Recasting...

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 hour ago, Elementalos said:

What I'm saying is that if "Press a button every 30-70 seconds" with nothing else to monitor, manage or consider other than that timer is the best gameplay an ability can offer... maybe that ability shouldn't exist.

Then you've missed the point of this argument.

Maybe the ability shouldn't exist, that's honestly fine with me, maybe it shouldn't exist in that form. The fact that the ability is boring is not the point, we know it's not engaging.

The point of the argument is whether or not that ability should become even more boring and non-engaging by having an automatic recast as long as you have the energy for it. Which is just plain not going to happen.

I'm not protecting the abilities themselves, I'm pointing out that they have timers because they're supposed to end and that recasting is one of the balances above and beyond the energy cost, to make sure you're playing the game overall. I'm pointing out that not paying attention to your recasts and getting too involved with only one aspect of the game is not conducive to better play, because the abilities and their timers are all part of the game too, is just tunnel vision on only one aspect of the game. And I'm pointing out that wanting to skip pressing an ability button to maintain something, as the bare minumum of cost to getting these buffs already, is just lazy.

Now if the abilities were interactive in the real sense, like a lot of the augments are, where active play extends them, adding seconds on for every kill you make, then they would be actual maintainable and interactive abilities that you didn't fire and forget. And that would also be fine.

But static buffs exist, and because there is no other cost to them, they also have to end. Timing might not come into the equation when you're casting them to gain some additional effect, but timing and awareness does come into how you prevent yourself from dying when your ability ends by using mobility, CC or just cover to make sure that you can recast safely. When they have some element of scaling or maintainability that costs extra, like Chroma's buffs where you have to take damage to attain the actual buffs as the main cost, then they give you the function where you can re-cast before the ability is over, maintaining the ability without having to pay the additional cost over again.

Again, the abilities and what they do isn't in question, they're all boring and un-interactive, and I even made sure to point out that the ones that are being listed as examples of 'interactivity' are still only interactive to the point of timing your cast, with some interactivity on the Augmented versions admittedly, and the buffs they give are still reliant on your paying attention to a timer or even a percentage number to tell when your ability is going to end. If that were an argument, then having the timing to say that, at the end of the forty second cast of Shatter Shield, I should be ready to clear the room with Peacemaker, or duck behind a pillar, and time my recast for when I'm least likely to be affected by the enemy, is just as interactive. In the game-play sense at least.

What's in question is whether there should be an incredibly lazy function implemented that would remove any actual interaction that's there from the necessity to recast it every so often.

[Teridax68]

46 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Your whole argument is based off the idea that it somehow isn't part of the design, and that simply isn't true.

Then you have not even understood the first thing of what I've said. I have never denied that timer management exists in the current game. If you define the current game as the game's design, then sure, timer management is part of the current game's design. However, what I take issue with is the question that timer management is part of the game's intended design: you keep on pretending that the developers intentionally want to force players to keep looking at their timers and making sure they don't expire, despite a total lack of supporting evidence, even after such evidence was requested multiple times. Moreover, even if a developer did go out and claim that they intended for players to engage in that sort of tediousness, that would still not automatically exempt it from challenge. Once upon a time, the developers refused to let Vacuum become a mod for anything other than Carrier/Carrier Prime, and even after that happened, they initially refused to let pets have an equivalent mod as well... yet here we are, and now all companions have either Vacuum or Fetch.

46 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Moreover the basic idea behind the argument is that you can't be bothered to recast an ability once every thirty or forty seconds yourself. Your problem isn't a lack of interactivity, it's laziness, and your idea for 'solving' something that is putting in a way to be even lazier.

Well hey, if it isn't the "it's not the devs' fault for making a bad mechanic, it's the players' fault for being bad" argument. That excuse only works if making an effort contributes to a better gameplay experience: Dark Souls' difficulty is a large part of its atmosphere and gameplay, which becomes all the better for it, which is why players are expected to get good to be able to play it. By contrast, properly managing one's timers doesn't create this amazing gameplay experience, it's just a bit of tedium to a game that has many ways to legitimately keep the player engaged. Tell me, then, why is it bad for players to be lazy and ask to not deal with timer management?

46 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Your examples cite an interactivity with the initial casting as being the way to make the ability more interactive, and even @Gurpgork has joined you on that, and I have not denied that these are slightly more interactive. But they are still, at base, non-interactive buffs once you've achieved them that you have to pay attention to a number in the corner of the screen in order to utilise them properly, and then you have to recast them after or you don't gain the benefit.

And? So first off, you are blatantly wrong, because both Warding Halo and Covenant do indeed provide interactive buffs, e.g. the close-range Slash procs and the bonus crit on headshot, but even in the case of a non-interactive effect like Iron Skin, the health buffer is a reward for good gameplay: if the player comboed properly and timed their Iron Skin right, they'll get a huge health buffer that'll basically make them immortal, and that's okay, because in order to get that they had to engage in some genuinely interesting gameplay. By contrast, Shatter Shield features no such gameplay. Once more, you are attempting to draw parallels that simply do not exist, and so grasping at straws.

46 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

If the timing of that cast is the only interactive part, then that's a very poor example of interactivity.

... why? Why is an interactive effect a poor example of interactivity?

46 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Abilities, even non-interactive ones, have to have an end to them, a balance to make sure that the player is not just tunnel-visioning. If you forget your timers or percentages, there are consequences, and that is the direct cost of having a period of, say, 95% damage reduction.

... why? Again, this is patently wrong, because warframes all have passives now, which are always on, and abilities like Baruuk's Serene Storm can technically last forever. Once again, all of this is hogwash you are trying to pass off as some official design principle.

46 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

So no, the game-play of something like Shatter Shield or Turbulence wouldn't change if you made the duration a little shorter or longer, but that's not the point of any of this. The point is that you just don't want the inconvenience of having to recast something because you think that's boring.

Okay, and now we're getting a little closer to it. 

46 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

That the ability is un-interactive is not in question. That you're not interacting with the game as a whole is.

Uh, no, that isn't, that is simply you trying to frame this issue in terms of blaming players, in this case me, for what is ultimately a game design problem. Moreover, the accusation you are levying here is deliberately false, as I have stated on numerous occasions, as have several other players now in this thread, that I don't want to deal with this inconvenience precisely because there are many more aspects to the game I'd like to interact with instead, mainly because they are legitimately interactive. I'd love to dedicate my full attention to parkouring, shooting, and using my abilities at precise moments for a precise effect then and there, without dying at random just because my "Press X to not die" ability expired after I didn't press it once every 60 seconds. Once again, trying to derail valid game feedback by trying to pin the blame on players is a rotten attitude to display on a game's feedback forums, and your posts here have not contributed positively in any way to this discussion.

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

The point of the argument is whether or not that ability should become even more boring and non-engaging by having an automatic recast as long as you have the energy for it. Which is just plain not going to happen.

It seems you are the one who missed the point of the argument, then, because this is simply an issue you made up on the spot, which no-one else brought up. It also seems the mask has finally dropped: your issue isn't whether or not these timer abilities are part of DE's grand design, but that you personally reject the very idea of those abilities recasting automatically, because you personally find that mechanic boring. Effectively, you are asking to deny everyone a mild amount of extra optional convenience just because of your own personal preferences. 

Quote

I'm not protecting the abilities themselves, I'm pointing out that they have timers because they're supposed to end and that recasting is one of the balances above and beyond the energy cost, to make sure you're playing the game overall.

Says who? Literally when and where has this been said by any member of Digital Extremes ever? It is worth noting that you have now been asked several times to furnish this claim you've repeated with evidence, yet you have continued to do no such thing. As such, your assertion here cannot be construed as anything other than a lie, and a self-serving one at that in view of your other posts.

Edited January 20, 2019 by Teridax68

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

It seems you are the one who missed the point of the argument, then, because this is simply an issue you made up on the spot, which no-one else brought up.

It's the topic of the thread.

On 2019-01-01 at 9:02 AM, punipunichen said:

Hey, Could we have auto recasting based on duration and depletion?

Sorry to drag you back again puni.

[Teridax68]

2 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

It's the topic of the thread.

Sorry to drag you back again puni.

Please point out any part of the OP that relates to the following:

2 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

The point of the argument is whether or not that ability should become even more boring and non-engaging by having an automatic recast as long as you have the energy for it.

Because the OP commented in no way on how auto-recasts would be boring or non-engaging, or how it would compare in those respects to manual recasting. You introduced that topic, and so as a means to attempt to shift responsibility from the developers to the players, and blame the latter for being "lazy" and not enjoying a pointless, tedious layer of timer management that just so happens to be the byproduct of being able to cast long-duration steroids with no downtime or meaningful resource cost.

[Birdframe_Prime]

Just now, Teridax68 said:

Because the OP commented in no way on how auto-recasts would be boring or non-engaging, or how it would compare in those respects to manual recasting. You introduced that topic, and so as a means to attempt to shift responsibility from the developers to the players, and blame the latter for being "lazy" and not enjoying a pointless, tedious layer of timer management that just so happens to be the byproduct of being able to cast long-duration steroids with no downtime or meaningful resource cost.

No, the OP wanted a function that was exactly what I described, a way to forget recasting entirely and have it happen automatically because they, self professed, find it difficult to manage their timers.

Your arguments, no matter what you're trying to justify, are just supporting the idea of forgetting your buffs entirely for as long as you have energy, with automatic recasts as the duration is ending, just like a macro function. Something that DE have worked for years to stamp out (unsuccessfully, yeah, but that doesn't negate the effort).

The shift from devs to players only came when it became apparent that you simply feel that the basic logic of having a duration is unnecessary and that the specific method that DE implemented in the game already that allows you to toggle an ability on and forget (Drain) is not good enough. Not even stopping to consider that the reason Drain isn't good enough is because it also falls under the basic premise that we aren't supposed to maintain any of our buffs passively for longer than they want us to without some kind of input. Any kind of input. Even if that input is the most basic of basics like pressing the button once after the ability ends.

In short, when you flat out dismissed the idea that this is all deliberate, and stated that it's completely unnecessary, the only conclusion I could make is that you just want the lazy option.

Not all buffs are equal, not all buffs are engaging, and not all of them are interactive. That's still not in doubt, we all know it.

But the fact that we're supposed to actively maintain them, even if that 'activity' is just a button press, is not going to change.

If, as I said before, you can come up with viable reworks for all the buff abilities that make them interactive, make maintaining them part of the game's other functions instead of on a timer? Then come back to me, I'm not above actually reviewing ideas and discussing whether they would work.

But this idea, for basically just fire and forget, is exactly what DE have been discouraging for years. They put Drains on abilities that are too easily maintained, like Valky'rs Hysteria (literally the stated reason for the change was it was too easy to maintain invulnerability as a Duration cast) and they put shorter durations on abilities they consider too powerful to last as long as they did before, like Limbo's Stasis after it was made less inhibiting to a team and more powerful overall.

If, however, those same buffs needed to be maintained by something other than energy cost or a duration cast, if you turned on Hysteria and you drained Health instead of Energy, and you had to use the claws Life Steal to maintain it consistently... or if Shatter Shield gained Duration by successful redirected damage, or if Turbulence required Airborne distance travelled to charge up, maybe if World on Fire charged up its damage over time by counting up a multiplier from all the Fire damage you dealt with your weapons and other abilities?

That's the reason that some of the abilities are recastable before their duration ends in the first place. The additional gameplay inputs, the costs attached to the ability, are such that they're deemed able to maintain nearly indefinitely if you have that energy to spend. But if you don't maintain them with the base recast as well? Then you're not paying the actual cost of that ability in order to maintain it.

So by that logic, if you made the costs for the buffs actually more in-depth, then in theory you could negate the recast cost as well.

Any of these methods would work, which would also promptly negate the need for an 'automatic recast', and would fall far more into the interactivity section of functional buffs.

But that's not the case right now. Flat buffs, with only an energy cost and duration on them, are throughout the game, they are managed by timers, and that's because the recast is part of the limitation on us as players with how much we can sustain our buffs without input.

Unless they're all given a way to sustain through input that isn't the recast, then the recast will stay. And in any case, the request for automatic recasts without player input will still be the lazy option.

[Teridax68]

32 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

No, the OP wanted a function that was exactly what I described, a way to forget recasting entirely and have it happen automatically because they, self professed, find it difficult to manage their timers.

Where did the OP state they "find it difficult to manage their timers"? Do you have any supporting quotes? At the end of the day, you were asked to furnish your claims with evidence on multiple occasions, and each and every time you have conspicuously failed to do so. Instead, you have preferred to repeat yourself, accuse other players of being lazy or unskilled, and outright lie in your attempts to derail conversation. Fact of the matter is, nothing you have said is true, nothing you have said is supported by even a shred of evidence, and nothing you have said even remotely comes close to disproving the fact that timer management minigames in Warframe are poor design, shouldn't be in the game, and may as well be resolved with a macro, one that can already be installed from a third party.

 

[UseNet]

17 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Fact of the matter is, nothing you have said is true, nothing you have said is supported by even a shred of evidence, and nothing you have said even remotely comes close to disproving the fact that timer management minigames in Warframe are poor design, shouldn't be in the game

Minimise it all you like but it's not a minigame, it's a core part of Warframes gameplay. Energy management, ability management go hand in hand. It's been like that since the game released public.

[Teridax68]

2 minutes ago, UseNet said:

Minimise it all you like but it's not a minigame, it's a core part of Warframes gameplay. Energy management, ability management go hand in hand. It's been like that since the game released public.

... except if Energy management were a thing, timer management would itself cease to exist, as the latter only exists when abilities can be cast for 100% uptime, and thus in the absence of the former. As such, timer management certainly isn't "a core part of Warframes (sic) gameplay", as the game was not originally designed to trivialize Energy expenditure. Your statement here has little relevance to the topic of discussion, and is also self-contradictory.

[UseNet]

6 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Thus, with you claiming that Energy management was meaningful, I made the (incorrect) assumption that you simply had not reached a stage of the game yet where it stops being that way, as no veteran player in their right mind holds Energy management to be meaningful there.

Some veteran players will purposely run negative efficiency to minmax a build to it's highest potential. Just because you yourself don't value your energy doesn't mean other players wont value theirs.

14 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

So just because melee weapons once gave significant forward momentum meant the developers intended for coptering to be a deliberate design feature? Just because Grineer Shipyard Interception has a tiny distance between points, this means that the developers intended for pre-SotR Draco to be the optimal way of leveling frames? Just because Trinity could abuse self-damage to give her team 99% damage reduction, this means that the developers intended for her to make her team permanently immortal? Spoiler alert, the answer to all of these is "no": a feature certainly existed that led to a certain behavior appearing, but that behavior was not DE's intent. Even in the case of features that were intended, such as Nervos, Stamina, limited revives, etc., those were also cut, simply because DE changed their mind. As such, whether or not something exists in the current game is utterly irrelevant to whether or not it should be in the game, and frequently says nothing about the developers' intent when the topic in question is emergent behavior, as is the case for timer management. In any case, it is also utterly asinine to argue that something should stay simply because it currently exists, in a game that's in a constant state of flux. So tell me again, what exactly is valid about your argument here?

Are you actually going to compare a core gameplay feature to a physics bug and say that are the same thing? Or compare poor level design with added powercreep to a core gameplay feature? Or compare a poorly implemented warframe ability set to a core gameplay feature? (BTW i main Trinity and back in the day you didn't even need to self damage to achieve full damage immunity. Just fyi. 200+ rounds in derelict defence were a cakewalk.)

To say that it was not DE's intent to have a time limit on abilities is completely silly.

 

21 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Elitist BS... where? You also don't really get to pretend like you were polite or respectful when you post this kind of tripe:

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

... except if Energy management were a thing

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

Your statement here has little relevance to the topic of discussion, and is also self-contradictory.

Maybe this elitist BS, where you claim that my addition to this thread has little relevance to the topic, when i am in fact directly referencing the thread topic. Commenting on the topic of recasting. And it is not self-contradictory, except in your own head. Or maybe the '...' at the start of your post, which is used when a person is being condescending. Don't play games, everyone knows what '...' means.

30 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

your arguments are utterly devoid of value, and add nothing new to this conversation except needlessly antagonize people.

I mean that sounds like the pot calling the kettle black. Seeing how you are just repeating yourself thinking that energy management is a non issue, when in fact it's just a non issue for YOU and the minority of veterans that don't have to worry about such things anymore, and instead merely worry about having to push a X amount of times per match. 😄

38 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Judging by your post history, this appears to be the norm with you, rather than the exception. Go troll somewhere else.

If your concept of trolling is participating in thread discussions and occasionally having a laugh with forum'ers, then sure i guess i'm trolling. Or perhaps you just don't like that a person has an opposing opinion. As for my post history, if you actually go have a read you'll find it's tame by most veteran forum user standards. In fact at least half of the posts in my history are helping players. The three posts that might be considered 'trolling' are me, telling a forum poster that his thread title and description are useless and i'm unable to help them. Commenting on a necro'd rage thread. And having a poke at a player for playing Warframe in windowed mode.

Ooooh i'm such a horrible troll though right?

This all could have been avoided had you refrained from telling me that my original statement has no relevance to the thread. Bravo for derailing this thread.

[punipunichen]

4 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Sorry to drag you back again puni.

LOL no prob... I seriously sux at counting in my head while doing ninja stuff... that's why I have such a hard time doing Loki Perv-Pics-Run on Exterminate on Pluto to max Affinity for  Sephlon Pervert... I can never hide on time... before I get caught, and mess up my stelth... ending up maving to mass kill everything anyways... such barbaric way for doing peeping tom mission... too bad Sephlon Pervert Isn't Necrophilia... otherwise it'd be easy...

[Teridax68]

5 hours ago, UseNet said:

Some veteran players will purposely run negative efficiency to minmax a build to it's highest potential. Just because you yourself don't value your energy doesn't mean other players wont value theirs.

But even with this negative efficiency, Energy management is still trivial, again due to the aforementioned factors. Just because a handful of people run negative Efficiency builds, and refuse to use any of the methods that trivialize Energy management, does not mean Energy management isn't trivialized at higher levels by all of those things. Moreover, if these people are struggling to even cast abilities, they're not going to be managing timers, because they won't consistently have the Energy to keep 100% uptime on their abilities. Again, I am having trouble seeing why you are insisting upon this kind of situation when this is the very kind of situation that does not involve timer management.

Quote

Are you actually going to compare a core gameplay feature to a physics bug and say that are the same thing? Or compare poor level design with added powercreep to a core gameplay feature? Or compare a poorly implemented warframe ability set to a core gameplay feature? (BTW i main Trinity and back in the day you didn't even need to self damage to achieve full damage immunity. Just fyi. 200+ rounds in derelict defence were a cakewalk.)

Momentum on weapons was not a "physics bug", it was a feature, one that was simply being used in a way the developers did not intend. Moreover, your argument here completely falls apart, as you are expecting me to take you up on the double standard you are setting between supposed poor design or implementation, and timer management, which is supposedly a "core gameplay feature": these features you are dismissing are features nonetheless, and existed in the game, to say nothing of the features I mentioned that were fully intentional and were still changed. Tell me, why does timer management have special status in all this?

Quote

To say that it was not DE's intent to have a time limit on abilities is completely silly.

Agreed, but to claim that timer management, i.e. the constant activation of those timed abilities to maintain 100% uptime, is "a core gameplay feature", and an intended part of the game's design, is itself "completely silly". I am by no means denying that abilities have limited durations and that this is intended by the developers; I am, however, not going to believe that the resulting emergent timer management minigame is also intended unless I see evidence (which you haven't provided), and even if such evidence were provided, it would still be irrelevant as to whether that feature deserves to continue to exist, as noted by the many other intended features in the game that were cut or changed.

Quote

Maybe this elitist BS, where you claim that my addition to this thread has little relevance to the topic, when i am in fact directly referencing the thread topic. Commenting on the topic of recasting. And it is not self-contradictory, except in your own head. Or maybe the '...' at the start of your post, which is used when a person is being condescending. Don't play games, everyone knows what '...' means.

This is grasping at straws. Punctuation is not elitist, nor is pointing out the irrelevance of your posts to the subject matter (particularly after one of your posts got removed entirely from this thread). You don't get to lecture me on playing games when your literal previous post (which has now been deleted) tried to finagle on semantics by pretending that your own attitude in this argument has been perfectly acceptable, simply because your personal attacks were supposedly levied at my posts rather than myself.

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I mean that sounds like the pot calling the kettle black. Seeing how you are just repeating yourself thinking that energy management is a non issue, when in fact it's just a non issue for YOU and the minority of veterans that don't have to worry about such things anymore, and instead merely worry about having to push a X amount of times per match. 😄

Except when I have said so I have provided examples. Moreover, this in itself is evidence that you have been completely beside the subject matter yet again, as timer management is a problem that exclusively affects people who don't have to worry about "such things" as Energy management (and they're not a minority either). This may sound to you like the pot calling the kettle black, but mostly because you are parroting my criticisms back at me, in a manner devoid of context or substantiation, in the hope they'll stick.

Quote

If your concept of trolling is participating in thread discussions and occasionally having a laugh with forum'ers, then sure i guess i'm trolling. Or perhaps you just don't like that a person has an opposing opinion. As for my post history, if you actually go have a read you'll find it's tame by most veteran forum user standards. In fact at least half of the posts in my history are helping players. The three posts that might be considered 'trolling' are me, telling a forum poster that his thread title and description are useless and i'm unable to help them. Commenting on a necro'd rage thread. And having a poke at a player for playing Warframe in windowed mode.

Ooooh i'm such a horrible troll though right?

This all could have been avoided had you refrained from telling me that my original statement has no relevance to the thread. Bravo for derailing this thread.

So... your terrible behavior on this thread is my fault now? Are you really trying to tell me that the valid criticism I made of your irrelevant posts is somehow worthy of responses so non-contributive and vitriolic that they had to be removed from this thread? Just... no. As said before, you should perhaps try another thread, as your attempts to troll here have so far been rather ineffective.

Edited January 21, 2019 by Teridax68

[5H4DE]

How about they also add a specter mode that you can turn on so your game plays itself for you? If you can't even be bothered to keep track of your own buffs I think you're better off playing mobile games, they play themselves for you, no need for any meaningful input from the player.

[Tiltskillet]

As long as they exist in this form, I'd be against auto-recasting of abilities.  It's small, almost minute, but I do get a bit of engagement from keeping track of  timers. 

That being said, I really, really dislike abilities where timer management is nearly the only interactive thing about them.   With only four abilities, we shouldn't have any low-engagement "fillers".

Mesa drives me nuts because I love her theme,  but two of her four are fillers.  Plus one interactive but near worthless ability, and a fun, powerful, but relatively low-input ultimate.  Peacemaker, and Mesa herself, would hold up a lot better for me if there were more engagement in her 2 and 3, and/or her 1 had a better role in her kit.

[Birdframe_Prime]

18 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Where did the OP state they "find it difficult to manage their timers"? Do you have any supporting quotes?

Funnily enough, yes, because I was actually having the discussion with them before this:

On 2019-01-10 at 2:47 AM, punipunichen said:

yeah... I just can't multitask that well with timing... will work on that...

On 2019-01-17 at 6:49 PM, punipunichen said:

there is just so many things happening, I still to this day can't keep my stacking for five minutes! I always forget!

But yeah, you keep lobbying for the lazy, even less interactive option, because that's all you're doing now.

Rather than take me up on the offer to actually come up with ways to make the buffs and abilities interactive, you'd rather just put on a macro.

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Funnily enough, yes, because I was actually having the discussion with them before this:

Which was not in the original post, and wasn't part of the original poster's demands, but simply arose later as a result of you derailing the topic. Once again, you are grasping at straws here in an attempt to obfuscate people able to take a look at the timestamped, chronological order of this discussion. Try again.

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

But yeah, you keep lobbying for the lazy, even less interactive option, because that's all you're doing now.

Gladly! Meanwhile, you can continue trying to put everyone but yourself down for being "lazy", in a feeble and elitist attempt to make yourself come across as somehow more enlightened, all while deliberately ignoring the legitimate reasons people have given for wanting such a macro. 🙂

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Rather than take me up on the offer to actually come up with ways to make the buffs and abilities interactive, you'd rather just put on a macro.

I'm sorry, what? Is this opposite day or something? Because my very first post on this thread said this:

On 2019-01-19 at 12:09 AM, Teridax68 said:

With this in mind, providing such a macro is largely inconsequential (people who'd be looking for one would obtain it one way or another), and if DE really wants people to not simply AFK win their games, they need to update their design so that their abilities never boil down to passive buffs with potentially 100% uptime. Chroma's Vex Armor is a prominent example of an ability whose gameplay absolutely does not come from its reactivation, as it may as well apply permanently and provide equal or better gameplay, and similar steroids exist in the form of abilities like Mesa's Shatter Shield, Trinity's Link, and even Nezha's Fire Walker (which got changed from a toggle to a duration effect because constant Energy drains disable regeneration, and players often forgot to turn the ability off entirely and caught themselves out of Energy at random moments). Octavia herself is a frame entirely made up of duration-based deployables, and there would be no meaningful difference in her gameplay if all of them just had infinite uptime (which I think says more about Octavia herself than ability design in general).

By contrast, abilities like Trinity's Blessing (when used to save allies), Harrow's Condemn, or Mesa's Peacemaker are all abilities that genuinely feel fun to use, because deciding when to cast these abilities is itself a meaningful decision (you can't use these abilities literally nonstop, except with Peacemaker, and even then you slow yourself down drastically). Even in the case of always-on abilities like Rhino's Iron Skin, Frost's Snow Globe, Nezha's Warding Halo, there is a meaningful timing component there, because casting those abilities at the right moment nets the player a bonus to the effect's strength (plus Frost can also case 3 to freeze enemies and deal a surprisingly large amount of damage). Thus, there are already examples in-game of how abilities can change to not simply devolve into timer management minigames, which are generally tedious more than truly engaging or fun.

Your immediate response to that same post was the following:

On 2019-01-19 at 6:56 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

Don't get us wrong, we do sympathise.

But remember that DE does have a system that allows you to press the button and then continue without active recasting.

And that's Drain. Which is a terrible system, would ruin the modding for Chroma by forcing him onto Duration and Efficiency if he wanted to maintain his buffs without losing all his energy, and even then a simple Magnetic proc from an Eidolon or even a door trap would completely remove his ability anyway, while the Duration version carries on after that allowing you to get your energy back. It's also one of the (many) reasons that people don't like using his 1 and 4.

We get what OP's asking for, we just don't want DE to get the idea into their head that he needs another Drain on him. A recast-before-end ability is miles more efficient, and leaves him with the ability to actively use all his abilities (if you want to).

And yes, you're right, an ability that only requires one button press every set duration is not very engaging. But as you pointed out, lots of frames have these. In fact it's hard to find a frame that doesn't have an ability you just press once every set duration and watch it do things. That's one of the key parts of Buff and Debuff abilities; you cast them and they do the work while you actually go do something else like shooting or melee, while you're now buffed or while the enemy is debuffed.

These kind of abilities aren't just limited to Warframe. You name a game with active-cast abilities, I'll give you examples of defense/buff type functions that you just press, go do your thing for a bit, and press again once you need to.

So yeah, it's not fun that people can lose their buffs, but it's kind of part of that whole 'active play' thing; if you forget your timers, you lose your buffs, or you leave yourself vulnerable when duration-based defenses die.

So not only was I the one pushing for alternatives to the timer management abilities that exist today, you were the one who rejected that idea under the notion that such abilities were not only not going to change, but were somehow essential to the game. Your attempts to lie and present the situation as its exact opposite have failed, as they were bound to in a conversation where literally anyone on here can go back and see the truth plainly for themselves.

If, however, you are being honest, and not simply posturing for the sake of saving face in an argument you've long lost, I'd be more than willing to discuss how Warframe could come up with alternatives to its timer management abilities. This was, in fact, what I was aiming to do from my very first post in this thread, as can be seen above, and as could be seen in my follow-up replies to you where I cited time-sensitive abilities as other examples of good timing-based gameplay in Warframe. I personally believe every current boring duration-based steroid could be turned into something legitimately interesting, and in so doing only enhance their frame's gameplay.

[Tiltskillet]

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

. I personally believe every current boring duration-based steroid could be turned into something legitimately interesting, and in so doing only enhance their frame's gameplay.

Amen.

[VenomousValentine]

On 2019-01-01 at 1:02 AM, punipunichen said:

Hey, Could we have auto recasting based on duration and depletion? like a shift + <Hotkey To skill>? or just hold cast to activate "auto recast cast" for timer based skills, should recast right at the end of last second, so the effect of the build up is kept... and depleting recast for the skills tennos want to have on all the time.. such as rhino skin and warding halo, sould auto cast when activated the moment it ran out... for the people who don't care for activation time... of course  auto cast is turned of when fail cast (when energy not suffusion), thus people don't have to use 3rd party program for auto timed clicks...

I'm not sure if this is against the rules or not but you could use third party software for it.

[DerGreif2]

On 2019-01-09 at 9:40 AM, punipunichen said:

so... memorizing timing.. is part of skill? sad... Im too busy guns and blazing to keep Vex Armor up all time... and when I missed the recast... it screws up my day... I jsut think it's a pain to consider that part of "skill" ... AFK check... ? yet people DO still use Macro for their game, and it is allowed...

The game is already ez as hell (with some sortie exceptions)... we dont need an auto mode.

[Gurpgork]

4 hours ago, VenomousValentine said:

I'm not sure if this is against the rules or not but you could use third party software for it.

It’s a bit of a grey area with that. Some macros are okay if they help you play the game a little. Like making a macro to help you click faster is fine because of the way it helps out players with disabilities. But a macro that does slide attacks over and over is not okay because it ends up playing the game for you. 

I think the rule of thumb is that it can only do one action for you.