Warframe - Loki and The Death of Crowd Control

Loki has been a topic of discussion lately. And with his QoL changes coming out tomorrow, nows the perfect time to discuss not just Loki, but also where Crowd Control stands as a whole in the game's current state. Amongst the dev team, the over-all thought seems to be: "We want to change Loki, but we're not sure how without making him something that isn't Loki." Let's talk 'bout that A Tweet from Pablo is what kinda kicked off this entire video's production, and I kinda dropped a much bigger project that I was in the middle of working on, to work on this one. Been about a month in production, and I put a higher than average amount of work into specifically animations for this one. So soz for the longer-than-average silence in uploads boyos. as always I want to marry you all ilu (very platonically) ((I just like you a lot))

To all the people who say "Just subsume X ability onto the frame and it works" let's not use helminth as a band-aid here.

Me: Why does it take trib so long to update? Trib: Animates an insane intro to the video just for a bit

The phrase "Nuking an entire room is also crowd control" is both the most accurate statement and condemnation of the sheer skew of modern Warframe missions.

And 9 days later, they nerf more CC abilities. Crazy.

loki being able to steal and bank eximus powers would be awesome, actually

“I don’t think this video will do anything…” -The guy who was single-handedly responsible for the majority of Grendel’s buffs

Well with the Dante patch we got the bad ending

And they just nerfed CC so fewer abilities affect Eximus units. It's Joever.

A video for a frame from 2012 coming out in 2024 does fit well with your usual schedule

I feel like scarlet spear really gave DE a traumatic experience to where things like coopertive gameplay/events, CC, and powerful alternative weapons, are so gimped and not seen its hayday

Update: CC is even more dead than before

Well this video unfortunately aged like fine wine. :(

While I will die on the safeguard hill simply due to the fact that you can maintain an extended duration + refresh of rolling guard whenever there is an enemy inbound, as well as being able to at least maintain and (to some extent) utilize the mechanics Loki offers. CC as a whole being neglected does feel extremely sour not just for Loki but any CC based warframe that doesn't have an instant multiplicative/bane buffer or AOE spell. But its not just the direction of new gamemodes that are pushing power and damage, rather the shift of our existing farms have altered the way players farm. Back then Xini and Heirachon were EXCELLENT relic farms and were both endless gamemodes that required players to control the enemies for mission progression (It wasn't mandatory to have CC as you still had DPS frames doing their job here but due to the mission structure and type, it allowed CC frames to have a chance and not feel like shit). Now that these gamemodes have been power crept alongside more general damage, there just isn't a reason to sit down in excavation and farm it outside of bile or sibear (or if its the only/best endless fissure on rotation). I think Mirror Defense for a brief time was okay at this because after the hotfix to where you couldn't heal it anymore via powers, Frost/Limbo actually saw some decent use in defending the crystals on both sides temporarily. Now I'm not saying we should make players slog minutes on end for rewards, but maybe striking a balance between missions and rewards would be something to look at. Hell awarding 2 items per round on interception would be a huge boost. Still not enough to compete with Void Capture but enough to at least make it not worthless, and enough for some CC frames to see more natural use as a result. Great video as always Trib, heres hoping at least someone at Digital Extremes considers your possible ideas for revamping Crowd Control.

So here's the thing I find awkward about the conversation regarding CC: The decisions to build counters into the game around CC was made with the understanding that CC is actually fucked-up powerful. It's like you said; it doesn't matter if the enemy is level 1 or level 1,000, an infested charger or a Corrupted Bombard, they are all equally declawed by being disarmed and equally useless if slept or timestopped. I think the single biggest change the game made against CC was Overguard. Overguard utterly kneecaps a couple of older frames who don't work without their grouping tools (hi Nidus), it obliterates poor Limbo because now enemy abilities pierce the rift and they're not even stopped by Stasis, and you need an absurd checklist of what does and does not pierce Overguard just to keep track of what you can actually throw at the only enemies you care about which will matter, and the items on this checklist are not at all related to their power level. Why does Breach Surge's blind work through Overguard when it's one of the strongest abilities in the game? Why do only some forms of distraction work? Who knows. Now, here's the thing I want to highlight, actually: The entire reason Overguard was introduced, which stems from the entire reason we have spent a decade nerfing CC to begin with, is to have enemies you are forced to interact with. Nullifiers, and later Arbitration Drones, were designed to present you a cloud of enemies that were a problem you needed to stop, think, and answer, without hitting an ability that could otherwise turn them off with a press of a button. Eximus units getting overguard and having their abilities buffed is the same thing; a VIP target that has to die yesterday, and you can't one-button tell them to fuck off, and they have a huge chunk of their health bar that's thick and resistant to damage and doesn't even feel status as strongly. And here's the problem: You actually can still one-button tell an Eximus to fuck off, it's just that button is the fire button. By weakening Control, players turned to Kill. By turning to Kill en masse, the game is now about Kill. Now that the game is about Kill, they started releasing mostly more and more Kill-focused game modes and frames, ultimately resulting in Kullervo's goofy ass being able to literally kill any enemy in the game by thinking about it hard enough, resulting in all other enemies in a fifteen mile radius dying as well. And the thing is, Kill is and has always been better than Control, because a dead enemy requires less thoughts per second than a stunned one. The one thing holding back the power level of Kill was that Kill had fixed output while Control scaled inifinitely. Now that we have equally infinite means to scale Kill, either by bypassing armor which is the game's means to scale or by simply cranking the damage so high that infinite armor doesn't mean anything, Control is literally both weaker and slower than Kill. And I think now, we need to actually step back and not just ask 'what does it take to make an enemy you must respect in Warframe', I think we need to entirely re-evaluate the question. What is 'respecting an enemy' in Warframe? Because I think recognizing a priority target and spending energy to either stun it and put it in a tidy little box to be dealt with later, strip it of its means to threaten me, or convincing it to attack something else, is a lot more respectful than 'left-clicking it with slightly more authority'. Just to be clear: Sure, Limbo Stasis Cataclysm turning off entire missions for two button presses is a problem. That is a unique can of worms. But I think we and DE need to think harder about CC on a case by case basis with regards to what should and should not work on VIP targets, especially when the alternative is 'idk just fucken kill em'. I have my own opinions of blanket changes vis a vis 'what should happen when I press which CC buttons on what', but I'm not DE. I'm just some dude who thinks Nidus not being allowed to play the game in the Circuit is kinda sad.

9 days later and DE says fuck you

Not even 2 WEEKS old video, proved right by the most recent hotfix (at time of comment)

The switch teleport idea is actually really great they 100% should do that

Back in the day, your suggestions elevated Grendel from a "like him but wish he was better" to "absolute favorite" for me. I hope Loki gets an amazing rework, you deserve as much.

It's so fucking funny that literally yesterday every single cc that worked we had last has been nerfed, and now overguarded enemies are literally imune to EVERY cc hability in the game. LOL