The era of dedicated builds is gone?

[Miyabi-sama]

Hello Tenno.

I might be scratching someone's bruises on this topic. But this is probably the best feedback I can come up with.

Since the "rework" thing started several years ago I've noticed a strange feature. Most of warframes right now have some sort of synergy in their power arsenal. One ability influences another and they both contribute to a third ability and so on and so forth. These changes were the most saluted ones, since it led to partial extinction of so called "press X to win" playstyle (Am I right, old Mag, Saryn and Ash lovers?), needless to say encouraging using the whole power arsenal which added depth to the gameplay. Saryn is using her powers in conjunction to achieve impressive potential, Wisp posesses capability of comboing her powers for stunning effect. The list goes on with Nidus, Harrow, some others.

Such a great win, where is the catch? The catch is in now we have a lot of abilities, which might be questionable to use on their own, if ever deserve to make a warframe build around them alone.

In particular there are many powers which are dependant on all the 4 characteristics of it: strength, duration, range and efficiency.

We will take an example of reworked Mag's Polarize (previous Shield Polarize). The polarize has an initial zone depending on range, then it takes duration in account while the magnetic wave slowly spreads in a set amount of time (just like Nova's MolPrime). The strength comes to play when calculating damage on enemies, and yet again we return to the range when effected enemies' shield or armor blasts are counting the AoE. How would you build that? Let's not dive in any particular playstyle, instead try to maximize some values. Slapping max range leaves us with less than optimal strength, bringing max duration (especially useful on augment) does gimp our range. If we gonna aim for certain crowd decimation with power, we are pegged with less both efficiency and duration. Let's not talk energy efficiency, because we're left without strength.

All these downsides in building are asking for compensation, which leads to the build encumbered with stat tweaking mods, and let's not forget about our survivability, energy reserves, maybe some utility or crucial mods. Allow me to remind you that despite you have maxed one ability you still possess more than one, ready to use. And these abilities are somewhat gimped in their own way, like very short strong pull which loses great panic CC potential and still does not shine damage wise. Or very long range Crush, failing to deliver meaningful damage.

The other side of this rotten coin is frames, that could be built around one or two abilities with such great effect, using other their abilities becomes obsolete, am I right, mr.Chroma? Mrs.Mesa? Before you start point at this sentence and yell "here comes the hater", I want to assure you: I've had my share playing with such frames. New and old Mesa, Chroma. In fact there is even more of abovementioned examples that I currently use with great pleasure. Trinity. Rhino. Banshee.

Some of these frames can be gimped in some way to get benefits of it: Vampire Trin, huge AoE stomp Rhino, tiny range Mesa or Chroma or even Gara). The gist is in there are still exist some frames which can use minmaxing ability properties for the great success. Some of the frames don't even require a single forma to be able to beat any existing content (Nyx, Zephyr, Loki).

And yet we have such frames that can't allow minmax a single ability under the fear of losing further effectiveness of either intended power combos, or plain gimping other powerful ability to benefit from other.

Now I might be late with this discussion as it could be done multiple times long ago, but still thinking about abovementioned facts brings me several questions:

- Is this a natural evolution process of the game?

- Should we be able to retain "oldschool" build capable frames? (Come on Sonar Banshees!)

- Is this an existing trend for all future warframes?

- Shall we lose something significant if eventually all warframes had to be switched to ability synergy template?

- Does having all warframes without ability synergy means "bad design" or presents any downsides balance wise (except pretty obvious "press X to win" cases)?

Excuse me for somewhat clickbait-ish topic. And feel free to correct me if you feel I am wrong in some place.

[Loza03]

Answering the Questions, soley in my opinion.

11 minutes ago, Miyabi-sama said:

- Is this a natural evolution process of the game?

Yes, for reasons that will probably be evident as I continue.

12 minutes ago, Miyabi-sama said:

- Should we be able to retain "oldschool" build capable frames? (Come on Sonar Banshees!)

No. Most of the time, building for a single power is done because that single power was overpowered in its own right - at least in its element. Able to basically complete content that relied on what it gave (survivability, nuking, CC, so on) on its own or with minimal added effort. In effect - press 4 to win. This wasn't universal, but even in the event the ability manifests gameplay, it's usually still one-size-fits-all.

13 minutes ago, Miyabi-sama said:

- Is this an existing trend for all future warframes?

Probably, but I'm not a psychic who can see the future. It's possible that some of the more balanced older frames may remain as or similar to how they are.

15 minutes ago, Miyabi-sama said:

- Shall we lose something significant if eventually all warframes had to be switched to ability synergy template?

Not really. As I said, these powers were often powerful enough in their own right to complete content without much input from the player. That removes something far more significant than anything that might be lost - engagement. A fight DE is continuing to make to get back. Just because something is traditional doesn't mean it's good.

16 minutes ago, Miyabi-sama said:

- Does having all warframes without ability synergy means "bad design" or presents any downsides balance wise (except pretty obvious "press X to win" cases)?

Wukong doesn't really have any synergies, even post-rework. Excalibur as well, despite IMO having some individual issues in his powers, is pretty well-designed overall despite also not having real synergies. Wisp, despite her 1 synergising with her 4 and 3, isn't really designed around setting up combos either, but instead around using each item in her toolkit. 1-3 synergy almost acts as much as another tool as a combo, for example, being a kind of fast travel first. Gauss also doesn't really go all that much into the synergy boat either - there's a few, but mostly his abilities revolve around a central mechanic designed to encourage a playstyle - going fast, all the time.

Gameplay like Saryn or Nezha, where everything feeds into each other and abilities are meant to be used as combos, isn't the only means.

[K4RN4]

I personally prefer the old frame design, because new frames often don't have synergy, but dependency, making some abilities unusable or really bad, if used alone. Using "only" one or two abilities at a time is no bad design to me, I would even go as far as to say that that is the better design, because old warframes typically fill a niche, while newer frames are allrounders. With the new frame design each warframe can do everything reasonably well, so your Warframe choice doesn't matter at all. I like to think of my arsenal as a toolbox and if I want to do a mission, I pick the tool that does the job best and while the old frames are regular tools, the new ones are swiss army knives.

Well my thought are all over the place right now, but I hope this was understandable.

[Birdframe_Prime]

7 hours ago, Miyabi-sama said:

- Is this a natural evolution process of the game?

- Should we be able to retain "oldschool" build capable frames? (Come on Sonar Banshees!)

- Is this an existing trend for all future warframes?

- Shall we lose something significant if eventually all warframes had to be switched to ability synergy template?

- Does having all warframes without ability synergy means "bad design" or presents any downsides balance wise (except pretty obvious "press X to win" cases)?

Yes, Probably not, Yes, No, No.

This process started after DE grew upset with us for not slotting all our abilities into our Warframes in the old modding system, taking out one, two or even three abilities in a build in order to focus on just the ones we wanted to work on and free up mod space.

Before that point, ability synergy was only possible in the tangential style, such as using Roar to boost the damage output on Stomp so that slightly higher level enemies died from it where they wouldn't have otherwise.

Our old school 'build capable' frames only exist in the form they are because DE had to account for the fact that players literally wouldn't use some of those abilities in this method, and so over time all of those frames will eventually be updated to the newer format in some way. It's literally the only reason that some of those abilities are as strong as they are, in fact, like Iron Skin or Blessing, and why those frames are actually so powerful now that there have been a few updates and augments to them. Trinity, even after years of nerfs, is still the best team-heal frame because of one ability and one of the most competent support frames because of one other ability.

This trend will definitely continue, with abilities being able to cast on their own, but also coming up with functions that are greater than the sum of their parts due to combination. Both tangential and explicit synergy, for example, are present in Nidus. Nidus has tangential synergy in that his 2 is an amazing CC function, but his 1 is a narrow-band damage function that rewards you for hitting multiple enemies at once, rather than casting it on one at a time, so having a CC that groups up enemies is a good ability, the damage cast is a good ability, by casting the 2 then the 1 you get a better result out of the interaction as a direct consequence, a tangential synergy. He also has the explicit synergy, where casting his 1 grants Stacks for his passive, and his 3 and 4 cost Stacks instead of Energy. Not only is this a trend that will continue, I believe that it's what DE wanted to do with their ability design all along.

More than that, I think that this is a move that we can only benefit from, as players, far from losing something by phasing out the old method. I genuinely believe that the point of view expressed by several of the developers, to whit they 'don't believe that any stat should be a dump stat, with rare exceptions', is the right way to go. While some frames can benefit from losing a particular stat, such as Loki being able to ditch Strength because all of his abilities directly benefit from Range, Duration and Efficiency instead, still means you're using all of his kit correctly.

Whether ability synergy is tangential or explicit, I believe all Warframes not only already possess it to some degree, but also need it in order to be interesting to play. I don't see the point in making four abilities that are completely functional on their own, but contribute absolutely nothing to each other. I would point out that this is considered to be one of the main problems with Vauban as of right now. His Bastille is amazing. His Vortex is amazing. They are not compatible with each other and genuinely would function better in the manner of the most recent tweets from DEScott, which is two sides of a coin; you can cast one or the other from the same ability, but if you cast Bastille then you have the choice to devolve it, and any other instances in its area, into Vortex on command. This immediately takes what was a wider area and pulls in all captured enemies in range (plus the un-captured ones that Bastille wouldn't have been able to hold, into the Vortex. With that you have tangential synergy with that new ability showed off (with the working title 'orbital strike') that deals damage in a small area. It's, in fact, very much like the 2-1 combo of Nidus where in order to gather up the larges amount of enemies you cast the CC, which is fantastic on its own because it benefits the entire team, and then use your own damage to greater effect.

In short, ability synergy is only bad when it's forced. Such as an ability that only ever dealt damage if you had placed a debuff on the enemy using another ability first, people feared that this was going to be the problem with Wisp when she was released, where her 3 appeared to only spawn from her 1, and casting it on its own did absolutely nothing. This prompted DE to change the function so that it spawned from Wisp as a radial debuff, but if you had cast her 2 it also spawned from the decoy so that you could get greater coverage and target an area from a distance.

These kinds of synergy are genuinely buffs to the function of the frame as a whole, and I hope to see them continue.

[Swagernator22663]

So tldr nerfs suck and people who want that suck too ? I agree.

Edited September 26, 2019 by Swagernator22663

[Miyabi-sama]

I am not in any way trying to argue with your opinions, just keeping up discussion.

7 часов назад, Loza03 сказал:

Most of the time, building for a single power is done because that single power was overpowered in its own right - at least in its element. Able to basically complete content that relied on what it gave (survivability, nuking, CC, so on) on its own or with minimal added effort. In effect - press 4 to win.

It's possible that some of the more balanced older frames may remain as or similar to how they are.

Just because something is traditional doesn't mean it's good.

Excuse me if it seems like cherrypicking, I tried to save the context, but I wanted to underline this particular moments.

We undoubtedly have some sort of "carry" abilities for frames, be it Exalted Blade, Hysteria or Peacemaker. While it does may bring a feeling of "press X", we have to keep in mind this is just one ability, which may be greatly based on the warframe intended theme, and while being somewhat OP remains a signature feature. Similar how Blade Storm had been reworked, leaving it with a great deal of interactivity (picking targets manually, no more press 4 to wipe an area), while it does retain its incredible effectiveness.

On the other side of perspective we have somewhat OP powers, which can be used as "one-trick", like Energy Vampire, Magnetize, or Turbulence. While those remain just an option to go for, it is indeed more attractive to use them, but does it necessary means the game plays itself and significantly lowers player's input? It is rather doubtful any ability gives player capability to afk-play today, but maybe some of them widen a room for mistakes, which they meant to be for.

Meanwhile some frames, most notably Nidus and Saryn, have to use the "one trick" almost constantly. To simply put - you stack or you lose. And those powers are considered their thematic, pretty similar to Exalted weaponry.

Wholeheartedly I do agree on a balanced oldies topic. Sometimes it is good to see succesful designs come through years as we see Volt or Nova today. And I'm amused to remind you about the least changed frame ever, Loki.

And lastly, the thought about traditions work both ways. It doesnt mean traditional design is nesessary bad thing. We see Garuda, who feels like a mix of great ideas from the past with a slightest touch of new ideas. 

8 часов назад, K4RN4 сказал:

I personally prefer the old frame design, because new frames often don't have synergy, but dependency, making some abilities unusable or really bad, if used alone. Using "only" one or two abilities at a time is no bad design to me, I would even go as far as to say that that is the better design, because old warframes typically fill a niche, while newer frames are allrounders. With the new frame design each warframe can do everything reasonably well, so your Warframe choice doesn't matter at all. I like to think of my arsenal as a toolbox and if I want to do a mission, I pick the tool that does the job best and while the old frames are regular tools, the new ones are swiss army knives.

I can understand your point of view. This might be a familiar feeling for people who plays from long ago. I personally met the game starting from Zephyr update. The prevalent opinion was "this is for defence, this is for extermination, this is for fun, and this is bad". And while frames had specific roles developed among the playerbase, it was never been the sole purpose of the tool. E.g. you can obviously crack nuts with a wirecutter, though it wasnt made for that.

I also have to mention we can misuse our tools, which arent designed for some task but clearly for some reason capable of achieving great success in it. Banshee is a prominent example being supposed for stealth and sharpshooting. Her kit was viable in any situation... yet people tended to resort to a very specific ability, which brings us to the point of previous comment. And this bitter fact brought a straight nerf upon her. Nowadays via clever implementation of augments Banshee's kit is as solid as it was never before. (Aside of the fact she doesn't nuke Berehinya anymore lol.)

But having this in mind we can recall previous infamous Corpus Slayer Mag, who was insultingly useless with non-shielded targets. And here we are, today Mag is capable of doing anything in the game, yet this fact does not make her jack of all trades, as she retains her specific touch in dealing with opposition.

While I do agree on a simple thought about specialization is relatively good thing, newest frames being capable of many things still can excel in some ways. Like Wisp is a great buffer, or Gara is great tank. It all does boils down to simple fact which ability can be brought up in power to be the staple of the build.

[Miyabi-sama]

1 час назад, Birdframe_Prime сказал:

This process started after DE grew upset with us for not slotting all our abilities into our Warframes in the old modding system, taking out one, two or even three abilities in a build in order to focus on just the ones we wanted to work on and free up mod space.

Though your entire point of view is clear and reasonable, I must admit I thought it was done based solely on feedback. Most players wanted to have all abilities in while able to mod freely. There was some amusing powerless melee tanky Saryn build though back then.

Complete freedom of removing powers to mod for strongest ones changed for... complete freedom of modding for all existing abilities. It is neither bad or good thing. It is just how things are now. We lost something, but gained something else.

I am totally comfy about all changes in powers (as long as it does not ruining my forma configs), but there is other issue with reworks.

I am mainly disturbed by the fact some of abilities benefit from all stats and in order to be somewhat effective they had to be built balanced, which somewhat kills the concept of builds. It is mostly more beneficial to just add straight buff mods and do fine, especially nowadays when proper guns can carry content regardless if you use your abilities at all.

Moreover, you can't minmax effectively, since some frames do have thei entire kit tied to all stats simultaneously.

How do you think this could be handled? Should we deal with it and leave as it is, or develop some kind of improvement?

[Autongnosis]

Between entirely forced sinergies and abilities that either need all stats or do not scale well with any stat, we lost a S#&$ton of modding depth. 

Gone are the days of trin, nova, rhino, frost, pre-nerf mirage etc. Now frames have so many stupid constraints on them they literally have one viable build with minor variations based on personal preferences. 

I say we lost far more than we gained. 

[Miyabi-sama]

21 минуту назад, Autongnosis сказал:

Between entirely forced sinergies and abilities that either need all stats or do not scale well with any stat, we lost a S#&$ton of modding depth. 

Gone are the days of trin, nova, rhino, frost, pre-nerf mirage etc. Now frames have so many stupid constraints on them they literally have one viable build with minor variations based on personal preferences. 

I say we lost far more than we gained. 

I do agree with the first sentence, but can't grasp what are your thoughts about frames you've referenced.

Rhino is mostly untouched throughout the years and still as strong as he was.

Trinity has lost her 30 sec. invincibility, which was, let's face it, kinda off. Following "nerfs" havent affected her playstyle very much.

Nova is still as strong as she was before, able of adapting for team tactics and huge AoE abilities.

Frost is frost. Globes, Avalanches.

Mirage is a delicate matter, since DE found blinds particularly very strong kind of CC and nerfed it throughout the roster, not only Mirage.

Again, other than I stated above I do agree with your opinion about building capabilities.

[Autongnosis]

il y a 52 minutes, Miyabi-sama a dit :

I do agree with the first sentence, but can't grasp what are your thoughts about frames you've referenced.

Rhino is mostly untouched throughout the years and still as strong as he was.

Trinity has lost her 30 sec. invincibility, which was, let's face it, kinda off. Following "nerfs" havent affected her playstyle very much.

Nova is still as strong as she was before, able of adapting for team tactics and huge AoE abilities.

Frost is frost. Globes, Avalanches.

Mirage is a delicate matter, since DE found blinds particularly very strong kind of CC and nerfed it throughout the roster, not only Mirage.

Again, other than I stated above I do agree with your opinion about building capabilities.

It probably came out wrong but i didn't mean that as in "those frames aren't like this anymore" but as in "the new frames are not like those frames anymore". 

It was a list of examples of older style frames' designs which allowed for actual builds and could fulfill different roles based on needs. 

[Xepthrichros]

14 hours ago, K4RN4 said:

I personally prefer the old frame design, because new frames often don't have synergy, but dependency, making some abilities unusable or really bad, if used alone. Using "only" one or two abilities at a time is no bad design to me, I would even go as far as to say that that is the better design, because old warframes typically fill a niche, while newer frames are allrounders. With the new frame design each warframe can do everything reasonably well, so your Warframe choice doesn't matter at all. I like to think of my arsenal as a toolbox and if I want to do a mission, I pick the tool that does the job best and while the old frames are regular tools, the new ones are swiss army knives.

Well my thought are all over the place right now, but I hope this was understandable.

You are being far too generous to say the new frames are swiss army knives. Because that implies usefulness. Some of them have just a bit of everything, to the point they excel at nothing. And thus become viable for nothing, besides fashion frame and start chart enemies. 

[Miyabi-sama]

45 минут назад, Xepthrichros сказал:

You are being far too generous to say the new frames are swiss army knives. Because that implies usefulness. Some of them have just a bit of everything, to the point they excel at nothing. And thus become viable for nothing, besides fashion frame and start chart enemies. 

This is very harsh comment. Is there any frame can't handle Sorties or Arbitration?

The ultimate use is just fun. And frankly I had some fun with some of 2018-19 frames...

... until I sold them out after a week of fun but that's a different story.

[Birdframe_Prime]

4 hours ago, Miyabi-sama said:

Though your entire point of view is clear and reasonable, I must admit I thought it was done based solely on feedback.

From my experience of it happening, as I wasn't all too active on the Forums back then, the change was generically met with wailing and gnashing of teeth from the experienced or 'high level' crowd.

When I first joined a clan, I didn't realise I'd joined a dedicated high-level clan, my first test to rank up past 'initiate' was to take a squad of players all deliberately making newbie mistakes on purpose on a 1 hour Void survival. I'm very familiar with the old min-max builds that got players through content like that very easily. And so, I was also there for some of the highest level players whingeing and moaning like little kids with their favourite toy being taken away.

Well, until they realised that this meant that their 8-mod specialisation builds were still there and they also had the other two abilities there for free, and that they could move Polarisations around without having to apply Forma... that was a huge one for them ^^ I still know people with 30+ Forma on their Loki or Nova because they changed their build, and mod-order, whenever a new mod was released that they could actually make use of, and just moving those around meant 8 levelling runs...

Anyroadup, my point is that for a lot of players that change to the modding system came despite a lot of player back-lash that claimed they never asked for that, that it invalidated many of their advanced min-maxing builds, that it also invalidated all of the effort/Forma they'd put in to these highly-specialised builds too. It also meant that the unranked frames could no longer just equip a max-rank 4th ability and begin levelling, they now had to 'unlock' their abilities as they went, which was annoying for them.

But the driving force at the time was, apparently, that DE wanted players to actually be able to use all of the abilities that they had designed for these frames, and that taking them off had never really been the intention for the modding system, just a byproduct of not all abilities being created equal.

4 hours ago, Miyabi-sama said:

Moreover, you can't minmax effectively, since some frames do have thei entire kit tied to all stats simultaneously.

How do you think this could be handled? Should we deal with it and leave as it is, or develop some kind of improvement?

I think that's actually the aim of this change. The min-maxing culture previously had the process of literally removing abilities from the frame in order to specialise, while the min-maxing now requires that you simply don't press those buttons, or that those buttons are fairly ineffective to press if you do.

With some abilities, as you say, benefiting from all positive stats, this then becomes far more of a min-maxing challenge, there's actually a meaning to putting on some mods instead of others, and it actually brings the mods that normally wouldn't get a look in far more into the light.

If it comes down to it, the fact that you can build successfully for all positives now, even if that doesn't give you the min-max system that you might have wanted, does actually mean that Warframes perform better overall.

You still can min-max on many frames, I'm just of the firm philosophy that you can get better overall performance from a frame this new way. Think of it like Mario in Mario 2, he's not the strongest, fastest or highest jumper, but he's the second best at all of those, meaning that overall a Mario player comes out on top because nobody else beats him consistently enough. So in that same way, a min-maxed Chroma will still be the best for dealing weapon damage in a quick and achievable manner, but a Chroma biased for Strength and yet with positive stats on everything else will actually out-perform that min-maxed Chroma overall because they'll have better access to the other abilities that help them out in more situations than just dealing damage, that build lets him just as easily use his elements to be more team-support oriented and yet still have great damage when that's needed.

It's a trade-off, I know, but a good one in my opinion.

As for handling this, as players? I say we don't try to. I say we continue to make the best builds we can for the frames that come out, and the usage and feedback on those frames will continue to drive DE to actually make iterations on those concepts they bring in, with reworks to old frames bringing in those newer concepts to actually improve them, rather than nerf them (as has happened in the past). Every new thing DE does is an experiment, and we're the testing bed.

If we can continue bringing our best feedback to the fore, then rather than having to 'develop some kind of improvement' on a grand scale that will cause everything to need updating to a completely new system, the game Devs themselves will come up with it for us based on our guidance and update everything to that new system over time.

In that light, I guess it's really just too early to see what this next wave of ability experimentation will bring, so how about we ride it rather than try to guide it?

[Miyabi-sama]

1 час назад, Birdframe_Prime сказал:

Every new thing DE does is an experiment, and we're the testing bed.

It would be really nice if the experimentator could notify his beds about intended results. To say "hey Tenno, we made this X so it could make Y" instead of throwing some stuff and watch what happens next.

When it comes to feedback, most of people come in to the forum and start sharing their wishes disguised as opinion. Because of the myth about "devs make everything based on players' feedback". Absolute minority actually cares about DE's opinion or intention, and it is even more prominent when you see suggestions of folks who care, most recent example of Rahetalius, who instead of throwing out some rant vid actually did "yet another 1 hour long Vauban rework idea". No surprise it came in accord with some of actual Scott's work.

Again no one knows what ideas they looking for, what goals they have in mind. What do they want from us as their test beds.

1 час назад, Birdframe_Prime сказал:

n that light, I guess it's really just too early to see what this next wave of ability experimentation will bring, so how about we ride it rather than try to guide it?

I am riding at full speed. Just hope waves of changes won't ruin my favourite things here.

[anonymous14z]

To be a bit less brainless (and from the perspective of a vulgar min-maxer).

In my opinion, the ability co-synergy (or Co-dependence) is not as strangling as you might think, I still can still use a power range nidus in the arena to speedrun it, I still use a power range saryn to speedrun exterminates, Hildryn is -largely- used for her durability and armor stripping (since it's accomplished with her pillage ability), Gara is strong in arbitrations due to the 90% Damage resist and her crazy shield.

The only warframe that somewhat suffers from ability co-dependence -IMO- is gauss, where you must use your 1st or 3rd ability to charge his battery for his 4th, -and it's done in a seemingly arbitrary and goofy way- unless if you fully integrate -and I dare say "force"- his 1st ability into your playstyle (where you spam it go to anywhere), but forcing his 1st ability on the upside really helps him have a "fleshed out" gameplay (Gotta go fast).

But there is enough "ability independence" for frames to still be able to build for one gimmick or ability. (and unusually there is one ability in a warframe that has no or little ability synergy/dependence)

Like with Gara who I build for her shatter shield -by boosting strength, duration, and range, (the ability synergy with her 1->4 is not as choking as you'd think) or with hildryn, where I build her for her pillage by using duration and Strength.

Gauss -when I was leveling him up- I used almost exclusively as a weapon damage warframe (with lots of runspeed) but his 4th ability is not affected by strength, nor his 1st, so I just build him for duration (for his 4th) and efficiency.

Bizzarely enough, the only frame where your hunches have moderate traction is when using nidus in arbitrations; Do I build him for his 3rd ability? IF so how much range? Should I try to CC with his 2nd ability at the same time? And boy I'm putting all of these mods to tweak my powers, my base survivability is a bit questionable.

I'll give you some more concrete examples if you hold me to it, but I want to keep my thoughts to this degree. (I don't want to answer your 5 questions).

P.S. I guess a lot of gauss's complaints -which I've mysteriously internalized?- is maybe the badly communicated design? Where the "gotta go fast" playstyle is not reinforced?

P.S. Forgive me if I'm not actually replying sensibly to your comment. (and my bad editing)

Edited September 28, 2019 by anonymous14z

[000l000]

Le 26/09/2019 à 02:07, K4RN4 a dit :

I personally prefer the old frame design, because new frames often don't have synergy, but dependency, making some abilities unusable or really bad, if used alone. Using "only" one or two abilities at a time is no bad design to me, I would even go as far as to say that that is the better design, because old warframes typically fill a niche, while newer frames are allrounders. With the new frame design each warframe can do everything reasonably well, so your Warframe choice doesn't matter at all. I like to think of my arsenal as a toolbox and if I want to do a mission, I pick the tool that does the job best and while the old frames are regular tools, the new ones are swiss army knives.

Well my thought are all over the place right now, but I hope this was understandable.

Dependency ? I only see people only spamming motes everywhere while playing Wisp, i only see people spamming Revenant's 4th, Khora's cage etc. You can skip half of new frames kit while playing them so i don't even get this whole thread point. Oldest frames did already have synergies and are no more niche than Hildryn's or Gauss. I'm even wondering why you're talking about allrounders when one of the newest frame mechanics doesn't even work against infested, a whole faction.

There's no old world vs new world story to tell here, brand new frames only have more elaborated synergies and complicated mechanics than old toons, that's the whole story, nothing to worry about tbh. Perhaps Devs are more comfortable with game's mechanics now while trying to not designing things we have played with before.

The only difference between old and new frames is that they're improving old features and thus creating better iterations of older mechanics.

Edited September 29, 2019 by 000l000

[Teridax68]

On 2019-09-26 at 12:38 AM, Miyabi-sama said:

Such a great win, where is the catch? The catch is in now we have a lot of abilities, which might be questionable to use on their own, if ever deserve to make a warframe build around them alone.

So I feel this point is a little ambiguous, and with just the right amount of detail can lead into either two arguments, one of which I can very much agree with, and the other I completely disagree with:

1. If the argument is that kits are being designed in such a way that abilities feel incomplete or dysfunctional on their own, I completely agree that that's not good; no ability in a frame should feel like just an augment with an Energy cost to another ability.
2. If the argument is that the new standard for good play involves players to press more than one or two buttons, I'm perfectly fine with that, and in fact I'd say that that's significantly better than the state of some frames, where pressing one or two buttons really is the entire summation of their hollow playstyle.

On 2019-09-26 at 12:38 AM, Miyabi-sama said:

- Is this a natural evolution process of the game?

Seems like it. DE seem to generally want players to not create builds that focus exclusively around one or two abilities, and that I think is a positive development due to how it adds more depth to those builds' playstyles. I also think it makes more sense now that we generally have more Energy to spare at higher levels, when previously single-ability builds often made sense because they cast fewer abilities overall.

On 2019-09-26 at 12:38 AM, Miyabi-sama said:

- Should we be able to retain "oldschool" build capable frames? (Come on Sonar Banshees!)

Sonar Banshee is defined by standing in the same place and spamming the same ability just so that her allies can melt enemies more easily. She can't really use many of her other abilities, because she's built in such a way that those abilities suck. As such, I don't think that's really the ideal to aspire to, and more generally, I think "old school" builds have more nostalgia value than anything else: I'd rather have different build options that capitalize on all of a frame's abilities in different ways, rather than have builds that completely abandon entire portions of a frame's kit just because they're too weak to be worth using.

On 2019-09-26 at 12:38 AM, Miyabi-sama said:

- Is this an existing trend for all future warframes?

I'd like it to be, and it seems to be the case for reworks and most new releases: Wukong's rework gave every ability a different, desirable function, as did Nezha's and Saryn's before him, and frames like Wisp and Gauss have a reason to use all four of their abilities (though Gauss I think is a partial failure because his 3 sucks when building for the rest of his kit).

On 2019-09-26 at 12:38 AM, Miyabi-sama said:

- Shall we lose something significant if eventually all warframes had to be switched to ability synergy template?

No, and on the contrary, I think it would be to the benefit of every warframe if they were encouraged to use all of their abilities, rather than a fraction of them.

On 2019-09-26 at 12:38 AM, Miyabi-sama said:

- Does having all warframes without ability synergy means "bad design" or presents any downsides balance wise (except pretty obvious "press X to win" cases)?

It depends: I think an example of healthy warframe design that doesn't involve synergies is swiss-army-knife designs where the frame can access a bunch of self-sufficient abilities that are all individually desirable. If you were to strip away Wisp's forced synergies, she'd still have a fairly interesting kit, because all of her abilities have a distinct use, even though it'd still likely be more interesting if they naturally fit with each other. However, the problem with a lot of older warframes is that a) they often have redundant abilities, e.g. Frost with his 1 that is inferior in almost every way compared to his 4, and b) they often have abilities that singlehandedly blow all of the others out of the water, as is the case with any "press X to win" frame. Neither design is particularly healthy, because they make for less deep and interesting gameplay overall, yet synergies between abilities, when done well, enable much greater depth of gameplay, which is likely why DE has tried pushing for those instead.

 

[Miyabi-sama]

37 минут назад, Teridax68 сказал:

Blah-blah

 

Don't bother to try and find real context in this topic I've tried to start. Whle I was writing with a specific thing in mind, it was lost in the process and the result was this wonky topic on the front with clickbait name. It looks more like a vent thread or rather sharing of my concerns about state of things with build variety.

I was about to redo the entire post but people started answering questions already. And here we are.