[Update 20] Octavia Feedback Megathread

[xKiuu]

For me, Octavia's Music just randomly starts over in the middle of the song, this is really annoying when i wanna get the bonuses any ETA on a fix?

[Unibu]

Indeed the timing "rings" were a terrible idea, firstly they are at your feet so you can't even see them when you aim your firearm, secondly, they are really inaccurate and tell you nothing about how to time your actions. A custom HUD piece on the bottom right would be much better.

[RistN]

Way it works now it would be better if Resonator and Mallet would be separated,that Resonator don't pick up Mallet.They are clearly confronted.

It would also be good if Resonator lose its charm when he picks up Mallet just making Mallet mobile but in a way so that this action isnt automated but that we have possibilitie to choose do we want Resonator to pick it up or not like for example throwing Mallet or Resonator in lets say 2 meter area of one that is active.

From what I've seen from testing Octavia abilities until now:

Mallet: good but in times I think its not drawing enemy fire that good.Too low duration in matter of time needed to build dmg.Best used on further areas enemies are comming from away from players.(please be free to quote me on this if you think im wrong.Im still testing Mallet)

Resonator:Ability I like the most.Great CC with max range.AI is actually not bad.

+1 to OP I've been looking for topic like this.

 

[TenGaugeBoson]

Love Octavia...

Metronome is an awesome ability....but it is way to hard to pull off....there needs to be a better way to trigger or time the buffs. I love the way they trigger , but the timing is just  to unforgiving.. You end up spending 30 seconds or more trying to get the buff. At that point it is no good.

It seems to be easier with different songs.Or mod set ups not sure....

 

[Colyeses]

The problem with the visual indicators is that they are moving rings, but the critical point is not when the rings fully collapse and it's not indicated in any other way when you have to hit them.

Any kind of rhythm game, the point that you have to hit a note is indicated, usually by a bar. Once the note hits the bar, that's when you hit the key. But here, that bar is missing, and so you have to guess, through trial and error, when you have to hit.

Metronome is a fun concept, but the execution is a complete and total disaster.

[Fylas]

from what I saw it's easier with songs that have rythmic bass with larger gaps so each success counts for more overall making a trigger easier  if you are bad at fast rhythms..... but seriously... has nobody pointed out that it essentially rewards teabagging by making you invisible??! 

[LascarCapable]

Hello there ! Enjoying U20 ? Great. Enjoying Octavia ? Also great ! I guess you guys are already messing around with the mandachord, trying to reproduce meme music and other Rick Roll thingies. But while you guys were probably trying to recreate Darude Sandstorm, I was a bit more focused on Octavia's gameplay.

So what's the diagnostic, doc ? Well, Octavia is a damn fine support frame... If you put the right music on it. DE again managed to make a Warframe with all powers retaining some kind of utility, but at what price ? Octavia is just plain in simple flawed in concept ability wise. If you planned to use Octavia at full potential while having a cool music packed with you, well, too bad. Basically, the way the powers of her kit works pretty much advantage unfairly fast paced music. If you want the most effective Octavia possible, you must make sure that EVERY SINGLE COLLUMS on the mandachord has at least one percussion and one melody tile on it. This is basically Octavia's major design flaw : if you want to be as good as possible, there's no real place for creativity.

With that main flaw adds a few minor flaws that I will describe with advanced ability descriptions, that I always do and will start right now.

--ABILITY AND STATS REVIEW--

I think octavia's stats are pretty wierd. Average armor, average health, low shields, high energy pool, average speed... I'd rather give it 125 shields, increase the speed to 1.1 and lower the armor value to 75 or so.

 

Mallet is a very good ability in theory and in practice. Probably too good for a first power by the way, but heh... Basically, imagine a Loki decoy with infinite health that fights back at ennemies when they attack it. You get the Mallet ! The power deal damage at each beat of percussion and it seems to attract enemies' attention pretty well.

However, there's no scaling of damage if your rythm is fairly slow. This means that fast paced percussions will deal far more damage than a slower rythm for a slow paced music. That's unfair. Shouldn't Octavia allow us to pack the music of our choice with equal efficiency ? If you use Mallet as a CC skill it's not really a big deal, but the damage potential of Mallet is definitely really great. It would be a shame to ignore it.

My suggestion : Give bonus damage depending of the time between two beats, in a way so there's no virtual damage loss. Here's an exemple so you can understand :

Let's consider two percussion tracks : 0 means a collumn where there's a beat on it, - means that there's nothing on that collumn.

1. 0000 0000 0000 0000
2. 00-0 --00- ---00 ----

So basically, on track 1, each beats would deal 100% damage. However on track two, the damage would look like this :

• First beat deals 100% damage.
• Second beat deals 100% damage.
• Third beat deals 200% damage because there was no beat in the precedent collumn.
• Fourth beat deals 300% damage because there was no beat in the two precedent collumns.
• Fifth beat deals 100% damage because there was a beat in the precedent collumn.
• Sixth beat deals 500% damage because there was no beat for 4 collums straight.
• Seventh beat deals 100% damage because there was a beat in the precedent collumn.
• Going back to the First beat : it deals 500% damage because there was no beat played in the last 4 collumns read by the mandachord.

I hope this was clear enough.

 

Resonator is a CC skill that charms nearby ennemies in addition of allowing its user to make his mallet mobile. It basically allows its user to move his mallet with him. There's a small flaw on Resonator tho. Because charmed ennemies won't attempt to attack the Mallet, you might end up wasting some damage. This is why it is wiser to let the mallet building a bit first before casting Resonator with you. Also, the Resonator's ability to follow you ins't really the best on some tricky tilesets, but that's a common flaw with invocations.

My suggestion : Make Resonator a toggleable ability so you can put back your Mallet in a static position once you are done moving it, so you can go back to building its power again.

 

Metronome is a pretty good ability in theory, but absolutely terrible in practice. Let's face it, no one wants to dance to earn bonuses. Especially during a high level fight where you have to remain as focused as possible in order to avoid a funest one hit death from random heavy unit. How does it work ? If you crouch, fire, jump or use your melee attack with the music, you earn bonuses depending of what actions you performed. The thing is, the power will award you the bonus only if you perform your action at the right time for a fixed amount of time. What does it mean ? It means that it's absurdly hard and slow to get a buff if your melody does not contain a lot of tunes. And it's already really hard with the base melody.

There's fortunately a way to cheese the system : do what you did with the percussion ! In other words, pull out at least one melody turn at each collumns of the mandachord. This pretty much allows you to earn your bonuses as fast as you can just by spamming the button of your choice at the right pace. And when you do, it's just crazy : you can stack invisibility, melee damage bonus, gun multishot bonus and speed bonus all at once, though the most interesting one is definitely the invisibility part of the power. The bonus also lasts a fair amount of time, and you can easly keep it up for more than the full duration of your ability. Anyway, once again, fast paced melodies are advantaged unfairly. But Metronome's concept was flawed from the start anyway. That power should probably not focus on the melody's rythm, though we can still keep the dancing aspect.

My suggestion : Lemme quote something I wrote in the official feedback thread !

Quote

How about awarding a buff based on a four movement sequence Octavia did rather than awarding a buff for following the rythm ? Basically a bit like dancing. The moves are shoot, melee, jump and crouch. We hit 3 to start registering the moves and the power awards buffs depending of what you performed :

• You and allies get x seconds invisibility for each time you crouched.
• You and allies get +x% speed for each time you jumped.
• You and allies get +x% multishot for each time you shot.
• You and allies get +x% melee damage for each time you used melee

Basically it's like a "pick your own buffs" menu. It's much less intrusive for players and much easier to perform mid fight. And shouldn't annoy players that much.

The power also give armor bonuses, but Octavia isn't supposed to be a tank in my opinion. Maybe that bonus should be replaced with bonus speed ? Or bonus Maglev ! Aye, definitely maglev, that would make my day...

 

Amp is Octavia's final ability... And I have nothing that great to say about it actually. It's basically a floor AoE that increase the damage you deal, with a small additional bonus awarded based of how loud the environment is. It also increases the range and damage of your Mallet, which is cool. It's definitely a useful power, but not really a memorable one.

I have no suggestions about this one. It looks fine as it is.

 

--CONCLUSION--

So to conclude, Octavia does not allow the serious player to pack the tune of his choice. You MUST build your tune for combat, and that's a shame. Abilities are probably too dependent of the kind of music you play, and awards unfair bonuses to face paced (and often terrible) music. We expected Beethoven, but you guys pretty much gave us a kid on a xylophone. :(

Octavia's powers should be reworked in a way where fast paced music does not dominate as much. Much more importantly, her 3 should also be reworked so bonuses can be awarded in a much easier way without interfering with in combat manoeuvers too much.

That's about it. I hope this was a good read and my concerns were on point. Don't hesitate about leaving your opinion here. :)

[LascarCapable]

All right, here's my complete feedback.

 

Octavia is a damn fine support frame... If you put the right music on it. DE again managed to make a Warframe with all powers retaining some kind of utility, but at what price ? Octavia is just plain in simple flawed in concept ability wise. If you planned to use Octavia at full potential while having a cool music packed with you, well, too bad. Basically, the way the powers of her kit works pretty much advantage unfairly fast paced music. If you want the most effective Octavia possible, you must make sure that EVERY SINGLE COLLUMS on the mandachord has at least one percussion and one melody tile on it. This is basically Octavia's major design flaw : if you want to be as good as possible, there's no real place for creativity.

With that main flaw adds a few minor flaws that I will describe with advanced ability descriptions, that I always do and will start right now.

--ABILITY AND STATS REVIEW--

I think octavia's stats are pretty wierd. Average armor, average health, low shields, high energy pool, average speed... I'd rather give it 125 shields, increase the speed to 1.1 and lower the armor value to 75 or so.

 

Mallet is a very good ability in theory and in practice. Probably too good for a first power by the way, but heh... Basically, imagine a Loki decoy with infinite health that fights back at ennemies when they attack it. You get the Mallet ! The power deal damage at each beat of percussion and it seems to attract enemies' attention pretty well.

However, there's no scaling of damage if your rythm is fairly slow. This means that fast paced percussions will deal far more damage than a slower rythm for a slow paced music. That's unfair. Shouldn't Octavia allow us to pack the music of our choice with equal efficiency ? If you use Mallet as a CC skill it's not really a big deal, but the damage potential of Mallet is definitely really great. It would be a shame to ignore it.

My suggestion : Give bonus damage depending of the time between two beats, in a way so there's no virtual damage loss. Here's an exemple so you can understand :

Let's consider two percussion tracks : 0 means a collumn where there's a beat on it, - means that there's nothing on that collumn.

1. 0000 0000 0000 0000
2. 00-0 --00- ---00 ----

So basically, on track 1, each beats would deal 100% damage. However on track two, the damage would look like this :

• First beat deals 100% damage.
• Second beat deals 100% damage.
• Third beat deals 200% damage because there was no beat in the precedent collumn.
• Fourth beat deals 300% damage because there was no beat in the two precedent collumns.
• Fifth beat deals 100% damage because there was a beat in the precedent collumn.
• Sixth beat deals 500% damage because there was no beat for 4 collums straight.
• Seventh beat deals 100% damage because there was a beat in the precedent collumn.
• Going back to the First beat : it deals 500% damage because there was no beat played in the last 4 collumns read by the mandachord.

I hope this was clear enough.

 

Resonator is a CC skill that charms nearby ennemies in addition of allowing its user to make his mallet mobile. It basically allows its user to move his mallet with him. There's a small flaw on Resonator tho. Because charmed ennemies won't attempt to attack the Mallet, you might end up wasting some damage. This is why it is wiser to let the mallet building a bit first before casting Resonator with you. Also, the Resonator's ability to follow you ins't really the best on some tricky tilesets, but that's a common flaw with invocations.

My suggestion : Make Resonator a toggleable ability so you can put back your Mallet in a static position once you are done moving it, so you can go back to building its power again.

 

Metronome is a pretty good ability in theory, but absolutely terrible in practice. Let's face it, no one wants to dance to earn bonuses. Especially during a high level fight where you have to remain as focused as possible in order to avoid a funest one hit death from random heavy unit. How does it work ? If you crouch, fire, jump or use your melee attack with the music, you earn bonuses depending of what actions you performed. The thing is, the power will award you the bonus only if you perform your action at the right time for a fixed amount of time. What does it mean ? It means that it's absurdly hard and slow to get a buff if your melody does not contain a lot of tunes. And it's already really hard with the base melody.

There's fortunately a way to cheese the system : do what you did with the percussion ! In other words, pull out at least one melody turn at each collumns of the mandachord. This pretty much allows you to earn your bonuses as fast as you can just by spamming the button of your choice at the right pace. And when you do, it's just crazy : you can stack invisibility, melee damage bonus, gun multishot bonus and speed bonus all at once, though the most interesting one is definitely the invisibility part of the power. The bonus also lasts a fair amount of time, and you can easly keep it up for more than the full duration of your ability. Anyway, once again, fast paced melodies are advantaged unfairly. But Metronome's concept was flawed from the start anyway. That power should probably not focus on the melody's rythm, though we can still keep the dancing aspect.

My suggestion : Lemme quote something I wrote in the official feedback thread !

Quote

How about awarding a buff based on a four movement sequence Octavia did rather than awarding a buff for following the rythm ? Basically a bit like dancing. The moves are shoot, melee, jump and crouch. We hit 3 to start registering the moves and the power awards buffs depending of what you performed :

• You and allies get x seconds invisibility for each time you crouched.
• You and allies get +x% speed for each time you jumped.
• You and allies get +x% multishot for each time you shot.
• You and allies get +x% melee damage for each time you used melee

Basically it's like a "pick your own buffs" menu. It's much less intrusive for players and much easier to perform mid fight. And shouldn't annoy players that much.

The power also give armor bonuses, but Octavia isn't supposed to be a tank in my opinion. Maybe that bonus should be replaced with bonus speed ? Or bonus Maglev ! Aye, definitely maglev, that would make my day...

 

Amp is Octavia's final ability... And I have nothing that great to say about it actually. It's basically a floor AoE that increase the damage you deal, with a small additional bonus awarded based of how loud the environment is. It also increases the range of your Mallet, which is cool. It's definitely a useful power, but not really a memorable one.

I have no suggestions about this one. It looks fine as it is.

 

--CONCLUSION--

So to conclude, Octavia does not allow the serious player to pack the tune of his choice. You MUST build your tune for combat, and that's a shame. Abilities are probably too dependent of the kind of music you play, and awards unfair bonuses to face paced (and often terrible) music. We expected Beethoven, but you guys pretty much gave us a kid on a xylophone. :(

Octavia's powers should be reworked in a way where fast paced music does not dominate as much. Much more importantly, her 3 should also be reworked so bonuses can be awarded in a much easier way without interfering with in combat manoeuvers too much.

 

[RAZORLIGHT]

i totally agree, beeing a squad member of octavia it is even harder to get the buffs

[Wandering_Sun]

I've been having a bit of trouble testing her abilities, mallets damage seems to fluctuate oddly even with a steady stream of the same notes on the mandichord, does the damage bosot from taking shots decay rapidly or maintain for the entire duration of the mallet because it very much seems like they decay after just a pulse or two.

[lukinu_u]

15 minutes ago, Fylas said:

from what I saw it's easier with songs that have rythmic bass with larger gaps so each success counts for more overall making a trigger easier  if you are bad at fast rhythms..... but seriously... has nobody pointed out that it essentially rewards teabagging by making you invisible??! 

THIS !

[DeMonkey]

Agree on all fronts, although there is one thing you missed.

She 100% facilitates static and mindless play, something DE has been taking strides towards removing. 

A decoy that pulls aggro, absorbs enemy damage, multiplies it and sends it right back to them. I've walked out of missions with 60% damage dealt, and having only shot maybe 2 or 3 enemies.

A buff that you can only get by focusing on timing and rhythm rather than actually playing.

And an AoE damage amplifier that doesn't follow you around.

Wasn't Mesa nerfed for being able to kill everything around her without moving or doing much of anything. That's the same feeling I get when playing Octavia.

[LascarCapable]

4 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Agree on all fronts, although there is one thing you missed.

She 100% facilitates static and mindless play, something DE has been taking strides towards removing. 

A decoy that pulls aggro, absorbs enemy damage, multiplies it and sends it right back to them. I've walked out of missions with 60% damage dealt, and having only shot maybe 2 or 3 enemies.

A buff that you can only get by focusing on timing and rhythm rather than actually playing.

And an AoE damage amplifier that doesn't follow you around.

Wasn't Mesa nerfed for being able to kill everything around her without moving or doing much of anything. That's the same feeling I get when playing Octavia.

That's on point. Maybe it's build dependent as well tho. I tend to build my Warframes in way that favors mobility whenever I can, so it's something I didn't experienced yet.

 

8 minutes ago, zephyr_infinity said:

I've been having a bit of trouble testing her abilities, mallets damage seems to fluctuate oddly even with a steady stream of the same notes on the mandichord, does the damage bosot from taking shots decay rapidly or maintain for the entire duration of the mallet because it very much seems like they decay after just a pulse or two.

Mallet deals damage at each beats of your percussions, so basically if you want to deal as much damage as possible you must make the rythm of your percussions as fast as you can. This is probably why the damage you are dealing seems to fluctuate.

[Colyeses]

1 hour ago, D20 said:

Mallet

My suggestion : Give bonus damage depending of the time between two beats, in a way so there's no virtual damage loss. Here's an exemple so you can understand :

Metronome

My suggestion : Lemme quote something I wrote in the official feedback thread !

Mallet: This suggestion is really, really good! More than just allowing for a greater variety of better music to be useful in battle, it would also allow different melodies to fulfil different purposes. Slower melodies would produce singular, powerful blasts, which would be useful against Sentient enemies, whereas faster melodies would produce more continuous damage which is better against Nullifiers.

Metronome: This is by far the clunkiest ability in her kit and it's a huge waste, because the concept is interesting. I'm not quite keen on letting go of the rhythm element as I feel it's not -that- intrusive, but there's some things I would like to change.

Most important is to recognise that Metronome, in its current form, is way too many layers of micromanagement, which makes it very, very awkward to use in combat. You have to monitor the duration of Metronome itself, of your individual buffs and you have to hit the beats. It's chaotic and thoroughly detracts from the game. To reduce this, I have two suggestions.

ONE: Metronome should operate on the same basis as Equinox' Provoke. That is to say, it should become a toggle power that drains energy only when Octavia or her allies use it. This would remove the micromanagement of reactivating metronome every time its duration expires, while not clashing with her passive or other means of energy regeneration.

TWO: The buff duration should add up. Hitting two notes grants 20 seconds of buff, and hitting two more just resets it at the moment. This means you need to monitor the remaining duration of your buff so you know when to reinstate it, and you need to do this often because the buff durations aren't that long. I would suggest allowing these buffs to stack up multiple times, up to a certain limit. Imagine, instead of getting 20 seconds per hit, you get 10, but you can stack it up to a maximum of, say, 80 seconds? That would justify taking time out of combat to focus on the rhythm game, and give you a reward for continuing to participate in Metronome, rather than what it is now: Throwaway actions for a throwaway buff.

Also, a harder issue to solve is that some weapons are largely unable to benefit from Metronome, such as spearguns, sparring weapons, glaives, the Opticor and more. I do not know of a solution for that yet.

[(XBOX)CannyJack]

[Unibu]

I find the Metronome's soft/blurry rings very bad timing display. Firstly, they are on the ground and hard to watch if while aiming down sights, secondly, it doesn't display the timing window at all, is it when the rings are already touching my feet? or when they are 1m away from me? I would much prefer some kind of simple HUD piece that could show up somewhere on the screen with more precise display. For example, single "rolling" vertical line with points on it which would indicate upcoming beats and one smaller horizontal line, basically what most musical timing games use nowdays.

[Gemenai]

The second ability conflicts with the purpose of the first, as it causes enemies to cease fire and not shot at the mallet anymore.

Also the duration on the abilities in general (except for maybe the fourth one) seem to be/ feel a bit too short.

Otherwise I think the frame is ok-ish.

 

Also some self made songs tend to bug out in a way, that if they repeat, they abort in the middle of the second beat to start again at beat one.

One of my songs in particullar tends to bug out like this, way more than any other I made. Sometimes, changing songs back and forth does the trick, most of the time I have to restart the whole game though, which is quiet annoying.

[achromos]

27 minutes ago, Unibu said:

I find the Metronome's soft/blurry rings very bad timing display. Firstly, they are on the ground and hard to watch if while aiming down sights, secondly, it doesn't display the timing window at all, is it when the rings are already touching my feet? or when they are 1m away from me? I would much prefer some kind of simple HUD piece that could show up somewhere on the screen with more precise display. For example, single "rolling" vertical line with points on it which would indicate upcoming beats and one smaller horizontal line, basically what most musical timing games use nowdays.

Change to a brighter color (A tip someone gave me).  The visual lines are mostly just a secondary feature, I get the feeling you are supposed to use your ears.  As far as finding out where you are supposed to fire/crouch/jump/melee?  Well, I'd say personally the simulacrum could help that out easily.

[Unibu]

4 minutes ago, achromos said:

Change to a brighter color (A tip someone gave me).  The visual lines are mostly just a secondary feature, I get the feeling you are supposed to use your ears.  As far as finding out where you are supposed to fire/crouch/jump/melee?  Well, I'd say personally the simulacrum could help that out easily.

That doesn't really solve all the problems, sometimes there is just too much noise and you can't hear your own abilities so the visual display is necessary. Also, the lines are not always visible because of uneven terrain, and I can't stand light energy colors but that's just my personal problem.

[achromos]

44 minutes ago, Unibu said:

That doesn't really solve all the problems, sometimes there is just too much noise and you can't hear your own abilities so the visual display is necessary. Also, the lines are not always visible because of uneven terrain, and I can't stand light energy colors but that's just my personal problem.

Mmm True I mean I wasn't saying it was a perfect solution but as I said before it is best to both know the visual and auditory queues of your song.  I've been in parties with 3 other Octavias...  I am glad I took the time to learn the song's I plan on using.

[PopeUrban]

I really do like Octavia, but I find the third ability excessively difficult to use, to the point I mostly ignore the buffs entirely. I'm not the only one either, I routinely see people attempting to crouch to take advantage of the stealth I theoretically give them and failing to do so. And, Like, I'm an avid player of keyboard based rhythm games like stepmania and curse of the necrodancer so I know I'm able to keep a simple 120bpm 4 count.

Whatever the window is for determining if something is "on beat" should be widened a bit. Even with very fast firing weapons It is nearly impossible to consistently time button presses to the beat, and the animation timing of jumping and ducking compound an already too-hard trigger.

I'd also like to repeat a report of the custom song playback bug. One of my songs aborts the loop every other cycle, cutting the last bar short, which messes with my groove :(

 

TLDR: Octavia is fun, but the timing aspect of her #3 is harder to use than it should be for a simple "press the button on the beat" mechanic, and playback bugs compound this be making for an inconsistent beat.

[Corue]

The roller design isn't final right?

Also I feel like it would be easier if you switched the tracks that her 1st and 3rd ability use.

It'd be easier to move in time to a simple beat.

Edited March 26, 2017 by Corue

[Meri_]

is there an option for other players to disable her sound fx? It's really annoying.

[(PSN)psycofang]

2 minutes ago, (Xbox One)CannyJack said:

even the relatively simple 4-3-4 combo is 9 button presses to start, and 5 per rotation to sustain; one other suggested combo can be up to 17 button presses each time)

 

Im still trying to understand how its 17 buttons unless hes counting compounded button presses. Left + roll (2) 4(1) 3(1) 4(1) thats 5 buttons total.

 

 

Then repeat 4 3 4 (3 buttons).

 

The other rotation was

 

Left + roll (2) 2(1) 4(1) 1(1) 3(1) kill/4(1) 6 to 7 button presses.

 

Where is 17 coming from?

[Kainosh]

I would like to :

1) be able to mute other Octavia players

2) be able to switch between 4 melodies i have.   Or to merge them... Coz i would prefer one long track over several short ones.  4 steps is just too limited.

 

Also, i think that ALL her abilities should be toggles.  Being unable to stop that bassline on demand is just meh.

   Oh and being able to extend note duration (bass and melody) would be great. 

Edited March 26, 2017 by Kainosh