Danjal777

Intro: In a game about sci-fi ninjas, we really don't act like it. We charge in like magical juggernaut sorcerers and lay waste to everything in our missions. For the most part this is fine, but...it really misses the mark on the whole ninja aspect of Warframe. Stealth in this game is clunky mess that can be bypassed easily and you are actually rewarded for doing so. There are two aspects to stealth in this game: Stealth and Finishers. Stealth: DE wants you to play stealthily, but have failed to constrain the Tenno by allowing the toolset we are given to be insanely adaptive and powerful. Then later on when the stealth aspect of the game came into play, we trounced it without difficulty. The reactive measures that were taken completely destroyed stealth as an option, and really didn't remove its exploited elements. What do I mean specifically? How to fix stealth: Step one: Enemies need states: States determine the enemies' priorities and actions, some are positive and some are negative, the chances of negative states applying are higher at low level, as the enemy level increases, the chances that an enemy will panic drops dramatically. There are likewise positive states that will apply more often at higher levels. Universal States: Oblivious, Suspicious, Readied, Confused, Alarmed, Combat and Panicked. Grineer States: Heat Scan and Fanatical. Corpus States: Network Monitor and Incentive Pay. Infested States: Scent and Hunger. Step two: Define stealth attributes in the environment. Stealth attributes: Light, Sound, Scent, Heat, and Void. This will include going back to each tile and placing these attributes within them. This could be a resource intensive process, but then again, a lot of it can auto populated. Step three: Missions where stealth is rewarded. The main reason stealth is used currently is because it gives an affinity bonus. The reason it isn't used for anything else is that it is easier to just face-tank a mission with brute force. The only mission that punishes lack of stealth ends in the whole team failing the mission. With that in mind, we can add missions that are more appropriate. Shadow Warriors: This is an exterminate mission, but the difference is that once a player is spotted, the enemy level jumps up 1-10 levels (scales with mission difficulty). This will happen every time a player is detected and an enemy enter the combat state. Eventually the opposition will be too difficult to defeat. In this mission, the enemies will only attack the player that has been spotted, other players staying stealthy will not be aggressed unless they are spotted (which will be easier if the enemy are in the suspicious or higher states. Rewards are given based on how many enemies were dispatched stealthily and how little the enemy changed their state. So for example. if you enter the mission and use teamwork to assassinate every enemy in the mission with stealth finishers and they remained in the oblivious state, you would get a maximum score. A team that comes in and tries to overtly finish the mission (assuming they survive against lvl 350+ enemies) will get the minimum score. The higher the score the better the rewards are, some of which could be special stealth mods for weapons and Warframes. A perfect score would be difficult in the extreme, but there will be players that will pursue that challenge. Oh you think you can just Loki your way through it? Demon: This is a survival mission, but instead of live support you have to maintain a panic bar. The idea is to terrify the enemy as long as possible, this is done by changing their states without being detected. If you are spotted you will instantly lose a revive and start back at the spawn room. You gain a huge bonus for sending enemies into the panicked state. The longer you go, the higher the enemy levels get. If the panic bar reaches 0 the mission ends and you will be extracted automatically with all of your rewards. The rotations are standard (A,A,B,C) and each rotation is set at 5 minutes, however any enemy that leaves the tile in a panicked state is despawned and it knocks 10 second of the clock. Nekros' terrify ability does not count as panicked, but will make the state easier to achieve on afflicted units. Finally, Step four: Stealth Finishers. Stealth finishers in Warframe are great for when it was made...but it is something else now. As such it need to evolve. Current finishers are sloppy and "clicky" forcing your Warframe to snap into position to deliver the animation and then pop back. For finishers, the enemies are the anchors, instead of the player. 1. The first thing that needs to change is the enemy needs to become ragdolled and brought to the player as the anchor. So this would look like the Warframe stepping in, breaking a knee with a kick, throwing the enemy to the ground and burying a knife in them. 2. The next thing is that stealth finisher and stealth head shots are ALWAYS lethal, they instantly kill the target. In Warframe most enemies we engage are fodder, they should be dispatched as such. 3. Tough enemies have 1-5 blue circles under their health bar representing toughness points. If an enemy with one of these if stealth killed they lose the dot instead of their lives and manage to push away the player's attack. Extremely tough high level enemies will be extremely hard to take down with stealth alone. A stealth head shot will only apply once per enemy. 4. More than one player can stealth kill at the same time. An Ash Stealth kills from the back, while Banshee drops down and attacks from the front within a small vulnerability window to team assassinate the target. Extremely tough targets may take the whole team to take down in one move. 5. Bosses and mini bosses have gold circles under their health bar. This means they have to have their health bark brought to 0 upon which they become staggered and are open to a finisher, the stagger lasts three seconds and if the players fail to initiate a stealth kill, the boss will get back up with half of their health bar. Some bosses could have up to 20 (Sortie level assassinations). 6. Give weapons stealth attributes, dual daggers can stealth kill two enemies within 2m of each other. Daggers have a .5 second finisher on average. Nikana's have a 50% chance to prompt a second finisher on the same target, but is flashy and takes about 4 seconds one average. Blade and Whips can initiate stealth kills from 10m away. Taking a step further, apply special treatment to weapons that don't get a lot of love. Ether weapons always deal 2 toughness points to infested. Heat weapons leave the enemy a burnt corpse after a stealth kill, enemies seeing this sight while investigating will be 20% more likely to become panicked. Dark weapons disintegrate enemies on a stealth kill. 7. Create a stealth kill power that each Warframe can perform, usually based on their first power, these are prompted by pressing for the "x" and the "1" key on oblivious enemies and you have to hold it down while it activates. Most of these have to be done within 1m, though some can be done from further away. All Warframe stealth kills increase the chance for the panicked state to be activated. These are very flashy and take a few seconds to complete and the camera will move into dramatic positions like a diet cutscene. Here are some examples (screw it, I'll do a bunch of them):

This is a good step in the right direction, I was truly afraid it all fell on deaf ears, but seeing the GOTL put to rest is a good thing. While it was made with the purest intentions, it, for some, became an elite exclusive club. I have had a few very uncomfortable encounters with certain individuals who lashed out at at me harshly for asking about how to join. For a program based on merit, allowing newer players to thank help directly is a massive improvement than an arbitrary fraternal order. The discord is huge too, allowing another chat room to masquerade as the official place to speak, once again started off innocent, but once that power was solidified and harness was abused to the extreme. It is an immensely wise choice to set the stage for your own words to be put on display. Finally, I feel that setting up an automated message similar to the trade chat's that notifies you what you were banned for and how long. Not to cater to idiots online, but once again because you are professionals, and transparency is crucial to discipline. In the least it should lessen support tickets from chat ban spam, at its greatest, it will actively display the things that will get your speaking privileges revoked and provide immediate feedback on proper behavior. -Danjal777

He has some valid points... I know the developers are hard at work making a game and the idea of spending any resources on unruly players in region seems silly, but this is just another example of half cooked projects in WF. Why isn't there an automated message? You made one for trade chat that tells you how long until you can post again. Would it be that hard to do the same for these chat bans? Don't get me wrong, I am not the type to mess around in region chat, but my sense of Justice is seriously jarred by the "punishment does not fit the crime" draconian tactics in the part of the game. A couple Christmas' ago one of the Devs went on a ban-a-thon while the office was empty. This person went as far to punish those people a second time for posting about it in the forums, which is dangerous territory. The faster that control is taken away and given to a third party, the better off this community will be.

There is far more to look at in this vein of thinking. Namely the momentum effects of high mobility Warframe abilities, for example, Rhino's charge ends in a complete stop, when it should be increasing him to max sprint speed, hell go a step further and have him proc a Heavy Impact when collides with terrain that stops him. There are a ton instances like this, and Warframe is a game that grants near total freedom of movement, so maybe these outdated abilities should be reviewed as well.

This. Always. Happens. Come on guys, keep your composure, no one is going to come in here and have a conversation with substance if we keep acting like children. Triggered. I get it, this subject is hot on some people's minds because it feels personal. Nezha is a Warframe, the original person who it was made from was male. This Warframe wouldn't exist if not for Chinese Warframe, the Chinese LOVE their mythology and the heroes within. So they made him look that way, cool, he is effeminate. I am a heterosexual Caucasian male. In almost every game there is a representation of my race and gender. Its kinda cool how much effort is given in this game to show different body types and hints at their personalities. I wish they would keep doing this, but care must be made to distance the Warframes from our very real lives. When these things were made, there were much bigger problems then trying to figure out where on a gender spectrum/web you lied. Nope, they actually feared being persecuted, and tortured in a very real and final way. So how does this get dealt with? If you want Warframes to be characters, then we need to be able to get to know who they were much better, a la Umbra. Until this happens they will continue to be a mirror for players to fill with their own image. This cyclical argument that always comes up...its exhausting to read and it stems from two simple facts. The word "trap" has different meanings. In anime culture it is a very effeminate character that you instantly assume is female and are led to believe this until the reveal is made, making the straight male suddenly have to question their sexuality, as this arena of thought is fair game in Asia. As these concepts migrate to our shores, we then must wrestle with it as well. How do most people deal with things they are uncomfortable with? Humor, even if it is poorly executed. This is further layered by our own modern internet culture. On the other side in LBGT culture, a trap is a derogatory term for someone who is intentionally trying to mimic a female to sleep with straight males. This may seem harmless but is the primary fuel in homophobia, as straight males are worried they will approached and hit on by another male. Worse still, this has led to violence on people in these situations even when that person has in no way attempted to trick anyone into a sexual encounter they didn't want. These two concepts are where our friction lies. You can believe whatever you want, but the Devs have stated they don't want any this bullS#&$ on their platform and that's that. However.... You're not off the hook either DE, all this "trap"speak is just a distraction for the real issue at hand. I get that you are trying your best to make a video game, and making a video game has nothing at all to do with chat moderation, so bringing in some people to help out was a good idea. Then they got rowdy and made some people upset (I have had uncomfortable moments with one of the "4 horsemen" which is alias I will use to describe the people that sparked this whole debacle). At some point you will need to make changes, and I can see that you have some things, but its the weird stuff that is pissing off the guys who keep bringing it up. Why are the 4 horsemen still out there? Why did it take until THIS MONTH for one of them to finally change their name? (I actually met her and added her as a friend, kindness can go a long way, especially with someone on the defensive. she seemed nice.) You don't owe me anything. I have reached out to you before and was struck down by callousness, that event will forever paint you in what I assume are your true colors. However, you can't have this game and your quality of life while let your community sour like this. Maybe a community spotlight, introduce the 4 horsemen, put their history out there and have them write an apology to the community, take away whatever power you have given them, there are plenty of ways to address this issue, but turning your nose up at it is not one of them and this whole business is what happens, and it will continue to sour and spread. As an NCO in US Army, I have learned some things, and one of the most important lessons is: -Bad news gets worse with time. Sincerely, The voice of one of 14 million registered losers.

Not to be rude, but you need to do something inbetween these updates. That is one of the very few things that have kept Warframe alive: a constant trickle of content releases. I mean grab a few people and put them to work on special bite sized projects and have them build up in a buffer so that you can release something. Ideas: -Special mission events (All Lancer mission with special drops, a new mod, lancer-esque cosmetic items). -Rework the mechanics on old weapons that no one uses, (heat weapons actually heating up as the combo counter rises, pangolin sword providing a thorns effect). -New Wraith, Vandal, Mara, etc. weapons...I mean come on it's a reskin and some adjusted stats with maybe some sound work. There is so much content that is in the game that is essentially wasted, put that stuff to work, get your money's worth and really make your weapons 'pop'. Why do I have a Magnus, Lex, Lato, and Vasto? They are so close to the same weapon that they are irrelevant. My advice, take it or leave it, is keep people engaged, or they go find things that will.

Suda doesn't really care about anything but data acquisition, and Hexis are too busy trying to reinvent the purpose of Tenno. The real power players are Perrin, they got the cash and the know-how.

Relay is destroyed..."Wow guys, that was intense you wanna rebuild it?" "Hell yeah, but first lets take a rest" *Three years later* "Yawn, I feel like we're forgetting something...Oh yeah, remember that relay that blew up three years ago, lets finally get around to that" Tenno: Masters of procrastination.