[Dear DE, I hate what you've done with the Mandachord. I have some suggestions.]

The Mandachord is the best idea the Warframe team has had in a long time. It really got me excited to try out this new warframe. It is such a wonderful idea.

Sadly, the idea in it's implementation has been ruined.

Instead of making the Mandachord an instrument with which the community could produce things of beauty, you attempted to make a musical system with "no wrong notes". Instead of focusing on giving us tools to express ourselves with music, you tried to create a tool that was impossible to create bad music on. It doesn't work. All the music is bad now, and your F notes are very flat.

Possible reasons you may have thought this was a good Idea, and alternative solutions:

1.

Problem: "People will make bad music and it will be annoying."

Solution: Mute option. If players have a fast and effective recourse against players with annoying music, you have no excuse to not give the players more freedom to create good music. This should be added anyways because right now playing the same pentatonic minor scale over and over in 4 measure sections is pretty bad.

 

2.

Problem: "If you have 2 Octavias in the same spot, what if it sounds bad?"

Solution: First one to place their beat starts playing their song. Beats placed by other Octavias within that song range strengthen the currently playing song, playing along with whatever instruments are equipped in their Mandachord. (Isn't that a much cooler system than we have right now? "Hey we have been here for 15 waves. I am tired of my song. Let's play your song now!")

If you must limit what notes can be played (which I think is a terrible design decision) you could have each of the 4 measures use a different chord theme for the allowable notes. People never get tired of 4 chord loops. Pop songs have been using the same 4 chords for decades. Just make the 4 measures be 4 different chords.

 

3.

Problem: "What if you aren't musically inclined?"

Solution: Import/export to text file. You should do this anyways. People like to share their musical creations. There is already a subreddit for Mandachord compositions.

 

In it's current state, I am very disappointing with the "Mary Had a Little Lamb/Hot Cross Buns" system.

[Energy Drain Is A Bad Mechanic. Here Are Some Alternative Mechanics.]

One of the greatest things about Warframe is customizing your build to fit your play style. You can find a frame with abilities you like, hunt for mods to improve your build, and experiment with new setups. Warframe is like a mix between a shooter, an RPG, and a MOBA. It works beautifully. Until your energy randomly hits 0 and you are playing CoD/L4D in space. Then you find out that If you didn't choose "I want to shoot things with my gun." as your play style, you chose wrong.

 

Here are some mechanics to replace energy drain.

 

Spell Shield:

A shield that blocks an ability. (Linken's Sphere/Banshee's Veil)

 

Dispel:

The ability to cancel the effects of Tenno abilities. Imagine an ancient using a huge AOE skill that cancels your Chaos/Rhino Skin/Snow Globe/Hysteria.

 

Silence:

Block ability use for a short time.

 

 

Sorry if everyone else likes energy drain. It just really annoys me, so I wrote this post. Feel free to ignore it and call me a nooblord. Not necessarily in that order.