Warframe Updates and Feedback

[rhoenix]

INTRODUCTION
Greetings!  As someone who's played Warframe since it was naught but a wee beta with three Warframes to choose from and promise ahead, I'd like to add my opinions and suggestions for how to help Warframe progress as a long-term game.

This will be written with the objectives of encouraging build variety, giving gameplay a better sense of progression in terms of abilities and missions, and perhaps giving easier ways of providing ways of updating in the future.

I've played Warframe at this point far more than any other game in my library, and I still truly believe it definitely can be the game that people can play for years, and still feel as fulfilled as they did at the beginning.  In my view, all the pieces necessary to make Warframe a 10/10 game are already there - with a few changes, I think it could be even better than any of us can imagine.

Warframe is made of many smaller systems intermingled into the face and model of one's character.  This means though that the overall structure still makes sense as a meta-model - it's only the parts themselves that comprise it that may need some adjusting to realise the vision behind them more clearly.

So - this is done out of love for a game that I've played now for a good while, trying to support and encourage it as it grew and became greater.  There will be criticism here, but I'll keep it to the contructive kind - this will hopefully help to balance the already present systems in a way that feels empowering to the player while also retaining build variety and game balance.

I'll be trying to tackle this in a relatively ordered manner:
1. WARFRAME ABILITIES
2. MISSIONS & PROGRESSION
3. ABILITY MODIFICATION (HELMINTH)
4. WEAPON AND ENEMY SCALING
5. EVENTS
6. "ENDGAME" STUFF
7. OPERATORS

1. WARFRAME ABILITIES
Most Warframes have followed a relatively similar pattern, variating based on theme - either support, direct damage, or damage support.  While this empowers the player to build for those powers, it is oftentimes better to use weapons instead with the mods available.  The abilities themselves aren't bad, it's just that even with caster frames a player rarely plays just as a caster.  There are exceptions of course - but this is true as a general rule.

Therefore, giving a new mechanic to abilities that doesn't require drastic changes to produce, and yet produces a more empowering effect would encourage build and play variety.  The simplest way to do this would be through a combo explosion mechanic, similar to that used from ME3 and ME:A, or from Secret World.

ME3 and ME:A have a setup/trigger mechanic with abilities as they apply to enemies, not only doing damage and/or providing an effect, but also giving an extra graphical, gameplay effect when triggered.  

A good example would be through biotic powers in those games - a Singularity is a wide-area crowd control ability that also does small amounts of constant damage to enemies trapped in it, similar to Vauban's Vortex.  However, when a player throws an energetic biotic attack at an enemy trapped in the Singularity, such as a Warp (which does a large burst of damage followed by a damage over time effect), the Singularity effect immediately stops and is replaced by an explosion, affecting all enemies within the radius of the original Singularity plus a percent.

Another and connected example is when a player uses a Warp on an enemy, which does a large amount of damage and provides a damage over time effect.  When the player follows with a Throw (which is a targeted kinetic blast), the damage over time effect from the Warp ends, the enemy takes a large amount of damage, and the enemy's armor is reduced or outright destroyed.

This pattern is also done with Tech abilities from Engineers in ME3, and in ME:A, biotic effects could trigger tech ability setups, and vice versa.

Secret World had a similar mechanic, in that some abilities the player can use, which follow an Expose/Exploit effect.  For instance, some abilities a player can use cause status effects on enemies, such as Hindered, Poisoned, or the like, and these are considered Expose abilities, as they effectively provide a weak point for a player to Exploit.  Following this, other abilities provide an additional effect when used on enemies with an active status effect, such as Hindered.

One way Warframe could easily duplicate this mechanic is not necessarily with elemental combos (but the thought of a Frost making all enemies affected by an Ember's Fire Blast explode with Blast damage is a fun idea), but instead by using something closer to Secret World's Expose/Exploit mechanic.  At least one of each Warframe's abilities that has a duration mechanic on enemies (such as Blind) would be used as the setup-type ability, and at least one of that same warframe's abilities that cause direct damage would be used to end the over-time effect, and cause a damaging explosion.

To use Excalibur as an example, Radial Blind/Howl could be used as the setup ability, with Radial Javelin and/or Slash Dash as the trigger ability.  Note that other Warframe's trigger abilities will work as well.

With a setup for abilities such as this, every Warframe has the potential to either be a caster or weapon-supporting variant - this obviously has effects on the potential effects of the Helminth system, which I'll discuss later.

 

2. MISSIONS & PROGRESSION

This is one of the main sticking points for the game I feel - where the pieces are in place, but not yet arranged where they could be. I'll do my best to elaborate.

At the beginning, we Tenno have our first Warframe, and the Orbiter for transport.  This currently opens up most of the mission map for all planets, only locking out Archwing or Railjack missions from being seen until the player has acquired the right items - however, aside from added caspability in the open-world maps, the missions made available by opening up Archwing and Railjack as options for the player don't currently offer a sense of progression.

You see, most games' method of offering that sense of progression is through expanded capability - new abilities allow you to reach areas previously inaccessible, and the same principle can apply here to achieve a similar effect, without having to be too overly ordered about it.

This can be resolved in Warframe's case relatively easily, as I see it.  One change that can achieve this effect for instance is at the beginning when the player only has access to the Orbiter.  At this point the player will not have access to missions on most nearby orbiting ships, apart from the capital class types, but will have access to planetary locations in the area.

Archwing, as a mobile winged jetpack, I feel should offer more and different options to a player than simply being able to attack a capital ship from space with new mission types.  That is a good option to build on however, as the added tactical capability gained by the player by virtue of having a winged jetpack should be significant.  

To show this, having places in each mission map that a player can locate to engage their Archwing and visit optional spaces in the level, similar to how Uranus does so with a few of its missions.  Having this lead to being able to cut down enemy communications arrays, locate enemy supply caches, and other additional optional objectives during the course of a normal mission that a player can go after to change certain conditions of the mission or get extra loot, but is not required to do.

In addition to being able to use it in ordinary missions however, this should also fall into expansion of capability, now that the player can fly around and breathe in space, even for short distances relatively. This should allow the player to go after some of the larger non-capital ships for missions.  

My suggestion for these missions is to not just have ordinary Extermination mission types for these, however - They should have a bit of extra requirement for the player to complete a mission (such as a mobile defense that leads into needing to assassinate a specific target, or the like), with the reward being the "evergreen" rewards to encourage players to play on them for more reasons than sight-seeing and gameplay.

This would also allow the player to land on planetary missions and bases that do not have an ordinary landing pad, which then opens up the possibility of expanded mission types, such as exploration missions (which function similarly in mechanics to survival missions, but require the player to collect specific resources as well), for instance.

The third stage would of course be the Railjack, but while I do agree that there should be Railjacks-specific missions for each planet, especially since the Railjack offers so much in terms of player capability, but it should also give players new ways of approaching the same missions they already have.

For instance, when attacking an orbiting capital ship, a player could choose to deploy to that mission with the Railjack instead.  This would load the player in Railjack at the edge of mission space for that planet or area, allowing the player to not only assault the ship directly, but also to board and loot the accompanying ships as well for extra rewards.  Or, in the case of planetary missions, being able to "go in hot" to assault other opportune targets in the area as well - additional enemy outposts or supply depots, and the like.

 

IV. DAMAGE & ENEMY SCALING
Now for the painful part of our program.  The problem inherent to most discussions regarding scaling is the exponential power gains a player can add in using mods.  Quite frankly, it has become excessive to the point of making it very difficult numerically to balance enemy health and armor against such things, and still have things relatively fair.

This also leads into discussions like "Just how much more powerful should elder Tenno be compared to newer players?"  

Replayability should also encourage more experienced players to come back to areas where newer players are, ideally for more reasons than just altruism.

Ideally speaking of course, most of the gap between newer and more experienced players should come from familiarity with gameplay and systems, not because you have more shiny objects than newer players do.  At the same time, Warframe needs to also offer a sense of power progression to a player, to make it help feel as if one truly has grown more into their power since they started.

So - how do the two things be balanced, then?  How does Warframe offer cool shiny stuff for a player to feel the sense of progression, while not making the disparity between newer and more experienced players as stark?

Quite frankly, and many players the issue is the stacking damage a player is capable of getting through mods.  The ability to modify weapons and such with mods is a long-standing good thing about Warframe, but over time, the power creep has gotten to the point where players will not consider a weapon "ready" until it has 4-5 forma and a Riven.

Now, the issue behind all this is how the math works out for damage, of course.  One of the simplest is to allow only one base damage boost (which therefore affects elemental damage by consequence) on a weapon, so if a player has Serration and a Riven that both provide base damage bonuses, only the highest one will apply.  I consider this more a short-term solution however.

Another way is to simply not have base damage mods affect elemental damage.

The idea behind both of those solutions is that an "endgame" Tenno shouldn't be more than about 2-3x more powerful than a new Tenno, with the objective of making mixing the two less overpowering for the newer player.

However, this flies directly in the face of the power fantasy aspect of Warframe, so this would probably require more math'ing to work out smoothly.

 

V. EVENTS
One thing that helps the Origin system feel more "alive" are planetary and system-wide events (such as the Thermia Fractures event on Venus, or the Infested Boil event on Earth), but they don't cycle around on any kind of regular basis.

One simple solution to this is to make sure there's at least one event going on during the week (no matter which planet), and a weekend event each week.  This would provide some feeling of the system being alive and doing stuff, and therefore help it to feel more immersive.

Nightwave is a good idea, but as cool a character as Nora is, we know nothing about her, except that she apparently has a radio station and gives shiny objects to Tenno. Her being the source of an event is a good source, as long as she's not the only source for new events happening.

 

VI. "ENDGAME" STUFF
One of the recurring things coming up for the past few years is for players who've completed the star map and most (if not all) quests wanting extra stuff to do.  Hunting Eidolons and the Profit-Taker is fun for a bit, but it doesn't really feel like there's much else of a challenge out there on this level.

One way to do this is to include ways to hunt down a major planetary boss per planet.  This would make sure that players could have the option of triggering the optional encounter even on planets that don't have an open world map, which would lead to the battle against the larger foe.  This could range from old Sentient weapons still running around (like the Eidolons), or giant Infested creatures, Corpus experiments that work a bit too well, and so on.

Additionally, including some kind of system or bonus for players who hunt them regularly, such as another rep faction, wouldn't be a bad idea.  Tying it to the Quills for lore would make sense, and would also open up the options of a Quills questline going on - but that's optional.

Of course, including something like Destiny's Strikes or Raids that players could engage in regularly would also help - essentially either a single mission or two back-to-back where players would face groups of regular foes, take down mini-bosses regularly, and then face the bullet-sponge end boss of the level.

Normal Assassination missions in Warframe have the potential to do this, but most of the enemy bosses would have to be redone to fit this theme.  However, a function to allow players a "challenge mode" for a given planetary boss that would have tougher enemies and more of them in exchange for more and better loot at the end might not be a bad idea.

 

7. OPERATORS
The Operators and Focus system still feel like a great idea, but one that needs refining.

Currently, they function as a selectable group of passive bonuses for one's operator, which mostly only apply against enemies that require them, such as Eidolons.

They're meant to symbolize a Tenno's growth in knowledge and power after "waking up," and while they shouldn't offer anything overpowering, I do feel that they should provide useful combat advantages in regular play.

What exact form this takes depends on a number of factors, of course - the Operator arcanes and amps all offer some hints as to what is possible.  

One idea is to differentiate the different Schools more, so that one would focus on an Operator fighting outside their Warframe, a second would offer bonuses for letting one's Warframe fight on their own (as Umbra does) once they're separated, a third could offer more caster-ish abilities for one's operator (exemplifying the whole Void powers thing), a fourth could focus on the link between Operator and Warframe, and the fifth more on movement.

This is of course only one idea for how to do this - the bottom line though is that the Focus schools are meant to show a Tenno's growing power and knowledge of the Void, which could also tie directly into all the hints the Family on Deimos drops about Void abilities.

 

8. CONCLUSION
I still feel that Warframe has the potential to be great, with all the pieces it has in place - it just needs some more polish and continuity between its inner systems.  Warframe as the dream made real by many of the devs is and has been inspiring to watch over the years.  I hope to see Warframe reclaim the feeling most players had when they began playing, and even after more than six years of playing it, I still think that it can, if some of the pieces that comprise it are polished and rearranged a bit.

The lore and backstory hinted at in Warframe is still more enthralling and fascinating than most other games I've seen, and yet not much is ever done with that.  There are so many interesting pieces at play, both past and present, that all could devote entire storylines to.  It is still very much fertile ground for storytelling, both of the Tenno's continuing story and the system moving around them.

You have my humble thanks for reading my thoughts (even if you may vehemently disagree with every point here), and I wish you all well.

[Kaggelos]

10 hours ago, rhoenix said:

ME3 and ME:A have a setup/trigger mechanic with abilities as they apply to enemies, not only doing damage and/or providing an effect, but also giving an extra graphical, gameplay effect when triggered.  

A good example would be through biotic powers in those games - a Singularity is a wide-area crowd control ability that also does small amounts of constant damage to enemies trapped in it, similar to Vauban's Vortex.  However, when a player throws an energetic biotic attack at an enemy trapped in the Singularity, such as a Warp (which does a large burst of damage followed by a damage over time effect), the Singularity effect immediately stops and is replaced by an explosion, affecting all enemies within the radius of the original Singularity plus a percent.

Another and connected example is when a player uses a Warp on an enemy, which does a large amount of damage and provides a damage over time effect.  When the player follows with a Throw (which is a targeted kinetic blast), the damage over time effect from the Warp ends, the enemy takes a large amount of damage, and the enemy's armor is reduced or outright destroyed.

This pattern is also done with Tech abilities from Engineers in ME3, and in ME:A, biotic effects could trigger tech ability setups, and vice versa.

Just for mentioning my favorite video game franchise, you get a huge like. Also, great idea!