How exactly can a weapon be abused? What makes abusing different from simply using?

[Ditto132]

I will be using the following definitions:

Spoiler

Abuse
verb: use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse.
noun: the improper use of something.

Exploit
verb:

1. make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource).
2. make use of (a situation) in a way considered unfair or underhand.

Efficient
adjective:

1. (of a system or machine) achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense.
2. (of a person) working in a well-organized and competent way.

 

1 hour ago, motorfirebox said:

I don't think it's really helpful to try to differentiate between use and abuse, in a situation like this. Because when you start talking about "abusing" certain weapons (or frames, or whatever), it becomes about the person who equips the weapon rather than the weapon being equipped. Someone who equips a Tonkor or a Synoid Simulor and blows up the entire map every two seconds isn't really at fault—they're using their weapon the way it was meant to be used. The problem isn't the person with the weapon, it's the weapon itself.

Saying that a weapon is overpowered is  a critique on the design of the game. Saying that someone is abusing a weapon is an attack on the person equipping the weapon.

33 minutes ago, -CM-DarkSyndrome said:

I see all these people saying that the Synoid Simulor and mirage combo is abusing. No, I see it as playing smart. As my late grandfather used to say. Work smart, Not hard. The synoid simulor+mirage is only going to take you so far. it's not like Mag+Polrize+Magnetize where you can face lv 300 enemies(before the recent nerf again). If you plan out things and work accordingly to your plan it makes things that may seem hard to there people really easy to you. It's like when you have these 4 man squads who make a joke of high lvl defence missions fighting mobs in the 500lvl+ range. Are they abusing because they take good frames and pair them up with great senergy and make the job easy? No they are working smart to help reduce the difficulty. All I have to say lol.

I agree that it is subjective. It is usually targeted at individual, not just the weapon/frame/item itself.
Examples:

Spoiler

From <weapon_name/frame_name> user perspective:
This person is playing efficiently, achieving maximum desired result with minimum effort and expenses(ammo/resources/energy)
From other players perspective:
The <weapon_name/frame_name> user is abusing <weapon_name>  because the player feel the bad effect (e.g. no enemies to kill, bored)

Real life example:
Police uses gun to take down threats.
Criminal uses gun to commit crime(bad purpose).

Doctor prescribes drug to patient.
Drug addict abuses drug(improper use and bad effect).

 

2 hours ago, Redthirst said:

"Abusing" is usually used to refer to weapons or weapon/warframe combos that aren't just powerful(like Nikana Prime), but straight up overpowered, making the entire game a joke. So yeah, if someone is using Mirage+Synoid Simulor, then he's abusing this combo to trivialize the game.

How is usage of certain weapons/frames/combos considered improper use?

2 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

Any playstyle that seeks to reduce the workload to almost nothing, but substantially increase rewards is abuse. 

It is usually considered efficient playstyle to me. 

2 hours ago, Vesiga said:

Abuse to me sounds like it would have a similar meaning of exploit. 
Like how people try to find combos to exploit interception EXP. 

That's all I can think of. 

"Abuse" involves/targets individual.

[Xekrin]

3 hours ago, LazerSkink said:

Mirage and Synoid Simulor is considered an abused combo, but why?

I was far too lazy to read the last 2 pages after the first one but here is my take on it.

Synoid Simulor is a powerful weapon.  When the orbs it shoots collide they do very good aoe damage.  This damage stacks over and over up to 5 which is when it bursts into a vortex that does damage over time.  It is powerful but somewhat balanced in its short range and that you have to somewhat try to get the orbs to collide precisely or nearly where you want the damage.

Now you have Mirage, with clones who also shoot an orb exactly as you do.  These orbs collide with yours and create that aoe burst damage far far faster and rather than doing the clone damage which should be quite a bit less than your own, it does your damage.  Stack that with eclipse and your damage increases exponentially.

That is tremendous damage in far less shots than the mechanics of the weapon intended since your clones are combining with your own rather than doing their own thing.  It could very likely be considered an unintended function of the mechanics, therefore abuse.

But that isn't really the worst of it, a mirage with spamulor will not even bother using it tactfully, they simply start the mission shooting, creating dozens of vortexes everywhere that do aoe damage to everything and pretty much render it near impossible for her teammates to even see past the spam of orbs and vortexes.

Due to the nature of the vortexes, combining up to 4?5? orbs based on distance, they are created everywhere and quite close to one another and the stacking damage just does way more damage in 2 seconds than few other weapons can.  Even the tonkor, a very powerful weapon has to actually be aimed more carefully else the grenades just bounce harmlessly away.

There is no skill involved in using this combo other than perhaps remembering to hit 1 and 3 occasionally to refresh buffs, beyond than sprint through the mission spamming spamulor and get all the kills do all the damage leave a trail of blinding vortexes everywhere you can't be bothered to manually detonate because why should you?

Ash and Mirage spamulor often compete to see who can get the most kills, since if ash marks them first mirage cant kill them but mirage can do damage faster so while ash is sipping tea waiting for his animations to finish on one group, mirage is spamming another to death.

I hope this makes sense now.

[(PSN)obsidiancurse]

Game gives players tools

player uses tools as efficiently as possible

no abuse here.

Might as well call using a washing machine abuse. Sure I could take my shirt down to the river with a couple of rocks.......

[Unus]

In the end, it appears to be a matter of "skill", if you will. It is not that Mirage synchronizes well with the micro singularity gun, it is not that the micro-singularity gun has reasonable statistics, it is the fact that the weapon does not require one to be concerned about where they are aiming, their ammunition, their reload speed etc like all of the other hyper-powered firearms need to. The Opticor needs to be pinpoint and takes time to charge up, the Dread needs time to pull the string and launch that hyper-critical blade arrow, the Bolter Prime currently requires one to be "rich" with platinum in order to acquire. What are the requirements for the Suda blaster? Pick a certain faction, "cheese" (is that what they call it in gamer lingo?) the appropriate map for the affinity to be a certain rank both in reputation and mastery andddd. . . that's it, nothing, nadda. The weapon is to perfect, there MUST be a drawback somewhere to rein-in the beast's power. Otherwise, what is any other gun in the game for beyond mastery rank to GET to the perfect gun. Just my wooden nickel on the matter.

[Redthirst]

1 hour ago, LorianTheElderPrince said:

In PVP it might do, but for other people to point fingers at you and claim that you're "abusing" a weapon to "trivialise content" have absolutely no right when it is not directly affecting them, such as PVP.

Yeah, because I play PvE games to see someone else kill everything with an overpowered combo.

[Karamethien]

2 minutes ago, Redthirst said:

Yeah, because I play PvE games to see someone else kill everything with an overpowered combo.

lol

[Rakosta_Kai]

4 minutes ago, Ditto132 said:

I will be using the following definitions:

  Reveal hidden contents

Abuse
verb: use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse.
noun: the improper use of something.

Exploit
verb:

1. make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource).
2. make use of (a situation) in a way considered unfair or underhand.

Efficient
adjective:

1. (of a system or machine) achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense.
2. (of a person) working in a well-organized and competent way.

 

I agree that it is subjective. It is usually targeted at individual, not just the weapon/frame/item itself.
Examples:

  Reveal hidden contents

From <weapon_name/frame_name> user perspective:
This person is playing efficiently, achieving maximum desired result with minimum effort and expenses(ammo/resources/energy)
From other players perspective:
The <weapon_name/frame_name> user is abusing <weapon_name>  because the player feel the bad effect (e.g. no enemies to kill, bored)

Real life example:
Police uses gun to take down threats.
Criminal uses gun to commit crime(bad purpose).

Doctor prescribes drug to patient.
Drug addict abuses drug(improper use and bad effect).

 

How is usage of certain weapons/frames/combos considered improper use?

It is usually considered efficient playstyle to me. 

"Abuse" involves/targets individual.

Funnily enough, I'd say your assertions are almost spot on.

"Abuse" is the term used in gaming probably because "Exploit" is already taken.

Stuff like the Simulor isn't an exploit as it does exactly what it says it does on paper... It's also not, strictly speaking, Overpowered as it's damage profile sits inside the tier it was designed for (debatable, of course).

Abuse applies when it's used on maps and modes where it clearly over-powers the content and does so to mass effect thereby removing all challenge. I say this because the folks carrying it in know this at the outset and bring it anyway.

The "abuse" part comes in when that player chooses to make use of the weapons effect or function as the tactic.

...Nothing wrong with that if the player is solo as no one is inconvenienced by the behavior but we can all see that it creates issues in groups though.

You see similar stuff in games like MH2016 but to much lesser effect for numerous reasons

• Multiple difficulty tiers for all missions for both solo and public options.
• Public missions have player output decreased/mob health increased to account for the other players engaging the enemies/in the vicinity.
• Enemy spawn is keyed to the player sin the field so the more that are KO'd the more get generated (typically).
• Scores aren't kept (for the most part) which encourages players to actually work co-op for the most part.

IMO, people will complain less about the need for nerfs if the summary screen was a little less competitive, missions had difficulty tiers available, and spawn counts got tuned for the group's size and kill speed.

[DxAdder]

4 minutes ago, Redthirst said:

Yeah, because I play PvE games to see someone else kill everything with an overpowered combo.

Ok so If someone is using a bow and Im using a Soma prime and out kill them 10 to 1 did I abuse the Soma Prime ?

No, we both made choices about what weapon we wanted to use and knew the Pro's and Con's of the weapons.

 

 

[Karamethien]

Synoid and Mirage is a bit of a gray area.  It can be considered an Exploit.

As the Shadows are not suppose to do full damage as the warframe.  However the way Synoid works overrides that penalty.

The weird part is I remember people saying that DE fixed it by not allowing clone synoid shots to combine with the main frame.   Maybe it was just friend's wishful thinking.

[Xekrin]

1 hour ago, LorianTheElderPrince said:

Literally this. The word "abuse" doesn't really count for anything in a PVE game.

It has to do with the perception of the observer and the situation.  If I take a soma prime, a notably strong weapon, or even a tonkor, an extremely strong weapon into a game and before I can even spray and pray a mirage spamulor has shot 16 times and created 50 vortexes that have not only killed everything in this level 100 sortie but also completely obscures my vision so I have no idea what's going on, then yeah it affects PVE.

I suppose if everyone just used the same weapons on the same frame every time in every squad with no difference between anyone then it wouldn't affect the playing of others, but we don't so it does.

Saying what happens in pve has no affect on others is just observationally wrong, meaning I see it as wrong even though you see it as perfectly okay.  Neither of us are correct because it is opinion only.

Now If I said the sky was poka-dotted yellow made from green cotton candy and you said no its just blue, then you'd be right and I'd be wrong.

There is a difference.

[Miser_able]

I think a weapon counts as abused when a large amount of the community uses purely because it is over powered not because it fits their play style or is fun, also it is abused when everyone has the same cookie cutter max dps build on it.

[Redthirst]

27 minutes ago, Ditto132 said:

How is usage of certain weapons/frames/combos considered improper use?

It's an improper use if usage of certain weapons/frames/combos is detrimental to other players' enjoyment of the game. Weapons/frames/combos that allow you to clear entire rooms full of enemies with a few shots destroy the experience of other players. And with how mostly shallow gameplay of Warframe is, killing enemies composes most of the experience.

[(XBOX)Bortis Badtouch]

41 minutes ago, Ditto132 said:

I will be using the following definitions:

  Reveal hidden contents

Abuse
verb: use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse.
noun: the improper use of something.

Exploit
verb:

1. make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource).
2. make use of (a situation) in a way considered unfair or underhand.

Efficient
adjective:

1. (of a system or machine) achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense.
2. (of a person) working in a well-organized and competent way.

 

I agree that it is subjective. It is usually targeted at individual, not just the weapon/frame/item itself.
Examples:

  Reveal hidden contents

From <weapon_name/frame_name> user perspective:
This person is playing efficiently, achieving maximum desired result with minimum effort and expenses(ammo/resources/energy)
From other players perspective:
The <weapon_name/frame_name> user is abusing <weapon_name>  because the player feel the bad effect (e.g. no enemies to kill, bored)

Real life example:
Police uses gun to take down threats.
Criminal uses gun to commit crime(bad purpose).

Doctor prescribes drug to patient.
Drug addict abuses drug(improper use and bad effect).

 

How is usage of certain weapons/frames/combos considered improper use?

It is usually considered efficient playstyle to me. 

"Abuse" involves/targets individual.

ah logic in the mist, careful though, people are going to disagree with logic

[Redthirst]

12 minutes ago, DxAdder said:

Ok so If someone is using a bow and Im using a Soma prime and out kill them 10 to 1 did I abuse the Soma Prime ?

No, we both made choices about what weapon we wanted to use and knew the Pro's and Con's of the weapons.

 

 

No, it's when you picked Tonkor, rushed forward and cleared everything is where you abuse it. Some Prime and other weapons like that are strong, but they are not overpowered to the point where one player can rob everyone in his group from experiencing the game.

Yeah, too bad that most weapons have a large con: they are not hilariously overpowered.

[haloamted]

Mirage Synoid combo is pretty stupidly strong. Its clearly an oversight, would I call it abuse? Not really, game breaking is more accurate for me atleast. It'll probably get changed somehow, at least I hope. It's not fun running a exterminate mission and having a 'Mirage Synoid' drop in with you. And yes, you can make a premade group for the bigger things, but in the normal alerts or the cephalon simaris scanning missions, you ain't going to make a premade group for that. 'Set it to private', I want to interact with other people, I've met hundreds of people, some of which I now play with regularly. 

But then, why should everyone else adapt to what is a game breaking combo that's only fun for the one that's using it in a co-op game?

Silly silly.

 

3 hours ago, Daconius said:

Abuse is when you and your loadout are significantly more effective than them and their loadout and they're concerned you'll end the mission with higher stats, despite it being a co-op game.

If you want to control how other people play then don't queue for public groups with strangers - find some like-minded friends who also complain about Ash and Synoid Simulors and run missions with them using only Chopsticks Prime so you can tell each other how hardcore you are.

 

I just found this amusing, the whole thread is clearly about the Mirage synoid combo, but you made my day with this. I took some time and made this, it's not intended to be rude so I hope you see the fun in it. But yes, Bladestorm Ash is another prehistoric leftover that's getting changed. *Confirmed to change. So there's no reason discussing it until the changes been tested.

Spoiler

 

[Gsterman]

I hate when people refer to any way of avoiding grind and difficulty as "abuse". It isn't abuse, it's human instinct. You can't expect people to just not use something that's overpowered because of "muh balance" and then when they do use that thing, admonish them like they did something wrong.

I dont even see the problem with it either. People are using a gameplay mechanic(Hall of Mirrors) with a powerful weapon(Synoid Simulor) and because its really good that's apparently "abuse"? Give me a break, it isn't abusing or exploiting to any measure of the word. It's overpowered and should be deal with, but it is no where close to "abuse" to use that combo.

People need to get this idea out of their heads that using good equipment and combos is somehow a bad thing. It isn't abuse to use Mirage with Synoid Simulor, it isnt abuse to use any other really good weapon, and the entire idea that using the Tonkor like it should be used (to clear a large group of enemies) is abuse, is stupid.

So is it overpowered? Yes.

Is it exploiting, abuse, or are you somehow doing something wrong for using a powerful combo? No.

Edited August 16, 2016 by Gsterman

[5HV3N]

Most stupid op weapons are overused, but used according to thier purpose.  

Though there are possibilities of "abuse" 

like post I saw some time ago, nekros and snipetron in conclave, where desacrated enemy was shown through walls and you could kill him through said wall thanks to snipetron's innate punch-through. While it sounds like it's working as intended, that combo has distinctive feeling of abuse to it, but example is just anecdotal since I don't do conclave myself. 
Other example of weapon abuse would be glavie and all self-damaging weapons paired with trinity and old blessing formula. That was a clear abuse, and costed us gutting and reworking pretty neat mechanic which was quite rewarding to use when used as intended.
And, arguably, there is also covert lethality with all abilities forcing finishers, which I don't believe was introduced to efficiently murder lv300 and higher enemies. But, oh well, this one is at least used as intended.

Edited August 16, 2016 by 5HV3N

[Atlas.0-5]

25 minutes ago, Gsterman said:

I hate when people refer to any way of avoiding grind and difficulty as "abuse". It isn't abuse, it's human instinct. You can't expect people to just not use something that's overpowered because of "muh balance" and then when they do use that thing, admonish them like they did something wrong.

I dont even see the problem with it either. People are using a gameplay mechanic(Hall of Mirrors) with a powerful weapon(Synoid Simulor) and because its really good that's apparently "abuse"? Give me a break, it isn't abusing or exploiting to any measure of the word. It's overpowered and should be deal with, but it is no where close to "abuse" to use that combo.

People need to get this idea out of their heads that using good equipment and combos is somehow a bad thing. It isn't abuse to use Mirage with Synoid Simulor, it isnt abuse to use any other really good weapon, and the entire idea that using the Tonkor like it should be used (to clear a large group of enemies) is abuse, is stupid.

So is it overpowered? Yes.

Is it exploiting, abuse, or are you somehow doing something wrong for using a powerful combo? No.

I agree

It is an extremely annoying thing to see IMO. They always get top damage and no one really gets to really do much.

but no,

it is not an exploit nor is it abuse.

 

Should it be fixed? Maybe not, If they buffed the older legacy weapons in the game maybe people wouldn't be constantly looking for these quick fixes. Most of the older weapons don't scale as the game progresses in content and then people are left with this impressive array of weapons that really can't do much at all compared with certain combos or just other weapons in general. 

So it is a little bit of the players being lazy and the weapon balancing never being up to date. Ever. (its a lot of work when you're trying to make content on top of it)

Edited August 16, 2016 by Atlas.0-5

[Ceryk]

Honestly, I think it's a very thin line. And I think a lot of the time, people are just mad and calling abuse incorrectly. But there are times where I would say there is abuse of power going on with certain weapons.

Simulor, as others mentioned, is the best example. I enjoy using the weapon. But I use it in a very reasonable way. See enemies, start firing. No enemies, stop firing unless I'm covering team members reviving other team members or am holed up behind cover using a restore or regaining my bearings, but even then I'm not spamming. I just do enough to keep the singularity up so it's ready for merging or detonation when I need it.

People who can be accused of abusing it's power are the people who run around and don't stop firing the weapon. Ever. I've seen gaps that lasted like 20 second with no enemies showing up and people still firing the thing. One enemy with no others in sight? They fire the weapon 5 times as much is actually necessary to kill it. Converting to Sniper Ammo and reducing the clip size to be more closely balanced an in line with other explosive weapons would probably go a long way to dealing with that issue.

Edited August 16, 2016 by Ceryk

[Berdfess]

Weapon is considered abused when it starts a tumblr blog about dealing with self diagnosed crippling mental disorders 

[Wolfdoggie]

5 hours ago, DeMeritus said:

The difference between use of a weapon and abuses?

That's easy!  The answer is below:
 

  Hide contents

ABS!

ABS + USE = ABUSES

 

 

Much enlightenment. :o

[1tsyB1tsyN1nj4]

5 hours ago, Redthirst said:

"Abusing" is usually used to refer to weapons or weapon/warframe combos that aren't just powerful(like Nikana Prime), but straight up overpowered, making the entire game a joke. So yeah, if someone is using Mirage+Synoid Simulor, then he's abusing this combo to trivialize the game.

^ all of this

[TentownsRaid]

The main issue is mostly in balance and weapon mechanics being exploited by warframe powers "Mirage". When there is imbalance people say it is abusing and in my opinion it just questions why we have the starchart if people just use one shot combos on it.

[1tsyB1tsyN1nj4]

49 minutes ago, Gsterman said:

I hate when people refer to any way of avoiding grind and difficulty as "abuse". It isn't abuse, it's human instinct. You can't expect people to just not use something that's overpowered because of "muh balance" and then when they do use that thing, admonish them like they did something wrong.

I dont even see the problem with it either. People are using a gameplay mechanic(Hall of Mirrors) with a powerful weapon(Synoid Simulor) and because its really good that's apparently "abuse"? Give me a break, it isn't abusing or exploiting to any measure of the word. It's overpowered and should be deal with, but it is no where close to "abuse" to use that combo.

People need to get this idea out of their heads that using good equipment and combos is somehow a bad thing. It isn't abuse to use Mirage with Synoid Simulor, it isnt abuse to use any other really good weapon, and the entire idea that using the Tonkor like it should be used (to clear a large group of enemies) is abuse, is stupid.

So is it overpowered? Yes.

Is it exploiting, abuse, or are you somehow doing something wrong for using a powerful combo? No.

It doesn't just trivialize the game, it makes the game unplayable (unfun) for other players who are unfortunate enough to join a game with a player who can't be assed to play solo or change their loadout from the one they use to main T4 Survival for 3+ hours. The same goes for any player who uses WoF religiously. I get it, you want to get the mission done fast,but is a lvl. 10 Infestation alert really the place for this S#&amp;&#036;? They could at least do everyone a favor and play solo

[TheGodofWiFi]

1 hour ago, Redthirst said:

Yeah, because I play PvE games to see someone else kill everything with an overpowered combo.

 

1 hour ago, Xekrin said:

It has to do with the perception of the observer and the situation.  If I take a soma prime, a notably strong weapon, or even a tonkor, an extremely strong weapon into a game and before I can even spray and pray a mirage spamulor has shot 16 times and created 50 vortexes that have not only killed everything in this level 100 sortie but also completely obscures my vision so I have no idea what's going on, then yeah it affects PVE.

I suppose if everyone just used the same weapons on the same frame every time in every squad with no difference between anyone then it wouldn't affect the playing of others, but we don't so it does.

Saying what happens in pve has no affect on others is just observationally wrong, meaning I see it as wrong even though you see it as perfectly okay.  Neither of us are correct because it is opinion only.

Now If I said the sky was poka-dotted yellow made from green cotton candy and you said no its just blue, then you'd be right and I'd be wrong.

There is a difference.

Well then my advise to both of you is to go solo or play with friends. Since the SOTR update there is literally no reason for anyone to play public now. You don't need to farm long term Void missions where you would need to team up with random people to get the best chance of survival. If you play public, you do it of your own accord and not out of necessity.

I know it may be unfamiliar, but you will encounter other human beings in public matches, who might actually have different ideas of fun than you. You can't go into a public game of your own will and expect everyone to play to your standards, that is both selfish and arrogant.

Before you think about uttering the same tired line of "oh but I shouldn't be forced to play solo because I like playing public", you obviously don't, because people don't play the way you want them to. Personally I don't play Mirage + Simulor because I find it boring, that doesn't mean I'm going to sit back and just whine about how they're getting all the kills and it doesn't mean I'm going to b***h and moan when other people use it. Live and let live.

Xekrin, you mention how a person with a Soma Prime could easily be outclassed by a Mirage with a Simulor. You do realise the Soma Prime is a rifle with infinitely better range right? In open maps you should have absolutely zero trouble taking out enemies before a Mirage, if you actually bother to put the effort in. The Simulor is very limited in range you know.

Redthirst, I suggest you get good. I have absolutely no problem matching a Mirage with a Simulor and believe me, I've had a few encounters. It all comes down to whether or not you have the mindset of a quitter or the mindset of a skilled player.