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Playford

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Posts posted by Playford

    Proposed Starchart Changes [Megathread]

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I have to echo some of the concerns voiced so far.

     

    I enjoy playing certain mission types on specific tilesets, not really for the reward, but just to play a fun and quick mission on my own terms. The  new system as proposed so far would take that away and would replace it with RNG, the thing that has been complained about since closed beta.

     

    Not only that, but it would mess with other systems already in place, such as scanning specific enemies and farming for a specific resource, the system as proposed wouldn't remove padding and grind, it would merely replace them with different padding and grind.

    Coming Soon: Devstream #52

    in Livestreams

    Posted

    Regarding Parkour 2.0:

    Will the older tiles be updated to better accommodate the new parkour system? What's happening to stamina?

     

    General:

    There are some fairly deep problems with the current damage and mod systems, namely the DPS race between the developers and players and entire segments of useless mods in everyone's collection, are you willing to address it? If so, how far would you be willing to go?

    Shotguns, sniper, scythes, (dual) daggers need love, what's planned for them?

    May 1St: Community Hot Topics!

    in Blog

    Posted

    When it comes to their visual design and personality I like all of the boss reworks, what I dislike are the rather egregious invulnerability phases. Let's compare two bosses that have similar(ish) mechanics; Jackal and Sargas Ruk.

     

    They are both invulnerable with weakpoints, but Jackal's weakpoint is shot to make the main body vulnerable, while destroying Ruk's weakpoints is what eventually kills him.

    The difference that I want to talk about is that with Jackal, we control the invulnerability phases, where Ruk just shows them when he's in the mood for it, making the fight drag out longer than it should.

    For a boss fight to be rewarding and satisfying it should be about the player understanding how the fight works and then executing it well, with the one in control being the player, not the boss.

     

    And as much as I hate Nullifiers, the mechanics of their bubbles could be applied on bosses to prevent them from being killed too fast. I know this was mentioned once in a devstream, players just steamrolling over bosses with their overpowered guns, the problem with that is some weapons would be unsuited against bosses just like they are against Nullifier bubbles. I would suggest that those weapons receive special flags that would make shots from them count as multiple hits.

     

    I don't really care about primed mods, I care more about entire segments of my regular mod collection being useless (tried making multiple threads about it, they never got any traction :( ).

     

    Archwing - you mentioned that there is an axis lock in place because some people get disoriented without it, guess what? The axis lock makes me disoriented.

    This is because when I look up and down, and I don't know that I'm looking up and down, because there is nothing like a horizon to orient myself with, the camera doesn't move like I expect it to.

    What I would like is atleast an option to disable the axis lock, enhanced flight controls are also welcome.

    The minimap on the other hand is better resolved by just getting rid of it and replacing it with a waypoint system like the one in Freelancer. If you don't know about that game, go play it, it's not on any DD platform, but it's 20$ on ebay.

    Warframe: A Beta No More?

    in General

    Posted

    The age of constant internet access and constant updates means that some older industry terms no longer work.

     

    After all, beta used to mean it's a work in progress with an upcoming final version, this no longer applies because there is no final version just an upcoming update.

    Small Article I Wrote On Warframe

    in Off Topic

    Posted · Edited by Playford

    When it comes to body diversity, the reason is entirely technical, all warframes are animated on the same skeleton.

    Having each warframe with their own skeleton would significantly increase workload and create problems when switching animations on waframes.

    Will The Skill Tree Ever Make A Return?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    The bold/underlined statement never crosses most people's minds it seems. But yeah, I guess it may end up happening for changes beyond rank 30 potato-forma frames.

    Actually, the old system was both.

     

    The tree was made of "nodes" you unlocked as you leveled up, some nodes gave you passive stat bonuses, others were blank nodes you could drop mods into. It still sucked.

    Some Long Standing Issues That I Believe Need Adressing

    in General

    Posted · Edited by Playford

    Well I've read it now, and I agree with almost everything.

    Some minor things to consider:

    1. Alternate suggestion for IPS mods: allow these mods to multiply the status chance, but only for that physical damage type. Then, elemental mods could change a percentage of the base damage to that element, and event elemental mods could change a percentage of the base damage and multiply the status chance for that element.

    2. I'm not sure if your Heavy Caliber change goes far enough, as it would be hard to pass up for most weapons. A 25% damage boost with 33% accuracy reduction might be a better bet, as it would be purely for a DPS focused build.

    3. Doppleganger sounds too similar to Decoy. It could work, but I don't know if we'd have mods that similar to Warframe powers.

    4. The elemental resistance mods could be combined into one mod that resists all elemental damage.

    5. You still have the problem of trying to compete with corrupted mods and builds. My solution would be to change the corrupted system and make it the new Focus one, where each ability would have corrupted modifiers that improve one stat for that ability while reducing another stat for that ability (which also keeps all powers as options while still providing tradeoffs).

    Regarding corrupted and multishot mods - the idea is that using them adds significant DPS, but makes their ammo economy terrible, so they are "too awesome to use" in a way. The numbers I presented I just pulled out of thin air to give the general idea, modifying them for balance purposes is trivial.

     

    Regarding doppelganger - I ran out of ideas and literally copied that (and others) ability from a Dota 2 character, still not sure what I was thinking.

     

    Regarding elemental damage resistance mods - I have an idea to rework player armor completely and what you suggested was a part of that, I left that out because I thought to make a separate thread for that.

     

    I'm too sober to think about the Focus system. Sorry.

    Some Long Standing Issues That I Believe Need Adressing

    in General

    Posted · Edited by Playford

    I love Warframe, I think DE has done an incredible job with the game and I've sunk an unhealthy amount of time ever since I started playing all the way back in closed beta, but there are several long-standing issues that have been bugging me for a long time (some going back to the CB), and I kinda regret not being more active on the forums and making my voice heard more often regarding these issues. I really think all of these should be addressed in some way during the Year of Quality.

     

    I will attempt to discuss some of these issues, point out flaws and suggest possible solutions. My original idea was to present these issues in what I considered the decreasing order of importance, but I realized they are all too much reliant on another to there be a specific order. Just take note that all of these issues are interconnected, and some suggestions will seem strange or nonsensical on their own, when they really should be all taken into account together, needless to say, a wall of text follows.

     

    Let’s begin.

     

    Mods right now have several problems, with the biggest issue being weapon mods.

     

    Modding weapons right now boils down to one question: "Does adding this mod increase my DPS?" because that’s the only thing that matters.

    There are some weapons that need slightly different builds focusing more on status chance, or need ammo mutation mods to make up for their ammo inefficiency, but in the end, you will still be predominantly adding damage mods to increase your DPS, either by adding elemental mods or crit mods (or both).

     

    This means that there is an entire section of the mod collection is useless because they have no effect on DPS or they don’t add enough of it to be worthwhile.

    To be specific, I’m talking about IPS mods, regular status mods and some other utility mods.

    For a time I thought the best solution to be simply buffing those mods into usefulness by increasing their numbers or changing their scaling. I slowly realized the flaw in this. Instead of adding more options for modding, it simply added more mods to increase DPS further.

     

    How to fix this?

     

    After some thought and suggestions from other people, the best solution I’ve come to is that mods that add damage shouldn’t exist.

     

    What do I mean by that?

     

    I mean that elemental mods and IPS mods should be changed not to increase damage, but change a percentage of base damage into whatever the mod specifies.

     

    (I gave my best to format this, but the forum bbcode isn’t cooperating, if someone can inform me how to do tables, please do)

     

    Example:

    Burston has 30 base damage evenly spread out:

    Impact: 10

    Puncture: 10

    Slash: 10

     

    Adding max rank Rupture should change 30% of non-impact damage into impact, so the new stats for Burston are:

    Impact: 16

    Puncture: 7

    Slash: 7

     

    Of course elemental mods would need to be rescaled completely because their 90% stat is just too big, my suggestion is to change them to change 4% base damage per rank meaning that at max rank they would change 24% base damage (nightmare and other dual stat mods would also be modified, unless I’m mistaken they all go up to rank 3 so 5% per rank, maximum 20% seems fine), so that adding a maxed Hellfire to Burston would make the stats:

    Impact: 7.6

    Puncture: 7.6

    Slash: 7.6

    Heat: 7.2

     

    When damage modifying mods are added, physical mods should be applied first, then elemental ones, so that adding both Rupture and Hellfire would make the new stats:

    Impact: 12.1

    Puncture: 5.3

    Slash: 5.3

    Heat: 7.2

     

    Some will point out that this also makes elemental mods useless on weapons that use the same element, to use the fire example yet again, fire mods would be pointless on Ignis.

    I honestly don’t consider that very important, let me remind you, currently all IPS mods are worthless on pure elemental damage weapons because of the way they scale.

    If they are changed so they can actually add IPS damage to pure elemental weapons that would actually increase the number of mods they can use. And if people are going to complain about realism and immersion, let me remind you about one other thing, our lasers can be modified to shoot viruses, why shouldn’t our flamethrowers also shoot tiny hammers?

     

    This still allows for specializing in a single damage type for a specific health type and in my opinion should work better than what we have now.

    Damage 2.0 was conceived to stop people from using rainbow builds, but in my opinion it merely created Rainbow Builds 2.0.

     

    One problem I can think of is that stacking various elemental mods would make the damage percentages go a bit wonky, I can think of multiple solutions (this isn’t a balancing measure, more of a programming one to prevent bugs, we have enough of those):

     

    Solution #1

    Allow only one elemental mod per damage type, meaning:

    You can combine Hellfire and Cryo Rounds for blast damage, but can’t combine Hellfire and Wildfire for extra fire damage.

     

    Solution #2

    Limit elemental mods to maximum of four, meaning:

    If you stack multiple mods of the same element, you get fewer other elements to put in.

    Example:if you put in three fire mods (Hellfire, Wildfire, Thermite Rounds), you can add only one other elemental mod.

     

    (Personally, I prefer solution #2)

     

    For this example I used the rifle impact mod, it’s stats are just there for the sake of an example, while shotgun IPS mods have the same stats, pistol versions got up to 60% for some reason and melee up to 90%. In this version of the damage system their stats should be revised, I think the rifle/shotgun version stats are a good baseline, no idea what to do with the event ones, maybe change them to be like the dual stat ones?

     

    I know I’m going to encounter really strong resistance on my next point, and this is something that’s been brought up in the past.

    I really think we should get rid of base damage boosting mods: Serration, Point Blank, Hornet Strike and Pressure Point (I actually have some suggestions for their corrupted counterparts and multishot mods I will be talking about later), they are mandatory on every single build and in effect we don’t have 8 slots to mod with, but 7.

    Instead of using them, weapon base damage should increase as the weapon ranks up, much like warframes get more health and shields as they rank up, my suggestion being 20% every 3 ranks for 200% bonus damage at max rank (damage numbers on primaries and melee would need to be revised).

     

    Of course, because we “lose” a lot of our damage output because the change to elemental damage mods, enemy scaling should also be revised. I don’t know the formula, so I can’t make any good suggestions, people more knowledgeable than me can comment on that.

     

    Some people might not like losing some very major mods from their collection, and that is perfectly understandable, I myself have multiple copies of both Serration and Hornet Strike at various ranks, losing them after all that effort put into them makes me a bit uneasy, but I also don’t like that while modding my weapons I have to cycle through tons worthless mods that I’m never going to use.

     

    If DE ever decides to remove these mods, compensating people with appropriate amounts of Arcane Cores should be sufficient.

    Primed Point Blank and other prime mods? No idea, Legendary Cores maybe?

     

    One of the benefits of this is that it “normalizes” DPS.  The designers know from day one how a weapon will scale and what the default damage output will be at all stages with all players, making balancing that weapon around other attributes, such as ammo capacity, fire rate, projectile speed, etc. possible, now that they no longer have to take into account all the varieties of elemental damage mods.

     

    This leaves basically one option for increasing DPS, fire rate. The thing about fire rate is that it kinda balances itself out, even if you decide to increase your DPS by adding fire rate mods, shooting bullets faster also means you waste bullets faster, decreasing your overall ammo efficiency.

     

    Some will object to this change that it makes some mods in their collection useless.

    Frankly, a disturbingly large chunk of everyones mod collection is already useless, this is about making every mod useful in some way. Naturally some will become less useful, some more, that’s just the way of things.

     

    I’ve mentioned corrupted base damage mods, time to talk a bit about them, but first to elaborate on one thing.

     

    The accuracy stat you see in the arsenal is a bogus. You might have noticed that some very accurate weapons have it very low, while it’s unexpectedly high on other weapons.

    Example: Vulkar has 13.3 accuracy, while Grakata has 28.6, that must mean lower numbers mean higher accuracy? WRONG, because Flux Rifle has 100.0 accuracy and is infact pinpoint accurate.

     

    Unless I’m misinformed, weapons have two attributes, Spread and Recoil, that are hidden, and the accuracy stat is some strange mixture of the two. We should see those two stats ourselves in the arsenal, because as mentioned before, accuracy is worthless.

     

    Now the corrupted base damage and multishot mods come in. Because they are the only mods that should increase damage, they should also have some heavy drawbacks.

     

    Heavy Caliber, Magnum Force, Vicious Spread and Spoiled Strike should all increase damage but only by 55% at max rank (5% per rank, Vicious Spread and Spoiled Strike are changed to have 10 ranks), while also heavily increasing recoil, the exception being Spoiled Strike that decreases attack speed just as it does now, only 3% per rank for 33% at max rank.

     

    Similar deal with multishot mods, (for consistency reasons Split Chamber should go up to 120%, Barrel Diffusion should cost 15 points at max, Hell’s Chamber is fine as-is, this is just my personal gripe), but instead of recoil they increase spread.

     

    For balancing purposes these mods should either not be compatible with weapons that have 0 spread and/or recoil (beam weapons like the Flux Rifle), or increase those stats not by percentage, but by absolute amounts, so their effect is felt equally across all weapons.

     

    (I cannot suggest numbers for spread and recoil because I have no idea how they work.)

     

    One last mod group that needs talking about are the regular status mods.

    They are worthless in any damage/mod system, and need to be buffed to the point they are useful and not a waste of UI space.

    Rifle Aptitude, Sure Shot and Melee Prowess all add 15% (Shotgun Savvy is the only exception, giving 30%) bonus status chance at their max rank, which is the same amount as the dual stat mods at their base rank.

    Not only that, but Sure Shot and Melee Prowess cost 7 points at their max rank, while Rifle Aptitude and Shotgun Savvy cost 9 point at their max rank. The dual stat mods make them completely and utterly obsolete.

     

    My suggestion for for their new stats:

    Rank Cost Status chance bonus

    0 6 40%

    1 7 80%

    2 8 120%

    3 9 160%

    4 10 200%

    5 11 240%

     

    Atleast this way when you give us the D (har har) on weapons that slot has more than one viable mod for it.

     

    Then we need to talk about the ammo system.

    Some time ago (I think it was on a devstream) it was stated that the ammo system is limited because of engine limitations. Considering how DE owns the engine and has access to the source code, that is not a very good excuse and hardly a setback.

     

    What the ammo system needs to improve in my opinion is as follows:

     

    Greater variety in which weapon types use what ammo type.

    Marelok is a stated in-game to be a cut down Grinlok, yet Grinlok uses rifle ammo while Marelok uses pistol ammo. Why? They should both use rifle ammo.

    Grakata on the other hand doesn’t feel right using rifle ammo and in my opinion should be switched over to pistol ammo.

    This is what I mean by variety of ammo usage.

     

    To prevent the weirdness we have right now with some secondaries limiting primary ammo, primary and secondary weapons should have their own separate ammo pools, even though they are using the same ammo type.

     

    And finally, and in my opinion most importantly, weapon pickups should be percentage based, going as far as different weapons having different percentage multipliers.

     

    With this system it’s possible to individually modify each weapons ammo economy without affecting it’s DPS, with wasted shots equally severe with all weapons, but especially with weapons that have corrupted damage, multishot and fire rate mods installed as outlined above.

     

    Some are going to argue that Warframe is not about ammo management and that we really shouldn’t be running around scrounging for ammo.

    I agree, but the problem is that we have weapons that are almost impossible to run out of bullets with (looking at you Latron), while there are others that make scrounging for ammo on top of using ammo mutation mods a necessity (looking at Twin Vipers). Very few weapons have a middle ground when it comes to their ammo economy, and it’s mostly because of the ammo system. The intention of this system is that all weapons have similar ammo efficiency, which is impossible with the current one.

     

    So far I’ve been talking about weapon mods, what about warframe mods? Warframe mods are in a much better position, but they too have their share of useless mods. Namely all elemental damage resistance mods.

     

    Flame Repellant? Diamond Skin? Antitoxin? Warm Coat? Should I go on? All of these are worthless and have no place in any build (except joke ones, those hardly count).

     

    I tried to get a conversation started twice but my previous threads on the subject didn’t get as much traction as I hoped. In short, I think those mods should be removed and replaced with mods that don’t directly modify stats, and instead focus more on mechanics and utility.

     

    Here are a few examples of such mods and some situational stat increases:

     

    - Desperation: power strength increases the less hp you have.

    - Battle Trance: casting abilities gives a (temporary) stacking buff that increases casting speed.

    - Juggernaut: while sprinting, deal impact damage and ragdoll enemies you bump into, each impact drains stamina.

    - Ablative Shell: after taking enough health damage, purge all status effects, and gain temporary immunity to them (damage from bleed and toxin counts).

    - None Left Behind: if a fellow Tenno within <x> meters is bleeding out, receive bonus armor and movement speed.

    - United We Stand: chance to resist knockdown when near other Tenno, shared with teammates.

    - Bloodrage: while bleeding, bonus damage for weapons and abilities.

    - Doppelganger: after using an ability (after the animation ends), create a temporary holographic decoy that roams around distracting enemies, decoy has no hitbox and doesn't deal damage (basically a Hall of Mirrors clone, just independant and doesn't do damage).

     

    With the new damage system the pursuit of DPS is no longer as important as before, I think mods that add mechanics and utility for weapons should also be added.

    Examples:

     

    Ranged weapons (rifle, shotgun and pistol versions all exist and are pretty much the same, only differences are in the name):

    - Rigged Magazine: after reloading, drop the used magazine which acts as a stun grenade, dealing no damage but stunning in an area that increases in size the more rounds were in the magazine at the time of reload (unused ammo is lost).

    - Shock and Awe: while shooting, enemies in a small radius around the shooter are staggered, enemies in a larger radius have their accuracy reduced (not compatible with noise reduction mods, not usable on weapons that are silent by default, such as bows).

    - Focus Fire: if you fire a long enough burst, reload faster (only usable on fully automatic weapons).

    - Headhunter: headshots give a (temporary) stacking buff to damage, bodyshots deal the extra damage but reset stacks to 0.

    - Shrapnel: physical damage procs affects all enemies in a radius around the primary target.

     

    Melee weapons:

    - Phantasm: attacks have a chance of creating autonomous holographic decoys that distract enemies (see above).

    - Repeated Strikes: gain bonus damage when attacking the same enemy repeatedly, attacking a new enemy removes the bonus.

    - Crippling Weakness: deal bonus damage the less % hp your enemy has.

    - Crippling Fear: critical hits that kill causes nearby enemies to become terrified.

    - Nothing Wasted: overkill damage is stored and used on the next attack. Kinda hard to put this one into words, but here's an example, enemy has 5 hp, you kill it with an attack that deals 20 damage, that extra 15 damage is stored and used on the next attack.

    - Pickpocket: melee finishers that kill generate extra loot (basically a single target Desecrate).

    - Essence Theft: kill an Eximus and you temporarily gain its aura.

    - Great Riposte: when resisting a knockdown attack (either by blocking or by knockdown resistance mods) perform a melee strike that hits all enemies in range and does bonus damage.

     

    In closing I will leave you a video in which TotalBiscuit and several developers from Tripwire (Killing Floor devs) talk about their game, Killing Floor 2:


    Beware, it’s an hour long, and while they have substantial differences, Killing Floor 2 is a coop-horde shooter not unlike Warframe, some very relevant points are brought up and discussed, especially regarding gunplay (gunplay is another matter I wanted to discuss but that deserves it’s own thread) and enemy scaling.

     

    Also, two videos by the Extra Credits team that I consider very relevant to the topic at hand and really should be discussed more often on this forum.

    Choice in mechanics:


     

    Power creep and balance:


     

    ==============

     

    TL;DR

     

    There is a bunch of worthless mods because of the way mods add damage, the focus on DPS stifles build variety and general variety of mods.

     

    Ammo system is bad and too simplistic, limiting some balancing options.

     

    EDIT: Finally fixed the dark theme thing.

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