Giant feedback thread for improving the game

[LightNBright]

No.... I'm not a game developer, yes making changes to a game takes time and can be risky i know but staying stagnant and constantly adding a bunch of other features and modes to a game that will never be fleshed out doesn't seem like a good idea. Constantly you see people complaining about drought and a lot of people tend to look back at the way things were in the past and wonder what changed and how to make Warfram fun again. Yes the yearly (ish) quest are grate (that's not an accident) but they don't last long, they aren't sustainable content and they take a VERY long time to make apparently so the basics of the game need to be changed or certain systems need to be added that can keep people entertained during the time it takes to make new stuffff. BUT HOW you might be asking, well I kinda have ideas, I've listened to tons of feedback from others and complaints seem to be similar, I've also looked at a lot of other games and what makes them fun so not all this is just me i got ideas from others this is just a thread that can hopefully being these things to DEs and the players eyes so that they can comment on it. Understand that this game has lasted long and it's core is pretty fun but it has to have sustainable content to continue or else it will eventually die. Without some serious issues being addressed they will only get worse so i have tried to think of problems and ways to solve them along with learning crap from other peoples, this will be long but if you agree please let DE know by backing up anyone who creates threads or videos like this so they can see it and hopefully try to take some of the advice and improve the game for the long run. Kay lets start with da problems.

Enemy scaling: One of the most dangerous and annoying problems with warframe is the enemy scaling. Not only is is kinda broken but it's also broken from many different angles. The damage from enemies is usually pretty low on the starchart and with decent mods or abilities you can laugh it off pretty easily, not including parkour. But once levels start to raise the damage enemies dish out seems to go up exponentially so instead of slowly hurting your defenses more they just end up 1 or 2 shotting you almost out of nowhere. The damage should raise fairly quickly then start to slow down so that it's challenging but not annoying or impossible (without tons of cc or something like that). Then you also have enemy health or defence, honestly we all know the main problem is armor because the bullet sponges but the fact that infested and corpus are such a joke compared to grineer is also a problem, we never use magnetic (hopefully) not only because grineer are OP but also because it's just not necessary shields are pretty garbo. And health is.....health. The point is that the enemy health is just all over the place and unbalanced not to mention grineer and armor are just really annoying and OP. Finally (this could probably have it's own thingy but eh) enemies are way to DUMB. The AI is trash for the most part but they are also ridiculously cheap and simple too. For example, you have a basic butcher he's basically a glass cannon but all he does is try to slice you while running up to you close enough for a kiss. The concept isn't terrible but that's it. Cool and more interesting enemies like the manics are more challenging because they have mechanics that flesh out their movesets. Most of the enemies just shoot you and get shot, maybe a ground slam but that's basically it. They are way too basic and when they are difficult it's in a cheap way. Like the manics basically have a time gate, the nullifiers just block powers, ancient healers are glorified arbiter of hexis head thingies ( or wait the other way around.....you get the point).

Lack of challenge: The game is grate but wayyyy too easy, there is that small window of time when you first start that has suspense and difficulty because you start from nothing but once you get a few high level mods you are basically God tier it's insane. Yes being OP can be fun but it's a lot more enjoyable to be OP because of your skill rather then just a bunch of broken cards. Very quickly players are super strong and overpowering enemies unless they are super high level and they 1 shot you, there's not real middle ground, no sweet spot just 2 extremes.

Lack of good rewards: Nothing matters if it isn't rewarding. Even if you drop the most bomb game mode ever it can easily be disappointing because what you get isn't worth it this is probably the easiest one to fix but it still needs to be mentioned. Rewards need to feel like they are meaningful and hopefully make you want to play even more.

No sustainable content/Endgame: Fashion frame is grate, it can be fun, but if all we have to do when we log in is play dress up this game is in trouble. We need things that are fun and can be done over and over again. Reaper did a great video on the topic which is how i came up with a lot of the previous problems. This content depends a lot on the first problems being solved or at least highly reduced. Either way at some point we need something we can do constantly, preferably endless, and that can be done regardless of any added content for the most part. COD black ops 2 was super popular and mainly because of multiplayer pvp. It was the same thing over and over but it always seemed fun and didn't necessarily have an end to it.

Anti-social?: one of the greatest parts of warframe is the community, it's what made the game what it is today, without the community warframe probably wouldn't of lasted this long. But recently the game has become more solo oriented and playing with others tends to be more of burden then anything else. Or people will play together and will never communicate and just rush right through something without ever being social at all (cough relics cough). Also the fact that people don't need to be social also relates to the fact that teamwork is pretty much non existent.

Damage...THE WHOLE DANG SYSTEM: Damage is pretty flawed, some things are grate, others are useless and it completely ruins build diversity and locks people into a few specific options, which removes choice, which makes you feel controlled, which is annoying in a game where you are a space ninja.

Ok these are a few basic but very important problems with the game. If the foundation is messed eventually it will break down and the game as a whole will fall. The basics are the most important parts of the game or of anything really. But yea anyone can complain about how crappy the systems are but can they fix them??? Why yes many people have given tons of ways to fix these problems and i have heard some of them and have a couple of my own so these are potential ways to fix some of those problems in a fairly easy and hopefully fluid way so that everything compliments eachother. HERE ARE THE THINGS.

Solutions ~~

Scaling: This is hard to fix from a view of the game because actual numbers are important for this and levels and stuff but I'll try to be vague, or general so the concept should help. Anyway scaling is mainly for enemies, if the enemies scale correctly and efficiently then the warframes wont be too underpowered or overpowered. So enemy scaling shouldn't be exponentially increasing but rather ahould be more of a slope like line on a graph where it starts low and increaes quickly but slows down and starts to slowly increase. For example star chart ranges from like lvl 1 to idk 60 MAYBE and 1 is a joke and 60 with any decent amount of mods even with bad weapons is still fairly easy. The first enemies should be difficult and rise quickly, starying at 1 is fine and growing slowly at first is reasonable but with ease to upgrade mods and stuff comes quicker progression, and with good weapons and mods anyone can cheese the starchart. Maybe increase the starcharts max level to like 90. That's a good start to keep things kinda challenging and different as progression goes on. But mainly for endurance runs scaling is important. For the first 45 minutes of so most survival missions are pretty easy except maybe how much damage enemies do. Realize that we have tons of enemies shooting at us constantly doing good chunks of damage each, with a few of them doing extreme amount in single hits. I think adjusting the amount of damage most of them do would help people to play survival or other game modes and get the ball rolling, instead of immediately getting 1 shot by something you couldn't react to. Picking a damage falloff for enemies would be a good idea, after a certain level right before you start immediately dying from 1 shots by enemies, when you have to pay attention and move to survive but it's still fairly manageable is where the drop off should start and they should get diminishing returns for damage so that it doesnt spiral out of control and just turn things into a cc and bullet spong battle. At that point it's not fun its just a chore. Ofc this will depend on the frame but obviously an average can be made. Then the amount of damage the enemies take needs to be reworked. The grineer have double stacking defence it's op and annoying. They quickly become bullet spongey and outclass the other enemies easily. The main issue is armor ofc. Once again put diminishing returns on armor after a while so that it's nit spiraling out of contril but also change lower the amount of armor base grineer , mainly heavys, have so that they aren't completely outclassing the other enemy types. Second add more effective hp to other enemy types. They armor is better then shield 90% of the time so give other enemy types more shields and health so that they have a little bit more beef instead of being jokes all the time. Also they have different strengths for a reason make the different strengths matter. Shields can recharge so maybe increase the recharge speed and make the enemies a bit more cover heavy so that they can recover that way we have to go after them while the grineer can be more face tanky and blatant. That way you fight them differently. Infested are probably the most straight forward but they also are the fastest for the most part make them really aggresive and allow them to do more damage and have more utility. This is starting to mesh into enemy design/ challenge but that's the point. You have to meld mechanics together so that they are balanced and compliment eachother.

Lack of challenge: The warframes have evolved a lot over the years mainly with the mobility this gives us a huge advantage over enemies but they are still very simplistic and slow. Not only that but flipping and jumping around just gives us tons of speed, survivability, and damage potential because we can move so quickly and positon easily to accommodate different situations, and that's a good thing. But with that enemies need to evolve too. Mechanics like in dark souls where the enemies are just as strong and capable as you with weaknesses and strentghs makes them challenging. Not only from a damage standpoint but also mechanically. Most enemies have the same weak spot ( the head) and other then slowly moving or awkwardly hiding for cover they don't do much to avoid getting shot. Challenge can easily be added with a balanced way of thinking. Don't always think about them being enemies but rather think of them as warframes with complicated mechanics to survive and or kill the enemies. If we wanted a heavy frame that was also supposed to do tons of damage we don't just give it a strong gun and make it tanky, we give it damage boost and cc and parkour so that it can move freely. Parkour for enemies might be difficult but small changes can make them a lot more skill oriented. Heavy gunners could have small energy shields they could put down for temporary cover. They could also have mechanics like krill ( i think) where you need to shoot specific spots to damage them. The normal enemies should be fodder its fun to just delete halllways of mobs they don't need to be complex (although giving them some varried guns and smarter AI where they work together wouldn't hurt) but the heavy units should be skill oriented and should be priority targets. Make eximus units more frequent but gather up a ton of mechanics that they will randomly have on top of the elemental thingies. Just off the top some could have specific spots you need to hit but to open them up you would have to run around them and knock them down. If tou try to knock them down or stun them from the front they will counter. That would give you a reason to have mobility and a way to make enemies difficult other then adding health. Make some of them have abilities like the warframes where they will suck players in and do high melee damage if you don't dodge certain projectiles, or shoot them from the air, and when the enemy reloads it could open them up to taking more damage, that way you are focused on dodging and shooting the projectiles so you are focused on them as the main priority and when they are reloading you use that moment to strike. Some enemies already remove powers that's a hood start but nullifiers could be a bit more threatening if you needed to shoot that bubble thingy to break it instead of filling it with lead, and maybe when you are in the bubble you take more damage from other enemies so that when they all gather together and you want to take it out you have to be quick and precise to kill the nullifier without getting shot a ton. Make a few enemies have like tether grenades so that when you get hit by them you can move but only within 10 meters or so and when you are tethered you can't get free until you kill the heavy who would also gather in other alies from the pool of enemies to use as defence from the warframe while you try to avoid oncoming attacks. Some units should kamikaze so you have to react quickly and move out of the way or they could take tons of your health but they damage other enemies and go through armor so you could lead them into a group of enemies and shoot them to make them do aoe damage. Some enemies could have sentinels that heal them constantly and drain health from warframes that are too close so it keeps you from sliding into his face and one shotting and could have a big shield like the arctic eximus but with holes in it in certain places to shoot through. That way you have to kill it quickly or it'll heal but you can't melee and you have specific angles to shoot from. Maybe give some heavys abilties like warframe abilities that last for a short time when you don't kill them quickly after causing damage. So you'll take have their health and move on so they get enraged and shoot lasers in all directions that adapt to your warframe like the revanent ult. Making eximus units more common after a certain level and giving them cool and random abilities and mechanics like that would make the game more engaging and challenging based off of how much control and skill the player has with their warframe and the movement etc. They would be made priority targets to focus on with trash mobs being about the same with meh damage and low time to kill but having strength in numbers. Maybe the more trash mobs that are on the map in 20m of eachother it slowly increases their accuracy and damage so that they have to be taken out quickly or they can seriously punish you even when you are doing parkour after they group up, that way you still have to focus on the trash mobs while fighting the more complex enemies. (Had to come back for this one) maybe enemies that shoot you through walls with guns like the lanka or arganak or whatevs and they shoot a projectile that latches onto the unit, even invis frames, and you have to follow his shots (they would have an energy effect with almost no real damage) but there will be a timer that counts down to find him or you take huge amounts of damage, this would eliminate camping but also encourage moving around the map and make multi tasking killing and looking for priority enemy types.I mean these are just basic ideas there's tons of stuff.

Lack of rewards: FOCUS we need focus system additions and the new quest could work and be the perfect time to add something like this. Current focus is kinda trash except a few but it's also fairly small and too operator focused anyways. I mean operator focused trees are fine but we should also have other added focus trees. No not new mods ( mods are nice but we need something to really grind even when not getting mod updates) but a giant path of exil skill tree for primed and special weapon types (prisma, syndicate, wraith, etc.) It will work exactly like the focus system you would add extra affinity added to weapons that can be used in the skill tree but here's the thing, it will work with any special weapon and a super big tree with small buffs will be unlocked after the first forma added onto a weapon for anyone over MR 20 with all the quest completed up to this point. You will.be able to use the current skill tree lenses just for ease but you will be able to sink in affinity into this tree and add idk 1.5% damage, 1% reload speed per unit on the tree, ofc it would be a choice on the tree to customize a weapon you really enjoy and make it a bit better after using it for a long time. Not only will this add bragging rights to having super cool weapons with 1 trillion affinity but it adds nice benefits over time and gives us a reason to play the game. Every maybe make those nodes more like .5% and then after unlocking 20 nodes you will have larger nodes that change the weapon or warframe in a significant way. Weapons can get small alternate firing methods, or like built in utility type augment abilities, weaker weapons could get fancy damage boost for larger nodes to bring them up to better weapons. Warframes can get augment type abilities, for example chroma can have a node to switch elements during the mission, frost can get 2 seconds more of invulnerability on his bubble, trash ones can be held to cause more aoe type damage or cc instead of being single target, maybe just add small buffs to abilities or cooler passives to warframes and make them varied so that you can have small build diversity. This will give people a reason to play something to work towards and encourage super long endurance runs for high amounts of xp it should not have a cap but the xp required for each node should cost a good chunk of xp and it should slowly increase the further you get into the tree. Maybe even break the trees up so that you have to choose a primary school, each school would offer a different play style almost like a class so madarai would be slightly more damage focused in the skill tree while vazarin would be more about improving teammates survivability and your own so like life steal or something. And you would only be able to choose one tree for each weapon so that it doesn't make things super OP and choices need to be made over which one is more important to you. A small damage buff and maybe a cool alt fire or bigger utility buffs with small heals or something, you could easily just seperate the play styles in different directions of the tree and set a node max so that you could level up the tree as much as you want but you could only have 100 nodes active at a time in any directions for example. This would be per each weapon so having 3 weapons you want to make super OP as your mains would take a good while and most people would want more then that so it gives them something to work towards and optimize. Adjust the affinity amount for enemies, the super high level enemies should give tons of xp compared to stealth killed enemies even with multipliers, DONT NERF STEALTH LVLING, that's dumb but greatly buff the affinity when levels increase past 80 and make it exponential so staying in a defence for 20 more waves can help you to get a lot more nodes in your tree in the long run. Make xp per node like super big so that it takes a while to get to but not so slow that it's just impossible and DONT CAP IT. the large amount of xp needed will work as a cap in itself if you really want the nodes you can get them but it will take hard work and skill. This will only really be enjoyable if the enemies are more mechanically focused and if the scaling is fixed. Fashion frame is still the GOAT though add a bunch of skins for weapons and syandanas to the reward pools for endless missions on rotation C mainly so that people have to stay for at least 20 mins and people aren't always leaving at 5. The problem with the old void system was clutter not the system itself. Add some visual things to the skill trees too kinda like those fun mods for weapons and stuff but less gimmicky and more pretty or cool. Small duration type buffs would help a lot to improve weapons without outright adding damage or whatevs. Give kubrows and kavats and stuff trees too but with more significant buffs and stuff. Imagine how different this could make playstyles. Maybe even add large nodes with negatives too so there's a trade off for certain choices even if it's small. Would make doing normal crap in the game a reason to be grinded and could be done with tons of weapons if the player wants to.

Sustainable content: i already gave huge advice in the previous thingies for this but give us more kinda of endless missions. PvPvE would be a cool way to see who is better and it could be like an endless tower of exterminating enemies gradually getting harder until one group dies giving one group a better reward based on if they win or not. Make defence less slow...this game hates slow, especially when it's mainly just waiting. Make raids with railjack THIS IS THE PERFECT CHANCE TO CHANGE THE GAME DRASTICALLY FOR ENDGAME DE. Make railjack a lot harder to get to and use effectively and add endgame type raids with teamwork and such with taking out boss ships and stuff. You could slowly add bosses into it and the raids would be dynamic and allow player choice, teamwork, and skill with the various different choices and roles. Maybe add 8 player missions for these raids and puzzles and stuff. The things about raids were that they took teamwork and planning and time but they also tended to avoid killing stuff which is one of the coolest parts fo warframe and they were super complicated and slow compared to most content. Speed railjack up for certain roles and make sure the players have to kill things to progress just to keep everyone busy while doing the raid. Give the players cool cosmetic buffs and xp which would connect to the skill trees. Cosmetics could be things like parkour "skins" so that instead of hopping you can run, maybe make it faster but harder to control even idk. The whole mission connect things shown is amazing keep that but make it more frequent and hopefully mission wide, try to connect missions as much as possible it will make the game so much better honestly and is just a cool idea. This would give us more to do give us a foundation for at least one type of endgame and make the game social and team oriented.

Damage system: PLEASE FIX DAMAGE. It would make the game more diverse and interesting slash is like slag in borderlands its needed almost and extremely important and outclasses everything same with corrosive. So lets starts with IPS. Hate to say it but slash might need to be nerfed a bit its a bit op and idk how to buff everything else to be that strong. The scaling idea wasn't bad, make bleed good but make it to where you need to stack it a bit to get the high damage that goes through armor. Make impact to where it stuns targets after stacking for a while but also make it give a defence debuff, defence as in all types of defence except maybe for sentients they should be a whole different can of worms. But yea make it to where it gives you piercing damage on enemies straight to health and for infested it'll just open them up to more damage, maybe a chance to disarm or lower accuracy. Same scaling with puncture but after a few stacks make sonar spots on the enemy for extra precision damage at least the other damage types would be useful. And getting high slash numbers would take a bit of stacks. Elementals would be more important with shield and health buffs shield and shield delay buffs for enemies, etc; but some just need buffs.  Gas could leave a status cloud like those one weapons lightly less fast tho, magnetic could also bring in enemies like a bubble like mag maybe but not as strong and still things would get stronger with stacks. Fire should do a lot more damage and stack but dead enemies would leave a fire thing when they die like the napalms that scales with enemy health as damage and stacks so it gets stronger the higher the enemy level and the longer you keep the spread going on. Electricity could shock enemies with flat damage and percentage damage after stacking it a few times. Poison should go through all defence types with like 80% efficiency at mac stack and should be very slow but also affect the enemies speed and damage output. Ice should freeze enemies after stacks, FIX THE STATUS CRAP but also add length to other status effects on frozen enemies. The freeze shouldn't last super long but be long enough to matter and the main reason would be to lengthen status effects so you could stack them effectively, blast would push spread status affects and stacks to surrounding enemies in a small burst rather then over time but wouldn't do tons of damage like gas and maybe a small percentage just to make it cool. BOOM i mean this isnt perfect but it scales and it compliments eachother so that you have a reason to combine them, enemy weaknesses and resistances could still exist but wouldn't be the main thing for the most part. This would also apply for enemies so the more you get hit constantly with the same status it would actually affect you further increasing the use of parkour and not wanting to get hit by even weak enemies constantly, this would make invisibility more important and decrease the need for pure mindless tanking because bullet sponges would be at a disadvantage after a while. Giving skill importance and mobility and mastery of the warframes would be important. Also make counters to certain frames abilities even if it's uncommon, invisible frames shouldn't basically be untouchable, and cc frames should still be important.

THIS WAS SO LONG. But i think there's some good thought out advice here and it could seriously improve the game. These are just small ideas and additions they could be further improved and fleshed out but this is a good start and i think it would change the game for the better overall. My specific ideas for enemies and stuff doesn't really matter it's more about the principle, having enemies with mechanics that don't completely stop gameplay but also change how you are playing the game in certain situations would be amazing and interesting while focusing and encouraging player skill, it doesn't have to be these specific things this is just brainstorming. If you think this thread is helpful and could improve the game please make it obvious so DE can see it, tell them what you would want to change in the replies, let DE know what core changes we want so they aren't super nervous and clueless where to even start. With changes like these this came can be dramatically improved for vets and newbies alike. I hope this gets seen by DE and they start to think about reworking the foundation of the game. God bless you people I'm clocking out now lol.

 

[Gabbynaru]

TL;DR: Please turn Warframe into *Insert generic looter shooter here*. Hard NOPE from me.

[(XBOX)SweatyPick3L]

15 minutes ago, Gabbynaru said:

TL;DR:

Yeah and about that. 

[LightNBright]

1 hour ago, Gabbynaru said:

TL;DR: Please turn Warframe into *Insert generic looter shooter here*. Hard NOPE from me.

It still wouldn't be generic because warframe at it's core is unique but mechanics instead of extreme hp values would make the game challenging or at least interesting at least i think so but ig i get your point thanks for sharing person.

[LightNBright]

51 minutes ago, (XB1)SixGunLove said:

Yeah and about that. 

Yes it was very long buttt oh well people can totally read in between the content drops, we have plenty of time xD. Seriously though i wanted to be detailed and stuffs.

[Gabbynaru]

2 minutes ago, TheBlackishBoy said:

make the game challenging

Yeah, well, I'm not here for that, so...

[LightNBright]

Just now, Gabbynaru said:

Yeah, well, I'm not here for that, so...

Well if you don't want challenge you could still play the game and the starchart and it would be mainly the same but for people who want to do "endgame" they can choose to participate in challenging content. Doing normal relic runs wouldn't change much sorties might be a bit more difficult for eximus one's ig but they could just seperate the "heavy" units from eximus units and make them different things for different game modes that way it doesn't affect people who don't want the challenge that way they can satisfy both player groups.