Bullet Sponge Enemies, This Isn't Hard This Is Boring.

[Lenzerker]

Salutations, let's make something clear the so called difficulty increase has nothing to do with difficulty, but with increased damage and life for the enemies. This don't make a game more difficulty or challenging this make a game more tedious.

 

Let me explain my point:

 

Higher damage is acceptable at some level, it makes you take more care to avoid enemy fire. Still the enemies on Warframe are deadly accurate, it's very hard to avoid incoming projectiles and, if you stay still, they will never miss. Alone higher damage wouldn't be a issue but when combined with higher life, then you have a problem.

 

Higher life means your enemies will withstand more damage before falling and it is a cheap way to call a game "hard". What it does is force you to spend more bullets, and time, to put an enemy down. Now let's face it, firing your whole ammo stock at a single enemy is not fun at all, neither rewarding, it's tedious and boring.

 

For those that say "higher life means you have to make every shot count hitting the weak spots", this can be true in some games but not on this one. The reason is that in Warframe enemies don't have a fixed weak spot, so it's trial and error to figure out where is the best spot to shot.

I was impressed by how fast I put a boss to rest after marking it with the Banshee power that reveals it's weak spot but, at the same time, I was equally impressed by how cheap this is, since marking the same enemy twice with her power reveals a different weak spot each time. This just confirms my point that enemies don't have a fixed weak spot.

 

Higher damaging and resistant enemies don't make a game more challenging. Smarter enemies makes a game more challenging, how about making the enemies coordinate their strikes? Improving the AI is the way to make a game more challenging and also more believable.

Also giving factions different patterns of behavior increases the identity of each faction. The Corpus tends to be more defensive as the Grineer tends to be more aggressive why not explore this features and improve them?

Also check the community, most players think the more interesting enemies to fight are The Jackal and Lieutenant Lech Kril. I ask you why would that be?

 

Now things get really punishing if you're planning going solo. The enemies damage and life should be based on the number of players at the mission. If this game has intended to be played solo and co-op, as the ads suggest, then it's reasonable that solo players would have a rewarding experience at the same level than co-op players and, at the moment, that is very far from the truth.

Edited August 1, 2013 by Lenzerker

[Stormquake]

They're steadily re-making the bosses, fret not.

 

Have you fought Raptor? That boss is mad fun and isn't a bullet sponge.

It's a good representation of what the re-made bosses will be like.

Also, Lech and Vor are sensational fights.

Edited August 1, 2013 by Stormquake

[DanPaul7]

While I agree it would be nice to see better AI, enemies do have fixed weak spots, unless i'm missing something.

[RibbonRobbin]

I like the idea of a smarter AI, but for Sonars sake... the skill "adds" a weak spot on the enemy, not really reveals one. A weak spot often tends to be the head in which you deal 200% damage. Sonar adds one which deals a varying percentage depending on skill level and focus level.

 

In essence, Sonar "adds" a new weak spot per cast. The enemies do have a fixed weak point. Aim for heads if corpus/grineer and aim for limbs/head on infested if you are looking for fixed weak points.

Edited August 1, 2013 by RibbonRobbin

[R3leaZ]

"For those that say "higher life means you have to make every shot count hitting the weak spots", this can be true in some games but not on this one. The reason is that in Warframe enemies don't have a fixed weak spot, so it's trial and error to figure out where is the best spot to shot.

I was impressed by how fast I put a boss to rest after marking it with the Banshee power that reveals it's weak spot but, at the same time, I was equally impressed by how cheap this is, since marking the same enemy twice with her power reveals a different weak spot each time. This just confirms my point that enemies don't have a fixed weak spot."

 

Banshee's Sonar creates a weak spot for you. It doesn't show the real weakspot.

 

"Also check the community, most players think the enemies more interesting to fight are The Jackal and Lieutenant Lech Kril. I ask you why would that be?"

 

You have never fought a lvl 70 Jackal. It takes ages to kill it solo it is so freaking boring. (Old alert 1.0)

 

I find Kril interesting to fight but in the end his AI is still lacking and he has two mentalities --> Shoot at you (not even taking cover or using clever tactics) or charge at you with melee not even caring about taking damage at all, just like a zombie AI (2nd Phase).

 

Sure he uses abilities every now and then but his base AI is still very simple.

Edited August 1, 2013 by R3leaZ

[Quamobrem]

Headshots aren't hard, and stay in the same spot.

However, I still agree with your post in general. I didn't play Oblivion with the difficulty slider turned up, and I don't play high level Warframe missions unless I'm farming for something. T3 missions aren't difficult, they're tedious.

[Dexxa-]

They're steadily re-making the bosses, fret not.

 

Have you fought Raptor? That boss is mad fun and isn't a bullet sponge.

It's a good representation of what the re-made bosses will be like.

Also, Lech and Vor are sensational fights.

Are you HIGH? The only way to obtain loot from Raptor is to bug him between doors

Yeah MAD FUN INDEED and also not a bullet sponge, right

Edited August 1, 2013 by Dexxa-

[Dasmir]

i like more bullet sponges than little guys with 900000000 armor.. oh wait a acient has those 2 things...

[Quamobrem]

Are you HIGH? The only way to obtain loot from Raptor is to bug him between doors

 

Uh.

 

I only have one more Nova bit to grab, and thus far haven't ever glitched Raptor at all. He had drop rate issues before, but they've been fixed.

[Lenzerker]

In essence, Sonar "adds" a new weak spot per cast.

 

Banshee's Sonar creates a weak spot for you. It doesn't show the real weakspot.

 

Headshots aren't hard, and stay in the same spot.

 

Tkx for the info. Didn't know that. Now about the fixed weak spots I do know headshots apply damage bonuses but at higher levels this isn't that noticeable won't you agree? Considering the damage you can deal and the damage the enemies can deal at the same lenght of time.

[Quamobrem]

Tkx for the info. Didn't know that. Now about the fixed weak spots I do know headshots apply damage bonuses but at higher levels this isn't that noticeable won't you agree? Considering the damage you can deal and the damage the enemies can deal at the same lenght of time.

It's really not sufficient, no. High level Heavy Gunners can take entirely too many shots from my Snipetron Vandal.

[Nept]

Agree with OP on the main point: making enemies bullet sponges makes them harder to kill, yes, but it's an artificial difficulty of sorts.  I would much rather see improved tactics, increased speed, increased maneuverability, etc. from higher-level enemies.  And yes, a cap on armour/hp increases at some point. 

 

Filling slow-moving mobs with entire magazines is neither fun nor challenging.

[11.11.11]

We need better AI. Essentially...

 

This has been brought up many times, but kudos to the OP for raising it again. It'd be nice to see DE at least talk about it. Instead of giving us "meet the sound guys" <_< 

 

Anyway. 

 

Just another point to consider. Has anyone noticed that the grineer are the weirdest combination of enemy traits possible? They rely heavily on stunlock (Grinders, Heavy gunners power attack, Scorpions, and shield lancers) but they also spam automatic fire, YET, they have pinpoint aim.

 

Contrast that to the corpus who fire higher damage plasma bolts - but at slower rates - that also travel slowly enough for you to effectively dodge. 

 

 

I mean, basic faction design balancing would dictate (one would think) that a enemy type that's going to spam full auto fire, shouldn't also be accurate with that fire, and shouldn't also be able to stunlock you into being forced to absorb that fire. It seems like DE's whole faction design is a little...unbalanced to say the least.

 

If the grineer are going to use suppressive volume of fire, don't make them also all snipers. And if they're going to use stuns, don't give them the ability to do it at close (heavies), medium (lancers) and long (Scorpions) - range. It seems like they were onto some sort of damage vs accuracy trade off with the Corpus, so why not the Grineer? 

[RoboDoge]

Dumb AI is dumb. We need fix on that.

[gell]

Yep, I feel like for all of DE's communication and feedback response, this is one they're mostly ignoring. Making smarter enemies is hard. Making god like enemies is super easy. They have aimbots and scale armor and health. Bullet sponges are not fun.

 

It's like they forgot where they came from. When they made maps for Unreal Tournament... did they ever fight at least adept bots in UT? God-like enemies were amazing feats of programming and logic, although probably too insane for this game aside from the occasional stalker or other nimble boss. AI needs to improve, Grineer at least need to use some squad tactics.

 

They seem to be trying with the boss redesigns, but I think they are only focusing on bosses. Not sure they'll ever touch the regular enemies, and that makes me sad. They don't mind the easy way out by just scaling everything up till you use all your ammo and still only deplete half a life bar. At least I  have my melee since everything really is a bullet sponge.

 

Also, Raptor is a terrible boss design. It's like back to page one again.

Edited August 1, 2013 by gell

[Pekku]

"Better" AI can only go so far. There's no meaning in consoling yourself that the enemy has incredible AI if they die from 1-2 shots. This is a run and gun action game at heart, and the only way to make enemies harder is making them hit harder and take more damage before going down.

[GetAtMeMods]

Agreed. I like quality over quantity but infested is an exception.

[11.11.11]

"Better" AI can only go so far. There's no meaning in consoling yourself that the enemy has incredible AI if they die from 1-2 shots. This is a run and gun action game at heart, and the only way to make enemies harder is making them hit harder and take more damage before going down.

 

If it is as you say "run and gun at heart" (ignoring the fact that players should be able to play a game in a variety of ways) - then why do we have 'roadblock' enemies with buckets of health and insta-death uber-weapons, stalling our progress at every turn? 

 

Surely a 'run-and-gun' game would be filled with a variety of enemies, none of which would require you to hunker down and empty 15 magazines of your high-tier weapon into them, before progressing onwards. 

[Pekku]

That's what run and gun games are. It doesn't mean you literally run and gun all the time, it means that gameplay is simple and the difficulty is determined by the number and toughness of enemies. The "roadblocks" is what challenges are.

 

Also, I believe the problems you mentioned could be easily alleviated by upgrading your weapons and Warframes more; I do not have any problems killing anything or getting one-shotted, even at the hardest levels the game has to offer.

[11.11.11]

Also, I believe the problems you mentioned could be easily alleviated by upgrading your weapons and Warframes more; I do not have any problems killing anything or getting one-shotted, even at the hardest levels the game has to offer.

 

Thank you, for pointing out how wrong it was of me to have an opinon before I reach mastery level 10.

 

I'll just be sure to always equip my maxed, potatoed, forma'd Lanka of doom - and breeze through fights, ignoring the underlying niggling staleness of enemies with artificially inflated health and lethality.  Or heaven forbid, the other players who don't have hyper-powered gear. Or would like to play the game using more diverse and creative tactics. 

 

 

I'm sorry but it really seems like you didn't get the OP's point at all. Sure you CAN beat level 150 enemies. But is it a rewarding, engaging experience? Not really.

[Pekku]

Yes I get the point, but I'm saying that it's delusional. What you're looking for is "advanced" AI on weak enemies. What are you expecting the AI to do in a game like this? Take cover? They already do. Try to flank you? They also do that. What else, I dare you to suggest, should the AI be doing at this point? Squad tactics? Should they move together in tight packs so you can kill them even more easily? In the end of the day this whole AI debacle just feels like a roundabout way to ask DE to make the enemies easier (while convincing yourself they are not and patting each other on the back for being able to overcome "smart" enemies).

Edited August 1, 2013 by Pekku

[11.11.11]

What else, I dare you to suggest, should the AI be doing at this point? Squad tactics? Should they move together in tight packs so you can kill them even more easily? In the end of the day this whole AI debacle just feels like a roundabout way to ask DE to make the enemies easier (while convincing yourself they are not and patting each other on the back for being able to overcome "smart" enemies).

 

I expect something like this. 

Open it up in full screen, max the quality, and watch closely:

 

 

You'll notice that the enemy (and friendly in this case) - units, dynamically seek out new targets. They move up and cover ground, sticking to cover. When several of them are in one area, they bolster each other, and fan out to secure the area. And that's from a game now well over 7 years old. Now, Warframe's AI does a lot of this. But all too often I see my enemies either running away backwards from me, shooting at me from the hip. Or else charging straight at me simply because they're programmed to do such. 

 

The trick when programming NPC behaivour, is not to make it truly intelligent - it's to give the player an illusion of intelligence. The more variety and depth you can provide, even if it's by fairly simple pre-scripted events. The better.

 

The grineer regulars taking cover behind sheild lancers, the corpus and grineer dashing to consoles and raising alarms. These are the kind of intelligent, albeit scripted behaviors I want to see more of.these sorts of things.

 

 

 

Here's a few ideas: 

~ Enemies that get stunned by my fire, or have an elemental effect applied to them, could become focal points for nearby squad mates. Imagine if I lit a grineer on fire, and out of 4 nearby units, 2 would continue to attack me, while another 2 would pull out their medpacks and try and put out their team-mate. That would force me to be a bit smarter, perhaps a bit more stealthy with how I took down groups. 

 

~ 'Special Units' should function in a special manner. Not just have a super power. Grineer elites, comandos, scorpians, lancers and heavy gunners should cause regular grunts to cluster around them and provide protective supressive fire. Commando's to my mind shouldn't even have a sidearm, or if they have one, they should only use it in extreme circumstances. They should be able to rely on the firepower of the squad they're Commanding. You know. As Commando's. 

 

~ Melee only enemies, shouldn't have the least armor and health pool of all. The grineer and corpus prod-men come to mind here. An enemy that's going to rely on only hitting the player from a meter away or so, should be either fast and agile. Or slow and heavily armored. And they shouldn't spawn in with the other units. They should burst out of inaccessible doors, or spawn behind the player and try and flank them. When moving with groups of regular grunts, they should try and get in the center of the group, or lead the group to either minimise damage, or act as a meatsheild for the regular soldiers. 

 

 

 

~ I don't want to see enemies on kappa, all running in straight - easy-to-headshot - lines, as they take the most linear, direct route to the objective. That is poor enemy AI. _{What if they could identify frames on sight? See a Nova for example, and try and break apart into smaller groups to minimise the effect of her attacks? Or if Heavy gunners could recognise a Vaubans Bastille, and prevent any nearby allies in a set radius, from advancing forwards and getting trapped?}

 

 

Enemies in Warframe have this inability to interact with each other or the environment. You get the feeling like platoons of grineer are just bunches of cretins, all instantly firing at the first head that pops around the corner. Because little work has been put into advanced behavior, a lot of the bigger battles feel less like going up against an organised enemy force, more like fighting bunches of unruly grineer teenagers who are all trying to outdo one another, and bag themselves a tenno first. Which hey, might be the mentality DE are trying to give the Grineer, as a race of endlessly cloned soldiers. But when the only difference between a Level 5 Grineer and a Level 150 is that the latter has 10x the health and does 10x the damage, there's something going wrong. 

 

 

Yes. It's beta.

But for the love of the Lotus DE, start adding depth to your game. Start fixing the bugs and the problems with RNG, add greater variety to enemy behaivours - BEFORE just spamming out new tilesets and weapons. 

Edited August 2, 2013 by 11.11.11

[Pekku]

It still doesn't take away the need to make enemies harder by means of increasing their damage and health. This is how games with RPG elements scale their enemies. You cannot make it so that lvl 100 Grineer are "smarter" than lvl 30 Grineer. The AI can only affect them as a whole. As you progress in level, as your weapons improves, you cannot hope for the enemies to still remain the same as they are in early levels.

 

I DO AGREE that the enemy has to be smarter; but it is not a replacement for the bullet sponginess.

[11.11.11]

It still doesn't take away the need to make enemies harder by means of increasing their damage and health. This is how games with RPG elements scale their enemies. You cannot make it so that lvl 100 Grineer are "smarter" than lvl 30 Grineer. The AI can only affect them as a whole. As you progress in level, as your weapons improves, you cannot hope for the enemies to still remain the same as they are in early levels.

 

I DO AGREE that the enemy has to be smarter; but it is not a replacement for the bullet sponginess.

 

Of course it's a replacement for bullet sponginess. If you want to have enemies be more difficult at higher levels, the lasy, &amp;#&#33;-backwards way of doing it, is to tweak around their health and damage. It's the way MMO's resort to creating a sense of progression and difficulty, because they can't technically handle the server side AI subroutines to manage hundreds of thousands of NPC's. The creative engaging way of doing it, is with new interesting coding, or by attacking the player in a way that they havn't previously experienced. 

 

 

Want to make higher level enemies more difficult? What about if they have reasonable health and damage output. But their sheilds regenerate at a rediculous rate, nessecitating teamwork with squadmates equipped with high ROF weaponary to keep their sheilds down. 

 

 

Too pedestrian and tedious for you? 

What about bosses or mini-bosses that can control gravity, causing everything in a room to float around, making your ability to track and aim at them, despite sudden switches in perspective - a priority? 

 

Still not interesting enough? 

How about enemies that deploy decoy's, or use their allies as meatsheilds to keep you firing at the wrong target? What about a corpus proxy that controlled a squad of smaller, faster proxies that were all equipped with high damage weaponry, but low health. The central "commanding" proxy, having no real offensive power, but being in control of all the others. Similar to the dynamic we currently have with shield drones. Take out the 'brain' unit, and the others go rouge, killing each other, and even harming other nearby Corpus units. 

 

 

 

There are thousands of possible permutations available here. Some tricky to code and implement, others, not so. Heck one simple change DE could implement by next week, would be to have enemy units that take significant damage retreat or outright flee. 

 

_{Perhaps this could even be extended further. The some-what honour-bound Grineer, and merchant trader Corpus - could surrender, after you've already killed half their squad. Maybe walking up to a Grineer cowering on the floor, would allow you to press "E" and receive an appeasment of a few credits, and maybe some health or a material drop, which you woulnd't have gotten from simply mowing everything down.}

Edited August 1, 2013 by 11.11.11

[Pekku]

You do realize all the incredible fight mechanics mentioned above means nothing if the enemies die as easily as they do in low levels right? What with how the whole game works right now you just hit a wide area CC or damage skill and they all explode? What you're suggesting requires a complete overhaul of the game system and Warframes abilities to work. This is why damage/health scaling is required.