Some thoughts on how to gate abilities (without energy or cooldowns)

Teridax68 · June 24, 2019

0. Introduction:

Spoiler

Those who have been around for a while will have doubtless heard many of the same complaints regarding some aspects of gameplay in Warframe: the game's balance is out of control, with most missions being trivially easy to complete unless we're faced up against bullet sponges with one-shot capabilities, and there's been an increasing amount of ability-immune enemies that have negatively affected all but a handful of frames, reducing the overall pool of "endgame" warframes. On top of this, our Energy economy is broken, as depending on the player's degree of progress in the game they will either be Energy-starved all the time, or will have such plentiful reserves at all times that the resource may as well not exist. Point being, there are some deep-seated problems with combat in Warframe, and much of it comes down to our abilities. More specifically:

Many warframe abilities are designed for spectacle and power, rather than gameplay.

What does this mean? It means than, rather than provide us with some new way of playing the game, an interesting and unique tool to use, or a fun goal to work towards, many abilities simply exist to output power, often to the point of making the game play itself, rather than make us play it. We've all seen the complaint threads regarding the likes of Saryn, Mesa, Equinox, etc., where a frame can clear a room at the press of a button without having to put any real effort, and we've seen what happened to Ember, a frame that once could do the same (up until about level 50 anyway), only to get nerfed severely for it. While these abilities may initially feel fun due to how powerful they can be, over time their unrestricted usage means they can make gameplay boring, both for the player and their teammates.

So, how do we change this? When the subject of change gets brought up, often the reaction is to state that Warframe has become so complex and large that it cannot change its systems at all, a reaction proven consistently wrong by the constant and major updates Digital Extremes have put out. In this case, it's also proven wrong by the warframe reworks we've been having, showing a clear intent to update older parts of the game. However, some of these reworks are hit or miss, as are some new frames. While I don't know how to make perfectly designed abilities every time, I do think there are some ground rules that can be established to make abilities feel appropriate to use in Warframe. In fact, I'd go even further and say that, with these sorts of ground rules, one could design practically any warframe without giving them Energy costs:

1. Good ability designs:

Spoiler

I think at the core of a well-designed ability is the following question: what qualifies as good use of the ability? In other words, an ability needs to have some inherent gameplay or interaction in order to work well. In this regard, I'd say there are four different ability types that respect this:

Assets: Abilities that provide some persistent, localized benefit, but that the player can only have a limited number at a time. The inherent gameplay here boils down to choosing when and where to deploy your assets, and using them well by deploying them at the right occasion.
- Examples: Frost's Snow Globe, Gara's Mass Vitrify, Nidus's Ravenous.
Modifiers: Abilities that alter the player's gameplay, by subverting or focusing on one of the game's rules. Modifier abilities typically work like a metaphorical carrot or stick: some will encourage the player to alter their playstyle with the promise of a reward (most passives are like this), and some will promise power in exchange for a tradeoff (and this is typically tied to actives, so the player can choose when to incur that tradeoff).
- Examples of reward-based modifiers: Wisp's passive, Inaros's self-healing passive.
- Examples of tradeoff-based modifiers: Garuda's passive, Harrow's Penance.
Payoffs: Abilities that are spectacular and don't require much interaction themselves, but that consume some sort of resource the player has built up through play. Part of the gameplay comes from choosing when to expend this resource (i.e. when's a good time to use a climactic burst of power), but also simply from generating it, allowing the player to kick back and reap the rewards.
- Examples: Baruuk's Serene Storm, Equinox's 4 burst (but not the aura), Nidus's self-resurrection passive.
Skillshots: Abilities that are generally useful and don't require the player to make some meaningful decision each time, but that require some degree of skill to put to good use, e.g. by aiming a projectile, setting a trap, or performing some other move that requires a bit of effort. This kind of model would typically work for bread-and-butter abilities meant to be used frequently, much like weapons.
- Examples: Ember's Fireball, Harrow's Condemn, Ivara's Navigator.

Notice how practically every current active ability is structured as a payoff: one of the reasons this hasn't worked is because the method of resource generation has no real gameplay (Energy tends to be given at random), is broken (the player either has way too much Energy or not nearly enough, and the fact that all abilities run on the same resource means you're perma-silenced when you run out), and doesn't really fit every ability (some abilities are meant to be used much more than others, and tread on each other's toes when it comes to Energy conservation, causing less-than optimal abilities to be left in the dust). Because there isn't really payoff-style gameplay to our payoff abilities, many of our abilities are broken because of it.

2. Bad ability designs (and how to fix them):

Spoiler

Whereas the core of a well-designed ability comes down to asking what is the ability's core gameplay, the flipside to this is to ask oneself: how can I abuse or break this ability? This is a necessary question to ask in a game like Warframe, because if an ability can be abused, it will be abused. As with the above, I think there are four different types of poorly-designed abilities in Warframe:

Cooldowns: Abilities that are forcibly disabled for a fixed length of time. This doesn't really work in a game like Warframe because players typically value being able to use abilities on demand, and prior implementations of cooldowns have caused some players to simply wait until it's elapsed.
- Examples: Harrow's Covenant invincibility (the crit buff exists to forcibly space it out), Focus 1.0.
- How to fix this: Simply change the ability into a payoff, and have the player work towards giving themselves uptime on the ability. This would give player much-needed control over their own ability uptime, even if it still wouldn't reach 100%. Combining the two into a cooldown that goes down faster when the player does something could also work, and could even help make the ability more consistent if the player is having a hard time building up towards the ability.
Egg timers: If the answer to "what qualifies as good use of this ability?" is: "Watching the ability's duration and refreshing it when it runs out, or is about to", then your ability is an egg timer. The constant reminder to refresh the ability tends to disguise the fact that doing so isn't really interesting gameplay, and is in fact tedious, particularly as the result is that the player constantly has to look at their ability bar or risk some sort of loss.
- Examples: Chroma's Elemental Ward and Vex Armor, Loki's Invisibility, Octavia's entire active ability set.
- How to fix this: If the ability is meant to be some kind of permanent bonus, it should be turned into some sort of modifier ability, and its power should encourage a different approach to the game. If the ability is meant to offer a window of high power, then it should be turned into a payoff, with the player working towards prolonging or reactivating the ability as they play.
Filler: Effects that make the player more powerful... and that's it. Filler abilities offer essentially no real choice or intelligent use for their power, they're just kinda there. Poorly-designed passives that don't offer any new ways to play are typically filler, as are some actives.
- Examples: Equinox's Maim aura (but not the end burst), Excalibur's passive , Nekros's Desecrate.
- How to fix this: Typically, filler abilities are just poorly-designed modifiers. Thus, instead of just giving the player power, that power can be held out in front of the player to obtain if they engage in a bit of gameplay. This also means the ability can instead be a payoff, if it's not meant to be around all the time. In both cases, making the ability no longer always-on means it can be made more powerful and more noticeable, especially if the player has to consciously think about getting its rewards.
Spam: Is the ability good to use all the time? Is there no meaningful cost or tradeoff to using it? In that case, why not simply cast that ability all the time? This is the problem of spam, where an ability can be used optimally while still being cast excessively, making for shallow, extremely repetitive and sometimes painful gameplay. In the worst cases, an ability can end up being balanced around being spammed (e.g. Vauban's Tesla grenades), causing the ability in question to feel weak.
- Examples: Ash's Blade Storm, Khora's Whipclaw, Vauban's entire active ability set.
- How to fix this: Just like fillers are usually poorly-designed gameplay modifiers, so are spam abilities often poorly-implemented skillshots. Reworking the ability around some sort of optimal gameplay (e.g. by hitting a sweet spot, catching multiple enemies at a time, and so on) would therefore fix the ability, even if it were to still be used often. If the ability is meant to offer persistent power, then it can be turned into an asset: if Vauban could only have a limited amount of his deployables out at a time (e.g. by destroying the oldest one on casting a new effect), he wouldn't have to spam his abilities anymore, which also means they could be balanced around some smaller, fixed number, and made much stronger.

3. TL;DR / Conclusion:

Warframe has a fundamental problem with many of its abilities, because many of its abilities either don't have any inherent gameplay, or are balanced around gameplay that doesn't really exist, namely Energy management at a time where Energy problems are no longer a thing. This in turn means players can make themselves permanently invulnerable or invisible, CC or kill entire rooms of enemies at a time, and so on. This needs to change if Warframe is to have healthy and balanced combat, and so without resorting to ability-immune enemies. Despite claims to the contrary, I believe it is possible to fix every single problematic ability in this manner, and in fact the alternatives would follow consistent rules of gating design. To some extent, this would mean nerfing abilities by making them less insanely powerful (i.e. less than 100% uptime on the really broken effects), but as pointed above, this would benefit the player, and make the game more fun. All the power in the world can't make up for abilities that are boring or tedious to use, and we're seeing the negative consequences of that today. With a push in the right direction (and note how DE's newer kits tend to follow better ability design), our warframes could be made to feel incredibly powerful, while always adding to gameplay, rather than subtracting it.

peterc3 · June 24, 2019

35 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

this would benefit the player, and make the game more fun

You are arguing against the players here, not DE. And this will absolutely not matter one iota to the bleating peons who see any nerf as a personal attack against them by DE.

DeadVoid118 · June 24, 2019

Okay, first off, if you're going to suggest fixing things you need to give more specifics. You give examples of abilities you consider bad, but you don't tell how you would fix them, merely that they're bad and this is how you should design abilities. Okay. Taking that and applying it to said bad ability would do... what? I don't understand really, because your example is never fixed.

32 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Payoffs: Abilities that are spectacular and don't require much interaction themselves, but that consume some sort of resource the player has built up through play. Part of the gameplay comes from choosing when to expend this resource (i.e. when's a good time to use a climactic burst of power), but also simply from generating it, allowing the player to kick back and reap the rewards.

Secondly, this resource is called energy. The fact that it's so common has reduced this point, but that is the purpose of energy. Rather than adding more resources, making energy serve its purpose would be better.

Thirdly, I disagree with the entire premise of this. You seem to think abilities that can be constantly used are bad. This is not so. The entire point of a Warframe is its abilities. Them offering no downsides isn't bad, because it's still gameplay. Abilities don't need downsides just as a gun doesn't. There's no reason for me to unequip my primary, just as there should be no real reason to not use my Warframe's abilities, for the most part. Sure, abilities with downsides can and should exist. But every ability? No. I don't need to have an ability that's hard to use, hard to manage, or hard to take effect. In fact, these generally go against Warframe's design, which is speed and flow. I press to activate ability, I continue dodging and weaving while shooting everything skyward. Pausing to manage my ability or make sure it works breaks this flow.

Volinus7 · June 24, 2019

How about turning Warframe into a cookie clicker game instead?

Spoiler

Btw, you don't balance a stupid game like Warframe. Yours is not the first, similar threads discussed about fundamental imbalances in Warframe popped up way back in 2014 with many more along the way ended with the same trope. Are you trying to make one of those "Warframe is a stupid game for stupid people" threads?

Edited June 25, 2019 by Volinus7

OrsonBear · June 24, 2019

It's not about the challenge. I don't want any more challenge in a spy mission and I'd rather just stay invisible forever. Why? Because I need to do the freaking mission over and over again for the drop and I just want to get it over with as fast as possible.

Teridax68 · June 24, 2019

2 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

Okay, first off, if you're going to suggest fixing things you need to give more specifics. You give examples of abilities you consider bad, but you don't tell how you would fix them, merely that they're bad and this is how you should design abilities. Okay. Taking that and applying it to said bad ability would do... what? I don't understand really, because your example is never fixed.

I literally typed a paragraph under each type of bad design with "How to fix this" in bold letters. I then explain how to fix the ability, and why it would be better (because the fix would prevent the ability from being abused). Did you miss that part?

2 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

Secondly, this resource is called energy. The fact that it's so common has reduced this point, but that is the purpose of energy. Rather than adding more resources, making energy serve its purpose would be better.

This is also explained in the OP, and I quote:

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Notice how practically every current active ability is structured as a payoff: one of the reasons this hasn't worked is because the method of resource generation has no real gameplay (Energy tends to be given at random), is broken (the player either has way too much Energy or not nearly enough, and the fact that all abilities run on the same resource means you're perma-silenced when you run out), and doesn't really fit every ability (some abilities are meant to be used much more than others, and tread on each other's toes when it comes to Energy conservation, causing less-than optimal abilities to be left in the dust). Because there isn't really payoff-style gameplay to our payoff abilities, many of our abilities are broken because of it.

Also in the TL;DR:

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Warframe has a fundamental problem with many of its abilities, because many of its abilities either don't have any inherent gameplay, or are balanced around gameplay that doesn't really exist, namely Energy management at a time where Energy problems are no longer a thing. This in turn means players can make themselves permanently invulnerable or invisible, CC or kill entire rooms of enemies at a time, and so on.

So I have difficulty understanding why you would make that point when it is already answered in extensive detail in this thread's first post.

2 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

Thirdly, I disagree with the entire premise of this. You seem to think abilities that can be constantly used are bad. This is not so. The entire point of a Warframe is its abilities. Them offering no downsides isn't bad, because it's still gameplay. Abilities don't need downsides just as a gun doesn't. There's no reason for me to unequip my primary, just as there should be no real reason to not use my Warframe's abilities, for the most part. Sure, abilities with downsides can and should exist. But every ability? No. I don't need to have an ability that's hard to use, hard to manage, or hard to take effect. In fact, these generally go against Warframe's design, which is speed and flow. I press to activate ability, I continue dodging and weaving while shooting everything skyward. Pausing to manage my ability or make sure it works breaks this flow.

You seem to fundamentally misunderstand my point on abilities, and more generally, it doesn't feel like you've actually read my post properly, because I describe an exact type of ability that functions like a weapon:

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Skillshots: Abilities that are generally useful and don't require the player to make some meaningful decision each time, but that require some degree of skill to put to good use, e.g. by aiming a projectile, setting a trap, or performing some other move that requires a bit of effort. This kind of model would typically work for bread-and-butter abilities meant to be used frequently, much like weapons.
Examples: Ember's Fireball, Harrow's Condemn, Ivara's Navigator.

Extra emphasis put here on the bit that directly contradicts what you're saying. The point I was trying to make wasn't that every ability needs downsides (I don't think that should be the case at all either), but that every ability needs gameplay: the moment you have an ability that has no gameplay, e.g. a button you press brainlessly at will to kill everyone in the room (and there are abilities like this in the game), that's when your entire gameplay falls apart, because efficiency dictates you simply engage in that easy, boring, yet hyper-effective strategy, rather than the fun one. And then the game gets boring and incapable of delivering a challenge, and then the developers try to fix this but, because players are so terrified of direct nerfs in any way, shape or form, they instead add ability-immune enemies, which nerf most frames far harder than if they'd taken a hit to their kits. I don't think we're on opposite sides of the discussion here, unless you truly want to hold on to abilities that let you be invincible all the time with no possibility of interaction.

2 hours ago, Laudator said:

It's not about the challenge. I don't want any more challenge in a spy mission and I'd rather just stay invisible forever. Why? Because I need to do the freaking mission over and over again for the drop and I just want to get it over with as fast as possible.

By that same reasoning, why not simply ditch mission gameplay altogether, and instead ask to turn Warframe into one big progress bar, which gives you cool images as it loads up? What you're asking is to take the gameplay out of the game just to streamline the process of getting rewards as much as possible, which is perverse.

3 hours ago, peterc3 said:

You are arguing against the players here, not DE. And this will absolutely not matter one iota to the bleating peons who see any nerf as a personal attack against them by DE.

This is true, but as we've seen time and again, this kind of knee-jerk reaction is short-lived, unless the frame genuinely does suffer. It doesn't just apply to nerfs, too: people were screaming bloody murder at the Nezha and Wukong reworks, even before we got the details, because the one thing they focused on was the possibility that those frames might get nerfed in some way. After the reworks happened, however, the near-totality of those people promptly shut up. Perhaps what I should've specified is that applying these sorts of changes would eliminate the need for stuff like ability nullification, ability immunity, and Energy drains, as those tend to be designed specifically against potential abuses that currently exist.

peterc3 · June 24, 2019

10 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

This is true, but as we've seen time and again, this kind of knee-jerk reaction is short-lived, unless the frame genuinely does suffer.

This is entirely unsupported by even a cursory look at popular memes about frames or any discussion around them. Pretending this wouldn't result in an ugly and relatively long period of time for DE to withstand entitled people feeling slighted is interesting, to say the least.

12 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Perhaps what I should've specified is that applying these sorts of changes would eliminate the need for stuff like ability nullification, ability immunity, and Energy drains, as those tend to be designed specifically against potential abuses that currently exist.

Right. They're just going to remove those enemies from the game and let bosses be affected by all the CC and damage abilities.

You haven't completely thought this through. Nullifiers might be a reaction to Viver and its ilk, but they aren't only in the game for that. Their gameplay is also to counteract different gunplay aspects. This addresses abilities, but not guns. Energy drains would still be a means to get the players to do something other than sit in a bubble and erase the map.

You've started from the result you want and worked backwards.

Teridax68 · June 24, 2019

14 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

This is entirely unsupported by even a cursory look at popular memes about frames or any discussion around them. Pretending this wouldn't result in an ugly and relatively long period of time for DE to withstand entitled people feeling slighted is interesting, to say the least.

... or, alternatively, one can simply look at the forums and see that the number of Wukong complaint threads has died out almost completely, with the three remaining threads on the front page discussing him all bringing up reasoned, constructive criticism. Where exactly are people memeing him, or Nezha, or even the more mediocre reworks like Zephyr or Hydroid for being nerfed?

14 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Right. They're just going to remove those enemies from the game and let bosses be affected by all the CC and damage abilities.

... yes? They need not be perma-stunnable, but if crowd control and damage abilities are made healthy and interactive, why not?

14 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

You haven't completely thought this through. Nullifiers might be a reaction to Viver and its ilk, but they aren't only in the game for that. Their gameplay is also to counteract different gunplay aspects. This addresses abilities, but not guns.

Even if that were the case, why not simply remove the ability nullification to the bubble? This is ignoring the fact that anti-gunplay objects already exist for Corpus and Grineer.

14 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Energy drains would still be a means to get the players to do something other than sit in a bubble and erase the map.

You've started from the result you want and worked backwards.

... but I'm specifically proposing a set of changes to abilities that would prevent players from simply spamming them with zero interaction. That is literally the reason I started this thread. I'm not working backwards from any conclusion here, I'm simply stating that if abilities were made healthy and interactive on their own, one would not need to shut them down just to make them healthy. It doesn't seem in this respect that you really internalized the point I've been making.

DeadVoid118 · June 24, 2019

31 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

I literally typed a paragraph under each type of bad design with "How to fix this" in bold letters. I then explain how to fix the ability, and why it would be better (because the fix would prevent the ability from being abused). Did you miss that part?

4 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Filler: Effects that make the player more powerful... and that's it. Filler abilities offer essentially no real choice or intelligent use for their power, they're just kinda there. Poorly-designed passives that don't offer any new ways to play are typically filler, as are some actives.
Examples: Equinox's Maim aura (but not the end burst), Excalibur's passive , Nekros's Desecrate.

How to fix this: Typically, filler abilities are just poorly-designed modifiers. Thus, instead of just giving the player power, that power can be held out in front of the player to obtain if they engage in a bit of gameplay. This also means the ability can instead be a payoff, if it's not meant to be around all the time. In both cases, making the ability no longer always-on means it can be made more powerful and more noticeable, especially if the player has to consciously think about getting its rewards.

Okay, so... what 'bit of gameplay' are we talking about here? Kill enemies? Shoot things? Hack something? How would this work for one ability in particular? As I said, you need to be more specific. Your 'How to fix this' is fixing the identified problem of fillers, not the examples. I want specificity on how to fix X ability by doing Y. It should be specific enough that most of what is missing should be numbers. All your 'How to fix this' sections carry this problem.

37 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

This is also explained in the OP, and I quote:

Also in the TL;DR:

So I have difficulty understanding why you would make that point when it is already answered in extensive detail in this thread's first post.

Right, and what I'm suggesting is that we fix energy rather than adding new resources. This contradicts what you seem to present, as it comes across that you want more new resources like Nidus' stacks.

40 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

You seem to fundamentally misunderstand my point on abilities, and more generally, it doesn't feel like you've actually read my post properly [...]

You seem to fundamentally misunderstand my point on abilities, and more generally, it doesn't feel like you've actually read my post 'properly'.

Sarcasm aside, there is no 'properly'. Language is fluid, and misunderstandings are as common as sugar in a cake.

48 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

[...] because I describe an exact type of ability that functions like a weapon:

I'm not saying abilities should be like weapons. That's why they're called two different things. I'm saying abilities can be like weapons in that they're direct benefits. Maybe I want a frame that's focused on weapons. This means I would prefer the abilities are easy to use and benefit my weapons without any trade-offs (well, the trade-off being I don't have a frame with other abilities) or gameplay aside from shooty-shooty.

50 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

[...] every ability needs gameplay: the moment you have an ability that has no gameplay, e.g. a button you press brainlessly at will to kill everyone in the room (and there are abilities like this in the game), that's when your entire gameplay falls apart [...]

No, I severely disagree. Not every ability needs 'gameplay'. Warframe already has gameplay. The shooting. The moving. The stabbing. It's fine to make abilities more passive than active, like Loki's invisibility. I rather prefer abilities to be more passive. I agree that there should be frames that do and play like how you say they should. I disagree that there shouldn't be frames like how I want to play. I rather like the idea that each frame has a certain style of gameplay, and that gameplay can be a focus on the 'core' of Warframe rather than the abilities.

53 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

[...] efficiency dictates you simply engage in that easy, boring, yet hyper-effective strategy, rather than the fun one. And then the game gets boring and incapable of delivering a challenge, and then the developers try to fix this but, because players are so terrified of direct nerfs in any way, shape or form, they instead add ability-immune enemies, which nerf most frames far harder than if they'd taken a hit to their kits. I don't think we're on opposite sides of the discussion here, unless you truly want to hold on to abilities that let you be invincible all the time with no possibility of interaction.

Efficiency dictates I stop playing/spending money on Warframe. People don't always maximize efficiency, and if you do and ruin the experience for yourself it is your problem. People complain about things like no challenge and so on, but the truth of the matter is that you can do things to make the game harder. Don't use certain mods, don't play certain weapons/frames, and so on. I rather like the choice to annihilate or not, and I don't find it boring to wreck the cloning factory. Now, people are stupid and can ruin the experience. It is inevitably their fault, but much of game design is around making the game 'unruinable', at least in certain manners. So, it would seem that making the game fun and challenging would be a good thing. However, this would drive me, personally, away. I rather like that I can be an invincible space ninja. I rather like that I can mow down hordes.

There are no abilities in Warframe that are direct invincibility with no interaction. Valkyr's is the closest it gets, and it locks you into melee. There was Wukong's (which, personally, I actually liked) but that's gone now. The current Wukong is better, but I miss the old defy. The new one feels just like another certain ability from Nyx. Truth be told, I do enjoy choice and variety over 'gameplay'. What people like is subjective, and being able to choose is what I like. Being able to be outright invincible is a choice that I liked because it was quite different from other things.

So, I do think we are quite opposed. My 'style' of gameplay is whatever I want it to be in the moment. Sometimes that's an overpowered powerhouse of fury and godly might. Sometimes that's running a mission with nothing but a mk1. Most of the time it's somewhere in between. You'd be removing a lot of that variety by making everything active gameplay with a thousand important decisions.

Teridax68 · June 24, 2019

4 minutes ago, Keylan118 said:

Okay, so... what 'bit of gameplay' are we talking about here? Kill enemies? Shoot things? Hack something? How would this work for one ability in particular? As I said, you need to be more specific. Your 'How to fix this' is fixing the identified problem of fillers, not the examples. I want specificity on how to fix X ability by doing Y. It should be specific enough that most of what is missing should be numbers. All your 'How to fix this' sections carry this problem.

... okay, but I can't be more specific, because any of those things could be enough of a change. You seem to understand what I'm saying here, so I'm not quite understanding why you'd nitpick on the specifics of what is meant to be a very broad proposal. If you really want one specific example, here's how I'd change one of the passives I've mentioned (Excalibur's):

Current version: Excalibur gains +10% melee attack speed and +10% melee damage when wielding sword-like weapons.
This ability is filler because ultimately there is no gameplay to this: you get some mild DPS boost to some weapons and not others, which translates to no gameplay in-mission (you either have the bonus or you don't, and the bonus doesn't make you play differently).
Fixed version: Finisher attacks grant Excalibur +50% melee attack speed and +50% melee damage for 10 seconds.
Same bonus, but stronger, because this time it'd be contingent upon actually doing something to unlock it (in this case, by using finishers). This would also synergize with Excalibur's kit, whose Radial Blind sets enemies up for finisher attacks.

4 minutes ago, Keylan118 said:

Right, and what I'm suggesting is that we fix energy rather than adding new resources. This contradicts what you seem to present, as it comes across that you want more new resources like Nidus' stacks.

Fix Energy how? Even if our Energy economy were reined in, there's still the problem of applying one very specific mode of gating across four separate active abilities at a time, as well as how we generate Energy. Nidus's stacks are perhaps one implementation, but yes, in cases where an ability is meant to have a meaningful cost or less than 100% uptime, that's when a resource comes in, which doesn't need to function along the same rigid and overly general rules as Energy.

4 minutes ago, Keylan118 said:

You seem to fundamentally misunderstand my point on abilities, and more generally, it doesn't feel like you've actually read my post 'properly'.

Sarcasm aside, there is no 'properly'. Language is fluid, and misunderstandings are as common as sugar in a cake.

There is a difference between a misunderstanding, and outright failing to acknowledge the contents of what one has just read. You have made a number of demonstrably wrong claims that the fluidity of language does not excuse, nor that can be chalked up to a simple "misunderstanding" (for example, claiming that I "seem to think abilities that can be constantly used are bad" when I explicitly mention a model of good design for frequently used abilities). Ergo, you did not read my post "properly", i.e. by actually reading its contents such that you became aware of them.

4 minutes ago, Keylan118 said:

I'm not saying abilities should be like weapons. That's why they're called two different things. I'm saying abilities can be like weapons in that they're direct benefits. Maybe I want a frame that's focused on weapons. This means I would prefer the abilities are easy to use and benefit my weapons without any trade-offs (well, the trade-off being I don't have a frame with other abilities) or gameplay aside from shooty-shooty.

But weapons aren't "direct benefits", you still have to point and shoot/attack for them to do their job. You can't simply press a button to instantly kill every enemy three rooms across, nor does merely equipping a weapon give you some constant stat increase. Unless there's some actual gameplay to that warframe's abilities, even if they focus exclusively on weapons, there's going to be nothing stopping you from simply spamming those abilities mindlessly, in which case you might as well just convert your entire warframe into a passive stat boost to your weapons. I'm not asking for a trade-off to every ability, either: something as simple as "your headshots deal X% more damage" would already be a healthy effect.

4 minutes ago, Keylan118 said:

No, I severely disagree. Not every ability needs 'gameplay'. Warframe already has gameplay. The shooting. The moving. The stabbing. It's fine to make abilities more passive than active, like Loki's invisibility.

How nice of you to mention Loki's Invisibility specifically, because its complete lack of interaction is what made the frame unhealthily strong for a large part of Warframe's lifetime, right up until we got missions full of AoE, invisibility-detecting enemies, and other mechanics that prevented invisible frames from surviving properly. It is a prime example of what goes wrong when you make abilities almost entirely passive, because the end result is an ability that breaks interaction between the player and the environment, in a way movement and weapons do not compensate for in any way.

4 minutes ago, Keylan118 said:

I rather prefer abilities to be more passive. I agree that there should be frames that do and play like how you say they should. I disagree that there shouldn't be frames like how I want to play. I rather like the idea that each frame has a certain style of gameplay, and that gameplay can be a focus on the 'core' of Warframe rather than the abilities.

This is all very nice, except when one style of gameplay boils down to simply letting oneself auto-win the game with little more than a few button presses, that playstyle is bound to dominate when it is strong, simply because it's more powerful and reliable. If you really want multiple styles of gameplay to coexist, you'd have to accept massive nerfs to that kind of playstyle anyway, simply so that other playstyles with actual gameplay could have a chance.

4 minutes ago, Keylan118 said:

Efficiency dictates I stop playing/spending money on Warframe.

Except we're not talking about efficiency of one's overall lifestyle, by whichever arbitrary standard you have set, we are evidently talking about efficiency of performance within Warframe. Fluid as language is and all, you're clearly arguing purely on semantics here.

4 minutes ago, Keylan118 said:

People don't always maximize efficiency, and if you do and ruin the experience for yourself it is your problem. People complain about things like no challenge and so on, but the truth of the matter is that you can do things to make the game harder. Don't use certain mods, don't play certain weapons/frames, and so on. I rather like the choice to annihilate or not, and I don't find it boring to wreck the cloning factory. Now, people are stupid and can ruin the experience. It is inevitably their fault, but much of game design is around making the game 'unruinable', at least in certain manners. So, it would seem that making the game fun and challenging would be a good thing. However, this would drive me, personally, away. I rather like that I can be an invincible space ninja. I rather like that I can mow down hordes.

"Everyone is stupid because they don't intentionally sabotage themselves to put some challenge into the game" is an utterly asinine argument to make, particularly when you have also explicitly admitted to preferring easymode playstyles that put efficiency over gameplay. Not everyone maximizes efficiency, but Warframe is an efficiency-driven game that pushes the player to max themselves out. There is no incentive to intentionally weaken oneself aside from wanting to set oneself a challenge, and the very fact that you'd have to do so implies that the game itself ultimately does not challenge the player. Fact of the matter is, abusive frames, hyper-optimal builds, and hyper-efficient strategies exist, and many of these are driven by mistakes in balance and design. Blaming the player for not unbreaking the game makes no sense, and is an overused argument on these forums that is pretty much always employed to deflect any suggestion of change to Warframe.

4 minutes ago, Keylan118 said:

There are no abilities in Warframe that are direct invincibility with no interaction.

Iron Skin, Limbo's Rift, Assimilate, and the new Defy all beg to differ. Some of them do have some mechanic that adds power based on some interaction, but all of these are effects that can be used to make a frame invulnerable with 100% uptime. When talking about less than literal invincibility, Inaros also comes in, as his high stats, coupled with Arcane Grace, make him functionally immortal in the near-totality of the content the game has to offer.

4 minutes ago, Keylan118 said:

Truth be told, I do enjoy choice and variety over 'gameplay'. What people like is subjective, and being able to choose is what I like. Being able to be outright invincible is a choice that I liked because it was quite different from other things.

Interesting that you'd presume that gameplay would be opposed to choice and variety, when the latter two are themselves contributing factors to good gameplay. When the choice comes between a playstyle that can win the game with no effort, and one that has to make some effort to win the game, it doesn't matter how much more fun the latter playstyle is, the former will dominate, thereby reducing choice and variety overall. Being outright invincible was the core reason Wukong was so boring prior to his rework, and the only people who seemed attached to the old Defy seemed to be those who didn't main him.

4 minutes ago, Keylan118 said:

So, I do think we are quite opposed. My 'style' of gameplay is whatever I want it to be in the moment. Sometimes that's an overpowered powerhouse of fury and godly might. Sometimes that's running a mission with nothing but a mk1. Most of the time it's somewhere in between.

And by this reasoning, you must also feel entitled to a frame that, with a single ability press, can instantly give you every other warframe, weapon, mod, and collectible item, max them out, put you to Mastery Rank 30, and complete every single quest and event in the game, including ones in the future. Because it exists, and you might want that at a certain moment, therefore variety or something. If your idea of gameplay is to not participate, but instead watch as you are showered in rewards and big numbers, then you may be better served by an idle game.

4 minutes ago, Keylan118 said:

You'd be removing a lot of that variety by making everything active gameplay with a thousand important decisions.

... but I'm not "making everything active gameplay with a thousand important decisions", that's a complete straw man. You don't make a thousand important decisions when aiming and firing a weapon, so there need not be that much more complication to ability usage, there just needs to be some sort of mechanic behind it, rather than just raw power.

ShortCat · June 25, 2019

You suggest a rather radical solution. I think you try to run before you even attempt to walk with this draft.

It is perfectly fine just to delete a room full of enemies with a press of a button. With a small but important addition though - you should not be able to do so in every room or at anytime. Limiter for this is/was energy. If you have to choose and time abilities, you automatically make them interactive, interactive by the thought process behind a button press. This is basically the "payoff" you are talking about. Warframe just needs a healthy energy economy, situational awareness will accomplish the rest.
As for solutions: give every Frame innate energy regen; rebalance stiff 25-50-75-100 costs; remove external & RNG energy gains like pizzas, orbs as well as OP Zenurik; rework efficiency; tune down energy leech effects. I am not saying we should not be able to influence energy, but it should cost us something doing so. Framed in such way, you create a controlled environment, where ability usage becomes tangible, thus manageable.
If the main problem is energy economy, then fix it. You often present suggestions, which are to broad to scoop concrete ideas from them and which still maneuver around flawed energy economy.
Your strong gravitation towards design with separate resources (a la Nidus or Baruuk) can run into the same problems. First and foremost, you just switch fuel, if the system behind is just as flawed as the original one, you gain nothing. Furthermore, if generation of the secondary resource is coupled with expanses of the primary one, you will be just as silenced in the end.
Primary, this design exists to clearly separate spam heavy and spam light abilities or mask cooldowns/charges mechanics. You could achieve similar effect by adjusting energy costs/gains. I am not against this design. Go all in, if it makes sense. But implementing this mechanic on every Farme could go overboard and is often unnecessary.
Your guideline is conflicting within itself and several issues disappear while viewed under another angle. You mention Harrow's Covenant while talking about " cooldowns". Yet, it also falls under "assets", because you have limited access to its buffs; it also falls under "modifiers", because it comes with a promise of a huge buff and alters gameplay with a hard switch from defense to offens; it also falls under "skillshot", for obvious reasons.

Teridax68 · June 25, 2019

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

You suggest a rather radical solution. I think you try to run before you even attempt to walk with this draft.

It is perfectly fine just to delete a room full of enemies with a press of a button. With a small but important addition though - you should not be able to do so in every room or at anytime. Limiter for this is/was energy. If you have to choose and time abilities, you automatically make them interactive, interactive by the thought process behind a button press. This is basically the "payoff" you are talking about. Warframe just needs a healthy energy economy, situational awareness will accomplish the rest.

But as I pointed out at length, and on several occasions in this thread, simply fixing Energy won't solve every problem with abilities: putting aside how our current model of Energy economy would still not be healthy even if our Energy generation were nerfed, there's still the problem of applying a mode of gating that just doesn't work for every ability, and gets in the way of proper usage. Some abilities need to be gated by a resource so as to avoid being able to clear the room all the time on demand, but some abilities are in fact meant to be used frequently, and aren't supposed to be about managing resources each time.

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

As for solutions: give every Frame innate energy regen; rebalance stiff 25-50-75-100 costs; remove external & RNG energy gains like pizzas, orbs as well as OP Zenurik; rework efficiency; tune down energy leech effects. I am not saying we should not be able to influence energy, but it should cost us something doing so. Framed in such way, you create a controlled environment, where ability usage becomes tangible, thus manageable.

While I can agree that energy regen would be an improvement to the current model, as would be removing most of our Energy generators, I do not believe that would fix Energy as a whole, as per the above. In the end, simply basing everything around Energy regen means you're putting your abilities on some implicit cooldown, or at least a forced waiting period that the player cannot influence. I'd also argue that passive regen is just about the dullest way of implementing a resource generation mechanic, when something as simple as "This warframe generates Energy every time they deal melee damage" (which would work well for a frame like Excalibur, for example) for one frame, "This warframe generates Energy on headshots" (e.g. Mesa or Harrow) and so on could already create far more interesting gameplay.

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

If the main problem is energy economy, then fix it. You often present suggestions, which are to broad to scoop concrete ideas from them and which still maneuver around flawed energy economy.

But as mentioned above, and in the OP, the problem cannot simply be boiled down to the Energy economy. Moreover, my suggestions are broad because I'm not offering a One True Way^TM of fixing every ability, just some principles one should run by when doing so. Even then, I do cite concrete examples of good and bad abilities, and listed a specific example of one way to change Excalibur's passive below the OP.

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Your strong gravitation towards design with separate resources (a la Nidus or Baruuk) can run into the same problems. First and foremost, you just switch fuel, if the system behind is just as flawed as the original one, you gain nothing.

So if the system is flawed... then the system is flawed? Who could have guessed! /s

But honestly, though, I can agree that the implementation of such a system can be flawed, but then literally anything could be flawed, that much is a truism. I could perhaps elaborate on what could qualify as a good method of resource generation, though in the broad lines I think it boils down to a) generating a resource based on some bit of gameplay that is b) sufficiently specific so that the player has to alter their "standard" playstyle to generate it optimally, yet c) general enough, and/or synergistic enough with the frame that the player can generate it consistently in most circumstances. For example, if Excalibur generated a resource from dealing melee damage, as mentioned above, or Zephyr generated a resource while airborne, that'd fit the criteria for healthy resource generation.

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Furthermore, if generation of the secondary resource is coupled with expanses of the primary one, you will be just as silenced in the end.

Which resource is primary and secondary here? I'm proposing to take Energy as a general resource away here, and moreover, I'm suggesting to only make some abilities consume resources, so that even if a frame is empty on that resource, they'd still be able to cast other abilities.

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Primary, this design exists to clearly separate spam heavy and spam light abilities or mask cooldowns/charges mechanics. You could achieve similar effect by adjusting energy costs/gains. I am not against this design. Go all in, if it makes sense. But implementing this mechanic on every Farme could go overboard and is often unnecessary.

I don't really agree with this, because there is a radical difference in player perception depending on the agency they're given: if building towards their next cast is a simple matter of waiting (i.e. a cooldown), players in Warframe don't like that because it feels like they have no agency over the downtime. Waiting is also something players don't really want to do in Warframe, and if the waiting time is too long it risks leading to unhealthy lulls in gameplay, e.g. sitting things out until one can cast again. If, however, the player is told that they can work towards their next cast by playing, not only would it feel like their ability uptime is in their control (even if it might be made very difficult or impossible to reach 100% uptime), it would also mean that their main way of generating more casts would be to continue playing, rather than wait.

3 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Your guideline is conflicting within itself and several issues disappear while viewed under another angle. You mention Harrow's Covenant while talking about " cooldowns". Yet, it also falls under "assets", because you have limited access to its buffs; it also falls under "modifiers", because it comes with a promise of a huge buff and alters gameplay with a hard switch from defense to offens; it also falls under "skillshot", for obvious reasons.

A few things:

I don't think there's any contradiction between these types of abilities, nor are they mutually exclusive. A modifier can also be a skillshot (e.g. "fire this projectile at an enemy to gain a massive burst of speed", or "pay X health to create this localized explosion"), a payoff can be an asset (e.g. by deploying some kind of buff dispenser that costs some resource to generate, where you can only have a limited amount of those dispensers at a time), and so on. You can also have abilities with both good and bad design, e.g. with Harrow's Covenant being a cooldown, but also a modifier. Never at any point did I ever suggest every ability should exclusively be one of the good types at a time.
I may have not expressed myself clearly, but I don't think you really understand what I'm trying to say regarding assets or skillshots:
- Assets are meant to be localized instances of power that you can deploy at will, but can only have a limited number of. Wisp's Reservoirs are an asset, because you can only have up to six of them at a time, and Octavia's Mallet, Resonator, and Amp are assets (and also egg timers), because you can only deploy a limited number of them at a time. Harrow's Covenant is not an asset, because it's not some separate entity you're deploying for a bonus.
- Similarly, a skillshot is an ability whose gameplay comes from setting it up before or during casting, as opposed to a modifier, which you have around to then subsequently give you bonuses for altering your play: you could technically call Covenant a skillshot because you could block fatal damage in a split-second with the right reactions, but that's not really how it's used most of the time.
- So in the end, Covenant is a cooldown, and is also a modifier, because it gives you bonus crit chance based on the damage you've soaked up, but it's not an asset or a skillshot, nor is it truly a payoff given our current Energy economy.

ShortCat · June 25, 2019

Stuff written in one bullet point kinda belongs together.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Some abilities need to be gated by a resource so as to avoid being able to clear the room all the time on demand, but some abilities are in fact meant to be used frequently, and aren't supposed to be about managing resources each time.

Covered in the part you let out. If an ability is supposed to be used seldom, make it cost 100 energy. If an ability is supposed to be used often - 5 energy. With an innate regen of 5 and total energy pool of 300 you can still spam what should be spammed, but you also have a small buffer for your "ultimate". If an ability costs 25, you gain 1 new use every 5 seconds, while with full pool you can "spam" it 12 times. The good thing, with this approach you can run the numbers on paper and change them accordingly.
The whole idea is, that you have a controlled income and reserve limit. Then according to design you can decide how often an ability can be used and how powerfull it is allowed to be for the number of uses. With uncontrollable gains like we have now, even most taxing ability cannot be to powerfull.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

In the end, simply basing everything around Energy regen means you're putting your abilities on some implicit cooldown, or at least a forced waiting period that the player cannot influence. I'd also argue that passive regen is just about the dullest way of implementing a resource generation mechanic, when something as simple as "This warframe generates Energy every time they deal melee damage" (which would work well for a frame like Excalibur, for example) for one frame, "This warframe generates Energy on headshots" (e.g. Mesa or Harrow) and so on could already create far more interesting gameplay.

Well, yes, it indeed seemes dull and introduces a soft cooldown, but I did not said you are not allowed to influence it, the opposite is the case. I still mentioned efficiency, you can expand your energy pool, Energy Siphon seems reasonable. I also see little harm in mods that generate energy on headshots - it is a clear build decision, where you trade weapon performance for Frame performance. No need to make those effects Fame exclussive. View base regen and energy pool as a base, that you can expand, but within clearly defined limits.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

But as mentioned above, and in the OP, the problem cannot simply be boiled down to the Energy economy.

Indeed, some abilities are just bad, but others get devalued by spam itself. Right now, nobody compares skills with their energy cost, number of enemies affected or runtime. With a harder limit on energy an Ash player won't spam BS in a room with 4 enemies, but instead use Shuriken.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Which resource is primary and secondary here? I'm proposing to take Energy as a general resource away here, and moreover, I'm suggesting to only make some abilities consume resources, so that even if a frame is empty on that resource, they'd still be able to cast other abilities.

I mentioned Nidus and Baruuk previously, their design is an iteration of your suggestion. Those 2 convert energy into their special resource, so no energy - no special resource. The idea with absolutely free abilities is not obvious enough from what I read, but could you elaborate why it could not happen to the next Frame? I think both concepts are not mutually exclussive.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I don't really agree with this, because there is a radical difference in player perception depending on the agency they're given: if building towards their next cast is a simple matter of waiting (i.e. a cooldown), players in Warframe don't like that because it feels like they have no agency over the downtime. Waiting is also something players don't really want to do in Warframe, and if the waiting time is too long it risks leading to unhealthy lulls in gameplay, e.g. sitting things out until one can cast again. If, however, the player is told that they can work towards their next cast by playing, not only would it feel like their ability uptime is in their control (even if it might be made very difficult or impossible to reach 100% uptime), it would also mean that their main way of generating more casts would be to continue playing, rather than wait.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

in the broad lines I think it boils down to a) generating a resource based on some bit of gameplay that is b) sufficiently specific so that the player has to alter their "standard" playstyle to generate it optimally, yet c) general enough, and/or synergistic enough with the frame that the player can generate it consistently in most circumstances. For example, if Excalibur generated a resource from dealing melee damage, as mentioned above, or Zephyr generated a resource while airborne, that'd fit the criteria for healthy resource generation.

Those 2 belong together.

We are not discussing hard cooldowns.
Perception has little to do with purpose or funcionality. Either you wait 3 seconds or perform 3 jumps, which take 3 seconds, will have the same effect in the end - gating, intended by design. Those are just cooldwons/gates in disguise.
A little mind game: an ability, a nuke, works as intended and clears a filled room. The room is not instantly filled with new enemies. Even if you travel to the next room, it is not guaranteed it will be full with enemies. There are natural gaps in combat, which happen between big wipes. This baseless fear of "waiting" led us here.
Especially in Warframe, there are other options, like 3.5 weapon slots.
If a Frame is designed to cast a lot, it will cast a lot. If a Frame is not designed to cast often, it shouldn't.
I am conflicted right now. On the one hand you criticise there is not enough payoff; on the other hand you go along the line that everything should be acessable at every moment.
If an ability is designed as a resource generator, it will do so, no matter how you call said resource.
Neither am I against multiresource designes, nor am I against resource generator abilities/options. I oppose to implement those mechanics on every occasion

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

So in the end, Covenant is a cooldown, and is also a modifier, because it gives you bonus crit chance based on the damage you've soaked up, but it's not an asset or a skillshot, nor is it truly a payoff given our current Energy economy.

Initially, I understood your "assets" as something limited, not only to a location. If you insist on this definition, have it your way. Payoff - uncontested. However, I cannot support the "skillshot" dismiss. Maximizing this ability requires timing and game knowledge - or skill. I just wonder why you didn't mention Volt's Discharge, it has a real cooldown. But we drift off.

Edited June 25, 2019 by ShortCat

Xzorn · June 25, 2019

It's a bit too late to do much about ability design at this point.

Energy management as a source of controlling their use went out the window when the game became a horde shooter.

What we can do is punish the wrong abilities being used at the wrong time but this requires more sophisticated AI like mini-bosses. Using ability damage on an enemy during an obvious power up moment; don't be surprised if they turn it back on you. CC an enemy at the wrong time; It suddenly gets a lot meaner. Trying to use a healing ability when you have an obvious debuff surrounding your character. Don't be surprised if it hurts you instead.

Things like that can bring a little brain activity back into ability usage.

I made a post a while ago based around this concept. The idea is a bit of a read to catch how the full system works but the TLTR of it is that players rely on each other to fill in gaps against certain mini-boss enemies they're weak again and each one can punish or counter certain ability usage.

The post is here. You can scroll down to some of the boss concepts to get an idea of what I mean.

Spoiler

Teridax68 · June 25, 2019

1 hour ago, ShortCat said:

Covered in the part you let out. If an ability is supposed to be used seldom, make it cost 100 energy. If an ability is supposed to be used often - 5 energy. With an innate regen of 5 and total energy pool of 300 you can still spam what should be spammed, but you also have a small buffer for your "ultimate". If an ability costs 25, you gain 1 new use every 5 seconds, while with full pool you can "spam" it 12 times. The good thing, with this approach you can run the numbers on paper and change them accordingly.
The whole idea is, that you have a controlled income and reserve limit. Then according to design you can decide how often an ability can be used and how powerfull it is allowed to be for the number of uses. With uncontrollable gains like we have now, even most taxing ability cannot be to powerfull.

But in that case, why not simply reduce the cost of the frequently-used ability to 0 Energy? Why does using one ability lots of times have to disable the use of others? Why does this model fit every frame? Because I don't think it does, and I don't think resource management is at the core of literally all our abilities (it certainly isn't for most of them, even).

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Well, yes, it indeed seemes dull and introduces a soft cooldown, but I did not said you are not allowed to influence it, the opposite is the case. I still mentioned efficiency, you can expand your energy pool, Energy Siphon seems reasonable. I also see little harm in mods that generate energy on headshots - it is a clear build decision, where you trade weapon performance for Frame performance. No need to make those effects Fame exclussive. View base regen and energy pool as a base, that you can expand, but in clearly defined limits.

But then you're asking for players to make up for a fundamentally dull and unpleasant system at the cost of their build options. By contrast, seeing which frames need a resource, and giving them their own way of generating that resource, avoids this entirely.

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Well yes, some abilities are just bad, but others get devalued by spam itself. Right now, nobody compares skills with their energy cost, number of enemies affected or runtime. With a harder limit on energy an Ash player won't spam BS in a room with 4 enemies, but instead use Shuriken.

Not really, because in an Energy system, using Shuriken means you'll have less Energy to cast Blade Storm, and since both have the same function (i.e. deal damage), might as well save up your Energy for whichever ability is strongest for its Energy cost (which could be either depending on balance). By contrast, if the two were decoupled from each other, and only BS cost Energy (or some other cost), then that would no longer be the case.

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I mentioned Nidus and Baruuk previously, their design is an iteration of your suggestion. Those 2 convert energy into their special resource, so no energy - no special resource. The idea with absolutely free abilities is not obvious enough from what I read, but could you elaborate why it could not happen to the next Frame? I think both concepts are not mutually exclussive.

I mean, I did mention in the thread's very title that I'm proposing to remove Energy from the equation, without always adding something to replace it, so I am in fact suggesting that abilities could be made entirely "free", so long as they were gated appropriately in the ways mentioned above. As such, I absolutely believe you could have a future frame with no Energy, particularly since this already exists with Hildryn. You could also have a frame with both Energy and their own resource, though I still think the core issue is why the frame would need Energy as a gating mechanism in the first place.

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Those 2 belong together.

We are not discussing hard cooldowns.

But we are discussing hard downtimes based on regen, which functionally is not that different from cooldowns.

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Perception has little to do with purpose or funcionality. Either you wait 3 seconds or perform 3 jumps, which take 3 seconds, will have the same effect in the end - gating, intended by design. Those are just cooldwons/gates in disguise.

Okay, but my specific point here is that perception is important: if the condition is to perform three jumps rather than wait 3 seconds, and those jumps each take a second to complete, the latter gating will always guarantee less uptime than the first, but the perception would be different, precisely because its condition is in the player's hands. This also presumes a forced downtime after every cast, when the general idea of a payoff is flexible enough that you could design abilities such that players could choose how much of a resource to spend with every cast in order to make for a more powerful effect.

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A little mind game: an ability, a nuke, works as intended and clears a filled room. The room is not instantly filled with new enemies. Even if you travel to the next room, it is not guaranteed it will be full with enemies. There are natural gaps in combat, which happen between big wipes. This baseless fear of "waiting" led us here.

But then the next room might be full of enemies, and because you didn't wait, you wouldn't be able to clear it. In the worst case, this might kill you, meaning that waiting would have in fact been the optimal solution. Because of this, there is always an incentive to wait, precisely because models like pure cooldowns or constant regen are based on time elapsed, rather than participation in combat.

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Especially in Warframe, there are other options, like 3.5 weapon slots.

But abilities aren't weapons or vice versa, and a weapon might not be enough to clear a large room full of enemies, whereas some abilities can.

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If a Frame is designed to cast a lot, it will cast a lot. If a Frame is not designed to cast often, it shouldn't.

Indeed, which is why I think we should switch to gating that works for that, rather than a system that is altogether too rigid and not all that conducive to frequent casting.

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I am conflicted right now. On the one hand you criticise there is not enough payoff; on the other hand you go along the line that everything should be acessable at every moment.

The two are not mutually exclusive: one can make a payoff ability accessible anytime, but only useful if one has generated enough of whichever resource it uses. Moreover, my point isn't simply that players want everything to be accessible at all times, but that they want to have control over when to use their abilities, even if they've cast them already recently, which putting resource generation into the hands of the player would achieve. Not every ability needs to be a payoff either.

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If an ability is designed as a resource generator, it will do so, no matter how you call said ressource.

Okay, but what you're saying is that this resource should always be Energy, and that resource generators should always be layered on top of the same core system, when that's what I'm questioning: I don't think every frame works in the same way, so I don't think it makes sense to impose the exact same mode of gating on all of their abilities.

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Neither am I against multiresource designes, nor am I against resource generator abilities/options. I oppose to implement those mechanics on every occasion

I don't think every warframe needs its own payoff mechanic, or therefore its own resource, but when a payoff mechanic does exist, the means of getting to that payoff should involve gameplay. In this respect, simply having time elapse is not gameplay on its own, whether it's via a cooldown or a resource that only regenerates over time.

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Initially, I understood your "assets" as something limited, not only to a location. If you insist on this definition, have it your way.

I mean, the name itself is only meant to describe a type of mechanic, but I do think it's indicative here: an asset is some sort of discrete resource you have a limited amount of, which you can use, but not in unlimited supply. The reason I'm suggesting that is in direct response to stuff like Vauban's different tech grenades, where they can be spammed ad infinitum (and you're in fact encouraged to do so), and are thus balanced around that spam, one of the many reasons why his kit feels so weak right now. Octavia solves at least that problem by having her own assets erase previous ones. With Harrow, it's not like you have this asset that you can deploy or redeploy at will, so much as just a buff you can activate.

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Payoff - uncontested. However, I cannot support the "skillshot" dismiss. Maximizing this ability requires timing and game knowledge - or skill. I just wonder why you didn't mention Volt's Discharge, it has a real cooldown. But we drift off.

That's true, Discharge does have an actual cooldown, one of the many unnecessary additions to the ability during Volt's rework. However, you are also here focusing too much on the name here, rather than what the name represents: If you want to be super-broad, literally every form of good design is contingent upon some sort of skill: using an asset properly also requires good game knowledge and choosing wisely where to allocate that asset over alternatives; using a modifier well is a matter of playing to its strengths and/or around its tradeoffs; and using a payoff well is all about choosing correctly when to expend the resource one has generated. However, what I specifically mentioned regarding skillshots is that the skill inherent in their proper use is not a matter of making some meaningful choice over play, but instead exercizing some much more basic mechanical skill, e.g. aiming, positioning, or reacting to something. In other words, Covenant depends mostly on tactical skill (i.e. you're choosing when's a good time to cast the ability), whereas a skillshot like Condemn is instead dependent on mechanical skill (the ability is always good to use, you just need to aim it).

1 minute ago, Xzorn said:

It's a bit too late to do much about ability design at this point.

Energy management as a source of controlling their use went out the window when the game became a horde shooter.

What we can do is punish the wrong abilities being used at the wrong time but this requires more sophisticated AI like mini-bosses. Using ability damage on an enemy during an obvious power up moment; don't be surprised if they turn it back on you. CC an enemy at the wrong time; It suddenly gets a lot meaner. Trying to use a healing ability when you have an obvious debuff surrounding your character. Don't be surprised if it hurts you instead.

I think there's a fundamental contradiction between giving up on changing our abilities because "it's too late" and because Warframe "became a horde shooter", and suggesting to remedy this instead by adding an entirely new system of minibosses, complete with an AI overhaul so radical that they'd be able to intelligently counter our moves Ninja Gaiden-style. Profit-Taker I think is good evidence that trying to mix bosses with horde mode-style combat is a recipe for disaster, and beyond that the suggestion is just as complicated, if not even more so than the suggestion to change our abilities. This isn't to say that the idea is fundamentally bad, as I'd actually love some more complex enemies (also I don't believe Warframe is entirely a horde shooter, at least not all the time), it's just that this feels more like rejecting one proposal simply out of personal preference for another, even though the suggestions aren't mutually exclusive either.

Edited June 25, 2019 by Teridax68

Xzorn · June 25, 2019

20 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

I think there's a fundamental contradiction between giving up on changing our abilities because "it's too late" and because Warframe "became a horde shooter", and suggesting to remedy this instead by adding an entirely new system of minibosses, complete with an AI overhaul so radical that they'd be able to intelligently counter our moves Ninja Gaiden-style. Profit-Taker I think is good evidence that trying to mix bosses with horde mode-style combat is a recipe for disaster, and beyond that the suggestion is just as complicated, if not even more so than the suggestion to change our abilities. This isn't to say that the idea is fundamentally bad, as I'd actually love some more complex enemies (also I don't believe Warframe is entirely a horde shooter, at least not all the time), it's just that this feels more like rejecting one proposal simply out of personal preference for another, even though the suggestions aren't mutually exclusive either.

I'm not sure Profit-Taker is the best example to use against a mini-boss counter action concept.

Profit-Taker is bad design and only has a Defensive mechanic. Everything else is just damage spam. It's the same concepts that have created the eHP + DPS meta we have today. CC / Invis just flat out don't work in that fight and wrongfully so. The fight isn't punishing wrong actions much as simply removing our total acceptable choices.

Oddly I'd say Shadow Stalker has one of the better designs. He's easy as pie but that's also because you can dodge all his moves and he's impartial to the frame you're playing for the most part. He could be a little meaner but his design is decent. Personally I'd swap out his dispell for True damage, add a new ability or two, make him faster and call it a day. Even as a squishy invis frame with other enemies. He gives you warning much like the Hunter's I made. You have time to prepare.

Saying it's too late is more a practical view based on DE's actions. They've back out of Damage 3.0 twice now and that's as important if not more than an ability rework. It's proven easier for them to just add new things than go back and fix old things. One tends to make more money than the other, so I get it. Kinda.

Teridax68 · June 25, 2019

46 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

Profit-Taker is bad design and only has a Defensive mechanic. Everything else is just damage spam. It's the same concepts that have created the eHP + DPS meta we have today. CC / Invis just flat out don't work in that fight and wrongfully so. The fight isn't punishing wrong actions much as simply removing our total acceptable choices.

Oddly I'd say Shadow Stalker has one of the better designs. He's easy as pie but that's also because you can dodge all his moves and he's impartial to the frame you're playing for the most part. He could be a little meaner but his design is decent. Personally I'd swap out his dispell for True damage, add a new ability or two, make him faster and call it a day. Even as a squishy invis frame with other enemies. He gives you warning much like the Hunter's I made. You have time to prepare.

Profit-Taker is bad design because of all the background noise generated by the horde surrounding it, though. Sure, it's pushed a meta, but beyond that, it's poorly-designed because it throws too many different things at the player for clean gameplay to emerge, owing to having to pay attention to both a boss, and a horde of enemies that are also meant to be a threat. Meanwhile, Shadow Stalker is acceptable in large part because players tend to find a place to fight him one-on-one -- he doesn't just pop up and instantly fight the player alongside a horde of enemies.

Quote

Saying it's too late is more a practical view based on DE's actions. They've back out of Damage 3.0 twice now and that's as important if not more than an ability rework. It's proven easier for them to just add new things than go back and fix old things. One tends to make more money than the other, so I get it. Kinda.

They've backed out of Damage 3.0 for now, but have overhauled much of the game's tech several times over, the Star Chart, Alerts, the balance of hundreds of weapons, multiple frame kits, Archwing (which they'll do yet again with Empyrean), parkour, and melee, which is still ongoing. I find it ridiculous to claim that it is ever too late to change anything in Warframe when the Warframe we know today is absolutely nothing like the game it was in 2013, and so due to massive systemic revamps (including a previous overhaul to damage).

Edited June 25, 2019 by Teridax68

Xzorn · June 25, 2019

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Profit-Taker is bad design because of all the background noise generated by the horde surrounding it, though. Sure, it's pushed a meta, but beyond that, it's poorly-designed because it throws too many different things at the player for clean gameplay to emerge, owing to having to pay attention to both a boss, and a horde of enemies that are also meant to be a threat. Meanwhile, Shadow Stalker is acceptable in large part because players tend to find a place to fight him one-on-one -- he doesn't just pop up and instantly fight the player alongside a horde of enemies..

The horde of enemies is there but they can be mitigated in threat value compared to a boss so the player can Focus on those mechanics.

In case of Shadow Stalker I've had to fight him right in the middle of a Kuva Flood Siphon quite a few times. Getting one on one is just optimal.

The key difference is abilities like CC or Barrier effects aren't just ignored as part of the game. Nyx can Chaos and effectively turn that mosh pit into a one on one against Stalker. Chroma can survive damage from all sides but needs pay more attention after being dispelled. Mag and Volt can still use their Barriers to block other enemies while they focus on Stalker. Profit-Taker takes none of this into consideration. It's a horde of nonsense damage everywhere because players are flat out denied ability interaction.

Believe me, I'd like less and more meaningful enemies like the Damage 1.0 days but I'm pretty sure I'm a minority in that interest. I think the path of least resistance here is for DE to stop this Immune mess and instead start to punish poor actions. If the player dies, it's their fault. Not because they didn't pick a specific frame.

DatDarkOne · June 25, 2019

39 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

I think the path of least resistance here is for DE to stop this Immune mess and instead start to punish poor actions. If the player dies, it's their fault. Not because they didn't pick a specific frame.

^^^This. Especially the Punish poor actions part.

DeadVoid118 · June 25, 2019

15 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

... okay, but I can't be more specific, because any of those things could be enough of a change. You seem to understand what I'm saying here, so I'm not quite understanding why you'd nitpick on the specifics of what is meant to be a very broad proposal. If you really want one specific example, here's how I'd change one of the passives I've mentioned (Excalibur's):

Current version: Excalibur gains +10% melee attack speed and +10% melee damage when wielding sword-like weapons.

This ability is filler because ultimately there is no gameplay to this: you get some mild DPS boost to some weapons and not others, which translates to no gameplay in-mission (you either have the bonus or you don't, and the bonus doesn't make you play differently).

Fixed version: Finisher attacks grant Excalibur +50% melee attack speed and +50% melee damage for 10 seconds.

Same bonus, but stronger, because this time it'd be contingent upon actually doing something to unlock it (in this case, by using finishers). This would also synergize with Excalibur's kit, whose Radial Blind sets enemies up for finisher attacks.

Well, yes, that was what I was asking for, specific examples. If you want to present an idea, you also have to present how to apply that idea.

And, be as that may, this points out the exact reason I disagree. You say the current version is bad when compared to the fixed, but I disagree. I don't need gameplay for every single ability. They're passives for a reason.

15 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Fix Energy how? Even if our Energy economy were reined in, there's still the problem of applying one very specific mode of gating across four separate active abilities at a time, as well as how we generate Energy. Nidus's stacks are perhaps one implementation, but yes, in cases where an ability is meant to have a meaningful cost or less than 100% uptime, that's when a resource comes in, which doesn't need to function along the same rigid and overly general rules as Energy.

Oh, so you're saying I need... a specific example. The gating is simple via energy cost and how you generate energy can be similar for most frames. Sure, separate resources for abilities like Nidus' stacks can occur. However, I don't think most frames need a bunch of resources just for abilities.

18 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

There is a difference between a misunderstanding, and outright failing to acknowledge the contents of what one has just read. You have made a number of demonstrably wrong claims that the fluidity of language does not excuse, nor that can be chalked up to a simple "misunderstanding" (for example, claiming that I "seem to think abilities that can be constantly used are bad" when I explicitly mention a model of good design for frequently used abilities). Ergo, you did not read my post "properly", i.e. by actually reading its contents such that you became aware of them.

Seeing as I have refuted every point you have made and presented reasons why, this is wrong. My claims aren't 'wrong' because you have yet to prove they are.

What I mean by 'constantly used are bad' are abilities that are like Saryn's murder-all. They are in constant use and there's little to no reason to ever not use them, and you see them as bad because of this. I disagree. See, the language can be interpreted differently from what I meant, but that is what I meant. Ergo, you did not read my post 'properly'.

18 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

But weapons aren't "direct benefits", you still have to point and shoot/attack for them to do their job. You can't simply press a button to instantly kill every enemy three rooms across, nor does merely equipping a weapon give you some constant stat increase. Unless there's some actual gameplay to that warframe's abilities, even if they focus exclusively on weapons, there's going to be nothing stopping you from simply spamming those abilities mindlessly, in which case you might as well just convert your entire warframe into a passive stat boost to your weapons. I'm not asking for a trade-off to every ability, either: something as simple as "your headshots deal X% more damage" would already be a healthy effect.

Staticor says hi to your 'can't press a button to instantly kill'. Arca Plasmor, Catchmoon, so on. You press button, enemies die with or without actual aiming. Other weapons are still direct benefits. There is little to no reason to not bring them, and Amalgam mods make them directly beneficial to base gameplay even if you don't use the weapon (like adding dodge speed).

Furthermore, the actual gameplay is pressing the button. That's literally all you do in any video game. You press buttons. You seem to just not like the result of those button presses, which is fine but doesn't mean we should eliminate those results altogether. If people want to play like that, I would let them play like that. People who complain about it have plenty of other options.

Additionally, how is 'your headshots deal X% more damage' any different from normal 'you deal X% more damage'? It doesn't change gameplay. You want headshots no matter what.

21 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

How nice of you to mention Loki's Invisibility specifically, because its complete lack of interaction is what made the frame unhealthily strong for a large part of Warframe's lifetime, right up until we got missions full of AoE, invisibility-detecting enemies, and other mechanics that prevented invisible frames from surviving properly. It is a prime example of what goes wrong when you make abilities almost entirely passive, because the end result is an ability that breaks interaction between the player and the environment, in a way movement and weapons do not compensate for in any way.

This doesn't serve as a counter-point, though. Sure, the effect of invisibility may have been too strong, but even granting that it doesn't mean passive abilities have no place. Furthermore, as I detailed prior, your point isn't much of a point at all to me because Loki before was variety, like Wukong's immortality. I actually rather dislike the fact that there are certain things that are just there to directly counter certain aspects of the game (cough nullifiers cough).

21 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This is all very nice, except when one style of gameplay boils down to simply letting oneself auto-win the game with little more than a few button presses, that playstyle is bound to dominate when it is strong, simply because it's more powerful and reliable. If you really want multiple styles of gameplay to coexist, you'd have to accept massive nerfs to that kind of playstyle anyway, simply so that other playstyles with actual gameplay could have a chance.

Well, no, playstyles exist regardless of usage. The public gravitate towards the meta, the strong, but is that really bad to have a specific 'strong'? Not in my opinion. People play what they want to play.

21 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Except we're not talking about efficiency of one's overall lifestyle, by whichever arbitrary standard you have set, we are evidently talking about efficiency of performance within Warframe. Fluid as language is and all, you're clearly arguing purely on semantics here.

Sure, but it's to point out the fact that efficiency is clearly not the end-all, be-all.

21 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

"Everyone is stupid because they don't intentionally sabotage themselves to put some challenge into the game" is an utterly asinine argument to make, particularly when you have also explicitly admitted to preferring easymode playstyles that put efficiency over gameplay. Not everyone maximizes efficiency, but Warframe is an efficiency-driven game that pushes the player to max themselves out. There is no incentive to intentionally weaken oneself aside from wanting to set oneself a challenge, and the very fact that you'd have to do so implies that the game itself ultimately does not challenge the player. Fact of the matter is, abusive frames, hyper-optimal builds, and hyper-efficient strategies exist, and many of these are driven by mistakes in balance and design. Blaming the player for not unbreaking the game makes no sense, and is an overused argument on these forums that is pretty much always employed to deflect any suggestion of change to Warframe.

Well, no, I admitted to liking variety.

And it's not a bad argument. If you want a challenge, you can easily make one. Competitions have rules because without them it becomes easy to win.

Warframe is clearly not an efficiency-driven game, unless you're talking about Sanctuary Onslaught. There's little reason to max things out, if we are as overpowered as you suggest, and the only reason someone would is because they A) don't want a challenge B) have no self control or C) want to reach the limits of the game.

Well, I mean, most of the challenge is in the months-long grind to get to the point where you can breeze through missions, so I'd say there is a challenge. However, is it bad that there is no challenge? You know, I like to feel like my efforts have been rewarded. The fact that I can now dominate missions I previously would instantly die in is quite fun.

Blaming the player for using tools granted to them is not what I'm doing. I'm blaming them for making the game easy, and then complaining that it's easy. If you don't want it to be easy, don't make it so. People can do that. They have a choice to not use X or Y, and there is little to no reason not to do so if they want a challenge.

It's an overused argument, but it isn't wrong in this sense. Usage has nothing to do with whether an argument is good or not. Heck, isn't popularity supposed to mean something is good?

21 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Iron Skin, Limbo's Rift, Assimilate, and the new Defy all beg to differ. Some of them do have some mechanic that adds power based on some interaction, but all of these are effects that can be used to make a frame invulnerable with 100% uptime. When talking about less than literal invincibility, Inaros also comes in, as his high stats, coupled with Arcane Grace, make him functionally immortal in the near-totality of the content the game has to offer.

I beg to differ. All those abilities have interaction. Iron Skin is just extra health, not invincibility. Limbo's Rift prevents you from damaging enemies outside the rift. Assimilate is an augment for absorb that reduces your speed by 50% and reduces the range of effectiveness, and still doesn't let you use weapons. Defy is absorb but with armor at the end. None of these have 100% up-time. Immediately casting again still leaves plenty of time for you to get shot in-between for each ability usage.

21 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Interesting that you'd presume that gameplay would be opposed to choice and variety, when the latter two are themselves contributing factors to good gameplay. When the choice comes between a playstyle that can win the game with no effort, and one that has to make some effort to win the game, it doesn't matter how much more fun the latter playstyle is, the former will dominate, thereby reducing choice and variety overall. Being outright invincible was the core reason Wukong was so boring prior to his rework, and the only people who seemed attached to the old Defy seemed to be those who didn't main him.

Well, no, I didn't presume such a thing. I did, however, notice that by doing everything the way you want, changing gameplay to fit your needs, it limits choice and variety.

In terms of popularity, variety will be squandered with definitive 'betters'. However, in terms of choice, this is not the case.

Okay? I can't have an opinion on a frame because gasp I use other frames too? If anything, wouldn't that make my opinion better because it would indicate it comes from a place that looks at the other frames and recognizes Wukong's place within them?

Also, you're wrong. While most everyone agrees the rework is good, the new defy is not liked by many a Wukong main (though, many isn't many because there was never many Wukong mains in the first place). At least, of the mains I have talked to (of which there are 'many').

22 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

And by this reasoning, you must also feel entitled to a frame that, with a single ability press, can instantly give you every other warframe, weapon, mod, and collectible item, max them out, put you to Mastery Rank 30, and complete every single quest and event in the game, including ones in the future. Because it exists, and you might want that at a certain moment, therefore variety or something. If your idea of gameplay is to not participate, but instead watch as you are showered in rewards and big numbers, then you may be better served by an idle game.

Well, as I have said many times before, no. Most of what you just claimed is quite unrelated. Gameplay is gameplay, even not doing something or waiting is still technically gameplay. Now, for the most part, I've been ignoring this fact with my previous statements in order to create a semblance of an understanding.

The type of thing you are speaking of is quite different from the type of thing I'm speaking of. The challenge exists, it's in the grind. Constantly pressing buttons or pressing one button every twenty seconds makes little difference to that grind. You can call it a challenge to press more buttons in a specific order and it may be so, but that's merely adding challenge to the challenge, which isn't good. It's not variety to reduce the 'challenge' as I call it to nothing, but shifting that challenge around is variety. For example, less grind but more button pressing. Same amount of challenge, more variety. More grind, less button pressing. Same amount of challenge, more variety. However, you don't indicate any such thing about making the grind easier for the more button presses, and besides the point, what if I feel like less button presses in exchange for more grind?

As the system currently stands, the grind is constant. Button presses can shift. This is slightly better than making button presses more constant. Variety is lost by making one or the other constant. Your system might work if rewards instead worked in tiers, with lower tiers being easier with crappier chances. Now, technically, both are 'variable' but theoretically adding the challenge of both together would ideally always result in a 'perfect' challenge amount.

22 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

... but I'm not "making everything active gameplay with a thousand important decisions", that's a complete straw man. You don't make a thousand important decisions when aiming and firing a weapon, so there need not be that much more complication to ability usage, there just needs to be some sort of mechanic behind it, rather than just raw power.

It's not. You are making the abilities more important than '1 and done'. My wording was a hyperbole, sure, but not wrong.

Teridax68 · June 26, 2019

3 hours ago, Xzorn said:

The horde of enemies is there but they can be mitigated in threat value compared to a boss so the player can Focus on those mechanics.

If the horde of enemies is made insignificant relative to the boss, why even have the horde in the first place? Bosses with adds tend to have simpler mechanics during the add phases, or just simpler mechanics in general, precisely to avoid having the player focus on more factors than humanly possible.

3 hours ago, Xzorn said:

In case of Shadow Stalker I've had to fight him right in the middle of a Kuva Flood Siphon quite a few times. Getting one on one is just optimal.

Anecdotal evidence for the Shadow Stalker is a particularly poor argument when the guy is currently as weak as he is, meaning that he can currently be disposed of regardless of mechanics or hordes purely because he's a pushover. The fact remains that one can anticipate his arrival and prepare for it to avoid dealing with hordes of enemies, which is typically what players do. Meanwhile, the Wolf of Saturn Six just pops out at random, with a number of fugitives to boot, and even that much is already enough for players to seriously dislike fighting him.

3 hours ago, Xzorn said:

The key difference is abilities like CC or Barrier effects aren't just ignored as part of the game. Nyx can Chaos and effectively turn that mosh pit into a one on one against Stalker. Chroma can survive damage from all sides but needs pay more attention after being dispelled. Mag and Volt can still use their Barriers to block other enemies while they focus on Stalker. Profit-Taker takes none of this into consideration. It's a horde of nonsense damage everywhere because players are flat out denied ability interaction.

... while also being attacked from all sides, i.e. like most horde modes, which directional barriers can't really work well against. Ultimately, what you are saying here is that some specific warframes are designed to simply ignore the horde mode aspect of horde mode combat, which begs the question of why one would then need it: what of the frames that can't just ignore the crowds? What purpose does the horde even serve if warframe abilities are designed to hard-counter them?

3 hours ago, Xzorn said:

Believe me, I'd like less and more meaningful enemies like the Damage 1.0 days but I'm pretty sure I'm a minority in that interest. I think the path of least resistance here is for DE to stop this Immune mess and instead start to punish poor actions. If the player dies, it's their fault. Not because they didn't pick a specific frame.

I can agree that DE should stop with the immunities, and I can agree that not everyone would want to avoid horde mode-style combat in Warframe entirely, but then I also think one can have one's cake and eat it too, thanks to factions: the Infested are well-suited for horde mode, but the Corpus by contrast really aren't, as some of their units' gameplay is too complex to work well in large numbers (and, on top of this, the lore says very few Corpus actually fight; they mostly just send proxies to do their dirty work). Meanwhile, the Grineer clearly have some sort of hierarchy, with a mix of cannon fodder and more distinguished elites: your miniboss enemies could thus insert themselves into some (but not all) factions, so that one could select a different mode of combat based on the opposing faction, thus preserving horde mode in some situations, while encouraging different and more tactical gameplay in others. That does mean, however, that these minibosses can't be the cure to poor ability design, as they wouldn't be around all the time.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Well, yes, that was what I was asking for, specific examples. If you want to present an idea, you also have to present how to apply that idea.

Which I did, except you didn't seem to have read or understood the relevant paragraphs.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

And, be as that may, this points out the exact reason I disagree. You say the current version is bad when compared to the fixed, but I disagree. I don't need gameplay for every single ability. They're passives for a reason.

So... what is your argument here? What is the actual reason not to have gameplay to our power? Because the rather obvious counterargument is that Warframe is a video game that aims to provide some sort of gameplay to the player, therefore its components should be conducive towards that.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Oh, so you're saying I need... a specific example. The gating is simple via energy cost and how you generate energy can be similar for most frames. Sure, separate resources for abilities like Nidus' stacks can occur. However, I don't think most frames need a bunch of resources just for abilities.

Okay, so first off, the very fact that you fail to give any specifics while underlining your own insistence on precise examples simply undermines the point you are making, as you're simply expecting me to figure out in your stead how Energy gating could be fixed. As I have directly told you, I am having trouble figuring that out, because I have pointed out fundamental issues with Energy as a system, which you haven't addressed in any way. Thus, your suggestion is at an impasse.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Seeing as I have refuted every point you have made and presented reasons why, this is wrong. My claims aren't 'wrong' because you have yet to prove they are.

Refuted... which points? Presented... which reasons? For someone so insistent upon specifics, you're being awfully vague, particularly as here you're simply telling me that my points are wrong, and that I haven't proven anything, instead of showing me either. Meanwhile, I have in fact been refuting your points, with examples to boot (I cited a specific example above of a demonstrably wrong claim you made), so really, this just comes across as grandstanding more than anything else.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

What I mean by 'constantly used are bad' are abilities that are like Saryn's murder-all. They are in constant use and there's little to no reason to ever not use them, and you see them as bad because of this. I disagree. See, the language can be interpreted differently from what I meant, but that is what I meant. Ergo, you did not read my post 'properly'.

So, to disprove the claim that you misunderstood my post... you make up an example that I never challenged as a misunderstanding? What?

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Staticor says hi to your 'can't press a button to instantly kill'. Arca Plasmor, Catchmoon, so on. You press button, enemies die with or without actual aiming. Other weapons are still direct benefits. There is little to no reason to not bring them,

But this is all blatantly wrong, as you still have to aim in some direction for these weapons to work, even if the aim is generous. There is no reason not to bring weapons in general, because weapons are in fact intended to be an essential part of our arsenal (which does not mean we output power simply from their existence), but there are reasons not to bring certain weapons in particular, including the ones you mentioned, in an environment where there are alternatives with desirable options. Again, you are fiddling with semantics, but on top of that seem to be relying on this strawman that I'm asking for everything to require some fine degree of skill, when really I'm not being that strict.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

and Amalgam mods make them directly beneficial to base gameplay even if you don't use the weapon (like adding dodge speed).

But dodge speed is itself a fairly situational bonus, because dodging is a fairly specific move with a specific purpose (plus increasing dodge speed carries the tradeoff of reducing the time you spend reducing damage). The same can be said for sprinting, charge attacks, and revives, especially since all of these mods are expressly designed with the intent of offering a tradeoff relative to others. They do make you stronger, but their design includes some form of gameplay.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Furthermore, the actual gameplay is pressing the button. That's literally all you do in any video game. You press buttons. You seem to just not like the result of those button presses, which is fine but doesn't mean we should eliminate those results altogether. If people want to play like that, I would let them play like that. People who complain about it have plenty of other options.

By this same ridiculous degree of abstraction, working on Excel sheets non-stop in an office is also its own kind of video game, because "you press buttons", and a game like Dark Souls has the exact same depth and quality of play as YIIK. In fact, watching a movie online is a video game now, because all you do is "press buttons" and admire the results. Your argument here makes zero sense.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Additionally, how is 'your headshots deal X% more damage' any different from normal 'you deal X% more damage'? It doesn't change gameplay. You want headshots no matter what.

... yes, you do want headshots no matter what, but you're not going to be able to headshot with the same ease as just shooting people. You have to aim a little more, or make use of effects that favor headshots, all of which require some sort of gameplay. Functionally, the end result is a damage increase, but it is a damage increase with gameplay attached to it. Once again, you are being far too abstract and reductive in your argumentation here to be able to make any cogent point regarding gameplay being presented to the player, and not just the output of that gameplay.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

This doesn't serve as a counter-point, though. Sure, the effect of invisibility may have been too strong, but even granting that it doesn't mean passive abilities have no place.

Because... ? Also, where did I say I wanted to eliminate passives? The other time you said this was in response to a suggestion I made for a passive, which makes that insinuation all the weirder.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Furthermore, as I detailed prior, your point isn't much of a point at all to me because Loki before was variety, like Wukong's immortality. I actually rather dislike the fact that there are certain things that are just there to directly counter certain aspects of the game (cough nullifiers cough).

... which exist precisely because stuff like Loki's invisibility exist. These annoying units exist to force gameplay in an environment where we can otherwise completely eliminate all gameplay for the game, and so with optimal results, which in turn kills actual variety. Don't like Nullifiers? Then accept the fact that you are not entitled to just passively win the game, and that you demanding as much ruins the fun for other players too.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Well, no, playstyles exist regardless of usage. The public gravitate towards the meta, the strong, but is that really bad to have a specific 'strong'? Not in my opinion. People play what they want to play.

This is hilariously wrong, as one could easily verify with even a cursory glance at the forums or Reddit, or even more simply, by playing the game and seeing how frequently some frames and weapons are used over others (DE even posted some data on this a little while back). The hypothetical existence of some people who participate in a playstyle regardless of optimality does not preclude the fact that some playstyles are far more frequently played than others due to how much more effective they are at winning. Warframe is a game that incentivizes players to go for optimal or more efficient builds, which means that if one playstyle is more reliable, more powerful, and easier than the rest, regardless of how fun it actually is, it's going to dominate, which means DE is eventually going to have to step in, as is already about to happen for the Maiming Strike + Blood Rush combo with Melee 3.0.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Sure, but it's to point out the fact that efficiency is clearly not the end-all, be-all.

But your argument points out strictly nothing, that's the point. It is completely irrelevant to the matter being discussed, and merely hinges upon a definition of "efficiency" that is clearly not being used here. That is what it means to argue on semantics.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Well, no, I admitted to liking variety.

But you clearly don't, and are yet again arguing on semantics here: your implicit definition of "variety" is "the playstyle I like exists in Warframe", in complete and deliberate ignorance of the fact that your hyper-efficient, gameplay-devoid playstyle is itself harmful to variety of play, because it dominates over playstyles that are less reliable due to hinging more upon player agency. Thus, you are willing to sacrifice deeper and more diverse combat in Warframe, and thus actual variety, in the defense of one-note playstyles that exclude the rest from viability by their very existence.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

And it's not a bad argument. If you want a challenge, you can easily make one.

It's an utterly terrible argument, because there is no incentive to "make a challenge" in Warframe when the game instead incentivizes efficiency. It is a deliberate attempt to dodge the actual point of the matter, which is that Warframe currently cannot offer a real challenge, despite the developers' best attempts, due to how many of our abilities trivialize the game by design (and if there are rewards behind the "challenges" DE give us, you can bet your butt that players are going to use those abilities to win as easily and as reliably as possible).

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Competitions have rules because without them it becomes easy to win.

I couldn't agree more! Which is precisely why Warframe should alter its rules of design to benefit integrity of play. :smile:

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Warframe is clearly not an efficiency-driven game, unless you're talking about Sanctuary Onslaught. There's little reason to max things out, if we are as overpowered as you suggest, and the only reason someone would is because they A) don't want a challenge B) have no self control or C) want to reach the limits of the game.

Point C being what the game expressly pushes the player to do, by having us collect more weapons, frames and mods, and max them out. Of course there is reason to max things out; it makes you more powerful, which not only makes it easier to get rewards, it also just satisfies the pursuit of more power, which is a common game incentive that is itself ingrained into Warframe's current systems (ranking up frames and weapons makes them more powerful, or more able to be made more powerful). Trying to blame the players for the game's flawed systems and incentives is a poor excuse, and is itself a transparent attempt to deflect the onus of change away from the game itself.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Well, I mean, most of the challenge is in the months-long grind to get to the point where you can breeze through missions, so I'd say there is a challenge. However, is it bad that there is no challenge? You know, I like to feel like my efforts have been rewarded. The fact that I can now dominate missions I previously would instantly die in is quite fun.

Yes, it clearly is bad. Players complain endlessly about the lack of endgame, despite DE's attempts to create one, and both player comments and global play rates indicate that many players eventually get bored and leave due to repetition taking over. The very fact that DE is trying to give us challenges should be an indication that the lack of challenge is in fact having a detrimental effect on the game. This isn't to say that the game should be difficult, it just needs to offer some kind of stimulation, and not devolve into an almost completely passive experience.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Blaming the player for using tools granted to them is not what I'm doing. I'm blaming them for making the game easy, and then complaining that it's easy. If you don't want it to be easy, don't make it so. People can do that. They have a choice to not use X or Y, and there is little to no reason not to do so if they want a challenge.

... but the game gives them the tools to make the game drastically easier and incentivizes them to do so, so again, why are you blaming the player here? I think you might benefit from reading up on incentives and incentive structures, and how they can make people worse off when improperly set up.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

It's an overused argument, but it isn't wrong in this sense. Usage has nothing to do with whether an argument is good or not. Heck, isn't popularity supposed to mean something is good?

Absolutely not, that is literally an argumentum ad populum. It is overused because it is invalid to begin with, and is merely the expression of an echo chamber on the forums (and the forums specifically, rarely if ever on other spaces) that trots it out every time DE even suggests nerfing anything for the sake of improving gameplay, or even when the possibility of a nerf is perceived without confirmation from the devs. Meanwhile, you have an even larger and more consistent number of players asking for Warframe to give them more stimulation and challenge, as well as address frames, weapons, and strategies that kill the fun and variety in the game, so it's not even the most popular argument in the room.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

I beg to differ. All those abilities have interaction. Iron Skin is just extra health, not invincibility.

... which can be constantly recast for more health each time, in addition to CC and status immunity, ergo its interaction is eliminated.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Limbo's Rift prevents you from damaging enemies outside the rift.

... which isn't relevant when the mission objective isn't contingent upon damaging enemies, thereby causing the ability to become a perma-invincibility button, one can preserve even when switching to Operator Mode to activate certain panels.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Assimilate is an augment for absorb that reduces your speed by 50% and reduces the range of effectiveness, and still doesn't let you use weapons.

... which, as with Limbo's Rift, simply lets you waddle through missions while invincible, removing all interaction at the cost of making the mission slightly more boring. The tradeoff here does not actually address the abusive aspect of the ability.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Defy is absorb but with armor at the end.

... which can be cast on-demand for constant invincibility and damage.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

None of these have 100% up-time.

Literally all of these can have 100% uptime. There is no cooldown in-between casts, we generate enough Energy for the costs to not matter.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Immediately casting again still leaves plenty of time for you to get shot in-between for each ability usage.

Except casting itself will make you invincible. If the argument you're making is that there's some delay in the cast where the player isn't yet invincible, that simply means that those abilities have 99.999...% uptime instead of literally 100%, which still has the same core problem.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Well, no, I didn't presume such a thing.

This statement:

On 2019-06-24 at 11:03 PM, Keylan118 said:

Truth be told, I do enjoy choice and variety over 'gameplay'.

Implicitly relies on the assumption that choice and variety are opposed to gameplay, by framing them as a choice between one set or the other. You therefore very much did presume such a thing.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

I did, however, notice that by doing everything the way you want, changing gameplay to fit your needs, it limits choice and variety.

Where? How so?

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

In terms of popularity, variety will be squandered with definitive 'betters'. However, in terms of choice, this is not the case.

What does this even mean? What good is a choice if it is strictly inferior to another?

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Okay? I can't have an opinion on a frame because gasp I use other frames too?

Oh no, you can, you just don't get to claim a personal stake in a frame you have had no personal involvement in until the tide of player politics in the Warframe community turned towards it. Pretending to know Wukong in-depth and arguing that changing Defy would be the end of the world, when you don't know what you're talking about or actually care about the frame itself, is blatantly dishonest, and does not convey constructive feedback when the intent isn't to actually benefit the frame, so much as just fight some imagined battle against nerfs of any kind.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

If anything, wouldn't that make my opinion better because it would indicate it comes from a place that looks at the other frames and recognizes Wukong's place within them?

Please explain how this argument even begins to make sense.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Also, you're wrong. While most everyone agrees the rework is good, the new defy is not liked by many a Wukong main (though, many isn't many because there was never many Wukong mains in the first place). At least, of the mains I have talked to (of which there are 'many').

[citation needed]

But also, how exactly does this hypothetical dislike of the new Defy's implementation translate in any way to wanting the old Defy back?

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Well, as I have said many times before, no. Most of what you just claimed is quite unrelated.

Quite unrelated to what? You're trying to justify the existence of playstyles that trivialize the game, and the very fact you're limiting yourself to most of what I just claimed itself implies you'd be okay with some of what I just listed, despite the fact that my suggestion was so obviously meant to be ridiculous.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Gameplay is gameplay, even not doing something or waiting is still technically gameplay.

Waiting... how long? Because I can agree that perhaps pausing on some input can constitute interesting gameplay, but calling stuff like build timers "gameplay" is stretching the definition significantly, as those kinds of mechanics exist specifically to inconvenience the player and lock off interaction with the game.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Now, for the most part, I've been ignoring this fact with my previous statements in order to create a semblance of an understanding.

Or, alternatively, you're simply choosing to pick yet another argument on semantics here when in an uncomfortable argumentative position, as you clearly haven't been interested in debating based off of some shared understanding of the terms and context we are using. You know what kind of gameplay I'm talking about, you're just trying to substitute some other meaning to it for argument's sake.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

The type of thing you are speaking of is quite different from the type of thing I'm speaking of. The challenge exists, it's in the grind.

How is the grind a "challenge"? Which skills does it test? Is it beneficial or enjoyable to the player to test those skills?

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Constantly pressing buttons or pressing one button every twenty seconds makes little difference to that grind. You can call it a challenge to press more buttons in a specific order and it may be so, but that's merely adding challenge to the challenge, which isn't good. It's not variety to reduce the 'challenge' as I call it to nothing, but shifting that challenge around is variety. For example, less grind but more button pressing. Same amount of challenge, more variety. More grind, less button pressing. Same amount of challenge, more variety.

Once again, your argument here is far too vague and abstract to actually mean anything: what is the variety you are talking about here? Why is this "variety" good? Why does the existence of "challenge" in the form of grinding mean we should exclude any other form of challenge from Warframe? If Warframe is just a game about pressing buttons, why doesn't it just resume itself to a clicker game?

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

However, you don't indicate any such thing about making the grind easier for the more button presses, and besides the point, what if I feel like less button presses in exchange for more grind?

... then pick the frame that requires fewer button presses? I don't see where I ever suggested that every frame should have button-masher kits, nor did I ever quantify difficulty or grinding around frequency of button presses, so your argument here is not only not right, it's not even wrong.

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

As the system currently stands, the grind is constant. Button presses can shift. This is slightly better than making button presses more constant. Variety is lost by making one or the other constant.

Where did I ever suggest to make every frame press buttons at the exact same rate?

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

Your system might work if rewards instead worked in tiers, with lower tiers being easier with crappier chances. Now, technically, both are 'variable' but theoretically adding the challenge of both together would ideally always result in a 'perfect' challenge amount.

Variable difficulty sounds good, but I don't see why it is necessary to my suggestion. Why can't my system work without that?

1 hour ago, Keylan118 said:

It's not. You are making the abilities more important than '1 and done'. My wording was a hyperbole, sure, but not wrong.

But I'm not, though, I'm simply proposing that using abilities shouldn't be a totally passive experience. As mentioned above with the examples of the guns you mentioned, I'm not saying that every ability should be this especially challenging test of skill, I'm just saying that every ability needs to be based on some form of healthy gameplay, which need not be difficult to achieve. You could thus still have very easy frames with the system I'm proposing and, in fact, removing Energy might make them even easier to use. You are, therefore, still continuing to be hyperbolic, in addition to being wrong.

ShortCat · June 26, 2019

15 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Because I don't think it does, and I don't think resource management is at the core of literally all our abilities (it certainly isn't for most of them, even).

18 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Not really, because in an Energy system, using Shuriken means you'll have less Energy to cast Blade Storm, and since both have the same function (i.e. deal damage), might as well save up your Energy for whichever ability is strongest for its Energy cost (which could be either depending on balance). By contrast, if the two were decoupled from each other, and only BS cost Energy (or some other cost), then that would no longer be the case.

"With great power comes great responsibility". If you have power without responsibility, you undermine all basic values. This is why Shuriken should be cheap, so that you are not punished for using it often, but not entirely free, because you are handed a certain ammount of power and you should be at least mindfull why/when to use it.
By contrast, your suggestion of "free powers" promotes mindless spam, as there are no downsides in doing so. If we follow this line of thinking, Shuriken cannot be powerfull, precisely because you can use it without restraint. If Shuriken is not allowed to be powerfull, it becomes a bad/meaningless ability. Free powers tend to become spammy or meaningless or both.

16 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

But we are discussing hard downtimes based on regen, which functionally is not that different from cooldowns.

But you also suggest cooldwons, just tied to predefined actions. As soon as you implement any kind of gating, you likewise implement downtimes or cooldowns. Furthermore, those turn into "hard cooldwons" only when you mismanage your resources, which is actually how it should work. Am I right?

16 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This also presumes a forced downtime after every cast, when the general idea of a payoff is flexible enough that you could design abilities such that players could choose how much of a resource to spend with every cast in order to make for a more powerful effect.

Neither is your idea more flexible in resource generation, as it specifically binds it to an action.

16 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

But then the next room might be full of enemies, and because you didn't wait, you wouldn't be able to clear it. In the worst case, this might kill you, meaning that waiting would have in fact been the optimal solution. Because of this, there is always an incentive to wait, precisely because models like pure cooldowns or constant regen are based on time elapsed, rather than participation in combat.

16 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

The two are not mutually exclusive: one can make a payoff ability accessible anytime, but only useful if one has generated enough of whichever resource it uses. Moreover, my point isn't simply that players want everything to be accessible at all times, but that they want to have control over when to use their abilities, even if they've cast them already recently, which putting resource generation into the hands of the player would achieve. Not every ability needs to be a payoff either.

18 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

But abilities aren't weapons or vice versa, and a weapon might not be enough to clear a large room full of enemies, whereas some abilities can.

The bold part is just as true for your concept, because you also implemented gating.
If an ability is only woth using after a certain treshold, than it is weak/meaningless and could be on cooldown or not accessible.
In Warframe weapons can easely rival powers. Even without abilities, you are not entirely helpless. There are Frames that resemble a weapon platform, others are casters as well as everything in between. Gunplay and powers complement each other and create the core experience. You cannot just cherry pick whatever happens to support your argument. Thus, claimes like "weapons are weapons" or "it is better to wait" are entirely baseless. Furthermore, the "wait" condition happens only if you either go against inteded design and spam or mismanage your resources.

17 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Okay, but what you're saying is that this resource should always be Energy, and that resource generators should always be layered on top of the same core system, when that's what I'm questioning: I don't think every frame works in the same way, so I don't think it makes sense to impose the exact same mode of gating on all of their abilities.

17 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I don't think every warframe needs its own payoff mechanic, or therefore its own resource, but when a payoff mechanic does exist, the means of getting to that payoff should involve gameplay. In this respect, simply having time elapse is not gameplay on its own, whether it's via a cooldown or a resource that only regenerates over time.

I never said it should always be energy, I say it could often be energy. I already mentioned it: different resource pools are ment by design to implement certain gating behaviour, when the core resource management system fails to address balance/design issues. However in a solid base system it can often be done just with right number adjustments. While too frequent special designs, introduce unnecessary complexity.
Pure payoff mechanic blatantly asks players to follow instructions and heavely punishes if you refuse or cannot do it in the first palce. Thus it is suited better as an expansion for a core system.

22 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Indeed, which is why I think we should switch to gating that works for that, rather than a system that is altogether too rigid and not all that conducive to frequent casting.

But it suits both extremes as well as everything in between. You can manage how often any ability should be used by combining e-regen(includding additional options if necessary, like generator abilities/actions), e-pool & e-costs. There is nothing rigid or prohibitive (if not intended) to frequent casting. I have a strong feeling you cannot imagine how it could work. Or you do not want to imagine.

Teridax68 · June 26, 2019

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

"With great power comes great responsibility". If you have power without responsibility, you undermine all basic values.

What does this even mean? What "responsibility" are we talking about here? Because I'm proposing a model of "responsibility" that does not require Energy costs to gate the usage of our abilities, so again, I don't see how such a trite maxim justifies slapping Energy and Energy costs onto every ability.

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

This is why Shuriken should be cheap, so that you are not punished for using it often, but not entirely free, because you are handed a certain ammount of power and you should be at least mindfull why/when to use it.

... but if an Energy cost is the only thing preventing an ability from being brainless, then the ability is fundamentally brainless, and should change anyway. Again, the problem with what you're suggesting here is that, because Shuriken and Blade Storm both draw from the same resource (i.e. Energy), and both accomplish the same function (i.e. damage), their usage boils down to an efficiency comparison, where the most efficient ability gets used all the time and the other ability not at all. This is, by the way, what is happening now on Ash, so I'm not speaking in hypotheticals.

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

By contrast, your suggestion of "free powers" promotes mindless spam, as there are no downsides in doing so.

Why? Where? First of all, this is wrong, because several of the models I suggested do come with downsides, but even in the case of free-to-cast abilities that are meant to be frequently used, I specified that they should be held to essentially the same standard as weapon attacks, e.g. gun or melee attacks, which are used frequently, but aren't considered "mindless spam" because there's at least some minimum amount of gameplay tied to them. Have you actually read what I posted?

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

If we follow this line of thinking, Shuriken cannot be powerfull, precisely because you can use it without restraint. If Shuriken is not allowed to be powerfull, it becomes a bad/meaningless ability. Free powers tend to become spammy or meaningless or both.

It may not be allowed to home in on enemies with every cast and instantly-kill them each time regardless of level or whatever (the latter which isn't the case either on the current ability), but at the end of the day, Shuriken is basically just a weapon attack anyway (it's in the name, too, which makes this one of the best examples to pick), so even if it were free to use, it could still be made just as powerful as any throwing weapon, and just as meaningful.

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

But you also suggest cooldwons, just tied to predefined actions. As soon as you implement any kind of gating, you likewise implement downtimes or cooldowns. Furthermore, those turn into "hard cooldwons" only when you mismanage your resources, which is actually how it should work. Am I right?

No, you're not, because you're stretching the definition of "cooldown" to encompass literally any sort of downtime, in complete and deliberate ignorance of how that downtime relates to player agency. Whether your force the player to wait 10 seconds because of a 10-second cooldown, or because of a 100 Energy cost with an unchanging 10 Energy regen per second, the net result is the same, because the amount of player agency is the same. By contrast, when the means of recharging an ability involves actually playing the game in some way, e.g. killing enemies, getting headshots, blocking attacks, etc., the player has agency over that downtime. Moreover, you seem to misunderstand the notion of a "hard cooldown", which is a cooldown affected only by the passage of time, whereas my own model does not, by definition, have hard cooldowns as part of good ability design, because the "cooldowns" I'm proposing have their duration influenced by the player's actions.

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Neither is your idea more flexible in resource generation, as it specifically binds it to an action.

Except there are dozens, if not hundreds of different actions to be performed in Warframe, which makes for an extremely flexible design model if one can simply pick from such a wide selection, and tailor it to every relevant frame as needed, as opposed to a single, rigid model whose one-size-fits-all model fits virtually no-one. Because many of these actions also tend to be open-ended enough to be triggered in many different ways (e.g. headshots), this adds even more flexibility, especially compared to a model where the only way of generating a resource is to wait, itself an extremely limited and generally undesirable action to perform. I don't really get how you can claim that my model is not flexible in this manner.

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

The bold part is just as true for your concept, because you also implemented gating.

Bolding portions of my quotes out of context is a rather dishonest tactic to make it look like I'm saying something different from what is being said: if you look at the full quotes you pulled, which you inexplicably left in spite of your attempt to quote mine me, you'll see that the bold part in the first paragraph explains why your proposed system incentivizes people to wait. For sure, because I'm proposing to gate some abilities by limited resources, the player may not always be able to use those abilities to their fullest effect every time, but because I'm tying the uptime of those abilities to actual play, the player has no incentive to wait, and instead is incentivized to go to the next room and keep playing, even if it puts them at risk (because staying back would achieve nothing). Unlike your proposal, my suggested system is expressly designed to incentivize players to keep playing, and not break the flow of combat or traversal just to recharge some resource that may as well replenish instantly in-between fights with the model you've set.

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

If an ability is only woth using after a certain treshold, than it is weak/meaningless and could be on cooldown or not accessible.

Well no, it just means one shouldn't use the ability until that threshold is met. In the case of a nuke with variable range or damage, that threshold can vary based on the enemies the player is facing, or the room they're in, and in general, unless the condition for good use is so niche as to rarely if ever come up, it is in fact good design to design abilities to be good in certain circumstances, but not as good in others.

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

In Warframe weapons can easely rival powers. Even without abilities, you are not entirely helpless. There are Frames that resemble a weapon platform, others are casters as well as everything in between. Gunplay and powers complement each other and create the core experience. You cannot just cherry pick whatever happens to support your argument.

The fact that they complement each other does not make them interchangeable, nor should it lead to that. I'm not "cherry picking" anything here, I'm just pointing out to you the rather obvious fact that weapons are not designed to clear rooms in the same way as some abilities, and that the usefulness of weapons does not preclude the usefulness of abilities.

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Thus, claimes like "weapons are weapons" or "it is better to wait" are entirely baseless.

It is your own claim that is not only baseless, but demonstrably wrong, as the existence of cooldowns has in fact caused players to wait when implemented, e.g. with players waiting to use Zenurik in Focus 1.0 to access the Energy regen they wanted to progress through missions, or using it now and staying in the regen zone instead of heading directly towards the mission objective. Cooldowns in Warframe are a bad idea, end of story.

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Furthermore, the "wait" condition happens only if you either go against inteded design and spam or mismanage your resources.

But waiting is part of the intended design, because you have designed a system that rewards players for waiting with a more full Energy bar, irrespective of how they mismanage their resources. If this is not your intention, then you have designed your system incompetently, and are better off finding a new one. If your intended design really were to encourage players to play rather than wait, why not go for my model instead? What I'm proposing clearly has an intended design of resource management on some abilities, coupled with encouraging continued gameplay to fuel those effects.

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

I never said it should always be energy, I say it could often be energy. I already mentioned it: different resource pools are ment by design to implement certain gating behaviour, when the core resource management system fails to address balance/design issues. However in a solid base system it can often be done just with right number adjustments.

... which presumes that your base system is solid, which it isn't, as evidenced by the problems with our current Energy system right down to its fundamentals.

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

While too frequent special designs, introduce unnecessary complexity.

This makes no sense, because the player isn't being asked to deal with every special design at the same time. This is the same as calling our diverse arsenal of frames and weapons "unnecessary complexity" because of all the "special designs" running around.

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Pure payoff mechanic blatantly asks players to follow instructions and heavely punishes if you refuse or cannot do it in the first palce. Thus it is suited better as an expansion for a core system.

... why? Also, why is that bad? If the player is incapable of performing a certain action, then I can agree that there's a problem, in that the resource generation condition is too difficult or too niche, but if the player outright refuses to play towards a goal, then obviously they shouldn't achieve that goal. If the player refuses to kill enemies in an Exterminate mission, they will lose, just as they'll lose if they refuse to defend the objective in a Defense mission. Thus, along those same lines, if a player picks up a melee-oriented frame like Excalibur, but refuses to use any melee weapons at all ever, not even Exalted Blade, then it's not anyone else's fault, nor the end of the world, if they don't benefit from increased melee power because of it.

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

But it suits both extremes as well as everything in between. You can manage how often any ability should be used by combining e-regen(includding additional options if necessary, like generator abilities/actions), e-pool & e-costs.

But this is simply not true. Let's take a very basic example:

Frame X has three abilities that are meant to only be used in very limited supply within a short duration, but after a very short downtime can be used again.
However, ability 4 is meant to be used frequently without any short-term limitations, but is meant to eventually run out and recharge slowly, so that the player has to pay attention to each use.
Abilities 1, 2, and 3 would need a low Energy pool relative to their costs, but high regen, whereas ability 4 would need a high Energy pool, but low regen.
One cannot have both on the same frame, because a frame with high regen would eliminate the long-term consequences of ability 4, whereas a frame with low regen would disable the usage of abilities 1, 2, and 3 for far too long.
Thus, your model is not a universal fit, because it does not accommodate frames that use different abilities with different rates of usage, e.g. with long-term vs. short-term limitations. QED.

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

There is nothing rigid or prohibitive (if not intended) to frequent casting.

Then why decry the so-called "mindless spam" I'd supposedly bring about by designing certain abilities around no resource costs?

2 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

I have a strong feeling you cannot imagine how it could work. Or you do not want to imagine.

But this is simply not the case, as I have clearly shown above with my examples that I have in fact made a serious effort to consider your proposition. The problem is simply that your model is critically flawed, and so in ways that can already be seen in-game or throughout its history. Thus, it may be that the issue here isn't me refusing to imagine how your system could work, but you refusing to acknowledge that you are proposing a model that is patently unsuccessful, and denying the existence of any flaws in spite of the many that were easily pointed out.

ShortCat · June 26, 2019

10 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

I'm proposing a model of "responsibility" that does not require Energy

Let's give your child a name.

You are proposing a charged ability system. This is the punchline of your thread. It took one page of pointless discussion to figure out what you actually want, because you couldn't put your thoughts together or masked your intents behind incomprehensive walls of text. The best part is, nothing stops it from coexisting with energy mechanic, or any other mechanic, because they all have their own applications.

You are preaching to the choir.

Teridax68 · June 26, 2019

4 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Let's give your child a name.

You are proposing a charged ability system. This is the punchline of your thread. It took one page of pointless discussion to figure out what you actually want, because you couldn't put your thoughts together or masked your intents behind incomprehensive walls of text. The best part is, nothing stops it from coexisting with energy mechanic, or any other mechanic, because they all have their own applications.

You are preaching to the choir.

A what now? I proposed a system with more than one model of gating for abilities, so unless the name you just invented is meant to describe all of them, I think you've just continued to not understand what was said in the OP.

Some thoughts on how to gate abilities (without energy or cooldowns)

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