why does the Nox have such a ridiculous damage cap?

[Jobistober]

15 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

What I'm asking is for the difficulty to be natural to whichever unit it's a part of, rather than inserted through a special-case mechanic, as is the case for the Nox's damage reduction, Vay Hek's invulnerability phases, etc. If the Nox were simply a unit with a lot of health who took a lot of pain from headshots, that would be fine, but the implementation of it so far has been a damage cap. Not just bonus armor, a full-on damage cap that also provides immunity to DoTs and applies to stealth finishers, and essentially forces all weapons down to a fixed level when dealing against it, just like the Nullifier's damage cap to their bubble. What should happen is that we need to have our damage flattened to a large extent, so that it never runs the risk of doing ridiculous stuff like one-shotting boss units, but so far the implementation has been a series of unpleasant band-aids that do not make for good clarity or fun gameplay. Adding variety and challenge to gameplay is fine, but doing so in a manner that goes against the natural flow of gameplay, and lessens enjoyment overall is not how to do it.

Still confused...

So if we had our damage "flattened" you would still not want enemies to have unique mechanics to defeat them? Or would it be one or the other? If the Nox just had tons of health, then he would be no different than any other trash mob or bullet sponge at high level. Unique combat mechanics not only add difficulty but also a freshness to the encounters we have with these enemies, i.e. not everything is a trash mob.

I can at least agree that the power creep is getting somewhat crazy, but honestly I don't see any end to that. With damage 3.0 likely being abandoned and replaced by the introduction of rivens, I see power creep only getting worse.

It is a highly ambiguous topic (difficulty is different for everyone). Besides, players have grown accustomed to being overpowered, so DE is trying to compensate for a few different, but interrelated, problems by introducing enemies that are both difficult and unique. I, for one, love feeling powerful but still having that "oh sh*t" moment every now and then when a unique enemy comes along. Obviously not everyone is going to be a fan.

[Teridax68]

8 hours ago, Jobistober said:

Still confused...

So if we had our damage "flattened" you would still not want enemies to have unique mechanics to defeat them?

I'm confused now too, where did I say that I wanted to get rid of unique mechanics as a whole? There are many unique and great gameplay mechanics in Warframe, like the Sniper Crewman's Ratel spawner, the Hellion's jetpack, the Broodmother's maggots, and so on, because they all add gameplay and give players more options, not fewer. By contrast, mechanics like the damage cap on the Nox limit the player's options and curb their power in a manner that is neither clear nor enjoyable. 

8 hours ago, Jobistober said:

Or would it be one or the other? If the Nox just had tons of health, then he would be no different than any other trash mob or bullet sponge at high level.

Okay, sure, but only because our weapons are so overpowered now that they turn bosses into trash mobs when they're not gated through invulnerability, damage caps, excessive armor scaling, etc. What I'm saying is that scaling our damage down would remove the need for a damage cap on the Nox, and he could simply be a unit with lots of health and a unique vulnerability to headshots. It may not sound feasible, but it's going to happen eventually for the game to become balanceable, as power creep and the ensuing band-aid difficulty on enemy units have degraded quality of gameplay a fair amount. Nobody likes dealing with swarms of Sapping Ospreys, Nullifiers or Corrupted Bombards at higher levels (the Nox himself becomes needlessly difficult to kill at that stage, as its damage cap remains the same and armor means even headshots deal piddly damage), and until we get our power pulled back to reasonable levels, that's what's going to qualify as difficulty in Warframe.

[Kierlak]

On 7/13/2017 at 2:31 AM, Xzorn said:

Ammo Economy partially plays into weapon design but for the most part Rifle pick-ups do not give enough ammo to compensate automatic weapons. Status rates play into this as most rapid fire automatic weapons have a low base status rate for no legitimate reason when compared to pistols and other damage per shot type weapons. It takes Soma Prime 80 rounds to kill a lvl 145 Napalm, it takes Akstiletto 50 ammo and it takes AkLex 15 ammo. Yet both Rifle and Pistol pick-ups give x20 ammo with similar drop rates.

 

On 7/13/2017 at 2:31 AM, Xzorn said:

Weapon design as I mention is partially due to ammo economy but simply put Automatic weapons do not have enough damage to justify the ammo use. Pandero can head-crit for 120k damage while Soma Prime head-crits for 8k. This is why in real life the bullets dictate the damage you do; Not the weapon. Automatic single target weapons are so underwhelming in both damage and ammo economy that attempting to overcome this deficiency with Ammo Mutation lowers the weapon's damage output below competitive levels thereby ruining a purpose in using the weapon.

 

This is a pretty concise noting of one of the main problems with (mostly) rifles. Most rifles feel terrible to use when compared to shotguns/pistols once you get beyond lvl 30 or so. They eat ammo, deal generally mediocre damage, and a fair number of them have painful reloads that you have to suffer again and again because they eat ammo. You can fix some of them with a broken enough riven, but some are just lost in the space garbage fire. Secondary stats on rifles are usually not great, or when they are they are saddled with some other drawback that makes them worse than pistols or shotguns to use, like flight speed projectiles, glacial reloads, bad base damage, or spin up mechanics.

 

Pistols having double the amount of multishot as part of a base build is a huge part of this. It's really hard to close that gap when pistols are basically firing three bullets for every two a rifle fires.

[Lost_Cartographer]

On 7/13/2017 at 7:13 PM, Teridax68 said:

What I'm asking is for the difficulty to be natural to whichever unit it's a part of, rather than inserted through a special-case mechanic, as is the case for the Nox's damage reduction, Vay Hek's invulnerability phases, etc. If the Nox were simply a unit with a lot of health who took a lot of pain from headshots, that would be fine, but the implementation of it so far has been a damage cap. Not just bonus armor, a full-on damage cap that also provides immunity to DoTs and applies to stealth finishers, and essentially forces all weapons down to a fixed level when dealing against it, just like the Nullifier's damage cap to their bubble. What should happen is that we need to have our damage flattened to a large extent, so that it never runs the risk of doing ridiculous stuff like one-shotting boss units, but so far the implementation has been a series of unpleasant band-aids that do not make for good clarity or fun gameplay. Adding variety and challenge to gameplay is fine, but doing so in a manner that goes against the natural flow of gameplay, and lessens enjoyment overall is not how to do it.

Even if our damage was scaled back considerably and enemy scaling set to match, there's still the issue of our AoE crowd control and damage abilities being too overwhelming.

At the end of the day, DE will have to reach for these "cheap" mechanics and exceptions to get people to change up their tactics.  There are going to be people that don't like it.  If this were JUST a shooter - no super powers, solid player/enemy balancing - then they could get away with less "gimmicky" stuff.  But it ain't, and making everything into a sponge isn't too exciting.  It's what the enemy does to player behavior that makes them interesting.

Edited July 15, 2017 by Littleman88

[P0Pz]

On Friday, July 14, 2017 at 1:13 AM, Teridax68 said:

What I'm asking is for the difficulty to be natural to whichever unit it's a part of, rather than inserted through a special-case mechanic, as is the case for the Nox's damage reduction, Vay Hek's invulnerability phases, etc. If the Nox were simply a unit with a lot of health who took a lot of pain from headshots, that would be fine, but the implementation of it so far has been a damage cap. Not just bonus armor, a full-on damage cap that also provides immunity to DoTs and applies to stealth finishers, and essentially forces all weapons down to a fixed level when dealing against it, just like the Nullifier's damage cap to their bubble. What should happen is that we need to have our damage flattened to a large extent, so that it never runs the risk of doing ridiculous stuff like one-shotting boss units, but so far the implementation has been a series of unpleasant band-aids that do not make for good clarity or fun gameplay. Adding variety and challenge to gameplay is fine, but doing so in a manner that goes against the natural flow of gameplay, and lessens enjoyment overall is not how to do it.

Abilities like Mag's (2) Magnetize, can isolate his poisen what i noticed so far. Including turn his 'ability damage' agains him selfe.

 

What i am going to point out;

- If a target increases active or passivly its withstand vs physical hits, it should decrease its withstand agains abilities in same proportion.

Which means 'mind weapons' gain bonus damage.

 

Its just like we have in our reality, a tank focused to be fast and hunt, with a big gun other heavy tanks, which are solid build to withstand high physical impact damage, can not be as agil moving as the one on the other side. The weaker one (very low armor just vs smaller/medium projectils) kinda like a 'caster frame', got a higher damage output as the heavy tank. The 'hunter' tank tradeoff his withstand to be faster (increased EVASION) while using a better gun. The other heavy tank side, got therefore enough power to out take this armor weak target, but due his unagility compared to his target, he can't get a clear target to aim and shot. While the physical weaker tank can 'kit' and outmaneuver the heavy tank and kill it with a bigger gun as the heavy tank with 'Burst damage". Traded armor weight for speed (higher evasion) and a bigger gun.

 

"Abilities should gain a bonus vs high physical armored targets. While other targets may have high defenses vs 'mind weapons' but weak vs physical atacks. So a player is in need to use all his powers within his layout and kit instead just using 'Hand-Weapons' to takeout targets."

 

Such mechanics are totaly missing in WF. Not even 1 Debuff exist to weaken targets vs Abilities. Not a single 1...

Only armor debuffs. All over armor debuffs...

 

[AlcatrazNC002]

Nox are quite challenging but it can be deal pretty easily as long as you're not shooting his body. It kinda remind me the Goliath on Borderlands 2, once he lose his dome, he become berserk and start murdering everyone. Wonder if you can make them fight against other Grineer though .

[Teridax68]

13 hours ago, Littleman88 said:

Even if our damage was scaled back considerably and enemy scaling set to match, there's still the issue of our AoE crowd control and damage abilities being too overwhelming.

I mean, that in itself is part of power creep, and a legitimate reason why warframes need some downtime to their power, much like guns have a reload time. A world in which players can stunlock enemies, keep themselves invincible/invisible and deal massive damage through walls with essentially 100% uptime is one in which enemies are forced to be completely out of whack in order to have any kind of effect on us, and the result is a game that isn't actually as fun as it could be. For sure, the idea of being able to use any ability whenever you want, perhaps even all the time, seems fun, but in practice ability spamming isn't fun, and is conducive to faster burnout. Giving us even minor downtimes to our abilities without cutting off our access to them entirely (one of the problems with energy when you're running without power efficiency, Zenurik or a Trinity) would allow the game to make us play with our abilities more tactically and organically, instead of alternating between cannon fodder that dies immediately to any kind of spam, and enemies whose "difficulty" resumes itself to cutting off our access to what could be interesting means of engaging them.

[(PSN)fullblast35]

the human mind is very resistant to new things and change

[n3kro5515]

Actually Nox is harder to kill than most bosses, requires more bullets and shots, example, with my Mesa fully moded I go trough Kela lvl 100 easily, but Nox takes at least double the bullets to kill him, as for pressision well, a critic riven on a crit build on a Snipetron Vandal with argon scope still takes too many shots to kill it.