Abilities Overhaul

[hrobatos]

We haven't had serious abilities overhaul since U7 and there is need for one before it exits beta. Here are my thoughts on how it should work and how to make game little more strategic (here I have in mind high level content on minde, low level is mostly learn how to play the game).

 

As Warframe borrows heavily from RPGs (not a bad thing) here is the general idea behind Warfames abilities how DE uses it and how it should look (of course there are some exceptions as it doesn't fit with some classes/ warframes):

 

1. ability; single target (or small AOE) damage, buff, debuff, CC, should be highly spamable.

 

2. ability; utility ability, this you should be using, and should be useful, in most situations (Rhino's Iron Skin, Saryn's Molt, Banshee Sonar, Frost's Snow Globe...)

 

3. ability; conditional ability. Ability you will not be using often but under certain condition could be great benefit.

 

4. ability; ultimate, your get out of jail free card, ability that should turn tide of most battles, ability that should be used when there is no other way out.

 

The problem:

 

Right now we have 2. and 3. ability that are generally in right mindset (yeah some could be more useful and some need rebalance) and I have no major problem with them. Bigger problems are 1. and 4. ulti ability. 1. ability is fun to use and useful at the beginning but when you level your weapon and get few damage mods it is mostly waste of your energy. Our 4. ulti has become spamable ability (especially with right mods) which negates usefulness of other abilities (good warframes have maybe one more great ability)

 

The fix:

 

Most games to balance power of abilities by use mana/energy pool or cooldown or combination of both. Warframe uses mostly mana/energy pool control your ability usage (a lot abilities cannot be used until power is in use which can be considered as cooldown but as you can use it as soon as it expires I don't see it as control factor) so energy pool should be place where balance should happen:

 

1. ability should be something you can spam and use without making major dent to your energy pool after .So most of 1. abilities should have decrease in energy cost around 10,15.

 

4. ability, it shouldn't be possible to spam your ultimate ability and level 30 warframe should be able to use it once with full energy pool (with right builds you could use it twice maybe three times on weaker warframes who depend on using their abilities to survive - Nyx, Vauban...). So increase ultimate to 200, 250 energy.

 

This wouldn't be just simple  energy cost change, according to energy cost abilities should be buffed or nerfed if needed or changed altogether, some changes in mods should also be reasonable. Not to mention weapon rebalanace, this should happen any how after armor 2.0.

 

The benefits:

 

First it would remove complain about people just spaming there ultimate and killing everything, second it would made game more strategic made you think when to use your ability, third it would made little more diverse builds for each warframe, you could concentrate on raw stats of warframe or use abilities to supplement those (e.g. you could use Rhino Rush build, or tank build and use Rhino Charge for movement).

 

I think that DE has great opportunity in upcoming U11 to fix many problems Warframe (this is just one of them) and make other wise good game in all it could be. And take little pause from giving us major content expansion.

 

[alpenhornblazer]

Very good points you are making here. Just had similiar thoughts after reading the gazillionth thread about how this and that is OP.

 

Only problem is that this 25/50/75/100 design is pretty much at the core of the power fantasy DE is selling at the moment. So I doubt they will touch it.

Nightmare mode is pretty much how they try to give you a challenge but imo it only shows how the lifeblod of this game is dependend on your weapons/ultimate being one-hit-OP gurantees, since when you are stripped of them and getting Vampire/Energy Drain you are pretty much dead from start.

 

It would be better to give experienced players a fair "hardcore" mode that prevents ultimate and grenade launch spamming and used a more refined power balancing system like you suggested.

 

The Mass Effect Multiplayer had a pretty good balanced system and kept most of its superpowers/superweapons in check, because you could either choose  superior weapons which would enhance the cooldown time of your powers or concentrate on powers but taking only inferior gear.

 

I wished DE would think about such a hardcore mode, where they restrict powers with such cooldowns. Maybe the conclave grade could be used for that, so for example if I use weapons that have a C-Rating of 345, all my powers would get a cooldown of 3.45 sec.

 

Hardcore could be restricted to rotating missions like Nightmare or alerts, of course, and they could create special hardcore mods (like cooldownenhancer, weaponoptimizer) that would help you to counterbalance the cooldwon issues. It should also be possible to skip weapontypes for a missson f you only want to rely on powers.