Enemy Quanity Vs. Quality

[Paradoxbomb]

HERES THE SHORT VERSION for anyone who doesn't want to read the wall of text below. Basically most of the enemy difficulty in this games seems to stem from the fact that the game throws up to twenty of the same standard grunts at you in any one tileset, rather than the enemies themselves being varied or powerful. I believe that rather than constantly throw mobs of run-of-the-mill soliders at us every ten feet, mobs should be smaller, but include more intermediate level enemies that arent quite as strong as heavy units, but still have more durability and unique abilities than the common troops. Existing unique enemies could also use a buff, and some of the lesser used heavy units (such as bombards and napalms) should be more frequent later in the game.

 

Feel free to read the OP if you still want more detail:

 

 

 

 

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Although I do enjoy this game greatly and do think that it can be very challenging, epsecially playing solo, I do have a small gripe about where the difficulty in the game comes from. It feels as though the difficulty of every encounter doesn't come from what enemies you're fighting and not even how powerful they are, but just the fact that they'll throw 15-20 into any given room at a time. Admittingly, it can be challenging, especially when the game does decide to throw a heavy hitter into the mix. However, I find the issue is that more often than not these 15-20 enemies are always the same standard smg/shotgun wielding Grineer that either get one-shotted by you and your teammates or Grakata you into a fine Tenno paste if their high level or your playing alone.

 

Again, it's not that it's too hard or anything, but it just feels repetitive and like a waste of potential. You have enemies that can teleport and shoot fire grenades and rockets, and even then you only encounter one or two a level (Heavy gunners and Commanders seem to have a decent, if not excessive at times, spawn rate). Plus having 20 enemies in one room at a time really brings down the fps for us people without high-end computers, and killing enemies at any level is just annoying when your computer can't keep up.

 

My suggestion is that instead of spamming so many standard low-level enemies, the enemies themselves should be reworked and reorganized to have more variety and challenge, so that it's not necessary to throw endless waves of the same standard troops at us all the time.

 

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Firstly, there should be a greater division of the different enemy types. For example, have the standard class, your standard grineer lancers and shotgun soliders, making up the bread and butter of the forces as usual, maybe spamming them every now and then if you have a full group of players. But instead of throwing endless amounts of these guys at players over and over, have a greater frequency of "advanced" classes, around the difficulty of Grineer commanders. A minimum of 1-2 of these guys will accompany a group of standard troops, have significantly greater health and armor, occasionally use shields, and use stronger guns (like, say, burst fire guns or latrons). Then finally you have the Heavy troops, like the Napalms and Bombards. With the exception of Heavy Gunners, enemies like these seem to spawn very infrequently, perhaps a boost in either frequency or AI in later levels would make encounters with them more feared and challenging, and make every combat situation more varied. Both the advanced and heavy gunners should have the ability to give orders to the standard enemies and even boost there damage, making them prime targets.

 

Secondly, the existing enemies designed to add variety should be combined or modified to improve the danger they pose. As an example, the Grineer seeker and Ballista. The seekers are at least made annoying by there ability to deployer latchers/rollers and their heavy armor, However, on there own, there pretty weak, just using a measly pistol and taking 1 or 2 extra charged melee attacks. Meanwhile, the Ballista can hit you from across the room with her sniper, but its really not that threatening a shot, and they have the armor equivalent of moist toilet paper. Enemies like this can be combined and have there attacks buffed. Instead of two seperate enemies, you now have one enemy that can snipe you, deploys grenades, and has much better armor to make up for their slow fire rate. Additionally, the sniper fire could ignore shields, making them a much more dangerous adversary and priority target. Essentially, enemies that just serve as a minor aversion need to be modified to fit the aforementioned advanced category of enemies.

 

Finally, enemies should utilize more group tatics. I'm sure AI improvement await enemies in the future anyway, so I guess this isn't really worth mentioning, but even so, having stronger enemies buff the weaker troops is just a start, Perhaps there could be medics who deploy healing devices for troops, or elemental troops that provide their allies with elemental damage. Additionally, enemies like the shield lancer could be more inclined to actively guard advanced/heavy enemies and make them harder to take down.

 

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By changing the way enemy spawning works, so that there's a lesser quantiy of enemies but a stronger, more varied one could help improved the game by:

>Making every encounter more challenging rather than spamming bullets at (and having bullets spammed at you by) the same two enemy types over and over.

>Encouraging players to work together (hopefully) since enemies would be more coorinated or at least tougher to take down via divide and conquer tatics.

>Giving snipers a purpose. I've heard a lot of complaints about snipers not fitting the game very well, which makes sense since you more often than not get spammed by hordes of enemies that don't require high damage to kill anyway. By having stronger enemies more often, Snipers get a chance to shine and pick off these targets from far away while smg/shotgun users can pick off their cohorts

>More opportunity for variety. For example, by having more enemies with shields or heavier vulnerabilities to cetain elements, it would players an excuse to really make full use of mods/artifacts that punch through shields or cause such damage.

>And of course, less lag from having so many enemies on screen at once.

 

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Well, that's my two cents, sorry about the wall of text. As a beta the game is fine as is, but for the final release I really hope to see more variety in the enemy encounters, so as to break up the monotony of shooting the same dudes a hundred times per mission.

Edited June 27, 2013 by Paradoxbomb

[AlricNarccus]

I agree

[Shinseiji]

+1 More variety is always welcome :D

[DiabolusUrsus]

More varying types of enemies? Yes, that's an excellent idea.

Enemies that call for a specific weapon loadout or set of skills to tackle effectively? Grineer Commander type enemies with every group of mooks? No, that's a bad idea.

 

As I mentioned before in a similar thread, while your suggestion would certainly be fun and entertaining, it hinges on two wildly inconsistent and unreliable requirements:

1. Actual teamwork between members of a group while playing the game. I have yet to encounter this outside of playing with groups of friends while talking over Skype.

2. Consistently varied weapon loadouts amongst members of a group. People are going to jump into the game with whatever they feel like using. What is a team consisting entirely of players with SMG-type weapons supposed to do when confronted with enemies that call for snipers? Or vice-versa? You could adjust it so that enemies can still be tackled effectively with other weapons, but then you've just taken a step backwards, towards more generic mooks. People are going to go for efficiency and minimal effort above all else.

[Taisho207]

can we get a TL:DR?

[CypressD]

This might be helped by having different "sets" of enemies on each planet. Instead of the typical mosh of regular lancers and the occasional heavy, have a mission or two per system entirely populated by heavies. Then have a mission entirely populated by light units, but double or triple them in number. etc.

[Namacyst]

can we get a TL:DR?

OP says that enemys in the game behave like clans these days: quantity over quality and that it would be better to have a few good enemys instead of lots of generic monsters to bring the game forward ;)

[Slayblaze]

I like the notion of more variety in enemies, but I'd hate to lose that feeling of being mobbed by dozens of foes rushing at me, as seen in some favorite games of the past like Serious Sam, Painkiller and Doom1.

 

Don't see why we can't have the best of both worlds though.

[Ordain]

Problem is if an enemy sniper ignores shields I'd expect our snipers to ignore shields. I don't like it when in games they give an enemy a benefit on a weapon/attack that a player doesn't have. I think they should be more of an = footing on that. That way skill/ability play more of a role on both sides of the field.

[Paradoxbomb]

More varying types of enemies? Yes, that's an excellent idea.

Enemies that call for a specific weapon loadout or set of skills to tackle effectively? Grineer Commander type enemies with every group of mooks? No, that's a bad idea.

 

As I mentioned before in a similar thread, while your suggestion would certainly be fun and entertaining, it hinges on two wildly inconsistent and unreliable requirements:

1. Actual teamwork between members of a group while playing the game. I have yet to encounter this outside of playing with groups of friends while talking over Skype.

2. Consistently varied weapon loadouts amongst members of a group. People are going to jump into the game with whatever they feel like using. What is a team consisting entirely of players with SMG-type weapons supposed to do when confronted with enemies that call for snipers? Or vice-versa? You could adjust it so that enemies can still be tackled effectively with other weapons, but then you've just taken a step backwards, towards more generic mooks. People are going to go for efficiency and minimal effort above all else.

I'm not suggesting that any enemy should call for a specific loadout, the sniper thing was just an example of how improving enemy variety could simply make them more viable. You could still take whatever weapon you please into combat, just be prepared to think on your toes a bit more instead of mindlessly mowing down a horde with a few machine gun clips as it tends to work now. The commander thing was also just an example. Having an actual commander escort EVERY horde would just be annoying.

 

I like the notion of more variety in enemies, but I'd hate to lose that feeling of being mobbed by dozens of foes rushing at me, as seen in some favorite games of the past like Serious Sam, Painkiller and Doom1.

 

Don't see why we can't have the best of both worlds though.

It could still occur every now and then, especially if you have a full party, just not every 10 ft. Besides, if all else, there's always the infested (those things should remain mobs cause, you know, there like zombies).

 

Problem is if an enemy sniper ignores shields I'd expect our snipers to ignore shields. I don't like it when in games they give an enemy a benefit on a weapon/attack that a player doesn't have. I think they should be more of an = footing on that. That way skill/ability play more of a role on both sides of the field.

This falls under what I said about more opportunity for player variety. If you have more shielded enemies and enemies with shield ignoring snipers, then not only should players get a shield ignoring sniper, but you'd have a reason to use it too since more than 3 enemies would actual use a shield.

Edited June 26, 2013 by Paradoxbomb

[Paradoxbomb]

Hate to bump my own post, but bump

[TheHeraldXII]

+1 for enemy variety and reducing the clutter.

As an added note, we don't want bullet sponges either, more time to kill doesn't mean more difficult.

[fatpig84]

I want more enemies with knock downs and stuns.

[Aizeol]

While I am 100% in favor for a healthy variety of enemies, I'd be worried that it would come at the cost of limiting the bada$$ness of the Tenno. As far as I can tell from the early interviews with the Devs, they wanted the players to feel very powerful. That is not to say unbeatable, but just very powerful. Having "mook" enemies that are almost just there to be killed helps, and I believe they shouldn't be removed. At least not for the early levels (i.e. All of mercury and at least half of venus). This will help new player feel awesome before the more varied enemies come in later.

On the plus side, more variety can go a long way to help the planets feel different from one another. Why not have some enemies only appear on a specific planet, or in different quantities? This could help player immediately feel like the mission they're on is not just a "higher level" version of a mission they played back at the beginning of the game.

[Sasha-]

I don't think mobs should be smaller, but I like the idea of new units and more variety, of course. Part of what makes the game enjoyable for me is feeling like a bada$$, killing hordes of grunts is so satisfying (I'm not going to lie) :D. I'd hate to lose that.

 

So basically I'd say keep the hordes of weaker units, but increase the variety of the more powerful 'mini-boss' type units. And perhaps make them more challenging.

[ZWarhammer]

Affinity scales much better with quantity rather than quality in this game so basically you get less exp for killing higher level enemies than multiple low level enemies.

[BloodRiot]

Affinity scales much better with quantity rather than quality in this game so basically you get less exp for killing higher level enemies than multiple low level enemies.

 

That's because, acording to what i've read somewhere, the XP actually scales very little to nothing with enemy level/difficulty rating. In theory, 20 weaklings should provide the same XP as 10 averages, 5 strongs or 1 boss just as an example.

 

L4D did manage this to a point. Teamplay is in fact not only encouraged, but also imperative in some areas of the game. And there you fight both hordes of easily dispatched weaklings as well as small groups of stronger and more dangerous and varied enemies.

 

Of course i'm refering to gameplay mechanics, not anything remotely related to the theme of L4D.

 

EDIT: Typos.

Edited July 3, 2013 by BloodRiot

[Paradoxbomb]

While I am 100% in favor for a healthy variety of enemies, I'd be worried that it would come at the cost of limiting the bada$$ness of the Tenno. As far as I can tell from the early interviews with the Devs, they wanted the players to feel very powerful. That is not to say unbeatable, but just very powerful. Having "mook" enemies that are almost just there to be killed helps, and I believe they shouldn't be removed. At least not for the early levels (i.e. All of mercury and at least half of venus). This will help new player feel awesome before the more varied enemies come in later.

On the plus side, more variety can go a long way to help the planets feel different from one another. Why not have some enemies only appear on a specific planet, or in different quantities? This could help player immediately feel like the mission they're on is not just a "higher level" version of a mission they played back at the beginning of the game.

 

 

I don't think mobs should be smaller, but I like the idea of new units and more variety, of course. Part of what makes the game enjoyable for me is feeling like a bada$$, killing hordes of grunts is so satisfying (I'm not going to lie) :D. I'd hate to lose that.

 

So basically I'd say keep the hordes of weaker units, but increase the variety of the more powerful 'mini-boss' type units. And perhaps make them more challenging.

A fair point, a little bada$$ery goes a long way! As I said before, I agree that mobs shouldn't be removed entirely, though I don't feel the enemy ratio scales well on earlier missions and solo missions, but for a full group of 4 players and mid to late game it's fine, in fact, this is when they should throw in a few more stronger units to really make things interesting (and agin varied).