Energy System

[Dazzor]

Is it me or it seems the amount of energy it takes for some moves is unbalanced? For example as if now I dont see any reason to use teleport or invisiblity in the LOKI. Hence invisibility makes you invisible but range bosses still perform their attack so it useless against them and teleport although looking cool is rather useless, besides giving you about 3 seconds of breathing time before you are swarned with enemies, however not enough to bring back your shields. As if now the most useful power the LOKI has its his hologram which costs the least energy, and can be a life saver and quiet the staller when upgraded.

What I am trying to say here is that the fact you need to pick up orbs to perform these special moves has in my opinion two flaws:

#1: It means that during bosses you have no way to get your energy back and it can be simply immpossible to pass through some bosses without some distraction of special moves (AKA hologram).

#2: One move affetcs all others because of the energy system.

I propose to either make energy to be gained by killing enemies or shooting enemies or either getting rid of it and making well balanced cooling off for each power.

[Crond]

You have a point there!

[Ced23Ric]

I'd like a energy restoration that can be accelerated by special kills (melee comes to mind) or other actions that require some skill - 3 headshots in a row within 15 seconds, for example. A bit like Bulletstorm's points for cool trickshots thing.

[Spiffmeister]

Low level energy regeneration would be useful. The problem is that if energy is too easy to come by then players would simply be overpowered (think a volt that can spam lightning or a loki that can spam invis).

As far as bosses are concerened. I like seeing the gunplay the focus during boss battles, but I'd also like to see more interesting boss battles. The jackal is the most interesting I've seen so far (I've only done 2 others).

[Rusalki]

I think the energy system can be maintained side-by-side with cooldowns if utility skills like Volt's Electric Shield and Speed were free, while key signature moves like Volt's Shock and Overload used energy. For pure offense Warframes like Ember and Rhino though, it's hard to find a free ability to give them, since on paper they all look pretty strong.

[Aodan]

Even before the energy system, there are issues with how "Boosts" work with skills.

I have all the Electric Shield bonuses/boosts but all I've noticed is the shield lasts slightly longer, nothing else.

I also know there are quite the bugs and issues with other skills for other frames as well.

[MJ12]

I think energy should regenerate at a low rate (1/second?) up to, say, 50. Just enough to use basic abilities but not quickly enough that waiting forever is viable. In addition, I wouldn't mind removing energy pickups entirely and make energy regenerate from kills or dealing damage. It'd increase the pace of the game significantly versus "oh dear I'm out of energy I need to go find some more", since to get back your energy

[Dredboss]

The current energy system doesn't make sense to me because you can only use your powers so many times before having to find more energy orbs. It seems that there is a lot of emphasis put on the different powers that the warframes get but because of how energy works they aren't used (at least I use them sparringly) as much. It makes playing all the warframes feel like the same playstyle because you can't focus your playstyle on their powers because of how energy works.

Since its a core system of the game I'd like to know if the devs are willing to change it before we start suggesting alternatives though.

[norent]

Agreed. Cooldowns of varying length on each ability seems to make the most sense here.

[[DE]Steve]

Not a fan of Cooldowns personally, as they overlap with energy too much for my liking. For my tastes you can pick one limiter: "mana" or "cooldown" but both are redundant. I prefer a 'cost/amount' over a 'wait/timer' - it gives more economic options for boosts, harvesting and conservation than cooldowns. Cooldowns have their place, and we had them, but we ripped them out in favor of a clearer limiter. If you have lots of energy you can quickly cast a cheaper power in rapid succession in a simpler way than with cooldown limiters. We wanted people to balance saving for an uber or slamming through a bunch of cheaper powers.

Despite strong opinions, we are open to feedback!

The things we are absolutely changing (and soon):

-Not enough energy in coop games. Simple fix, enable our new 'shared' pickup so there is no Energy stealing among players.

-Rebalance energy costs of some powers or boost their effectiveness. (e.g. Super Jump was way too costly, some top-end powers aren't worth their cost, some low end powers are too awesome for their cost)

-Improve boosted powers (as mentioned, the improvements are pretty marginal on some of the powers) ... this has to be done cautiously so that it doesn't mutate the power, it always needs to expand or improve it without making the mechanic different, otherwise you get problems of 'I boosted SlashDash and it sucks now'.

-Adding some direct damage to Loki's decoy when boosted!

-Adding specific Warframe opportunities to the environment and bosses (we have this in the queue) so their powers enrich traversal and strategy for the levels and boss encounters.

A slow regen *is* possible with the Artifact Card system we're slowly phasing in! Definitely a great artifact to get in your deck!

...Great notes in this thread BTW!

[Chedeuine]

I'm personally a fan of the cooldown system myself. It just feels like a much better fit in a game like this. I know you said you're not a fan of the energy + cooldown comboination, but what about something along the lines instead of simply energy you receive 'warframe charges.' For example you begin a mission with 5 charges (numbers are obviously only here for the example and have no balance ideas in place) and each skill uses a set number of recharges, say 4 for a t4 skill and 1 for a t1 skill, but you gain a new charge every 15-30 seconds? (again just numbers are simply for the example)

This method allows you to spam skills if you need to, but also limits what you can do to a certain extent.

EDIT: Or even an over heating type of energy / cooldown system

Edited December 29, 2012 by Chedeuine

[Tebbo]

I think the way energy management works currently is far more interesting and elegant than any cooldown system will ever be.

Just a matter of tweaking to make it really sing.

[ApokalypsBZH]

@DESteve I agree with you on most points, I like the cooldown as it is in Mass Effect 3 but in this game the energy system is perfect - each skill should just have its own cost instead of the 25/50/75/100 currently in place (except for the uber, for which 100 is a good value).

For the Loki, I think that instead of adding direct damage to the decoy, you should either :

- make it explode when it is destroyed, or

- make it reflect damage the the enemies, like getting them shocked or something when they hit it, or

- both, with the 2 upgrades.

This way it would still have the same function of drawing enemy fire, but with more usefulness and a more satisfying result (especially against heavies/bosses).

Edited December 29, 2012 by ap0k41yp5

[Sealgaire]

I much prefer the current energy system to a cooldown system. It gives you more options for power use and adds a resource management mechanic that makes the fights seem more desperate. I was about to suggest that the energy spheres be made shareable, but I see that's already in the pipeline, so bravo!

[Rusalki]

Offtopic: It'd be interesting if there were a Warframe with an ability that cannibalized full shields for one charge of Energy.

Ontopic: Perhaps the reason we're so up in arms about Energy costs is because abilities are fun. They feel really important to the game, since they define a Warframe's playstyle - limiting abilities limits the fun. Super Jump for example, is a super awesome ninja move - that has an energy cost. When I'm playing an epic space-faring gun-toting magical ninja, I don't want to be weighing costs and effects between utility and combat abilities, I want to be a ninja.

Now, I understand that there are Power mods for Warframes in the game, and that either increases efficiencies (is it possible to get a 100% efficient Warframe?) or maximum Energy caps, and these are big game changers for people that enjoy abilities - but that sort of thing is inaccessible to a new player who's wondering why jumping really really high uses Energy instead of Stamina.

I have an idea that might open up a few doors. What if...when you have no more Energy to use...abilities started to use Health?

You've used up all your resources, your energy reserves are all gone, but in a moment of desperation you need to use "that". Thematically speaking, it calls out to most hero tropes, increases the use time for abilities, AND opens up pathways to abilities that have such huge costs that they need both Energy as well as Health! Or even Warframes that have damaging Health cost abilities and healing Energy cost abilities. Lots of possibilities to be mined there.

Edited December 29, 2012 by Rusalki

[Laserwolf7]

I mentioned this in another thread, but this seems very on-topic. It was about the "unique-ness" of each warframe. My two cents is that, right now, players have the option of customizing their warframe "out-of-game" using mods and choosing their weapons. This is fine and all, but a warframe should define how you will actually play within each mission, and right now as far as I can tell that is limited by energy. Playing some levels solo, you seem to get enough energy orb drops to be able to use your abilities a fair number of times, but thinking about it, all warframes would play pretty much the same without energy (yes, I realize that some players might melee more, some would shoot more, but I feel each warframe should be actually played differently in a unique manner).

On the topic of energy and cooldowns and such:

1. I feel like energy AND cooldowns could actually work, but it is not necessary. There really is no need to incorporate cooldowns since people can only spam their skills so much before they run out of energy in the current system.

2. I like the idea of incorporating some base energy regen, either having it be slow enough that it would be impractical to wait for a full charge between battles, or just have the base regen cap out at 50% energy so that you can at least use your basic skills.

3. I really like the idea of getting little energy boosts for performing certain actions, such as +10 energy for a headshot, +5 for melee kill, +15 for a stealth kill, or something along those lines. I dislike the energy orb idea since it seems a bit lame in my opinion to hope for a random drop to be able to "play your character" and use his abilities.

Unfortunately, if your base regen rate only recharged your energy to 50%, and it took specific actions to raise it any higher, I can see it getting frustrating for players to use their higher level skills (can't get headshots, maybe melee is too dangerous for that situation, etc). There would have to maybe be some sort of balance to get around these kinds of issues.

On a side note: I hope that the weapon ranking system becomes a bit more involved since from what I can tell each weapon uses the same ranking

tree (I have a large portion of the melee weapons and each tree is exactly the same). I would hope that different weapons have different inherant upgrade options later on (dual skanas have more crit and attack speed upgrades, Bo has more base dmg / range upgrades, etc).

[Spiffmeister]

A slow regen *is* possible with the Artifact Card system we're slowly phasing in! Definitely a great artifact to get in your deck!

In that case there's no need for a passive regen. Using cards that compliment the team should be a part of coop gameplay.