Why doesn't energy regenerate?

[quxier]

16 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Abilities are fun when their use is a decision.

Not all abilities are for some mathematician (joke).
Some abilities are for playing (at least for me). Why do you think I like Grendel? Because he is powerful (maybe he is)? Nope. I like to eat & spit people and rolling through people.
Some are used as "oh shi...".
The same with guns. Sometimes you go like SWAT and sometimes you go rambo.

19 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

When their use becomes "press button quickly," they lose their complexity and thus their entertainment value.

But press LMB to shoot enemy till his huge bullet sponge disappear is complex?

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, quxier said:

But press LMB to shoot enemy till his huge bullet sponge disappear is complex?

Yes. That's because there's an entire gunplay and parkour system to handle that. There is no such system for abilities. The vast majority of them you don't even aim. The few that you do... Tend to be Exalted Weapons, which themselves use the gunplay system, not the ability system. Like I said - if you want to spam the same ability over and over again (Atlas' Landslide, Nidus' Virulence), then turn them into an Exalted Weapon, mod them with weapon mods and use them AS a weapon. The problem with your comparison is that Warframe's ability system has no inherent depth aside from the abilities themselves, and "spammable" abilities are spammable because they themselves don't offer any. If you're going to spam abilities, use the Weapon system for it.

 

1 hour ago, quxier said:

Some abilities are for playing (at least for me). Why do you think I like Grendel? Because he is powerful (maybe he is)? Nope. I like to eat & spit people and rolling through people.

Right, but Grendel doesn't benefit from ability spam. Feast is self-perpetuating, Nourish is a one-off, Pulverise is a toggle. Regurgitate is about the only ability I can kind of see as spammable, and that's only because it's kind of a dumb design. It's essentially a launcher grenade, and could use a redesign. If anything, I would personally find Grendel more fun with a short cooldown on Feast, as that would put more emphasis on eating a large number of people in a single go. Not only does this fit Grendel's theme of gluttony, but it adds a slight element of skill to the ability. As it stands, Feast may as well not be self-perpetuating since you can just retrigger it for any enemies you missed.

I don't think you're arguing the point you think you're arguing.

 

2 hours ago, selig_fay said:

Boring abilities are a problem with boring frames. Abilities can go as an addition to weapons. DE can make it so that some one-handed abilities may not interrupt shooting. For example, khora cat commands looks like an ability that you can spam in battle to direct your cat while attacking another target. But 1 command costs 25 energy. If you have a standard 5 energy recovery, it turns out that you restore 1 command within 5 seconds, but this is provided that you do not use your other abilities at all. So you need to wait longer if you want other abilities. And this is what you call a choice. 

But this is what Teridax was saying earlier, though - limiting ability spam through ability design. Spamming Venari doesn't actually DO anything, because it just swaps Venari's mode and her target. The ability doesn't stack, ergo there's no reason to spam it. It's still a boring ability, but it doesn't take up so much uptime to use that you need to choose between spamming it and using your guns. As was pointed out earlier - the same applies to quite a few other abilities. Loki doesn't benefit from spamming his Decoy as the ability simply moves the existing decoy. He doesn't benefit from spamming Radial Disarm, either, since disarmed enemies can't be disarmed any further. Inaros, similarly, doesn't benefit from spamming Quicksand since you can only Devour one person at a time. I mean... I guess the single-target hold is worth it, but Inaros has a wealth of much better control.

Point being, abilities which revolve around spamming the ability key over and over again ala Virulence, Landslide, Fireball, etc. are what I'm trying to get rid of. At best these are weapons masquerading as abilities, at worst they're a much less complex, much less compelling means of playing Warframe. Even the dumbest variety of melee combat in this game is still more interesting to engage in than spamming 1 and pretending I'm One Punch Man.

[Urlan]

12 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Yes. That's because there's an entire gunplay and parkour system to handle that. There is no such system for abilities.

How does parkour factor into killing a damage sponge in this case?  If you are talking dodging fire; enemies actually increase in accuracy with level; something DE admitted to back when doing the enemy armor and stat changes, and once they got to a point they would totally negate any bonus folks have from bouncing around like drugged monkeys.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

This complaint was one of the first posts I made when I was new, either here or the subreddit, can't remember which.  The only response I got was "play more of the game and after hundreds of hours of grinding, eventually you'll have arcanes and focus schools that fix the energy economy problems."  No one wanted to actually admit that energy economy for early to middle level players is absolutely trash.  And it is.  You can either dump a whole bunch of resources into energy pads and stand around waiting for them to give you enough energy to actually play with your frame and not just your weapons, or you can wait until you get to the point in the game where you have a few nodes in one of the only focus schools that matters specifically because energy economy is trash.  Or you can shell out a boat load of plat for an Arcane Energize.  Isn't that fun and compelling?

[Teridax68]

19 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

However, I still don't feel it's applicable across the board. I'll give you a few examples. Take Hyldrin's Pillage ability. It almost always recovers more shields than it costs, so does Hyldrin have any reason to NOT constantly spam it? Beyond stacking Arcane Barrier and Arcane Aegis thus not needing it, I mean?

I think Pillage is actually one of the easier ones, given that it only restores Hildryn's resources if enemies still have shields or armor, so past a certain point spamming the ability does nothing except cleanse status. Perhaps there's something to be said about why the ability even needs to partially steal those resources if it's just going to be cast multiple times in a row, but Pillage is one of the few existing abilities in the game with some anti-spam measure built in already.

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Or more broadly, take Trinity's entire kit. Well of Life and Blessing recover health, Energy Vampire recovers energy, Link offers damage resistance. What reason do I have to not just constantly cast Energy Vampire over and over again? In fact, this is easily my primary reason for not playing Trinity as much - I spend the bulk of my time hitting Energy Vampire, killing the target, the repeating the process because Vampire Leech gives me overshields. Trinity's abilities are not situational and take no significant skill to manage. Unless we create an entirely separate resource for her, as well, there really isn't anything that her abilities can cost.

This I can agree with, Trinity's kit is inherently conducive to spam because you just press buttons to gain power, with no real gameplay intermediary in-between. She'd be one of the cases where her kit would need to change more significantly to fit the new paradigm, though that would already have to be the case in a game where Energy were no longer a resource. 

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But you still have a wealth of really basic abilities which aren't easily limited by pure design. Take Inaros' Dessication, for instance. Freeing all affected targets on re-cast isn't a bad idea in principle, but it doesn't keep the ability from being spammed. If I wanted to sand/finish/sand/finish enemies, I could still do that. Take this from a self-professed "Inaros main" - that's REALLY boring.

As someone who's done that too, I can confirm -- though in Inaros's case, I think the problem lies specifically in the finishers, rather than the ability itself. When Excalibur uses Radial Blind and then follows up with stealth bonus-enhanced Exalted Blade waves, for example, it typically doesn't feel boring, because all throughout the player gets to move and attack freely. By contrast, finishers force the player into a protracted animation for each individual target, which makes methodically killing groups of enemies in this manner a snooze fest. If, by contrast, Inaros could get the same benefits from regular melee attacks, the one-two combo with his 1 would likely feel a lot smoother.

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I personally believe in giving abilities some kind of cost, simply because that fosters... If not necessarily "tactics" then at least a less mindless approach. When you can't hedge your bets by spamming an ability 10 times hoping to land it once, you're encouraged to aim it. When you can't immediately retrigger a "major" ability, it encourages you to pay attention to when it would be most appropriate. That cost doesn't necessarily have to be a cooldown, but I simply find that to be the easiest one to apply across the board, rather than custom-tailoring per Warframe. You propose Hysteria costing health to sustain, for instance.

See, I think actual resource costs can work, I just think they're one of several different options, and I think one cost that isn't really accounted for here is time: if you cast an ability ten times just for it to land once, you could've spent that same time firing a weapon or the like to much greater effect. Even without ammo or reloading, for example, missing a shot with a weapon means you've just wasted time, and given the speed-oriented nature of much of Warframe, time can work as its own implicit resource.

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OK, that'll work for Valkyr since she's a tank, but what about Excalibur's Exalted Blade? What about Mesa's Reugulators?

Also likely worth an entire discussion of its own, but I think the fundamental concept of Exalted weapons as weapons-but-better is fundamentally flawed: when the Exalted weapon is strong, it replaces the player's arsenal entirely, and when the Exalted weapon is weak, it doesn't get used at all, and the player is short one ability. Hysteria I think is valuable for its invincibility, but its claws need not be restricted to the mode, and I think in general Exalted weapons should be moved to Garuda-style innate weapons, and balanced accordingly. In Mesa's case, though, the ability is arguably not really a weapon due to its different functionality, though it creates a deeper problem because the effect is basically a turret mode, which gets boring fast. This is something to give more thought to, but if the ability instead functioned off of some kind of mark, and had Mesa apply marks through some gameplay to then use Peacemaker to shoot marked targets, then the ability would likely be a lot healthier.

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quxier also has a point - what about Gauss' Mag Rush? That intuitively "feels" like it should be a spammable ability, even though I HATE the control scheme due to ability keybinds.

I agree, Mach Rush in particular is basically just a better sprint, and should likely replace his baseline sprint as his actual passive. Gauss's current shield regen passive is an obvious bit of filler, and he could use some other active instead.

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You seem open to hitting abilities with costs that they don't currently have. Why not consider "a cooldown" as one potential cost? It doesn't have to be on everything, but it might make sense for some things.

The issue I take with cooldowns specifically is that I believe it's important for players to be able to cast abilities whenever they want to: missing an opportunity just because of a cooldown feels bad, but having to watch a cooldown tick also means focusing away from the game itself, which I don't think is ideal. This is why I feel that, in the worst of cases, abilities that would normally incur a cooldown could probably incur a health cost instead -- you'd basically be paying health to "skip" the cooldown, and so in a manner that would inherently discourage spam.

 

[selig_fay]

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

But this is what Teridax was saying earlier, though - limiting ability spam through ability design. Spamming Venari doesn't actually DO anything, because it just swaps Venari's mode and her target. The ability doesn't stack, ergo there's no reason to spam it. It's still a boring ability, but it doesn't take up so much uptime to use that you need to choose between spamming it and using your guns. As was pointed out earlier - the same applies to quite a few other abilities. Loki doesn't benefit from spamming his Decoy as the ability simply moves the existing decoy. He doesn't benefit from spamming Radial Disarm, either, since disarmed enemies can't be disarmed any further. Inaros, similarly, doesn't benefit from spamming Quicksand since you can only Devour one person at a time. I mean... I guess the single-target hold is worth it, but Inaros has a wealth of much better control.

Point being, abilities which revolve around spamming the ability key over and over again ala Virulence, Landslide, Fireball, etc. are what I'm trying to get rid of. At best these are weapons masquerading as abilities, at worst they're a much less complex, much less compelling means of playing Warframe. Even the dumbest variety of melee combat in this game is still more interesting to engage in than spamming 1 and pretending I'm One Punch Man.

I see your problem with spam abilities, but in fact this is not a problem, because it is the player’s choice, what style of game he wants to use. I just want the energy economy to change so that instead of the problem of lack of energy, we have the problem of energy cap, which will stop the spam of strong abilities, but allow the use of weak more.

And in fact, I would like all the things that restore energy now to affect passive regeneration, rather than restore energy on their own. For example, 1 energy orb will increase your energy recovery by 25% before you use your next ability. If this is stucking 4 times maximum, then you will get + 100% energy regeneration until you use abilities. And now we can add here arcane energyze, where it will simply give an additional 25% for each energy orb. We can also remake rage so that for every 10 lost health you gain + 4% to energy regeneration until you use abilities.

And so we can do with all the objects in the game, including zenuric. I think that such a system will not make energy things mandatory and strong. This will give players more control over their resources. And it is much easier to balance for DE.

I mean, the players go to the forum and complain that Saryn is strong. DE say, “ok,” then watch the energy recovery. They see that it is 10energy / s by standard for Saryn. They nerf this to 5, and then they look at the forum and see how people cry that DE killed Saryn, but this is only 1 value. As an example, numbers are arbitrary.

[quxier]

 

10 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Yes. That's because there's an entire gunplay and parkour system to handle that. There is no such system for abilities

Urlan said it right in the next message.

 

10 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Nourish is a one-off

With my build It restore me 100hp...

10 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Right, but Grendel doesn't benefit from ability spam.

I mean only that not all abilities/weapons are used to kill. Some might be just for toying around, laughing at weird interaction etc.

6 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I agree, Mach Rush in particular is basically just a better sprint, and should likely replace his baseline sprint as his actual passive.

Buffing his sprint would make him clunky. Running for X seconds is more precise than vold speed buff.

 

 

 

[Teridax68]

18 minutes ago, quxier said:

Buffing his sprint would make him clunky. Running for X seconds is more precise than vold speed buff.

... why? How is "your sprint is permanently much faster" clunky?

[Steel_Rook]

11 hours ago, Urlan said:

How does parkour factor into killing a damage sponge in this case?  If you are talking dodging fire; enemies actually increase in accuracy with level; something DE admitted to back when doing the enemy armor and stat changes, and once they got to a point they would totally negate any bonus folks have from bouncing around like drugged monkeys.

I wasn't suggesting that you parkour around enemies while shooting at them, even though some enemies benefit from this. Rather, I was pointing out that there's a world of difference between sustaining automatic fire on an enemy using the weapons system and repeatedly pressing one ability button. Warframe's gunplay might be simple, but it still has substantially more complexity. You have to concern yourself with actual manual-dexterity aiming, it features progressive aim spread that has to be accounted for, recoil which needs to be managed as well as a wealth of weapon mechanics, not to mention something like 3/4 of the game's entire body of mods. Even something as simple as firing a Tenora into the head of a Bombard still offers substantially more gameplay complexity than spamming Virulence as Nidus or mashing your 1 key as Atlas.

The reason I brought up Parkour is that I personally find it to seamlessly integrate itself into gunplay in ways that ability spam does not. There absolutely are issues with enemy stats and enemy design which make it more optimal to stand stock-still and mag-dump into enemies than it is trying to do fancy acrobatics. I've gone into this in other threads. I absolutely feel that enemies - especially "Specials" - ought to have more telegraphed, indirect attacks that we can dodge over dying to invisible homing Bombard rockets or getting shot by a Heavy Gunner you never even saw. Definitely not claiming there aren't issues.

Let me put it like this: Warframe's ability controls have no complexity or finesse inherent in them. You push a button and forget it, an ability triggers and manages itself. Complexity in abilities comes from the decision-making process of when to use them and when to hold back. Cooldowns give abilities an opportunity cost. Functionally infinite energy does not. Warframe's weapon controls, by contrast, have a wealth of complexity and finesse. They can afford to entirely eschew that kind of decision-making process because the manual dexterity needed to use them to their full potential makes up the gap. Weapons are also freely usable in conjunction with the Parkour system without locking the player into full-body animations, and they naturally occupy the "convenient" key binds on the mouse, where abilities are relegated to inconvenient keybinds on the number keys. And while, yes, players can remap their keys... Weapon controls always go on the mouse, because they're the ones that need the precision of LMB and RMB. Abilities are almost always fire-and-forget, so they rarely need that precision.

Ability USE is a compelling mechanic, as long as the game encourages us to be smart about it. Ability SPAM is a reductive mechanic which actively discourages us from trying to be smart.

 

6 hours ago, selig_fay said:

I see your problem with spam abilities, but in fact this is not a problem, because it is the player’s choice, what style of game he wants to use. I just want the energy economy to change so that instead of the problem of lack of energy, we have the problem of energy cap, which will stop the spam of strong abilities, but allow the use of weak more.

"Player choice" is not always a good thing. Compelling gameplay requires proper game balance, which requires a balance between catering to the choices of players and restricting them. The goal, ideally, is to present a situation where our choices both matter and offer some kind of parity. When one choice is substantially more powerful than most of the others don't really offer "player choice." They offer the illusion of choice by means of a sucker trap. Ability spam is one of these choices. As I said above - Warframe's ability controls are too simplistic to use abilities like weapons. Nevertheless, some Warframes work best in exactly this way. Nidus is at his best when he's spamming Virulence into a crowd of people collected via Larva. Weapon use doesn't even enter into it. That's fun for a few minutes, but the reductive nature of this gameplay gets really old really fast. And yet, my "choice" to not do that effectively saddles me with a far less effective Nidus because that's my primary means of generating Mutation.

Again - I'm fine with using a lot of abilities. It's what makes our Warframes unique from each other. What I'm not fine with is ability design which encourages me to chain the same ability into itself over and over again, to the point where I never actually get to use my guns. Cooldowns help with this tremendously, because they "package" abilities into short bursts between which I can still use the underlying and far more compelling gunplay and parkour systems, rather than being stuck on the ground looping the same animation over and over again.

Secondly, what you're proposing can equally be accomplished via cooldowns. Give weak abilities a short cooldown, give strong abilities a long cooldown (or maybe even an Ultimate meter) and you accomplish the same thing. Players will use their weak abilities often and their strong abilities less often. One of my primary disagreements with standard MMO mana systems is that "energy" is the bottleneck of the entire ability system. Using one ability draws on a shared pool with all the rest of 'em, meaning that you often have to pick one or two abilities to "spam" and one or two abilities to never use. Playing Grendel, for instance, I all but stopped using his Nourish ability, because it locked me out of Feast and out of keeping enemies in my gut. Playing Inaros, I almost never use Sandstorm because its energy consumption is too high for what it does, locking me out of my other more useful abilities without being useful itself. The list goes on.

I personally prefer cooldowns because they allow me to use one ability as much as I want without having to worry about locking myself out of all my other abilities if I use it too often. Imagine, for instance, if all of your firearms used a shared ammo pool. You bring a Kohm, you shoot it for a while, then you run out of ammo for it, and also for your Lex and also for your Imperator and also for your Galatine, somehow. Now you have to wait until you can find more ammo before you can use ANY of your weapons. That's how I feel about abilities right now. Without infinite energy, I'm usually restricted to one or two abilities because trying to use my full suite just runs me dry.

As I've mentioned before, incidentally - I feel the same way about Operator Energy. Because basically all the cool stuff you can do as an Operator all draws on the same shared pool of energy, I end up not even bothering trying to do cool stuff. I jump out, do one thing (Void Blast for the Magnetise proc, do a few dashes, dodge an attack in Void Mode), then jump back into my Warframe. And sure, there are solutions to that as well. "Play Zenurik," increase your Void Energy pool and Void Energy regeneration so much that you have functionally infinite energy, render the entire system irrelevant. I'm in the process of unbinding the second Zenurik Waybound, so I'll get back to you on that.

I'm always going to pick cooldowns over a shared energy pool. Yes, it limits how quickly you can chain abilities, but I personally find chaining abilities quickly to be faulty in the first place. In return, however, it allows me to use all of my abilities independently without worrying about the interfering with each other.

[selig_fay]

@Steel_Rook This is more like what kind of ability control system players prefer. Someone wants to use mana, someone wants cd, someone their own hp. But at the moment I am not considering anything but energy, because something else is a fundamental change in the system. Although, I could be wrong, because something similar is used in ESO.

In principle, I will be fine with any system if this does not limit the abilities very strongly, especially for exalted weapons and mods. You know, I'm fine if I have to wait 60 seconds after leaving razorwing, but I won't be fine if razorwing won't act as much as I want. My problem with the current system is that it just does not work without individual items. 

[Steel_Rook]

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I think Pillage is actually one of the easier ones, given that it only restores Hildryn's resources if enemies still have shields or armor, so past a certain point spamming the ability does nothing except cleanse status. Perhaps there's something to be said about why the ability even needs to partially steal those resources if it's just going to be cast multiple times in a row, but Pillage is one of the few existing abilities in the game with some anti-spam measure built in already.

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This I can agree with, Trinity's kit is inherently conducive to spam because you just press buttons to gain power, with no real gameplay intermediary in-between. She'd be one of the cases where her kit would need to change more significantly to fit the new paradigm, though that would already have to be the case in a game where Energy were no longer a resource. 

Yeah... I love both Hyldrin and Trinity. They're really cool, they're really effective, they're a niche change of pace... But GOD they're both so boring to play. Both of them but especially Trinity feel like I'm just babysitting my ability set and getting a few shots in here and there when I have the time. It's like a soccer mom trying to get the kids ready for school in the morning. OK, Energy Vampire, how's my Link, OK still 7 more seconds, where'd the Vampire target go, OK Energy Vampire, Link, team-mate is dying so Blessing, Forgot about Energy Vampire, how's my Link... Hyldrin is a BIT better, but she suffers from that worst of transgressions - weapon swap speed. I really wish DE would just get rid of that and give us instant weapon switch as it works for melee right now. Her Balefire Projector is cool, but DAMN is pulling it out and putting it back in so... slow...

In general, I find "a passive buff on a short timer" to be one of the least compelling types of ability, but it can still be done well. Look at Harrow, aka "passive ability babysitting, the Warframe." Yet even so, he doesn't feel as aggravating to play. The reason for this is simple - his passive buffs are conditional. If you use it with enough shields, Penance can easily last a few minutes, which is not nearly as onerous, and you do need to set that up with Condemn. Thurible is one of the game's most tedious abilities, but it's conditional on you losing energy and it has a fairly long duration. Covenant is simple to use, but not needed most of the time. Like Wikong's Defy, it's best used when you find yourself in the S#&$, since that's where it'll get the most mileage anyway. So he has two conditional passive buffs and one with a really long duration.

 

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

As someone who's done that too, I can confirm -- though in Inaros's case, I think the problem lies specifically in the finishers, rather than the ability itself. When Excalibur uses Radial Blind and then follows up with stealth bonus-enhanced Exalted Blade waves, for example, it typically doesn't feel boring, because all throughout the player gets to move and attack freely. By contrast, finishers force the player into a protracted animation for each individual target, which makes methodically killing groups of enemies in this manner a snooze fest. If, by contrast, Inaros could get the same benefits from regular melee attacks, the one-two combo with his 1 would likely feel a lot smoother.

I don't know... If you just turn Dessication into bonus melee damage, then you're essentially guaranteeing it'll be spammed. It's a very wide cone with fairly long range even with no range modding, so I'd then have no reason not to cast it constantly every time I see an enemy. That's one of the things I tend define as "reductive gameplay." Combat doesn't change - I'm still Beyblading my way through hordes of enemies, except now I have to occasionally hit a button to deal more damage. It's why I'm happy that channelling is gone, since that's all THAT was. I don't mean to be dismissive here, I really don't. It's just... I find that the need to individually stab everyone affected by Dessication is at least some sort of limiter to keep me from constantly spamming it.

I genuinely feel that Dessication is one of those abilities where a cooldown would be a perfect fit. It's a massive ostensibly cost-less hard control ability. Give it at least a 5-second cooldown so I can't spam it all of the time.

 

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

See, I think actual resource costs can work, I just think they're one of several different options, and I think one cost that isn't really accounted for here is time: if you cast an ability ten times just for it to land once, you could've spent that same time firing a weapon or the like to much greater effect. Even without ammo or reloading, for example, missing a shot with a weapon means you've just wasted time, and given the speed-oriented nature of much of Warframe, time can work as its own implicit resource.

And that would work if ability animations took any meaningful amount of time. If this were City of Heroes where a decent jumping overhead smash took 3 seconds to get through its animation then I'd agree that spamming it would be self-limiting. In fact, City of Heroes did a fairly good job limiting people less by "energy" and more by animation uptime. You wanted to always be animating an attack, and how long each one was played a huge part. In Warframe, the majority of our abilities have aggressively short cast times, if they have a cast time at all. Sure, poor Nekros has that four-second dance of resurrection, but let's go back to Dessication. That has a cast delay of 0.5 seconds. It fires faster than my god damn Corinth Prime. I can spam that to my heart's content and suffer next to no opportunity cost. In fact, I'll give you an example:

You know that "disco ball of death" attack that Sentients have? You can knock them out of it with a hard control. The problem is that the way they curve in on themselves makes it hard to see where their "fronts" are when they spin. Now, in a game where my abilities had an opportunity cost, I would need to learn to recognise where their fronts are, wait until they turned around and THEN sand them. In Warframe, I can just keep spamming Dessication and know that they'll turn around eventually and get blinded. When abilities allow me to hedge my bets on their timing to this extent, they lose a lot of their mechanical complexity, and this is a prime example. Now consider adding a 5-second cooldown on Dessication. Now I can't just mash my 1 key and eventually blind them. Now I have to time my application. If I succeed, great! Disco ball of death doesn't wipe out my team. If I fail, then it was my fault and I need to pay more attention.

I hate using Overwatch here because it seems to annoy people, but that has a very good direct example of this. People playing Wrecking Ball will tend to attach themselves to an objective an spin around it like an infinite pendulum. This allows them to contest the point while being hard to kill. One of the things I can do as Reinhardt is charge the Wrecking Ball, pin him and smash him into a wall. The thing is that my charge has a 1-second start-up delay and a 12-second cooldown, and Wrecking Ball spins pretty fast. It's a bit of a high-risk move, but the payoff for it so both significant and REALLY cool - the kind of cool which gets you cheers from the team, and possible a Play of the Game. Warframe could use a few more "plays" like this, but it's not going to happen as long as we can just infinitely spam our abilities. These kinds of "plays" happen when timing matters and we aren't free to just shotgun-spread our abilities across an opportunity to ensure we always succeed. Actually, since we're on the subject...

 

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

The issue I take with cooldowns specifically is that I believe it's important for players to be able to cast abilities whenever they want to: missing an opportunity just because of a cooldown feels bad, but having to watch a cooldown tick also means focusing away from the game itself, which I don't think is ideal. This is why I feel that, in the worst of cases, abilities that would normally incur a cooldown could probably incur a health cost instead -- you'd basically be paying health to "skip" the cooldown, and so in a manner that would inherently discourage spam.

See, I don't agree with this. I personally feel it's important for players to NOT be able to cast abilities whenever they want. I feel it's important for players to always face the danger of missing an opportunity because their ability is on cooldown. To me, opportunity cost is what makes ability use tactical. I want to be put in a position of deciding on whether to use an ability now and risk not having it for a better opportunity later, or save it and risk missing a golden opportunity. Yes, intuitively it "feels bad" when all your abilities are on cooldown and you get murdered with no recourse. This was one of my own personal biggest hurdles with Overwatch, The Division and Destiny. However, that's where cooldown management comes in. A good player will get a sense for about how fast their abilities recharge and learn when to push aggressively and when to hold back. This kind of ebb and flow of combat is what makes otherwise simplistic weapon handling mechanics actually interesting. Warframe has plenty of "otherwise simplistic" weapon handling mechanics which could use more tactical complexity.

This is the same reason why I keep suggesting enemies with breakable weak points and enemies with telegraphed attacks. I propose cooldowns not just because I want to get rid of energy (even though I do). I propose them because to me, they offer a better balance between easy access to an ability AND opportunity cost for using it. Cooldowns ensure that the first use of an ability is always available, but that repeated use starts to have a cost. As much as I hate Elite Sanctuary Onslaugh, Simaris locking away my abilities if I overuse them HAS made me consider just how much I tend to lean on those. I don't feel that Warframe's ability controls have enough depth to them to really be "fun" without some kind of opportunity cost to using them. And yes, Energy is meant to be such an opportunity cost, but it simply has too many inherent issues to really work in the long run. People will always work to render energy meaningless. You can never make cooldowns meaningless, not unless you modify your playstyle to where you simply don't need an ability again faster than it recharges.

From where I gather your opinion sits, I don't expect you'll agree with me. I just wanted to lay out where my priorities lie.

 

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I agree, Mach Rush in particular is basically just a better sprint, and should likely replace his baseline sprint as his actual passive. Gauss's current shield regen passive is an obvious bit of filler, and he could use some other active instead.

A bit off-topic, but... I personally feel that every Warframe's Sprint ought to be replaced with a toned-down version of Mag Rush. Gauss' own Mag Rush would then become a passive enhancement onto his Sprint, causing him run faster, bowl over enemies he hits and generate and explosion on impact. As it stands right now, "Sprint" in Warframe is pointless. Salmon-flopping bullet jumps are faster even across open ground and the speed difference between basic running is negligible. If we all had a Mag Rush, then maybe we'd be more inclined to actually run along the ground than constantly flip through the air.

[Steel_Rook]

9 minutes ago, selig_fay said:

@Steel_Rook This is more like what kind of ability control system players prefer. Someone wants to use mana, someone wants cd, someone their own hp. But at the moment I am not considering anything but energy, because something else is a fundamental change in the system. Although, I could be wrong, because something similar is used in ESO.

In principle, I will be fine with any system if this does not limit the abilities very strongly, especially for exalted weapons and mods. You know, I'm fine if I have to wait 60 seconds after leaving razorwing, but I won't be fine if razorwing won't act as much as I want. My problem with the current system is that it just does not work without individual items. 

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that fundamental change to Warframe's ability system is warranted. Energy just has far, FAR too many issues to ever really be balanced... Or at least to ever be fun. Tying all Warframe abilities together to a shared resource pool is always going to be annoying.

In my opinion, though - cooldowns don't NEED to limit abilities overly hard. Cooldowns can be pretty short. Above, I cited a 5-second cooldown for Dessication, which is both substantially shorter than its actual duration and also short enough that an Inaros can kill 3-4 people before being able to cast it again. The only thing it limits is spamming it against individual targets, which I feel is a limitation it SHOULD have given it's a massive cone. I also mentioned Protea's Turrets. Let's say she had a cooldown of 3 seconds per Turret, but could amass up to, say, 5 turrets. Press button to deploy one Turret, hold button to drop all available Turrets. You dump all 5? You wait 15 seconds for another full set, or you wait 6 seconds and drop two more. Hyldrin's Pillage I might put on a 10-15 second cooldown. Need more shields? Make sure you're in range of a lot of people. Or take Grendel's Feast. I'd put at least a 5-second cooldown on that, but at the same time increase its initial duration to 2 seconds (up from 1.5) and its retrigger duration to 1.5 seconds (up from 1) in order to make it a little easier to eat lots of people.

I could go on, but my point is this: Cooldowns don't need to be onerous. Their goal isn't to keep you from using your abilities. Their goal is to keep you from spamming them. The goal here is to ask players to be situationally aware and use their abilities when appropriate while still letting us use our abilities freely without worrying about a restrictive resource. And for those abilities which really NEED to be spammed? Move them to their own Exalted weapons. Which reminds me - something I forgot to address:

 

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Also likely worth an entire discussion of its own, but I think the fundamental concept of Exalted weapons as weapons-but-better is fundamentally flawed: when the Exalted weapon is strong, it replaces the player's arsenal entirely, and when the Exalted weapon is weak, it doesn't get used at all, and the player is short one ability. Hysteria I think is valuable for its invincibility, but its claws need not be restricted to the mode, and I think in general Exalted weapons should be moved to Garuda-style innate weapons, and balanced accordingly. In Mesa's case, though, the ability is arguably not really a weapon due to its different functionality, though it creates a deeper problem because the effect is basically a turret mode, which gets boring fast. This is something to give more thought to, but if the ability instead functioned off of some kind of mark, and had Mesa apply marks through some gameplay to then use Peacemaker to shoot marked targets, then the ability would likely be a lot healthier.

Agreed completely. The current design of Exalted Weapons is just bad. They either replace our existing weapons or our existing weapons replace them. I personally feel that Exalted Weapons ought to be a cost-less, ammo-less alternative to our existing weapons which in some way hooks into our ability system. We could go with the Garuda approach of Exalted weapons taking up a weapon slot we leave empty, we could go with the Hyldrin approach of just having an Exalted Sidearm for when we feel like it. I don't, for instance, mind an Excalibur running around with his Exalted Blade all the time. Let him. I don't mind a Garuda running around with her Claws, either. I wouldn't mind Atlas running around with his own Exalted fighting style punching and kicking everything in sight.

Mesa IS an issue, this is true. I think her case is a bit special. I don't want to go too far off-topic, but I'd say that she needs a Warframe-wide resource of some kind. She already has her Ballistic Battery. That could be used to generate a resource which Regulators would then consume to stay active, in place of Energy. But for everything else - I'm fine with treating Exalted Weapons as "just another weapon," rather than making them somehow superior to regular weapons.

[selig_fay]

6 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Mesa IS an issue, this is true. I think her case is a bit special. I don't want to go too far off-topic, but I'd say that she needs a Warframe-wide resource of some kind. She already has her Ballistic Battery. That could be used to generate a resource which Regulators would then consume to stay active, in place of Energy. But for everything else - I'm fine with treating Exalted Weapons as "just another weapon," rather than making them somehow superior to regular weapons.

Mesa peacekeepers are not a problem. Just leave it as it is and go to other exalted modes. But if this does not give you peace, I would suggest simply removing the peacekeepers, removing the restriction of movement and making a temporary autoaim with normal weapons. Like a soldier 76 in overwatch. If this can exist for a pvp game, then it makes no sense to consider it strong for pve.

[headsoup]

43 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that fundamental change to Warframe's ability system is warranted. Energy just has far, FAR too many issues to ever really be balanced... Or at least to ever be fun. Tying all Warframe abilities together to a shared resource pool is always going to be annoying.

In my opinion, though - cooldowns don't NEED to limit abilities overly hard. .

I think there can be other ways to manage abilities better without removing energy, especially if it actually regenerates by default.

Opportunity cost can be implemented in the skill casting mechanics: 

If you miss a target, you waste the energy. 

For large CC's, it uses more energy the less targets you hit.

Re-casting removes the effect from targets already affected.

Mesa's guns etc increase drain the more targets are hit and that drain continues for a period after the skill stops.

Etcetera, I think there are some novel solutions that allow infinite energy to remain, so long as energy cost still matters and it regenerates so not left to chance to build it (orbs).

Energy drain can then also be enhanced as an enemy ability (with clear indication) so that it slows regeneration, but doesn't just zero the pool.

Abilities that are basically spamming a pure damage attack probably need a rethink, it breaks the dynamic of melee/gunplay vs abilities.  Work out the Exalted model in a better way instead.

[Urlan]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

I wasn't suggesting that you parkour around enemies while shooting at them, even though some enemies benefit from this. Rather, I was pointing out that there's a world of difference between sustaining automatic fire on an enemy using the weapons system and repeatedly pressing one ability button. Warframe's gunplay might be simple, but it still has substantially more complexity. You have to concern yourself with actual manual-dexterity aiming, it features progressive aim spread that has to be accounted for, recoil which needs to be managed as well as a wealth of weapon mechanics, not to mention something like 3/4 of the game's entire body of mods. Even something as simple as firing a Tenora into the head of a Bombard still offers substantially more gameplay complexity than spamming Virulence as Nidus or mashing your 1 key as Atlas.

The reason I brought up Parkour is that I personally find it to seamlessly integrate itself into gunplay in ways that ability spam does not. There absolutely are issues with enemy stats and enemy design which make it more optimal to stand stock-still and mag-dump into enemies than it is trying to do fancy acrobatics. I've gone into this in other threads. I absolutely feel that enemies - especially "Specials" - ought to have more telegraphed, indirect attacks that we can dodge over dying to invisible homing Bombard rockets or getting shot by a Heavy Gunner you never even saw. Definitely not claiming there aren't issues.

Let me put it like this: Warframe's ability controls have no complexity or finesse inherent in them. You push a button and forget it, an ability triggers and manages itself. Complexity in abilities comes from the decision-making process of when to use them and when to hold back. Cooldowns give abilities an opportunity cost. Functionally infinite energy does not. Warframe's weapon controls, by contrast, have a wealth of complexity and finesse. They can afford to entirely eschew that kind of decision-making process because the manual dexterity needed to use them to their full potential makes up the gap. Weapons are also freely usable in conjunction with the Parkour system without locking the player into full-body animations, and they naturally occupy the "convenient" key binds on the mouse, where abilities are relegated to inconvenient keybinds on the number keys. And while, yes, players can remap their keys... Weapon controls always go on the mouse, because they're the ones that need the precision of LMB and RMB. Abilities are almost always fire-and-forget, so they rarely need that precision.

Ability USE is a compelling mechanic, as long as the game encourages us to be smart about it. Ability SPAM is a reductive mechanic which actively discourages us from trying to be smart.

I would agree that our gunplay tends to outclass our ability usage, speed to kill with abilities, and is not IP conductive to the setting -anyone in the setting can pickup a gun or melee and do the same as a Tenno as seen in npc, faction enemies, and both arena. The abilities mostly do not scale for the endless scaling of enemies, while as pointed out; enemies gain in accuracy per level up actually counting totally any of the artificial missing that the AI has from movement. The benefit for parkour to dodge enemy factions; particularly projectile users tends to fall-off around lvl 70 per DE's previous chart; though it feels more around 100 now (where a sortie level nullie can track and shoot you out of the air pinpoint no longer pretending to miss by design). I would content that melee has the least complexity and would be the most braindead manner of attack, followed by gunplay from a creative and mechanical standpoint.

Powers having cooldowns and energy costs is a form of bad design that can be seen most championed by moba games. Sometimes when trying to fully justify such a system; a full on stamina bar is implemented to show that mechanically and creatively; the abstraction of tiring due to repeated actions isn't something just magically given to the player's units. Now this is something we had, but was removed; mostly restricted to blocking and dashing before. Cooldowns for abilities is something that DE Scott has been pretty against for some time now; to be honest energy regen already covers this largely; even if it was innate, and only is overcome when either you are wallowing in energy, ala consumables, have saved it up through a match, or if using Rage/Hunter Adrenaline are being considerably beaten up and hopefully have controllable and reliable healing.

I would be cool with the parkour argument if realistically doing so stopped any form of aimed gunplay, while restricting melee down to its basic attacks or slams; though this wouldn't be creatively responsible, just as energy regen and power functionality being more emphasized would be creatively responsible. The problem comes, I agree; in how this is handled, and I agree spamming of either style of fighting should not be ideal going forward; but what would be the best way to handle that? We know that creatively, the Technocyte our warframes are made from mean they can not tire, they do not age, and they absorb and metabolize Void energy given off by our Tenno or sources like the Void Reservoir; this would seem to suggest that a stamina bar wouldn't be realistic in the setting; and energy itself should be pretty high supply at least within use by us. Perhaps totally removing the energy system except in areas with low or non-existent outside void presence; or like Kuva liches who have our abilities but no connection to Tenno; might need alternative forms of supply; and that cooldown suggestion of yours - taken from Simaris' Elite Sanctuary of course - could be implemented.

[quxier]

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

... why? How is "your sprint is permanently much faster" clunky?

With higher speed you get less precise (of course it might not be a problem for you)

 

41 minutes ago, selig_fay said:

you know, I'm fine if I have to wait 60 seconds after leaving razorwing

*random nullifier appears*.... good luck with such game.
 

18 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Turret, but could amass up to, say, 5 turrets. Press button to deploy one Turret, hold button to drop all available Turrets. You dump all 5? You wait 15 seconds for another full set, or you wait 6 seconds and drop two more.

You want to spam more turrets. They are quick but single target so you wan to put a lot. They might be strong enough to kill an enemy, but when they cannot they keep an enemy occupied.
And how it would work with TA?

Personally I like how Bloodrayne changes. In the first version The attacks were with some cooldowns (or other things) so I keep pressing attacks and nothing happens. In the second version not sure if every, but lot's of attacks matters. At least for (mini) bosses. Let's say one attack hit an enemy. If you try to do it again the enemy will block you. The combat system feels more natural then cooldowns in 1st.
As someone said it would be better if next abilities' castsweren't the same.

[selig_fay]

2 minutes ago, quxier said:

*random nullifier appears*.... good luck with such game.

If a nullifier affects me, this is my mistake, so I'm ready to put up with it. The only thing that seems dishonest is the invulnerability of arbitration drones.

[headsoup]

2 minutes ago, selig_fay said:

If a nullifier affects me, this is my mistake, so I'm ready to put up with it. The only thing that seems dishonest is the invulnerability of arbitration drones.

For something like Razorwing where it would be very easy to just turn a corner into a nullifier blindly when cheesing through a completed capture for instance, I just see pointless frustration...

[quxier]

5 minutes ago, selig_fay said:

If a nullifier affects me, this is my mistake, so I'm ready to put up with it

If Nullies where nice guys, but no!. It can appears out of nowhere.

[selig_fay]

1 minute ago, headsoup said:

For something like Razorwing where it would be very easy to just turn a corner into a nullifier blindly when cheesing through a completed capture for instance, I just see pointless frustration...

Well for me a much bigger problem is the lack of energy. And I am more disappointed when I am left without energy than when I get into the nullifier. But I agree with you. Everything that knocks you out of razorwing, including the inability to integrate with the objects of the world, is sad.

[selig_fay]

3 minutes ago, quxier said:

If Nullies where nice guys, but no!. It can appears out of nowhere.

I think it's alright as a gameplay moment. I would like more mobs worth fearing.

[headsoup]

5 minutes ago, selig_fay said:

Well for me a much bigger problem is the lack of energy. And I am more disappointed when I am left without energy than when I get into the nullifier. But I agree with you. Everything that knocks you out of razorwing, including the inability to integrate with the objects of the world, is sad.

Except with Titania Prime in the void, touch a couple of death orbs and fly forever🙂

Otherwise yeah, lack of energy sucks, but a 60 second wait after hitting a nullifier would be worse... Unless barely an orb drops for 60 seconds...

[selig_fay]

2 minutes ago, headsoup said:

Otherwise yeah, lack of energy sucks, but a 60 second wait after hitting a nullifier would be worse... Unless barely an orb drops for 60 seconds...

Oh, for some reason I very often encounter situations where arcane energyze does not give me anything for a long time, but at the same time mobs have an extensive spawn of energy leeches. For this I want it to be a mana system that regenerates. In principle, I can understand the person who offers the CD and I would be fine with this system too. I do not call real numbers, so it can be better as 15 seconds, and it can be much worse as 120 seconds. It all depends on the numbers.

But I am more inclined to mana, because on its basis it is also possible to build a CD system, but only in my head. But there is a problem here that you will not see the CD digits on the UI and you still have to contact the mana. Maybe simeris stop word mod would help with that.

 

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, selig_fay said:

Mesa peacekeepers are not a problem. Just leave it as it is and go to other exalted modes. But if this does not give you peace, I would suggest simply removing the peacekeepers, removing the restriction of movement and making a temporary autoaim with normal weapons. Like a soldier 76 in overwatch. If this can exist for a pvp game, then it makes no sense to consider it strong for pve.

I'm not arguing that Mesa's Peacekeepers are necessarily a problem. Rather, I'm arguing that they're so heavily dependent on the Energy system for balance that they're a problem for any potential rebalance and redesign attempts. I'm not at all opposed to the concept of "autoaim," but Mesa's combination of autoaim + turret mode loses its appeal pretty quickly. It pretty much lasts about as long as one finds it funny. You bring up Soldier 76's Tactical Visor, but you'll note that that's his Ult. Outside of custom games, Soldier can't run around with the Tactical Visor active 24/7. The ability has a fairly short duration and a fairly long cooldown. Now granted - as an Ult, Soldier can speed up the cooldown via killing things, but there's still a good minute or two before you can use it again. This was one of the reasons I proposed using Mesa's Ballistic Battery for it. Deal damage to charge the Regulators, consume stored damage to sustain the Regulators.

Either way, this runs counter to my proposal for turning Exalted Weapons into alternate equipment, rather than objectively more powerful guns. I still think your idea is better - triggering some kind of auto-aim ability which uses the currently-equipped weapon with booster rate of fire, damage, projectile flight speed and either infinite ammo or massively boosted reload speed or some such. That way the Regulators themselves could be balanced as pistols of their own, while the bulk of the "Peacemaker" ability can stay in the ability itself, independent of weapon used.

But that's a bit off-topic, though.

  

1 hour ago, headsoup said:

I think there can be other ways to manage abilities better without removing energy, especially if it actually regenerates by default. Opportunity cost can be implemented in the skill casting mechanics:  If you miss a target, you waste the energy.  For large CC's, it uses more energy the less targets you hit. Re-casting removes the effect from targets already affected. Mesa's guns etc increase drain the more targets are hit and that drain continues for a period after the skill stops. Etcetera, I think there are some novel solutions that allow infinite energy to remain, so long as energy cost still matters and it regenerates so not left to chance to build it (orbs). Energy drain can then also be enhanced as an enemy ability (with clear indication) so that it slows regeneration, but doesn't just zero the pool. Abilities that are basically spamming a pure damage attack probably need a rethink, it breaks the dynamic of melee/gunplay vs abilities.  Work out the Exalted model in a better way instead.

That's along the same lines as what @Teridax68 proposed earlier, and in spirit I agree. However, trying to keep Energy as the primary limiter still runs into the same bottleneck issue. Using one ability doesn't JUST lock you out of using that ability some more. It ALSO locks you out of using all of your other abilities. For as much as I talk about limits and restrictions, this is one restriction I don't want. This kind of min-maxing naturally leads us to entirely ignore some if not most of our Warframe's abilities, because not enough energy exists to use all of them. I'm fine with some abilities being more rarely used and more heavily gated than others, just as long as they're not this tied together. The reason I keep proposing cooldowns is because cooldowns are per-ability, not per-warframe.

I do agree in spirit, though. Having a small, fast-recovering pool of energy is always better than having a large, slow-recovering pool. The former case works closer to cooldowns, where you can't spam your abilities since you run yourself dry, but you're never dry for long. The latter - which is what we have now - leads to a "feast or famine" situation all too often. Either you have so much energy that you can spam to your heart's content, or just simply don't have energy and probably won't have any for some time. It's why I've consistently argued about the importance of weapon ammo pick-up over weapon ammo capacity. It doesn't matter how large your ammo pool is - if you use substantially more ammo than you pick up, you're going to run out and you're never going to fill back up to full again. It's why the Kohm is such a hilariously unusable weapon unless you massively overload yourself on Ammo Mutation.

In short, I want players to be able to use their abilities on demand when the right situation presents itself, but not able to chain them together constantly.

 

1 hour ago, Urlan said:

Powers having cooldowns and energy costs is a form of bad design that can be seen most championed by moba games. Sometimes when trying to fully justify such a system; a full on stamina bar is implemented to show that mechanically and creatively; the abstraction of tiring due to repeated actions isn't something just magically given to the player's units. Now this is something we had, but was removed; mostly restricted to blocking and dashing before. Cooldowns for abilities is something that DE Scott has been pretty against for some time now; to be honest energy regen already covers this largely; even if it was innate, and only is overcome when either you are wallowing in energy, ala consumables, have saved it up through a match, or if using Rage/Hunter Adrenaline are being considerably beaten up and hopefully have controllable and reliable healing.

What makes that bad design, though? Your argument is kind of jumping around all over the place, so I'm not sure I follow. Nobody is talking about a Stamina bar, nobody is talking about introducing restrictions to parkour. This is a discussion specifically about ability use. Gunplay has an entire system of game mechanics governing it. It doesn't really need added tactical complexity. Similarly, parkour has a wealth of mechnics and doesn't necessarily need additional tactical complexity. Abilities, by contrast, are almost overwhelmingly dirt simple. Some amount of complexity exists in concocting ability-centric builds, yes, but that's done in the Arsenal - not in moment-to-moment gameplay. This is why I feel that abilities need a tactical element to them - some kind of real-time decision-making which can paper over the otherwise paper-think ability controls. Sometimes you can achieve that through complex ability designs, sure. Grendel is a good example of this, though even for him Energy still causes issues. With very few exceptions, however, most of the "impact" from our abilities blends into the background. Rather than some kind of big play, our abilities provide little more than white noise.

Take something like Mag's Pulse. It's a very useful, really powerful ability. What does it do, though? It reduces the on-paper EHP of enemies and sometimes changes the colour of their health bars. What it amounts to is "push button to fight slightly squishier Grineer." You don't aim it, you don't time it and it has enough range to catch an entire room with little effort. After a while, it becomes a glorified egg timer. The same goes for most everything Trinity does, the same goes for a lot of Volt's abilities, etc. Yes, there are a wealth of changes needed if we wanted to actually introduce any sort of moment-to-moment decision-making within ability use, and we'd have to do it on a case-by case basis. However, one cheap thing we can do across the board is simply keeping players from repeatedly casting the same ability in rapid succession, in order to ensure that players spend at least some amount of headspace into deciding exactly when to use their abilities.

Becoming "brain dead" is the worst thing that can happen to any decent action game, because THAT is when it starts to get boring and when it starts to put me to sleep.

[selig_fay]

2 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

That's along the same lines as what

@Teridax68 proposed earlier, and in spirit I agree. However, trying to keep Energy as the primary limiter still runs into the same bottleneck issue. Using one ability doesn't JUST lock you out of using that ability some more. It ALSO locks you out of using all of your other abilities. For as much as I talk about limits and restrictions, this is one restriction I don't want. This kind of min-maxing naturally leads us to entirely ignore some if not most of our Warframe's abilities, because not enough energy exists to use all of them. I'm fine with some abilities being more rarely used and more heavily gated than others, just as long as they're not this tied together. The reason I keep proposing cooldowns is because cooldowns are per-ability, not per-warframe.

Well, I think there's a perception problem here. 

If we have:

1 - 5 sec CD

2 - 10 sec CD

3 - 15 sec CD

4 - 20 sec CD

This is what will happen with the CD system. Timer.

But if we take 250 energy and 20 energy/s, we can see that:

1 - 25 energy cast. If you use this every 5 seconds, you will lose 5 energy/s

2 - 50 energy cast If you use this every 10 seconds, you will also lose 5 energy/s

3 - 75 energy cast. 15 seconds = - 5e/s

4 - 100 energy cast 20 sec = -5e/s

And thus, observing strict timers you will go to zero. And your abilities will have a cycle. But 250 energy will also limit you from spam, even if you significantly increase your energy regeneration.But you also have the choice of which ability to use more often, and which one you can opt out of at the moment. Because this whole system is resource management, not a timer. I think it's much more flexible than CD. This is harder to understand, but you can play a CD with energy regeneration.