Do people like "exclusive" ability modding?

[Tyreaus]

RE: something I and @Teridax68 talked about before:

Are people happy with how modding a fair number of Warframes works? I.e., that a lot of optimal setups leave one or more abilities in the dust, sometimes turning Warframes into one-trick ponies. As opposed to something that, for example, brings ability stats up in tandem, e.g. basing stats off Strength and having the other stats alter things like cast cost and cast speed.

Personally, not a fan of inter-ability trade-offs. Weapons, for example, trade off between straight damage and utility things like reload speed (though most people build for the former because of min-maxing, the latter does sneak in from time to time). But abilities trading off between themselves is like boosting one's secondary weapon damage and neutering the damage of their primary and/or melee. It's weird, in a way, that an optimal Gauss build (maxxing duration) renders one-quarter of his kit borderline useless. And Warframes already trade off ability potency with things like swap speeds or sprint speeds or survivability mods. Having mods that boost one ability or alter its properties (like mini-augments, e.g. for Speedva builds) would be one thing, but doing that at the expense of other abilities (to detrimental effects, at times) seems a bit self-destructive.

But am also wondering what other people think about it, because it is such a big part of the game that maybe people like building for that couple of abilities?

[Rakosta_Kai]

Are you asking people who play a game tuned for min-maxing whether or not they enjoy min-maxing?

Edited September 25, 2019 by Padre_Akais

[Drachnyn]

I think the bigger problem with one trick pony warframes is that their other abilities are just bad. Chroma's 1 for example is just a trash ability, no individual modding screen will ever make it not trash. It's more a problem of how DE designs some frames, where there is just no meaningful internal ability synergy. IMO Volt is a great example for that: his abilities barely do anything for each other so depending on the situation you use him in you are going to make some of his abilities useless.

Gauss' 3 still does something for you even if you have range as dump stat and neutral strength: it gives you battery charge. Your suggestion would improve that but would make modding either more forma expensive, even harder to learn for new players or both. Having to trade off somethings to get the maximum out of the tools you currently need is not a bad thing, the problem is that DE sometimes designs abilities that just dont work for eachother or are just bad. 

Wukong is an example where the modding system works very well. Depending on the mission i'm doing I'll choose a different build: a tanky build for survivals, a speedy build for spies. I know some people just using a generic build for both and that's perfectly fine. If each ability gets its own modding screen pretty much any and all build variety goes out of the window and I dont think that's a good idea. DE just needs to make abilities worth caring about. (looking at you frost 2)

[Nash]

I am the same, I don't like building for one ability but that is how it ends up, for example using gauss and having only 79% range for thermal sunder but 254% duration, I use magus anomaly to drag enemies into my thermal sunders range to benefit from it. I just turn the downsides into a strength, and it works out very well.

Edited September 25, 2019 by _Behemot

[Oreades]

Eh honestly I'm sorta torn...

On the one hand you have dumpstats and DE has in the past stated that they don't like dumpstats, stats that essentially have no bearing on how the warframes powers work that the player is free to dump without consequence. Which are about the only way you can really min/max a kit without tanking it. 

However on the other hand you being up the other side of the coin, which is something I like to call dumpskills, which like the name implies are skills that the player ends up tanking because it's the only way to boost another ability.

For quite a while I had two Khora builds because you essentially had to choose between Whipclaw or CC and choosing either one effectively neutered the other. Then they added accumulating whipclaw and I switched to a hybrid build that actually worked. I mean I didn't mind having two Khora builds but at the same time it was really nice not having to continually switch between defensive and offensive Khora builds. 

[NoSpax]

Back when Warframe abilities were Mods, you could plug in only those, you built for.

There were 10 Slots. So, if you only used Loki's invis, you had 9 Slots left to build around invis.

This later got removed and warframe abilities have become permanent, opening all 10 slots up, an Aura Slot and later the Exilus slot.

Why was there such a huge change? To prevent players building one-trick ponies.

Now the ghosts of the past strike back with even more avail slots and players still build around one single ability (or two, depending on the frame) by reducing an unused parameter.

Edited September 25, 2019 by NoSpax
fixed a memory glitch.

[BansheePrime]

56 minutes ago, NoSpax said:

Back when Warframe abilities were Mods, you could plug in only those, you built for.

There were 10 Slots. So, if you only used Loki's invis, you had 9 Slots left to build around invis.

This later got removed and warframe abilities have become permanent, opening all 10 slots up, adding an Aura Slot and later added another slot: The Exilus slot.

Why was there such a huge change? To prevent players building one-trick ponies.

Now the ghosts of the past strike back with even more avail slots and players still build around one single ability (or two, depending on the frame) by reducing an unused parameter.

If I recall correctly, we lost 2 mod slots when frame ability mods became built in.

Edited September 25, 2019 by BansheePrime

[trst]

In some cases it's actually the best setup for them either due to other abilities being weak or not being practical for specific content. Or whatever content you intend on doing only requires one specific ability of a frame to be good it only makes sense to make it as good as possible; like the typical meta Eidolon builds do.

Though there is isn't any exact necessity to focus an entire build to min-maxing one or a few aspects of a frame. You can just as well make a very general build with a bit of every stat while excluding any corrupted mods. Or just make one that focuses on general suitability and movement mods while relying more on your weapons.

[NoSpax]

Gerade eben schrieb BansheePrime:

If I recall correctly, we lost 2 mod slots when frame ability slots became built in.

WTF? Ok, editing my previous post.. how the F.. did I get that wrong?

[Portlalaland]

Quote

Personally, not a fan of inter-ability trade-offs. 

I don't think you can't have modding without trade-offs. At least, that's what usually happens in real life. You want your car to go faster, you'll lose fuel efficiency (or the backseat) for example.

[(XBOX)RPColten]

So long as it is not a case of where those one or two abilities are the only useful abilities, I don't mind it. If a player wants to exclusively buff up one single ability? Sure go for it. If a player buffs up one single ability because it's the only one worth using? Now there I feel there is a problem.

E: I do rather like inter-ability tradeoffs though.

Edited September 25, 2019 by (XB1)RPColten

[(NSW)Sk0rp1on]

I kinda like the trade offs and min maxing. Makes the game intetesting.

The real problem, which a lot of people have pointed out already, is that not every power is useful. Some frames only HAVE one power that’s worth using.

[BiancaRoughfin]

1 hour ago, Tyreaus said:

Are people happy with how modding a fair number of Warframes works? I.e., that a lot of optimal setups leave one or more abilities in the dust, sometimes turning Warframes into one-trick ponies.

I usually build my frames focusing on a specific ability wile trying not to cripple the rest, example wile most build Mesa for Energy efficiency and completely cripple her other skills due to low duration, i focus on Duration which keeps her 2 and 3 useful wile her 4th drains slower too, Nova is another good example as you can build her for being tanky tho her 3rd gets crippled but the other 3 skills remain very powerful.

[Gabbynaru]

Actually, something like that could offer a lot of variety, if only Warframes had abilities worth building around. You could have a Mirage built around Hall of Mirrors, one built around Sleigh of Hand and another Mirage built around Prism, all playing in completely different ways. The problem however is that people demanded more synergies in frames, which makes all abilities suck until the synergy happens, which does exactly what you said, turn Warframes into one-trick ponies... that only have one trick. Whereas with the Mirage example I gave, you could have 3 different playstyles (4 if Eclipse ever gets that ability to toggle), frames with Synergies are essentially having just one  ability, split in 4 shards, which, in my opinion, makes them far worse than the one trick pony builds that still allow for 3-4 different playstyles.

So, yeah, I personally like building around one ability, because at least that ability will turn out insanely good if I do a good job.

[Chappie]

As a bit of comparison...Destiny 2 gutted their fairly limited system even more from Destiny 1 and is was widely panned as WTF were they thinking.    While too much choice is a bad thing...so is too little.   

Regardless you are entitled to your opinion about changes core aspect of the game because you don't like it...and thus you need to accept that for the most part people are going to tell you to get bent.  

[Guest]

If you don't want to build around one ability over others, a balanced build is also possible. Many people just happen to enjoy optimizing their builds to fit their playstyle, that's where the minmaxing comes in.

And as many people have said in this thread, "one trick pony" frames are considered such because most of their abilities are simply garbage (looking at you, Chroma). Frames that have a well-rounded kit have much more diversity in builds.

[Yasha-7HS]

I enjoy making new builds, but the builds I aim to use are specifically to try and use all of a Warframe's kit. In short, no I do not enjoy trading off the usability of one ability for additional usage of the other three. 

I use Excalibur a lot. In 6 years, through three accounts, the only frame that I've enjoyed after playing everything has been Excalibur. Currently, his Radial Javelin is almost completely useless. Furious Javelin, which is somewhat nice now, still pales in comparison to Surging Dash for a number of reasons. Using both of these Augments is untenable, and Furious Javelin by itself has no usage at all. In low level missions, Slash Dash is both more efficient and scales with combo count, your melee mods, and helps your Exalted Blade while also adding to it in multiple forms of synergy. Radial Javelin? It just does damage at 3 times the cost of Slash Dash, no DR to counter its pitiful cast time, and no synergy with any of the kit in any way, shape, or form. It doesn't feel like the ability is even meant to be in the game with how little it does, and the complete lack of playfulness with the rest of Excalibur's kit even with the augment. 

I think this thread already had its answer back when abilities stopped being cards, and then again when augments were introduced, and then yet again when the Exilus slot was introduced. First, the community didn't like that you could only have so many abilities to use in the game at the same time without sacrificing their entire usability. Second, the community felt the same way when augment mods were introduced, yet we still had two less mod spaces and no where to fit these items onto builds unless they created such an amazing advantage that there was no malice that could prevent you from putting it on your build and getting value, to the point where some of them are viewed as 'mandatory.' (E.G. Iron Shrapnel's main ability, the ability to decast Iron Skin, should've been a base mechanic) The community does not like when kits are missing one of their abilities because it lacks synergy, which is why for quite a long time people have regarded Nidus as a very well designed frame, because all four of his abilities play well with the other, and can be modded for together. 

In my opinion, this thread couldn't even exist if all frames had 4 abilities in the first place. Much like one of the first comments mentioned, many frames really only have 3 abilities because one of them is complete and utter garbage that can only kill content so low that it's literally easier to use a weapon. 

 

If you haven't noticed, I want Radial Javelin changed to not be garbage, and to have ANYTHING to do with the rest of his kit. 

[Valgaarv]

It´s because a lot of warframe skills are useless, you can build full into a useless skill and your "1 trick" will still better, like vauban vortex/batille vs his other two skills

[-Kittens-]

Make the meta your master and you'll never be happy.

Steve saying there will never be more than 8 mod slots was a mistake, but here we are. The simple solution is mod however you want. No one ever broke into someone's house  and made them use forma.

 

Edited September 27, 2019 by -Kittens-

[Arnul.]

I sacrificed my rhinos ultimate to make him more support oriented. I'm ok with it. I can't explain it but it makes it more interesting that way the way modding is. We're already op as it is also. 

[Oreades]

2 hours ago, RougeMagma said:

I don't think you can't have modding without trade-offs. At least, that's what usually happens in real life. You want your car to go faster, you'll lose fuel efficiency (or the backseat) for example.

Alternatively in real life when you make a car go faster and improve its fuel economy it's simply called innovation. 

[Teridax68]

I think quite a few people missed the point of the OP: the point being made isn't necessarily that min-maxing as a concept is bad, but that our current method of min-maxing our frames is perhaps not the best way to implement min-maxing, because it frequently leads to kits that only use a subset of their abilities. When the only major way of altering a frame is to raise or lower certain general stats, and that frame has a mixture of abilities that either a) scale with those stats, or b) need those stats to function properly, the end result is that the latter abilities become unusable. Even on a frame that has multiple builds based on different abilities, e.g. Rhino, this means that any one build will tend to have one or more dead abilities. In an environment where we've become increasingly less tolerant of partial kits, due to their shallower gameplay, this means our more advanced modding frequently comes into conflict with our ability to enjoy our frames to the fullest.

By contrast, what @Tyreaus is proposing, and what I fully endorse, is that we take our min-maxing to individual abilities: for those wondering what tradeoffs that would entail, rest assured, the tradeoffs would still exist at the level of each individual ability. On the flipside, so would the benefits, which would mean that no ability would find itself useless unless the ability itself were poorly designed or balanced. Effectively, we would still be min-maxing ourselves, except instead of sacrificing entire abilities to overcharge others, it would be a matter of giving each ability appropriate drawbacks for the advantages you'd be giving them.

It's also worth mentioning that the min-maxing being proposed are, in fact, what min-maxing tends to entail: in any typical RPG, including pen-and-paper ones, the fun in min-maxing comes from working around one's strong weaknesses in addition to playing to one's exceptional strengths. Thus, we actually have to deal with our weaknesses, and make full use of the tools at our disposal to navigate situations in a particular style. By contrast, the min-maxing in Warframe right now doesn't really follow that, because with only a few exceptions, min-maxing doesn't enhance our gameplay, so much as restrict it: we don't have to learn how to deal with a weakened ability, because we can just as well not use it at all and instead lean on our more overpowered effects the entire time. We thus don't have to play around our weaknesses, so much as just abuse our strengths all the time. By contrast, the broad lines of the OP's proposal suggests to bake the weaknesses into the strengths, so that using any ability would always involved acknowledging both.

[Rakosta_Kai]

41 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

It's also worth mentioning that the min-maxing being proposed are, in fact, what min-maxing tends to entail: in any typical RPG, including pen-and-paper ones, the fun in min-maxing comes from working around one's strong weaknesses in addition to playing to one's exceptional strengths. Thus, we actually have to deal with our weaknesses, and make full use of the tools at our disposal to navigate situations in a particular style.

Conflicts with.

42 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

By contrast, what @Tyreaus is proposing, and what I fully endorse, is that we take our min-maxing to individual abilities: for those wondering what tradeoffs that would entail, rest assured, the tradeoffs would still exist at the level of each individual ability. On the flipside, so would the benefits, which would mean that no ability would find itself useless unless the ability itself were poorly designed or balanced. Effectively, we would still be min-maxing ourselves, except instead of sacrificing entire abilities to overcharge others, it would be a matter of giving each ability appropriate drawbacks for the advantages you'd be giving them.

 which, incidentally,  also seems to conflict with 

43 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

When the only major way of altering a frame is to raise or lower certain general stats, and that frame has a mixture of abilities that either a) scale with those stats, or b) need those stats to function properly, the end result is that the latter abilities become unusable. Even on a frame that has multiple builds based on different abilities, e.g. Rhino, this means that any one build will tend to have one or more dead abilities. In an environment where we've become increasingly less tolerant of partial kits, due to their shallower gameplay, this means our more advanced modding frequently comes into conflict with our ability to enjoy our frames to the fullest.

 

Perhaps it's just me...My understanding of Min-maxing for the last 20 years has always been enhancing strengths to the point where they cover weaknesses even if it's at the expense of moderate abilities. I.E. the the player trades a well rounded build for more directed power in one area and accepts the consequences.

What you are describing sounds more like "max-maxing" which is what DE guarded against by making attributes be the decider to begin with. Granted, the way those attributes used to be assigned didn't always mesh so well (Old Frost/Rhino spring immediately to mind) but subsequent reworks introduced synergy to keep that from being a pain-point.  

[Chappie]

55 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

I think quite a few people missed the point of the OP: the point being made isn't necessarily that min-maxing as a concept is bad, but that our current method of min-maxing our frames is perhaps not the best way to implement min-maxing, because it frequently leads to kits that only use a subset of their abilities. When the only major way of altering a frame is to raise or lower certain general stats, and that frame has a mixture of abilities that either a) scale with those stats, or b) need those stats to function properly, the end result is that the latter abilities become unusable. Even on a frame that has multiple builds based on different abilities, e.g. Rhino, this means that any one build will tend to have one or more dead abilities. In an environment where we've become increasingly less tolerant of partial kits, due to their shallower gameplay, this means our more advanced modding frequently comes into conflict with our ability to enjoy our frames to the fullest.

By contrast, what @Tyreaus is proposing, and what I fully endorse, is that we take our min-maxing to individual abilities: for those wondering what tradeoffs that would entail, rest assured, the tradeoffs would still exist at the level of each individual ability. On the flipside, so would the benefits, which would mean that no ability would find itself useless unless the ability itself were poorly designed or balanced. Effectively, we would still be min-maxing ourselves, except instead of sacrificing entire abilities to overcharge others, it would be a matter of giving each ability appropriate drawbacks for the advantages you'd be giving them.

It's also worth mentioning that the min-maxing being proposed are, in fact, what min-maxing tends to entail: in any typical RPG, including pen-and-paper ones, the fun in min-maxing comes from working around one's strong weaknesses in addition to playing to one's exceptional strengths. Thus, we actually have to deal with our weaknesses, and make full use of the tools at our disposal to navigate situations in a particular style. By contrast, the min-maxing in Warframe right now doesn't really follow that, because with only a few exceptions, min-maxing doesn't enhance our gameplay, so much as restrict it: we don't have to learn how to deal with a weakened ability, because we can just as well not use it at all and instead lean on our more overpowered effects the entire time. We thus don't have to play around our weaknesses, so much as just abuse our strengths all the time. By contrast, the broad lines of the OP's proposal suggests to bake the weaknesses into the strengths, so that using any ability would always involved acknowledging both.

In a system like warframe in which you have numerous systems interacting with each other in which each system actually has some depth you NEED to basically get over the concept of "real balance".    I understand what you are getting at...but here is the thing...a lot of "ideal system" have no real translation into actual reality.    In any typical RPG..you are dealing with system with a FRACTION of the complexity...and even then they can be broken pretty easily by the player unless your GM is a twat and just keeps swinging the nerf bat everytime somebody gets creative.; those GM's don't last long.  

[NekroArts]

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

By contrast, what @Tyreaus is proposing, and what I fully endorse, is that we take our min-maxing to individual abilities: for those wondering what tradeoffs that would entail, rest assured, the tradeoffs would still exist at the level of each individual ability.

The problem with this is that there are abilities that have little to no use of the other stats making some of the trade-offs nonexistent. Take Inaros and Nidus for example - because they're pure HP and high armor, using just Rage, they are allow to completely neglect efficiency. Using Nova for example:

• Null Star
  • Duration: high for more particles for damage reduction (DR)
  • Range: none because even if you maxed power strength the damage is still small for high-lvl missions. It's better to just keep them close for the DR
  • Strength: none. again, not strong enough when maxing it and does not affect the DR
• Antimatter Drop
  • Duration: none, doesn't affect
  • Range: none, the explosion radius is a flat unchangeable value
  • Strength: max it
• Wormhole
  • Duration: flat 100%. 16 secs is already long enough for everyone to have a chance at using it,
  • Range: add stretch. It has a flat 50m, that's far already; adding Stretch pushes it to 73m
  • Strength: none, doesn't affect it
• Molecular Prime
  • Duration: high for map wide coverage and longer slow
  • Range: flat 100%. 10m radius (20m diameter) is actually a good size, adding Stretch puts that to 14.5m radius (29m diameter).
  • Strength: you can increase it for the Blast damage which would yield 2,272 (Max Blind Rage, Transient Fortitude, and Intensify - 284% power strength), but minimally you want just a total of 145% as that's the value in which the slow is cap at 75% slower movement speed.

Edited September 26, 2019 by NekroArts