Why Is Armor Ignore And Piercing Everything?

[theangelbelow88]

While i agree that this game dificulty should be increased by improving AI, unique mechanic of some mobs and etc, i still hope that DE will ignore moaning of unskilled noobs on this thread.

Again, we are not discussing the game's difficulty, the whole point of this is to address a gap issue between armor ignoring weapons and none.

Also I don't believe throwing out random insults in anyway help make your point.

[theangelbelow88]

Uh, doesn't Snipetron Vandal deal armor piercing damage by default?

Yes, I'm at a loss why he used that weapon as an example...

[theangelbelow88]

 

If your weapon can't kill things you have 2 choices:

 

1: Use a weapon that is better for those missions. I can tell you from using EVERY weapon in the game, they are all viable with the right set up for different tasks. (if your "pet" gun doesn't work use something else, basic common sense)

2: CORROSIVE PROJECTION

 

We don't need another game ruined because of people crying on the forums rather then finding an in game answer (they ARE there)

 

What you are saying pretty much makes my case, why would people go with anything other then armor ignoring weapons and/or piercing for higher level content, and why use any other aura when clearly corrosive projection is a must if you don't feel standard bullet damage weapons will cut it. Heck, lets just make 80% of the currant weapons and 90% of the auras obsolete, just so we can play high level content, this system seems to make complete sense... Sarcasm by the way for anyone who cant tell.

 

Honestly, I'm surprised that there are even people who seem to think the current scaling system is good, even more so that they would think changing it would "ruin" the game.

 

Also, thank you Katsuni and DiabolusUrsus for making some well written and thought out points.

Edited July 26, 2013 by theangelbelow88

[Taranis49]

+1.

 

It is kinda sad when more than three-quarters of all the weapons in the game are useless in areas that "matter" -- high-level content.

 

U9 dropped and DE added a good 10-30 levels onto all the planets, which further increased armor AND health.

 

So basically, every enemy is now a bullet sponge unless you have really awesome mods, which leaves newbies and mid-tier in the dust while the hardcores still get to roflstomp everything, because face it... nothing is going to survive a fully modded Ogris blast, or what-have-you.

 

It'd be nice if these poor weak weapons would once again have a use in later game, other than "level to 30 for mastery and then chuck".

 

That's what MOST weapons in this game are -- Mastery Fodder that you grind up to 30 on lowbie planets that you can actually kill something with them.

 

Pretty clear you haven't played top-tier content during your little rant about "hardcores", because at current "end game" content like the final waves of T3 Void Defense, where the mobs hit level 130? They take such reduced damage it can still take a full clip or two from a well-modded Ogris to kill stuff, even assuming the damage doesn't bug. Seriously, odds are you'll actually get tired using one over the course of 20 waves and defense is pretty much the only mission type where an Ogris is usually preferable over most weapons.

 

Stop speaking from a position of ignorance, because the absurd armor scaling affects people with end-game gear too; just not as quickly. By the time you're facing level 130 mobs, you're still better off with weapons like Kunai/Despair/Hikou.

Edited July 26, 2013 by Taranis49

[theangelbelow88]

Pretty clear you haven't played top-tier content during your little rant about "hardcores", because at current "end game" content like the final waves of T3 Void Defense, where the mobs hit level 130? They take such reduced damage it can still take a full clip or two from a well-modded Ogris to kill stuff, even assuming the damage doesn't bug. Seriously, odds are you'll actually get tired using one over the course of 20 waves and defense is pretty much the only mission type where an Ogris is usually preferable over most weapons.

 

Stop speaking from a position of ignorance, because the absurd armor scaling affects people with end-game gear too; just not as quickly. By the time you're facing level 130 mobs, you're still better off with weapons like Kunai/Despair/Hikou.

Well, I think the point that they were trying to go for was that you need an absurd amount of firepower to be to do higher level mission, even if the example was a little off.

 

And, your right Kunai/Despair/Hikou/Bolto/Acrid(deals poison damage which is unaffected by armor), are really the only way to go for end game content and they all share the same thing in common. 

[MattHarrigan]

It's always been the way in game design; if you have two stats which go up at the same time, which effectively do the same thing, then all you're doing is making the game harder to balance.

 

Case in point: Armour and health has been a consistent issue with poor design for years, since at least the early starcraft 1 days when many tower defense map makers would have the levels increase in both armour and health, but wouldn't add any armour ignoring tower choices to counteract such. All this meant was that the # shots to kill a target went up faster than intended, and became difficult to predict without wasting vast amounts of extra time on damage calculations or play testing. WC3 was even worse for this since armour was now a % based decrease that was poorly understood by most players, rather than the flat damage reduction in SC1. 10 armour would be equivilent to +60% effective health, for example, assuming the armour constant wasn't altered in the process.

 

Other games have had a similar issue; things like combining attack speed and damage on weapons that don't have to reload, or reducing the damage of an enemy and increasing the resistances of an ally at the same time. This can be seen all throughout amateur game design, mostly in mods or fan-based works, because it's quite literally just a time sink that a company which has to actually pay it's employees can't afford. If they're hourly, waste of time, if they're salary, you're still pushing back the release date which can cost even more money in the long term.

 

Again, if you scale two stats which do the same thing, it's simply annoying to deal with. Sure, it's possible to create a large spreadsheet which calculates out everything, but again, it takes time to build the spreadsheet and then review it for content compared to fairly linear increases due to a single stat adjustment.

 

The other issue, is when you apply things like armour in particular; either you don't have armour piercing options, in which case the increase to armour is largely pointless as it exists only as a further health increase, or you have armour piercing options, in which case anything but those options are now a moot point.

 

At high end play, it will invariably become that the top end players will 98% of the time use armour ignoring weapons, because if they use literally anything else, then they have to waste mod slots which could otherwise be put to better use.

 

Sacrificing things like energy regeneration or raw damage for armour piercing is a poor trade off if you could have had both.

 

This isn't "difficulty", it's just poor design, as the top players will simply use the AP weapons, and eventually everyone else will read about it in the wiki and everyone else will use the AP weapons as well, meaning why would you even bother making any new weapon content which isn't AP?

 

This, in turn, restricts the development choices of the devteam so that they're now trapped in an endless loop; non-AP weapons are useless, so we have to create new AP weapons or they'll never be used and we'll have to listen to complaints any time we release anything. Creating only AP weapons means higher level new enemies now need more health or new mechanics to negate the AP effects, reducing their effectiveness, which further impacts against non-AP weapons, further emphasizing their uselessness.

 

Round and round you go, continually compounding the problem until you're left with anything non-AP being so completely useless that no one in the game uses them any longer, not even the newbies, and at that point you need to overhaul the whole system, but that means a TON of work in trying to replace all of the items, all of the damage formulas, and all of the armour values on higher end enemies.

 

The longer you leave it, the more work it becomes, and any changes made will &!$$ off large groups of players who will quit the game once it's live. As long as it's still in beta, you can at least use the pitiful "well, it's just a beta" excuse, which will at least placate most of the populace so that it doesn't compound the problem further.

 

In short... you either fix the problem relatively soon, or it'll be too much work to fix, and you'll have dug your own grave in the process.

 

About the only place where armour scaling of this nature matters, is in PvP games where players may choose to go health OR damage reduction, and it becomes a matter of countering your opponent's build, and again, that only really works if you have the capacity to counter-build in relation to such as you see them gaining gear towards that end. This would be something like a MOBA game, where the stats reset at the end of each mission and you can predict their stat growth as the game progresses.

 

For a PvE game, stat stacking is really never the answer, nor is spamming out more enemies (unless you're talking about something like Serious Sam, then go right ahead =P ). Generally, your ideal choice is to aim for more complex and interesting enemies, with new abilities or effects that alter how a fight progresses. Give one or two tenno-class skills to an enemy, and see how the battlefield shifts significantly; give it specific hit boxes that are easy to see but have to be systematically removed like armour clasps on a grineer that have to be shot off to remove the heavy slabs of plating, or multiple gun turrets on some kind of corpus walker.

 

Regardless, the point is using two stats which perform the same function, such as "makes me harder to kill", in such a way that they are multiplictive rather than defending against different types of attacks, is always going to eventually equate to more trouble than it's worth.

 

You don't put armour on an enemy that reduces it's damage taken by X% and an ability where it reduces the damage of all enemies it fights by X% as well. One or the other, never both.

 

To this end, armour and health are the same thing. One or the other scales; you can have some armour, so long as the armour piercing variant doesn't do as much damage as the non-piercing variant, and so long as the armour reduction options make the two relatively on par with one another. This simply means the player now has a personal choice of which they prefer, so long as the margin of difference is within ~5% or so. Much more than that, and it becomes too big of an impact to be worth taking personal preference over effectiveness and we're stuck back with the same situation again.

 

An excellent post right there, I hope it gets widely received by the community and also by the devs. This really should be looked at sooner rather than later. It's a shame for all those nice "normal damage weapons" that remain in the locker because of the armour mechanics in this game.

 

The mechanic is already too complicated and thus hard to balance. As Katsuni points out, there's too many stats that affect the same thing, being harder to kill: Resistance to normal damage (armour), health and resistance to elements (AP, ice, fire, electro), with the regular armour being the most pain in the &#! for players, cause it renders a lot of weapons useless on high levels. Since the armour is just a % based reduction of damage, it seems odd that it increases with the monster level! It should stay the same, while only increasing health. I'd like to see how that would work.

 

Also the AP damage mods could be reworked into "armour reducing" mods, having part of the damage ignoring the armour completely. These mods would then be totally useless on already full armour ignoring weapons and as such would narrow the gap between normal and armour ignoring weapons.

 

I don't have a solution to this problem and I don't have experience with balancing this, but I hope some of the ideas expressed in this (and other) thread will make it towards actual development versions of the game.

[theangelbelow88]

An excellent post right there, I hope it gets widely received by the community and also by the devs. This really should be looked at sooner rather than later. It's a shame for all those nice "normal damage weapons" that remain in the locker because of the armour mechanics in this game.

 

The mechanic is already too complicated and thus hard to balance. As Katsuni points out, there's too many stats that affect the same thing, being harder to kill: Resistance to normal damage (armour), health and resistance to elements (AP, ice, fire, electro), with the regular armour being the most pain in the &#! for players, cause it renders a lot of weapons useless on high levels. Since the armour is just a % based reduction of damage, it seems odd that it increases with the monster level! It should stay the same, while only increasing health. I'd like to see how that would work.

 

Also the AP damage mods could be reworked into "armour reducing" mods, having part of the damage ignoring the armour completely. These mods would then be totally useless on already full armour ignoring weapons and as such would narrow the gap between normal and armour ignoring weapons.

 

I don't have a solution to this problem and I don't have experience with balancing this, but I hope some of the ideas expressed in this (and other) thread will make it towards actual development versions of the game.

Yes, I agree completely, before U9 was dropped, armor scaling wasn't as big of an issue, and it seemed more limited to defense missions and higher wave counts, but now that most missions got a level increases the armor scaling issue is affecting more of the game, and as it was pointed out, unless DE does something its only going to keep getting worse.

[Botskiz]

As someone who prefers to use weapons that are fun to use, and not necessarily the "best" equipment available, I wholeheartedly agree with the intent of this topic. (Seriously, I love that Ignis I just built already)

 

Even though I'm absolutely fine with certain weapons being superior to others, or having different advantages and disadvantages, I really don't want to have to fall back to a weapon that I don't like just because it's the only viable choice available. Sadly the current armor scaling system forces exactly that.

 

It also amazes me that people actually defend this system. It doesn't make any sense at all that armor-ignoring weapon damage basically doesn't scale at all, while every other weapon has a huge damage fall off that gets bigger and bigger as enemy levels get higher.

 

Removing armor scaling would not even affect those who use armor-ignoring weapons at all. It just serves to get rid of the non-sensical damage fall off of non armor-ignoring weapons, thus giving more choice to the player as to which equipment is viable. Armor-ignoring weapons would still remain more effective, though.

 

As for wether or not the game would magically be a cakewalk after removing armor scaling, I doubt it would change a lot for most high-level defense players, since most of them probably already use armor-ignoring weapons anyway.

 

Even if the majority of players didn't use them and the game actually became easier due to the higher damage output of non armor-ignoring weapons, it would always be possible to raise the health scaling of enemies to get the average difficulty level close to where it was before the change. This would actually be the only case in which users of armor-ignoring weapons would be affected, but for those players the game would actually become harder as a result.

[whitejackale]

They should simply leave the same armour value on enemies, and simply increase the health. This way people can find a weapon that they enjoy using and continue to use it instead of being forced to get an armour piercing weapon for higher levels.

[theangelbelow88]

As someone who prefers to use weapons that are fun to use, and not necessarily the "best" equipment available, I wholeheartedly agree with the intent of this topic. (Seriously, I love that Ignis I just built already)

 

Even though I'm absolutely fine with certain weapons being superior to others, or having different advantages and disadvantages, I really don't want to have to fall back to a weapon that I don't like just because it's the only viable choice available. Sadly the current armor scaling system forces exactly that.

 

It also amazes me that people actually defend this system. It doesn't make any sense at all that armor-ignoring weapon damage basically doesn't scale at all, while every other weapon has a huge damage fall off that gets bigger and bigger as enemy levels get higher.

 

Removing armor scaling would not even affect those who use armor-ignoring weapons at all. It just serves to get rid of the non-sensical damage fall off of non armor-ignoring weapons, thus giving more choice to the player as to which equipment is viable. Armor-ignoring weapons would still remain more effective, though.

 

As for wether or not the game would magically be a cakewalk after removing armor scaling, I doubt it would change a lot for most high-level defense players, since most of them probably already use armor-ignoring weapons anyway.

 

Even if the majority of players didn't use them and the game actually became easier due to the higher damage output of non armor-ignoring weapons, it would always be possible to raise the health scaling of enemies to get the average difficulty level close to where it was before the change. This would actually be the only case in which users of armor-ignoring weapons would be affected, but for those players the game would actually become harder as a result.

 

They should simply leave the same armour value on enemies, and simply increase the health. This way people can find a weapon that they enjoy using and continue to use it instead of being forced to get an armour piercing weapon for higher levels.

Yes, these are the points I been stressing, and how people are against the idea of changing something that is clearly broken is beyond me.

[whitejackale]

Yes, these are the points I been stressing, and how people are against the idea of changing something that is clearly broken is beyond me.

There is nothing wrong with people being against a suggestion if they can put forth a reasonable argument. Anyone that is simply against an idea without being able to offer any sound arguments should be ignored.

[theangelbelow88]

There is nothing wrong with people being against a suggestion if they can put forth a reasonable argument. Anyone that is simply against an idea without being able to offer any sound arguments should be ignored.

Well, to word it better, what I meant is that some people think the the enemy armor scaling system is good and doesn't need revising in anyway, and that's what stumps me.

[alocrius]

The game isn't going to be ruined by changing how enemy armor scales and evening out the change by introducing a larger overall health pool. It just means that people don't have to use only armor-ignoring weapons to deal decent damage. It will still take just as long to kill higher-level mobs, people will simply have a wider choice of weapon and mod loadouts when accomplishing that task. Diversity is a good thing, it keeps the game interesting.

Yeah mang. +1

[Wutever]

All this "b-but muh newbies can't clear high level missions" and "weapons that don't ignore armor are useless" thing really makes me wanna make a new account and just f*cking start over to see if this is true or the players complaining are just sh*t at the game / expect things to get handed out to them for free.

 

Yesterday I did T3 Void Defense with two friends. Our setup was as follows:

1. Nova (30): level 1 Torid, level 30 Despair (Forma'd once), some random level Amphis that he leveled for points (I ninja invited him out of the blue)

2. Loki (30): level 30 Braton, level 30 Vasto (neither weapon was Forma'd even once), level 30 Dual Ethers (no Catalyst afaik)

3. Me - Rhino (30): level 30 Hek (3x Forma'd), level 30 Dual Broncos (Forma'd once), level 30 Gram (no Formas)

 

We successfully cleared 3 runs, and the pod never went below 50% except once when we had one critical moment where both the Loki and Nova went down to what seemed to be a glitchy laser that killed them while they were standing behind the consoles.

 

There's a few interesting things here, some of which are obvious and some that are not:

1. we did what is arguably the hardest content the game has to offer as a 3-man group

2. we had only two sources of armor ignoring damage - Despair and Rhino Stomp

3. we had two sources of damage amplification - Roar and Molecular Prime

4. we used 2x Energy Syphon and 1x Rifle Amp

5. we had reasonable amounts of CC, but no Vauban or Frost bullsh*t

6. the Loki had been playing for a little more than a week and was missing core mods for his frame, me and Nova have 200+ hours played

7. we used the f*cking lasers that oneshot even wave 15 ancients

8. unloading a Hek into a weakspot blows up almost everything in 1 or 2 shots unless it has shields, in that case you need a few more. Spraying gets you nowhere unless you are killing light units

9. our only problem was caused by a hitbox bug that oneshot 2 out of 3 members and we didn't wipe even then nor did we blow revives

10. this was the first T3 Void Defense either of us had done (although I had tried to solo it before with my Rhino and lost the pod at wave 10 because I ran out of energy)

 

As for the "both armor and health should not go up at the same time as they stack multiplicatively" - base damage mods, multishot, elemental damage, crit chance, crit damage, etc all stack multiplicatively as well. A level 30 weapon scales so hard with every mod you pack into it that it isn't even funny. Heavy units having high amounts of armor to counteract the fact that a Hek can still blow them to shreds with a single magazine to the chest is necessary and encourages players to actually f*cking aim at weakspots instead of randomly blowing 100+ bullets into a crowd. Weapons that don't ignore armor have higher DPS for a reason - you get rewarded for that headshot.

 

The only thing that goes up end-game shouldn't be just stats. People should be expected not to be garbage at the game and improve themselves, not just their guns and frames. Heavies not giving a f*ck about you shooting at their left tit that is covered by a massive layer of shields and space-steel does this nicely.

Edited July 30, 2013 by Wutever

[IfritKajiTora]

PISTOL must have mod armor piercing not 30% at max level but 90%.
Because Kunai and Despair are OP because they have ARMOR IGNORE or ARMOR PIERCING.

[RealityMachina]

*snip*

It's like, you completely missed the point of this thread.

 

We're complaining about the fact that only certain weapons work well in high level areas you idiot.

 

And I'm sorry, but:

This is not good game design.

[Relkin]

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/84269-a-solution-for-the-armor-problem-difficulty-to-an-extent/

 

Here's another alternative to the current crutch DE is relying on for difficulty. 

[Wutever]

It's like, you completely missed the point of this thread.

 

We're complaining about the fact that only certain weapons work well in high level areas you idiot.

 

And I'm sorry, but:

 

This is not good game design.

And my point was that most weapons function just fine in high level regardless of armor ignore, except you are actually expected to know where the weakspots are located and hit them and / or use damage amplification (everything dies almost instantly with Sonar at the current EHP rates, for example). Yes, the game could be made harder in better ways (like more interesting abilities or better AI for enemies), but in its current state everything all the way up to level 130 is very managable with every gun that isn't inherently sh*t either by design or because it has terrible stats.

 

This game has plenty of design flaws, but armor and health isn't even close to being one of the biggest. Heck, it isn't even the worst case of artificial difficulty achieved by increasing stats - Nightmare Mode takes that medal, and by a large margin.

 

Even with the brutal enemy stats this game isn't hard in any way if you aren't bad at it or severely undergeared, because even L130 Ancients and Heavy Gunners explode from a sufficient amount of well-placed shots to the head or other weak-spots, and hitting them isn't in any way hard with things like Vauban in the game or because they tend to slowly walk at you for a good period of the time, or in the case of the Heavy Gunner, stand freaking still. You will need to hit weakspots anyway not to run out of ammo with less ammo-efficient weapons, even if they ignore armor simply because it deals double damage, so the difference really isn't that massive as you make it to be if you play the game correctly.

 

Do you know what is actually bad game design and is much more problematic? Half the Frames having fundamental issues, a large part of the weapons, especially melee, grind-walls, monotone events, half the mutators in Nightmare Mode (especially no minimap) being punishing instead of hard and making people instantly Abort Mission, a large portion of mods being completely worthless or seemingly random, badly planned out loot tables and resource distribution (f*ck Nanospores, seriously), the goddamn Foundry getting two UI reworks while the mod screen is still impossible to navigate for anybody after a week of play, no real plan for player retention other than more grind. All of these are actual problems, not EHP for non-weakspots scaling exponentially for heavy units only while all weapons scale exponentially as well.

 

F*cking seriously, get good and let them fix what is actually broken, like the things I listed above, so that the game doesn't turn out to be DoA.

Edited July 30, 2013 by Wutever

[Kyte]

Dude not everyone runs Banshee and only Ancients have unarmored spots. (This is important because when a Heavy Gunner takes only quarter damage due to armor a headshot is still only half damage)

 

Honestly if all enemies had unarmored areas that took some aiming to hit it'd be better because then at least skill would be rewarded with better damage.

 

The point is the huge gap between AI weapons and normal weapons. And less bullet-spongy enemies would allow other more interesting play variations.

 

And just because there're other problems doesn't mean you get to sweep this one under the rug.

Edited July 30, 2013 by Kyte

[theangelbelow88]

I'm not saying its impossible to get higher level content done with standard bullet damage weapons, what I'm trying to say is that it's much easier with AI/AP weapons, and there is a huge damage gap between the two types right now, and its extremely noticeable on higher levels.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

And my point was that most weapons function just fine in high level regardless of armor ignore,

The Hek, one of the most powerful weapons in the game, is not "most weapons." Particularly when you're enhancing it with stomp, rifle amp, and sonar all at once. :|

[BronzeDragon]

Even more pointless that AP weapons don't do AP all the way, its effectiveness starts to lower at enemies lvl 40+ and then becomes useless as any other weapon.

[Kyte]

Even more pointless that AP weapons don't do AP all the way, its effectiveness starts to lower at enemies lvl 40+ and then becomes useless as any other weapon.

This is completely wrong.

[Relkin]

Dude not everyone runs Banshee and only Ancients have unarmored spots. (This is important because when a Heavy Gunner takes only quarter damage due to armor a headshot is still only half damage)

 

Honestly if all enemies had unarmored areas that took some aiming to hit it'd be better because then at least skill would be rewarded with better damage.

 

The point is the huge gap between AI weapons and normal weapons. And less bullet-spongy enemies would allow other more interesting play variations.

 

And just because there're other problems doesn't mean you get to sweep this one under the rug.

See the link I posted a few up or just here: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/84269-a-solution-for-the-armor-problem-difficulty-to-an-extent/

 

The weak points are a big part of this proposed system.  Trying to get them to fix what we have without taking another lazy &#! shortcut like deleting scaling armor or AP/AI. 

[CaptainohCaptain]

Let's just think about it. You are charging at tyrannosaurus with a fork, poking him with this about 150-200 times and after this he gotta die? It doesn't work this way. And complaints like "OMG can't kill elephant with my pepper gun" are simply stupid.

1)Nobody makes you even go there

2)This game has such specialized units as Volt at your disposal (God against corpus, meh against everything else, stick to your guns and pray for your shields). And, off course, you have specialized guns at your disposal. And many of the end-game guns is kinda annoying to use. Torid? Yes, smoke the hell out of the enemies, render yourself to see nothing and die in your own cloud when someone who got direct shot from you comes a bit closer. Ogris? Die in poorly timed blast. Kunai? Wait for forming a line. Wait for forming a line. Wait for it. Feel the shame from the fact that you did 3 times less than your mate with shotgun.

And yep, shotguns kick asses.150% bonus damage + 150% ap damage = gibs flying.

3)Sidearm is suposed to be an ammo saver for your long gun. it's not even supposed to be full-time weapon. Why do you think it's called sidearm?

4)At the end of the line, abilities>guns.