Solving the One Hit Kill Issue

[BlackCoMerc]

How do we solve one hit kills in a an ARPG game with scaling? Easy.

1. Hitscan for Enemies: Take hitscan weapons away from enemies. Give Grineer "fake" versions of the guns they use now, that fire actual projectiles.

2. Snipers: as soon as they lock on, the Warframe issues warning beeps. Also, consider the "Hollywood Shot" mechanic very seriously, at least for newly spawned snipers.

3. Bombards: faster rockets, no target tracking.

4. Trash Mobs: Stop scaling up trash mob, grunt level enemies at 30-40. Treat Gunners, Bombards, Nox, Red Crewmen as mini bosses and bring in Proxies for Corpus above that.

5. Accuracy Scaling: STOP SCALING UP ACCURACY FOR ENEMIES. Grunts need accuracy caps. Period.

6. Shield Reliability: NO MORE DAMAGE THROUGH SHIELDS. Half of one shot deaths probably happen to players who THINK they are safe, but are actually down 50% of their health due to unnoticed Slash and Toxin procs, and drain auras. Despite their shields NEVER HAVING BEEN DEPLETED, and thus, never having heard the Depletion Warning cue.

Shields SHOULD WORK LIKE SHIELDS DO IN LITERALLY EVERY OTHER GAME IN EXISTENCE. Some standards exist for a reason.

 

Possible Concerns:

But...if enemies didn't have hitscan, and shields were actually reliable (because they aren't now, at all)...then some especially agile people would never get hit, you say?

GOOD. That's called Skill. And it deserves a reward. I'm NOT one of those virtual Warframe gymnasts, but good for them. 

Moreover, at higher levels, on crowded missions, even very skilled players WILL take hits. And those hits will present a real threat.

 

Why Do This:

Warframe, like Diablo and Torchlight, is a gear based ARPG at heart. Right down to Gear Checks.

Unlike those games, where in most enemies use melee and need to get close to hit you, Warframe gave trash mobs GUNS. With magical hitscan projectiles. This made distance literally irrelevant.

Fortunately, tiles have walls. Unfortunately, Landscapes...don't. Turns out, distance and the need for enemies to close it, was a buffer in most ARPG games. It created a timeframe in which players could react before enemies got into threat range. Warframe handled this with walls and doors, because...guns.

But Warframe Landscapes lack that buffer. And so do many larger map tiles. So, it needs another instead.

Real projectiles and accuracy caps create a buffer. They increase the time frame in which players can react to threats, much like distance does in melee based ARPG games. Coupled with reliable shields and movement, this moves damage avoidance closer to skill based and away from gear checking mechanics.

Edited November 5, 2017 by BlackCoMerc

[o.0-]

I wonder if another possible avenue, could be to apply a damage reduction formula to shields?

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Armor#Damage_Reduction_Formula

[motorfirebox]

You know, I've thrown this idea around as a fix for Mag's survivability, but... what if shields acted as armor? As in, if you have 200 shields, you have 200 armor against anything that bypasses shields. If an enemy shoots you and knocks your shields down to 100, you have 100 armor against anything that bypasses shields. That would help a lot with the problem of poison and slash procs.

Or we could just stop having stuff bypass shields. That would also be cool.

[Naftal]

So since we already have the upper hand in dodging everything enemies do either by parkouring and using our OP abilities. Should we nerf all our abilities at the same time if we're nerfing enemies like this?

EDIT: You can already reduce enemy accuracy to S#&$ if you just move properly. This includes hitscan enemies.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Naftal

[Kalvorax]

25 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

3. Bombards: faster rockets, no target tracking.

best part is...Tusk Bombards from the Plains already have this...DE just needs to make the change to regular bombards.....OR switch them around so the plains have the homing where it makes sense lol.

25 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

5. Accuracy Scaling: STOP SCALING UP ACCURACY FOR ENEMIES. Grunts need accuracy caps. Period.

say what???? never knew about this.

25 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

6. Shield Reliability: NO MORE DAMAGE THROUGH SHIELDS. Half of one shot deaths probably happen to players who THINK they are safe, but are actually down 50% of their health due to unnoticed Slash and Toxin procs, and drain auras. Despite their shields NEVER HAVING BEEN DEPLETED, and thus, never having heard the Depletion Warning cue.

Shields SHOULD WORK LIKE SHIELDS DO IN LITERALLY EVERY OTHER GAME IN EXISTENCE. Some standards exist for a reason.

There IS a shield gating thing that has been thrown around lately...and being tested somehow...iirc DE just doesnt like how their tests are reacting properly.
How would this work against enemies though?

25 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

4. Trash Mobs: Stop scaling up trash mob, grunt level enemies at 30-40. Treat Gunners, Bombards, Nox, Red Crewmen as mini bosses and bring in Proxies for Corpus above that.

i would be down for this for sure....they ARE trash mobs after all.

one other thing i would like to add is the bloody Armor scaling. I'm fine with shields and health scaling as we DO have proper means to lower them easily thru status, but Armor is a complete joke with Corrossive being so useless its not even funny (Due to the NEED for High Fire Rate weapons ON TOP OF CP).

Edited November 5, 2017 by Kalvorax

[Trichouette]

6 minutes ago, Kalvorax said:

say what???? never knew about this.

Low level enemies can shoot behind them, high level enemies will never miss.

Go to simulacrum, spawn a lvl 1 grineer, and literally hug him and you'll see how blind he is.

31 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

But...if enemies didn't have hitscan, and shields were actually reliable (because they aren't now, at all)...then some especially agile people would never get hit, you say?

GOOD. That's called Skill. And it deserves a reward. I'm NOT one of those virtual Warframe gymnasts, but good for them. 

Spamming ctrl+space isn't skill, also i'm not sure the P2P connexion can handle that many projectiles.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Trichouette

[BlackCoMerc]

2 minutes ago, Kalvorax said:

best part is...Tusk Bombards from the Plains already have this...DE just needs to make the change to regular bombards.....OR switch them around so the plains have the homing where it makes sense lol.

say what???? never knew about this.

There IS a shield gating thing that has been thrown around lately...and being tested somehow...iirc DE just doesnt like how their tests are reacting properly.
How would this work against enemies though?

i would be down for this for sure....they ARE trash mobs after all.

one other thing i would like to add is the bloody Armor scaling. I'm fine with shields and health scaling as we DO have proper means to lower them easily thru status, but Armor is a complete joke with Corrossive being so useless its not even funny (Due to the NEED for High Fire Rate weapons ON TOP OF CP).

Fair point about armor. The fact that the CAP Aura exists screams that there's a problem.

Health should scale, I think. But Armor Scaling needs a cap. A hard cap.

Now that Landscapes are a thing...it's time to find something other than insurmountable enemies to push us out of Endless missions. The scaling system is based on Endless, but it's breaking the game and killing the fun of open maps.

[motorfirebox]

4 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Fair point about armor. The fact that the CAP Aura exists screams that there's a problem.

Health should scale, I think. But Armor Scaling needs a cap. A hard cap.

Now that Landscapes are a thing...it's time to find something other than insurmountable enemies to push us out of Endless missions. The scaling system is based on Endless, but it's breaking the game and killing the fun of open maps.

Yeah, endless scaling needs to end. It was an okay stopgap, but it's just not an interesting challenge.

I keep harping on adding more telegraphed attacks; maybe increased challenge could be reducing the lead time on such attacks, and/or increasing frequency.

[BlackCoMerc]

Just now, motorfirebox said:

Yeah, endless scaling needs to end. It was an okay stopgap, but it's just not an interesting challenge.

I keep harping on adding more telegraphed attacks; maybe increased challenge could be reducing the lead time on such attacks, and/or increasing frequency.

I like the idea.

I'd rather have many fewer, smarter enemies in most missions, than a brainless, suicidal, zombie horde with guns myself.

But yeah...Endless missions need another direction. Another note to end on. Or the scaling used there should be contained there in, and not allowed to infect the rest of the game.

[motorfirebox]

I mean, here's the thing with trying to fix one-hit kills. What you're effectively doing is placing a cap on enemy damage. You're saying that it doesn't matter if an enemy is level one million, it shouldn't be able to kill you in one shot (or, really, within a particularly short period of time; preventing OHKs on individual hits doesn't help when the enemy has a machinegun that fires OHK bullets—looking at you, Corpus Tech). Which means that, in terms of damage output, you're saying that enemy damage should stop scaling with level.

Which means that it's not really the OHKs that are the problem. The OHKs are mainly a symptom of another problem—infinite scaling. By and large, it's infinite scaling that needs to be solved; once that's solved, the edge cases where OHKs still occur can be re-evaluated.

[BlackCoMerc]

Just now, motorfirebox said:

I mean, here's the thing with trying to fix one-hit kills. What you're effectively doing is placing a cap on enemy damage. You're saying that it doesn't matter if an enemy is level one million, it shouldn't be able to kill you in one shot (or, really, within a particularly short period of time; preventing OHKs on individual hits doesn't help when the enemy has a machinegun that fires OHK bullets—looking at you, Corpus Tech). Which means that, in terms of damage output, you're saying that enemy damage should stop scaling with level.

Which means that it's not really the OHKs that are the problem. The OHKs are mainly a symptom of another problem—infinite scaling. By and large, it's infinite scaling that needs to be solved; once that's solved, the edge cases where OHKs still occur can be re-evaluated.

Exactly.

And if you hard cap enemies, you have a number around which to make balance adjustments as needed. So that's a win, too.

Ideally, the game gets a major star squish. Soon. Before lots of new folks drawn in by PoE grow accustomed to godhood.

But for now...I think the steps above are a good leaping off point.

[meristu]

or you could just learn to move, use your abilities and watch what is damaging you

your problems

1. you dont know how to move, you are standing still doing who knows what and snipers on plains have whole day to target you across half of earth and kill you .. fix ? learn to move
2. this isnt archwing, simply dont stop moving thats what warframe is about, if they implemented this Id probably come to your house and delete all your frames because all frames would sound like morse code in plains
3. dude you cant dodge lame snipers and you want fast rockets? you are obviously static half of the time you play bombards would rek you twice as fast ... thats the point they are homing but slow so you have chance to avoid them
4. half of the mainstream weapons can oneshot trash mobs even after hour of survival .. all it would do would be just lame nerf for longer survivals where nothing would be able to kill you and bigger mobs would stay the same..
5. yes they could use caps but you are talking about something like lvl 80 moa missing you from melee range
6. another one, I can see you out there in PoE, being static and all and then the Nox arrives and he dies in cloud and you instead of avoiding it just continue being static .. mhmm .. lovely ... hello there mr. Harrow with 946584163157 shields Id like to see something kill you ...slash and poison deal damage to hp, oh unexpected that it deals damage to hp and not your shields .. I hope corpus also gets this buff so you need to take shields down first every time .. fix for this is basically good old "dont stand in fire"

Edited November 5, 2017 by meristu

[(PSN)LordZezrel]

I dunno about plains, but this sounds awful. this sounds like warframe but with foam armor so the kiddies don't get hurt....

 

The only thing I agree with is shields have some type of damag reduc, other than that this just sounds too easy.

[motorfirebox]

9 minutes ago, meristu said:

or you could just learn to move, use your abilities and watch what is damaging you

your problems

1. you dont know how to move, you are standing still doing who knows what and snipers on plains have whole day to target you across half of earth and kill you .. fix ? learn to move
2. this isnt archwing, simply dont stop moving thats what warframe is about, if they implemented this Id probably come to your house and delete all your frames because all frames would sound like morse code in plains
3. dude you cant dodge lame snipers and you want fast rockets? you are obviously static half of the time you play bombards would rek you twice as fast ... thats the point they are homing but slow so you have chance to avoid them
4. half of the mainstream weapons can oneshot trash mobs even after hour of survival .. all it would do would be just lame nerf for longer survivals where nothing would be able to kill you and bigger mobs would stay the same..
5. yes they could use caps but you are talking about something like lvl 80 moa missing you from melee range
6. another one, I can see you out there in PoE, being static and all and then the Nox arrives and he dies in cloud and you instead of avoiding it just continue being static .. mhmm .. lovely ... hello there mr. Harrow with 946584163157 shields Id like to see something kill you ...slash and poison deal damage to hp, oh unexpected that it deals damage to hp and not your shields .. I hope corpus also gets this buff so you need to take shields down first every time .. fix for this is basically good old "dont stand in fire"

Dude. "Watch what is damaging you" doesn't apply. None of this applies, really. We're talking about one-hit kills. It's right there in the thread title.

Edited November 5, 2017 by motorfirebox

[Xzorn]

Most of this doesn't really solve one-shots. It just hides them behind a larger curtain.

Enemy damage scaling and the massive eHP gap between frames are what cause one-shots. Reducing enemy accuracy does little since 10% chance of a one-shot is still a one-shot. Removing fodder enemy scaling does very little as well since it's the other enemy types which break at later levels causing unfair one-shots. Napalms, Nullifiers and Commanders are prime culprits.

I do agree with some concept though. Hit-scan weapons should be used sparingly in the hands of NPCs and should be adjusted to never be unfairly punishing. Damage types bypassing shields is another I very much agree on. There's no point in a health type if it can be completely ignored and a Grineer Lancer able to land shots from 600m away or even the fact they try to shoot from that distance is pretty silly.

[BlackCoMerc]

1 minute ago, Xzorn said:

Most of this doesn't really solve one-shots. It just hides them behind a larger curtain.

Enemy damage scaling and the massive eHP gap between frames are what cause one-shots. Reducing enemy accuracy does little since 10% chance of a one-shot is still a one-shot. Removing fodder enemy scaling does very little as well since it's the other enemy types which break at later levels causing unfair one-shots. Napalms, Nullifiers and Commanders are prime culprits.

I do agree with some concept though. Hit-scan weapons should be used sparingly in the hands of NPCs and should be adjusted to never be unfairly punishing. Damage types bypassing shields is another I very much agree on. There's no point in a health type if it can be completely ignored and a Grineer Lancer able to land shots from 600m away or even the fact they try to shoot from that distance is pretty silly.

Honestly, short of damage 3.0, I don't know if anything solves the issue outright. The stat crushing rebalance isn't coming. It won't happen. It's needed, but it won't happen.

So these were just some ideas I had that I thought might help. 

Like capping trash mob scaling. At level 50+ nearly everything is a mini boss. In terms of health, damage, armor... everything is deadly dangerous.

This is terrible design. No enemies are special. None FEEL threatening. It's just a wall of Tedium.

Scale back and cap trash mobs. Then you can really focus on Gunners, Boombards, Red Crewmen...bring in Proxies. And you can make these guys genuinely tough and threatening, because players won't have to worry about OHK from ever basic Moa, Crewmen and Lancer on the field any longer.

This makes the game much more reasonable.

[KuraiWolf2014]

I think that we just need to reduce enemy bleed and toxin proc chances. I don't get hit often, but when I do it is almost always guaranteed death because it is always going to inflict either toxin or bleed. And since I often play as Loki (unless it is defense or survival) then that means in order to not die, I need to stay cloaked almost all the time. And that sucks down energy like a fat guy chugging soda.

[BlackCoMerc]

14 minutes ago, motorfirebox said:

Dude. "Watch what is damaging you" doesn't apply. None of this applies, really. We're talking about one-hit kills. It's right there in the thread title.

Watch what is damaging you also doesn't apply when it's one of 50 enemies in a 360° arc, in a crowded tile...or when it's PoE and literally too far away to SEE.

[KuraiWolf2014]

1 minute ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Watch what is damaging you also doesn't apply when it's one of 50 enemies in a 360° arc, in a crowded tile...or when it's PoE and literally too far away to SEE.

You can't imagine how many times I was being shot at and was looking for what was hitting me only to find nothing. I swear, enemies seem to have binoculars or something in order to see me from 4km away.

[BlackCoMerc]

Just now, KuraiWolf2014 said:

You can't imagine how many times I was being shot at and was looking for what was hitting me only to find nothing. I swear, enemies seem to have binoculars or something in order to see me from 4km away.

Oh no. Trust me, I believe you. I do.

It's even more fun, when it's mortar fire and you're stuck in a Ubisoft style "mission area" you can't leave. That's SO fun.

[KuraiWolf2014]

4 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Oh no. Trust me, I believe you. I do.

It's even more fun, when it's mortar fire and you're stuck in a Ubisoft style "mission area" you can't leave. That's SO fun.

Oh god, those flipping mission areas always peeved me off so much when playing Far Cry. I will never understand why they did that stuff.
 

And those mortars can go die in a fire. You almost need a titanium umbrella just to survive when those things come knocking.

Edited November 5, 2017 by KuraiWolf2014

[mac10smg--Toa_of_Green]

38 minutes ago, meristu said:

your problems

1. you dont know how to move, you are standing still doing who knows what and snipers on plains have whole day to target you across half of earth and kill you .. fix ? learn to move Maybe a little presumptuous? But I digress.
2. this isnt archwing, simply dont stop moving thats what warframe is about, if they implemented this Id probably come to your house and delete all your frames because all frames would sound like morse code in plains But...this suggestion enhances the play style you're recommending. Doesn't...compute.
3. dude you cant dodge lame snipers and you want fast rockets? you are obviously static half of the time you play bombards would rek you twice as fast ... thats the point they are homing but slow so you have chance to avoid them Okay, that's the second presumption you've taken, slow down, and why the hell is wanting rockets to act like...well...rockets, a bad thing? It's the same concept, except you actually have a fleeting chance of not taking splash damage from a projectile that's as slow as molasses but still has the most accurate homing capabilities in the universe. 
4. half of the mainstream weapons can oneshot trash mobs even after hour of survival .. all it would do would be just lame nerf for longer survivals where nothing would be able to kill you and bigger mobs would stay the same.. Um...if there such pushovers even at higher level, then what's the issue with at least capping their damage output? You're not making much sense, honestly.
5. yes they could use caps but you are talking about something like lvl 80 moa missing you from melee range Hahaha...no. MOA's are more accurate than that. Plus, are you talking about, like, dagger melee range or Polearm melee range?
6. another one, I can see you out there in PoE, being static and all and then the Nox arrives and he dies in cloud and you instead of avoiding it just continue being static .. mhmm .. lovely ... hello there mr. Harrow with 946584163157 shields Id like to see something kill you ...slash and poison deal damage to hp, oh unexpected that it deals damage to hp and not your shields .. I hope corpus also gets this buff so you need to take shields down first every time .. fix for this is basically good old "dont stand in fire" Okay, you have officially jumped the presumption shark, there's no saving you now.

 

[DatDarkOne]

1 hour ago, BlackCoMerc said:

3. Bombards: faster rockets, no target tracking.

4. Trash Mobs: Stop scaling up trash mob, grunt level enemies at 30-40. Treat Gunners, Bombards, Nox, Red Crewmen as mini bosses and bring in Proxies for Corpus above that.

5. Accuracy Scaling: STOP SCALING UP ACCURACY FOR ENEMIES. Grunts need accuracy caps. Period

I really like these.  This is really easy to see those effects in PoE.  

40 minutes ago, meristu said:

1. you dont know how to move, you are standing still doing who knows what and snipers on plains have whole day to target you across half of earth and kill you .. fix ? learn to move
2. this isnt archwing, simply dont stop moving thats what warframe is about, if they implemented this Id probably come to your house and delete all your frames because all frames would sound like morse code in plains
3. dude you cant dodge lame snipers and you want fast rockets? you are obviously static half of the time you play bombards would rek you twice as fast ... thats the point they are homing but slow so you have chance to avoid them

This doesn't apply when enemies are sniping you from over 100m away or using homing rockets that scale in speed, accuracy, and power.

44 minutes ago, meristu said:

another one, I can see you out there in PoE, being static and all and then the Nox arrives and he dies in cloud and you instead of avoiding it just continue being static .. mhmm .. lovely ... hello there mr. Harrow with 946584163157 shields Id like to see something kill you ...slash and poison deal damage to hp, oh unexpected that it deals damage to hp and not your shields .. I hope corpus also gets this buff so you need to take shields down first every time .. fix for this is basically good old "dont stand in fire"

This one shows lack of experience.  I've gotten oneshotted by naplam's fire that was just sitting there hidden by all the bushes in the Plains while trying to rez a teammate that had died to it.  You really don't get a chance to stand in the fire, because it one shots you before you even see it.  It's not much of a problem in regular missions, but a big one in the Plains.  

Basically, you can get killed by the Napalm fire by just doing as you said in "moving around".  

[meristu]

14 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

This one shows lack of experience.  I've gotten oneshotted by naplam's fire that was just sitting there hidden by all the bushes in the Plains while trying to rez a teammate that had died to it.  You really don't get a chance to stand in the fire, because it one shots you before you even see it.  It's not much of a problem in regular missions, but a big one in the Plains.  

Basically, you can get killed by the Napalm fire by just doing as you said in "moving around".  

I dont know, how about using a void mode while reviving.. I was accused of presumptions so I should consider this as a being skilled when you cant even protect yourself ? :D you cant even imagine how many times I saw someone die from aoe in WoW while he was ressing, and it was all that dead dudes fault because I died while reviving you .. no friend you died because you didnt "watch what is damaging you" ... also resistance mods exist too

Edited November 5, 2017 by meristu

[Pyradus]

In regards to enemy accuracy, many probably already notice there is a similar effect when you are not the host. This has been in the game for a long time already.

Host - Enemies react instantly, instant lock-on, kills you much faster

Client - Enemies have delayed reaction (depends on latency). Sometimes I can jump around room full of Grineer and they literally cannot hit me.

You can notice with enemies like Corpus using Flux Rifle much easier. There is a real and tangible effect latency has that makes it far easier to dodge enemies as a client than the host. I think adjustments would only remove the 'host disadvantage' and make for a more even experience.