Power Immunity: A Development Crutch that Needs to Go Away

[BlackCoMerc]

6 hours ago, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

Yes absolutely.  You have a good base for a damage 3.0 rework.  This would solve the issue of enemies one shotting us.

However, I do have a few suggestions.

I like most of this except that steel fiber, redirection, vitality are baked into the frames.  I like the idea we have to pay fusion cores in to something to get stronger.  It gave a nice sense of progression as I was leveling up.  Second, if we were just given these mods we would have to lose at least 2 mod slots to compensate.  I like being able to 'spend' tankiness on extra speed or stronger abilities.  If the mods are baked in loki will always be made of tissue paper where as now we can drop seven mods on loki to make him quite tanky.

Potentially being able to dodge every bullet fired at you would be a massive skill based evasion improvement.

I don't think there is a reason all abilities should effect all enemies in the same way.  Why not change disarm so that it disarmed trash mobs like lancers and snipers, but only jammed the weapons of larger targets.  Most trash enemies have very short lifespans so stripping their weapons would not be a big deal.  Most of the abilities could be left as they are if they were balanced by giving meaningful enemies resistance to power strength and duration.  So the mini bosses you mentioned would recover from chaos in a few seconds but the rest of the room would still be brainwashed for the entire duration.  The power strength reduction is mainly for nova so the slow is not as sever on important enemies and not frames with purely damage based abilities.

I like being able to use energy frivolously.  I would leave it as it is and adjust the resistance modifiers on non-trash enemies per ability counter any p4tw that occurs.  However if we had enemies that required special actions to kill, instead of ever growing bullet sponges, p4tw would not be a thing anyway.

This is where I really disagree with you.  I do like that you are going through an removing the cheese from enemies but if only the suggested changes were made all the enemies would be too similar and difficulty would be based almost entirely on effective HP, which would make everything that currently exists trash mobs.

Enemies should have four distinct classes: trash, elite, mini-boss, boss.

Trash enemies should always be weak compared to the tenno and provide no real threat.

Elite enemies should have a limited amount of power resistance and require special interaction to kill.  However the fight with an elite enemy should not last longer than about 5-10 seconds.

Mini-bosses should have more power resistance and require multi staged special interaction to kill.  Fights with mini bosses should last up from 20 seconds to 45 seconds.

Bosses are current bosses.

Nullifiers - Buffed and turned into a mini-boss as is appropriate for what they do.  They should never have been a trash mob to begin with.  Shield should be completely unbreakable and the nully should be damage immune while the shield is up.  The shield is powered by three dedicated ospreys under the shield.  We should have to parkor in and destroy the ospreys before we can get back out and down the shield.  Once the shield is down we have the option of destroying the shield generator before killing the nully itself.  Should use a supra to make it dangerous to go after ospreys while he is not reloading.

Bursas - Should be an elite class enemy.  The turn speed should be unnerfed and targets should be added to the front that temporarily disable the unit as the special interaction.  I like the stealth hack Idea.

Heavy Gunner - elite class enemy.  Has an ammo pack we can hit to downgrade the gun and a point on the back we can hit to strip armor.  Finishers will also strip armor.  Damage resistance while armor is still up is increased.

Bombard - elite class enemy.  Completely damage immune until we reflect a rocket back at him which strips armor.

Scorpion - Buffed and turned into a Mini-boss enemy.  Has near total damage immunity at the start of the fight.  Scorpion's grappling hook grabs a player and reels them before suspending them and starting to cut through the Warframe with a miter saw.  However, once hooked the player can shoot the grappling hook's winch to release the grapple.  Or melee when close enough for the same effect.  There are 5-6 different targets on the scorpion that stun the enemy and allow up to walk up and physically rip a plate of armor off the enemy.  Shooting the newly exposed area does more damage.  Ripping off more plates causes you to do more damage.

Napalm - elite class enemy.  Has high damage resistance.  Has 6 tanks of napalm that deal 1/6 of total hp for each one blown up.  Napalm tanks completely resist AOE damage.  Still hits through walls, but napalm blasts can be shot down.

Drahks and Heykkas - elite class enemies that hide and just keep summoning pets till we hunt their sorry behinds down.  Max 5 pets per unit.  Missing pets replaced every 10 seconds.

Ancients - elite class enemies.  Grapple is replaced with a grab that holds you in place.  You must shoot the ancient's arms or melee to release.  If you let the grab go on for too long the ancient one shots you by crushing your frame like a tin can.  Does not deal incremental damage.

Auras - Fine as is but should highlight enemies affecting you with an aura through walls.  Also there should be a way of disabling auras without needing to kill the unit.

I think your mini-bosses are too weak and too based on effective HP for difficulty.  Even the stalker in my book is currently only an elite enemy.  I like most of the characteristics but they need multistage special interaction so they are resistant to powercreep.  Couple examples of multistage special interaction are above.

You have some really good suggestions there. I understand your concern on frames, however, as long as we are able to straight up ADD power - whether its armor, health, shields, energy or power strength - without severe drawbacks, then power creep will continue, and we WILL end up right back here again, with late game almost completely unplayable - and utterly unenjoyable - except for a few CC frames. We dont need more of that.

As for enemies...sorry, but your over reliance on weak points and gimmicky hit-this-then-that game play is...tedious. It detracts from the fun far more than it adds to the challenge. I've been driven away from other games due to their reliance on gimmicks like hard to hit weak points and taking out small defenders to make mini bosses vulnerable. No thanks, and I will tell you why, so that I hope I dont come off as simply not wanting because I personally dont like it.

Mobs are simply too large for Nullifiers to require our killing off multiple, tiny ospreys under that bubble. Nullifiers are tragically bad, thoughtless design. This makes them worse. Likewise, hordes are too large for heavy gunners and others to have singular weak points we are required to hit. The game plays too fast and the mobs are too big, for these to be viable gimmicks in Warframe. Not to mention, there are hosts of people both on PC and console who have to play this game with controlllers - asking them to hit some weak point on numerous enemies would drive them away quickly (I would absolutely quit). 

Moreover...the numerous tiers of enemies simply dont work here. There are too many enemies, spawning and dying too quickly, for Loki players to keep track of which enemies are which tier. When you've got 50 enemies on screen, its not a good time to have to stop and figure out whether  enough of them are trash that your Disarm is a viable cast. You simply dont have time for this sort of thing in Warframe.

[Bibliothekar]

22 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Players: Redirection, Steel Fiber, Vitality and Intensify built into frames.

I have to agree with @(PS4)Final_Dragon01 here, that's not a very good idea. It takes away options from the player. At the moment, you can decide to either go "blank", with none of those mods, and throw in some utility mods like Maglev or the Drifts for example, or you can take just Vigor (like I do most of the time) or take Redirection/Vitality for maximum survivability. And depending on the frame, I might only go with one of those (my Mag has huge shields but only standard health, Ember is the other way around due to toxics).

[Bibliothekar]

17 hours ago, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

Bombard - elite class enemy.  Completely damage immune until we reflect a rocket back at him which strips armor.

Scorpion - [...] However, once hooked the player can shoot the grappling hook's winch to release the grapple.  Or melee when close enough for the same effect.  There are 5-6 different targets on the scorpion that stun the enemy and allow up to walk up and physically rip a plate of armor off the enemy.

Ancients - elite class enemies.  Grapple is replaced with a grab that holds you in place.  You must shoot the ancient's arms or melee to release.  If you let the grab go on for too long the ancient one shots you by crushing your frame like a tin can.

I feel like Warframe's horde mode is way too hectic for that kind of interaction. Even Mass Effect didn't do that, and there you had full control over your team and fought half a dozen enemies simultaneously at best. While those suggestions sound good on paper, I can assure you they'd be zero fun in actual missions.

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

8 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

You have some really good suggestions there. I understand your concern on frames, however, as long as we are able to straight up ADD power - whether its armor, health, shields, energy or power strength - without severe drawbacks, then power creep will continue, and we WILL end up right back here again, with late game almost completely unplayable - and utterly unenjoyable - except for a few CC frames. We dont need more of that.

As for enemies...sorry, but your over reliance on weak points and gimmicky hit-this-then-that game play is...tedious. It detracts from the fun far more than it adds to the challenge. I've been driven away from other games due to their reliance on gimmicks like hard to hit weak points and taking out small defenders to make mini bosses vulnerable. No thanks, and I will tell you why, so that I hope I dont come off as simply not wanting because I personally dont like it.

Mobs are simply too large for Nullifiers to require our killing off multiple, tiny ospreys under that bubble. Nullifiers are tragically bad, thoughtless design. This makes them worse. Likewise, hordes are too large for heavy gunners and others to have singular weak points we are required to hit. The game plays too fast and the mobs are too big, for these to be viable gimmicks in Warframe. Not to mention, there are hosts of people both on PC and console who have to play this game with controlllers - asking them to hit some weak point on numerous enemies would drive them away quickly (I would absolutely quit). 

Moreover...the numerous tiers of enemies simply dont work here. There are too many enemies, spawning and dying too quickly, for Loki players to keep track of which enemies are which tier. When you've got 50 enemies on screen, its not a good time to have to stop and figure out whether  enough of them are trash that your Disarm is a viable cast. You simply dont have time for this sort of thing in Warframe.

I disagree a bit because our health is static.  We don't get stronger after a point and game play could be balanced around that point assuming the usage of the two most beneficial mods for a frame out of those three.  We only have 8 slots so there is an opportunity cost to bringing any particular mod with you since it means you can't take a different mod.  The cost effectively becomes the mod you didn't take.  Besides we get one shot all the time anyway, so it is not like we are OP in that regard.  Redirection/vitality/steelfiber are not required mods in the same vain as serration.

I understand your concerns about enemies.  But how easy the target is to hit depends on the implementation.  I was imagining targets that were at least twice as easy to hit than the targets for General Ruk and with no invulnerability phase.  Also, it is not targets for the sake of hitting targets.  The napalm for example is essentially a walking set of explosive barrels.  Each one causes an awesome explosion damaging nearby enemies and staggering the unit.  And doing that still wouldn't be required since finishers would still deal armor penetrating finisher damage.  Also sub targets, even though I am partial to them, are only one type of special interaction and can be replaced with others.  I assume the one you liked the least was the bursa suggestion.  Instead the bursa could project a forward energy shield that we overload by shooting it which then disables the unit.  Once it is temporarily disabled we can keep shooting it from the front for half damage or in the back panel for the 3x multiplier like it is now.  I would not completely remove the subtargets as a special interaction, but It should be fine if they are on a few elites and mini-bosses.  That way it is occasional thing.

For the nullifier the design could be changed so that the larger osprey model was used.  That one is easy enough to hit.  Even then the only reason i suggested ospreys instead of standard crewmen is because it would be easier for the ospreys to always stay with the nully, so there are other options.  Also given that it is a mini-boss there would only ever be one, and other mobs could be changed to not seek out the shield for cover.  The size of the bubble could also be bumped up a bit to give you more room for hitting the or w/e is under the shield.

I didn't mention it in the original because the post was already too long but more or less every change I suggested was a substantial buff to the enemy in question.  Warframe was once a tactical shooter and it became a horde mode game over time.  The changes I suggested are specifically meant to move the game closer to a tactical shooter once more.  Fewer more challenging enemies is the goal.  So along with these changes the number of enemies we are fighting at once would need to be reduced.  Generally speaking a confrontation should involve quickly wiping out trash enemies to isolate an elite.  Complete the special interaction to kill the elite and move on.  Then on rare occasion there is a mini boss or two to fight.  High and mid level exterminates for example would need to be reduced to 40-60 enemies (30-45 trash, 8-15 elites, 1 mini-boss) per mission instead of the current 220+ nonsense we have right now because all the enemies are trash tier.  Elites should only be encountered once every tile or two and in very occasional groups of no more than three when on solo.  Similar reductions and proportions changes would need to be made to other mission as well.

Besides it would also always be worth it for loki to cast disarm since it would still have decent effect on all enemies, but it would just be a little less effective on a few.

There should never ever be 50 enemies on the screen, that is part of the problem we have now which contributes and CC spam and the existence of nullies.

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

1 hour ago, Bibliothekar said:

I feel like Warframe's horde mode is way too hectic for that kind of interaction. Even Mass Effect didn't do that, and there you had full control over your team and fought half a dozen enemies simultaneously at best. While those suggestions sound good on paper, I can assure you they'd be zero fun in actual missions.

This was meant to be part of the original post.

46 minutes ago, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

I didn't mention it in the original because the post was already too long but more or less every change I suggested was a substantial buff to the enemy in question.  Warframe was once a tactical shooter and it became a horde mode game over time.  The changes I suggested are specifically meant to move the game closer to a tactical shooter once more.  Fewer more challenging enemies is the goal.  So along with these changes the number of enemies we are fighting at once would need to be reduced.  Generally speaking a confrontation should involve quickly wiping out trash enemies to isolate an elite.  Complete the special interaction to kill the elite and move on.  Then on rare occasion there is a mini boss or two to fight.  High and mid level exterminates for example would need to be reduced to 40-60 enemies (30-45 trash, 8-15 elites, 1 mini-boss) per mission instead of the current 220+ nonsense we have right now because all the enemies are trash tier.  Elites should only be encountered once every tile or two and in very occasional groups of no more than three when on solo.  Similar reductions and proportions changes would need to be made to other mission as well.

I want to actively undercut the value of wide area CC so players will naturally choose other abilities.

[Mr.Lube]

On 7/25/2016 at 10:04 AM, 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. 

Changing a couple frames isn't going to solve the issue.

The problem isn't the ability themselves, but the how unrestricted we are in using them. Power efficiency has turned ultimates into passive abilities that you turn on in the beginning of the game and don't have to worry about them. I feel that power efficiency needs to go.

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

1 hour ago, Mr.Lube said:

The problem isn't the ability themselves, but the how unrestricted we are in using them. Power efficiency has turned ultimates into passive abilities that you turn on in the beginning of the game and don't have to worry about them. I feel that power efficiency needs to go.

That unfortunately is too big of a sacrifice of fun and cool at the alter of challenge and balance.  Warframe has become more fun as we have been able to use our abilities more.  Personally I love chaining wormholes, but I can only do that because of efficiency and Zenurick regen.  When Titania comes out I want to spend the entire mission in archwing because that is what I wanted since Zephyr.  Frivolous energy usage is a good thing.  I would hate to go back to the days where people only equipped and used a single ability.

Instead of killing efficiency and fun giving meaningful enemies power strength and duration reduction modifiers would be a much better solution.

[Mr.Lube]

35 minutes ago, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

That unfortunately is too big of a sacrifice of fun and cool at the alter of challenge and balance.  Warframe has become more fun as we have been able to use our abilities more.  Personally I love chaining wormholes, but I can only do that because of efficiency and Zenurick regen.  When Titania comes out I want to spend the entire mission in archwing because that is what I wanted since Zephyr.  Frivolous energy usage is a good thing.  I would hate to go back to the days where people only equipped and used a single ability.

Instead of killing efficiency and fun giving meaningful enemies power strength and duration reduction modifiers would be a much better solution.

The solution is not to only remove efficiency. That would suck. The solution is to give the players a bigger energy pool and an energy siphon-like passive, as well as remove efficiency. This wouldn't be such a dramatic change, but players would not be able to do the things they do right now. They would need to be more wary of how much energy they are using (which isn't saying much).

People would be encouraged to use an ability that costs less instead of always using their ultimate. Unlimited power may seem great, but all it does is hurt the game.

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

4 minutes ago, Mr.Lube said:

People would be encouraged to use an ability that costs less instead of always using their ultimate.

I'm not sold on that.  If I know I need to constantly stack snow globes or cast prime every every 20-30 seconds, I won't use energy for anything else since those are the roles of those frames.  It sounds unlikely your solution would allow me to fulfill my role and then do extra fun stuff, since the entire point of your change is to make it so frames can't do their jobs as well.  This will bring us back to the dark days of single ability Warframe.

12 minutes ago, Mr.Lube said:

Unlimited power may seem great, but all it does is hurt the game.

I disagree.  Pre-SoTR the only real challenge and rewarding activities were raids, sorties, and endless voids.  The real problem is that the only real difficulty is based on effective HP and nothing else.  This meant the missions were filled with bullet spongy enemies that could one shot players.  Since getting one shotted with no warning by a hit scan weapon is terrible we got CC.  Then people said CC was too strong.  But you can't nerf CC until you fix the original problem.  Several of my suggestion solutions that provide meaningful enemies while leaving our powers intact are in the posts above.

Long story short we should not nerf powers so we become more like the corpus and the grineer.  We don't need to become more like the trash.  The corpus and grineer should become something worthy of our powers.

[Mr.Lube]

9 minutes ago, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

I disagree.  Pre-SoTR the only real challenge and rewarding activities were raids, sorties, and endless voids.  The real problem is that the only real difficulty is based on effective HP and nothing else.  This meant the missions were filled with bullet spongy enemies that could one shot players.  Since getting one shotted with no warning by a hit scan weapon is terrible we got CC.  Then people said CC was too strong.  But you can't nerf CC until you fix the original problem.  Several of my suggestion solutions that provide meaningful enemies while leaving our powers intact are in the posts above.

Long story short we should not nerf powers so we become more like the corpus and the grineer.  We don't need to become more like the trash.  The corpus and grineer should become something worthy of our powers.

Both the enemies and the Warframes need to be toned down in power.

Enemy scaling should cap, and the scaling itself should be gradual. After that, introduce an enemy hierarchy and you're good. Removing efficiency won't be such a detriment once something like this is done to the enemies.

 

12 minutes ago, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

I'm not sold on that.  If I know I need to constantly stack snow globes or cast prime every every 20-30 seconds, I won't use energy for anything else since those are the roles of those frames.  It sounds unlikely your solution would allow me to fulfill my role and then do extra fun stuff, since the entire point of your change is to make it so frames can't do their jobs as well.  This will bring us back to the dark days of single ability Warframe.

You say that nerfing energy management will bring Warframe back to the days of people using only one power. Look around, people use nothing BUT their ultimates because there is no cost to them.

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

20 minutes ago, Mr.Lube said:

Both the enemies and the Warframes need to be toned down in power.

Enemy scaling should cap, and the scaling itself should be gradual. After that, introduce an enemy hierarchy and you're good. Removing efficiency won't be such a detriment once something like this is done to the enemies.

Sure that would fix broken scaling, but it would also make the game boring.  I would quit.  I don't want to play just another average TPS.  Like Robby said:

On 7/27/2016 at 4:17 PM, robbybe01234 said:

I'm gonna keep this as simple as possible.  Do whatever you have to do so I can play warframe:

As this: A freakin space mummy

Not this: Shooter guy #3

 

21 minutes ago, Mr.Lube said:

You say that nerfing energy management will bring Warframe back to the days of people using only one power. Look around, people use nothing BUT their ultimates because there is no cost to them.

I think we play different games.  As I watch my allies now they are using energy on the weaker abilities more than ever before because it won't stop them from using the ability they brought the frame for.  Ashes use teleport for travel and shuriken to bleed the last few enemies in a defence.  Embers use fireball and fireblast in addition to WOF.  Frosts use ice wave.  Novas use Wormhole.  Volts use shock.  Vauban sets up mine fields.  Your changes will make all of that go away.  Most energy will be saved for the ult and nothing else.  I know that is true because that is how it was in the past.   You are trying to make history repeat itself.

[RealPandemonium]

18 minutes ago, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

\ I know that is true because that is how it was in the past.   You are trying to make history repeat itself.

How far back in the past?  I don't remember a climate like this existing in all the time that WF has been on consoles.  

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

1 minute ago, RealPandemonium said:

How far back in the past?  I don't remember a climate like this existing in all the time that WF has been on consoles.  

It was the worst when abilities were mods.  It was really bad before the warframe reworks started.  It completely ended when focus was introduced.

[(PSN)Del-ProdigyT]

I think your being a bit irrational with fear @(PS4)Final_Dragon01 on what kind of nerfs towards power efficiency Mr.Lube is suggesting as if we won't be able to spam our 25 cost abilities vs our 100 global abilities.  I don't think anyone wants our first bread and butter abilities not to feel accessible but just to solve the cheese problems of the game so the nullifiers can be put to rest. I mean he's suggesting a baseline energy siphon for all I think that clearly speaks to creating a more stable flow of how often powers are used once frames are better balanced and mods like primed flow are looked at.  Right now our first abilities are heavily under performing the further into scaling we get and even more when you can just continuously nuke a whole room why press the first abilities on some frames.   

 If DE can't figure out a way to balance energy costs to remove the nullifier the only other option is to put cool downs on abilities and that would be very messy if they didn't really balance each warframe individually and did a lazy 25-100 system.  The problem with a cd system is that would highly encourage communication between players to work together  on harder difficulties and this game is pretty free for all I don't think the community would handle that well.

Nobody has a perfect solution but the game play needs to improve past spamming your best abilities to avoid one shot damage and panic in the face of nullfiers.  

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

@(PS4)Del-ProdigyT The completely fleshed out version of that change also includes the removal of energy orbs, removal of EV, and zenurk regen so that the baseline energy siphon and one optional aura is all the energy you can ever get.  The point of the system he is suggesting is to essentially add cool downs by strictly controlling energy.  It is one of the other popular rework suggestions for fixing the overall problem.  There is no fear involved.  I just don't like the system.

1 hour ago, (PS4)Del-ProdigyT said:

Nobody has a perfect solution but the game play needs to improve past spamming your best abilities to avoid one shot damage and panic in the face of nullfiers.  

Agreed hence my rework suggestions from above. (Quite long)

Spoiler

Here is a TL;DR:

What we need in addition to the trash are enemies worthy of our powers.  Super enemies that don't die just by shooting at them.  Each faction should have several enemies that require special interaction to kill, and these enemies should be in every mission, but their power should be such that fighting two at once is a problem for a group of four.  These enemies however should never instant kill a frame, and should be power resistant by having power strength and power duration reduction percentages.  Chaos would not last long, and prime would not completely seal the enemies movement, weapons would have to be destroyed by targeting them and radial disarm would only temporally jam them.  However  abilities would still affect trash at their full power.

Here is the wall of text which was my conversation with several others in this thread:

On 7/30/2016 at 2:51 PM, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

I think the problem is more fundamental then that.  The problem is heavy gunners, bombards, lancers and elite lancers are all essentially the same enemy with a different weapon and model.  The only real difference is the health and damage dealt, and both are difficulty based on effective HP, ours and theirs.  If difficulty is based on effective HP we eventually end up with nigh-invulnerable bullet sponges that one-shot even the strongest frame.

Us getting one-shotted so easily and by everything is a huge problem and that is why we have such powerful CC in the first place.  If there are one-shot attacks in the game, they must be very well telegraphed.  The new laser on the grineer sniper is a good example of this.  The beeping grenades are a step in the right direction but they need a much better visual indicator.  However, eventually even a cruddy lancer with it's rapid fire, hit scan weapon will one-shot anything, and that should never be true, ever.

An example of difficulty not based on effective HP would be making it so that heavy gunners have an ammo pack we can blow up to downgrade their gun and have a spot on their back we can strike to strip their armor which should have even more damage resistance than it does now.  Fielding sets of enemies like this would greatly increase the challenge and variety of Warframe without simply nerfing everything into the ground.  Power strength and power duration reduction modifiers could be used to make sure enemies that are meant to provide a skill challenge are not trivialized.

 

On 7/30/2016 at 4:03 PM, BlackCoMerc said:

Honestly, what needs to happen is something like the following:

 

=============================

Damage, Health, Shields and Armor

=============================

MAJOR Stat Squish. EHP capped at 2x base. Same for Armor and Shields.

Players: Redirection, Steel Fiber, Vitality and Intensify built into frames. Those mods are removed, and compensated. Maybe even replaced with mods that offer tradeoffs as well, such as less power for more shields and vice versa.

Weapons: Damage output adjusted based on new values.

ENEMY Weapons: ALL Hitscan weapons are removed from enemies and replaced with versions using REAL projectiles we can actually dodge

Shields: Become real shields again. Physical damage procs cannot occur while shields are up. Damage that would reduce your shields to Zero still does, however, it does not carry over to reduce health in the same shot (Shield Gating). Health starts with the first attack AFTER your shields are depleted (no more one shot deaths).

Likewise, physical damage procs are made MORE dangerous, since our shields must first be reduced before they can occur

NO MORE MODS THAT STRAIGHT UP INCREASE NUMBERS WITHOUT A TRADEOFF OF SOME SORT. EVER.

 

==============

Abilities - Players

==============

-Radial Disarm becomes Radial Jam (Radial version of Mesa's Shooting Gallery). Irradiated Disarm becomes Explosive Misfire. Prior to Jamming, all weapons discharge an explosive backfire, dealing 150% of their damage to their owners and causing a 100% chance of Impact Proc. THEN they jam for the duration. 

Reason: Sorry, I love Loki, too. But you cannot balance enemy weapons in a game where a frame is allowed to PERMANENTLY take them away. That's...ludicrous.

 

================================

Power Efficiency (still unsure of this one)

================================

Power efficiency either:

-Negatively affects STRENGTH, NOT Duration

-OR it does not apply to Ultimates

-OR it is capped at 50%, with Streamline being buffered and Fleeting Expertise being removed and compensated.

 

================

Abilties - Enemies

================

Nullifier is removed. The bubble is given to Comba (Blue Bubble) and Scramba (Green). The bubble is no longer bullet proof. At all. It blocks powers only, both in and outbound but will NOT stop projectiles of any kind. It exists more as a visual cue and indicator of the suppression area.

Bursa: Turning speed reduced an additional 10-20%. Punchthrough now enables weapons to damage them from the front. Undetected Tenno can hack them before they are downed (because...NINJA!)

Butcher: Loses his knockback leap. The ability to push Warframes around like schoolyard kids has NO BUSINESS showing up on an enemy that can spawn on level 1-3 missions. 

Heavy Gunner: Reprised animation. Knockdown slam now requires the Gunner to holster her big weapon fully on her back, then begin the slam animation. The Slam now staggers Tenno momentarily, but does NOT knock them down. See reasoning of Butcher, above.

Bombard: Rockets lose tracking. Slam Staggers, but does NOT knock down.

Scorpion: Removed from the game. It serves no purpose but to spam a single knockdown over and over again to prevent power spam through loss of control. Its the Grineer Nullifier. Get rid of it.

Lancer: Grakata uses REAL projectiles we can dodge.

Napalm: Flamethrower now does friendly fire damage to other Grineer units. If we have to suffer through this with our more powerful weapons - Kullstar, anyway) so do they. Additionally, Napalms can no longer damage players through walls, because, well...THEY'RE FRICKIN WALLS.

Hyekka Master: Loses Flamethrower and ALL armor. What animal trainer would wield an AoE Flamethrower (that now deals friendly fire damage) as their primary weapon? Nope; its replaced by a whip. They lose armor because...plain white tanktop shirts ARENT ARMORED. If a unit does not have a visual indicator its wearing armor, you DO NOT give it magical invisible armor. Period. This should be a nuisance unit, NOT a unit on par with Bombards.

-Drahk Master: Loses disarm chance on hit. If we can no longer let Loki take away their weapons, they have no business taking away ours.

-Ancient: Loses Grappling hook/Cthulu tentacle thing.

-Toxix/Drain Auras: Removed from the game. Things are now balanced and power spam reigned in some. We no longer need auras that drain our health or energy without skill based counterplay. This is no longer the game for that.

 

=================

Mini Bosses

=================

ALL missions above a certain level would see the introduction of mini bosses. These would likely be Rathuum Champions (Grineer), Proxy Robots (Corpus) and maybe the occasional Acolyte appearance in their place. 

Mini Bosses have the following characteristics at all times:

-Proto Shields

-Sufficient health to actually require engagement, balanced around a potato and reasonable number of Forma for that level of mission.

-Always drop a reward unique to them or from a hard to acquire loot table (can include Forma BP and Relics of T3 or T4)

-Can appear with ANY wave of enemies on any mission, but cannot exceed two on the battlefield at the same time (the spawn will be overidden if it tries again with two mini bosses still alive)

-Will NEVER teleport, or have forced invulnerability phases. Mini Bosses are there to FIGHT, not to cheese players into auto losses and frustration. Will NOT affect self buff or team buff powers in ANY negative way.

-Power Strength: Damage powers deal 50% damage to Mini Bosses on their first cast, and are reduced an additional 10% in effectiveness per hit thereafter

-Crowd Control abilities affect mini bosses for only 30% of their duration with the first cast, and suffer an additional 10% reduction thereafter, down to 0% on their fourth cast (with an audible notification that it has reached that point)

Reasoning: Players want powers. I want powers. I enjoy powers. But I also want enemies we need to ENGAGE. To think about. To interact with beyond "Pres 4 to kill." Mini Bosses allow us to suppress the Hordes of mooks with our powerful abilities, while still throwing in a monkey wrench now and then, in a manner MUCH more enjoyable than Nullifiers.

Besides...who wouldnt enjoy fighting those Proxy robots in Corpus missions where Nullifiers no longer existed. I think Corpus might be my favorite mission type if that were to happen - and I didnt think I would ever say that.

So...let me know...is this a solid foundation for reworking things? Should DE take some inspiration from this?

 

 

 

 

 

On 7/30/2016 at 10:15 PM, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

Yes absolutely.  You have a good base for a damage 3.0 rework.  This would solve the issue of enemies one shotting us.

However, I do have a few suggestions.

I like most of this except that steel fiber, redirection, vitality are baked into the frames.  I like the idea we have to pay fusion cores in to something to get stronger.  It gave a nice sense of progression as I was leveling up.  Second, if we were just given these mods we would have to lose at least 2 mod slots to compensate.  I like being able to 'spend' tankiness on extra speed or stronger abilities.  If the mods are baked in loki will always be made of tissue paper where as now we can drop seven mods on loki to make him quite tanky.

Potentially being able to dodge every bullet fired at you would be a massive skill based evasion improvement.

I don't think there is a reason all abilities should effect all enemies in the same way.  Why not change disarm so that it disarmed trash mobs like lancers and snipers, but only jammed the weapons of larger targets.  Most trash enemies have very short lifespans so stripping their weapons would not be a big deal.  Most of the abilities could be left as they are if they were balanced by giving meaningful enemies resistance to power strength and duration.  So the mini bosses you mentioned would recover from chaos in a few seconds but the rest of the room would still be brainwashed for the entire duration.  The power strength reduction is mainly for nova so the slow is not as sever on important enemies and not frames with purely damage based abilities.

I like being able to use energy frivolously.  I would leave it as it is and adjust the resistance modifiers on non-trash enemies per ability counter any p4tw that occurs.  However if we had enemies that required special actions to kill, instead of ever growing bullet sponges, p4tw would not be a thing anyway.

This is where I really disagree with you.  I do like that you are going through an removing the cheese from enemies but if only the suggested changes were made all the enemies would be too similar and difficulty would be based almost entirely on effective HP, which would make everything that currently exists trash mobs.

Enemies should have four distinct classes: trash, elite, mini-boss, boss.

Trash enemies should always be weak compared to the tenno and provide no real threat.

Elite enemies should have a limited amount of power resistance and require special interaction to kill.  However the fight with an elite enemy should not last longer than about 5-10 seconds.

Mini-bosses should have more power resistance and require multi staged special interaction to kill.  Fights with mini bosses should last up from 20 seconds to 45 seconds.

Bosses are current bosses.

Nullifiers - Buffed and turned into a mini-boss as is appropriate for what they do.  They should never have been a trash mob to begin with.  Shield should be completely unbreakable and the nully should be damage immune while the shield is up.  The shield is powered by three dedicated ospreys under the shield.  We should have to parkor in and destroy the ospreys before we can get back out and down the shield.  Once the shield is down we have the option of destroying the shield generator before killing the nully itself.  Should use a supra to make it dangerous to go after ospreys while he is not reloading.

Bursas - Should be an elite class enemy.  The turn speed should be unnerfed and targets should be added to the front that temporarily disable the unit as the special interaction.  I like the stealth hack Idea.

Heavy Gunner - elite class enemy.  Has an ammo pack we can hit to downgrade the gun and a point on the back we can hit to strip armor.  Finishers will also strip armor.  Damage resistance while armor is still up is increased.

Bombard - elite class enemy.  Completely damage immune until we reflect a rocket back at him which strips armor.

Scorpion - Buffed and turned into a Mini-boss enemy.  Has near total damage immunity at the start of the fight.  Scorpion's grappling hook grabs a player and reels them before suspending them and starting to cut through the Warframe with a miter saw.  However, once hooked the player can shoot the grappling hook's winch to release the grapple.  Or melee when close enough for the same effect.  There are 5-6 different targets on the scorpion that stun the enemy and allow up to walk up and physically rip a plate of armor off the enemy.  Shooting the newly exposed area does more damage.  Ripping off more plates causes you to do more damage.

Napalm - elite class enemy.  Has high damage resistance.  Has 6 tanks of napalm that deal 1/6 of total hp for each one blown up.  Napalm tanks completely resist AOE damage.  Still hits through walls, but napalm blasts can be shot down.

Drahks and Heykkas - elite class enemies that hide and just keep summoning pets till we hunt their sorry behinds down.  Max 5 pets per unit.  Missing pets replaced every 10 seconds.

Ancients - elite class enemies.  Grapple is replaced with a grab that holds you in place.  You must shoot the ancient's arms or melee to release.  If you let the grab go on for too long the ancient one shots you by crushing your frame like a tin can.  Does not deal incremental damage.

Auras - Fine as is but should highlight enemies affecting you with an aura through walls.  Also there should be a way of disabling auras without needing to kill the unit.

I think your mini-bosses are too weak and too based on effective HP for difficulty.  Even the stalker in my book is currently only an elite enemy.  I like most of the characteristics but they need multistage special interaction so they are resistant to powercreep.  Couple examples of multistage special interaction are above.

 

9 hours ago, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

I disagree a bit because our health is static.  We don't get stronger after a point and game play could be balanced around that point assuming the usage of the two most beneficial mods for a frame out of those three.  We only have 8 slots so there is an opportunity cost to bringing any particular mod with you since it means you can't take a different mod.  The cost effectively becomes the mod you didn't take.  Besides we get one shot all the time anyway, so it is not like we are OP in that regard.  Redirection/vitality/steelfiber are not required mods in the same vain as serration.

I understand your concerns about enemies.  But how easy the target is to hit depends on the implementation.  I was imagining targets that were at least twice as easy to hit than the targets for General Ruk and with no invulnerability phase.  Also, it is not targets for the sake of hitting targets.  The napalm for example is essentially a walking set of explosive barrels.  Each one causes an awesome explosion damaging nearby enemies and staggering the unit.  And doing that still wouldn't be required since finishers would still deal armor penetrating finisher damage.  Also sub targets, even though I am partial to them, are only one type of special interaction and can be replaced with others.  I assume the one you liked the least was the bursa suggestion.  Instead the bursa could project a forward energy shield that we overload by shooting it which then disables the unit.  Once it is temporarily disabled we can keep shooting it from the front for half damage or in the back panel for the 3x multiplier like it is now.  I would not completely remove the subtargets as a special interaction, but It should be fine if they are on a few elites and mini-bosses.  That way it is occasional thing.

For the nullifier the design could be changed so that the larger osprey model was used.  That one is easy enough to hit.  Even then the only reason i suggested ospreys instead of standard crewmen is because it would be easier for the ospreys to always stay with the nully, so there are other options.  Also given that it is a mini-boss there would only ever be one, and other mobs could be changed to not seek out the shield for cover.  The size of the bubble could also be bumped up a bit to give you more room for hitting the or w/e is under the shield.

I didn't mention it in the original because the post was already too long but more or less every change I suggested was a substantial buff to the enemy in question.  Warframe was once a tactical shooter and it became a horde mode game over time.  The changes I suggested are specifically meant to move the game closer to a tactical shooter once more.  Fewer more challenging enemies is the goal.  So along with these changes the number of enemies we are fighting at once would need to be reduced.  Generally speaking a confrontation should involve quickly wiping out trash enemies to isolate an elite.  Complete the special interaction to kill the elite and move on.  Then on rare occasion there is a mini boss or two to fight.  High and mid level exterminates for example would need to be reduced to 40-60 enemies (30-45 trash, 8-15 elites, 1 mini-boss) per mission instead of the current 220+ nonsense we have right now because all the enemies are trash tier.  Elites should only be encountered once every tile or two and in very occasional groups of no more than three when on solo.  Similar reductions and proportions changes would need to be made to other mission as well.

Besides it would also always be worth it for loki to cast disarm since it would still have decent effect on all enemies, but it would just be a little less effective on a few.

There should never ever be 50 enemies on the screen, that is part of the problem we have now which contributes and CC spam and the existence of nullies.

 

8 hours ago, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

I want to actively undercut the value of wide area CC so players will naturally choose other abilities.

 

 

[Jukantos]

On 25.7.2016 at 5:24 PM, LegionCynex said:

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 

I'd love to see them at least be less aggravating against bows. Bows were BY FAR my favourite weapon category and have been rendered all but unusable outside of stealthed spy mission runs because of nullifiers eating up 8-10 arrows before becoming vulnerable. Yes, killing a nullifiers through his bubble might seem a bit overpowered, but it would just be a reward for a good precision shot. Alternatively at least scale the damage properly and have one arrow collapsing the bubble instead of only ~10-15% of it, forcing absolutely annoying gameplay of SPAMMING arrows at it (or straight up swapping to my Akstilletto Prime every time i see a blue or golden bubble on my screen)

The mechanics on bows make it in my personal opinion the most satisfying / rewarding weapon to use. Great damage, great accuracy challenge, and potential area of effect damage IF used correctly on lined up enemies are all hallmarks of a fun weapon archetype that all but died simply because of the existance of nullifiers.

Admittedly this doesn't really fit into the discussion about them screwing us with power immunity, but bows have been shut down a LOT harder than power based gameplay by the existance of nullis. And the irony of Ivara's special weapon only working against nullifiers because it fires 7 arrows per shot in a spamable way is bitter enough to make me cynical about using her

[(PSN)Alphonso-Alonso]

I have no idea what to do anymore. Sentients will passively laser objectives on Lua so I can't protect them, meanwhile damaging them is an effort since I need to coordinate my builds accordingly and that leads to everyone having to micromanage each other (which isn't a co-op enriching experience, it's just a pain). Corpus seem like a fun idea in concept, a tactical SWAT team that has mastered every move you can possibly make- until you realize that you literally can't hurt them and have to "wait for them to do the thing" before you can take down their big-bad, let alone mitigate escalation entirely by playing an absolute horror of a hacking minigame. 

Infested? Eh, Juggernauts are annoying in close quarters but that's more of a failure of level design. They're fun to wrangle around in an open area like we do with Phorid but otherwise it isn't a deal breaker.

Grineer? Always a good vanilla fight with exception to their Ramparts which are just cheap and poorly balanced in comparison to the rest of their arsenal. You have enemies who can fight very light-dps machine guns and then from your periphery something DPS/BLEED/DEBUFF/PRE-FIRES you into hell and you don't even know what got you. When you revive you suddenly realize that you have to baby sit the damn thing until you can destroy it or else enemies will literally trample their dead friends just to hop in and insta-kill you once again with it.

 

I just don't know anymore. I got into Warframe because it was basically Dynasty Warriorrs: Avengers Infinity War but as of late they seem to keep introducing more game elements that pull back that power fantasy and try desperately to resemble something akin to a low-error-margin that's more suited for a Try-Hard crowd than a Hack n' Slash/Shooter crowd.

What is the point of building if enemies will just invalidate that weapon's damage type? What's the point of using or nurturing a frame if it's just going to be nerfed in the next update because it's TOO reliable? DE made the foundation of a great pick-up game you can get lost in but when it comes to actually delivering core content a lot of what they implement seems to be things that punish you for doing exactly what got you into the game in the first place.

"Gotta go fast!"

DOORS HAVE BEEN LOCKED- PLAY A TERRIBLE MINIGAME TO CONTINUE YOUR PROGRESS.

"Modify and customize your weapons to punish your enemies!"

SENTIENTS/STALKER ARE/IS NOW IMMUNE TO DAMAGE TYPES ONCE YOU HIT A THRESHOLD- STOP USING THAT WEAPON SO MUCH.

"Use your powers and combine them with teammates to overtake vast enemy forces!"

POWERS HAVE BEEN DISABLED/LIMITED ENERGY MODE/THIS GUY I PLAYED IN PUG OVERUSED HIS POWERS SO NOW I'M ASKING DE TO NERF THIS FRAME (DE: Yes of course, that specialized frame no longer has it's specialization. THAT'S BALANCE!) YAAAAAAY!

O_o I just don't follow the logic of this game or it's community anymore. It's gotten to the point where Destiny has grown (albeit bitterly kicking and screaming) to balance gameplay and player progression in a manner that's more rewarding and respectful to player investment. 

[DSpite]

"Normal level" missions don't contain tons and tons of units that do these things. Those units only appear at the points where everyone in the team knows they will because they are "pushing the farming" above normal counts.

Only Endless causes Nulli spam, and by then the units are well above our maximum level. You want to keep going? Then adapt or die. You have no right to stay in that mission anyway, because back in the old days, a handful of cheap, repeatable tricks was all that was needed to stay on a map as long as you damn well wanted.

Now everything is inside a Nulli bubble? You can't one shot with Mag or Sound Quake or Blade Storm or <insert other ability here> the entire map while sitting in a cupboard?

Working as intended.

Run the map one rotation, or two, or three - and not 50 - then do it again, and the spam won't happen. You can't magically expect DE to create a more intelligent, coordinated AI just because "you want them to". If they could, they would have already, so for the time being, we get far less intelligent units, with some cheap tactics.

The only "fair" or "unfair" argument is at what point in missions it should get spammy, but spammy it will EVENTUALLY get, and from what I can see, it's NOWHERE as bad as you people keep harping on about.

[Spergin_McBadposter]

1 hour ago, DSpite said:

"Normal level" missions don't contain tons and tons of units that do these things. Those units only appear at the points where everyone in the team knows they will because they are "pushing the farming" above normal counts.

Only Endless causes Nulli spam, and by then the units are well above our maximum level. You want to keep going? Then adapt or die. You have no right to stay in that mission anyway, because back in the old days, a handful of cheap, repeatable tricks was all that was needed to stay on a map as long as you damn well wanted.

Now everything is inside a Nulli bubble? You can't one shot with Mag or Sound Quake or Blade Storm or <insert other ability here> the entire map while sitting in a cupboard?

Working as intended.

Run the map one rotation, or two, or three - and not 50 - then do it again, and the spam won't happen. You can't magically expect DE to create a more intelligent, coordinated AI just because "you want them to". If they could, they would have already, so for the time being, we get far less intelligent units, with some cheap tactics.

The only "fair" or "unfair" argument is at what point in missions it should get spammy, but spammy it will EVENTUALLY get, and from what I can see, it's NOWHERE as bad as you people keep harping on about.

Not everyone is this 4 hour endless mission caricature you have built up in your head. Nullifiers are awful even in sorties, which DE clearly intends for us to be able to complete because otherwise they wouldn't have locked unique rewards behind it.

[HarrodTasker]

 

TL;DW is, nullifiers are a developer crutch BUT removing them would be a mistake.  Its just a bad situation with no easy way out.

[Vohim]

DE is cornered kinda  they have to choose between:

Players being demigods

or focus on the game staying challenging

[Bibliothekar]

6 hours ago, Retepzednem said:

DE is cornered kinda  they have to choose between:

Players being demigods

or focus on the game staying challenging

However, as @(PS4)El__Lobo_Loco said, the entire game was and still is advertised as players being demi-gods.

I quit Skyforge when I realized that "Become a god" doesn't mean anything when you still get your arse kicked by mutant shrubbery despite becoming 10x more powerful. Well, and the grind was even worse and more boring than in Warframe.

Edited August 19, 2016 by Bibliothekar

[BlackCoMerc]

There's a solution to all this. And it is an EASY solution. So mind boggling easy it baffles me (and defies understanding) that the Solution has not yet been implemented. Especially since the Solution is:

a. Already present in the game, and 

b. Has been used before

That Solution: Mini Bosses.

Mini bosses are resistant to warframe powers. Much like Rathuum guys, though maybe not quite to the same degree. In my mind, Mini Bosses have the following charactersistics:

-Limited Spawns: No more than two on screen at once

-MUCH larger effective health pools. Whether that is by way of Proto Shields (Corpus) or Armor and Health is dependent on the faction and type.

-NO Wait walls/invulnerability phases (see the part about MUCH larger health pools)

-Are MUCH larger and more physically imposing than normal units (Easy Visibility)

-Would spawn at level appropriate ranks along with normal waves, except on Exterminate missions. On Exterminate missions, 1 mini boss would spawn in the final group, and perhaps at lower levels even be optional to take down.

-Are strongly power resistant. This means CC hits them for 25% of its duration the first time, and 10% the second, and 0% the third. Damage based powers deal 75% damage to them the first time, and 50% thereafter. No reason we cant damage them with powers, but they do resist. Finisher damage dealt to them is converted to Puncture or evenly split Physical damage instead; they cannot be dealt finisher damage, ever. 

 

As an example of a mini boss: In Destiny, you have TONS of Mooks. Largely grunt enemies. But then...you have the big Robot Walkers that drop on your head. Well, in Warframe...you have Rathuum units. AND you have...CORPUS PROXIES. (Though I would love to see a Grineer Battle Armor that is essentially a 9 foot tall, walking soldier with excellent resistances we have to FIGHT as opposed to Cheese).

Now of course, once we have powerful mini bosses on the table, we can do the following:

-Get rid of Nullifiers

-Add visual, AoE indicators for Comba and Scramba (seriously, why is this NOT a thing? This is a visual medium).

-Get rid of Scorpions (now we have power resistant mini bosses, its not necessary to constantly drag us across maps to prevent power spam)

-Get rid of Ancient Hooks (see above)

-Prevent the spawning of Bursa (especially the godsforsaken Isolator) when a mini boss is active on the grid

 

And POOF! NOW we have a game where we STILL Get to crush the mooks like demi gods, while still having challenging enemies we have to actually FIGHT. 

So seriously...why has this NOT been done already?