there isn't such a crazy disparity.

[Borg1611]

I think they need to consider alternatives to adding challenge that don't involve complete immunity to all abilities or the removal of our buffs/constructs. 

One thing that can increase challenge is to scale enemy accuracy and even perhaps firing rate and movement speed a bit. It wouldn't have to scale infinitely obviously, but say it goes up gradually and caps at some level on level 100+ mobs. 

Things like frost bubbles and other barriers can be countered by a combination of improving the AI and having diminishing returns. IE: mobs see you in a frost bubble, at higher difficulties they start to act more intelligently to counter this. Instead of shooting at it helplessly forever, higher level enemies will start to realize that's futile and charge into the bubble to shoot you. The knock out effect can have a diminishing return, possibly as strict as: you can knock them out once and then those particular units become immune to the knock out of re-casting the bubble (or X seconds of CC immunity as described below in the CC hard cap idea). 

Volt's shield could potentially be given a health value and remove the energy cost of moving while holding it. 

Hard cc could be given diminishing returns or a hard cap on duration. A hard cap could be something like mobs level 20-29 can only be cced for 10 seconds max, 30-39 8 seconds, 40-49 5 seconds 50+ 3 seconds (just making up example numbers). Effects that do other things and CC could still effect the mob continuing to do damage or restore energy or debuff them in some way or whatever else they do, the CC portion of the effect would simply be suppressed after the max duration and then the mob would be granted temporary CC immunity. Maybe 5 seconds of immunity (just immunity to CC, nothing else)? That might be too long at really high levels though, it could be a shorter immunity. While immune to CC snares and attack speed reductions could also be suppressed or reduced to a max of some lower % (IE: during CC immunity slows will only slow by up to 25%, negative duration nova wouldn't be affected by this since that's essentially a buff to mobs). 

After all these changes they also will then need to address EHP of many frames as most are too fragile to survive outside of "overpowered" immunities and CC. They can also remove nullifier bubbles from the game, or nerf them so that they are essentially just a silence bubble that does not remove any buffs or constructs or grant immunity to warframe powers. 

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

54 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

I never kit around Nullifiers.  If I don't have high RoF weapons i jump in and melee them.  

That entails unnecessary risk.  The number of people who die doing that is ridiculously high.  Not to be confrontational but I don't revive people who die in such a way because I want to discourage them from taking such a risk in the first place.  I am not saying you personally can't rush stacked nullifier bubbles with multiple bombards and eximuses hiding under the shields and get away alive every time.  I am saying that most competent player's can't do that and live every time.  For me personally it's not an option because I usually use toggle abilities or long duration buffs with energy conversion so needing to find a new energy orb and recast every time a nullifier shows up is not viable.

Edited July 25, 2016 by (PS4)Final_Dragon01

[BlackCoMerc]

2 hours ago, Borg1611 said:

I think they need to consider alternatives to adding challenge that don't involve complete immunity to all abilities or the removal of our buffs/constructs. 

One thing that can increase challenge is to scale enemy accuracy and even perhaps firing rate and movement speed a bit. It wouldn't have to scale infinitely obviously, but say it goes up gradually and caps at some level on level 100+ mobs. 

Things like frost bubbles and other barriers can be countered by a combination of improving the AI and having diminishing returns. IE: mobs see you in a frost bubble, at higher difficulties they start to act more intelligently to counter this. Instead of shooting at it helplessly forever, higher level enemies will start to realize that's futile and charge into the bubble to shoot you. The knock out effect can have a diminishing return, possibly as strict as: you can knock them out once and then those particular units become immune to the knock out of re-casting the bubble (or X seconds of CC immunity as described below in the CC hard cap idea). 

Volt's shield could potentially be given a health value and remove the energy cost of moving while holding it. 

Hard cc could be given diminishing returns or a hard cap on duration. A hard cap could be something like mobs level 20-29 can only be cced for 10 seconds max, 30-39 8 seconds, 40-49 5 seconds 50+ 3 seconds (just making up example numbers). Effects that do other things and CC could still effect the mob continuing to do damage or restore energy or debuff them in some way or whatever else they do, the CC portion of the effect would simply be suppressed after the max duration and then the mob would be granted temporary CC immunity. Maybe 5 seconds of immunity (just immunity to CC, nothing else)? That might be too long at really high levels though, it could be a shorter immunity. While immune to CC snares and attack speed reductions could also be suppressed or reduced to a max of some lower % (IE: during CC immunity slows will only slow by up to 25%, negative duration nova wouldn't be affected by this since that's essentially a buff to mobs). 

After all these changes they also will then need to address EHP of many frames as most are too fragile to survive outside of "overpowered" immunities and CC. They can also remove nullifier bubbles from the game, or nerf them so that they are essentially just a silence bubble that does not remove any buffs or constructs or grant immunity to warframe powers. 

Some solid suggestions here that are well worth considering. Diminishing Returns for CC are something I have also thought of as an alternative. Never considered having enemy level affecting it, though, that is an interesting idea.

I understand the devs cannot offer real challenge while we have these sorts of abilities. On the other hand...turning off all the tools that make this game unique is simply not fun or enjoyable. Nor a good idea for the brand that is Warframe.

One more radical idea to consider: Use incentives to get people to play other ways.

Dont want players rampaging through maps while spamming CC? How about an XP bonus for any mission where you used your Warframe powers LESS than 5 times. The fewer instances of dependence on powers, the larger the XP bonus, with the XP bonus capping for those who never used powers all mission long. This could be one of several modifiers players choose or it could simply be one of several passive bonuses available to missions. 

Other incentives that come to mind: 

Never set off alarms

Never detected

Small XP bonus per melee kill, as a reward for killing silently and wading into the melee to begin with

Small XP bonus for not using Ultimates

Basically...the more you challenge yourself, the better bonus rewards you receive after any mission. This would also serve to put those "Git gud, dont depend on powers, I can do X hours in a T15 Survival with Nekros and a wet noodle" players on notice. You dont need powers? Fine. Here's some incentive for not using them. Screen shots please.

But all jokes aside, this would offer players incentive to challenge themselves and avoid power spam.

Another tactic: Balance all your missions around 2-4 frames, with maxed "Core" mods. Test all missions with a group that uses only the core, basic mods: Intensify, Continuity, Stretch, etc. Dont use any Corrupted or Primed mods in the testing of anything but Raids and Sorties. If its on the Star Map, its not SUPPOSED to be balanced around end game gear and loadouts. So stop doing it. 

Will some people complain about the game being too easy? Sure they will. But they will also complain about the mandatory mods they think they  NEED to add to their gear, like Overextended on Nyx, Loki and Oberon; Narrow Minded on Mesa. Will they complain about a lack of challenge? Sure they will. But they still complain about that now, against level 100 enemies in Sorties. 

Balance star map content for reasonably leveled frames and not end game gear. (Hint: Nullifiers should not be a star map enemy, even if you DO leave them in the game long team - which you shouldnt) because max efficiency power spam shouldnt be something you plan on or balance around for Star Map content. 

[BlitzkriegBob]

On 25/07/2016 at 5:45 PM, Zyrgi said:

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.

 ^ This is pretty much how I feel about nullifiers.

-"Ho, look, we created something to block Tenno powers and stop bullets as well!"

-"Perfect! Just build plenty and give them to some random guys, while we will leave our officers and planet bosses with only their underwear on!"

 

On a more serious note: I think nullifiers should be given the same treatent as eximus units. They should be heavy, slow moving units, and with a low spawn rate, on par with eximus, to reflect how special they are. we should not bump into three of then in the same alleyway. I really think their presence make sense: fighting technology with more technology, so on. And on a gameplay point of view, I think also it makes sense to have an ennemy able to bypass our powers. I just think it's poor and annying design to have a mere random crewman (Ok, he got a sniper riffle, so let's call him Paul Lanka) to handle such a magic device that protects from pretty much anything expect one meter of sharp metal slapped directly in the face. If this magic backpack is so common that we can give to anyone, so why not include in the base pack of every single soldier? And also Officers/heavies? And also Bosses? Pretty much everyone in the Corpus Faction?

Another design issue I was thinking about: this equipment is simply always on. What about making it switched off by default (on unalerted state), then upon alert the guy turns it on, and then off again when returning to unalerted state. Well, that's just for the sake of infiltration gameplay, and it gives another solution to get rid of those guys, in addition to run-and-gun or run-and-slap.

 

Edit: typo.

 

Edited July 26, 2016 by BlitzkriegBob

[RealPandemonium]

19 hours ago, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

That entails unnecessary risk.  The number of people who die doing that is ridiculously high.  Not to be confrontational but I don't revive people who die in such a way because I want to discourage them from taking such a risk in the first place.  I am not saying you personally can't rush stacked nullifier bubbles with multiple bombards and eximuses hiding under the shields and get away alive every time.  I am saying that most competent player's can't do that and live every time.  For me personally it's not an option because I usually use toggle abilities or long duration buffs with energy conversion so needing to find a new energy orb and recast every time a nullifier shows up is not viable.

One of the biggest problems with WF's playerbase at the moment is that they refuse to take risks and stay in their safe space, coddled by powers and overkill weapons.  There are too many pampered cowards who avoid challenge at every turn and always take the easy way out, afraid to risk losing their rewards or perhaps just afraid of not being validated in general.  This takes the camaraderie out of the game and has kind of ruined the groove of public matches for me and many others.  When the rewards become more important than the gameplay itself, Warframe loses what makes it special and worth playing.  If DE can implement more mechanics that encourage players to step outside their comfort zones, I'm all for it.  

[(PSN)Del-ProdigyT]

They have to address the ability to spam ultimate's along with power immunity.  Power immunity exists because we eventually can just spam abilities that started out as costly.  I'm not surprised looking at a stream knowing what I'm capable of that the players with everything are finding the game boring.  I kinda don't want to work on my lens or towards arcanes because then I'll just find everything too easy.  I wish there was more true gun variety for tackling the higher levels then the soma.  The soma is just so much better then everything its frustrating to bring others guns vs level 60+ plus stuff to me.  Its so painfully obvious just reading the stats and understanding critical hit damage.  I hate critical hit damage I swear not one game developer has been able to balance this stat in any game period, it always results in stagnant balance where high crit chance builds rule or the norm  becomes everyone has massive critical chance level.  Powercreep powercreep powercreep can't anyone try to avoid this?

I see the balance problem being a combination of poor gun balance to encourage variety vs higher level foes, prompt up by ability spam to bring other weapons which then forces the concept of power immunity to make the game challenging in the face ability spam.  So in short they need to balance the gun variety first then remove this infinite energy along with nullfiers and go from there.  In no other game would spamming your best global ability be considered acceptable skilled gameplay.  Watching frost players spam avalanche is humbling in not wanting to keeping pushing forward.  That's not good gameplay its not interesting to watch or do.  If they balance the guns better first it will be fun for everyone moving forward before the necessary nerfs hit.

Edited July 26, 2016 by (PS4)Del-ProdigyT

[Bibliothekar]

59 minutes ago, (PS4)Del-ProdigyT said:

They have to address the ability to spam ultimate's along with power immunity.  Power immunity exists because we eventually can just spam abilities that started out as costly.

And why can we do that? Because of stupid decisions like Fleeting Expertise and Primed Flow ... They didn't have to give us mods that pump our energy pool to 600+ and allow us to cast abilities at a quarter of their cost at the same time. If it also makes Nullifiers go away, I'd happily give those mods back to them.

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

4 hours ago, RealPandemonium said:

One of the biggest problems with WF's playerbase at the moment is that they refuse to take risks and stay in their safe space, coddled by powers and overkill weapons.  There are too many pampered cowards who avoid challenge at every turn and always take the easy way out, afraid to risk losing their rewards or perhaps just afraid of not being validated in general.  This takes the camaraderie out of the game and has kind of ruined the groove of public matches for me and many others.  When the rewards become more important than the gameplay itself, Warframe loses what makes it special and worth playing.  If DE can implement more mechanics that encourage players to step outside their comfort zones, I'm all for it.  

You won't find me arguing for less challenge.  However nullifiers are not challenging at all so please take the 'Git gud' argument and go elsewhere.  All they do is limit our options and make the game seem more like a generic PvE shooter.

Did you read my initial post about capture missions?  There I detail a more interesting way to go about balancing our powers with enemies that we need to not be able to simply run over, but still respect that we have those powers. 

One of the reviewers who got back into Warframe after not playing it for 2 years said Warframe was all about the 'Rule of Cool.'  Please tell me how brainlessly rinsing down a giant flashing bubble with a Boltor is cool?

Loot and grind is part of the game.  There are only so many times you can run a t1s to 60 mins looking for a volt part before the magic wares off.  After that I'm not there for the novelty of the gameplay, I'm there for the part.  I'm glad DE changed the prime part grinding game play, but in doing so they also removed any reason to ever stay in a mission long enough to find real challenge.