Energy: Isn't it about time we added passive energy generation?

[Teliko_Freedman]

Warframes, Excellent warriors with awe-inspiring abilities.

Surely these warriors wouldn't be as scary to the rest of the universe if they were simply dead in the water as soon as they used up all their energy.

Anyways, I'm just here to ask: Why don't Warframes have built in energy generation? We do have Living Tenno Batteries shoved into them.

The Archwings have built in energy generation already, so it's not something impossible to do.

 

I know energy pads can restore energy quickly, Zenurik school too, Energy Syphon Aura mod to a far less degree.

But they're basically a crutch, that makes it harder for other players to move away from and try other other Focus Schools, or any other Aura Mods.

 

So a simple proposal to DE: Give Warframes the built in energy generation that you already gave to Archwings.

Let's increase Build Diversity.

[kyori]

DE: we call this 'balancing'.

[Loza03]

Axe Zenurik, Energise and Pads to a substantial degree as well, and we can talk. Reason being those only exist as a crutch because of how abysmal the current base is, and that crutch existing has caused plenty of its own problems. So having a decent baseline lets us balance with energy use again.

Just throwing more and more free energy at people doesn't increase build diversity. More can sometimes be less, when it isn't meaningful more. Adding a fourth hand sign to rock-paper-scissors which automatically wins the game if you use it and the other player doesn't would technically add more, but it'd invalidate more situations than it introduces. Likewise for Warframe's build variety, just letting players use every ability for basically free technically gives the players more options, but if a 100 damage ability and a 1000 damage ability are both freely usable, then the 100 damage ability isn't as valuable as it would be if the 100 damage ability was cheap and the 1000 damage ability expensive. In such a case, they aren't directly competing with one another, because the former is more consistent, and the latter more powerful. 

[Teliko_Freedman]

Sure, Let's nerf Zenurik and Pads. I'll agree with that. Reminds me of Riven Dispositions.

Things that get used too much should get nerfed so we'll try other things.

 

IMO Warframes being able to regenerate energy should be done. Even at 0.25 energy/second.

Archwing's already get around 1 energy/second.

 

[DoomFruit]

Throw me in with the "this is completely backwards" crowd. I don't see how there can be any kind of decent game balance with the constant power creep that we're seeing. In fact, I'd rather have it so that zenurik, arcane energise and *all* corrupted mods (except for heavy calibre) get taken out, pizzas get reduced to one, massively nerfed, unspammable model (read has a forced cooldown between deployments).

Alongside this, every single type of nullicancer or ability resistance/immunity needs to get nuked from the game. ALL OF THEM. This will make frame powers both more useful and more valuable. No spamming any more (unless it's your #1 power and you've saved up a full energy bank), but when you do cast your abilities, you will be able to rely on them 100%.

EDIT: yes, this leaves energy siphon. That's a conscious tradeoff and would give you a reason to take something that's not corrosive projection (which right now is still by far the most useful aura). Rejuvenation had a brief period of usefulness back when necramechs were released, but DE obviously thought that people weren't using CP enough and stopped it from working.

[Xaero]

Alongside removing and limiting some ways of getting tons of energy instantly - sure, why not.

[Lone_Dude]

DE don't seem to like passive energy regen very much. But they are big fans of limiting our energy sources lmao. When it comes to getting energy, there always has to be a trade-off, an investment, or it has to be active/reliant on use of abilities. And I can't say that I dislike it. If you want to be able to cast abilities constantly - make sure you can sustain yourself. Sounds legit to me. Doing what you're asking for wouldn't "diversify" the game - it would make it even more dumb than it already is.

From what I've seen over the years of playing this game, energy seems to be one of, if not the ONLY resource that players are willing to make sacrifices for or even request help of another player to maintain. In a game where almost every character can sustain itself, having such an element that enforces active and co-operative play is a good thing.

Rather than passive energy regen, I'd prefer it for DE to add more ways to acquire it and have a pass over on certain frames that already have energy-related abilities, but need some tweaks.

That being said, considering how good DE at balancing the game, it would be one of the worst updates unless they test it properly and consider player feedback. Energy affects so many things in the game that just changing its acquisition rates alone would certainly negatively affect balance(or parody of it that we have currently) overall.

[AlphaPHENIX]

1 hour ago, Loza03 said:

Axe Zenurik

26 minutes ago, Teliko_Freedman said:

Sure, Let's nerf Zenurik

As a Vazarin main, post the Scarlet Spear massacre, I am looking at this and actually can't decide if I want the sweet taste of vengence.

[Kaggelos]

On 2021-01-02 at 1:45 PM, Teliko_Freedman said:

Warframes, Excellent warriors with awe-inspiring abilities.

Surely these warriors wouldn't be as scary to the rest of the universe if they were simply dead in the water as soon as they used up all their energy.

Anyways, I'm just here to ask: Why don't Warframes have built in energy generation? We do have Living Tenno Batteries shoved into them.

The Archwings have built in energy generation already, so it's not something impossible to do.

 

I know energy pads can restore energy quickly, Zenurik school too, Energy Syphon Aura mod to a far less degree.

But they're basically a crutch, that makes it harder for other players to move away from and try other other Focus Schools, or any other Aura Mods.

 

So a simple proposal to DE: Give Warframes the built in energy generation that you already gave to Archwings.

Let's increase Build Diversity.

Agreed 100%

[Andele3025]

Id rather see the rankup bonuses be RPG style selectable and flat 0.25 energy per sec being one of them (with a cap of 10 so 2.5 if you dump 10/30 rankup "stats" into it in place of e.g. the 200% extra hp or shields or 100 from both).

[(PSN)thegarada]

On 2021-01-02 at 8:56 AM, DoomFruit said:

Throw me in with the "this is completely backwards" crowd. I don't see how there can be any kind of decent game balance with the constant power creep that we're seeing. In fact, I'd rather have it so that zenurik, arcane energise and *all* corrupted mods (except for heavy calibre) get taken out, pizzas get reduced to one, massively nerfed, unspammable model (read has a forced cooldown between deployments).

Alongside this, every single type of nullicancer or ability resistance/immunity needs to get nuked from the game. ALL OF THEM. This will make frame powers both more useful and more valuable. No spamming any more (unless it's your #1 power and you've saved up a full energy bank), but when you do cast your abilities, you will be able to rely on them 100%.

EDIT: yes, this leaves energy siphon. That's a conscious tradeoff and would give you a reason to take something that's not corrosive projection (which right now is still by far the most useful aura). Rejuvenation had a brief period of usefulness back when necramechs were released, but DE obviously thought that people weren't using CP enough and stopped it from working.

I kinda agree  with you, however, this is a much bigger task than it seems. The balancing right now relies heavily on the spamability of skills. Some frames are designed with that in mind. Same goes for HP regeneration, armor scaling and damage scaling. Considering that balancing 1-2 skills for a few frames is a monumental task for DE, I dunno if this is ever going to happen. 

Personally, I think the design of warframe current balance has some appeal to it. However, I think the melee rework and heleminth tilt the power creep too far. And SP returned the armor scaling problem. 

But even without that, I think nerfing Zenurik a bit and adding passive energy reg, based on the energy pool, would work so much better, even without fixing the overall issues.

[DrivaMain]

On 2021-01-02 at 8:56 PM, DoomFruit said:

Throw me in with the "this is completely backwards" crowd. I don't see how there can be any kind of decent game balance with the constant power creep that we're seeing. In fact, I'd rather have it so that zenurik, arcane energise and *all* corrupted mods (except for heavy calibre) get taken out, pizzas get reduced to one, massively nerfed, unspammable model (read has a forced cooldown between deployments).

Alongside this, every single type of nullicancer or ability resistance/immunity needs to get nuked from the game. ALL OF THEM. This will make frame powers both more useful and more valuable. No spamming any more (unless it's your #1 power and you've saved up a full energy bank), but when you do cast your abilities, you will be able to rely on them 100%.

EDIT: yes, this leaves energy siphon. That's a conscious tradeoff and would give you a reason to take something that's not corrosive projection (which right now is still by far the most useful aura). Rejuvenation had a brief period of usefulness back when necramechs were released, but DE obviously thought that people weren't using CP enough and stopped it from working.

I would want this, but that would cause so much backlash DE may have to find another main audience for the game. I can say like 90% of the players will demand these changes to be reverted or they quit for good.

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

1 hour ago, DrivaMain said:

I would want this, but that would cause so much backlash DE may have to find another main audience for the game. I can say like 90% of the players will demand these changes to be reverted or they quit for good.

Hell, Id be one of them. I enjoy how warframe works atm, because its my cathartic stress release after work or classes. If it suddenly shifted to become tactical like what the other guy suggested Id probably not play it, or at least play it less. 
 

Furthermore, while the gunplay is good, its not like Destiny’s. Being forced to rely on guns would remove the power fantasy many frames have, whether or not its good for balance. 

[DoomFruit]

1 minute ago, (PSN)CommanderC2121 said:

Hell, Id be one of them. I enjoy how warframe works atm, because its my cathartic stress release after work or classes. If it suddenly shifted to become tactical like what the other guy suggested Id probably not play it, or at least play it less. 
 

Furthermore, while the gunplay is good, its not like Destiny’s. Being forced to rely on guns would remove the power fantasy many frames have, whether or not its good for balance. 

This is what Warframe was like back when I first saw it in 2013 - the only sources of energy refill were blue orbs and Trinity (and there was no transient fortitude or fleeting expertise to make it faster) and there was absolutely no kind of nullicancer. It wasn't guns only - melee was quite viable back then (and I actually preferred the older style of quick melee only, where no attack animations interfered with your movement).

Perhaps I'm just nostalgic, but I still think the game was better back then. Cleaner UI, power creep hadn't settled in yet and melee was nicer.

[Reitrix]

I'd kinda be interested in seeing external energy sources be removed along with drains, and then move to having the first and second abilities generate energy if they hit a target or some other conditional to prevent spamming to a full bar on empty air with the second 2 abilities costing Energy as they currently do.

Ember is a good example of how it could work. Throwing Fireballs (with better scaling ...) to generate the energy for her 4. 

Instead of what we have now, where it's spam 4 all the time because everything else is basically a waste of Energy XD

Could even get a bit creative with the method through each ability generates Energy. 

Hall of Mirrors could be generating Energy when a clone deals or takes damage. 

Teslas Nervos generating Energy per second while attached to mobs, Grenades generating lumps of Energy when their effects are triggered etc.

Could go all sorts of ways with it. 

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

Just now, DoomFruit said:

This is what Warframe was like back when I first saw it in 2013 - the only sources of energy refill were blue orbs and Trinity (and there was no transient fortitude or fleeting expertise to make it faster) and there was absolutely no kind of nullicancer. It wasn't guns only - melee was quite viable back then (and I actually preferred the older style of quick melee only, where no attack animations interfered with your movement).

Perhaps I'm just nostalgic, but I still think the game was better back then. Cleaner UI, power creep hadn't settled in yet and melee was nicer.

Melee falls into the same category aa guns for me. They arent abilities. I personally use many ability heavy frames, like Grendel, Gauss, Ember and Atlas. I personally started the game mid-late 2015, and since then technically energy gen has been nerfed multiple times. Energize has cooldowns, Zenurik requires activation as opposed to a passive energy gain, and while some frames do have their own forms of energy management (Gauss 2, ember 4 aug), there hasnt been much more added.
 

The issue is that the game is now 7(?) years old, so the amount of people who had energize 4 years ago, when it didnt have a cooldown (but a slighly lower proc chance) was possibly half or less then half of who has it now, ESPECIALLY with events likr scarlet spear and orphix venom. 

 

I can understand the nostalgia aspect, and I get that at times about different things (hot take: I liked the old orb planet star chart) but I dont know if the game could survive such a drastic change for many people, sadly myself Included

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

21 minutes ago, Reitrix said:

I'd kinda be interested in seeing external energy sources be removed along with drains, and then move to having the first and second abilities generate energy if they hit a target or some other conditional to prevent spamming to a full bar on empty air with the second 2 abilities costing Energy as they currently do.

Ember is a good example of how it could work. Throwing Fireballs (with better scaling ...) to generate the energy for her 4. 

Instead of what we have now, where it's spam 4 all the time because everything else is basically a waste of Energy XD

Could even get a bit creative with the method through each ability generates Energy. 

Hall of Mirrors could be generating Energy when a clone deals or takes damage. 

Teslas Nervos generating Energy per second while attached to mobs, Grenades generating lumps of Energy when their effects are triggered etc.

Could go all sorts of ways with it. 

This is the type of change I feel would be needed if they wanted to rework the energy system, as to keep frames from suddenly losing all power to cast, while also limiting the insane energy gains we often have. Idk how theyd be able to properly balance everything tho...

[Reitrix]

20 minutes ago, (PSN)CommanderC2121 said:

This is the type of change I feel would be needed if they wanted to rework the energy system, as to keep frames from suddenly losing all power to cast, while also limiting the insane energy gains we often have. Idk how theyd be able to properly balance everything tho...

Wouldn't be too difficult, surely less difficult than the current iteration lol

Mostly would come down to a simple question of "How many casts (energy consuming abilities) per minute should a given frame be capable of in a target rich  environment".

Once you have a baseline number of uses per minute, you can set the energy gains around that figure. 

In testing, you'd start high on gains and then tweak downward until you reach a balanced cast per minute vs how much power the ability offers.

You'd be able to preserve much of how our frames feel to use right now, but you'd be actively using your whole kit to do it instead of Zendashing and popping pads to feed spamming the most powerful ability.

[Loza03]

54 minutes ago, Reitrix said:

I'd kinda be interested in seeing external energy sources be removed along with drains, and then move to having the first and second abilities generate energy if they hit a target or some other conditional to prevent spamming to a full bar on empty air with the second 2 abilities costing Energy as they currently do.

Ember is a good example of how it could work. Throwing Fireballs (with better scaling ...) to generate the energy for her 4. 

Instead of what we have now, where it's spam 4 all the time because everything else is basically a waste of Energy XD

Could even get a bit creative with the method through each ability generates Energy. 

Hall of Mirrors could be generating Energy when a clone deals or takes damage. 

Teslas Nervos generating Energy per second while attached to mobs, Grenades generating lumps of Energy when their effects are triggered etc.

Could go all sorts of ways with it. 

I think some external energy source as a baseline is alright, within reason (which, IMO, it isn't with orbs or with things like Zenurik), but I'd prefer for it to be itself related to in-game performance instead of randomness, and possibly to other aspects of loadout instead of mods and arcanes. In other words, weapons regenerate energy, and stronger weapons tend towards less. Useful since you can bring two guns. And then for caster-oriented frames who're using their abilities all the time, a system like this is introduced. To compensate, the baseline should trend to be lower, but not as low as it is now.

For example, Rhino and Chroma aren't using their abilities all the time - they rely largely on buffs which can be maintained for long periods of time, so they could rely more on fuelling up with their buffed-up weapons in the meantime. So they can rely on baseline measures. Meanwhile, Ember's going to be throwing abilities around all day long so she should have a system like this.

There's precedent already - Protea works kind of like this, Limbo works like this, Nidus as well - so this would be my preferred approach.

 

It'd kill two birds with one stone - it'd help rebalance the energy economy, and give more space for weapons to shine outside of raw power, in turn making more interesting build decisions. The main issue though is that you'd probably need to throw energy-based support under the bus, because they let you get more energy than your loadout allows. Ultimately I think it'd be worth it, but I'd be remiss to not call this out.

 

This isn't an easy problem to fix, but power creep's been eating away at content for long enough that I think it's really worth taking the effort to fix.

[Teridax68]

I think there are two levels of brokenness with Energy in this discussion that are potentially getting mixed up:

1. Our Energy economy at higher levels looks nothing like when we start, because our baseline Energy system is incredibly deficient, yet propped up by power-ups powerful enough to remove constraints almost entirely once equipped.
2. Energy as a system is broken because its model fundamentally doesn't work for the way we want to use our abilities. Spamming abilities without limit trivializes the game, yet when we're prevented from using our abilities when we want to, it feels awful and often shuts us down way too hard.

For problem #1, I would support the OP's proposal as part of a larger plan to eliminate the extremes of the Energy economy: we may not feel it when we have some experience with the game (and the mods, arcanes, Focus, etc. that come with it), but newcomers have a hard time utilizing their abilities at all, because their only source of Energy will be orbs, which drop infrequently, and even the smallest ability cast costs a large portion of their reserves, which don't even start at full. It's entirely possible for a newcomer to complete a mission from start to finish and never be able to cast their 3 or 4. Because of this, I think it would make sense to implement baseline Energy regeneration. In exchange, I'd tone down or remove excessive higher-end sources of energy. Energy pizzas in particular ought to go, as whenever one can use them, one no longer has any Energy concerns at all no matter what.

Problem #2 is a lot thornier, and I'm not even sure if simply changing components to our Energy economy would fix it. For sure, removing Energy drains would make gameplay less unpleasant at times, but at the end of the day, it's not actually fun to have our ability usage limited, no matter the means. Many players push back against changes to make our ability usage more limited, because they don't want to play a resource management game with Energy, and I'm pretty much on the same boat as well. I don't think Warframe is really a game about managing resources, and I actually like being able to use any ability whenever I feel like it.

With this in mind, I'd argue the problem with our Energy system isn't even with our Energy gating, but with what happens when we get to use our abilities on-demand: because most of our abilities don't feature much in the way of interaction (i.e. they're designed to kill enemies at the press of a button), using them excessively removes interaction from the game, which is why DE have repeatedly designed enemies that ignore or negate our abilities just to try to force some of it back in. It's the reason why playing lots of Mesa or another nuke frame feels boring for many, because spamming a room-clear button non-stop isn't very engaging gameplay. Thus, I'd much rather have a Warframe without any Energy gating at all, but one where abilities are instead designed to be interactive, offering the player awesome power if they participate in playing the game. This is obviously much easier said than done, and would require massive changes of its own, but ultimately I think would work much better for the game than any other sort of ability gating system.

[TheLexiConArtist]

Passive energy generation should have been around from the start, really.

A small amount, nothing to us vets and our swathes of killing and other energy generation tools, would make a world - or more specifically a solar system - of difference to new players.

Actually letting them play with the abilities that make Warframes what they are, without the stranglehold of energy orbs (or eventually nabbing an Energy Siphon).

I still remember back in the day when energy was a luxury and you could only cast a few things per mission. Actually having to scrounge lockers in the vain hope one would pop out an orb so you could use your kit.

[Tyreaus]

As said: if everything else is nerfed or adjusted in kind, yes. Though I'd also add on "if some abilities are adjusted too". Ember's whole heat gauge might not be very sustainable with a limited energy pool, and there's a number of damage abilities (besides the ones that already aren't worth it) that might get dunked on with a stricter energy economy. Personally, if abilities are much more rare, I'd like to see them all get a healthy bump in power so they can reliably wreck house.

[Angwah]

Yeah, the entire game-system needs to be rebalanced to a greater or lesser degree. Energy is no exception.

When you start out energy is a precious resource which you want as much of as possible and manage carefully. When have get all the goodies (Primed) Flow is generally a waste of a slot and you can still spam your abilities with abandon and glee.

I personally feel the best place would be somewhere in the middle. Using abilities only rarely would be no fun, but spamming them basically at will, with their cost eliminated as balance mechanic, is definitely not working as intended. Might as well dump the energy mechanic and move to cool downs then.

So, yes, I could live with removing or reworking energy pads/Zenurik/Arcane Energize and tying energy regen to passive ways, preferably tied to actions in gameplay, and active ability-use, would be a vast improvement.

[Mu_Gera]

I think it's a good idea, it wouldn't matter much later on but early players would probably be more engaged if frames had innate energy siphon and rejuvenate.

[(PSN)Vexx757]

When I play for fun I use energy syphon and even through I know I can use archane energise and zenuric I don`t coz that`s too convenient I don`t want to get too use to or attached to them however when I take a mission seriously, then yes I will use them. When I mod a warframe for the most part I always use energy syphon which is a shame coz I would like to use other aura mods.

So yes I'm in 100% agreement for this to be a thing.