Stunlock Is Not A Substitute For Actual Design.

[DAWGUNITALPHA]

I like warframe. I like it a lot, but it has one glaring flaw. The enemy design team is lazy. Instead of making creative or interesting enemies, time and time again we get enemies who just...stun you. Large enemies like the heavy gunners have an AOE knockdown, Grineer Rollers do nothing but stun you constantly, scorpions have a tricky to avoid stun attack that can potentially cause you to lose if you're soloing. The corpus mostly just have the shockwave moa who's attacks would be a lot nicer to avoid if we didn't have that silly air shoot and roll animation. Oh and the entire infested faction is based around high damage and stunlocking. A recent buff to runners made them knock you flat on your face with each explosion, which when combined with a bad host can result in a guy halfway across the map knocking you on your face forever.

 

A while ago there was even a pretty big outcry asking for rollers to be changed or removed because of how annoying they are. Now, devs, hear me out on this. People play your game to enjoy it, challenge or no. If their primary emotion when playing your game is not a positive one, but annoyance instead. Then you're failing. You're filling your games with tedious, annoying enemies that simply aren't fun to fight. I would rather see some more interesting enemies than get half a dozen new weapons I'll probably use for the mastery and never touch again, or another caster frame that plays almost identical to the other caster frames.

 

I guess what I'm getting at is please stop relying on stunlocking non-stop. It's hurting this game more than the lack of content or challenge, in my opinion.

[LiroRaeriyo]

their trying to force players into the handspring mod and that other one...

[ToxinReign]

I'm guessing you've died for the 10th time by being stunlocked? I find absolutely no problem with any of these units, stunlock or no. I find their design is rather smart; the heavy units perform better when you're not standing right next to them, potentially stunlocking them, so they counter with their own stun. As for the grineer, only the heavy units have stuns, and rollers are so easy to kill (Sentinels, any high-damage weapon can kill them unmodded in one shot, jump melees). The infested do focus on stunning you, I agree, but any decent melee or warframe skill can kill them en masse. As for corpus, you can jump over the shockwave and dodge it, thus rendering shockwave moas basically useless.

TL;DR: Stunlock isn't a huge problem if you know how to avoid it. The game would be far too easy if you never got stunned, as literally nothing would impede your movement, sans laser doors.

Happy hunting, Tenno!

[DAWGUNITALPHA]

I'm guessing you've died for the 10th time by being stunlocked? I find absolutely no problem with any of these units, stunlock or no. I find their design is rather smart; the heavy units perform better when you're not standing right next to them, potentially stunlocking them, so they counter with their own stun. As for the grineer, only the heavy units have stuns, and rollers are so easy to kill (Sentinels, any high-damage weapon can kill them unmodded in one shot, jump melees). The infested do focus on stunning you, I agree, but any decent melee or warframe skill can kill them en masse. As for corpus, you can jump over the shockwave and dodge it, thus rendering shockwave moas basically useless.

TL;DR: Stunlock isn't a huge problem if you know how to avoid it. The game would be far too easy if you never got stunned, as literally nothing would impede your movement, sans laser doors.

Happy hunting, Tenno!

Not at all, I just find it incredibly boring that so many enemies in the game function in basically the same way instead of actually being well thought out or designed. Its like being back in early PS2 games or something where shockwave attacks were all the rage because it was easy to do and a cheap way to make things "challenging". I guess I just expect more out of games I actually like.

[Tsukinoki]

@ToxinReign
Stunlock is a cheap and simple, and lazy, mechanic to use to increase 'difficulty' without actually being hard/difficult.  Just annoying.

They can make the game challenging without relying on stunlock.  And frustrating, fake, difficulty is no reason to include something.

Now, why do I call it fake difficulty?  Because its not really difficult.  Its just cheap.

When you can be permanantly stunlocked by a roller rolliing into your legs against a box there is a problem.
When you can be dragged over and over and over and over again by scorpions without any break or chance to do anything because they pulled you around the corner before you could see them, there is a problem.

And the problem is the BROKEN stun mechanic.

If the game provides a way to either become permanently staggered/stunned, or to do it to enemies, than there is a problem with the stun mechanics.

The game should not allow an enemy to keep you staggering around to death, permanently with ZERO way to recover or fight back, except hoping the enemies AI randomly stops, or the rollers get stuck on terrain.

They can increase difficulty without resorting to just stuns, stuns, and more stuns.

Maybe units that work together?  Maybe more unit variety?  Maybe smarter enemies?

All of those could increase difficulty, be fun, and avoid stunlocks.


@OP
One way to fix the stunlock mechanics is to try to ask for diminishing returns on all stuns.

Basically it would beak down to this:
The first stun has its full duration.  The next stun, within a few seconds, has say 4/5ths duration.
And it keeps going down like that until for a few seconds you *cant* be stunned at all.

That would prevent all perma staggers and stunlocks.  And it could also apply to player generated stuns so that you can no longer stunlock bosses or ancients.

That would nicely solve the problem and would be easy for DE to implement.

[lstalri]

I stopped reading when he said the dev team was lazy because all they do is make enemies stunlock because I already know the answer:

 

Fix the damn block feature. 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/67881-blocking-breathing-life-into-a-dead-feature/

[DAWGUNITALPHA]

I stopped reading when he said the dev team was lazy because all they do is make enemies stunlock because I already know the answer:

 

Fix the damn block feature. 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/67881-blocking-breathing-life-into-a-dead-feature/

Making the block and dodge roll features useful would go a long ways to making this game better. Especially if they allowed for a melee-counter system to go with a well timed block.

[fatpig84]

They can increase difficulty without resorting to just stuns, stuns, and more stuns.

Maybe units that work together? Maybe more unit variety? Maybe smarter enemies?

All of those could increase difficulty, be fun, and avoid stunlocks.

By increasing enemy hp and resistances together and tripling their current firepower yes ??? So you are only forced to kill them via critical spots ? Welcome to Call of Warframe since you will be hiding or taking cover half the time or playing conservatively.

Or would you prefer enemies that spam radial disarm and cast you unable to shoot your weapon for 20 seconds but still mobile, would that be better for you ?


Face it nothing will be perfect.
Be glad they removed Nervos and scorpions are easy as hell to dodge, run with enemy radar instead of siphon for once. Edited July 8, 2013 by fatpig84

[Kyte]

Dude he just mentioned three things that would make it more difficult (in a good way) without involving bullet sponging, ability cheesing or stunlocking ie. forms of fake difficulty.

[neKroMancer]

Stunlock issue.

 

Many games have it, many games use it to good effect, many games fail to use it for the good of the game.

 

Many forumers who vehemently defended this mechanic in the past raised one and one point only : Stun promotes teamplay. While this notion certainly rings true in some games like L4D, the mechanic and the narrative walk hand in hand in that game. L4D focus on being helpless while you're alone. The spawn mechanic generates millions of zombies if you stray from the group. Stunlock without anyone rescuing you means death. It fits the narrative which developer tries to present to the players. Being helpless.

 

Other games like DMC series also have stun mechanic within it. However, due to the nature of the game, player is given a way to breaks free from it in form of invulnerable frame and obviously telegraphed attack animation. If you get stunned, it's your fault. Stun is being used as a teaching tool in DMC and it works fairly well, as long as your fingers aren't tired.

 

Back to Warframe. How does this mechanic fit in Warframe's narrative? Of course, stopping a futuristic homicidal mass murderers requires certain mechanic like stun. However, is the game about being helpless? No, I think not. I think using stun mechanic in Warframe is similar to DMC example - use it as a teaching tool, give players a way to get out of it or avoid it.

 

Nervos failed to address these issue : it didn't allow player to get out of stun animation and it certainly was hard to avoid when there were 4 of them slithering around your team and stunned all players at once. Scorpion isn't an inspiring example. I think player probably feel better about her if they can shoot her/cut the rope with melee weapon while being dragged along the floor. Adding QTE to stun mechanic is a fine but rather cheap way to do it and I see nothing wrong about it, as long as it's not overused.

 

Other ways to increase difficulty is about AI's design and coordination. If they work together like the shield lancer using himself as a mobile cover for regular lancer it would be very good. Expand that kind of behavior .

[NalkorRN]

I prefer Dark Souls' approach to stunlocking: only ever happened at zero poise because the only weapons that can stunlock are low-poise damage weapons. Make it so tough frames, like Frost and Rhino are almost immune to stagger from light attacks like a roller and might stagger after numerous runner explosions. The higher the armor, the more stuns/staggers/knockdowns you can resist, an invisible poise bar that depletes with each stagger/stun/knockdown hit, but recharges on it's own, like stamina. Of course, that's make Frost with maxed out Steel Fiber and Aurora helm all but immune to stagger/stuns/knockdowns, much like in Dark Souls someone wearing full Havel's with Wolf Ring and Havel's Shield buff going for them. Rhino's Iron Skin would still retain CC immunity while it's in duration and given how quickly it goes away in higher levels, an extra 20 seconds after the damage immunity wears off.

Frames like Ash could take several small hits or one big shockwave stomp before their poise bar would go empty. Excalibur would just be staggered. This would all be default, but would also make the slower frames more appealing.

[Voltyr]

This is why I play Rhino. Iron Skin might currently be useless for damage absorption on higher levels, but it still renders you immune to stuns, knockback, disruption and toxins. :P
Rocking that on lower levels usually means having Iron skin up constantly and not getting frustrated over stunlocking for the entire duration of the match. It's the most fun way to play the game. Honestly I'd trade the whole damage-absorpion thing for a version of Iron Skin that passively makes you immune to stuns and knockbacks any day. When a player feels that way, that probably says more about the game than about the warframe. So I can only agree with you.

[Theseus_Tidewalker]

the facts are: The enemies could be more interesting

                      constant stun moves are annoying

                       the AoE of heavy units are cool and anyone who does not know how to evade a shock wave is lame

                       the roll dodge move is useful not sure about block but roll works ( I think block should include blocking melee attacks)

                       

All in all nothing should be removed however more interesting things should be added. make the grineer and corpus less cowardly and cheep, make the infestation less annoying when you say weak claw attacks mean it, weak claw attacks shouldn't  knock you back plus make them more interesting and scary eg. a large snake-like monster who's head could pop out of any part of the derelict ship relentless critters that run on walls and force squads into stand off, animalistic moans heard long before they find you .So far they are good at being beast like and ferocious that's good more of that. More moves, grab moves by both players and enemies, counter grab moves, more martial arts. I agree with friend up there who said raising damage and armor of enemies is a bad idea I don't want this to be Call of Warframe (C.o.W {O.o}) hiding and looking for cover like soap mac tenno. So more attacks besides stun more enemy strategies and more enemies that's the way to go.  and keep adding new weapons that's great    

[Tselkie]

Had this yesterday, got hit by a rail gun moa from behind, then another one rounds a corner.

Stunned to death, despite having 900 in health and shields on a low level defense mission, sitting around getting chain stunned 12-14 times is not fun, not is there any skill element, it's not like making 14 mistakes and being punished for it.

How about this : leave the stunlock mechanic, but make it so that whilst stunned, you can 'break out' of the stun through the use of energy.

Either by using the block button, or using your ultimate, you break out of the stun for a cost of energy.. Minimum of say, 50 to activate, but additionally drains 50% of any energy you have remaining afterwards.

This gives a 'skill' element to stuns, gives block a use (or ultimate a use), the minimum cost is only 50 so even starter frames should e able to use it, but the 50% drain after getting back up means that storing lots of energy to use this for us discouraged (say you have 400 energy, -50 to activate, 350 energy, half drain, 175 energy, a second use would leave with 63 energy)

Numbers could be tweaked of course, but it would fix an annoying problem and turn it into a skill based gameplay element, whilst penalising improper energy management.

[Tsukinoki]

By increasing enemy hp and resistances together and tripling their current firepower yes ??? So you are only forced to kill them via critical spots ? Welcome to Call of Warframe since you will be hiding or taking cover half the time or playing conservatively.

Or would you prefer enemies that spam radial disarm and cast you unable to shoot your weapon for 20 seconds but still mobile, would that be better for you ?

And where did you get any of this from what I was saying? I really would like to know how you got that out of what you quoted and what I said.

The three suggestions I made are all ways that DE can include actual difficulty and challenge in this game without resorting to the fake and cheap difficutly that you somehow got out of what I said.

If they include more units they can add units with different mechanics that can be challenging, fair, and fun. Such as adding a few stealth units to the corpus, since they have a boss that stealths, that goes around and snipes you while entering and leaving invisibility.

They could include a grineer support unit that heals other grineer and provides them with small buffs.

They could make a heavy shielder that more units can hide behind and that take longer to kill to protect say a bombard.

They could give the infested a flying unit to make some battles more dynamic in the larger rooms and give them a different way to attack, and a way to attack players on boxes.

All of those would increase challenge and be fun to go up against.

They could make grineer units that spawn in set troops. Such as 3 lancers, a ballista, and 2 shielders that stick together. The shields provide cover while the lancers and ballista snipe at you from their mobile cover.

They could make the grinneer commander spawn with a scorch more often so he could switch teleport you right next to his flame thrower wielding friend.

They could make more units take advantage of the shield lancers, and put into place AI that keeps them close together to make them harder to pick off in general.

Those are just examples of how the grineer could be made to work together and provide better support for each other. Again, this would provide a challenge but it would be fun and an actual challenge.

If they combine that with increased unit variety they could easily make the game a lot more challenging and fun without doing what you seem to be suggesting.