Operator-only fights aren't fun, and not because of Operators

[TARINunit9]

Anyone who doesn't want spoilers about Sacrifice, know that this problem already existed in Chains of Harrow, and I'll very clearly mark the parts that are in Sacrifice.

But yeah, Operator-only fights are not fun. Not because you're suddenly less powerful, that in and of itself wouldn't be a dealbreaker

. No, the dealbreaker is how none of the Operator-only fights with the possible exception of the Mastery Rank test are designed around the Z-kid's inherent abilities and limitations.

Let's start by looking at the Z-kid. You have an attack that uses up one energy bar before it has to go on a cool-down. You also have evasive maneuvers that use up their own energy bar. The ramifications of these powers and limitations should be obvious: fighting as a Z-kid is about resource management and finding the right "rhythm" between attacking and defending, as well as using your environment to get as much free defending as possible.

None of the fights do this, and Sacrifice manages to make things even worse.

Let's start with Chains of Harrow, which only does some things wrong instead of everything. You have to destroy a thingy in the middle while enemies spawn around the arena to take up your attention. A good start, lots of games have boss fights like this. The main issue is how the enemies are almost all melee rushers, and while your defensive options aren't innefective they're far from ideal. Your best one is a dash to make some distance between you and our pursuers.

The REAL problem is having to split your attacks between your objective and your pursuers; this uses up your attack resource bar equally. And the reason this is a problem is because you REALLY don't have enough to spare; you barely have enough for one, much less both. Your void dash is expensive; even with full focus trees (which you won't have unlocked) you'll run out quickly. Trying to gun down and evade all your pursuers will drain your offensive and defensive bars; once those are both gone, the environment really doesn't lend you any defenses against melee rushers, the arena is a small circular platform.

None of these problems alone are annoying, they're all aspects of the fight. But they don't mesh together for satisfying combat. It's a frustrating drain on all the player's bars until they're stuck out in the open with no weapons or defenses. You'll take some hits. You'll make progress but the objective has more endurance than you. And you'll eventually die.

And when you die, you... suffer no penalty whatsoever and return back to the arena good as new. And you'll likely die again, and maybe a third time. You can die as much as you want but you don't have a penalty. That might not exactly be hard, but that's also not very fulfilling. You know what fighting enemies that you can't outlast and just die against until you respawn and outlast them through infinite lives feels like? It feels like playing Oscar on the SNES.

That segment of Projared's video might not be the easiest to understand outside of context, but the segment from 6:58 through 7:56 and then his joke at 8:23 encapsulate the issue with Z-kid only battles. The battles are not designed around the Z-kid's capabilities so you're given with unlimited lives to beat them anyway.

This was fine in War Within because it was a tutorial, a tutorial that turned out to be a dream. Once you're out in real battles it's no longer acceptable; it's a band-aid on a brain tumor.

That said, I think Chains of Harrow is easily fixable. Tone down the melee rushers and add some ranged enemies; the terrain has some line of sight blocks that should make fighting those enemies fun. Unfortunately I don't think the battle in Sacrifice is quite so easily repaired... Yep, it's spoiler time.

Spoiler

 

In Sacrifice you have an Operator-only battle against Excalibur Umbra. THREE TIMES. The first fight is the least problematic, because Umbra isn't fighting you, he's fighting the Grineer, and the fight ends quickly. I only "died" because I was being too aggressive. The second fight is acceptable but to explain why I have to talk about what the third fight lacks. It's the third fight that is just... awful:

You are a Z-kid, far weaker than a Warframe even with maxed out focus trees and a good amp, and you are up against a full-powered Warframe. That is already a tall order, but NOTHING about the Warframe itself or the arena work to help you. Not only is he faster, more durable, and more damaging than you, not only is the arena a big flat plain where he can just run up and hit you (there are a couple platforms that you can void dash up to, but hurt you with fall damage if you drop back down without of void mode, so they aren't the "free environmental defenses" I mentioned earlier), not only is the fight stacked against you like any normal boss fight, HE IGNORES YOUR DEFENSIVE OPTIONS. He can hit you THROUGH void mode and void dash, something that NOTHING ELSE IN THE ENTIRE GAME can do! This means he has EVERY advantage over you other than being AI-controlled. And on top of everything (this is a more personal nitpick) HE STUNLOCKS YOU! He has Stalker's impact procs on all his attacks!

I had to throw my corpse at him like eight times to finally drop him. I would have been better off just standing on spawn and holding down left click. Half the times he killed me I was in the middle of a void dash too, he just shot me with a radial javelin. I really can't stress this enough, EVERYTHING in this game has trained the player that void mode is safe, yet it's USELESS against this boss!

But what really makes this a shame is that the second fight against Umbra was perfectly fine! One simple tweak made everything so, so much more bearable: you had substitutes for void mode and void dash that ACTUALLY WORKED. 

Umbra not being able to hit you in void mode and void dash would have fixed almost everything in the third fight, and adding some more platforms would have fixed the rest. We know this because that's what the second fight has. By jumping back into your Warframe, you can't hurt Umbra, but you can survive more hits (emulates void mode) and bullet jump between the first and second floors whenever you want (emulates void dash). When Umbra has to stop what he's doing to find the stairs you have an opening to shoot at him.

 

Spoilers end there... I dunno, there's my conclusion, you didn't design the Chains of Harrow finale or the third spoiler fight very well because you didn't take into account the limitations of the Z-kid's slower playstyle and made him too vulnerable too often. 

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

The REAL problem is having to split your attacks between your objective and your pursuers; this uses up your attack resource bar equally. And the reason this is a problem is because you REALLY don't have enough to spare; you barely have enough for one, much less both. Your void dash is expensive; even with full focus trees (which you won't have unlocked) you'll run out quickly. Trying to gun down and evade all your pursuers will drain your offensive and defensive bars; once those are both gone, the environment really doesn't lend you any defenses against melee rushers, the arena is a small circular platform.

None of these problems alone are annoying, they're all aspects of the fight. But they don't mesh together for satisfying combat. It's a frustrating drain on all the player's bars until they're stuck out in the open with no weapons or defenses.

Guess not everyone actively uses their operator to learn how not to run out of energy.

11 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

You'll take some hits. You'll make progress but the objective has more endurance than you. And you'll eventually die.

And when you die, you... suffer no penalty whatsoever and return back to the arena good as new. And you'll likely die again, and maybe a third time. You can die as much as you want but you don't have a penalty. That might not exactly be hard, but that's also not very fulfilling. You know what fighting enemies that you can't outlast and just die against until you respawn and outlast them through infinite lives feels like?

Totally agreed. Having no penalty to the operator is just... too easy.

 

Won't say anything about the Spoiler part because I haven't played it.

[TARINunit9]

7 minutes ago, (PS4)iQuedas said:

Guess not everyone actively uses their operator to learn how not to run out of energy.

Thanks for the Ad hominem. But I'm not mad because I actually did in the one Operator-only fight where it did reward you: the mastery test

I actually had fun doing that one. The enemies in that one reward careful offensive resource management. You still have to split your focus between the enemies and the objective, but you aren't expected to dump so much offensive energy into the enemies. You can ration it out to kill the enemies and still have some left for the objective, or spend your defensive energy wisely to create enough distance to not run out. In Chains of Harrow the former is flat-out impossible and the latter is simply much harder. But you are correct in that it isn't impossible

Edited June 15, 2018 by TARINunit9

[Guest]

1 minute ago, TARINunit9 said:

Thanks for the Ad hominem. But I'm not mad because I actually did in the one Operator-only fight where it did reward you: the mastery test

I actually had fun doing that one. The enemies in that one reward careful offensive resource management. You still have to split your focus between the enemies and the objective, but you aren't expected to dump so much offensive energy into the enemies. You can ration it out to kill the enemies and still have some left for the objective, or spend your defensive energy wisely to create enough distance to not run out. In Chains of Harrow the former is flat-out impossible and the latter is simply much harder

It's a shame the game doesn't encourage the use of operators in more missions.

If not for eidolons and a few useful abilities in the focus tree, operators would end up being archwing 2.0. Hated by most of the community and forgotten.

I actually have fun with them and some times I try to do a few missions using only my operator (without hiding in void mode every time).

[SolarDwagon]

The staggerlocking in the Umbra quest was a massive pain. Like yeah, if I mess up a dodge I should take some damage, but an enemy shouldn't lock me out of any offensive or defensive attacks permanently once they land a hit.

[Shoelip]

I took the fight to be about evasion like most operator fights, so I evaded enemy attacks.  I didn't die once.  I think the trick is to use void dash to stay away from Umbra.  His ranged attacks are all really slow and easily avoided if you pay attention, so if you just keep at range and keep moving it shouldn't be too hard.  I had all the passives active though, so it might be harder if you don't.

[TARINunit9]

5 hours ago, Shoelip said:

I took the fight to be about evasion like most operator fights, so I evaded enemy attacks.  I didn't die once.  I think the trick is to use void dash to stay away from Umbra.  His ranged attacks are all really slow and easily avoided if you pay attention, so if you just keep at range and keep moving it shouldn't be too hard.  I had all the passives active though, so it might be harder if you don't.

Again, I was doing that, only yo get killed by radial javelins DURING a void dash. Not after it ended, DURING the dash that's supposed to make me invincible

[LordLokai]

I think issue is they want this dynamic between tenno and frame, but the big problem is the GAP in speed, when in a frame you can zip around dodge, and avoid attacks, and counter with your own. When i go into operator mode usually same general feeling of the game slowing way way way down, and not having the tools available to deal with enemies that are just faster then we are. That's biggest problem in my eyes... tennos are just so slow and methodical in comparison...  trying to do anything in operator mode outside of a quick snipe or shot and retreating is just pain staking. Then you have fights like umbra where they expect you to face down guys 3-4x's as fast as you are, and give you zero tools to deal with it. We have no knock back, no shield, and worse the operator's hp and energy is tied to focus so if you haven't spent your days focus farming get ready for a rude awakening as you get one shot at every turn.

I LOVE the idea of the tenno being part of combat, but until the teno can match or at least dodge and avoid combat in some manner, or keep enemies away or locked down in some manner they feel clunky and annoying and these forced fights don't help it at all.

They need to go back to tenno combat and either revamp those encounters going forward OR change the way the tenno play. Personally i'd like to see them get say void dash as there slide, so you can zip around, and teleport and i'd like to see them get some abilities on there 1-4 that you can customize depending on your chosen school. Like Zenurik could get some lightning based skills that CC and stun, for example showing that the tenno are growing and learning to master the void.

[Tuoweit]

15 hours ago, (PS4)iQuedas said:

It's a shame the game doesn't encourage the use of operators in more missions.

If not for eidolons and a few useful abilities in the focus tree, operators would end up being archwing 2.0. Hated by most of the community and forgotten.

I do hate it and mostly forget about it.  I don't feel that the reward of some Arcanes that might increase my power level from "overpowered" to "even more overpowered" are particularly worth an awful Quills rep grind and terrible eidolon fights.  I spend my focus on passives that help my warframe and otherwise ignore the rest of the focus trees. 

I don't mind using the operator for brief moments to blast a Kuva Guardian or strip a Sentient's resists, but being stuck in operator mode for a whole fight is really frustrating for me.  I really didn't enjoy the operator fights in Chains of Harrow or Sacrifice, but I'm glad that I could just "respawn and hold left click" (as the OP says) to get through them.  I don't think I could have finished either quest without that safety valve.

IMHO: Warframe has awesome gameplay.  That's why I play it.  Operators are an amazing story element, but are not awesome gameplay.  I wish DE would stop making me forgo awesome gameplay in order to experience not-awesome gameplay.