I'm Pretty Sure Most People Would Like This.

[Tempera]

The challenge of Infested, to me, has always seemed to be the way the Infested swarm players, and attempt to staggerlock/stunlock them while dealing heavy damage. Regular mobs of Chargers and such have little health, but they can deal quite heavy damage to players and move quite fast, and the Ancient mobs have a lot more health to trade off against moving slower.

 

I don't think Disruptors fit this very well. Their attack drain shields, which fits in very well with the 'swarm and do heavy damage' mechanic the Infested seem to run on, and they screw up the player's screen, which is odd but is a fitting twist to the Disruptor's theme. I find their staggering attack aggravating, personally, but all Ancients have a similar attack, and it is simply their contribution to the swarm.

 

Energy drain doesn't seem to fit into this very well, however. It doesn't add anything to the Infested's 'theme', except for removing many player's ability to use their abilities to escape from the swarm/deal with further swarming enemies, which doesn't seem very... appropriate.

 

If people are looking for more challenge in Warframe, I think that rather than arguing for the continued inclusion of the Disruptors, they should be arguing for other, more balanced/"fitting" forms of challenge in the game, such as upgrading the Infested's AI to make them swarm players better, or increasing the Toxic Ancient's speed to give them a chance to rush at the player before the player can deal with them.

 

Then again, I guess I am not exactly the type of person who runs T3 Void Missions. I have Polarized only one item, and have made an entirety of one Warframe, so I am not precisely an expert on the types of challenges people who run those missions are looking for.

[X3Evanescence]

Disrupters are fine, adds some challenge IMO

[Raptros]

Sometimes I feel like you need to look at a game simply sometimes, instead of in a very complicated manner.

 

Disruptors stealing your S#&$ and costing you missions?

 

Prioritize, Be vigilant, communicate if need be, conquer.

 

There are ways to counter everything, sometimes more indirectly than others. Think, strategize, decide, prevail.  

 

Trust me, you'll feel better conquering a difficult objective in the end rather than comfortably roaming around and pulling an "oh hey I'm done"

[Lumdalumlum]

Just played Jupiter IO mission at wave 30. I don't know how and why. They decided to spawn 7 Disrupter together, marching towards the pod. like really? I think this should be fixed... The disrupt effect should be longer. But they should spawn in lesser amount. Like how those heavy grinner are spawn. Not come in 1 big squad and march towards you. 

[Hyusu]

Bind the block key, use the block key. Blocking makes you invulnerable to disruption.

[Madotsuki]

Bind the block key, use the block key. Blocking makes you invulnerable to disruption.

Uhh, no it doesn't, i tried. And the fact that the block key starts unbinded is practically a giant neon sign saying this function is useless anyway.

Sometimes I feel like you need to look at a game simply sometimes, instead of in a very complicated manner.

 

Disruptors stealing your S#&$ and costing you missions?

 

Prioritize, Be vigilant, communicate if need be, conquer.

 

There are ways to counter everything, sometimes more indirectly than others. Think, strategize, decide, prevail.  

 

Trust me, you'll feel better conquering a difficult objective in the end rather than comfortably roaming around and pulling an "oh hey I'm done"

No, it doesn't feel better conquering the Disruptor, because the Disruptor is a completely bipolar enemy. When a Disruptor shows up, there are two types of scenarios.

A: You see the Disruptor and know it's there, in which case the Disruptor is nothing but a glorified bullet sponge, trivialized by cold mods, melee stunlock or a Hek to the knee. They are in no way challenging or satisfying to kill, just makes me sigh in relief that the PoS didn't screw me over. There was no satisfaction, unlike when I soloed each boss the first time, or when I joust a Shield Lancer and win, or pull off 1337 maneuvers to kill a Tech before they can deploy shield ospreys, because Disruptors, when you know their there, are easy as pie to kill 90% of the time.

B: You DON'T see the Disruptor, because the game decided to spawn one in the room you just cleared out less than 20 seconds ago, it charges across the room at Loki speed completely silently while you try to kill a swarm of Chargers from the front, and the Disruptor smacks you into the ground, ripping all shields and energy from you in a single hit, while the Chargers catch up and r8pe you with their "weak claw attacks". How is THAT challenging either? You can't do ANYTHING about it because the Disruptor is completely silent, and the spawns are completely counter-intuitive and random. Unless you're some kind of gaming god with 360 degree visual environmental awareness every second in the middle of a firefight, which should not be expected from players in a game that is NOT advertised as the next hardcore Dark Souls, you're going to get screwed instantly.

Disruptors are a completely bipolar enemy because they are either $&*&*#(%&ly simple to kill (thus making them not challenging or satisfying to beat), or extremely punishing when one ends up sneaking up on you or you just make a single mistake (which is just frustrating and rage-inducing). That isn't challenge, that's just fake difficulty.

[gell]

I'll say that while I don't agree with Madotsuki's made up definitions for words, I do think he's made the case clear about Disruptors. They may add some form of difficulty to the game, but they're poorly designed and harshly punishing for a simple mistake.

 

These disruptor threads always go the same way:

1) Someone asks for a nerf.

2) There is some support.

3) The disruptor defense squad has one response: it adds challenge to an otherwise easy game! Don't change them!

 

And everyone goes their separate ways even when there are some good points brought up.

 

DE needs to look at this because it's so polarizing.  Hopefully when they do, they'll see what a poorly designed enemy the disruptor is. It's not about making it easier. It's about making an enemy that's interesting to fight and still give them challenge. There are so many games to draw from. They don't have to be derivative, they just need to do something more than enemies who all file in to die, and enemies who give more challenge than emptying 3 clips before they go down (that's not challenge, it's tedium), and stop throwing in silly enemies like disruptors who are super easy to kill with stun lock, yet magically can sometimes appear behind you and take away most of the FUN in the game (using your abilities makes Warframe fun, and without them, you've lost much of what makes your Warframe choice unique). I know DE doesn't want to remove fun, but they're doing so with disruptors. I really feel like giving any example of what they should do undermines their ability to design anything good. They have a long history of games to draw from, and they're still using designs from the late 90s. Look at why people dislike disruptors, and also why people defend their existence. Your move, DE.

[Nubsawce]

What I don't understand about this entire damn thread is one thing. It's so obvious and so viable, but the defense force can't seem to see it.

 

Did you know that you can actually make the other infested more threatening? Oh man. Who saw that one coming?

I'm not usually so sarcastic, but it's just baffling how hostile you guys are for having such a bad position.

 

How about we nerf disruptors a little bit and then add new types of infested that are dangerous from range? And then buff runners and change them from a stun into a shield capacity debuff or armor debuff? Or maybe we could also make toxic ancients lower your maximum health temporarily instead of just draining it through shields?

 

Do you see all of these ideas I have thrown out that add challenge that isn't cheese? There are many more. We can make the infested harder. We don't have to go "well, screw every other infested unit, they'll just have to stay cake while the disruptors are somewhat frustrating".

 

Edit: another move that would help difficulty and reduce cheese is to have better dodging and blocking and enemy targeting, so that infested don't strike behind them and whatnot. Then just make the moves more threatening, or add more variety to them. Maybe some sort of ground slam on ancients, who knows? There are plenty of things possible.

Edited June 26, 2013 by Nubsawce

[CookiesMonsters]

I don't like the disruptor nerf. Infested defense mission is already easy by warframe standing on higher grounds.

[Tsukinoki]

@Madotsuki

Actually, blocking does work and you can consistently block a portion of the damage and negate the energy drain from a disrupter attacking you in the direction you are blocking. You see the windup, you hold block, the attack hits your block, and you get some damage but no disruption effect.

@Nubsawce

The problem is that if they nerfed the disrupters, *then* went through and added all the tougher enemies and brought the infested back up to challenging you would first have some people happy the infested are even easier, and others angry about it. Once you introduce the harder infested you would have the people who are clamouring for a disrupter nerf get into rant threads on the forums that infested are too hard.

A better way to handle it is to start to release reworks to the infested and some tougher enemies, perferrably at least one ranged enemy but not too many as they should stay mostly melee IMO, and after you have some of that implemented and happy then you can slowly nerf the disrupters while adding more infested content. It'll keep a larger portion of the player base a lot happier with the changes then just dropping the disrupter to having zero threat and then later coming through and upgrading the infested faction.

[Psychotoxin]

there should be something like a "Spitter" infested. just so you had to actually pay attention to your surroundings. right now the infested are kinda easy unless you get swarmed... then it`s a matter of luck and a certain skill to get out of the mosh-pit...