MXXVI
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Posts posted by MXXVI
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There have been posts like this in the past, I aware. Nevertheless, in the following post, I will attempt to make a case for a significant re-evaluation of Warframe’s movement system... and offer a fleshed out gameplay mechanic to make movement in Warframe more than just a means to an end. If you want to skip to that part, you’ll find it under heading 4 “The Possible Solution”.
1) The Past:
For those of you who weren’t around in the old days, here’s a brief history lesson:
In the beginning, movement was slower. To get a sense of how slow, run through a level without ever using crouch-jump, slide, shoot dodge, or any of the methods of accelerating or circumventing scenery. Regular jumps and sprint only. And keep in mind that in the beginning, there was stamina; you couldn’t sprint forever.
All level design and game pacing was based around this movement system (and arguably, a lot of the game’s tilesets are still based around it).
Navigating a level quickly in the old movement system required mastery of the old movement system; it required skill on the part of the player. Horizontal wall-running required the correct angle. Vertical wall-running could only be done in short bursts before your character ran out of momentum; you could back flip onto a surface behind you and climb further, but this required correct timing. Wall-running also involved an actual wall-RUNNING animation, not that awkward hop-hoppity-hop thing we have now.
Anyway, because of these limitations, navigating a level quickly required learning the game environments. Your movement through the environment was entirely defined by that environment; entering a large open area, your eyes would not be focused on the empty space... but on the platforms, walkways, stairs, elevators, zip-wires and white scuff marks. At a glance, the player was engaged with the environment; contemplating the paths they might take, the shortcuts they might find.
Combat was intrinsically connected to movement; as such, combat was intrinsically connected to the environment. Where you were... defined the nature of the fight from start to finish.
2) The Present:
Play through a regular tileset-based mission. Enter a large open area. Ask yourself how you’re going to reach the other side. Pause for a moment, and seriously think about it. How are you going to get from there, to the other side?
Now ask yourself, how often is your answer based on control inputs, not environment details? How often is your answer, “sprint forward, crouch, jump, hold aim to engage shoot dodge, then before I fall out of the sky, forward roll and engage shoot dodge again”? How often does this answer apply to every area, every level? How often did this apply when you reached the Plains? How often did this apply when you got to Vallis?When you’re at the bottom of an area, and you’re trying to reach the top, how often do you actually rely upon environmental details... and how often do you immediately crouch, look up and jump?
How often do you initiate the jump BEFORE you know where you’re going to land?
How often do you begin moving through an environment before you’ve actually processed what the environment is, or what it contains?
As you’re sliding and rolling through a level, how does it feel when you are forced to interact with the environment? How does it feel when you accidentally come into contact with scenery, and your otherwise smooth flight is interrupted?
How does it feel when you cross that open expanse, soaring through the sky, and promptly get lodged in the ledge above the door, and the rest of your team zooms past you? Do you feel like part of the team when that happens? Does it feel like a coop experience? Or do you feel like you’re suddenly slowing them down?
In the old days, levels were there to be explored, navigated with care; a challenge to overcome. Now, they exist to be avoided. The more detailed the scenery, the more inconvenient it is. Give serious thought to how you interact with a level – are you engaging with the level? When the extraction marker appears, are you figuring out how to reach it, or are you just spinning the camera around, looking for that green icon and pressing jump?
When you’re told to evacuate quickly, when the game tells you to flee, do you feel like you’re running from something... or racing towards something?
3) The Problem:
The level itself has become an inconvenience. The optimal gameplay – that is to say, the least frustrating player experience – requires that the player interact with the level as little as possible at all times - an issue compounded by the fact that players tend to race each other to the finish line. This not only renders the level design itself (the level geometry, its physical space) redundant, but so too the aesthetics; everything is a fleeting blur, and every solid object is quickly dismissed as naught but a tedious obstacle.
This also has the simultaneous effect of homogenizing the combat. If the player exists in a state of limbo, perpetually scanning for negative space in which to move freely, and the player can propel themselves into the air on a whim and traverse great distances with speed... then the player is no longer concerned with the possibility of being flanked, with the possibility of being backed into a corner; the player no longer has to search the environment for ways to attain elevation... elevation is an inherent possibility at all times.
The gameplay is reduced to 3D Robotron – the player moves around in a void, while enemies spawn on all sides, brainlessly moving in the player’s direction, never quite catching up. Once you’re up in the air, remember, cover no longer matters to either you or the enemies; you gain direct line of sight on everything, and they on you.
Put simply, the modern movement system has resulted in the relationship between player and level deteriorating dramatically. The diverse tilesets don’t matter, because the player interacts with them all in exactly the same way.
4) The Possible Solution:
If the game is going to focus on players practically flying through the levels, then the act of flying through the level should be integrated into the core gameplay, subject to skill, to risk and reward like everything else.
To this end, I suggest the introduction of a parkour counter or bar, not unlike the melee combo system. Essentially it would function as a visible, readily quantifiable version of the “flow” system in Mirror’s Edge – the better you play, the more mobile you become. Here’s how it works:
Firstly, changes to some basic behaviour -
Sliding should no longer prevent heavy falls – instead, like in Mirror’s Edge, a well-timed roll should be necessary to maintain momentum. The height at which the heavy fall animation triggers should be decreased a little, to encourage this fundamental interaction between the player and their jumps (that the player actually has to know where and when they’re landing).
Slide acceleration should be reduced, and the slide should be far less effective on flat terrain (only inheriting the player’s momentum, not accelerating them, and not allowing for physics-defying slide-roll chain acceleration). However, acceleration acquired from sliding down slopes of any kind should be increased significantly, and sliding into enemies with sufficient speed should knock them down (with knockdown potential increasing with player speed, and decreasing with enemy mass).
In open world environments, sliding down big mountains should allow for sufficient acceleration to enable Tribes-style skiing and stunts (so instead of just leaping into the sky and flying, you earn the air time, replete with whistling wind effects to make it a bit more thrilling).
Finally, crouch jump should not be a default behaviour, but something that also has to be earned.
How To Earn Momentum:
At the start of a mission, your mobility is limited to the basics of sprinting, jumping, dodging. As you cover distance in continuous sprinting (without stopping or bumping into things), whenever you climb scenery, wall run, utilise zip wires, slide down slopes or successfully land big jumps via well-timed rolls, you gain parkour points, which we’ll call “Momentum” with a big M for the purposes of this post.
You gain Momentum at different rates depending on the action – uninterrupted wall-running would grant Momentum quickly. Continuous sprinting would gain small, steady amounts. Landing big jumps would grant bigger chunks of Momentum, depending on the height fallen. Bonus Momentum would be awarded for chaining these movements – going straight from wall running into leaping onto a zipwire, or sliding down some stairs then jumping from a great height and landing it perfectly? Bonus Momentum awarded.
Gaining Momentum would have the following effects:
- Increase to movement speed
- Increase to jump height
- Increase to wall-running range
- Increase to knockdown chance when sliding (or jump-sliding) into enemies
- Increase to aim glide duration (which should be tied to movement speed by default, because hovering in one spot is silly)
With sufficient Momentum, certain enhanced movement abilities could come into play. For example, crouch-jumping. Instead of just being able to take off and fly like you have rocket boots at all times, crouch-jumping would be something you could use only when you had high enough Momentum (and could possibly cost Momentum to use). There could perhaps be other enhancements or augmentations relating to your Momentum counter – for example, the ability to replace your crouch-jump with a bonus to defences when Momentum is maxed out, or increased resistance to slowing effects.
Losing Momentum:
Momentum loss would happen when failing to land jumps properly, being knocked down by enemies, dying, falling into bottomless pits, running face-first into lasers, that kind of thing. The amount lost would vary depending on the incident (dying or falling into bottomless pits would wipe the counter entirely, for example).
Momentum loss would also happen slowly over time (so if you stand still doing nothing for long enough, it would zero out).
Extended Rules:
Combat could also play a part, especially melee combat. Melee kills should add to the counter (allowing you to build up Momentum as you fight, working hand in hand with the combo system), with stealth kills adding a big chunk of Momentum (allowing for people to become speedy ninjas, zooming from one kill to another, or accelerating away after slowly sneaking up on a target). Additionally:
Some people like the power fantasy of being a lightning-fast ninja, a shadowy blur of death. Some people like the fantasy of being a juggernaut, stampeding through enemies. To accommodate these plays styles, I’d suggest the ability to set (via armoury) your Warframe’s Momentum mode to either Grace, or Brutality.
Grace:
Setting it to this mode, pure parkour feats gain a lot of bonus Momentum, allowing you to accumulate it more quickly... but also penalizing you more for screwing these actions up.
Brutality:
Setting it to this mode, killing enemies in any way would grant small quantities of Momentum (so you could actually gain Momentum by striding head-first into some enemies and shooting them all), but you’d lose small amounts of Momentum by getting hit (the numbers would be tweaked in favour of kills). There could be bonuses for chained kills, or kills performed while simultaneously doing parkour things.
In Summary:As it stands, player movement is just a thing that happens. Player movement doesn’t really interact with the environment, except when it is obstructed by the environment. Because players are so mobile, environmental dangers alternate between irrelevance and ridiculous lethality, and the enemies often lean this way too. Since the general Warframe playerbase seems to favour the fast-running “smooth” gameplay, the movement model for the game should be more integrated into this behaviour – allowing players to invest in it, and be rewarded by it accordingly. Smooth navigation and exploration should be incentivized the way many combat actions already are (we gain combat bonuses for combat actions, why not movement bonuses for movement actions?).
Other games with free-running elements already utilise a reward system like this, one way or another; granting momentum for skillful player movement. Other games with free-running feel a lot weightier than Warframe - like their characters have more physical presence. With a momentum system, perhaps Warframe could attain a more solid and skillful feeling to its movement.
If Warframe wants to be speedy, why not make speed, and precise movement, a fully implemented feature of the game... not just as a means to an end, not just as a way of getting from A to B, but a gameplay mechanic in its own right?
Anyway, like it or lump it, them's my thoughts on the matter.-
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1 minute ago, IIDMOII said:
I read your original post. I hope you get this resolved. I have a similar situation and may have to jump through this hoop.
The game seemingly made the least active person founding warlord. But I'm the only one left that plays. Everything in the dojo is mine. Everything. Resources, formas and enough time spent, that if it were taken away, I'd quit without hesitation. It's mine.
I know some people don't care about the dojo but it's a pretty big portion of my time played. I love having a customizable personal base.
Totally the same here - I loved the dojo feature, because it didn't punish loners like me. It allowed me to take the time to invest in building my own space house. But I think DE kinda forgot that they allowed people to do this - that clans aren't just clans in the traditional MMO guild sense.
And the thing is, the situation could be worse. This friend of mine - we didn't fall out or anything. But we have kinda lost contact. It's an inconvenience, but this situation could be really nasty; if he was a bad person, he could totally just destroy everything, rearrange everything, demote me... whatever. This shouldn't be possible at all. -
As I quoted above - their response is that they won't get involved with internal clan matters.
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So I created my own clan. For myself. I wanted a dojo, I didn't actually want to join a clan, or team up with people to make one. So I made my own clan, gathered the resources to build my own dojo, and to research the various weapons. All on my own. For me.
Having done all of this for myself, years later I invited a friend to join my clan because he knew I'd unlocked a weapon he wanted. I let him join. I never promoted him or gave him any permissions; he just had access to research. We didn't really play together that regularly; he just sat in my clan, acquiring the things I had unlocked.
I took a short break from the game recently, and came back to find that DE had implemented a new rank. To my surprise, I found that despite being literally the sole founder of the clan, and the one person who had built and researched literally everything in it, YEARS before anyone else joined, and despite my friend being the lowest rank... he had been declared Founding Warlord.
DE had literally handed the keys to the dojo I made for myself... over to someone who had been the lowest rank. Control of my clan, and my dojo, was just... given to him, simply because I'd been away for a month. One month. I've been playing since the earliest days, but I leave for a month, and control of my dojo and clan is given away just like that.
Here's the kicker. He's not a regular player. I have no idea when he'll next play; the only reason he was not classified as "inactive" when this patch hit... was that he just happened to have logged in perhaps once or twice that month. According to DE's support, who politely informed me that they will do absolutely nothing about this:Quote
Digital Extremes makes it our policy not to get involved with internal clan matters
Except they already did, by arbitrarily making somebody else the founder of the clan I founded for myself. They literally already interfered with internal clan matters, and now refuse to fix it, because they don't get involved with internal clan matters.This leaves me in the position of waiting for him to possibly maybe at some point get around to logging in and promoting me, the founder of my clan, to the status of founder (if he remembers to do it, and feels so inclined)... or for him to be inactive for a solid month (which is not actually likely) in order for DE to get involved in my internal clan matters.
Now, it's entirely possible that he'll stay away just long enough for to trip the 30 day requirement (and for support to process the request before he randomly pops in again). It's also possible that he'll log in and have the decency to hand the keys to my dojo back to me. But the very fact that this tenuous situation exists demonstrates a fundamentally flawed implementation of the new rank - that this could happen at all is ridiculous. I mean good grief, 30 days? This isn't a subscription game. I'm not allowed to take a month away from the game I've been playing for years, without control of my stuff being given to somebody else? What if I'd invited someone less scrupulous? They can just... petition support to be given control of my clan whenever I take a month off?
I count myself lucky that I only invited one vagrant. I shudder to imagine the drama this could have caused if I'd been in the habit of inviting everyone who asked. -
I'm having a problem with this too.
Typically, I just upgraded to Windows 7 at last, and Warframe is running way smoother than on XP......but it seems like a 50/50 chance that I'll get "session unavailable" when searching for pugs.
And the most infuriating thing is the way it handles this error; the fact that it doesn't just default to the "play now" button, it makes you sit there waiting... then dumps you to the map screen. Meaning that if you got the error, you *cannot start* your own pug session. -
"As long as Rhino can make himself invincible"
Did they... change Iron Skin again while I wasn't looking? -
To be fair, they buffed Volt's ult by massively reducing his animation limits.
After all, his ult used to require that he do a floating Jesus routine. Now you can fry the room and leap straight into cover.
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There would need to be a significant trade-off (and low shields really... isn't much of a trade-off if you know what you're doing)
Health-gaining abilities in this game are few and far between, and if you gave her any substantial health-gain ability, you'd have to reconsider the complete lack of such abilities in most of the other Warframes. Especially poor Rhino, whose primary purpose she is dangerously close to trampling on. -
It's messed up. Also kinda craps on the notion of customising your energy colour... when you end up glowing green regardless.
Also, if you go invisible (tested on Ash), you "drop" your glow. A puddle of green glowing light stays where you were when you popped invis, and only returns when the invis ends. -
Are you sure it's just T3 missions?
Personally, I'm CTDing every time I try to load *any* mission, and it's been happening since the 10.6.1 patch.
When it crashed, did it crash after the loading bar got to like 50-60%? -
No. DX9 all the way. And as I said, I haven't changed *anything*, and the game itself loads fine; the graphics engine is entirely functional, with the main menu visuals rendering correctly across the board.
It's just mission loading that fails.
It was the patch that broke it.
And now, with the most recent patch, I still can't load any mission... with the added bonus that the damn error reporting box is broken too. It appears at a reduced size (so I can't actually click/type anything) and I can't resize it. So now I can't even report the error.
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Any mission I attempt to load, whether online or solo, whether hosting or joining, CTDs when the loading bar has reached about 60%
Basically, I can't play the game, and haven't been able to do so since the 10.6.1 patch.
Not much more to say about it. The game was running fine prior to 10.6.1, and the main menu and all its features (foundry, arsenal etc) work perfectly, and absolutely nothing has changed on my end (no driver changes). As such, I have no idea what's going on. -
So, I can't actually play the game now.
Any mission I try, whether solo or online, CTD's when the loading bar is at about 60%. -
There's still BSOD occurring in the gift of lotus alert currently.
I can confirm this; two attempts at loading that mission, CTD'd both times.
Lotus has a mean sense of humour.
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Just lasted 56 minutes in a PUG.
And our reward was exactly that: game ended, but the map didn't exit.
After a while, the game just crashed.
Yaaay -_-
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Seriously?
No love for the Translocator?
Telefragging 4tw.
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So, I saw the new Rhino Iron Skin visual for the first time last night.
Saw it on another player.
And it must be said, I thought they'd given the Rhino hair.
Too many spikes. Way too many. And they're so thin, at distance, it makes the Rhino look fuzzy. Like he's furry.
I'd suggest:
1) Make the spikes shorter, and perhaps fatter. When they're that long, they look "delicate".
2) Limit them to his shoulders, thighs, back. Basically, put them on areas where it actually makes sense to have armoured spikes. There shouldn't be any spikes on his belly.
3) Only have 4-5 per armour "region". Having that many spikes makes them look like hair, when you can't see them up close.
These changes, I think, would make the armour-shard effect look more intimidating - like running into a Rhino would be more like running into a wall, than running into a cactus.
Otherwise, I like the underlying metallic effect - makes him look less like a frozen turd, and more like it's actually iron skin.
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I'd rather that Freeze was a cone, like DnD "Cone of Cold"... making it an AOE would kinda screw with its status as the "lowest" of the Frost abilities. It'd have to have some element massively nerfed to compensate, or people would whine.
Otherwise, I'm with you on the CC thing.
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Yeah, I've been saying this since I first encountered it.
It's kinda silly.
I mean, all they'd have to do to fix this is just rename/re-describe the items. Swap them around.
That way, technically you'd be going to the same places to get what you need... and all the foundry BPs would be using the same mats, but the words would actually match the content.
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"We should be crushed under the pressure"
What pressure? Hull breach represents a rapid shift from a high pressure environment to a zero pressure environment.
And no, you didn't see Grineer being sucked into space during a hull breach in the "warframe concept trailer with hayden tenno", if you're talking about the original Dark Sector trailer. If there's a trailer I've missed, please link it... cos I love that stuff.
The extraction animation is exactly the same as it is now - minus some particles and debris.
As for why the Grineer can suck on vacuum... we have to take into account that they're barely human anymore - as we saw from the latest trailer, featuring Vor, they don't necessarily die even when they've been sliced in half, because they're so full of cybernetics.
Anyway, no helmet removal.
It destroys the enigmatic, kinda scary nature of the Tenno. They are faceless. And that, as good ole Mister Slender has demonstrated, is way more intimidating.
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They both look stupid.
They look like a kid's idea of "cool" and "badass", fresh out of the tackiest beat'em'up. They are trying way too hard.
The glorious thing about the Warframe designs is that they look cold, emotionless, efficient, and unnatural in an almost eerie sort of way, while simultaneously looking organic.
One of the most intimidating things about the Excalibur, for example (which goes right back to the days when he was Hayden Tenno) is that you can't see his eyes - there's something uncompromising about his blank, armoured face.
The moment you add a scarf, the Tenno go from being cold, efficient badass killers... to vain fashion victims.
And yes, there are some terrible colour combinations out there... but one could see them as akin to the Eldar Harlequins in Warhammer 40K:
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I think everyone needs to chill out and listen to the soothing voice of Andreas Katsulas
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Meh, I treat Void content as a gamble.
I got my Frost Prime (though, to be fair, I had the BP from the Moa event), and my Latron Prime... but I have NEVER EVER seen a single Reaper Prime blade.
Meanwhile, after surviving 25 waves on Xini the other day, my reward...
wait for it...
was Heated Charge.
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I hope they return to english instead of this sims-alike-gibberish.
But you don't have a problem with the Corpus dialogue?
Personally, I've been rather impressed with the Grineer psuedo-language. It sounds plausible - far from the gibberish of the Sims, it has an interesting accent, sounds suitably gutteral (which I think is important, where the Grineer are concerned) and isn't a copy'n'paste American Marine voice.
In particular, the latest E3 trailer has some fantastic psuedo-language moments:
Rationale for a Parkour Overhaul (with suggested system)
in General
Posted · Edited by MXXVI
I feel like most of the replies here have missed the core concern, and haven't actually addressed it in the slightest. Nobody has made an argument for environment or level design... mattering. Which strikes me as rather baffling - that nobody is bothered by the fact that the elaborate level design work that has gone into each of the tilesets is being wasted at the moment by virtue of players simply not interacting with it in any meaningful way.
You didn't read my post properly. That's not what I said at all.
You come from a game in which you are far more physically grounded, and cannot just fly around the environment; a game in which the environment actually defines how you move through it, and you spend most of your time with feet on the ground.
You mean the tedious mini-games on Lua that some people get stuck on for a very long time? There's a reason people don't visit Lua that much unless they have to... and outside of those mini-games, I'm not sure I've seen any evidence on any tileset of the level design being "adapted" to Parkour 2.0. How would it be, except to make more big open environments? The player doesn't need to climb anything anymore, wall-running is entirely redundant, there is literally no chasm that the player cannot slide-crouch-jump-flip-glide their way across. What adaptations are present on Lua, outside of forced challenges (that ironically are more restrictive than the systems I'm suggesting above)?
This statement contradicts the bulk of good game design throughout history. Player movement is supposed to be absolutely intrinsically tied to the game's challenge. You are movement. You are a physical presence that moves through the world - how you move should always be tied to player skill, and be something to learn and master. Additionally, the game already integrates SOME movement systems into challenge mechanics - stealth kills, for example, and stealth in general requires specific types of movement (speed, proximity and direction being important factors). Movement also already plays a role in melee combat, defining the nature of the different attacks you perform.
One could argue that adding new game mechanics that are tied to movement is not desirable, but this was my attempt at fashioning a design option that uses the existing movement pattern, instead of discarding it.
Because quite frankly, speaking as someone who has played the game since its earliest days... the current movement system is awful, and given the choice I would gut it entirely and return the game to its more "grounded" days of back-flipping off walls and clambering up obstacles, instead of just flying everywhere.
I get the impression that people are envisioning a system in which you would slow to a crawl the moment you hit a wall - I suggested no such thing. I literally just suggested that crouch jump be restricted, and that you gain minor movement bonuses (on top of current movement values) when performing parkour actions. I also suggested, let's not forget, that slide essentially receive a buff; that greater mobility would be granted in more open environments... while still requiring interaction with the terrain.