Zariman kids should have shields

[TARINunit9]

I think I've figured out what the Zariman kids are lacking. (Well, other than a reason to stay in them for an extended period of time because it doesn't feel gratifying to switch to a drastically weaker weapon in a slower, less mobile, more vulnerable body, thus incentivizing the player to get back out of that mode as quickly as possible, thus relegating the mode to a skill monkey, only half the possible skills are godawful) But I think I have a solution for the "more vulnerable" part:

Give the kids shields. Syndicate operatives have them, Rescue hostages have them. I think our Z-kids should be able to earn them. This would help solve the "oh I have like 13 health left and I didn't bring Vazarin today, I guess I just have to die and get my health back now" problem. (Or you know, you could let players use Warframe abilities to heal each other's Z-kids, I really don't see why that's so forbidden). But still, this is a game where in-mission healing items are super rare, so we have regenerating shields to make up for it. I think it's time the Z-kids could earn them. Maybe like the Quills branch on Venus or Mars could sell them

[Xantheis]

i like this idea.  given corpus are shield-heavy, it could be included in Venus (if not already part of their plan).  i expect we will be getting more operator progression there...

[Jakorak]

I hope if they ever consider giving operators shields it doesn''t come at the cost of their other defenses... From my perspective, I sit real pretty with a maxed out operator that has a comparable health, armor, and hp regen to nidus and will just snap back to the warframe if all that is actually depleted considering how many CC and damage avoidance options the operator has

[Retrospecter]

I mean, various healing options are available, either in arcanes or in cross-group focus abilities.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

1 hour ago, Jakorak said:

I hope if they ever consider giving operators shields it doesn''t come at the cost of their other defenses... From my perspective, I sit real pretty with a maxed out operator that has a comparable health, armor, and hp regen to nidus and will just snap back to the warframe if all that is actually depleted considering how many CC and damage avoidance options the operator has

I wouldn't mind shields. But ya, with way bound nodes and magus my operator is more durable than my frames...

And i heal my frame in operator mode, and my operator every time i dash. Lol

[TARINunit9]

1 hour ago, Retrospecter said:

I mean, various healing options are available, either in arcanes or in cross-group focus abilities.

26 minutes ago, (PS4)Riko_113 said:

I wouldn't mind shields. But ya, with way bound nodes and magus my operator is more durable than my frames...

And i heal my frame in operator mode, and my operator every time i dash. Lol

I'm not saying this is false, but it's pretty late in a Z-kid's progression. My thoughts go like this: we are expected to start out with Excalibur, Mag, and Volt before we earn Inaros and Nidus. But Excalibur, Mag, and Volt all have shields while your starting Z-kid does not. This makes using your Z-kid and wanting to power him up much less fun

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

50 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

I'm not saying this is false, but it's pretty late in a Z-kid's progression. My thoughts go like this: we are expected to start out with Excalibur, Mag, and Volt before we earn Inaros and Nidus. But Excalibur, Mag, and Volt all have shields while your starting Z-kid does not. This makes using your Z-kid and wanting to power him up much less fun

I agree, i wasn't saying we don't need or deserve them. Hehe

[Birdframe_Prime]

As far as I've experienced, the only downside to the Operators when you actually progress through the Waybounds is that their weapons are sub-par to anything a Warframe uses.

The upgraded Operator has, as far as I've been able to calculate by sitting and taking damage in the Simulacrum for a decent while, 650 Health, 150 Armour, 4 H/second regen, 140 Energy with Energy Regen at around 70 per second, 140 ammo for their guns and around 70 Ammo per second regen, a Sprint Speed of about 0.8, but also the most mobile dash ability in the game. (You say lower mobility, but the Operator Dash can move instantly in more directions, and far enough from full energy to outdistance any Volt or Nova over broken terrain.)

Considering these stats are easily comparable to the Warframes themselves... having the weakness of no shields (which are easily bypassed by certain damage and status types anyway) and less damage is actually sort of to be expected.

But, as has been noted earlier in the thread, we're not done with the progression of the Operators yet. There's far more to be done, unlocked and earned.

We'll just have to see.

[TARINunit9]

3 hours ago, Thaylien said:

Considering these stats are easily comparable to the Warframes themselves... having the weakness of no shields (which are easily bypassed by certain damage and status types anyway) and less damage is actually sort of to be expected.

I refer you to my previous post on this subject

3 hours ago, Thaylien said:

(You say lower mobility, but the Operator Dash can move instantly in more directions, and far enough from full energy to outdistance any Volt or Nova over broken terrain.)

This falls into a different complaint I have: "incentivizing the player to get back out of [Zariman kid] mode as quickly as possible". Congratulations, you've spent all your energy on void dashes. You have none left for void mode (and you need void mode for your maximum health regen). Sure you might regenerate a little after you've fired off your Amp, but you won't get your full bar back by the time you're under fire again. Your best option is to spend your bar on void dashes, and then jump back into your Warframe, because if your Warframe needs to bullet jump after it comes under fire it can do so for free with no meter or cooldown

If that was DE's intention then mission accomplished, but judging from their press releases pre-War Within and pre-Focus 2.0 I really don't think it was

Edited June 18, 2018 by TARINunit9

[Birdframe_Prime]

9 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

If that was DE's intention then mission accomplished, but judging from their press releases pre-War Within and pre-Focus 2.0 I really don't think it was

Actually yeah, the objective with Operators was not to create an alternative to Warframes. Just a system that's available independent of them, for example creating a source of energy, healing, melee buffs, damage buffs, defense buffs and so on. But the fact that we can jump out of our frames also means that we shouldn't be totally defenseless, and doesn't mean we should have nothing to do but buff our frames.

The Warframes are our main Armour, our main Damage and our main Utility. That's never going to change, and DE have stated they definitely want your go-to for pretty much everything in the game. Specialisation for more power.

Operators are like... the player character at the start of a regular RPG. If we'd gotten them at the start of our play, they would completely make sense, because we'd have been levelling up their main ability tree consistently over the course of the entire game, and the Quests would have been unlocking more powers for us as we go. But all the Warframes would be just considered 'gear' rather than 'characters', like armour in a regular RPG.

They do have powerful abilities, but they are independent of the systems that we have currently. In the same way that only the silly kind of person would go into another RPG and take off their armour and weapons and only run around in their underwear punching things (unless they were at a high enough level where their base resistances and health would shrug off the hits of low-level enemies) we shouldn't expect to be able to run around with our little child and their little void ray, no Warframe, and no specialised weapons on high level and expect to last all that long.

The key difference between those other RPGs and this one, is that the powers your base character has are only possible to activate when you take off the gear and wonder around with, in the same example, no clothes on. Putting on the armour changes our abilities into that armour's abilities instead.

So the 'incentive' you're looking for is the balance that DE were attempting to achieve; a complete independent ability system that provides potentially powerful buffs and changes to how we play our regular Warframes, but with fully intended reliance on our Warframes for the main bulk of the game.

You're supposed to blend the two. Not pick one over the other.

Use your Operator Dash to get into position, summon your Warframe back, perform actions, kill enemies, jump out again for a Vazarin healing dash, or a Executing Dash, or an Energising Dash, jump back in again to shoot some enemies, or stab a few that are now permanently open to a Melee Finisher...

They compliment, they don't replace.

[TARINunit9]

8 hours ago, Thaylien said:

So the 'incentive' you're looking for is the balance that DE were attempting to achieve; a complete independent ability system that provides potentially powerful buffs and changes to how we play our regular Warframes, but with fully intended reliance on our Warframes for the main bulk of the game.

You're supposed to blend the two. Not pick one over the other.

Use your Operator Dash to get into position, summon your Warframe back, perform actions, kill enemies, jump out again for a Vazarin healing dash, or a Executing Dash, or an Energising Dash, jump back in again to shoot some enemies, or stab a few that are now permanently open to a Melee Finisher...

They compliment, they don't replace.

I wish DE had actually confirmed this instead of shilling "combat operators" incredibly hard not just once but twice. But anyway, have an upvote

Edited June 18, 2018 by TARINunit9