Devstream 87 Overview

[Lyravain]

10 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Infested Eximus

Despite me being so against enemy invulnerability (It is the single worst gimmick that can be added), I do agree on Eximi needing to be more of a 'presence' in the battlefield. So, how about we pitch in some help on how to make them more interesting?

I'll start;

First of all, make Eximus units physically bigger -not just increase their 'sacks of health', but increase their size. A psychological factor that'll help us know a badass has just entered the area and coming to get us. An issue for many units is CC, so give Eximus units a resistance to CC -whether it's that they don't get slowdowned as much or they count as more 'units' in a Vauban's Bastille doesn't matter. A way for them to simply not be slowed down would be great for them (heck, make this CC resistance into a short-range Aura so their buddies can benefit from it as well). To make them even tougher, add random damage resistances that they get on top of what they already have, rolled when the unit is generated -that way, we can never be sure we'll be dealing optimal damage and will have to adapt. Of course all that is useless without improving the heuristic processes of the AI -if the enemy charges at us all the time, they are predictable, so make the unit calculate more optimal ways to attack -for example, hiding or retreating until a sizeable amount of allied units is present. Finally examine which ways we, as players, use to trivialize (cheese) the game. As an example, the Grineer are often made trivial by the presence of a Snowglobe, since most of them are ranged and will comfortably sit outside the bubble and shoot it until it breaks -which, with a decent Frost, it's not going to happen. So, in this example, give the Grineer Eximus a short-range teleport to a target (a la Flameblade, but a bit longer reach) to get into the bubble and the ability to teleport a small number of allies with him (a short castable 'taunt' that brings in a couple heavy gunners and some butchers/lancers/scorpions, for example). Who, by the way, would also benefit from the Eximus' 'weakened CC' Aura since they're so close together. Sure, for a good premade group of people, experienced and with powerful weapons, they'd be able to adapt and take down the enemies pretty fast. But even then, the flow of the fight will shift towards the enemy, rather than the players, since enemies will still be coming towards them. For many teams, this is going to be chaos, utter chaos.

In a bit of tl;dr: There's way more ways to make Eximus units interesting, applicable and capable of disrupting a team's formation and 'tried-and-true strategies' without resorting to the terrible idea of 'invulnerability'.

And if you want your weakspots; Give Eximus units lots of armor, but put big, glowing obvious weakspots that you can hit for massive damage. This way an accurate 'marksman' player can take them out in one or two hits (provided they hit the weakspot) but even a less accurate 'spray and pray' (like me on many of my weapons) or a sudden movement, won't completely invalidate the effort.

Oh, and I do find it rather hypocritical when you say you want to 'avoid adding invulnerability phases' to the game and then proceed to add exactly that. Come on, we're not idiots. Just stop listening only to the design council and start listening to the rest of the community - the design council is how many people compared to the rest of us? We have some pretty good ideas too, you know.

Edited February 4, 2017 by Lyravain

[-EvilShadowFR-]

10 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

A WIP look at this new gamemode is below – but beware, Tenno. Rebecca was (accidentally) channeling her love for RE7 during this section, so this timestamp might be 2spooky4u:link.

Your link doesn't work ^^.

[AdunSaveMe]

I feel like you guys might need to rethink your idea of a miniboss and a priority unit. How can you have a priority unit that can sometimes spawn in groups of half a dozen at once? How can you prioritize a unit when almost half the enemies in the game need to be prioritized?

In every game I have ever played that had them, a miniboss has been a tough unit between a regular mob and a boss, usually by itself or in very small numbers, with its own unique abilities and traits. Whereas what you're doing is slapping weak point on units that still have bland (and sometimes unfair) abilities, and are still clones of regular units, that spawn very frequently.

This is not the kind of 'challenge' we need.

Edited February 4, 2017 by AdunSaveMe

[NovusNova]

4 hours ago, -EvilShadowFR- said:

Your link doesn't work ^^.

Should be fixed now.

[rafacasper]

- Please, stop invincibility and "pinpoint aim his pinky nail or he is invencible" mechanics. Please, if so, restrict it to some game modes. Make their points be a full arm, a full leg, like the Sonar, make them full of yellow glowing eewww pus balls! :D Big and fun

- I don´t like the idea of another enemy that "trivialize" or "nullify" or "cheese" our powers and weapons like the new proposed eximus. I like grinding trough hords. The game gives us some of the best horde killing in all games in history. Now you want to "darksouficate" it more.These kinds of enemies, debuffers and invencibles are unfun. From the latest 10 new enemies, more than a half mess with our abilities/damage/both or have invincible stages.

- People like to fight more infested, because they have the less quantity of special enemies that on high levels insta-kill you with swarming of out-of-control damage scale of oxprey bombs or osprey blue pools, or nullifiers group hugs, hyekka area fire, ICBM carrying rocket launchers, etc.

- Keep the mini-Hyennas, they are super cool, or make them a variant of the ski-balls

- Use combas instead of the sniper model for their summoner

- I like the PVE cooperative aspects of the game a lot! If something happens you can revive or be revived, Auras and buffs stack more, affinity is better shared. But the new game modes like interception and manifest recover force the players to split. Please, rethink that new game mode. We would have to split the team to cover the civilians, replenish the air. Spiting is unfun!

- Carrying things around is one of the most unfun aspects of the warframe to me. Energy cells, Lotus "pen drives" data masses, fuel cells. I suppose would be much more fun killing things before the arrive somewhere. Like a mini-boss / armored special enemy that disrupts the defending point. The last game mode, Manifest recovered had pen-drive mechanics, separating players, time mechanics, all in a single package, very unfun. The same for rescued targets, where people cheese it with Limbo to avoid headache. This new one will have pendrive and rescued babysitting.

- Sorry but Raptor and Kela were some of the most unfun reworks. Kela become a "I will run up there, where you can´t shoot me, and now you run like a maniac trying to escape the missle rain or die, while it artificially make the fight longer", and before it "Oh, your partner didn´t brought a Rhino? Suffer while the lights reset and artificially make the pre-fight longer!" Raptor was "Run or be dead in 0.5 seconds like a trash mob, no matter your armor unless you are a Valkyr, because Limbo can´t use the pen-drives/bombs while it rains nullifers, missles and explosive balls and blue pools of death!"

Personally I don´t do sorties with Raptors and Kelas, because I will get more sad than happy with the game and group mates.

 

Edited February 4, 2017 by rafacasper
Bacon for the Bacon God

[--RV--arm4geddon-117]

I'll be fine with the invulnerable/hitthespot eximi if their spawn % rate is as high as the drop % rate of Sovereign Outcast

 

[DaftMeat]

17 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Some NPCs will copy the parkour moves you do in missions, especially in Rathuum and Rescue missions. Keep a close eye out and you might just see Clem wall running!

He better look extremely awkward doing so, and maybe even occasionally trip and recover on walls.

[xoyv]

did somebody say "nef anyo boss fight"?

Spoiler

 

[OvisCaedo]

I don't really want this eximus change, but if you do it, please make energy leech auras not stack.

[._.-._.]

21 hours ago, Loswaith said:

Honestly why do we even need to have battles directly with Nef Anyo? 

i had enough with his void babblings so i want to smack him down, and make corpus get rekt

 

about infested enemies:

 

still, watch out for "simulor abuse"

Edited February 5, 2017 by Primbone

[(PSN)XPS-15]

Sad nothing on umbra, but I'm excited finally more tennogen on consoles hopefully we'll get 2-6 tennogen eventually and can't wait all these awesome new changes!

[ILChirurgoDellaVita]

I'm sorry I have to say this: but the Eximus "weak points" thing seems like a lazy move on DE's part.

As it's right now, the eximuses are already  nightmares to deal with for early-mid range players (which made up at least more than 60% of the player base) in contents upwards of lvl 40. I say this as an end-game players mainly focus on high lvl stuff who has been through all of the early-mid phases.

The community asked for challenges, not rage-inducing invulnerability mechanics. How about complimentary between enemy types? Better AI? 

Imagine getting swarm in sortie eximus stronghold? That's a right nightmare.

Edited February 5, 2017 by ILChirurgoDellaVita

[ILChirurgoDellaVita]

20 hours ago, Lyravain said:

Despite me being so against enemy invulnerability (It is the single worst gimmick that can be added), I do agree on Eximi needing to be more of a 'presence' in the battlefield. So, how about we pitch in some help on how to make them more interesting?

I'll start;

First of all, make Eximus units physically bigger -not just increase their 'sacks of health', but increase their size. A psychological factor that'll help us know a badass has just entered the area and coming to get us. An issue for many units is CC, so give Eximus units a resistance to CC -whether it's that they don't get slowdowned as much or they count as more 'units' in a Vauban's Bastille doesn't matter. A way for them to simply not be slowed down would be great for them (heck, make this CC resistance into a short-range Aura so their buddies can benefit from it as well). To make them even tougher, add random damage resistances that they get on top of what they already have, rolled when the unit is generated -that way, we can never be sure we'll be dealing optimal damage and will have to adapt. Of course all that is useless without improving the heuristic processes of the AI -if the enemy charges at us all the time, they are predictable, so make the unit calculate more optimal ways to attack -for example, hiding or retreating until a sizeable amount of allied units is present. Finally examine which ways we, as players, use to trivialize (cheese) the game. As an example, the Grineer are often made trivial by the presence of a Snowglobe, since most of them are ranged and will comfortably sit outside the bubble and shoot it until it breaks -which, with a decent Frost, it's not going to happen. So, in this example, give the Grineer Eximus a short-range teleport to a target (a la Flameblade, but a bit longer reach) to get into the bubble and the ability to teleport a small number of allies with him (a short castable 'taunt' that brings in a couple heavy gunners and some butchers/lancers/scorpions, for example). Who, by the way, would also benefit from the Eximus' 'weakened CC' Aura since they're so close together. Sure, for a good premade group of people, experienced and with powerful weapons, they'd be able to adapt and take down the enemies pretty fast. But even then, the flow of the fight will shift towards the enemy, rather than the players, since enemies will still be coming towards them. For many teams, this is going to be chaos, utter chaos.

In a bit of tl;dr: There's way more ways to make Eximus units interesting, applicable and capable of disrupting a team's formation and 'tried-and-true strategies' without resorting to the terrible idea of 'invulnerability'.

And if you want your weakspots; Give Eximus units lots of armor, but put big, glowing obvious weakspots that you can hit for massive damage. This way an accurate 'marksman' player can take them out in one or two hits (provided they hit the weakspot) but even a less accurate 'spray and pray' (like me on many of my weapons) or a sudden movement, won't completely invalidate the effort.

Oh, and I do find it rather hypocritical when you say you want to 'avoid adding invulnerability phases' to the game and then proceed to add exactly that. Come on, we're not idiots. Just stop listening only to the design council and start listening to the rest of the community - the design council is how many people compared to the rest of us? We have some pretty good ideas too, you know.

This is the kind of "Challenges" that the community was talking about: Mini bosses with abilities that can disrupt the "comfy" state of a well-made end-game team. Ruin the Nova-Vauban-Frost-sitting-in-a-corner-killing-everything mentality. That's good.

Invincible enemies with auras like right now? My gosh I can't even imagine the frustration and the saltiness.

[Serbian2G]

Anything but immunity to damage on eximus units.. Please.. Damage immunity is only gonna cause frustration and annoyance.

[Lyravain]

2 hours ago, ILChirurgoDellaVita said:

This is the kind of "Challenges" that the community was talking about: Mini bosses with abilities that can disrupt the "comfy" state of a well-made end-game team. Ruin the Nova-Vauban-Frost-sitting-in-a-corner-killing-everything mentality. That's good.

Thank you. The point of Eximi should not be 'let's annoy players', it should be 'let's make players adapt'.

From Infested Eximi with Volt Shields that persist for a few seconds after their death (meaning we'll have to prioritize, unless we want a horde of Infested a breath's away from us), Corpus with EMP pulses (interfering with our graphics, shields and possibly active abilities), Grineer with teleports (getting right into our Snowglobes)... There's ways to deal with it all. I'm sure I'm not the only one with ideas like that. We just have to put these ideas out, let them be heard and, hopefully, adapted into the game.

Making Eximus units more important, yes. Giving Invulnerability, heck no.

[EmptyDevil]

On 2/3/2017 at 6:41 PM, Fukushu said:

I said it in Bunny's overview, so now I'll say it here with a little more clarity since I've had time to sit and come up with a valid argument to what seems like a poorly thought out idea and hope it gets seen.

Eximus Unit "weak points". If the stream was anything to go by, this idea was met relatively poorly by a majority of the viewers, and I was one of the viewers voicing my concerns. The way I see it, I question DE's definition of a weak point since that doesn't normally mean "shoot this part so you can damage the whole". I know this is till the "experimental phase" of developing this feature, but if it's added as is after being given such a negative response, the forums will ignite similar to the Hema resource cost. Not only did Rebecca having trouble shooting a single point with a shotgun on a fast moving, constantly twitching and rolling mob seem like an oversight, the number of points that spawned on the Eximus' back was a major issue I saw due to how quickly enemies can turn around, leading me to believe a lot of players are going to rely on CC 'Frames or constant knock-downs to take them out, making these "challenging" enemies nothing more than a complete nuisance, especially in large numbers, which is another thing I fear none of you have taken into consideration a la Eximus Stronghold Sorties and Infested Survival/Defense missions (since the Infested seem to have the highest Eximus to regular enemy ratio).

If I may make a suggestion, I'd recommend you actually make these act like their name suggests: weak points. As an example, Dark Souls 3 has a boss named Highlord Wolnir who, in my opinion, is an excellent example of how this feature should work. As a boss, he understandably has a large health pool, but when attacked directly, he takes minimal damage, but he has three actual weak points in the form of golden bracelets, two on his left arm, one on his right. After hitting a bracelet a few times, it shatters and takes out a large amount of his health. Repeat the process for each bracelet, and he's dead; no "Oh, he has a sliver of health left and needs a few more hits" a la The Four Kings of Dark Souls, just straight up dead since his bracelets are set to kill him once they're all shattered.

In short, make these "weak points" into actual weak points! Shoot the Eximus itself? It still takes damage, but reduced. Break one weak point? Big chuck of health down. Break 'em all? Dead Eximus. That way, instead of feeling forced to hit the weak points just so you can unload who knows how many shots into the enemy, players are properly rewarded with a quick kill for taking the time to choose their shots carefully.

This post reminds me of an old thread someone else posted, asking if Warframe could learn anything from Dark Souls, and it looks like it certainly can learn a bit from Dark Souls. +1

[(PSN)WetPollito]

On 3/2/2017 at 7:59 PM, [DE]Taylor said:

(but still susceptible to Warframe abilities – like Titania’s 1)

could explain it, will They be susceptible to CC abilities only? 

Edited February 5, 2017 by (PS4)AleDiorio

[ograzzt]

"...it's a small chance... I think it's a 30% chance (to spawn new type of infested eximus)..."

Well, at least I understand where all these overlapping nullifiers bubbles come from. 30% isn't small chance for a game with dozens of enemies like warframe, guys. Not even close to small chance. Can we move this guy to work with droptables instead? I want "small" 30% chance for rare drops.

[[DE]Rebecca]

On 2/3/2017 at 5:59 PM, [DE]Taylor said:

A proposed, work in progress change is to have a certain percentage of these foes spawn with weak points. They might be invulnerable (or in hindsight highly resistant to) to damage (but still susceptible to Warframe abilities – like Titania’s 1) until these points are destroyed. These kinds of units will only appear with high-level content (no number has been released) and will scale with the enemies’ difficulty. 

Just want to bump and quote one of the most important parts of this Overview: Weak Points (http://www.giantbomb.com/weak-spot/3015-296/) 

The giantbomb gamer community says ''Weak spots are usually used on enemy NPCs that are slightly more important or powerful than normal cannon fodder enemies. Sometimes, the weak spot will be the only vulnerable spot on the enemy." 

Right now in Warframe, cannon fodder enemy heads are largely uncommunicated weakspots. Getting headshots yields more damage. Pretty conventional practice in shooters. 

Our devstreams show the rawest aspects of what is going on. This is intentional - we often adapt to changes, get real time feedback. The overview of this Devstream hours later included one of the likely adaptions to Infested Eximus Weakpoints: they may not be completely preventative of damage. I'll also add the setting I played it in: this was a sandbox room outside of the developer branch of the game. These units don't even exist in a developer/testable mission setting yet. That's just how work-in-progess this is - totally ready to adapt! Please ensure you've read this detail before you continue to add reactions 'round the web. 

Admittedly using a shotgun did not demo well: the enemy was too fast, I couldn't really aim. You witnessed some of the first player feedback on this idea, real time. Weak points: how can we make them more interesting? Maybe if you target them you get additional damage bonuses - turn the concept upside down? Lots of great ideas flowing around. I encourage you to remind yourself to be constructive; productive before pitchforks! 

[Kracken]

8 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Admittedly using a shotgun did not demo well: the enemy was too fast, I couldn't really aim. You witnessed some of the first player feedback on this idea, real time. Weak points: how can we make them more interesting? Maybe if you target them you get additional damage bonuses - turn the concept upside down? Lots of great ideas flowing around. I encourage you to remind yourself to be constructive; productive before pitchforks! 

Since we are at it . the mechanics should be done in a way that EVERY weapon type will do its job. And I meant exactly every weapon available in game.

And i suggest to not look at upside down side of it but the most troublesome (painful player experience) place of implementation of it, like eximus fortress Sorties.

Edited February 5, 2017 by Kracken

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

On 2/4/2017 at 2:06 AM, Sir_Alex_Traffo said:

- Eximi changes: while I understand the need to make them a bit more challenging, invincibility phase is not the way to go; I am a Dark Souls huge fan and there are plenty of terribly difficult enemies, but invincibility is not a feature: damage, movesets, powers, environment,  that's what makes them a challenge and that's what I'd like to see in Warframe. 

Pretty much this ^ And the abilty to hit said weak points with every melee in any stance and with every single weapon in the game.(bows, snipers esc esc) Also the weak points should have a fixed postion, and not randomly generated. And if weak point is hit with x amount of damage, scaling with enemy's level should= dead eximus. imo

Edited February 5, 2017 by (XB1)FCastle74

[Kuestenjung]

31 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Right now in Warframe, cannon fodder enemy heads are largely uncommunicated weakspots. Getting headshots yields more damage. Pretty conventional practice in shooters. 

This is something completly different then the weakspots you showed and talked about, cause, getting a headshot will yield you bonus damage, while the weakspots you showed have to be destroyed before you can do any damage. 

I can kill any enemy without a headshot but I cannot kill an Eximus without destroying the weakspot, not the way you showed it.

34 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Admittedly using a shotgun did not demo well: the enemy was too fast, I couldn't really aim. 

A shotgun is actually the best way to demo this feature, cause you have a spread and don´t aim with shotguns and you struggeled to kill the one Eximus with no other enemy around, now imagine this with 30 enemies and 10 Eximus at the screen.

35 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

 I encourage you to remind yourself to be constructive; productive before pitchforks! 

My feedback for this still stands since years. Before you introduce such systems you need to completly rework the spawnmechanics in this game, keep a balance between the different enemies and not reduce the amount of small enemies while also increasing the amount of hard enemies the further you go into a mission.

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

Also as a Nyx player there is this particular scenario :

 If I was to mind freak a eximis with a weak point and that eximis that I mind freaked were to agro another eximis with a weak point then they should go after each others weak point, and not be locked in an aimless fight with no outcome. Thank you for reading and your consideration. 

[Godchamp]

15 minutes ago, (XB1)FCastle74 said:

Also as a Nyx player there is this particular scenario :

 If I was to mind freak a eximis with a weak point and that eximis that I mind freaked were to agro another eximis with a weak point then they should go after each others weak point, and not be locked in an aimless fight with no outcome. Thank you for reading and your consideration. 

Good point, and the enemies with a rad proc, or naramon, etc.

[Chroia]

Quoting myself from the post-devstream thread, since this seems to be where the discussion's happening:

17 hours ago, Chroia said:

Eximus strongpoints. Ugh.

Alright, let's see -
I'm assuming that nothing will change regarding enemy stat or density scaling, since Damage 3.0 is (currently) aimed at enemy mechanics rather than touch their stats (to go with not touching mods) anymore.

First off: The starting mindset is problematic.
"How can we make an enemy require skill, instead of being a one-shotting bag of HP?"
"I know! Make it invulnerable unless specific points are hit!"
Why is that the starting brainstorming position?
How about "Hey, high level enemies are one-shotting bags of HP (and that's not changing). How can we make player skill more impactful?"
"Why not - in addition to their normal eHP and scaling - give them 1-4 weak points that, when hit with precision weaponry, instakills them?"
Voila. Both low effort, low efficiency brute force and high effort high efficiency finesse are possible.

(P.S.
Wasn't that the supposed intention/domain of headshots/crit headshots?
Might be worth considering why you're superseding them.
Are they not filling their role? Why not? Would it perhaps be better to address that instead?)

Now, in fairness, it's possible that this was talked about in brainstorming.
But we-the-community can only base ourselves on what you say.
If it was talked about, I can't see how not talking about it as part of the discussion on the devstream helps the discussion-in-general.
If it was talked about, enlighten us as to the cons that barred it from being the basis.
If it wasn't talked about... Why not?

Second, density scaling.
"How can we make an enemy require skill, instead of being a one-shotting bag of HP?"
"I know! Make it invulnerable unless specific points are hit!"
Because that makes Ruk, Kril, etc. such fun boss fights, but at least they're optional and unique (read: 1 per mission). Past 20 minutes into an endless, you're getting 4-12-more Eximus units per wave.
On the bright side, at least here you're not hamstrung by depending on the AI to decide to expose the vulnerable spots... Which is, in retrospect, a subject that I should have asked about for the Devstream.

Third, Eximus auras.
"How can we make an enemy require skill, instead of being a one-shotting bag of HP?"
"I know! Make it invulnerable unless specific points are hit!"
As if elemental Eximus aren't bad enough, entirely invalidating damage from their related elements (e.g. Toxin, Gas, and I'm not sure about Corrosive vs. Toxic Ancients, Arson eximi reducing Blast damage to 0, stacking Guardian + elemental eximi granting area-wide elemental immunities)
just wait until you meet a invulnerable Energy Leech, Venomous, Shock oh right, they don't proc Mag atm, Guardian, Cold (i.e. slow aura) eximus or six, forget the base unit being any kind of Ancient or heavy-hitting unit, amid a couple dozen smallfry. Or, RNG forbid, an Eximus sortie.

Or an Arctic Nullifier or three.

Wait, no, actually, I take it back. Go right ahead.
I'd love to see how 'just run into the bubble and melee it' apologists (I call them apologists because that's not the problem with Nullifiers... but that's a different discussion) will adapt their narrative.

 

tl;dr-
I don't see how this can work alongside all the other mechanics currently in place.
You want to go with this? I'm fine with that, but some of the other stuff needs to change (even if it didn't need to, already).

-----

 

1 hour ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Admittedly using a shotgun did not demo well: the enemy was too fast, I couldn't really aim.

Please consider what this means for weapon archtypes, if it goes through as is:

Shotguns, the close-range burst damage weapons? Can't deal. Not enough coverage or RoF.

Sniper rifles, the iconic finesse weapon? Can't deal. No-scope accuracy penalty means close range isn't viable. Mid-long range is possible, depending on enemy density, the specific point location (e.g. on something's ankle, when it's amid a swarm), and the specific enemy with the "weak"point (e.g. Leapers are hard enough to headshot to begin with, due to the location of the critical volume vs the model's orientation (facing away, head down and back).

Bows trade off the hipfire accuracy penalty for projectile travel time. Which'd make them most effective either:
at point-blank range (wow, such skill, much accuracy, etc.),
or against stationary targets (same as sniper rifles), so bring a CC frame otherwise gl finding targets like that, maybe unless you're playing stealth and solo.

And all of this ignores frame nukes, which - unless manually targettable - autotarget the torso, meaning they're useless in this context.

And all of this means that either:
* launchers are back to undisputed rule, or, if the points are immune to AoE,
* bullet hoses win again.

I may be reading this wrong, but if I'm not, that doesn't look to me like it encourages accuracy, changing the combat pace, etc.

Edited February 5, 2017 by Chroia