2020’s First Mainline: Review, Revise, Refresh.

[Graavarg]

When I started with Warframe, DE was one of the reasons. I played my first games on a VIC-20 (not counting TV Pong 🙂), and I've been gaming ever since and seen developers some and go, implode, explode and fizz out, being bought up, mostly destroying good games and good potential in the process.

DE is also one the reasons I am still playing Warframe, there are times I don't agree with decisions and there are some stuff I just don't get 🙂, but I do trust DE as a game/Warframe developer. And that is bloody important (and quite rare, considering).

Last evening's devstream was, well... ...just great. I get every single thing. I even understand why my double arcane setups needs to be nerfed a bit, but buffing arcanes to rank 5 is a great way of safe-guarding the importance while achieving more variety at the same time, and even before testing it out I just know I'll now have a lot of fun with selecting "the second arcane" for different builds. And it doesn't matter that the shotgun status calculation has been "a bit strange" (being kind here) since forever, what matters is that it now changes into the same logical damage system that applies to everything else. And it will be bloody interesting to check it out as well (single pellet procs/damage, looking at you).

Finally, thanks to the community/player-base for showing their true colors in response to these changes. For a while now anyone checking out the forums could have gotten the impression that Warframe players are mostly self-entitled w*nkers blaming DE for just about anything, wanting everything for nothing and continuously needing to establish their existence and self-worth by incessant complaining. Not so, after all. 👍

Edited February 29, 2020 by Graavarg

[(NSW)Kayaba]

10 hours ago, Data-Raptor said:

NO no no a millions times no. self damage is VITAL for good chroma builds. and 'stagger' is boring and over come with 100% prime surefooted. And bassically nerfing other weapons by adding stagger. This whole thing is a VERY BAD IDEA.

 

So you want to keep a bad mechanic just because it benefits one frame? Self Damage hurts every other frame and makes an entire class of weapons useless unless. And this knock down probably can’t be negated, as for chroma, this isn’t as big of a nerf as you think, all you need to do is activate vex armor get stepped on (shield gate stops you from being one shot) and boom full vex armor 

[(NSW)Kayaba]

10 hours ago, Cephalon_Baphoma said:

Agreed, it makes no sense anyway for weapons not have at least some self damage. I hate these changes.

So you want to keep a bad mechanic just because it benefits one frame? Self Damage hurts every other frame and makes an entire class of weapons useless unless. And this knock down probably can’t be negated, as for chroma, this isn’t as big of a nerf as you think, all you need to do is activate vex armor get stepped on (shield gate stops you from being one shot) and boom full vex armor 

[Suska]

4 minutes ago, (NSW)Kayaba said:

So you want to keep a bad mechanic just because it benefits one frame? Self Damage hurts every other frame and makes an entire class of weapons useless unless. And this knock down probably can’t be negated, as for chroma, this isn’t as big of a nerf as you think, all you need to do is activate vex armor get stepped on (shield gate stops you from being one shot) and boom full vex armor 

Self Damage was the price we paid for Bramma being too good, so now what? Everyone will use the Bramma and/or it will be nerfed. I think most likely the nerf is in the details already, aoe falloff can do that. And there is a difference between doing something deliberate which you can do by yourself, and doing something accidental or like some damage-seeking behavior which is even more gross than just blowing yourself up.

[(NSW)Kayaba]

10 hours ago, ccjuju said:

I genuinely enjoy the risk of blowing myself up when using a high explosives weapon.  It adds fun and thrill and challenge to a game that is otherwise just clicking the mouse and watching numbers rise off of dead things.  Please, don't make this self damage removal change.  You are removing player engagement by doing this.  It's actually okay if a player kills himself from time to time using this and is unhappy with the results.  This encourages him to try harder in the future (or pick a different weapon).  Removing the need to make this choice just to assuage temporary disappointment leads to greater long-term disappointment down the road.  Warframe is known for its many, many weapons.  The last thing it needs making a few that stand out even more "samey" to the rest.

 

If you don't want Chroma to be able to charge with self-damage, that's fine.  Just change Chroma.  But please, don't remove weapon diversity from the game.

I’ve said it twice I’ll say it again, you want to keep a bad mechanic just because it benefits one frame, Self Damage hurts every other frame and makes an entire class of weapons useless unless. And this knock down probably can’t be negated, as for chroma, this isn’t as big of a nerf as you think, all you need to do is activate vex armor get stepped on (shield gate stops you from being one shot) and boom full vex armor 

[Suska]

you're being silly saying it's only in game to benefit one frame i've already explained this

[ADHDoug]

Skimmed through comments looking for instances of the COMMAND INSTRINSIC, and to my surprise and dismay I only saw three mentions of it. Come on DE, you haven't even finished implementing Railjack fully and you're going to throw an event at us? We're already two months into the new year and we haven't even heard of the command intrinsic since launch. Even if it were to drop before the event, which is doubtful considering early March is as soon as tomorrow, AND we haven't heard diddly on it, we're not even getting any prep time to speak of. How are we SOLO PLAYERS expected to participate? I know this will get some backlash from the "Just pug, it's not that hard" crowd, but without going into detail and telling my life story, let's just say that some of us don't have that luxury.

That said, as somebody who isn't affected by most, if any, of the listed nerfs that have been noticed in other posts, I appreciate these changes greatly and all I really have to complain about is the COMMAND INTRINSIC.

[Suska]

my 2 cents:

armor should affect mobility
shields should draw from energy

it's gotta be crazy to try and adjust a game with this many parameters, especially if there's no real-world logic behind it.

[Crevab]

11 minutes ago, ADHDoug said:

Skimmed through comments looking for instances of the COMMAND INSTRINSIC, and to my surprise and dismay I only saw three mentions of it. Come on DE, you haven't even finished implementing Railjack fully and you're going to throw an event at us? We're already two months into the new year and we haven't even heard of the command intrinsic since launch. Even if it were to drop before the event, which is doubtful considering early March is as soon as tomorrow, AND we haven't heard diddly on it, we're not even getting any prep time to speak of. How are we SOLO PLAYERS expected to participate? I know this will get some backlash from the "Just pug, it's not that hard" crowd, but without going into detail and telling my life story, let's just say that some of us don't have that luxury.

That said, as somebody who isn't affected by most, if any, of the listed nerfs that have been noticed in other posts, I appreciate these changes greatly and all I really have to complain about is the COMMAND INTRINSIC.

Considering you can do ground missions or Railjack missions for the event, I imagine you'll be doing the ground missions. And the event is about bringing a part of Railjack they've previously shown

[Opyt]

Don't forget about per-pellet on the Redeemer, as it's quirky enough that it might not be on your list of shotgun weapons. 🙂

[daktfi]

Many big thanks for rework of Status, especially UI change! The thing I really dreamed of (unknowingly for the most time).

Thank you very much, [DE]! 🙂

[Golden_Tatsuo]

With regards to the self-damage: I feel like we could allow self-damage to still exist, as it feels a bit unrealistic to unload a huge explosion at point-blank range and not kill ourselves, especially when radiation procs allowing our allies to do the same wont be going away. If too close to the center of the blast, you could give us a button prompt to allow for the backward dodge (think: the Arkham series of games, except instead of an enemies attacks we will have a split second to do the 'dodge'). 
When dodged successfully, perhaps the energy of the explosive could be partially applied to shields or energy (with a cooldown to avoid people abusing it). 

There could be a cumulative damage counter as well, perhaps starting at a low % of, say, 10%, increasing with each successive hit within a short window. Each additional proc of self-damage before the damage counter has reset will increase the amount of total damage you would take. You could ensure that no matter the damage, anything below X% (lets say 40?) will never do lethal damage, but after that, if you're shooting rockets into your own feet over and over, you wont be surviving long.
You could also allow your own shields to be the first casualty of unmitigated self-damage (if applicable) before applying the buff, so new players realize "oh, I cant use a mini-nuke on myself to clear away enemies".
Alternatively, you could use a mechanic that fighting games use. The self-damage will show the amount of health you will lose in total by a small overlay on your health bar that depletes, allowing for players to see the increasing damage they are dealing to themselves before the eventual lethal damage, as well as giving them the option to back off and/or get some health. 

If on the edge of the blast, perhaps a smaller percentage of the damage will be dealt regardless, with or without the minor flinch as shown in the devstream. You could also have this tied to the self-damage prevention buff, having increasing self-damage the more you take the hits, but with a higher threshold for death level damage (lets say 70%).
This would reward players who know what their arsenal is capable of, and help teach other players to be more aware of their actions. It would also tie into us feeling like the badass space ninjas we are! 

This could help the risk/reward of using explosive weapons still exist without making room-clearers the new go-to weapon, while keeping a bit of realness to using a rocket launcher to blow up a corpus within arms reach.

 

With regards to AI Aim: could we get a fix for AI that has an absolute zero percent chance of hitting something (due to terrain, weapon arc, or just being out of range) for friendly AI? 
I hate seeing my Wukong clone firing dozens and dozens of Bramma arrows into a slight hill or a pillar because he doesnt have actual line of sight. 

[(PSN)Toolriz]

11 hours ago, Senguash said:

I feel like I've never said this before these changes actually all look good. Scaling changes make sense. Shield gating, self damage and status chance changes are good. Sentinel duplicate mods and grenade markers are very good as well, even if they're about half a decade overdo. 

The only thing that's a bit questionable is the balancing on the arcane changes, but it's going to nice overall regardless. A number of the arcanes still have bad conditions, like on finisher or parry. That and then the murmur changes are not really adressing the problem you still can't play properly with your friends.

And there's a typo in here, right?

I agree...my biggest gripe is some of the arcane changes. Grace energize and guardian nerfs (duration and cool down) r really not needed and really help maintain the balance of the game being fun. Cool downs on these r scary in the fact that most of the damage in warframe is gunfire which cannot be avoided unless u don’t stop moving. I get accuracy changes are happening but this really is concerning and will have to see what happens. Energize cool down could greatly effect frames that have draining specials. Also with them maybe not as good rewards for eidolons well there goes that fight which is some of the best synergies of teamwork I’ve played in this game which is something the raids need to b reworked to showcase as well as maybe this being a real endgame since vets really do get stomped on. Vet turn over is a problem and making the game accessible for everyone does have a double edge sword as when I stream I meet people doing content they should not be doing and frustration sets in which also causes noobs to quit early. I would love to see the data on mr and hrs played as well as what is wanted by these players. However if they quit already u may not see their feedback lol.

Edited February 29, 2020 by (PS4)Toolriz

[mizeriq]

So level 5 arcanes are supposed to be roughly 1.5x old level 3 arcanes, yet the stats shown for Arcane Aegis are a massive nerf even when compared to old level 3. By the looks of it the trigger chance is lowered 3 times(!) and the duration 2.5 times at the same level, and that thing was already very inconsistent with the old stats and 2 of them equipped, now it's just going to be ridiculous.

[Fogg]

A point of consideration for Chroma no longer being able to self damage, allow player to hold the vex armor button down to do health damage and charge the buff similar to Inaros' Scarab Swarm. Looking forward to seeing the changes and how they play out.

[Little]

Please buff the stats of Arcane Guardian, 600 armour is kinda sad now that you can only equip 1 of each arcane 

[Possesstime]

Finally, som good firetrucking food.

 

On the other hand, could you look at the melee exalted weapons like Valkyr's Talons and Excaliburs exalted blade? After the last melee rework changes, these abilities feel so less, so weak and so meaningless now that most normal melee weapons are by far much better. I don't know if letting us equip mods like weeping wounds and blood rush on them would be a good start, but these two melee weapons are warframe abilities, and for an ability that takes the 4 slots on both frames seems rather useless at the moment.

Also, at the moment, Excal's exalted blade feels more powerfull than valkyr's talons since he can reach 100% status, while talons only can reach about 60% status with all the current status mods. Valkyr can use a weapon like the Zakti to inflict status damage to enemies and benefit from the condition overload mod, but i don't feel like it's fair to use a secondary or a primary slot just for your 4th ability to be worthwhile.

I think perhaps some new combos and a few stat changes, like giving Excal's blade a bit more crit, and valkyr talons a bit more status would help them greatly.

 

But these current changes to the game is a great path to head down, i for one wouldn't mind if you had to push back some updates just so you could fix the current game, and instead of these islands, you could make the game into one, big, breathing organism that interacts with all the current content in a way. Btw, i know partners like Rahetalius and some others have som great suggestions like this.

Continue with this trend!

[Lavyros]

While you changing status mods, cause they are worse then 60 60, can you also look into tactical pump, which gives +30% reload speed, while chilling reload gives +40% and +60% cold damage.

[eboomer]

While you're touching arcanes, please fix the bug where arcanes are unequipped from our Warframes when we sell a max rank arcane to another player for platinum.  I dread selling arcanes I actually use because of all the work it takes, and all the builds it breaks.

[Asgaeroth]

What I would like to see most is a ground up revamp of rivens. It is way too difficult to get rivens, wildly inconsistent and generally too difficult to reveal rivens, way too difficult to reform rivens, way too difficult to participate in the riven market. It's just a bad system from every angle, and in my opinion the worst system in Warframe at the moment. It either takes astounding levels of luck or completely unreasonable levels of dedication to get the riven collection you want. Would love to see the teeth taken out of this system and made to be fun and approachable. Maybe scrap revealing entirely, and just have the tradeable aspect of a riven be it's weapon type. As far as the stats themselves, maybe have something along the lines of the crafting bench from Path of Exile where you unlock riven modifiers and they have particular resource costs for different modifier weights.

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

Arcane changes and shotgun changes are heavy handed garbage. Please dont. 

[(XBOX)Baski7786]

I really haven't been enjoying your guys game for awhile now, even as a long time supporter. That being said, I'm extremely glad to see this stuff finally happening. All I'll say is for the future, as a customer I'd be much more interested in your game if you were to do this type of stuff more often. You guys don't need to make something totally bonkers every time. Just making the game fun is enough.

[spicyframe420]

16 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Arcane Guardian
On Rank 5: On Damaged:
15% chance for +600 Armor for 30s

 

Why guardian received nerf ? 

I frankly couldn't care less about the "meta" arcane since what they offering are a lazy way of playing. While this arcane offered an additional layer of fat for very squish frames and easy of access in terms of grind for.

 Wouldn't reducing the chance and the consistency of arcane imply there should be a bulk buff, so +800 armor for 30 second sound fair for losing 5% from the chance of it being applied. 

Armor changes / reword for teno don't really cut as an excuse  for leaving % chance nerfed while having the same buff amount. 

Edited February 29, 2020 by spicyframe420

[czechart]

Would be awesome if we'd get this type of devstream every year from now on

[Mephane]

8 hours ago, AuroraSonicBoom said:

Knockdown is nice and all, but on average that's actually a drawback. I would suggest either adding a general damage multiplier to knocked down enemies, or revising the double impact proc effect to a longer "open to finisher". That would allow for some interesting attack combos.

Yeah, I have proposed this in some other context already: for knocked down enemies, the whole body should count as a weak spot, then the effect wouldn't be such a huge detriment.