Feedback On U8 From A Small Clan Member

[Cypherdiaz]

Before I begin, yes yes, I know there have been a few of these. Why don't I post it on those threads? Those other threads belong to those that started them and it would be rather S#&$tastic to just drop a long post in their thread; its like taking a dump on someone's pillow: you just dont do it.

 

And to follow the trend, I will put the TL:DR up front for you less then detail oriented folks.

TL:DR: This update makes me happy, angry, confused, and I want to skull-fuq a Scorpion.

 

Now for the long version.

Before we get to the clan stuff (Read: Dojo Rant), Ill cover some of the other finer boot-to-the-junk points.

 

1)Rhino's Iron Skin change. Dafuq? Really? So its..its a buffer now? 800 Damage, it is impressive, granted. I already have 750 Shields, 500 HP, and plans to take those totals to over 1100 shields and 700 health. The bloody flux do I need another 800 for? What I need is an ability that can mitigate damage (Pause: I am talking about the 80% damage mitigation, not the whole invulnerability stuff.). 80% Damage Mitigation, with a maxed flow/cont/streamline is powerful as it should be. Rhino is not a damage beast, he is a tank and knockdown/float? beast.

 

I will pause here for two seconds to say this though: THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH for adding aggro to Iron Skin, thank you thank you thank you. Id give you soul but I already promised it to anyone who could resurrect SWG Pre-CU/NGE.

 

Point is, while the aggro thing is a good change, I feel the flat 800 damage..buffer/shield is a bad idea. To quote the meme: "I know you like shields, so i put a shield on your shield". That's basically what you did. Bad. Please return it to the damage mitigation! 20-40-60-80% scaling by rank. That's our main thing as a Rhino. You are almost making it as awe inspiring as Excalibur's Super Jump!

 

EDIT BEGIN:

All my previous negative commentary on Iron Skin's change is hereby removed. Why? Well...playtime. I jokingly referenced the meme and said "its a shield on a shield". It was a joke, turned out I was right. It really is EXACTLY that. Its an instant 800HP Shield (at full rank) that sits 'above' your shield. What does this mean? Fun times. Sat infront of a Heavy Gunner[42] in the Void, let them get my shields down to about 50 (from 750). Then I popped Iron skin. My shield...started..regen. Now since I have a fairly high Fast Deflection..that means fast. By the time the heavy gunner finallly blasted through Iron Skin (I think it timed out first actually), my shield was fully back up to 750. So it really is a Shield On a Shield. Brilliant. So now with a push of a button they have to go through 500+750+800=1950 before i go down. Ahahahah, woo.

EDIT END:

 

2)Dual Bronco's. For this..I hate you and love you. Thank you for bringing them in. Why the hell didn't you say anything? Just a hint a week before: "Hey don't potato any Bronco's till U8" something. I always wanted a Bronco so on Monday I built one. On Tuesday I played with it and then put my last remaining catalyst (from an alert) into it. Leveled it some more on Wednesday. Hey look thursday. Oh..damn. So now I am building a second Bronco and I will be fusing them together because I believe the Bronco is the best closing-melee weapon around. Run, slide, blast off the Bronco, spin attack for the win. I know I am going to be loosing the damned catalyst and that makes me sad. I had it in the gun for less than 48hrs (16 of which I was asleep for) before you released the Dual Bronco's. If I had known they were coming and put the cata in anyways then it'd be on me. But this is on you guys, Id love to get a refund of the cata but I doubt I will get it. Communicate S#&$ like this beforehand please. Surprise Awesomeness is a little less awesome when it comes with a side of smite.

 

3)The new mods. Some are good, some are great, and a few left me wondering what the hell you were thinking.

Sanctuary: Thank you for this. Thank you thank you.

Reach: Here is a cookie, I will love you for this. As I use a gram, this mod makes me giggle like a schoolgirl.

Master Thief: Meh? But im sure one of the other two guys I run with will use this in their frame.

Insulation: Really? Are you daft? So let me put a mod on my warframe that I MIGHT get to use if Lotus feels like being evil. Oh wait, how about I not and instead abort the mission, restart it, and presto..no ice.

Rage: What? Why? Unless this also counts damage done to your shields then it's just $&*&*#(%&. If something starts hitting my health then that means they already chewed threw over 700 shields and its time for me to back up and let Gorgon speak.

Melee Channel: Another cookie. I love you. So now when I spam my Iron Skin, I can do extra damage? I am ok with this.

Acrobat: Uhm what? Only fell once during a wall run and it was a very long one that was sort of accidental.

Hawk & Eagle Eye: You mean...I can add more zoom to my zoom? Whut? Why.

 

As I said, some good, some bad, some that just make me facedesk.

 

However, I would have loved to never see Insulation, Rage, Acrobat, and the zooms if that meant I could pay 20plat to install a proper FLASHLIGHT on my warframe. The current one is pathetic and only works when it feels like it. Give us something shoulder mounted like on the Colonial Marines in Aliens, make it a flood light. Hell let enemies see it and react to it, fine! But not being able to see is really annoying. And no, I refuse to crank brightness/contrast around just to have a well lit area. I see that as abusive and I rather like the ambiance of the game, all dark and gloomy. But give me a frigging flashlight that's worth a damn, even if I have to pay plat for it.

 

4)New weapons. Cleavers and Machetes woo? Sorry I personally can't get excited about those. I prefer big slow weapons that hurt a lot, hit multiple folks, and do crazy charge damage. Personal issue, I am aware, but still. The new stalker stuff made me excited, well the scythe. The kunai/despair made me facedesk. Awesome idea but holy god are they broken. They can go hit for hit with a Lex pretty much, reload quicker than sin, have an abusive fire rate, and are deadly deadly accurate. Now maybe if they had a smaller overall capacity then Id be fine but yeh, they are broken right now. As for some of the other weapons. Thanks for adding a flamethrower...but I hope someone smacks you for making it 'big clan only' via the dojo research system. Seriously stupid idea.

 

5)Before I get to the Dojo, I will say the new Grin tile sets are amazing and breaths some fresh life into this game, thanks.

 

6)Polarization...ugh. I love you and I hate you all at the same time. My Rhino is Level 30 and I calculated out (Yep im a spreadsheet user) exactly how to balance my mod points. And now..now. Just to give you an idea. In my Pre-Polarization build, my max shields would be 870 with 500HP behind that. Based on my calculations with polarization in mind...1110 Shields, 700HP. Huzzah? Oh right and every damn mod will be max rank. Joy to the farm. I get you guys did this as a way to open up more end game stuff because the point when you are 'done' is much farther down the road but..meh.

 

My one concern here is elitism. "Oh you aren't polarized? Yeh go away" or "Oh only one polarization? Come back when you have 3 like the rest of us". If that crap starts, I will not be happy.

 

7)Dojo. Oh darn, I brought up the Dojo, well might as well cover that. The concept is amazing, the look is amazing, but I hate you for the resource costs. There have been MANY MANY excellent ideas posted on how to fix it beyond just flat lowering of it. What really upset me is claims that you ignored the concerns of small clans, whose members have Master/Grand Master and thus sit on the design council or however that works. That does not make me happy.

 

Im not going to go find all the excellent ideas I have seen around the forums but I will summarize them.

 

Idea #1)Scaling Levels of each piece. Level 1 is 1/6 current cost, Level 2 is 2/6 current cost, and Level 3 is 3/6 Current cost. And yes, you must get level 2 before level 3. Each level reduces time but has no effect on outcome (IE: Same BPs for all). This would let the smaller clans have their cake too, even if they have to bake it for longer.

 

Idea #2)Lockable clan sizes. Small (10 and fewer), Medium (40 and fewer), Large (No limit). A clan can choose "Hey I only want to be this size". This is locked in and only changeable by a plat purchase to 'upgrade' the clan size. That is not to say a new clan can't choose to be the Large size right off the bat, cause they can. The point is that based on clan size, the resource costs are different. The plat purchase to change size is an anti-abuse mechanic to stop people from shrinking their clan size only for the reduced resources. Also maybe a resource-mechanic to increase the size might be useful in addition to the plat purchase. This would let a clan grow, but again, discourage shrinking a clan's size only for the lessened resource cost.

 

EDIT: AceRules211 had a similar idea to Idea #2 but he went ahead and went into much more detail than I did. His post is here:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/50729-suggestion-clan-dojo-and-small-clans/?p=523205

I suggest you guys check it out.

 

And lastly, when speaking on dojo's. Vault. Where..the bloody hell..is it? Im aware that trading 'isnt ready yet' but a clan vault would have been nice...not that any of the smaller clans would get to use it.

 

Ok and that pretty much wraps up my feedback on the new update. Oh wait, one last thing.

 

DE: You guys are impressive. I have been playing large scale games like this (MMO's if you will) for a long time; since Ultima Online (If you are wondering, I am well above 18years of age). Never..ever..have I see a Developer so quickly hotfix issues. Mostly I hear "oh more data needed before hotfix" you guys just get the S#&$ done, for that I am impressed beyond words. Keep up that kind of work and youll go far.

 

PS: Whoever was in control of the red text in global ingame chat during the deployment of U8, you sir/madaam are epic. That is all.

Edited May 25, 2013 by Cypherdiaz

[lautalocos]

upvotes for you, sir.

 

PS:why don´t you like the extra zoom mods? they can be usefull for some weapons, like the lex, kraken, latron or burston

[Mickey1779]

Being in a small Clan, I definitely like Idea#2.

Just the basics in order for a Clan to research and build the new weapons and keep one side of the Clan Hall available for future expansion I came up with this layout.

..............Reactor...Energy Lab

..................|...............|

Clan Hall..-+-...........-+-.Chem Lab

..................|...............|

..............Oracle.....Bio Lab

2 - T-shapes 1 each of Reactor, Oracle, Energy Lab, Chem Lab and Bio Lab.

Total materials needed for the basic setup 75 Forma, 15k Alloy, 175k Circuits, 140k Polymer, 70k Ferrite, 240k Nano Spores and 455k Salvage.

These are just stupid amounts of resources for a Clan of under 5 members to come up with.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Mickey1779

[Cypherdiaz]

upvotes for you, sir.

 

PS:why don´t you like the extra zoom mods? they can be usefull for some weapons, like the lex, kraken, latron or burston

Thanks much.

Eh true but meh. Compared to other options, those are low low and the priority list. Of all the mods that I dont fully like/understand/see a need for, those are the lesser of them all. I dont use any of those listed cept the Lex. I run a Gorgon/Hek  Lex/Bronco (Guess Dual Bronco's now), Gram/Amphis. I let the other two guys I play with do the accurate stuff usually, Lex is my only 'accurate' gun that would benefit of the zoom but im accurate enough without any more zoom, but ill probably try em out IF i get them.

 

Being in a small Clan, I definitely like Idea#2.

Just the basics in order for a Clan to research and build the new weapons and keep one side of the Clan Hall available for future expansion I came up with this layout.

..............Reactor...Energy Lab

..................|...............|

Clan Hall..-+-...........-+-.Chem Lab

..................|...............|

..............Oracle.....Bio Lab

2 - T-shapes 1 each of Reactor, Oracle, Energy Lab, Chem Lab and Bio Lab.

Total materials needed for the basic setup 75 Forma, 15k Alloy, 175k Circuits, 140k Polymer, 70k Ferrite, 240k Nano Spores and 455k Salvage.

These are just stupid amounts of resources for a Clan of under 5 members to come up with.

Yeh.

Idea 1 and 2 both have pro/cons and there is no way to not open up the system to abuse so its best to design in the abuse beforehand. Rather, someone suggested that the resources naturally scale based on members in the clan. Of course someone quickly pointed out that all a big clan need do is kick everyone cept for a few, build the stuff on the cheap, then bring everyone back. The point with both of my ideas was to design IN the abuse aspect in a controlled manner. That's what most of the good system designs do, they don't try to design out potential faults because they know you can't fully get rid of them. Instead they design in failure points.

 

My clan right now is seriously considering joining with a friend of mine's clan whom has about 20ish members just so we can experience the Dojo. Still a small enough clan but yeh, not liking being forced into how I play. I loved the fact that this game was based around a 4 member squad. That's PERFECT for small team play. But then to counteract that with a major feature that is big-clan only? Errr..

[metalbacon666]

As a person who does not play Rhino I can not really say if the change to him is good or bad. Though a damage mitigation like it had was great I also do not see absorbing 800 damage as a bad thing. But yet again I say I do not play Rhino so my ability to comment on this change is fairly limited.

The Dual Broncos issue I can agree with. I personally do not have this issue as I have not really built anything that requires another of its kind to make and I have fallen in love with the Kunai so I will probably be sticking with those. But I can see the annoyance you have over that.

 

As for the mods I am can agree on Insulation being somewhat pointless with just needing to restart the level but the rest I am fairly happy about especially with the Hawk and Eagle eye mods as I much prefer precision weapons. I primarily use Latron, Paris, Kunai, was aiming for a Snipetron (will aim for the other sniper rifle now) and weapons of accuracy such as these.

 

As for the flashlight. I will agree and disagree. I have not upped my brightness at all but can still see fairly well but something I have learned is that some monitors just seem to be brighter than others so the darkness while it is there does not bother me as much. But I would like a less $&*&*#(%& flashlight. Sometimes the flashlight will only point down depending on your weapon such as the Paris and the only way to get it up is to right click and walk around like that. All in all I agree it could be a bit better but hell that isn't a massive priority and I understand that.

 

As for the weapons. I agree that it is unfair for those of us in small clans to not be able to get some of the guns that are research only all because we are not in a big clan. As for the kunai, I am mixed on this. Yes they are powerful but they are weapons to get later down the road in game. Not something you particularly start with. Kind of like the Lex. It can one shot pretty much everything in the lower level missions but as you go up in missions that starts to happen less. Same with the kunai. As a kunai user I may be a little biased though.

 

Moving on to the polarization part of your post. I like the idea of it and the implmentation gives us the ability to customize our warframe a little more to the individuals liking. But there are 2 issues with it. 1. The elitism that it will bring. Unfortunate but just a byproduct of an expansion for more to do. Not really much that can be done. Issue 2. being able to polarize ability slots. I personally do not think it is something that should be able to be done.

The Dojo issue is something I agree on. I made a post about the 2nd idea that you posted and feel that it may be the best idea out of the 2 for players and DE. DE can still make money off of it and the players can still get what they want out of it over-all. It is the most balanced for the happiness of everyone. For those of you who are interested this guy made a really good post explaining how smaller clans would have to do things and how long it would take. http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Tnargraef/What_to_do_about_Clan_Dojos:_Day_1

I love this game and coming from other MMO's and many other style games and Free-to-plays I feel this game has a leg up on everything in almost every regard other than the Dojo and what is needed to even be apart of that. I love that DE has made this game and how big they are on fixing things almost immediately or however fast they can get it fixed. It is truly a sign of a company that will make it far. Thank you for everything you have done DE.

[Cypherdiaz]

Just updated the OP with some new info that I thought up after the fact or after playing.

[Cypherdiaz]

Will add this to the OP later but some new stuff and further feedback to update 8.

 

There's a post floating around (Here: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/51407-new-chemenergybio-lab-weapons/) where someone nicely decided to go ahead and share with us the crafting requirements for the new weapons in the Dojo. Mind you, thats after the actual facilities are built. Ahaha woah. And I thought the facilities are bad. Most of the weapons look like complete jokes unless they are ungodly powerful. If they are ungodly powerful then I am going to have some issue because yet again..this is bending all the small clan members over and saying "SORRY You can't touch any of this stuff because you don't want to be part of a large nameless clan".

 

The only new weapons that look in any way interesting are the rocket launcher and flamethrower. Honestly the rocket launcher would be fun but not a serious weapon, why. The flamethrower, that I can see being useful. I will not-so-patiently wait to see these weapons pop up on the wiki and hope they aren't god weapons.

 

Here's a concept. IF you base your game around a 4 player group system, do not then base another entire system in your game off of a massive zerglike size population in one clan. Truly brain damaging to think about it.

 

 

Moving on from the Dojo fiasco...

I just finished updating my sheets on my weapons/frames. Yes I use a spreadsheet to balance out the mods, at what ranks, etc. I updated them for polarity. To get to the max, I am going to have to polarize my Rhino frame 3 times, my Gorgon 3 times, my Lex 2 times, my Gram 2 times. Thats 10 polarizations. Granted I can do most of them together..IF i have 3 forma. Nope sorry, instead of getting anything useful for login rewards (Since U8), I have only been getting 2400 Frame XP. Anyways. I havent even done the calculations on my Hek, Amphis, or Dual Broncos (Namely cause they arent even level 30 yet, nor have I potatoed them yet). But yeh, if most weapons/frames average 2-3 times for max polarization..wow. Basically the only limiter is the number of slots on the item.

 

And that brings me to the next point.

Excalibur Prime is now seriously crazy. Repolarize the two useless ability slots (Super Jump is a joke and Radial Blind is only good for soloing really). So now I have a warframe with 2 Ability slots, 8 other slots (1 Def/2 Power already polarized) and i can polarize a bit more. 8 Slots..damn. That's going to make Excal Prime very very scary powerful. Was this a minor oversight on their part? (As you can see, I am a hunter rank founder, I have one and it is rank 30. This is just an observation, not a 'im jelly' post). Other warframes with somewhat useless abilities or abilities you don't normally need (Banshee's Silence) fit the same thing.

 

OO orokin catalyst bp, ill edit this more later.

[Cypherdiaz]

So been doing some talking with friends, reading of the forums, etc and I had some feedback on the void issue.

 

What I would do is this...

Void Access: When you get a warframe to 30 OR Get Mastery Rank 3 (Depending on choice/balance issues) each player is GIVEN a Non-Consumable Void Key. This key accesses the Level 1 Void (So Tower I ONLY). When they 'use it' for the first time, it opens up a new point on the big map that they can click on, like any other planet. Inside of said point are 7 Mission Spots. One for each of the mission spots (Excluding Endless Defense and Mobile Defense). This means you will have permanent access to Tower I and you can choose which type of mission you want to go on.

 

The chance for Forma to drop here is LOW (Similar to the same chance for a Rare Resource to drop from a mob/storage container in the non-void areas; IF not lower). The main goal of these areas is two fold:

1)Entry to the void and let people learn the areas/mobs/etc.

2)Tower II and Tower III Keys. Tower III Keys would be RARE, very rare, but possible. Tower II Keys would be much more common. Not like throwing them out like Candy, but you can expect to get one in 5 runs. Of course, Tower II/III Keys can still drop from the typical places (Capture/Raid/Spy Mission Bonus Reward or ED Wave Rewards)

 

This would then give players access to Tower II (And potential access to Tower III). The keys for these would stay the same, meaning, they are one time use.

Now once in Tower II, the chance for Forma dropping raises a bit along with the chance for Tower III Keys (Good chance, not 100% though).

This would allow, with work, to get to Tower III where Forma becomes much more common (Again, not like candy. If I had to give an example. Id say 1% in Tower I, 5% in Tower 2, and 15% in Tower 3).

 

As for a trio of certain void only items (Frost Prime, Latron Prime, Reaper Prime), I would have the PART BP's/Items drop in Tower II Only. Have the final Master blueprint drop in Tower 3 Only.

 

This would, in short, make the whole system a lot less random and better. Not easier, mind you, because work is still required. I am all for work, just not work that has no sense to it.

 

And before I forget, the cash-shop Void Keys. Obviously they would have to be updated NOT to include Tower I Keys since those would be gone and replaced with the permanent entry to Tower I. They would only give Tower II and Tower III. Id say at a 75%/25% ratio of Tower II to Tower III.

 

So just some thoughts on fixing this specific part of the new systems.