Warframe's fundamental lategame issue - Rocket Tag

[Mental_Omega]

From my studies of the game and my experiences with high level content I've come to the conclusion that most of the issues surrounding high level play can be traced to how the Game quickly descends into a state of what is known as "rocket tag", where conventional durability becomes meaningless because all the players involved in the game can essentially kill each other as soon as they can start landing hits.   This goes both ways, enemies get mowed down even with huge slabs of armor as we start spamming corossive and slash procs barring invulnerability phases or the like; while warframes without either outright or de facto invulnerability powers die more or less the moment they start getting hit at high level play.   

Generally speaking; Rocket Tag results from durability being hugely outpaced by the ability to deal damage barring certain examples of outright cheese to essentially cheat your way to being durable.   Meanwhile "conventional durability", I.E; durability not relying on some frames who have some "press this key to laugh in the face of death" ability, becomes essentially worthless.  This might be fun and exciting to some people but to others; particularly those who aren't quite gods at parkour dodging all over the place while still landing headshots, it's not exactly very fun.  It makes gameplay extremely punishing for even the smallest misstep, and it massively elevates Crowd Control abilities and weapons over others.   

This continual arms race between high level enemies with broken scaling and players with instant death weapons (which due to the way scaling works; will pretty much all be slash and corrosive focused at high level play barring the occasional madmen willing to fight high level corpus) has lead to game balance starting to creak around level 30, showing serious strain at level 50; and basically completely bust itself at level 100.   If you can't kill a bombard in a single clip or if you can't CC a whole room down you might as well go home; and unless you're using a certain few frames who have some way to essentially become immune to death; you might as well not bother with trying to take any hits.   

Generally, the best solution to rocket tag is to bring the time to kill on both sides back in line.   Whether this is done by nerfing offense or buffing defense is a trickier question to answer, but as long as high level play is basically a quickdraw contest to see who gets to land the first hits the game at high level play will continue to be busted.  The extremely quick time to kill means that players are forced into using extremely high DPS or burst damage weapons and room clearing CC which forces enemies to have to fire back with similar cheese to have a chance; resulting in a "need" for things like nullifiers and Scrambuses to outright deny players their toys to give the Corpus a chance while the Grineer come packing huge AoE damage and ridiculous slabs of armor and the infested need to spam toxin clouds and the ever aggravating juggernauts and ancients to keep up.  And of course, the Corrupted combine the most annoying aspects of all three other factions and the Sentients basically just dial everything up to eleven to make you feel the mighty fist of Hunhow repeatedly bashing you into the dirt.      

I think that to fix late game level play; more than anything we have to do away with rocket tag gameplay.   Enemies should both be able to take hits better (without turning into outright bullet sponges mind you), while players should be able to take some blows on the chin without exploding into giblets.   If it becomes actually possible to not die within moments of any serious hits landing, the need for crushingly devastating CC abilities diminishes and you can promote more build variety as you can invest into builds that aren't just about CCing everything you can down/flat out ignoring death/dealing six digit damage figures in the space of ten seconds.   Enemies can also be designed in a more fun; counterplay friendly way as we don't have to resort to unfun shenanigans like the Nullifiers' shields not only taking away your powers but also screwing with burst damage weapons and Scrambuses taking away powers with no visual feedback until it's too late.  We can also do away with the need for the Grineer having ridiculously scaling armor or just most everything about high level Juggernauts in general.      

Now generally I hold Metroid Prime as one of the greatest games ever made (and the second is my personal favorite game of all time) and like to cite the trilogy as an example to follow for game design and I do recognize that a first person metroidvania shooter (and a single player one at that) has very different needs than a third person hack and slash f2p multiplayer shooter, but I think having the general enemy time to kill being around the ballpark of the enemies in that series would be fair (fodder enemies like zoomers of course dying essentially the moment you spot them while the average space pirate starts off taking about 5ish seconds to kill until you get better gear; and the tankier enemies ranging around 10 seconds to a minute depending on how tanky they are in particular whil bosses ranged from about two minutes to ten minutes depending on the boss in question, though out of Warframe's bosses; only Lephantis and Kela are really worth mentioning in the same breath as Metroid Prime's bosses; nevermind the Emperor Ing which remains my favorite final boss of all time) while the player time to kill I feel should be more in the lines of 10 seconds of sustained fire from an appropriately leveled mob to perhaps 30-40~ seconds depending on how tanky the frame is in particular.     

You'd still have weapons that can blast fodder into giblets in moments of course, but just as a Bombard should no longer delete you with one hit, at least letting you take two (I'd prefer three) hits; said bombard should probably at least take more than one clip to kill in turn without a dedicated single target killer weapon like a sniper or an opticor (which currently fall by the wayside because it's just much better to have a shotgun, bow, or machine gun that can annihilate everyone in front of it and have the ROF to clean out hordes).   But as long as you can essentially kill everyone in the room with one ability use or one clip; there is going to be the perceived need from the Dev's end for a lot of ridiculous shenanigans we see from enemies now to prevent them from being trivial to deal with.  

Edited June 22, 2017 by Mental_Omega

[KirukaChan]

I'd be down with kicking the rocket tag to the curb. Maybe then snipers might actually get some love.

[peterc3]

People would see this as just turning every enemy into bullet sponges. If it can't be erased from existence within microseconds of being created, it's just DE making the game take longer because they are greedy and want you to pay... or something.

Armor scaling serves one purpose: the game is telling you to leave, or deal with the consequences. The game isn't balanced around the point armor scaling becomes an issue. If armor scaling is an issue, rethink your approach or accept you shouldn't play at that level.

[Mental_Omega]

1 minute ago, peterc3 said:

People would see this as just turning every enemy into bullet sponges. If it can't be erased from existence within microseconds of being created, it's just DE making the game take longer because they are greedy and want you to pay... or something.

Armor scaling serves one purpose: the game is telling you to leave, or deal with the consequences. The game isn't balanced around the point armor scaling becomes an issue. If armor scaling is an issue, rethink your approach or accept you shouldn't play at that level.

It's not really the armour scaling, and honestly the armour scaling isn't that big of a deal because it ultimately just serves to make Corrosive/Slash focused weapons the meta, which means they ultimately die about as fast as their Corpus and Infested counterparts against a decent build.   

It's that the time to kill for both the players and the enemies is so low that it's nearly impossible to create any semblance of balance in a PvE game.  In rocket tag, only cheese matters.   Cheese to either avoid being tagged or cheese to let you land that instant death tag.   

This is not very conducive to making the content above starchart level (like sorties) particularly enjoyable to most people.   Rocket Tag is a very frustrating game to play because even the tiniest error results in failure.     I don't think anyone particularly enjoys dying instantly because you misjudged the height of the sapping osprey's mines or forgetting that one bombard rocket homing in after you.   

[chainchompguy3]

23 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Armor scaling serves one purpose: the game is telling you to leave, or deal with the consequences. The game isn't balanced around the point armor scaling becomes an issue. If armor scaling is an issue, rethink your approach or accept you shouldn't play at that level.

*cough*Sorties*cough*

Spoiler

Maybe that was how it was before, but Sorties are the primary intended way for players to get a hold of Riven mods and Focus Lenses (A core part of the endgame content).

Sorties regularly scale to level 100 in the final mission.

Thus, we are fully intended, at least in the occasional sortie, to be playing at these kind of scaling situations.

 

Edited June 22, 2017 by chainchompguy3

[tnccs215]

Now this is some high quality content. 

*clap clap clap clap*

Fully agreed. The issue, of course, is that it's probably pretty much impossible for DE to realistically change the game that much.

I belive the major culprits of Warframe's rocket tag are, first, infinite enemy scaling, second, the mod system, and third, the good ol' power creep. And truth be told, these are so interconnected and so ingrained in Warframe's core mechanics and economy (its a goddamn f2p after all, and that means you gotta deliver what the players immediately demand unless you wanna go home to tell honey and the kids that dinner is gonna become a weekly occasion) that changing one demands changing the others, and all that demands such a ridiculous amount of resources, time - and above all, taking the risk of pissing off the lowest denominador that never the less sends money your way - that I don't believe DE will be able to realistically do it. At least, not in a short or even mid term, and judging by the fact they simply accepted the fact they drove themselves into a corner and went full "f*ck it" with Rivens, that possibility becomes more remote every update. 

Which is a really big shame. 

[PrivateRiem]

The issue with Lategame is that, contrary to other progression-gear-grind based action games, Warframe has neither endgame nor a way to restart from the beginning, for a fresh experience while keeping our accumulated "wealth".

Any attempt at requesting missions that are higher level than the snoozefest that the star-chart becomes once you start getting your weapons leveled up, is met with hostility and confusion. Some people want a challenge, but if it doesn't give significantly higher rewards, they don't understand the point. Some people like sweeping entire of enemies instantly at the press of a button and don't understand why people can't be satisfied with that. When you reach the point where collecting ressources, mods, frames and weapons are no longer your priority (Probably because you have everything), you realize that outside of grinding for something, there isn't a whole lot of stuff to do.

 

A repeated victory will lead to one feeling empty.

 

People test the potential of their weapons and frames against enemies 3-4 times what you see on the star-chart, yet those enemies aren't found anywhere, short of sleeping through 40 minutes of an endless mission.

 

The fact that players can both one-shot and be one-shot past a certain point is irrelevant. The game is not balanced around that and getting to that point takes forever yet, some people actually like the thrill of "living on the edge", not feel like an immortal god for a while and enjoy the challenge of kill or be killed.

 

We're just never gonna get that.

Edited June 22, 2017 by PrivateRiem

[tnccs215]

28 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

29 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

 

Armor scaling serves one purpose: the game is telling you to leave, or deal with the consequences. The game isn't balanced around the point armor scaling becomes an issue. If armor scaling is an issue, rethink your approach or accept you shouldn't play at that level.

 

There's a problem in that logic: it's that we have access to so many tool to circumvent, in the worst possible way, that scaling, that any sign saying "go home" is buried in the dirt. 

And honestly, if the game features it, you will try to access it. Specially when there are exclusive rewards to those supposedly ridiculous (which really just end up being "bring the mozzarella frame")  levels, which clearly mean that you should, one way or another, be able to attain them. And when those rewards aren't even that great, the logical conclusion is that neither are the levels so unattainable. 

You argue that the game isn't balanced around those levels. I disagree. I think the game isn't balanced at all. 

[(PSN)fullblast35]

i wouldn't mind a record reset around these kind of changes :D   geez why didn't i think these things.

[Mental_Omega]

One of the places where I think Rocket Tag is very much to the game's detriment is in boss design.    

Bosses end up needing tedious invulnerability phases where the player can't do anything to them at all for extended periods of time just to artificially extend the length of the fight and give the boss some chances to land some instant death or instant hobbling horsehockey so that the lovingly crafted model isn't dead in a few seconds.     To do anything else means that the boss is dead in seconds and you don't feel like you just had an epic battle, which a boss battle absolutely should; it should give you the feeling of engaging in an epic and memorable duel and put your skills to the test; not basically be an examination to see if your build can quickly force the boss into their next invulnerability phase.

Just look at this: The Emperor Ing, my all time favorite boss fight 
 

  

And compare it to this 
 

   
Not only is Vay Hek a great example of rather bad boss design (a rule of thumb is, the harder it is to actually deal damage to a boss; the less durable they should be.  Of course relative to a boss appropriate for their "stage of the game".   Vay Hek's first stage has the cardinal sin of having a very small, infrequently exposed weak point and having a massive slab of HP and further adding to the frustration with a magnetic proc ability to drain your energy) but it also encapsulates the issue with rocket tag in general.   

Vay Hek was; until we met the Queens; the biggest and baddest of the Grineer.   Given the reclusiveness of the Queens while Vay Hek is not only head of the council but also head of Propaganda; he's the essential face of the Grineer Empire.  The mailed fist of oppression with only the absolute best in Grineer augmentations, the terror of the solar system and unless directly contradicted by the Queens; the overall commander of the Solar System's most powerful military force.   

And because that person had the right build he's dead in seconds of getting into his combat frame.    Lame.    

And of course there's the issue that to compensate, a lot of bosses rely on instant death attacks which doesn't make the boss feel challenging or "epic", just cheap and frustrating.  

Now let's be fair here.  In a grind heavy game like this one, you can't have bosses take too long.   I'm sure everyone is aware how 1 hour+ long raid bosses are fast dying out in MMORPGs everywhere; because that just doesn't jive with grinding.   But a boss that is either a teeth pulling slog with constant revives after cheap shenanigans or a breeze because of the difficulty of having a satisfying encounter in rocket tag games is not the way to go.   A boss should generally take no more than twenty minutes; preferably five to ten; but they should be a memorable ten minutes.   

Rocket tag just doesn't make for very engaging boss fights.  Either you're constantly looking at your warframe waiting for a revive or the boss is dead before you know it.

Of course the other issue with Warframe bosses is the lack of great boss music to get you in the mood for the battle.   No boss fight is complete without a unique and awesome boss battle theme.   But then I'm the kind of weirdo who plans on having Warrior from Shadow Warrior 2 play the entire time I'm fighting Lephantis' second phase with an Exalted Blade focused excalibur.

Edited June 23, 2017 by Mental_Omega

[Trichouette]

This huge wall of text to tell us what we already know : The game is awfully balanced and should be fixed.

I won't say I read it all (because wow that's a huge wall and it's late) but you do make fair points, but I can't agree with all of it.

1 hour ago, Mental_Omega said:

I think that to fix late game level play; more than anything we have to do away with rocket tag gameplay.   Enemies should both be able to take hits better (without turning into outright bullet sponges mind you), while players should be able to take some blows on the chin without exploding into giblets.

Sure we need to be tankier, after all it doesn't make sense for us to die in a blink of an eye, but the game is supposed (from what i've been told countless times on the forum) to be a horde game, which means enemies can't be that tanky (which they currently are, at high level). However having a few tanky & special units from time to time would be neat, instead of having napalm / bombard / heavy gunner / corpus tech / ancient everywhere on the map.

Making them, and us, tankier won't mean players will use less cheese and CC, they'll still use that much of it because it means going faster, and that's all what matters in this game where the rewards are close to nothing.

 

We should be tankier, enemies should deal less damage but actually try to kill us (instead of barely trying but killing us so fast every time a bullet manage to cross our path) and our abilities and weapons should be somehow less powerful.

It doesn't make sense to have AOE weapons dealing way more than single taget slow shooting weapons (thanks DE the tonkor and simulor got nerfed...), as much as it doesn't make sense to have abilities completely negating the difficuly by either killing everything or CCing everything. (in sight, or not)

I still wonder why DE claim "we want to remove press 4 to win gameplay" and yet banshee is the way she is...

 

Sadly the game aim more on grinding quick missions and going as fast as possible, which means there isn't a lot of room for improvement. Stuff needs to die and it has to die fast for us to go through and start the next mission as quickly as possible.

Edited June 22, 2017 by Trichouette

[peterc3]

2 hours ago, tnccs215 said:

There's a problem in that logic: it's that we have access to so many tool to circumvent, in the worst possible way, that scaling, that any sign saying "go home" is buried in the dirt. 

And honestly, if the game features it, you will try to access it. Specially when there are exclusive rewards to those supposedly ridiculous (which really just end up being "bring the mozzarella frame")  levels, which clearly mean that you should, one way or another, be able to attain them. And when those rewards aren't even that great, the logical conclusion is that neither are the levels so unattainable. 

You argue that the game isn't balanced around those levels. I disagree. I think the game isn't balanced at all. 

What exclusive rewards are in exceptionally high-level, endless content?

The only thing that seems to trouble people are sorties, but that just seems to be people who expect their regular loadouts to work. "Why is my pure elemental weapon doing no damage in this sortie with reduced elemental damage?"

2 hours ago, chainchompguy3 said:

*cough*Sorties*cough*

  Reveal hidden contents

Maybe that was how it was before, but Sorties are the primary intended way for players to get a hold of Riven mods and Focus Lenses (A core part of the endgame content).

Sorties regularly scale to level 100 in the final mission.

Thus, we are fully intended, at least in the occasional sortie, to be playing at these kind of scaling situations.

 

I have yet to run in to a sortie and feel the need to bring something to cheese it. Yes, it requires a moment of thought when choosing my loadout, but it's literally the only thing I need to think about. I can run any loadout in any star chart mission and make it work.

The idea that bullet sponges are the fix to this? Absurd.
That entire wall of text is asking that the TTK on all enemies is raised, that it's totally not bullet sponges that he is asking for (they are explicitly asking for bullet sponges) and that somehow, basically putting the brakes on existing gameplay is better?

Everything beyond 100 is not paid attention to, because there is no content locked behind anything over 100. It is purely player choice that they go beyond what the game is rewarding you for. Essentially, the game breaks at that point.

[Mental_Omega]

A bullet sponge is the Cyberdemon in DOOM I-II which could eat fifty rockets to the face over the course of a several minute long gruelling boss fight and kill you in one good shot (unless you had the BFG which could splatter it with ease).   

What I'm asking for is for durability to matter at level 100-150 for frames that aren't basically cheating to absorb things to the face.    

This would necessarily entail a great rebalancing because I know the reasoning behind things like Scrambuses and Nullifiers; the developers feel that players have perhaps gotten too powerful and thus they need to resort to basically cheating to rein in players without directly nerfing them.   However almost everyone can tell you that the sort of "no super powers for you" and the eye searing array of one shot instant death projectiles is not good game design.   It's annoying.       

Similarly, enemies dying too quickly means that Boss Fights struggle to be memorable.   Either the boss relies on a bevy of cheap tricks to artificially extend the boss fight's duration or they're like the Ambulas in which case for all the hype they're given they're dead before you know it because it simply can't take a hit worth a damn from a player with a half way decent build.    

My vision would be that fodder enemies generally should still die about as quickly as they do now, while decently elite enemies like heavy gunners should take about 3ish seconds; higher tier enemies like bombards 5-10 seconds, and minibosses like Bursas and Prosecutors 15-30 seconds.    

Proper boss fights should generally be 2-3 minutes for early boss fights and invasion boss fights like the Stalker, the G3 and the Zanuka; 5 minutes for mid level boss fights; and 10 minutes per "stage" for endgame boss fights like Lephantis and Vay Hek; this is all assuming an average joe casual who's decently good at games but doesn't sink their life into them.    
However corresponding to any increase in boss fight length should also come with an increase in the interestingness of a boss fight.   This means more attacks, more movesets; more things the boss does.   The fewer attacks a boss can use; the shorter it should be.   

On the flip side, things like Sapping Ospreys that kill you in a single damage tick should just go away; that's wretchedly terrible game design.   I'm not even sure what purpose the Sapping Osprey serves, the Mine Osprey is already there; we don't need another area denial osprey.   Enemies should no longer be able to one shot a full health player of somewhat appropriate level; ever.  It doesn't matter if they're an end game boss or not, unless the game is designed from the ground up for one hit kills to be the rule of thumb like Mario or Bullet Hell games; the enemy should never be able to one shot a player.   

Player health and shields should matter even if they didn't pick a sueprtank warframe.   

[Shockwave-]

De just missed the boat in how damage should be handled. They should have done damage this way:

Shields are your main health in the game, they recharge like the do now.

Health never recharges in a mission, ever.

Powers that "heal" heal shields buff shields, lower the shield drain rate, etc. Some powers may buff health in some  way but never heal it (increase your health pool by 25% for instance, or block health damage for the next 20 seconds, etc). or great care should be taken when they do (one health pizza per person per mission and that is it which means deciding when to use it is key).

Health then becomes the measure of how many times you screwed up. How badly did you play that they got through your shields and ticked off your health a bit? Health becomes a meter that totals up accumulated bad play over time until you die, while shields are the softer give and take that lets you take some damage for free while fighting enemies.

Keeping hits away from your health then becomes tactical, with a much larger shield pool, and one that ticks off more slowly, you can evaluate your situation better and decide when to flee, or what to revive someone or not, etc.

Revving downed teammates might return them with 25% health, or 20% health perhaps. or 100 health first revive, 75 2nd 50 3rd 25 from then on, the design could vary. but new decisions come in (how long can I stand here before it hits my health) or you might need cover from a team-mate to raise.

Instant heal, unlimited health pads, etc all require death to be instantaneous to be a threat.

Lower the damage done by both sides, lower the speed of damage done, but keep the horde aspect (don't get surrounded, don't go off by yourself, etc).

If there is no ability to make a tactical decision between the first tic of shield damage and death, then the game is not tactical or based on much skill at all.

[Krion112]

You're pretty much asking for orthogonal unit differentiation; the concept of every element of the game having equal and unique purpose (ie, that every element fulfills a unique role that does not wholly overlap with other roles), and by having unique purposes, actual counter-play can take affect. The most basic form of Orthogonal balance is Rock-Paper-Scissors.

When counter-play exists, every encounter has risk and reward; you're punished for improperly handling the situation, and you're rewarded for defeating the enemy with the correct equipment. It becomes a dance of sorts, with proper and improper moves.

In Warframe, we miss out on this because any weapon with enough modding capability can kill any enemy, but weapons that are too specialized (like Snipers, and nuance based weapons like most Corpus and Infestation weapons) fall short because the other weapon types can carry out their own counter-play, but also overlap the counter-play of these specialized weapons. Similarly, 'convenient' crowd-controlling abilities can negate any encounter whatsoever. Just today, I sat through a Nitain Extract Defense Mission because everyone else was spamming energy restores, and blasting everything away with their ultimate abilities, leaving no room for interaction with the enemy.

Without that interaction, there's no counter-play, and without counter-play, there's no depth, and it makes the base game-play shallow and unrewarding, which means literally the only way to expand on the game is linearly (ie, adding new content), because then there's no way to properly and fairly exploit the natural depth and variety provided by counter-play.

Seriously, in Orthogonal Balance, there's 3 execution types, each with 3 degrees, 5 balance roles, 5 variations of each role, and one of those roles has 5 facets, so you can combine each of those actions with each other for a total of some 1125 roles, which totals to 1125^2 potential counter-play scenarios, and you can then combine and rearrange those scenarios to create practically endless situations to throw against the player. So much more than the 1 measly interaction we have now, which is straight up kill or be killed.

Edited June 23, 2017 by Krion112

[Birdframe_Prime]

Okay, you know something? This may be a place to pitch a damage system rework... Because that's kind of what we need. Enemies are just bullet sponges that you have to customise your damage against for best effect, while we are just fixed-health mobility characters that, as you say, resort to purely evasive or cheese tactics in order to maintain our advantage.

So here, have a damage rework, I call it something like 'actual armour':

Spoiler

So, as some of you may remember, there were suggested Eximus changes by the AI team that would mean specific enemies spawn Invulnerable, with randomly generated weak points that then are shot off to make them become normal enemies.

DE's boys have suggested and started testing this because they are concerned about how to make enemies in Warframe more difficult without having to make them simple bullet sponges with health and armour scaling.

A laudable ideal, but it's generating a lot of negative feedback in the fan base, I can't get through a conversation with others about it without hearing the terms 'stupid' or 'counter productive' thrown around.

But why is that? And when I ask people to explain their thoughts, it's because almost unanimously they believe no enemy in this game should be immortal by default, especially when the way to end that immortality is a combination of randomly generated location, making it very difficult to hit if it's, say, on the back of a limb, and also getting progressively more chance to spawn on progressively more and more dangerous opponents. Once you pass a certain point, 1 in 2 eximus units would be spawning invulnerable by default and at that point the amount of enemies, the amount of effects, the amount of interference from the game's general chaos will prevent access to, or successful location of these weak points on the most dangerous units in the room. There are a few that allow for the idea of bosses being invulnerable, with specific weak points, but those are the specific, one-off cases where the game works around that fact.

None of them argue with the concept, however, that more skill and less sponge is necessary. Because all of them are aware of the problem of Armour Scaling.

So if players don't want totally immortal enemies that they have to 'unlock' in order to kill, what do they want?

What I have, may be an answer.

Instead of total immortality until unlocked, why not logically placed sectioned areas of invulnerability?

The situation: An eximus Charger unit spawns at level 30, with this rank he has a chance to spawn with a logically placed area on his body that is impervious to damage. None of the rest of him is affected, just, for example, across his chest/face (which as we know isn't actually a Charger's head hitbox). This then means we have to use movement, skill, and/or abilities to shoot the Charger somewhere that isn't the face to kill it.

At higher levels, the chance to spawn with this invulnerable plate increases, and beyond that the chance to spawn with two appears, one on the front, one on the top, meaning that shooting full in the back, or in the legs, is the only way to kill them. And so on, and so forth as the levels progress.

Apply this to all Eximus types. And disallow the invulnerable area to ever get in the way of the Head hitbox (whichever that may be on the unit, on Chargers that appears to be the butt).

Instead of total invulnerability and a scaling amount of times we have to deactivate it, we are then treated to logically distributed partial invulnerability that encourage us to maintain headshots, limb shots, melee attacks, ground finishers or abilities in order to kill the enemy via skill, not brute force.

Abilities that strip armour, like Seeking Shuriken or Shield Polarise, will then have a perfect visual representation of their effects in game as an invulnerable plate (one or all plates depending on how strong the ability is) suddenly pings off thanks to a well-placed shot.

But Thaylien, I metaphorically hear you cry, what about Armour Scaling or Corrosive Projection/Corrosive Status, how are these things affected by this?

Indeed, in a game where scaling armour can reduce damage so far as to give an armoured unit effective health of over a million points, while an un-armoured unit only has four thousand or so plus a shield... why would this improve anything?

It wouldn't.

But then, the answer to the question really is... that I don't want to suggest only applying this effect to Eximus units.

In a world where this method exists, partial invulnerability that encourages movement and skill to make kills, it could be applied to almost every unit in the game instead of the pure scaling that we currently have.

Rather than becoming bullet sponges as they go, enemies all gain damage reduction and health as they go, scaling corpus shields, grineer armour and infested health so that at all times they have an equal amount to the equivalent units on either side, up to a point. Up to a cap.

After that point, enemies become skill based by developing these hard-points of invulnerability, that then make players have to abandon, more and more, the basic tactics they've had already and instead use more aggressive/more varied forms of attack to get around the hard-points. Corpus could gain specific hard-shield points, Infested gain chitin carapaces, grineer over-armour, and all of their resistances to damage would then start to taper off to be replaced by this.

Mods like Corrosive Projection would then be the specific faction debuffs, taking Grineer armour away would mean that only the base health scaled and lower-damage weapons with more precision would be just as viable for getting headshots on the higher level enemies as the boom-sticks we would use normally. Weapons of lower damage but easier control or better use for skill-shots would become just as viable with a team of CP's against grineer as a Tigris Prime is without the team.

(Note: This whole thing also opens up the idea that weapon damage could be re-balanced and mods like Pressure Point and Serration could be removed from the game without detrimental effect. In turn, this would mean that the more powerful a weapon was would depend as much on the accuracy, range and skill cap of it, rather than just the DPS. DPS, in fact, would have a genuine ceiling that could be raised or lowered by buffing or nerfing the amount of scaling resistance that enemies have in order to match how much damage the weapons in game could deal reliably to the head hitboxes. I mean, think about it, a weapon like the Buzzlok would now become end-game viable because you could mark a head-hitbox with it on an enemy that's nearly invulnerable and then guarantee damage, where other weapons couldn't. And the upcoming gameplay mechanics for Harrow with his tenno staff-gun that creates a bullet-attractor for heads would be amazing for teams...)

And the improvement to Status as a damage type could be even further highlighted by letting Status proc through the invulnerable plates (before anyone jumps in to say that Slash would be even more powerful now, no, it wouldn't be. Slash procs are based off the damage you deal, if you deal no damage because of an invulnerable plate, a slash proc deals no damage, so it would actually balance back the other way to allow puncture and impact to be more useful status procs overall) meaning that the earlier mention of Corrosive Status would still be viable because armour stripping would then bring the enemies with high resistances back down a bit to regular kill-able levels via their non-invulnerable parts. Likewise, other Statuses would possibly have to be looked at as being reliant on the damage dealt (such as Toxin).

Let's see, there's also the option of Punch Through becoming a desirable stat, able to punch through the hardened armour at a reduced damage, and weapons with really, really high punch through (like, 3.5-4.0 levels) would be seen as amazing trade-offs for the reduced damage they would now deal by ignoring the plates entirely. Warframe abilities that reduce or remove armour would simply change to removing the plates, abilities like Sonar would then add weak points to the hardened armour, effectively giving weapons punch through on the plates so that they could deal damage through the armour at reduced values... 

And much the same way that Corrosive Projection affects specifically Grineer resistances and reduces or removes them (the way it does now, but more effectively, allowing the rebalanced low-damage weapons to play equally) so the other auras would work, EMP Aura removes Corpus resistances, Infested Impedance removes Infested resistances. It would all work together to mean that every weapon could be used if you wanted to.

In fact, the only draw back to this entire idea, as I can see so far, is that... it would take a fair bit of work overall. Not just to revamp the game's damage and introduce this system, but also little things like graphical clarity, to show that the enemies had the over-plates on for players to be able to figure out which enemies needed to be killed around their armour and which could be mowed down by regular shots.

So...

tl;dr

Since so many people hate the idea of scaling bullet sponges, and the game DEvs want to increase the skill cap, but people hate the idea of totally invulnerable enemies with specific weak-points even more than bullet sponges, how about making the skill-cap higher by using normal enemies with specific invulnerable points that are logically placed and able to be figured out and played around if you have the skill to do so?

It wouldn't remove any of the regular play we see today in lower level, and would then introduce a demand for skill past that, starting at a level that's within the Star Chart's usual scaling. In addition it would open up the entirety of the options for Damage 3.0 that we've actually wanted, where some weapons are preference-based side-grades to each other while Prime Weapons are the de-facto better class of weapon, and where our damage never actually drops off, only our skill does, allowing us to legitimately play for hours of endless missions as long as we have the team for it.

The idea behind that wall of text in the spoiler there is simply this: Enemies become tougher up to a point, and then gain specific points that are immune to direct damage, meaning that you need to use skill to shoot them where they're vulnerable.

The Auras like CP, EMP Aura and Infested Impedance would all remove the resistances of those factions to allow less powerful weapons to be effective based on a simplified damage system, and on top of that all Warframe Abilities would still basically work as normal, but rejigged a little to fit this system if necessary.

It would allow removing mods like Serration and Hornet Strike from the pool and favour instead modding for status, accuracy, punch through... utility mods!

All of this would simply erase the problems of the bullet sponge armour scaling, and rocket tag gameplay, and instead it would make the caps on gameplay be our skill at movement, Crowd Control and ability synergy, our accuracy and ability to identify weak points, and our ability to work as a team to draw aggro/take out threats and use actual tactics.

What do you think?

[P0Pz]

20 hours ago, Mental_Omega said:

It's not really the armour scaling, and honestly the armour scaling isn't that big of a deal because it ultimately just serves to make Corrosive/Slash focused weapons the meta, which means they ultimately die about as fast as their Corpus and Infested counterparts against a decent build.   

It's that the time to kill for both the players and the enemies is so low that it's nearly impossible to create any semblance of balance in a PvE game.  In rocket tag, only cheese matters.   Cheese to either avoid being tagged or cheese to let you land that instant death tag.   

This is not very conducive to making the content above starchart level (like sorties) particularly enjoyable to most people.   Rocket Tag is a very frustrating game to play because even the tiniest error results in failure.     I don't think anyone particularly enjoys dying instantly because you misjudged the height of the sapping osprey's mines or forgetting that one bombard rocket homing in after you.   

Exactly! And thanks for this great written OP. Enjoyed reading it.

Isn't it true that xx Health ~ xx time 

Your time you have, to kill the other side. If your Health is 1 and the other side also... none got time... (well 'health' is just used by me now as the point of 'total substance' to withstand maximum damage.)

Evade to get a hit or make sure you hit first. Lottery at a given point ~ Luck/Unlucky.

[DrBorris]

-Buzzkill incoming-

 

I have been ranting about the "balance" of the game for quite awhile, and as you pointed out the "TTK" of enemies and us is the huge issue. Other PvE "horde" games like Destiny (Light), Battleborn (Per-level scaling), and Borderlands (Correlated enemy and player scaling) do it MUCH better, albeit all in their own way. 

 

What it comes down to, IMO, is the stupidly high delta in power that BOTH players and enemies have, you can't balance enemies around 12045% more damage. 

Spoiler

 

There is a reason enemy scaling is broken, it is because player scaling is broken. 

So, fight the problem at the source, right? If insane scaling on both sides makes balancing the enemy vs player gameplay hard, just fix the scaling.

And this is what I call The Great Squish. Unfortunately, it is also known as The Great Nerf because while it is a overall a null gain or loss in power, those players who are used to cheesing through content will find it as a nerf. 

Spoiler

 

 

After a lot of rambling everything really comes down to this in terms of balancing scaling and a supposed "Damage 3.0".

On ‎12‎/‎25‎/‎2016 at 5:04 PM, DrBorris said:

TL;DR

• TTK on both our and our enemy’s sides will be squished
• This will be a nerf to much of the community
• A (considerable enough) portion of the community will “rage quit”
• Thus, DE does not want to jump off the cliff -or- Damage 3.0 will be half-@ssed to protect the community’s ego.

So... yeah, don't get your hopes up.

[VentiGlondi]

DE has rolled with this mess they call difficulty and challenge for such a long time that I doubt they'll do anything about it now.

[hukurokuju5]

TAG, YOU"RE DEAD

NO TAG BACKS

[AperoBeltaTwo]

On 22.06.2017 at 11:25 PM, KirukaChan said:

I'd be down with kicking the rocket tag to the curb. Maybe then snipers might actually get some love.

You don't want that love again. Next time snipers get love, you'll get fake inaccuracy even scoped on targets that are standing too close to you.

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

More durable enemies, more mini bosses, yes.

Less canon fodder. yes

Less need for cc. Priceless.

Edited June 24, 2017 by (PS4)WINDMILEYNO
Edit

[ikkabotz]

Kudos to OP for spreading the word. You're not alone feeling this way and we've been sharing similar thoughts throughout the forums. Keep spreading the word! We need this fix. @Krion offers a really good perspective on the alternative too. I really appreciate putting the "Rocket Tag" terminology on the issue. Does a good job to sum everything up in a way we can start sharing without having to get trapped in the loop of explaining the problem over and over again.

Edited June 24, 2017 by komoriblues

[Mr.Lube]

I truly believe a complete overhaul of Warframe's core mechanics is what this game needs to breathe life in it again. Enemies and Warframe's ability management need to be changed. Unfortunately, the community responds poorly to anything that changes their speed farming ways of life, or isn't a shiny new toy. But in general, the player-base is extremely bored; burning out in a couple weeks then waiting for the next new toy.

If DE truly wants their game to flourish they need to bite the bullet and take some risks with their game design.

[True_Naeblis]

The problem in a nutshell: the game resorts to masses of enemies, with or without cheese, and OP bosses to provide a "challenge". There need to be fewer enemies in some of the higher level content with more unique skills/abilities/tactics. Why do Grineer stop hiding as you get into higher content and always try to face tank everything thrown at them? Where is their squad-based play? Why don't we fight other frame-style enemies?

Give us fewer enemies with unique styles and tactics to make higher level content more interesting. Have us encounter Grineer with minor slow abilities in early content and later those that can freeze us in place momentarily if we don't act quickly enough to move out of their field/range. Why are kavats the only things we run into that are stealthed until attacked?

There are so many ways for encounters to be improved without just throwing more enemies at us. Make the players think and use caution to get through content. Make us plan, make us act as a team or play intelligently solo. Please, please, please, just don't think that means give us tedious puzzles.