Ideas DE can use for warframe changes

(PSN)sweatshawp · December 31, 2020

ahh chaos inb4 lock

PublikDomain · December 31, 2020

I'm also in software, specifically games, though it hasn't been 20 years.

1 hour ago, Zimzala said:

In reality, the actual implementation of long-term or short-term 'content' can vary wildly in terms pf resources. This is why even when there are things players like, sometimes they are not implemented or expanded because they are simply too complex to implement to create ROI, regardless of the intended lifespan of the content.

This goes both directions, you can spend a lot of time on a piece of short-term content that goes nowhere and you can spend very little time on a piece of long-term content that greatly affects the game.

K-Drives have a not-insignificant amount of effort put into them: there's the physics of the boards and whatever DE's done to make objects grindable, whether that's preprocessed markup in the environments or a dynamic system that can work on any surface, the art and animations for all of the boards, tricks, and NPCs, voiceover and localization, the creation and maintenance of races, the mechanics of all of the mods, creating the Vent Kids faction, and so on. K-Drives certainly weren't trivial to develop. And yet their impact on the game is almost zero. Warframe would be the same game with or without K-Drives.

Meanwhile everything the game needs for decent PvP/CvC already exists, it's just not designed well or missing parts. Adding bots to Conclave should be simple, given DE already has allied and enemy bots in the Index, Arena, and in events like Dog Days. DE could also lift the Armistice without much hassle, since the major problems with Solar Rail Conflicts can all be solved with existing mechanics. There'd be the same bots and Conclave loadouts for balance, the star-chart supports multiple missions per node and even entirely different views, and the biggest problem they had (resource taxation) is purely a design problem.

This is why I said DE could just as easily make long term content as short term content, and that the difference is mostly just the design. They're already more than willing to spend significant resources on insignificant content, and those resources could be better used in other ways. Sometimes event the same content could be packaged in a slightly different way to give it a much longer-term value.

1 hour ago, Zimzala said:

In the end a shareholder does not care about how the $1,000 is spent, only that it provides a return. Most companies look to short term profit over long term product/service additions, this is just the way business leaders are trained.

WF's model is to put out small things to get the short term returns from the content locusts, while the more casual players consume the content over a much longer period, so for much of WF content, both things are already true.

I think looking at Layou's statements regarding Warframe's profitability and the publicly available information about the game's CCUs put that mindset into question. From Leyou's 2020 Interim report:

Spoiler

Game development and publishing is the Group’s core business, and our flagship product Warframe is the key driver of the Group’s revenue and profit. During the Reporting Period, revenue contributed by the game development and publishing business reduced by US$17.3 million to US$74.1 million, representing a year-on-year decrease of 18.9%.

...

The decline in revenue of Warframe during the Reporting Period was mainly due to the following factors. On one hand, our content creation pipeline during the COVID-19 pandemic could not fully meet the players’ demand for a greater amount of new content. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, home quarantine restrictions have largely increased the free time of entertainment product users, benefiting most games, including premium games offering experiences with a fixed amount of hours, as well as some highly competitive or interactive F2P games. However, as Warframe is a content-driven F2P game, the content that could be created within a certain period of time is limited. When users’ spare time and their demand for new game content increased, Warframe’s competitive advantages over other popular games reduced by a certain degree as the progress of the Group’s game development team was inevitably affected by home quarantine measures. Meanwhile, the ambitious update Empyrean released in December 2019 fell slightly short of players’ expectation due to certain technical issues, thus impacted the revenue of Warframe to a certain extent in the first quarter of 2020. The development team released patch updates regarding Empyrean in March to enhance and elevate the game experience, which turned out to be very well received by players. In addition, we saw a decrease in revenue in China during the transitional period when new cooperation arrangement with Wegame platform was in discussion.

Making casual, short-term content isn't keeping people playing the game and spending money. Rushing out unfinished content isn't, either. More people have more time to spend on entertainment right now due to COVID, and they're not spending it with DE. I'd say, as it appears from Leyou's reports, that a large part of that is because Warframe's content-driven focus can't keep up to demand, especially when pressed. People run out of stuff to do, and when the game can't offer them anything else they leave and take their money with them. Which brings us all the way back to the beginning: shifting from a content focus to a gameplay focus could help reverse this. That means developing long-term content that can be played for a longer period of time. That means spending more effort on actively balancing the game.

What I originally quoted you about was what appears to me to be a belief that the players carry all of the burden for their behaviour within the meta. That it's solely the player's fault that they rush, follow a meta, and get burned out. But I don't think that's entirely the case, DE has a lot of responsibility for that because they're the ones that have created an environment where that mindset thrives. And that environment, which focuses on short-term content over balance and long-term gameplay, is not doing anyone any favors.

Zimzala · December 31, 2020

9 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

What I originally quoted you about was what appears to me to be a belief that the players carry all of the burden for their behaviour within the meta. That it's solely the player's fault that they rush, follow a meta, and get burned out. But I don't think that's entirely the case, DE has a lot of responsibility for that because they're the ones that have created an environment where that mindset thrives. And that environment, which focuses on short-term content over balance and long-term gameplay, is not doing anyone any favors.

I will happily agree DE participates in making the meta, they make the game.

However, IME, no game company can find the actual mathematical meta in their own games faster than the players, it's a numbers game and the automated testing available leaves much to be desired. DE is no exception, especially because of the PvE Power Fantasy based IP with no ladder-ranking seasons, etc.

Additionally, modern online gamers, for many reasons, look to 'farm' free games. They are determined and they are legion. They create a blazing path that IMO/IME today is led by streamers and other online 'content producers' who find the shortest paths to rewards per minute, and that mentality has overtaken the community at large.

DE did not do that.

As for the resource allocation, I think it's a crapshoot, to be totally honest, because gamers are so fickle, and modern business outlook and resource allocation does understand successful/popular computer games are mostly happy accidents.

(PSN)guzmantt1977 · December 31, 2020

2 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

What claims? Let me quote my claim for you:

Did I say "DE could easily make long-term content"? No.

What I said was "DE could just as easily make long-term content as short-term content".

Say you find $1,000. You can spend it on a big new-years fireworks display that lasts 5 minutes, or you could spend it on some home improvements. The fireworks are fun, but once they're gone they're gone. The home improvements might not be very exciting, but they're going to do a heck of a lot more for you in the long-run. It's the same $1,000 either way, how do you spend it? On something trivial, or on something that will help you in the long term?

The technical effort to produce long-term and short-term content is more or less the same. That's not to say the effort is minimal, making an update is expensive no matter what i is. When the only real difference is in the design of the content itself, surely you could agree that it makes more sense to spend that effort on things designed to give a better return on investment, no? DE can spend X effort on an update that only has enough content for a couple of days, or DE can spend the same X effort on an update focusing on mechanics and gameplay that can affect the game for years. They can spend time balancing the game, or they can spend time building mechanics like K-Drives.

DE could spend an update cycle making a cinematic sidequest for Arbiters of Hexis that can be completed in a leisurely 2 hours that rewards two new guns and a Warframe, or they could spend that update lifting the Armistice. Doing the former adds some new collectables but the content is done in a few hours no matter how slow the player moves, while doing the latter adds content that can be played for years.

Instead of adding Scarlet Spear and Squad Link as a one-time event - or even as an occasionally-recurring event - DE could have just as easily spent that time and effort adding Sentients to the already-existing Invasion system. Sentient Invasions could feature all of the new Sentient mechanics and gametypes DE wants to try out long into the future and make the New War actually feel like a war, instead of being a thing we're reminded about briefly every 6 months and then forget exists. DE can spend the effort adding a one-off or recurring event you can only play a month out of the year, or they can spend the same effort putting the same content into the existing mechanics that would be available year-round.

DE should spend more of their effort on balance and mechanics that can keep the game enjoyable for longer instead of spending most of their effort on collectable one-off content with a fixed lifespan. That's my claim.

And the apple trees in your yard could just as easily make oranges.... Wait..... That's not right at all, is it?

And from what I see, it looks like you're claiming that they don't make very good short term content, at least not good enough for you to avoid self-burnout for more than a few weeks. And while balancing the game sounds great, unless you have a magical "balance the game" button, and are willing to lend it to them, I'm going to guess that it is something that is a work in progress (which already seems to be happening given things that I've seen here) and not something that can happen overnight.

Next we get to consider whether the playerbase is willing to forego the regular updates while we wait for them to achieve what you only seem to be able to describe in rather nebulous ways. The cries of "content drought" ring any bells?

So again, none of what you are saying makes even a lick of sense. But please, do go ahead and keep doing what you are doing.

PublikDomain · December 31, 2020

18 minutes ago, Zimzala said:

However, IME, no game company can find the actual mathematical meta in their own games faster than the players, it's a numbers game and the automated testing available leaves much to be desired.

I certainly agree, but the meta isn't some super secret thing the players are hiding from DE. It's out there in the open for DE to observe and react to. Yes, it'd be impossible to perfectly predict the appearance of a new meta, but as long as you're paying attention you can get a general idea and make a good prediction. For example, if DE adds Voidrig to normal missions what will happen? People will use its >7.7M DPS to vaporize any and every piece of stationary content in the game.

17 minutes ago, Zimzala said:

Additionally, modern online gamers, for many reasons, look to 'farm' free games. They are determined and they are legion. They create a blazing path that IMO/IME today is led by streamers and other online 'content producers' who find the shortest paths to rewards per minute, and that mentality has overtaken the community at large.

DE did not do that.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about that, maybe if we're just talking about F2P or liveops games? But let's assume this is true. Warframe's streamability is... poor. DE's incapable of fully meeting that kind of content demand, even without the current global circumstances. So they could either try and appeal to that kind of audience, or focus on retaining the audience they already have. They seem to be focused on the former, and it's not really working.

PublikDomain · December 31, 2020

58 minutes ago, (PSN)guzmantt1977 said:

And the apple trees in your yard could just as easily make oranges.... Wait..... That's not right at all, is it?

Well, no, that analogy doesn't make any sense. A better one would be that you've got an apple tree, and you can either chop it down for firewood or harvest the apples to sell. Sell the apples and you can get all the firewood you need, and a little extra. You could do something that benefits you in the short-term, or you could play the long game. DE's chopping down their apple tree for firewood when they should be chopping their apples to make apple pie.

1 hour ago, (PSN)guzmantt1977 said:

And from what I see, it looks like you're claiming that they don't make very good short term content

Not at all, DE's short term content is great. But it's still short term content. My claim is that they don't make very much long term content, which is IMO a lot more important to the longevity of the game and player retention. Which, given DE's declining revenue, would be pretty important to focus on.

56 minutes ago, (PSN)guzmantt1977 said:

And while balancing the game sounds great, unless you have a magical "balance the game" button, and are willing to lend it to them, I'm going to guess that it is something that is a work in progress (which already seems to be happening given things that I've seen here) and not something that can happen overnight.

Ah yes, the ol' "it'll never happen but I'm sure it's happening already". If DE's actually working on balance, then great! That's exactly what I'd want. If they're not, then they should be.

XaoGarrent · December 31, 2020

This is actually what's happening right now, and Vauban is actually king again, thanks to his rework. He might actually be the best frame in the game right now.

People just don't know it because most people just ignore Steel Path and other high end content unless they absolutely have to do it for some reason. Almost *everything* is meta on the regular star chart, so it's kinda pointless to even talk about that, and nobody does Steel Path so most people don't realize how incredibly hard frames like Vauban, Mirage, and Nezha can scale.

Saryn, who everyone thinks is queen, due to her ability to clear maps on normal star chart, actually has low damage, not enough CC to make up for it, sub par debuffing, etc... Once you get into Steel Path.

Careful what you wish for, because if DE becomes aware of this they'll probably start forcing people into Steel Path to get new stuff. Especially with everyone complaining Steel Path has no rewards.

(PSN)guzmantt1977 · December 31, 2020

25 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

I certainly agree, but the meta isn't some super secret thing the players are hiding from DE. It's out there in the open for DE to observe and react to. Yes, it'd be impossible to perfectly predict the appearance of a new meta, but as long as you're paying attention you can get a general idea and make a good prediction. For example, if DE adds Voidrig to normal missions what will happen? People will use its >7.7M DPS to vaporize any and every piece of stationary content in the game.

:facepalm:

Let's say that you build a tower of Legos. Then someone who doesn't like how high your tower is, comes along and dismantles it and takes some of your Legos. Are you suddenly unable to make a new tower?

There'll ALWAYS be a meta because the meta isn't a thing that's fixed and written in stone. It's a concept that just describes "this is the best right now". The last time we had content that removed all possible mod effects, it was Dog Days, and people hated it, but there was still a meta. Originally the meta was one which involved "go hide in a box and don't play the game", literally.

The existence of a meta is NOT an issue.

6 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

Well, no, that analogy doesn't make any sense.

It does when you grasp that I'm telling you that you can't compare apples and oranges, but I guess that loud whooshing sound didn't clue you in.

8 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

Not at all, DE's short term content is great. But it's still short term content. My claim is that they don't make very much long term content, which is IMO a lot more important to the longevity of the game and player retention. Which, given DE's declining revenue, would be pretty important to focus on.

1) How long have you been playing? That puts paid to your first claim.

2) You recognize that 2020 involved a crap load of people being laid off of work and trying to just make ends meet? No?

Ask Disney how their parks revenues look this year compared to any other. That puts paid to your second claim.

10 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

Ah yes, the ol' "it'll never happen but I'm sure it's happening already". If DE's actually working on balance, then great! That's exactly what I'd want. If they're not, then they should be.

I see that reading comprehension really isn't your thing. Or long term memory. But hey maybe it just all happens whenever you are already burned out.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/warframe/warframe-melee-3?amp

https://www.gamepur.com/guides/what-is-shield-gating-warframe

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1172454-warframe-revised-update-2720/

PublikDomain · January 1, 2021

50 minutes ago, (PSN)guzmantt1977 said:

There'll ALWAYS be a meta

Never said there wouldn't be.

50 minutes ago, (PSN)guzmantt1977 said:

The existence of a meta is NOT an issue.

Never said it was.

A meta is natural and will always exist. A meta isn't necessarily a bad thing. But when the difference between the meta strategies and non-meta strategies gets too wide, like through years of unchecked powercreep, the meta becomes harmful and restrictive. And with DE's focus on short-term content, there's an increased incentive for the player to turn to that harmful meta to cut through the grind and repetition. The players get stronger and stronger but the content they play stays the same, so they get bored and eventually burn out. A meta isn't a problem. A harmful meta is. And Warframe has a pretty harmful meta.

1 hour ago, (PSN)guzmantt1977 said:

you can't compare apples and oranges

And you can compare different types of content. Long term content and short term content are largely the same except for the small details. It's apples to apples. You're trying to tell me you can't compare Fiji apples to Granny Smith, and doing a pretty poor job of it.

58 minutes ago, (PSN)guzmantt1977 said:

https://www.pcgamesn.com/warframe/warframe-melee-3?amp

https://www.gamepur.com/guides/what-is-shield-gating-warframe

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1172454-warframe-revised-update-2720/

Ah yes, the updates which made the player significantly stronger and the enemy significantly weaker. These will surely have addressed the player being too strong and trivializing content! /s?

Or was your point "DE can work on multiple things at once"? Or that they're already balancing, which I think is a good thing and they should do more of? Actually, what is your point? Because I thought your concern was that DE focusing on balance would cause a content drought or something, yet here you are trying to prove it won't?

DealerOfAbsolutes · January 1, 2021

It would be good if the player damage curve matched the enemy ehp curve.

Right now, damage is just stacking enough multipliers (Crit, Base Damage, multi-shot, fire rate, bonuses, etc) to get past enemy health multipliers (armor, DPS based DR, innate damage reduction, etc).

Above a multiplier and the enemies are paper. Below a multiplier and the enemies are sponges.

Before all the scaling, before player get the right mods to trivialize energy, ammo, health economy, early Warframe for a new player is actually a game instead of gear checks. At low levels, there are still penalties for bringing the wrong damage type, but they aren't so insurmountable that aborting mission and subjecting others to a host migration is the correct choice.

Armor Scaling Rant:

Against a Level 8 Heavy Gunner with 500 ferrite armor, which is 62.5% Damage Reduction. Puncture is the best physical damage type against armor like the tool tip says.

100 Neutral will deal 37.5.
100 Impact will deal 28.
100 Puncture will deal 82.
100 Slash will deal 42.
100 Base damage, Bleed ticks for 35 each.

In sorties, against a Level 100 Heavy Gunner with ~6000 ferrite armor, which is 95% Damage Reduction. Slash, which is resisted by armor, is the best physical damage type against armor?

100 Neutral will deal 5.
100 Impact will deal 3.75.
100 Puncture will deal 13.5.
100 Slash will deal 5.
100 Base damage, Bleed ticks for 35 each.

At Base level in this case, Puncture with +50% against Ferrite (50% mitigation and 1.5x multiplier) deals 2.1xNeutral, while at Sortie level it deals 2.7xNeutral.

At Base level in this case, Bleed (ignores armor) tics for 0.9xNeutral, while at Sortie level tics 7xNeutral.

This is in stark contrast to the the advantage Impact has against Shields over Puncture and Slash which is static and unchanging.

Next Damage Revisit:

Armor shouldn't scale. Armor scaling has been the bane of damage balancing since Damage 1.0. The change in armor scaling did not change the fact that only a handful of damage types in the game even matter. If armor remained flat values, then the early game damage balance would actually carry over instead of Slash becoming obvious best physical type. Armored ehp wouldn't balloon in comparison to non-armored ehp or even lightly armored.

The ehp ratio between the lowly Grineer Butcher in Ferrite and Heavy Gunner in Ferrite shouldn't change, but it does.

Weapon modding in Warframe is just an exercise of cramming as many multipliers as you can into 8 slots. No one will give up an entire multiplier for QoL. That is why multipliers need to be reined in to be additive.

Critical Damage should be additive with Base Damage. Viral procs should be additive with Base Damage. In the face of diminishing returns, Serration may finally stop being mandatory as QoL becomes a lot more attractive. Stacking elementals already has diminishing returns especially when resistances come into play.

The precedent being Condition Overload.

When Condition Overload was multiplicative with itself and Primed Pressure Point, not having both was wrong.

When Condition Overload became additive to Primed Pressure Point, there was legitimate decision making going on as you considered dropping one of them for utility.

If Critical Damage becomes additive with Condition Overload and Primed Pressure Point, then the same thing will happen.

Hybrids won't be objectively better than Pure Crit or Pure Status anymore.

(PSN)guzmantt1977 · January 2, 2021

On 2020-12-31 at 8:01 PM, PublikDomain said:

Never said there wouldn't be.

Never said it was.

A meta is natural and will always exist. A meta isn't necessarily a bad thing. But when the difference between the meta strategies and non-meta strategies gets too wide, like through years of unchecked powercreep, the meta becomes harmful and restrictive. And with DE's focus on short-term content, there's an increased incentive for the player to turn to that harmful meta to cut through the grind and repetition. The players get stronger and stronger but the content they play stays the same, so they get bored and eventually burn out. A meta isn't a problem. A harmful meta is. And Warframe has a pretty harmful meta.

And you can compare different types of content. Long term content and short term content are largely the same except for the small details. It's apples to apples. You're trying to tell me you can't compare Fiji apples to Granny Smith, and doing a pretty poor job of it.

Ah yes, the updates which made the player significantly stronger and the enemy significantly weaker. These will surely have addressed the player being too strong and trivializing content! /s?

Or was your point "DE can work on multiple things at once"? Or that they're already balancing, which I think is a good thing and they should do more of? Actually, what is your point? Because I thought your concern was that DE focusing on balance would cause a content drought or something, yet here you are trying to prove it won't?

I'm sorry, I can't believe that anyone can actually be this obtuse, or so easily forget what their own claims which got shot down are. That leaves me to believe that you are just arguing for the sake of arguing, and have no good faith intentions of seeing sense when it is presented to you.

Since it's a new year, I'm leaving you in 2020. Enjoy yourself there.

(PSN)Vexx757 · March 26, 2021

EDIT: Mirage

1st ability:

· This adds splash damage radius of 7m for all weapons.

· Holding the ability gives you the option to focus all clones` shots in the centre of the radical.

3rd ability:

· You can cycle between either light or shadow buff.

· The shadow buff will also decrease enemy`s vision, enemies will see Mirage within 7m.

· As a bonus, if you stand in the light, she will receive fire damage on weapons and if you stand in the dark, you will receive 20% sprint speed.

· Both of these lasts for 20 seconds and can be increased by duration mods.

· You can switch buffs even when active however you can`t refresh the duration.

(PSN)Vexx757 · April 27, 2021

Sevagoth has been added, take a look.

Sevagoth by Aaronj-c

(PSN)Vexx757 · May 7, 2021

Press CTRL + F to view

Contents

Damage

Healing

Crowd Control

Survivability

Defensive abilities

Mobility

Buffs

Decoy

Companion AI

Damaging projectile/single target/ first abilities

Marking Mechanic

New Mechanic: Threshold Progression

New Mechanic: Ability/Command wheel

Synergy

Energy efficiency consumption

Augments

Low/high-level missions

Melee 3.0

Melee Affecting Abilities

Combo multiplier

Diverse Mod Builds

Animation/cutscenes

Sounds and visually fun

Side Notes

My Warframe Concepts

When it comes to Warframes some are success on release and some are not, I'm going to talk about some aspect of warframe abilities that DE need to consider when creating abilities for warframes.

Damage

Spoiler

This is what this game is all about and there is lots of way to deal damage to enemies however there are some problems it has;

· The base damage on abilities that deal damage to enemies are too low for it to be useful.

· Abilities that rely on melee weapons to deal more damage is a problem because the player has to sacrifice using the ability and make it works as intended or using the melee weapon they want to use.

· Most damage ability don`t scale up verses the enemies they are fighting against.

· There are inconsistencies in the amount of damage each enemy is afflicted by.

Solution: Damage need to be able to deal decent amount of damage in low and high-level missions.

Here are some suggestions on how this can work with warframs that can benefit from it;

· All 1^st abilities, single target, projectile damaging abilities needs to have a base damage between 600 - 1000.

Oberon

Banshee

Nekros

· Giving some warframe abilities the combo multiplayer with no damage limit.

Ash`s 1^st

Excalibur`s 1^st

Xaku`s 3^rd (Deny)

· Dealing damage based on enemy level.

Nyx`s 3^rd

Frost`s 2^nd

Rhino`s 1^st

· Increase the ability`s damage based on the amount of enemies affected by it.

Inaros`s 4^th

Volt`s 4^th

Titania`s 3^rd

At this point on I will give two examples of warframe abilities, one that is a good example and the other that makes the ability lack lustre.

Healing

Spoiler

Even through this is helpful in tough situations, at the same time it`s not a fun ability, it will most likely be useless in low-level missions if this is the main focus of the ability and it`s only be useful in some situations.

Solution:

To make this ability more useful it should either be a minor feature of the ability that offers more than just healing or it should synergise with another ability.

Warframe example:

Harrow

His 2^nd offers increased fire rate, reload speed and healing.

Trinity

Her 4^th being the best healing in the game visually isn’t fun to look at and is a simple way of healing.

Crowd Control

Spoiler

If a warframe`s abilities are strictly cc it has the issue of competing with other abilities in its own kit based on which one is the most affective and which is useful in a certain situation.

Solution:

A warframe should either have no more than two cc abilities or cc is the secondary focus of the ability. One can be focused on single targets while one can be for multiple targets, I can be in more than two abilities if cc is not the main focus.

Warframe examples:

Nova

Her 4^th ability covers a wide area, offers increased damage and it can be modified for either slow or fast movement to enemies affected by it.

Hydroid

His abilities are strictly cc which make it to where it is competing with each of his abilities by which one is affective, doing so will make the other abilities inferior and mostly not used also, most of his ability mainly focused on cc.

Survivability

Spoiler

Invisibility, damage reduction, armour, healing all fall under survivability, it’s very good for hight level however it`s useless in low-level missions and if a warframe sole focus is surviving then it will be boring and lose it`s fun factor like Wukong before his rework (unfortunately his still boring imo).

Solution:

I don`t mind if all of a warframe`s abilities have some sort of survivability however If all abilities are going to have this, it has a minor part of the ability and it has to be fun and interactive to use at the same time.

Warframe examples:

Baruuk

Every one of his abilities have some sort of survivability attracted to it, what makes them successful is that the 1^st ability has its survivability as its main focus but the other 3 is just an add-on to the abilities and is fun to use (it`s a shame Baruuk visually is generic looking).

Inaros

The passive, 1^st 2^nd and 4^th abilities mainly focus on survivability through healing for the fact that he has no shields, because of this, every other feature is severely lacking. The 2^nd has bad duration on sand creatures and is the best way of survivability making the other ways of surviving redundant or not used often, sandstorm being energy draining, low range and very slow and the 4^th can`t affect a lot of enemies and relies on enemies running into it to be affective, all of this combined makes it lack the fun factor.

Defensive abilities

Spoiler

Most content is this game is about moving from point A to point B and a warframe that has more than one ability that makes you stand in one spot in my opinion is not good. I also personally don`t like a defensive ability that is a warframe`s 4^th ability.

Solutions: It should have added features to the ability than just defence also it should never be the 4^th ability, if it is, it has to do a lot more than just defend and be useful I also think that there should be an option for it to be mobile or stationary.

Warframe examples:

Chroma

His 4th ability gives you a speed buff when activated, you visually look different, you can be in two places at once, it does damage, cc, gives you bonus credits, it’s fun to watch and visually pleasing.

Gara

While her 4^th ability is convenient, it`s not really fun to use, the synergy it has is energy consuming, it keeps you in one spot and it`s the 4^th ability.

Mobility

Spoiler

These types of abilities are very useful to get from A to B however some of these abilities can`t be used in close spaces which is most of the games content. The only place these types of abilities can truly shine is in open-works areas but let’s be honest most ppl don`t go there to have fun.

Solution: These abilities should never be awkward to use and should be easy to manoeuvre in close quarter spaces also, there should be an option to be able to halt your movement by pressing the ability again for easy control and I also feel that while it`s happening it should be dramatic and pleasing to look at.

Warframe examples:

Volt

His 2^nd ability is fast, fun to watch, sounds great and easy to manoeuvre.

Grendel

While his 4^th ability is visually pleasing, the inertia makes it harder to handle, its slow when turning and it has a slow ramp up speed (it`s a shame, if it wasn`t for the inertia this would be a fun ability).

Buffs

Spoiler

I think the important thing here is how self-buffs are received, do you cast the ability to receive the buff instantly or do you get the buffs by preforming certain actions to receive them? The problem with some buffs is that some of them are not useful in certain situations for example, an armour or raw damage buff won`t be useful in low-level mission on the other hand, a sprint speed or energy buff will always be useful. Also, I don`t think a warframe should have more than two buffing abilities unless it’s a secondary part of the ability.

Solution: Ability buffs either need be activated that makes it interactive or be a secondary part of an ability.

Warframe examples:

Harrow

His 2^nd ability gives fire rate, reload speed buff and healing, all buffs are useful because your weapons will be more effective and since he loses his shields the healing buff keeps him alive by attacking enemies while all being interactive.

Rhino

His 2^nd ability is a one cast the gives you a survivability buff which is not interactive and is not that useful in low-level missions.

Decoy

Spoiler

The issue with these types of abilities is for the most part they are stationary abilities (which can`t be helped), sometime they don`t have a high enough agro pull as other things in the game and they only have one use.

Solution: It needs to offer something else other than distracting enemies it also needs to have the highest agro pull of anything else that draws attention to make it viable to use.

Warframe examples:

Saryn

Her 2^nd ability can not only distract enemies but can deal damage to enemies within its radius if it`s destroyed, when active it removes status affects and give her a speed boost which gives it another reason for it to be used.

Loki

His 1^st ability It has no way of increasing its survivability which means enemies will shoot it down as quick as it was cast only giving you a few seconds of distraction which makes the duration meaningless.

Companion AI

Spoiler

Besides the obvious issue being the AI, they are not good at dealing a decent amount of damage to enemies and they are basic in what they are able to do in missions. The only thing they are good at is being a distraction to take heat off you.

Solution:

The need to do a lot more in missions. The damage they can deal needs to be based on enemy level (like I said in the damage section), they need to have more survivability to make them more reliable, they also need to have a speed boost, they need to have some commands like the operatives in syndicates (not all of them need this), having their own mod slots would really improve their performance (again not all of them need this), they need to have interesting animations and improved AI to where if they are following a warframe they need to travel at the quickest route not the exact same route as you do.

Warframe examples:

Khora

Her 3^rd ability Venari can do damage amongst striping enemy`s weapons and healing which are commands, it can be modified and can deal with a group of enemies while I’m somewhere doing something else.

Nyx

Her 1^st is the worst companion in the game ever since her revisit came out. Besides the damage depending on how much you put into it and that it`s a good distraction, the AI is really awful.

It`s very slow, has other animations that`s not needed or important decreasing their DPS and since it based on duration that`s a bad thing and for it being called “mind control” it only does one thing.

Just to add I don`t like the teleporting feature and the radius limit Wukong`s 1^st and Atlas` 4^th has. Atlas never had those features before and it was fine, they could be in one area dealing with a group of enemies while I’m in another area doing something else, however with these two mechanics they are stuck with you 24/7 which is something you don`t want all the time.

For example, if there`s an enemy Infront of you, they will run to the enemy trying to attack it but because of the range limit (20m for wukong and 50m for Atlas) if the enemy is beyond the range limit, they well teleport back to you and if you want them to defend something and you run off somewhere, they will teleport to you which imo is very problematic.

To also make companions useful they could benefit from a new mechanic I call the ability/command wheel. To know more read the header with the same name.

Damaging projectile/single target/ first abilities

Spoiler

For the most part, these types of abilities are useful in low-levels but awful at high-level missions.

There are some that benefit off of melee and even through it will make the ability stronger you end up having to sacrifice using the weapon in order for it to make then ability better, you have to choose to either have fun using the melee weapon but the ability being inefficient and vice versa.

Solution:

When it comes to damage the base damage should be between 600-1000, as for damage scaling it could either be affected by enemy level, have the combo counter mechanic or (something new) it could work by the longer the projectile travels, the more damage it does on impact which Frost`s 1^st ability could benefit from. Some of them should have the ability option to either deal high damage to a single enemy or affect multiple enemies.

If it`s a projectile ability, it needs to have a very fast projectile speed since warframe is a fast-past game, it also needs to have another feature to be useful.

Warframe examples:

Nezha

This is one of the best of these types of these abilities because it`s useful in both low and high-level missions. In low-level missions it does a decent amount of damage while in high-level missions it makes enemies vulnerable to damage, on top of that the held version is thrown in a strait line which increases its damage which gives you the option to either make it bounce between enemies or target a specific enemy and when enemies are killed by it, it can drop health or energy orbs which works no matter where you are.

Ash

While it does decent damage in low-level missions it becomes useless in high-level missions.

If there are three enemies in front of you and you want to kill the one on the right, sometimes it will target the other two enemies instead of the one you want even if you`re aiming at it, there is no option to pick and choose when enemy you want to kill.

The only way it will be affective is if you spam the ability however you will lose out on energy doing so plus you can`t control what enemy you want it to which makes it a waste of energy.

When it reaches high-level territory It`s only good with its augment, augments are meant to be used as an option and not to make a ability better, which means on its own it`s not worth using.

Marking Mechanic

Spoiler

Implemented right this mechanic can be useful. The downside of this mechanic is that most of the time it won`t work well in a fast-past situation in a public team. The marking mechanic would be good if it was tied other things like to cc or healing however it should never be tied to damage EVER. A good example where this mechanic could work would be inaros` 4^th, he would mark the enemies then cast it getting more enemies, spread out healing and can be used in creative ways. Also, if the point of marking is meant to be a command you should be able to bypass windows and other transparent objects.

Warframe examples:

Khora

You can command Venari to either kill a target, disarm them or heal Khora and allies while you deal with other enemies.

Ash

Bladestorm`s marking mechanic is ties to damage which is something that should never happen and because of this, it makes it slow, hard to control, requires line of sight, useless in public low-level missions due to allies taking your kills and is not good for a fast-past situation and despite the high damage and range, it doesn`t make up for it`s slow cast time.

New Mechanic: Threshold Progression

Spoiler

The way this will work is you perform an action multiple times when you reach a certain point, something will happen and it could be anything.

An example could be a kill threshold where if you kill a certain number of enemies, something happens, it could be a buff or it could be increased damage. An example of a frame that would benefit from this is Chroma`s 3^rd ability, the more enemies he kills the more his damage will increase overtime and it fits the name “vex armour” (mostly). To a certain extent this mechanic is in the game already but is not the focus of warframes abilities.

Here is an example of a waframe I created the (un) lucky warframe that uses this mechanic (look at the 3^rd and 4^th ability).

New Mechanic: Ability/Command wheel

Spoiler

This mechanic already exists (to a certain extent) on controller bindings to view and select all abilities of a warframe in one button but for an improvement, this will give you the ability for warframes that have multiple abilities in one (Vauban`s 2^nd) to open up second menu. It works by you clicking the ability of a warframe, then it will display another menu within it, it will show the other abilities and then you cast the ability. When click on it, it will stay open until you select your chosen ability, this will make it easier to select abilities with other abilities within it by opening it before hand and will be efficient on the move and in hectic situations instead of you having to keep pressing the ability to switch to the one you want to use.

This is a feature that can also work for ally companions as well, it opens up a menu that has the commands; stay, follow, attack, stealth mode & mark mode. I`m not sure on the button bindings but I believe this will make companions tactical and fun using.

The point of this mechanic is to remove the clunky press and hold feature to a click and click feature.

Warframe example:

Ivara

This menu would be perfect for her 1^st ability. Ivara is a stealth warframe that is tactical and needs to plan ahead in stealthy situations and this menu will make it even more strategic and give that sense of fun of opening up a menu and picking the ability you want to use when the situation presents itself.

Synergy

Spoiler

Through playing warframe I have noticed that there are two types of synergies; obvious synergies and synergies that changes the abilities function. The obvious synergy is when you know using one ability will make another ability complement each other, the other type of synergy (new) either improves one of the abilities or it offers something new to gameplay that can help in certain situations. All synergy abilities have to be useful either to other abilities, to allies, weapons or parkour movement.

Warframe examples:

Harrow

His 1^st and 2^nd ability synergies complement each other because to increase the duration of his 2^nd ability, you have to accumulate a lot of shields using his one to get a better use out of his 2^nd ability and when your shields are depleted by activating his 2^nd ability, you can get your shields back but using the 1^st ability again. This would be classified as the “obvious” synergy.

Oberon

As we know his 2^nd ability puts down a carpet of radiation that damages and makes enemies fight against each other and the 3^rd ability sends out a wave of continuous health regeneration for allies within its radius however, combining the two together will offer an armour buff to allies.

This is useful because it`s increasing Oberon`s and his ally`s survivability, this would fall into the “new” synergy because it offers something new to Oberon and it completely changes how the abilities can be used.

Ash

The description of it is If you use his 4^th ability to mark enemies while his 2^nd ability is active, it will cost less energy, even though it says it`s synergy it really isn`t.

The it`s not synergy is because players want to be as efficient as possible and this does that however no one is going to use an ability that drains a lot of energy when there`s an option to use less of it, this so-called synergy is a requirement to use instead of it being a choice.

An example of a good synergy that involves his 2^nd ability would be;

If Ash has his 2^nd ability active while he kills with his 1^st, 3^rd and 4^th abilities, enemy bodies will disappear.

This is synergy because it adds a new feature that makes sense to his theme, it makes it useful in stealth situations which changes how you use the abilities and you approach from guns blazing to stealth gameplay.

Energy efficiency consumption

Spoiler

This is the most important thing in warframe, energy tied to ability usage and the more efficiency you have the longer you can use the abilities. Because of the energy consumption of abilities, we have to use things like energy pads, arcane energise and energizing dash for zenurik to keep our energy up which sometimes can be tedious.

Solutions:

· Show an indicator that lets players know when their energy is about to be depleted from energy draining abilities. The indicator can be a bright flashing red numbers with a low sound indicator which will activate when there is only twenty-five energy left.

· If there is an ability that drains energy overtime, when interacting with objects or in an animation, the ability should halt the energy drain so you don`t waste energy since you can`t help being in that situation or force to no matter how small e.g. boss cutscenes.

· Even through this already exists, the combo multiplayer would make a complete difference to certain warframe abilities (the more you use the ability, the less energy it consumes).

· If you have cast an active ability and you fall of the map the energy spent will be refunded back to you if the effect of the ability disappears.

· Abilities that have energy drain should have an energy requirement to use the ability but not take it which mean it will only drain energy not take the required cost.

· Energy is taken depending on the amount of enemies the ability affects.

· Depending on the warframe, if an energy draining ability is active, it should make the other abilities cost half the energy.

· The obvious one is to decrease the amount of energy of (some) warframe abilities take/drains.

Here are some examples that can benefit greatly from this:

Excalibur

If his 1^st ability had the combo multiplier mechanic this would drastically improve it. It makes sense coz it`s a ability the needs to be spammed which will use a lot of energy, the combo muli changes that by not only decreasing the energy cost with every use but it will also increase its damage in the process.

Titania

While in her 4^th ability, it would make sense to have her other three abilities cost half the energy. Since it drains a lot of energy and even more so by casting her abilities most ppl won`t use any of her abilities while her 4^th ability is active, this will improve her efficiency drastically.

Revenant

When it comes to his 4^th ability, the obvious change her would be to decrease the energy drain it consumes, I’d probably say decrease it down to 10 energy a second or less.

All warframes

· Warframes have the benefit of an energy drain indicator would be a huge improvement all around. The purpose of this is to make players aware of their energy pool in fast-paced situations and better manage it in missions.

Augments

Spoiler

There are seven problems with augments;

· They make the ability better and if taken off the ability is useless.

· It`s should be a part of the warframe`s abilities or made into an ability.

· While the augment is good, it`s for the wrong warframe.

· One is good for only type of mission vs one good for all missions.

· They do the same thing for different warframes but nothing that stands out.

· It`s bad/useless overall.

To know more take a look at this post.

Solution

Augments need to not only change how the ability works but they also need to be good enough to be an optional choice.

Warframe examples:

Mag

Her 3^rd ability augment jams enemy weapons and disables robotic enemies for 4 seconds. This turns the ability from an armour/shield strip and restoring shields to cc, this completely changes how the ability works and how it can be used. Now you can use it in high-level defence or interception mission to keep enemies away from the objective.

Ash

While his 1^st ability augment changes how the ability works, it suffers with two problems. Firstly it`s useless in low-level mission and secondly, the ability itself is not that good on its own to the point where its augment is used a lot over the ability which means the ability needs a revisit.

Low/high-level missions

Spoiler

There are three types of abilities; ones that work in low-level missions, ones that work on high-level missions and one that work at both levels. Obviously, we want all abilities to be useful on both levels, and we all know not all abilities can do that but when it comes to damage abilities, we want that to happen and unfortunately not all of them do that.

Solution

Warframe abilities need to have a use no matter what level you play, if it`s a damage ability it needs to do a lot of damage or have a secondary feature that helps dealing with low/high-level enemies.

Warframe examples:

Nova

Her 4^th ability is good in both low and high-level mission, whether you`re mod for speed or slow it works, the cc part is good in low-level missions and making enemies invulnerable to damage is useful against high-level enemies/situations this is an example of an ability the has more than one feature.

Nyx

While the 2^nd ability being able to strip enemy defences is useful against high-level enemies it`s absolutely useless in low-level missions, this ability is also meant to slow infested`s movement speed but it`s barely noticeable.

There is no point using it in low-level mission since enemies are weak enough to be killed with your weapons, this is an example of an ability that only has one feature.

Melee 3.0

Spoiler

Warfrmame abilities should benefit or take advantage of the new melee system. For example, an ability could require you to kill enemies in the air to get a buff, slam attack from melee could help with that or an ability could give you a certain advantage if you stay in the air for a timed duration, melee aerial attack (if improved in the future) can support that ability. The Parazon could be added in some sort of way to the melee system and how sick would it be if a warframe or an ability could benefit from Parazon finishers? Ash is a prime example of a warframe could somehow benefit from this.

Melee affecting abilities

Spoiler

I don`t think melee weapons should affect the performance of warframe abilities in terms of raw damage (khora`s 1^st, atlas 1^st) because you would have to take a “stat stick” in order to make the ability better and you have to make the choice to either improve the ability but you can`t use the melee weapons which sometime can restrict you from using other weapons also maybe coz that weapon don`t suit that frame OR you take the melee weapon you want to use but in return the ability is ineffective.

Solution:

These abilities should have their own mod slots that way you can enjoy using the ability and your chosen melee weapon.

Combo multiplier

Spoiler

Warframe abilities that requires you to spam the ability to get up to its full effectiveness could benefit from this. Atlas` 1^st works to where the more you spam the ability, the more damage it does the less energy it takes which encourages spamming and is rewarding.

Here are some warframes that can hugely benefit from this which will improve their abilities performance;

Ash`s 1st

Excalibur`s 1^st(this was meant to be a thing but DE didn`t go through with it)

Frost`s 1st

Gara`s 1st

Khora`s 1st

Nekros`s 1^st

Xaku`s 3^rd (deny)

Zephyr`s 2^nd

Also, to improve the combo multiplier the x4 damage limit should be remove however the energy reduction can stay as it is and increase the base duration (combo window) to 2 seconds. This encourages players to spam the ability withing the combo window until it resets rewarding them with less energy consumption and continuous damage which can scale against high-level enemies.

Diverse Mod Builds

Spoiler

I would like to see more warframes to have more than one way of using a ability depending on the mods you equip on it. For example, Nova`s 4^th ability where more power strength will decrease enemy’s movement speed while less of it increases the speed. There is another warframe that has this benefit but unfortunately the second option is less affective.

Ash`s 2^nd ability can either be built for more duration for longer invisibility or if you build less duration and more range which will make you able to spam it because of less duration and will have a further reach for enemy stuns (stretch mod = 14m) but since the stun duration is only one second it`s not worth use however if the stun had a four second duration it would change the ability entirely. This build won`t harm any other of his abilities but will benefit bladestorm and teleport.

Animation/cutscenes

Spoiler

This is one of the rarest things for warframes to have, to me this not only look sick but kind of gives you the visual excitement of anticipation of the ability. At the moment only two warframes have this integrated into their abilities, this is something I would like to see more warframes to have in the future.

Warframe Example

Ash

While being in the animation of his 4^th ability, you get to see sick moves of Ash speedily teleporting to enemies to enemies shanking them with about six different moves, this gives you the excitement of Ash being a teleporting ninja, using teleporting as an offensive weapon, enemies are not fast enough to react. This ability does a good job of making you hyped for the ability.

Sounds and Visually Fun

Spoiler

Warframe abilities need to be visually pleasing to the eye and pleasing to the ear to make it a fun experience and makes you want to use the ability more often adding to the excitement to the abilities.

Warframe examples:

Gauss

His 1^st ability is one of the best examples of this, the running animation, the wind and energy streeks to show how fast he`s going and the camara zoomed out, the sound of activating the ability sounding so good that you would recognise it if you heard it, the quick sounding footsteps while you`re running all giving you the sense of speed, the high adrenalin of excitement.

Side Notes:

Spoiler

· Show an indicator that lets players know when the duration on the ability is about to end. The indicator can be a bright flashing red numbers with a low countdown sound, the indicator will activate when there is five seconds left. The purpose of this is to keep players noted in fast-paced situations so that they can be efficient in missions.

· Any ability that can deal with airborne enemies (osprays) and irritating enemy companions swiftly and effortlessly is a very beneficial ability (ash`s shuriken).

· For incentive, an ability could buff the features that is not widely used e.g. a buff that improves fly-kicks by have 100% critical chance with damage affected by power strength and enemy level. While the buff is active each kick increases its damage the more time it`s used.

· I`d like to see more abilities that benefit or synergise with weapons make them useful and fun to use (mirage`s 1^st and Gauss` 4^th ability).

· I would like to see more abilities that takes advantage of stealth gameplay and being affected by elemental status whether by weapons of being afflicted by it.

· Abilities that stun enemies need to consistently interrupt enemy`s actions (heavy gunner knockdowns) and it needs to be able to override another stun an enemy is affected with (Ash`s teleport stun overriding an enemy stunned by a fire proc).

· Abilities that make you invulnerable to status affect should also include environmental elemental traps (icy ground traps).

· Abilities should aid weapons to improve them not the other way around. For example, for ivara`s 2^nd ability to be effective, you need to modify your melee weapons with the appropriate mods which means you can`t enjoy using you weapons and the ability because you have to mod for the ability just to make it work (too much projectile speed makes the ability move it too fast to control).

· Warframe abilities should never have abilities that are very close to being the same function wise (besides damage abilities) if so, one should be the main focus and one should be a minor focus. For example, Nyx`s Mind control and Chaos, both abilities can control enemies, one can control an enemy that does increased damage and the other is a cc that can control multi enemies then you have Ash`s teleport and blade storm one had mobility and deals with single target enemies and the other deals with multiple enemies dealing damage, both similar but different which I see as a good way of adding similar abilities, with nyx no so much.

· Ability should be able to work with enemies with guns and melee enemies but mostly gun enemies since two out of three factions use guns and you will be going up against them most of the time. A warframe that has mostly abilities that work better against melee units is a fail in my book e.g. Vauban before the rework.

My Warframe Concepts

Here are some examples of concepts I have come up with that follow some of these requirements to be an optimal warframe.

The Genie Warframe Reza

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1066003-the-genie-warframe-reza/

Genie Warframe Reza by Aaronj-c

The Mech Warframe Sodium

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1067038-the-mech-warframe-sodium/

Robot Warframe Sodium 1 by Aaronj-c

The Fat Warframe: Barricade

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1106951-the-fat-warframe-barricade/

Fat Warframe Barricade by Aaronj-c

The Samurai Warframe: Yasuke

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1172994-the-samurai-warframe-yasuke/

Samurai Warframe Renji by Aaronj-c

(Un) Lucky Warframe: Karma

This was the warframe I entered in the community made warframe competition back last year

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1189070-un-lucky-warframe-karma/

Ninja Warframe: Kunoichi

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1213400-ninja-warframe-kunoichi/

Ninja Warframe Kunoichi 3 by Aaronj-c

If DE took all these aspect into account I believe warframes would be far greater than they are currently.

(PSN)AbBaNdOn_ · May 7, 2021

Is Reza a Kid Buu clone?? Im down for that lol. The model has to be kid sized tho.

(PSN)Vexx757 · May 10, 2021

@_Anise_

I`m glad you like it.

In my eyes Banshee is meant to be a stealth frame but like you said different from the others frames, you don`t need to be invisible to be stealthy. The best thing about this changes is that you can control the size of the radius of the ability so you can either use it for stealth or have a small radius to use it to take advantage of it when using melee, plus the synergy with her 2 and 3 makes her even more useful and imo should have been a thing. To make that make sense, here hearing is heightened and now is aware enemies position within the radius.

I like the way Banshee looks (original) and I like her concept but her abilities are lack lustre, also what do you think of the other ability ideas I came up with?

(PSN)Vexx757 · May 10, 2021

Press CTRL + F then type the part your interested in