Game Feedback

[SnowyGreyish]

Game feedback

 

Hi, I missed my chance at meeting you at Gamescon, heard you liked the feedback you got, so figured I would contribute to that aspect as well. I will describe with my own words how I view things in the game.

 

I’m a mastery rank 12 player. I missed out on getting braton and lato vandal, otherwise maxed all the gear in the game at this time, and I am a Warlord of a 150-player clan.

 

Let’s get it started ^^

 

 

Warframes

 

In general:

The frames look great, although details like banshees shoulder makes them possibly look a bit quirky from time to time. In general they still have an epic feel about them, which can be hard to keep when having characters displayed in cinematic trailers and the in-game experience. I would like to see them a bit more often showcasing the epic warriors they actually are, the always leveling and trying to handle missions tend to diminish that aspect a little.

Ideally the frame’s abilities should be equally considered useful for ppl, but that is generally not the case.

I see energy consumption able to go two ways, modified to stay useful and have high consumption or low energy gain or having less effect and ability spamming to compensate inefficiency. And as the usefulness the energy usage should give according effect. In general 1-ability doesn’t reflect the ¼ energy of the 4-ability, when doing less than 1/50 or 1/100 effect the 4-ability would.

Prime frames are generally harder to get than regular frames, yet not a single ability difference from the “normal”-version, sort of a nice shell, but empty… Didn’t need to be a power buff outright, it could just as well be a slightly different ability or something instead of only giving it an polarity a forma could have done.

There has to be some overpowered things in the game, the frames are depicted to be like that after all.

 

Ash

Many have taken their liking to this frame for his Shuriken and Blade Storm. While the damage may be decent the stealth bit about him is a bit flimsy. While shuriken seems decent enough for his look, although low effect against higher level missions, smoke screen and teleport seems too imitative. Unless you’re standing in a tight grouping smack in the middle and you get the stagger effect, you just have a weak version of Loki’s invisibility. The teleport is too restrictive to be of much use. While new players leveling Ash tend to try out smoke screen and teleport they are instantly thrown out for serving too little purpose. Infamous Blade Storm, people are always hyped about this ability and prays it, while franticly begging for buffs. It has a nice animation, but in terms of use, it’s messy and slow. Mobs awaiting attack fight on exposing your group comparing to other “ults” (4-ability) and the time the animatic takes, ash is absent and attacking mobs individually at a weapon attack rate, then to be returned to a now possible hostile spot.

 

Banshee

Somewhat a joker card, banshee is abstract in her own way. This is one of the frames people love or hate using, and I have to agree, she has her ups and downs. Sonic boom, only used for pushing mobs, the damage is a joke that just functions as filling and might as well not be there. Sonar, Banshee’s trump card and only thing keeping her in use. Still only useful for aoe attacks unless you’re manually shooting everything. The timer and the missing effect to shields makes banshee quite debated, some people talk highly about her but often don’t want to be the one playing her. Silence is pretty much filling, with just too little effect. The odds of sneaking so close to so many mobs that it could be useful is slim and useless for the aspect that stealth approach is not very rewarding. Sound Quake, well, low range, low dmg, crowd control, making banshee a sitting duck while in use, which will last long with no exit. The amplification with sonar to make it compete with other frames makes it spend way more energy than other frames to for the same effect.

 

Ember

The fiery woman in general is pretty weak for armor and after u9.8 gets less defensive boost from fire skin. Fireball is pretty much what you’d expect, still better than most 1-abilities being small aoe with lingering effect. Overheat, Ember’s usual means of survival since her ability 2, 3 and 4 are centered on her location, but also a weakness in the way it can only have an alternative purpose if exposing your weak frame to close proximity to enemies or have enemies running after her. Fire Blast is a blast centered on your location, though I would probably remain convinced it would be a better working ability if it was an aiming ability (aoe at target location) instead, since it would only be competing with world on fire. World on fire is a very debated ability since it can be wide stretching, okay dmg (for medium range mobs), with the 2 drawbacks that it has a long cast time and (and it’s a biggy) only a very few mobs can be affected at a time. Personal opinion: It’s just too few mobs to be affected by the ult of this weak frame, something else should have been reduced like range or time if nerfing was needed.

 

Excalibur/- prime

The offensive ninja that generally feels balanced and a good starter frame, except a bit exposed which the radial blind try to compensate for. Prime should have had a little something to make him stand out from “normal” excel.

 

Frost/- prime

One of the two frames I consider tanks in the game, slow like one as well. He’s one of the stronger frames in the game and I find it justified, since he’s difficult to acquire. Freeze is a weird ability, should be good, but few use it and those that do, do it clumsily. Little dmg and freeze stops before time if you or teammate does regular dmg to the target. I find this ability out of balance. It affected area is too little to do so little dmg and only active afterwards if you’re passive to the target. Ability 2-4 seems balanced to me, even globe since you are restricted to the same rules as the mobs and work on a timer unlike rhino. Prime should have had a little something to make him stand out from “normal” frost (I know there is talk about it having slightly more shield regen, but that still seems like secondary detail).

 

Loki

The stealth and deceit frame. Deceit can be used to some extent in the game for crowd control, but not quite to the extent loki hopes for. Regarding stealth, the game doesn’t have the aspect of gaining enough from being stealthy or doing stealth runs, since you gain enormously less than a gun blazing counterpart.

 

Mag

A general manipulator and dmg frame.  The buff it got at u9.8 was needed, since it was a bit underpowered even though many don’t consider her so. Although her abilities can be great, they can only be if she has a lot of energy available and stay out of harm’s way with her weak health. Shield polarize is a bit impractical when you have to spam while aiming at a moving target. Her bullet attractor has a lot of issues with dmg not being transferred to the mob as well as if shooting the mob without bullet attractor. For instance Acrid have (haven’t tested in the last few updates) been known to not do lingering dmg and only register the immediate dmg.

 

Nova

Just as mag, nova is a weak frame, that is compensated with her abilities. Null star is by concept a cool idea, but when you found out it can’t be recast until you run out of particles and can only attack once per second with 200 dmg, it remains semi useless against mid-high level enemies. Worm hole is okay, but maxed it tends to disappear after 2 uses though it shouldn’t and it is always placed quite high, sometimes barely so you can jump into it. Molecular prime may seem slightly overpowered, but there are several factors that make it different as well, for instance the chain generally need help to start. A strong ability for a weak frame and like frost in general very difficult to acquire.

 

Nyx

It got a needed buff in u9.8, in general the only thing that made people play nyx was her chaos ability, since the rest were lacking usefulness. Mind control seems like a good trick, but the thing is only being able to be active on one at a time makes it too weak. Psychic bolts is just a low-dmg ability and Absorb generally have an issue that to be useful you need to be in great danger which you have low chance of getting into position for before dying, otherwise the dmg is too small to consider and blocks team fire as well.

 

Rhino

A tank by the regular sense, balanced although many have a disposition to his iron skin, regarding pvp or other aspect. Still, if rhino goes into too much trouble his iron skin won’t save him, so for normal pve I have no issues with him, though pvp does have a problem with him having double shield on a tank.

 

Saryn

I do have some mixed emotions about saryn, since her speed and health reflect more her being a tank than a dmg over time frame. She has a very specialized playstyle with her venom, decoy, melee buff and aoe ult, but with ability 2 and 3 sort of passive there is a lot of pressure on ability 1 and 4, meaning they have to bring their A-game to make saryn matter. Miasma seems to pull it off, though even after all this time I still have my doubts about venom.

 

Trinity

The healer frame, for a long time it’s been considered sort of practical having around, but hell no if you want to play it. With no abilities targeting more than 1 mob it’s not made to fight, it’s meant to regen as long as there aren’t that many mobs grouped. With your link dying  very often, you tend to get burned.

 

Vauban

The camper frame. All his abilities are for stationary camping. He’s pretty weak against other factions than infested, you pretty much have to keep everyone in the room under bastille and the energy consumption that follows is insane. Tesla is okay, but you don’t need to go that far up in lvls before they are nothing more than a beesting on the mobs. (No… im not gonna talk about bounce -.-) Bastille might have been nerfed too much in u9.8, something like the time the individual mob could stay affected or similar would possibly have been better. Many will likely stop playing him because of it. Vortex is so small and low dmg it primarily functions as a crowd control instead, for instance to be used by nova’s molecular prime for hard grouping, but it isn’t a great ult.

 

Volt

A frame with a mismatch of abilities. Decent shock, speed boost for a short time, but makes it hard to move about, especially if a teammate triggered it and you were trying to pick something up. Electric shield is more a nuisance than a buff, it messes with your vision and some weapons do less damage than it would without, weapons like acrid only hit for their instant damage, the lingering damage is not transferred to the mob. Overload is your typical aoe ult.

 

 

Helmets/coloring

 

The helmets seem cool and give a practical reason to be used, although there are quite a bit of discussion about not all helmets are near something useful for the specific frame. In general a lot of colors to choose from, but for some reason the intense red range are missing. Many weapons and frames have color choice that do close to or precisely nothing, lato prime is a golden example. It would be cool if you could have a radiating black as well as energy color, at the moment that only gives a pale white.

 

 

Well, that’s it for this time around, might be back at some other time to continue on other categories like;

weapons, missions, bosses, design, lore/tutorial...

[Kyria]

Warframes

 

Ember

The fiery woman in general is pretty weak for armor and after u9.8 gets less defensive boost from fire skin. Fireball is pretty much what you’d expect, still better than most 1-abilities being small aoe with lingering effect. Overheat, Ember’s usual means of survival since her ability 2, 3 and 4 are centered on her location, but also a weakness in the way it can only have an alternative purpose if exposing your weak frame to close proximity to enemies or have enemies running after her. Fire Blast is a blast centered on your location, though I would probably remain convinced it would be a better working ability if it was an aiming ability (aoe at target location) instead, since it would only be competing with world on fire. World on fire is a very debated ability since it can be wide stretching, okay dmg (for medium range mobs), with the 2 drawbacks that it has a long cast time and (and it’s a biggy) only a very few mobs can be affected at a time. Personal opinion: It’s just too few mobs to be affected by the ult of this weak frame, something else should have been reduced like range or time if nerfing was needed.

 

Mag

A general manipulator and dmg frame.  The buff it got at u9.8 was needed, since it was a bit underpowered even though many don’t consider her so. Although her abilities can be great, they can only be if she has a lot of energy available and stay out of harm’s way with her weak health. Shield polarize is a bit impractical when you have to spam while aiming at a moving target. Her bullet attractor has a lot of issues with dmg not being transferred to the mob as well as if shooting the mob without bullet attractor. For instance Acrid have (haven’t tested in the last few updates) been known to not do lingering dmg and only register the immediate dmg.

 

Trinity

The healer frame, for a long time it’s been considered sort of practical having around, but hell no if you want to play it. With no abilities targeting more than 1 mob it’s not made to fight, it’s meant to regen as long as there aren’t that many mobs grouped. With your link dying  very often, you tend to get burned.

 

Vauban

The camper frame. All his abilities are for stationary camping. He’s pretty weak against other factions than infested, you pretty much have to keep everyone in the room under bastille and the energy consumption that follows is insane. Tesla is okay, but you don’t need to go that far up in lvls before they are nothing more than a beesting on the mobs. (No… im not gonna talk about bounce -.-) Bastille might have been nerfed too much in u9.8, something like the time the individual mob could stay affected or similar would possibly have been better. Many will likely stop playing him because of it. Vortex is so small and low dmg it primarily functions as a crowd control instead, for instance to be used by nova’s molecular prime for hard grouping, but it isn’t a great ult.

 

Volt

A frame with a mismatch of abilities. Decent shock, speed boost for a short time, but makes it hard to move about, especially if a teammate triggered it and you were trying to pick something up. Electric shield is more a nuisance than a buff, it messes with your vision and some weapons do less damage than it would without, weapons like acrid only hit for their instant damage, the lingering damage is not transferred to the mob. Overload is your typical aoe ult.

 

(I snipped and butchered your post only to properly reflect which frames I can in fact speak to.) This is spot on! Excellent feedback! :)

[SnowyGreyish]

Weapons

There are more opinions on this subject than any other in the game, so I will only try to cover the most general view of the weapon.

 

 

In general

The weapons generally have a nice feel to them, not to mention their look. At this point in the game, higher mastery levels are reached and nothing more gained beyond rank 7, I would call the top end or even end-game weapons are missing, since most previous top end weapons have been nerfed.

The interrelations between them, well, are a quirky one at best. An opinion I hear often is primaries sort of falling behind side arms in performing, for instance there isn’t much competition from the rifles against a dual vastos, despair or acrid. If I had to pick a weapon to take out a boss, it wouldn’t be a primary. As well the melees are not really putting of a fight against the other weapons, if it wasn’t for the part they didn’t use ammo, they would probably only be used in fashion regard.

 

 

Primaries

For what rifles goes it’s kind a weak. Supra being the only automatic rifle with base damage over 30 and it’s even from the special rifles category and sprays its ammo. Braton is generally thought of as the weak series, only prime trying to break free from that reputation, which still is on the low side. Grakata is shooting peas at the enemies, not sure what that will accomplish. The latrons do decent damage, well, mainly the prime, some have taken that to be their favorite primary, but still not quite the right feeling like a top end weapon for a primary. Hind does seem like a decent weapon, sadly the 5-shot firing is an awkward size, often being too many and ammo consuming or a lot more were needed to begin with.

 

Shotguns are up and competing now with sobek and wraith, also with some weaker starter-shotguns. I’m not much of a shotgun-person, but even I play shotty sometimes. I find them to be working well for the game.

 

The sniper category is an abstract category, high damage with complications. The game doesn’t give many options for putting the sniper scope to use. Nevertheless some people still go for the sniper rifles, ignoring the firing-delay/fire rate and scope, and focus on the high damage per shot.

 

Bows… There are so many opinions about these. Some just love the feel about a bow and can’t argument why someone should use them, others talk about the high base damage and hush when fire rate is mentioned and some say thunderbolt as if it was a trump card. When it comes down to it, a side arm would outperform it, doesn’t have the fire rate to compete with latron/- prime and thunderbolt is kind of a weak way to imitate ogris and… It’s okay. Many just like the feel about aiming the arrow descent and see an arrow go through an enemy’s head.

 

The launchers should be referred to as the special category, because they are, either way two of the three will kill you every now and then. Miter being the only friendly weapon among them, it shoot these blades at, well, a bit low rate and unpredictably, even though it’s been buffed it doesn’t quite deliver compared to what you’d expect when your frame takes a hold of it for the first time. It’s big and cruel looking, but it have the same firing sequence like ogris’s bazooka feel, but with just a blade flying off and hack one mob, maybe two, doesn’t give quite the right feeling in comparison. Ogris is going to kill you, it wants you dead. It has a huge explosion range, meaning keep your distance to the enemy and hope there is enough meters between you and him. And you WILL get killed at some point from a teammate jumping in front of you or jumping onto the spot you’ve retreated to. Torid, the camper launcher, will make sure you won’t catch up with your teammates if not used in a defence or survival mission. You could run past mobs and shooting them behind you so you can run forwards unless they drop loot you want, because then you just have to wait it out.

 

Dera is a cool weapon, it just doesn’t have the damage needed to be top end. Flux is a funny creation although continues, just annoying that the distance it can handle with only 20 base damage per ammo. So the question is if the mag size is enough compensation for the low damage and short range. Ignis [sigh] short range, terrible damage, single targeting, I’ll call this the weakest primary in the game, even the beginner braton is better. Supra the big spray and pray weapon of the game, with gorgon as its little brother, high requirements, mediocre performance and poor ammo efficiency. I ain’t feeling impressed enough when firing it compared to the look of this heavy gun.

 

 

Side arms

Most things do seem balanced in the side arm category even though some possibly will disagree. The most noteworthy I find in the category is the extremely small bronco mag. They have higher damage but with shotgun functionality its range is crucial for it to do the damage anyway. The category otherwise has a broad top and bottom selection of weapons, giving a feel of it being pretty balanced for different play styles.

 

 

Melees

When I think of melees I tend to think that slicing an enemy up would do more damage than a bullet but that’s not quite the case in the game. On the surface some of the melees seem to have decent damage, but when you take into account that they can only be used when standing close enough to shake their hand (few exceptions), general low attack rate and get exposed to melee reactions from enemies makes it feel a bit uneven. The mods for melee have for a long time been quite week, I don’t have to mention when focus energy was released that it had double the electric damage than shocking touch and had speed boost to boot, just to give you a feel about how far behind the melees was compared to other weapons.

There are a couple of abilities the melees can strive in; range, multiple targeting, speed, throw and special effects like stagger and so on. Some lack in almost everything, dark dagger and ceramic dagger are quick examples. Low damage, short range, single targeting with mediocre speed and they can only be gained from doing rare alerts.

The skins are pretty cool, though their use is quite restricted.

 

 

That’s it for this time around, maybe I’ll return another time on another subject…

[SnowyGreyish]

Missions/maps/mission rewards

 

Exterminate type missions seems like a simple safe bet and with the new minibosses coming up soon it’s a good part of the foundation for the game, but with some frames build more towards sneaking through the map stealthily, they don’t get much in reward for using that aspect of the game, I find that to be quite a shame. I hope this will be accommodated in some way in the future to some degree.

 

Raid, spy, capture and sabotage is well functioning for those wanting to sprint-troll the enemy or fight in regularly manner. I would enjoy sabotage more if it had a few more objectives along the route i.e. turn off two control panels to expose the core. A miniboss occasionally trying to stop you from taking the artifact would add another dimension to raid missions.

 

I find Mobile defense generally working well, although going from fighting void mobile defense to void defense is quite a jump in number of enemies, experience gain, well, not to mention the difficulty level. I can solo a void tier3 mobile defense mission, but I would be foolish to attempt a void tier3 defense mission, the difficulty difference is enormous.

 

Survival missions are a fun new style, although you are completely at the mercy of RNG at the beginning of the mission that there are enough enemies to give oxygen drops. I know it was hugely improved by the enemies being less likely not to spawn, but nevertheless the weakest link in the mission, since you don’t have extra oxygen lying about yet.

 

I can see there has been put a lot of work in making sure when the hostage is saved that he does keep up in rescue missions, he is still a weak point in often getting stuck or stopped following until you run a quick circle around her. Even more an issue than normal when new areas are released.

 

Generally I like the structure of the map build ups, though I have quite some issues about the way pointer. Too often it’s pointed in the opposite direction you are supposed to end up. When phobos was released I can’t describe how bad the hostage was screwed trying to follow you through the big mainframe room. If to find the short distance waypoint prevents you from finding your way to the longer waypoint, make two. One waypoint for short distance waypoints like it is now and a waypoint that always are set on the exit of the sector/large rooms or target if it’s in that sector. For instance; on xini there is a tendency for enemies not coming out from a specific spawn and if you follow the route the way pointer tells you, you will get a full tour of the map before you find the missing enemy. We are talking about a way pointer to objective, not a sightseeing guide.

 

The mission rewards are set to an extent, but in some regard it should be set a bit further. For instance getting the cheapest mod after a 50-60 wave defense, doesn’t reflect the effort, if possible the more the effort the better prize generally should likely, you should still be able to get good rewards at first chance, but rarity should improve the more/longer you endure. Just as most long time players have tried getting offered the same prize several times in a row in a defense, maybe not everybody has tried being offered the same prize 8-10 options in a row, in the same game, but nevertheless I have (can’t tell how many precisely it was, because at some point we just stopped counting and tried to ignore it).

 

Some accessible areas in the current tutorial are without texture, for instance the backside of the hanging tenno pod excel falls from.

 

 

Bosses

 

In general

There is a great difficulty difference for the bosses, some just gun ‘em down and walk away, while some are very time consuming and/or difficult to have enough ammo or protection to handle. Sometimes people are not properly prepared for what they are facing, a quick example to show what I’m saying; most players have no idea that kril is damage immune most of the fight and burns ammo at him like it was the end of days. Even those that notice that the cryo pack changes color often still don’t get a feel of him.

I might have a tendency to call some of the bosses simple, that’s mainly regarding their comparison to the difficulty difference to bosses like raptor, kril, ruk, vor, jackal and phorid.

 

Vor

I like this boss, putting up a decent fight, a bit on the stronger side for being the first boss encountered in the game.

 

Jackal

A funny concept with the shockwaves, though it’s extremely ammo consuming if you’re not selective about the weapons used to kill him.

 

Vay Hek

Simple, possibly better suited to be the first boss encountered, for his straightforwardness.

 

Nef Anyo

Simple, yet amusing for his invisibility-walk-off.

 

Golem

I’m going to refrain from commenting since I understand he’s working on finding his inner self.

 

Ruk

Amusing for the difficulty he adds to one player at a time, a pain to solo if you’re not tactical.

 

Kela

Simple, though still a bit tougher because of the higher level in play.

 

Tyl Regor

Simple, but amusing when he’s running after you

 

Raptor

Periods with damage immunity and high damage without pause makes this boss a really tough enemy. I consider him the hardest in the game at this time. When he was released (well, back then he didn’t want to fight and flew off) he was so much stronger than other bosses that many failed if they didn’t bring a frost on the team, even rhinos instantly lost their shields because of the damage.

 

Hyena

The easy version of jackal, can easily kill you if you let your guard down, but without the same defense it’s much easier to handle.

 

Phorid

Except for having an attack that could instant kill you if you were unlucky and got the full blast on the way down to him, the howling generally made you worry about your vulnability, but luckily he rarely does anything in that period. For the actual fighting he is possibly the boss I enjoy the most fighting while avoiding when he goes after you.

 

Kril

I like the concept of how to fight him, though new players have no idea how to handle him if not told in chat by a more experienced player how it’s done. Some experienced players still don’t know about his cryo pack and many more haven’t figured out his damage immunity.

 

Ambulas

Amusing, but a bit simple for a boss.

 

 

That's it this time around, maybe I'll return at some other time on a different subject...

[alocrius]

I recommend you put your addendum's into separate posts in the gameplay feedback forum.  Will be easier to assimilate and comment on for us.