Suggestion for Electrical Shock Status

[Krion112]

So I saw on the Devstream today that Status effects are being looked at, and I just wanted to make a suggestion for the Status Effect for Electrical Damage:

I would suggest that Shock Status force enemies to trigger their weapons and abilities, but treating their allegiance when forced to use their weapons and abilities like as though they are confused. So, for example, if you electrified a Lancer, he would start shooting sporadically in various directions, potentially injuring his allies.

The way this could scale, as they suggested status effects would start scaling, is that it would go from affecting how long they fire their weapons, to stacking to a point where it forces them to trigger abilities, so for example you could force an Arson Eximus to unleash their heat wave with a high-powered Shock status, which would ignite and knock back all other enemies around them. A Lancer may be forced to drop a plasma grenade at his own feet. For summoning abilities, it could make the summoned unit unaffiliated, so like a Corpus Tech would deploy a Shield Osprey that won't shield them, or a Drakk Master would summon unruly Drakks that immediately turn on them.

This would, of course, have no effect on Passive abilities, such as Aura's.

Shock Status would no longer conduct between enemies, but that effect of spreading status could be moved to Heat status, perhaps being that every stack of Heat status added would also fan the flames onto other enemies near the target, with perhaps high scaling Heat status automatically spreading.

In addition, to make Radiation Confusion Status more distinct in comparison, not only does Confusion alter the AI into fighting each other, but perhaps when they injure other units, they have a certain chance to spread Confusion Status to other enemies, making it distinctly a combination between Shock's enemy manipulation and Heat's spreading.

Just a suggestion.

[SpinnningSideKick]

Thats a lot of coding to do. Its a cool idea, no question. But a lot of work to implement. 

[Krion112]

7 minutes ago, SpinnningSideKick said:

Thats a lot of coding to do. Its a cool idea, no question. But a lot of work to implement. 

In what way? My understanding of code suggests this status effect would just simulate the same inputs a unit would already use to activate an ability or weapon, and if DE is smart, they would have that input already tied to a simple execution variable (which would make the act of having a unit fire their weapon simpler to call upon, but also helps with syncing for multiplayer). 

I think animating this, particularly in a way that would both be useful and believable, would be harder than it would be to code, unless DE is using spaghetti code.

[peterc3]

Why make Electric into a worse Radiation?

[Krion112]

21 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Why make Electric into a worse Radiation?

First: Control mechanics (ie, mechanics that manipulate enemy behaviors) are a set of mechanics Warframe doesn't have enough of, yet are the mechanics I enjoy the most. Mind Control, Galvanization, Forced Misdirection, Triggering, etc; Warframe has very little proper use of these mechanics, with the few examples of such often being apart of Warframe kits they don't belong in, and what better way to begin introducing them correctly than dedicating a damage type to it? Especially because...

Second: Right now, Electric is just a better Heat and Cold, at least in nuance. It does more damage to more enemies than Heat's status, and its stun has a more noticeable stopping effect than Cold's status. Instead of keeping it this way, Electric should be its own thing, so that these other elemental types can be made more useful. (For example, above I mentioned Heat damage could inherit Electric's Status chaining). This is especially so, considering talks of Status suggests DE is going to make them scale more, so freeing up Chaining and Stunning would allow those mechanics to be obvious choices for Heat and Cold, respectively, to Scale.

Third: It would create incentive DE to make Radiation more powerful in some way, while retaining its AI altering ability. I recommended that, because it is Electric and Heat Combined, it would Chain when enemies attack each other, perhaps increasing their damage effectiveness against each other based upon the before mentioned scaling.

Finally; I would argue this isn't much worse than Radiation is presently. It could also be considered better, in the sense that you wouldn't have to wait for the AI to activate their abilities. Instead, the proc forcibly activates them if it scales high enough.

[peterc3]

2 minutes ago, Krion112 said:

First: Control mechanics (ie, mechanics that manipulate enemy behaviors) are a set of mechanics Warframe doesn't have enough of, yet are the mechanics I enjoy the most. Mind Control, Galvanization, Forced Misdirection, Triggering, etc; Warframe has very little proper use of these mechanics, with the few examples of such often being apart of Warframe kits they don't belong in, and what better way to begin introducing them correctly than dedicating a damage type to it? Especially because...

Second: Right now, Electric is just a better Heat and Cold, at least in nuance. It does more damage to more enemies than Heat's status, and its stun has a more noticeable stopping effect than Cold's status. Instead of keeping it this way, Electric should be its own thing, so that these other elemental types can be made more useful. (For example, above I mentioned Heat damage could inherit Electric's Status chaining). This is especially so, considering talks of Status suggests DE is going to make them scale more, so freeing up Chaining and Stunning would allow those mechanics to be obvious choices for Heat and Cold, respectively, to Scale.

Third: It would create incentive DE to make Radiation more powerful in some way, while retaining its AI altering ability. I recommended that, because it is Electric and Heat Combined, it would Chain when enemies attack each other, perhaps increasing their damage effectiveness against each other based upon the before mentioned scaling.

Finally; I would argue this isn't much worse than Radiation is presently. It could also be considered better, in the sense that you wouldn't have to wait for the AI to activate their abilities. Instead, the proc forcibly activates them if it scales high enough.

These are all fantastic ideas... for a much slower game than Warframe. In the time you've chosen a target to force them to use an ability (side note: there are not really that many enemies with things like Arson's fire wave) I've gone ahead and killed them plus everything around it. If I want/need to turn them against their allies? I use Radiation.

If your idea requires everything else to also change, you might want to rethink it.

[Krion112]

31 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

These are all fantastic ideas... for a much slower game than Warframe. In the time you've chosen a target to force them to use an ability (side note: there are not really that many enemies with things like Arson's fire wave) I've gone ahead and killed them plus everything around it. If I want/need to turn them against their allies? I use Radiation.

If your idea requires everything else to also change, you might want to rethink it.

First, DE has ridden on the mantra that Warframe is a game you can play the way you want to, as such saying Warframe is a 'fast game' is kind of a farce, given you can build the game's pace to the way you want, especially if you know what equipment to use and the ways to modify them to slow it down or speed it up. As such, expanding on mechanics that work in other paces than fast seems fine to me.

Second, Not all damage types or statuses are useful against all enemy types, the same should be said for this. How useful is a Magnetic Proc on a Grineer (assuming present mechanics)? The particular mechanic of triggering abilities is not meant to counter units that just don't have an ability.

Also, you defend not changing by using Warframe's present power imbalance issues as an example for why a mechanic shouldn't be changed, which seems to me like a logical fallacy.

Finally, this idea would require very little change (at least, no more change than was expressed by DE), and would open up potential for other elements and mechanics both for that system and potential future mechanics.

Edited November 18, 2017 by Krion112