Is energy really necessary?

[Shadowbladedeathkiller]

I’ve seen on this forum a couple times that this game used to have a stamina bar. Why did DE remove that but still require us to get energy for our abilities? This game also doesn’t have ability cooldowns. It doesn’t make sense.

[Infirito]

I agree, we should also remove ammo and reloading, it only gets in the way. And while we're at it, might as well ditch the whole HP / Shields thing, just make frames not die.

[Artekkor]

You don't quiet understand. Abilities didn't worked on stamina. The stamina was used for sprinting, parkour and blocking. It was quiet honestly annoying, more than anything. So they removed it because it just held players back.

As for cooldowns - DE apparently tried to experiment with them in the early days of the game, but it turned out to be a bad game design, because all that would happen is that players would get caught in a gameplay loop:
1) Enter room
2) Nuke
3) Wait for cooldowns
4) Rinse and repeat

So DE droped the idea and went with energy. Which is fine but then they gave us too much sources of energy, including the cursed Energy Restores which i consider to be game-breaking. So i don't know... At this point i honestly wouldn't mind cooldowns. We became too powerful.

[PublikDomain]

44 minutes ago, Shadowbladedeathkiller said:

This game also doesn’t have ability cooldowns. It doesn’t make sense.

Energy is the cooldown. Or at least it's supposed to fill the same role of limiting player ability use over time. When we don't use energy we use cooldowns like with Lavos, or some alternate resource like shields on Hildryn. If we didn't have energy, we'd have cooldowns. And between the two IMO energy is better because it's more flexible and you can choose where that energy goes.

Edit: That said, the current energy economy is a bit broken. So is this energy system really necessary? Probably not... A system where energy generates passively on its own with less of a reliance on things like Zenurik/Energize/Dispensary/etc. could be better.

[Sevek7]

Yeah energy is weird. It's supposed to be a check on player power, limiting ability use. In practice, there are too many sources of energy, so players are essentially free to spam abilities endlessly.

I think energy should be gained from weapon kills (possible shared with team-members), so that you play the normal combat to build your energy and then unleash your abilities for a kind of ultimate move or other tactical action.

[Loza03]

As-is? Yes, because having absolutely no limits on ability use would be... well, picture the current game, but then dial it up by, like 1.5X.

 

As a broader concept? No, certainly not in the way it's currently used. Energy's current implementation is, as far as I can tell, the same or nearly the same as it was 8 years ago when it was designed for a fundamentally different game - a game where abilities weren't even on the player by default.

Spoiler

 

By 'implemented', I mean in the sense that the base system, without any extras like focus or pizzas, is still 'RNG energy drops'.

 

Needless to say, an argument could be made the current system might be outdated.

[Shadowbladedeathkiller]

3 hours ago, Infirito said:

I agree, we should also remove ammo and reloading, it only gets in the way. And while we're at it, might as well ditch the whole HP / Shields thing, just make frames not die.

That would make sense yeah. Why stop at stamina or energy? This game is supposed to be a power fantasy, right?

[(PSN)Unstar]

49 minutes ago, Shadowbladedeathkiller said:

I’ve seen on this forum a couple times that this game used to have a stamina bar. Why did DE remove that but still require us to get energy for our abilities? This game also doesn’t have ability cooldowns. It doesn’t make sense.

Having a finite pool of energy is what allows abilities to not require cooldowns.  When you take away the energy pool, you need to introduce cooldowns or other types of anti-spamming systems to blance things.  Hence you get Warframes like Lavos, who has no energy but does have cooldowns.  Both are valid approaches.

You couldn't have Warframes like Ember (spam 4) or Mesa (channel 4) without energy.  In that sense, I think energy is good and makes some interesting types of abilities possible.

 

[Shadowbladedeathkiller]

8 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

Energy is the cooldown. Or at least it's supposed to fill the same role of limiting player ability use over time. When we don't use energy we use cooldowns like with Lavos, or some alternate resource like shields on Hildryn. If we didn't have energy, we'd have cooldowns. And between the two IMO energy is better because it's more flexible and you can choose where that energy goes.

Edit: That said, the current energy economy is a bit broken. So is this energy system really necessary? Probably not... A system where energy generates passively on its own with less of a reliance on things like Zenurik/Energize/Dispensary/etc. could be better.

Ok this makes more sense 

[Shadowbladedeathkiller]

6 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

As-is? Yes, because having absolutely no limits on ability use would be... well, picture the current game, but then dial it up by, like 1.5X.

 

As a broader concept? No, certainly not in the way it's currently used. Energy's current implementation is, as far as I can tell, the same or nearly the same as it was 8 years ago when it was designed for a fundamentally different game - a game where abilities weren't even on the player by default.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

By 'implemented', I mean in the sense that the base system, without any extras like focus or pizzas, is still 'RNG energy drops'.

 

Needless to say, an argument could be made the current system might be outdated.

Well Warframe is already like a regular game but dialed up to....way more than 1.5 lol

 

....yet somehow manages to not be hard at all.

[Shadowbladedeathkiller]

3 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

Having a finite pool of energy is what allows abilities to not require cooldowns.  When you take away the energy pool, you need to introduce cooldowns or other types of anti-spamming systems to blance things.  Hence you get Warframes like Lavos, who has no energy but does have cooldowns.  Both are valid approaches.

You couldn't have Warframes like Ember (spam 4) or Mesa (channel 4) without energy.  In that sense, I think energy is good and makes some interesting types of abilities possible.

 

Why can’t Warframe just have an innate energy recharge system? Like you could have mods or talent perks to boost your energy recharge or sacrifice it in place of other strengths, like shields or ability power. Maybe a weapon or weapon mod can help recharge energy based on headshot kills or something.

[Zimzala]

What does not make sense is all the people trying to make WF work like other games and this topic is a symptom of that, IMO.

The modern gamer at scale is not longer interested like they once were, from my POV, in the 'leveling process'.

So very many of the most popular games that are considered 'quick co-op mission' based have taken the route of each Avatar just being who they are with what they do and the gamer just 'picks one'.

Sure, there might be some power-ups and a couple bonus points if you have played for a while, but you are not really leveling up nor are you really creating a unique Avatar.

Even the MMORPGs now try to make the new player 'fly through' the process and 'streamline' until there are no choices to be made past choosing the Avatar/Class.

Therefore, IMO, this is the real reason behind so very many of the complaints about any of the underlying systems of WF, because the gamers at scale simply don't want to have to make choices beyond the Avatar they chose and 'keeping up with all that stat stuff' is not 'fun' to many.

IMO, gamers see 'co-op space game' and then, without any data, make up what they think it should be and when they find WF breaks the mold, they don't know what to do beyond saying it's wrong and must be fixed, because it broke the mold.

As with so many things, I just see people assuming since WF does things in a way many do not 'expect', it's 'wrong'. 🤷‍♂️

 

[Yamazuki]

28 minutes ago, Zimzala said:

Even the MMORPGs now try to make the new player 'fly through' the process and 'streamline' until there are no choices to be made past choosing the Avatar/Class.

This is for the purpose of making money, and not for the benefit of people playing. The majority of MMORPGs make money off of people paying to skip "end-game" grinds. The quicker people get to that point, the more money they make. This is why so many of them sell max level boosters, or "events" for new accounts to get a skip to max level.

This is no different to what DE is doing. Intentionally release new content with low MR requirements, knowing full well people won't have the resources to participate for the purpose of keeping boosters relevant, as well as the fact almost every single item can be bought with plat or cash only bundles.

Even on the subject of energy and no cool downs, Warframe isn't the first game to do this. Even some MMORPGs had an entire class type that operated with 0 cool downs at end-game with mana being the limiting factor, and even some of them suffered the infinite mana issue due to consumables being spammed or the game having a class that functioned like Trinity. 

Nothing DE does breaks the mold. People just have a tendency of refusing to look outside their bubbles of reality.

[Reitrix]

1 hour ago, PublikDomain said:

Energy is the cooldown. Or at least it's supposed to fill the same role of limiting player ability use over time. When we don't use energy we use cooldowns like with Lavos, or some alternate resource like shields on Hildryn. If we didn't have energy, we'd have cooldowns. And between the two IMO energy is better because it's more flexible and you can choose where that energy goes.

Edit: That said, the current energy economy is a bit broken. So is this energy system really necessary? Probably not... A system where energy generates passively on its own with less of a reliance on things like Zenurik/Energize/Dispensary/etc. could be better.

A better system is to have part of the kit generate Energy and the other part spend it. 

Leaves DE room to tailor generation and spending to balance out the power of the abilities directly. 

[Zimzala]

2 minutes ago, Yamazuki said:

Nothing DE does breaks the mold. People just have a tendency of refusing to look outside their bubbles of reality.

The minutiae of the game systems is the difference, IMO, not the overall monetization, I mostly agree with you there, but the reason it all sells is because of the impatience of gamers at scale who no longer have an interest in creating characters over just picking Iron Man or Thor, and 'being with friends' IMO.

It's just an observation, nothing wrong with it IMO if that's what people enjoy. I have friends that thinking 'leveling' is a 'chore', no matter the game.

IMO, even the basic way in which you progress in WF is different for most players that assume every game has 'traditional' level and powers. I am not saying it's earth shatteringly new at this point, but the combination of how it all works is pretty different IMO than most games.

To make what you want in WF, you have to make more choices, IMO, than many players want to have to make, including, "what should I do today?"

More and more of the gaming entertainment I see, especially in games where you can play with other people at scale, contains fewer and fewer choices tied to leveling mechanics and just provides a pre-made Avatar 'balanced' however the game maker chooses, etc.

That's all I am saying.

IME/IMO, I think a reason a lot of static around WF occurs because it does the minutiae just different enough and combined with the trend of having fewer choices to make, it causes many people to think DE is 'wrong' instead of 'different', that's all.

The fact that the gaming industry caters to those players that want fewer choices in their entertainment is fine by me, it's just financial reality.

I am simply postulating that many games I see comments about revolve around 'streamlining' the choices and complex systems of most things in games when it comes to what the Avatars can do, as players at scale expect it to be this way, for all these presented reasons.

For myself, I think the WF energy state is fine, for example, as a Solo player without endless resources, but some players don't even want to worry about resources in the first place, while others want that to be a center point of their entertainment...it's hard to please everyone.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Considering how poorly cooldowns worked for Lavos. Yes Energy is necessary.

[Teridax68]

I think there's a deeper question to be had from this. As framed in the OP, the question I think has a fairly simple answer: Stamina was removed because DE decided they weren't going to limit the player's parkour anymore, and so because the player's parkour did not need to be limited. What followed from that was arguably the best movement system out of any video game. Energy, by contrast, was kept because abilities are designed under the premise of giving a lot of power, at the cost of not being able to be used all the time (in theory), and when our abilities aren't being kept in check... well, you get what we have now.

However, I'd argue that it would in fact be desirable for abilities in Warframe to be as freely usable as our parkour, because despite the major balance problems we have now, our ability to cast on-demand without too much trouble in most cases at higher levels is fun, whereas being out of Energy feels terrible. The problem therefore I think isn't with Energy, but with our ability design: an "I win" button can make sense if that button can't be pressed all the time, but when it can be, you get Mesa, and gameplay gets reduced to just pressing that button, because pressing that button doesn't really carry that much interactivity. If we can use any ability on-demand yet still want gameplay, we'd have to bake that gameplay directly into abilities themselves. This would require a massive set of changes to pretty much every warframe, but the end result I think would still be worthwhile, and would certainly resolve many of the issues tied to the present game's balance and design.

[Shadowbladedeathkiller]

2 hours ago, Zimzala said:

What does not make sense is all the people trying to make WF work like other games and this topic is a symptom of that, IMO.

The modern gamer at scale is not longer interested like they once were, from my POV, in the 'leveling process'.

So very many of the most popular games that are considered 'quick co-op mission' based have taken the route of each Avatar just being who they are with what they do and the gamer just 'picks one'.

Sure, there might be some power-ups and a couple bonus points if you have played for a while, but you are not really leveling up nor are you really creating a unique Avatar.

Even the MMORPGs now try to make the new player 'fly through' the process and 'streamline' until there are no choices to be made past choosing the Avatar/Class.

Therefore, IMO, this is the real reason behind so very many of the complaints about any of the underlying systems of WF, because the gamers at scale simply don't want to have to make choices beyond the Avatar they chose and 'keeping up with all that stat stuff' is not 'fun' to many.

IMO, gamers see 'co-op space game' and then, without any data, make up what they think it should be and when they find WF breaks the mold, they don't know what to do beyond saying it's wrong and must be fixed, because it broke the mold.

As with so many things, I just see people assuming since WF does things in a way many do not 'expect', it's 'wrong'. 🤷‍♂️

 

Uh no you have the complete opposite. I’m wondering why this game doesn’t just go all the way like the first reply in this thread so kindly pointed out 

[Shadowbladedeathkiller]

29 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

I think there's a deeper question to be had from this. As framed in the OP, the question I think has a fairly simple answer: Stamina was removed because DE decided they weren't going to limit the player's parkour anymore, and so because the player's parkour did not need to be limited. What followed from that was arguably the best movement system out of any video game. Energy, by contrast, was kept because abilities are designed under the premise of giving a lot of power, at the cost of not being able to be used all the time (in theory), and when our abilities aren't being kept in check... well, you get what we have now.

However, I'd argue that it would in fact be desirable for abilities in Warframe to be as freely usable as our parkour, because despite the major balance problems we have now, our ability to cast on-demand without too much trouble in most cases at higher levels is fun, whereas being out of Energy feels terrible. The problem therefore I think isn't with Energy, but with our ability design: an "I win" button can make sense if that button can't be pressed all the time, but when it can be, you get Mesa, and gameplay gets reduced to just pressing that button, because pressing that button doesn't really carry that much interactivity. If we can use any ability on-demand yet still want gameplay, we'd have to bake that gameplay directly into abilities themselves. This would require a massive set of changes to pretty much every warframe, but the end result I think would still be worthwhile, and would certainly resolve many of the issues tied to the present game's balance and design.

This is better

[PublikDomain]

3 hours ago, Reitrix said:

A better system is to have part of the kit generate Energy and the other part spend it. 

Leaves DE room to tailor generation and spending to balance out the power of the abilities directly. 

Mmm, kind of? I don't know if a frame's kit is where to primarily address this, since then every frame would need some sort of energy mechanic which could get cluttered or feel tacked on. It's definitely a place to address energy use, like on energy-generating frames like Garuda/Protea/Harrow/Trinity/etc., but I don't know if it'd be good to make every frame fit that pattern. That said, passive health/energy generation might be an interesting frame-specific stat. A frame could have a big energy pool and generation mechanics but a really low passive regen, for example. Another frame could have a small energy pool but very high passive regen. Then frames can have their default energy economy balanced individually depending on the mechanics. 🤔

[Butterfly85]

Hildryn says no, it isn't  😎

[Xarsis01]

7 hours ago, Infirito said:

I agree, we should also remove ammo and reloading, it only gets in the way. And while we're at it, might as well ditch the whole HP / Shields thing, just make frames not die.

Then there wouldn't be any challenge or risks to missions? System like these may seem annoying but there key to making the game balanced and flow correctly, 

[Xarsis01]

I think energy is a good limiter, It stops frames from just nuking rooms and enemies. Cooldowns kinda work but then players would just walk into rooms, nuke things and then repeat. I think energy is a good system and stamina wasn't originally for abilities it was for parkour and blocking. 

[Shadowbladedeathkiller]

22 hours ago, Zimzala said:

The minutiae of the game systems is the difference, IMO, not the overall monetization, I mostly agree with you there, but the reason it all sells is because of the impatience of gamers at scale who no longer have an interest in creating characters over just picking Iron Man or Thor, and 'being with friends' IMO.

It's just an observation, nothing wrong with it IMO if that's what people enjoy. I have friends that thinking 'leveling' is a 'chore', no matter the game.

IMO, even the basic way in which you progress in WF is different for most players that assume every game has 'traditional' level and powers. I am not saying it's earth shatteringly new at this point, but the combination of how it all works is pretty different IMO than most games.

To make what you want in WF, you have to make more choices, IMO, than many players want to have to make, including, "what should I do today?"

More and more of the gaming entertainment I see, especially in games where you can play with other people at scale, contains fewer and fewer choices tied to leveling mechanics and just provides a pre-made Avatar 'balanced' however the game maker chooses, etc.

That's all I am saying.

IME/IMO, I think a reason a lot of static around WF occurs because it does the minutiae just different enough and combined with the trend of having fewer choices to make, it causes many people to think DE is 'wrong' instead of 'different', that's all.

The fact that the gaming industry caters to those players that want fewer choices in their entertainment is fine by me, it's just financial reality.

I am simply postulating that many games I see comments about revolve around 'streamlining' the choices and complex systems of most things in games when it comes to what the Avatars can do, as players at scale expect it to be this way, for all these presented reasons.

For myself, I think the WF energy state is fine, for example, as a Solo player without endless resources, but some players don't even want to worry about resources in the first place, while others want that to be a center point of their entertainment...it's hard to please everyone.

It's very strange that you are taking this stance on a game that is ridiculously easy. You're talking about "choices" and my thread being a symptom of needing "instant gratification" but the reason I am asking this is because this game does away with mechanics that are usually put in place to prevent games from becoming too easy. Why was the stamina bar removed? Because it was a limiter that messed with peoples power fantasies. Why not remove the energy bar as well? "Kids these days need their instant gratification". Yeah ok that's why grindfests like Genshin Impact and Warframe (cough) are some of the most popular games available these days...right?
 

And if you want to talk about games that need "work" to get the most out of them, rpg's arent even it. Games that are focused exclusively on creativity would be where its at. Kerbal Space Program, Space Engineers, Minecraft, Factorio, Dwarf Fortress....those are the games you should be talking about. Not mindless grindfests where you can just put yourself on autopilot for hours on end.

[(PSN)Yggranya]

With rage, i never run out of enery. The "limitation" that energy is supposed to be hasn't worked in years.

 

56 minutes ago, Xarsis01 said:

I think energy is a good limiter, It stops frames from just nuking rooms and enemies. Cooldowns kinda work but then players would just walk into rooms, nuke things and then repeat. I think energy is a good system and stamina wasn't originally for abilities it was for parkour and blocking. 

As opposed to nuking the room, using energizing dash and going to the next room to do the same? What a joke.