How do you feel about Minions in Warframe and what do you like about minions/summoners?

[Zahnny]

I've always felt summoners as a playstyle has always been lackluster in Warframe and I wonder if this is just a "me" thing or if anyone else agrees or disagrees. I'm much interested in hearing what others opinions are on this.

When I specify a summoner, minions or etc I refer to any semi- or fully autonomous entity that can provide buffs, a distraction, CC or more firepower. This, to me, also applies to both stationary and mobile entities, including both turrets and specters. If this sounds too broad, that was the point as in Warframe it can come in many forms, from weapons, gear and abilities. I'm hesitant to include the Zenistar because it's not really targetting enemies, it's a trap for enemies to walk into that you deploy, and as such is not putting any real priority or intelligence behind it but I thought I should mention it honorably.

TL;DR I really dislike Minions or Summons that are duration based, to me personally it is a major downside to any Summoner related content. Not just in Warframe, but in any game. Unless they warrant one. Such as kamikaze styled or they are summoned in a huge swarm. (While Nekros can feel like a large swarm I don't feel he has the numbers to really warrant a timer)

As stated in the tl;dr, whether or not something has a duration is a major factor in whether I want to use those things. Granted there will always be such things out there where an infinite timer will make things go crazy, or potentially break things but when playing a Summoner in other games, I pay more attention to the health or effectiveness of my minions rather than the timer of them. In many games even without a timer, playing a summoner can already feel like being a babysitter.

Two of my favourite games both include Summoner classes that don't restrict minions (or at least not most of them) to a timer and they work great.

Those games being Terraria and Path of Exile. I won't focus much on Terraria since those minions don't have health and cannot die which I don't think would fit Warframe that well. More so given the Side-scroller vs 3D thing between them. But it gets around this by having a Minion cap which you can extend through progression.

Path of Exile on the other hand deals with Summoners much better and having a wide arsenal. Zombies, Spectres, several different types of Golems, a Sentinel-like thing called a Holy Relic. Similar to Terraria, there are minion caps that can be increased, however rather than a global increase, you increase it for certain summons, e.g. Golem count increase, Spectre count increase, Zombie count increase. This isn't to say that Path of Exile doesn't have duration based minions but even those they kind of warrant it. Skeletons are slow, too slow to reasonably follow you around but can be spawned around combat, easily swarming enemies, and another being raging skulls, a very short lived but easily spammable minion for swarms.

If there was anything Warframe could learn from PoE's summoners, it might be the "Skitterbots" an ability, which unlike other summons instead of relying on a minion cap, they Reserve a portion of your Mana, which we can substitute with Energy. Warframe could have you summon an entity that takes a certain percentage of your energy, say 60%, you would have 40% to cast abilities with. For example, say you have 100 energy, you reserve 60 of it, and you have 40 energy to cast things with (probably higher energy pool but just for ease of concept) but that 60% is untouchable unless you deactivate the ability. Protected from things like parasitic eximus, so that even if you reach 0 energy it'll remain active.

 

I won't get into every Warframe ability and summoner-esque thing but here's a few examples not tied to abilities:

Specters Summoned from Gear: Perfect, please add more enemies into it if possible but don't make them difficult to obtain like the Corrupted Gunner/Bombard. I do believe that with our Extended Gearwheel that a cap on specters summoned through this might require a limit, 5 max seems reasonable.

Synoid Heliocor Great idea and great concept but this can easily be made permanent without breaking the game. It already only allows one at a time and rewards you for picking out specific enemies. Ability to switch them by creating another which would kill the previous. (Combo Count is more important than Channeling used to be so there's more to lose by re-using it every 30 seconds)

Ballistica Prime Also a great ability, though perhaps like the above it could be limited to one permanent max, and have the other fire mode create the temporary 7 second ones that already exist. (The first two or so seconds are wasted just waiting for the enemy to realise it's in combat anyway.)

Spoiler

I'm sad I never got to experience the glitch where Ballistica Prime was spawning specter version of enemies, rather than ghosts that didn't despawn allowing players to fill a survival map with allies. I'd love for it to "break" again so I can experience that day.

 

So uh, anyway. After a long post. What are your thoughts on the Summoners/Minions in Warframe? And how, if they should. Can they improve?

[KnossosTNC]

Keep those overgrown yellow tampons away from- oh, you mean summons.

The issue here is that really good summons would allow people to go full AFK. Octavia's music ball of doom almost already does that. To prevent that, you either have to make summons utility rather than offensive, really weak, or have downsides that prevent them from fully replacing your weapons.

[Obviousclone]

I think most peoples expectations of minion/summoners is: "the minions should play the entire game for me; if they aren't killing everyone while I afk in the back, then they are worthless"

my expectation of minion/summoners in warframe is "if I see the enemy isn't shooting me and instead shooting someone else, then I'm happy"

[Zahnny]

Yeah I'm entirely on board with not wanting the game to be AFK'd for me. But if we were given the roll of actively taking care and engaging with our minions, as they deal with everything would that be too much to ask? I don't see how it'd be much different than being a Healer for other players.

[DrivaMain]

Minions/summons shouldn't have a duration, BUT include some sort of anti AFK mechanism to them. Specters already have this that they stop attacking if the player is not moving for 1 minute. They just need to apply this everywhere.

[KnossosTNC]

6 minutes ago, Zahnny said:

Yeah I'm entirely on board with not wanting the game to be AFK'd for me. But if we were given the roll of actively taking care and engaging with our minions, as they deal with everything would that be too much to ask? I don't see how it'd be much different than being a Healer for other players.

Well, then it would have to be a) worth the effort, and b) somehow fun. Otherwise it's just going to feel like baby sitting.

Teammates are supposedly intelligent sapient human beings. If they screw up, you can try yelling at them to stop. With summons, you are completely at the mercy of the AI's digital whims. If it's going to go off to, say, sniff a bum, there's not much you can do. That can get frustrating fast.

[OneYenShort]

2 hours ago, KnossosTNC said:

The issue here is that really good summons would allow people to go full AFK. Octavia's music ball of doom almost already does that. To prevent that, you either have to make summons utility rather than offensive, really weak, or have downsides that prevent them from fully replacing your weapons.

Yeap.. this is the reason.  BUT when you think about it, pets are veritable summons and they don't do squat unless you are attacking something.  I rather dislike it, but I can understand from the AFK perspective on why that happens.

Now Champions Online back when I played, so long as you could do your own build and not an... archtype/template or whatever they called.  I made a summoner that the only non perm was a trio of shadows, all of the other powers were all perm till killed summons.  It was darn fun. couldn't really kill real bosses like a buffed up hero could, but over all lots of fun.  I never tried to AFK it becuase in that game there really wasn't a point to trying to AFK farm.  At least back then, no idea these days.

[Richeatue]

 I'd think it would be pretty cool, however next time you write a title, please don't capitalize the word Minions.

You gave me a scare there.... 

[(PSN)Dishinshoryuken]

Would be kookz to have this as a Warframe

 During the Arsenal areas, have them able to place Sumnons in as mods for their powers. This would be a place where you could use their first power to gain new Summons by how many ensnarement of enemies you get. The more you do in a mission, the more a Character card fills up. Once you fill the Character card, you may summon them. Once you get to a certain amount of Character cards filled, a screen similar to Riven one would appear and have you the option to keep, turn to Particles (resource for Character cards), or enhance another card to next level  EXAMPLE-

You scanned a Earth Butcher to max and his next level is Armored Butcher with Twin Basolks and Warp OR Eximus with Cold Aura. You choose which branch you want to go and once you get new Particles, can dissolve a Character card to make room for others or keep enhancing.

I don't know what I am talking about...tired but having withdrawals from no playing WARFRAME....is it July 6th yet and I can be in front of my systems?

 

[mysty]

would love to have a new real minion based Warframe  a better Nekros would be fine and that his soulpunch could create more minions like in the prime trailer

i only like pet classes

 

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

On 2020-07-03 at 9:01 PM, Zahnny said:

TL;DR I really dislike Minions or Summons that are duration based, to me personally it is a major downside to any Summoner related content. Not just in Warframe, but in any game. Unless they warrant one. Such as kamikaze styled or they are summoned in a huge swarm. (While Nekros can feel like a large swarm I don't feel he has the numbers to really warrant a timer)

The shadows are based on what you killed before making them. If you don’t occasionally let them time out, they'll be underpowered compared to the enemies that are still alive. 

His other abilities allow you to not run into any any energy related problems so periodically refreshing isn't an issue. 

[Zahnny]

12 minutes ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

The shadows are based on what you killed before making them. If you don’t occasionally let them time out, they'll be underpowered compared to the enemies that are still alive.

Fair. But you could also just let the enemies kill them if they're that weak. Or allow Nekros to Hold (as to not use accidentally) his 4 to make them detonate. Similar to how you can kill converted enemies in Shadow of Mordor/War, giving both a tactical use and a way to refresh the horde.

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

I like summoners and in Warframe I can see one that has minions but I wouldn't make them do damage only debuff enemies or heal you just support in general

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

6 minutes ago, Zahnny said:

Fair. But you could also just let the enemies kill them if they're that weak. Or allow Nekros to Hold (as to not use accidentally) his 4 to make them detonate. Similar to how you can kill converted enemies in Shadow of Mordor/War, giving both a tactical use and a way to refresh the horde.

They're not really weak health wise and their damage is buffed. In a lot of cases, the timer is the determining factor of how long their health lasts, more than the enemy in a lot of cases. I think the base rate is 3% per second, reduced by high duration stat. 

I'd rather have them as is, especially with the augment, than the ability to go around killing them for a little additional damage from time to time. 

 

 

[BDMblue]

As some one who also likes summoners I’ve started to become sick of the way games seem to implement them. 

 

Problems they all all have. All but action games for some reason they get it and RPGs don’t.

POE just what I love to do look on the top left of the screen and make sure my numbers are full so I can resummon... same in a 20 year old game Diablo. Same as in Torchlight why? 

If we’re doing this we are putting summons and summoning in a passive. The fun part of summoning is fighting with and supporting an army not watching the damn numbers all game. 

If we look at a fun game with summons Shadow of War. Your a ring Wrath and you kill and summon orcs or just take them over. You don’t have to look at numbers you help them fight they keep bing made as you go.

Stubbs the Zombie.

anything you kill turns to an ally. You help your zombies and deal with threats keeping your horde growing.

If I was going to change Nekros I would remove his 4 change his useless passive into when you kill something turn it into an undead thrall. Then make his other powers feed off the undeads life force.

 

same with Inaros make sand clones when you kill. Powers cost 1 clone no mana.

Easy fun passive army that you just fight with.

[Takamori]

Wish Necros had more flavour in his summon undead ultimate ability. Instead of just shadow of the dead have a proper army of spooky skeleton and maybe have an upgrade mod where you hit ultimate again you amass then to make a huge abomination.

Replace his useless number 2 maybe with detonate his undead?

In its current state necros is just the Desecrate guy that robs enemy corpses from their lunch money.

[Zahnny]

2 hours ago, BDMblue said:

Stubbs the Zombie.

Oh my god I loved that game. I hope it gets a sequel or remaster one day.

[Galuf]

specters are minions kind of. Also some frame abilities summon things that move but also turret-like stuff anchored an you(itzal/titania but also protea ^^)

Generally it is not that good for pure raw damage.

[ChaoticEdge]

There was a story when Nekros was King of all the warframe for he was known Big Daddy and there use to be an old mission called "raid" to keep the story short the video will speak itself.

This is the true power of the summoner and how it was once was glorified.

[ShogunGunshow]

We have decent summoner/minion frames as is, but it's the AI of their minions that sucks. 

[BDMblue]

1 hour ago, ChaoticEdge said:

There was a story when Nekros was King of all the warframe for he was known Big Daddy and there use to be an old mission called "raid" to keep the story short the video will speak itself.

This is the true power of the summoner and how it was once was glorified.

I don’t think people wanted you to summon tho. You were there for extra life support drops that’s it.

 

edit not life support but w/e the things are called that fill the other things and give you armour back. It’s still used in the Nidus levels.

[ChaoticEdge]

1 hour ago, BDMblue said:

I don’t think people wanted you to summon tho. You were there for extra life support drops that’s it.

 

edit not life support but w/e the things are called that fill the other things and give you armour back. It’s still used in the Nidus levels.

keep in mind it was king why do you think I just say it but the summon is not a flunk for they are lvl balance to the mission block but never on stupidly on open maps game like PoE and Solaris. I do know the dev will fix this summoning the specter for all I know nekros still able have balance lvl enemies still depending who he kill.  Summoner class are not should be taken lightly still but it still has that remaining true power it has for it is temporary.