Forma & Mastery Rank Dev Workshop

[[DE]Marcus]

Tenno,

When we first introduced Forma years ago, Warframe was a much smaller game. We had fewer weapons, fewer Warframes, and way fewer Mods. As players continue their Forma journey, there’s often discussions on doing a Quality of Life (QOL) pass to the way things work with our favourite Golden Puzzle Piece. We’ve a bit of QOL changes in development, and this workshop details out how Forma will soon work on Warframes, Archwings, and Necramechs. 

We want your Mastery Rank to be considered when using Forma to establish a baseline power level for your playable characters!

What does that mean?

If a Mastery Rank 30 player uses a Forma, they won’t have to re-unlock any Abilities (or their Ranks) on a given item! Yes, they’ll still need to level the gear itself to apply another Forma, but the Abilities are no longer locked depending on your Mastery Rank! This achieves our goal of keeping Forma essential to build customization, but allowing players with higher Mastery Ranks a more convenient experience. 

Right now using a Forma on a Warframe (or Archwing/Necramech) requires you to start from 0 when it comes to Abilities you can use. Furthermore, you only get the first Rank of your First ability. Take Valkyr for instance. You install a Forma, and you’re back to only casting unranked Ripline!

Our change will make it so your Mastery Rank impacts how much you have unlocked by default on Forma use.

For instance, a Mastery Rank 10 player would have all abilities unlocked, albeit not at their full strength! 

This ranking process is something players already experience in game - you know by the time you’ve levelled your Valkyr on Hydron to 10, you unlock Hysteria. We are making your Mastery Rank ‘match’ those milestones, so to speak, with the end goal being a Mastery Rank 30 player can use Forma without ever having to be locked out of Abilities. Simply put, the higher your Mastery Rank, the higher the baseline of your gear when using Forma. 

Expect this change in a future Update. 

[Hammer_of_Sol]

yay~

[Jivy]

poggers

[Necrogenisis]

Nice.

[Kaotyke]

Poggers in chat

[Damocles]

What about Leg 1 Ranks? What do we get?

[Synpai]

This is so nice, but I really wish MR could be tied to starting level after forma :[

Even if it takes a special forma

Edited September 24, 2021 by Synpai

[TheAlp]

1 minute ago, Synpai said:

This is so nice, but I really wish MR could be tied to starting level after forma :[

Then people wouldn't have to level at all though?

[Klokw3rk]

would this allow MR30s to take unleveled frames onto sorties?

 

[Kialandi]

Will the Warframe stats still reset to rank 0 - i.e. Hildryn will go from 1575 shields down to 450 shields?

[DiBBz]

really great change to see. cheers DE

Still waiting on multiple weapon / warframe slot purchases on the market rather than individually purchasing them at a time

same with ttransmuting more than 4 selected mods at a time. just transmute the entire stack if there is more duplicates of the same mods

[(XBOX)XenixF47]

Will this apply to Health/Sheilds/Energy on Warframes?

For example there is no difference between an unranked weapon and a maxed weapon for MR 30 players.
Could we get the same applied to Warframes?

[Goliath20333]

I guess it's cool but that's not really the problem with formas tho... 

[Zla_Gad]

The banana man will be pleased.

[Synpai]

Just now, TheAlp said:

Then people wouldn't have to level at all though?

Yeah after like 9 years, leveling is the last thing I want to do xD. I'd buy a special forma to avoid it at this point

[HunterDigi]

Can we do something about sortie's rank 30 requirement too? It sucked not being able to bring Nidus Prime to sortie just because it wasn't fully ranked :/

[Flannoit]

This is an extremely welcome change!

Also obligatory "please fix nidus prime's butt" comment

Edited September 24, 2021 by Flannoit

[alttea]

Great fix, real QoL. Just please fix the frame lvl requirements for sortie and ESO while you are at it

[Tesseract7777]

I still think starting rank of gear after formai'ng them should be whatever your mastery rank is. 

This would affect weapons too. 

Then say, this would give leg ranks something to work for, as say at legendary rank one your necramech or rank 40 weapon could start at 31, then 32 for leg rank 2 etc. 

This is a really cool start though, but for me it is not so much the abilities unlock or levels, but the excessive re-leveling that gets tiresome. But I understand DE probably doesn't want to do things that lower amount of time played, thing is, I'd still play, just actual full missions instead of spending my time leveling. Just a suggestion.

This is still cool though. 

Edited September 24, 2021 by Tesseract7777

[megamino]

Finally, a change that i am 100% agree with, and using mastery rank is also nice meaning that people have some idea of why they want to rank up MR

Edited September 24, 2021 by megamino

[--PV--Eli]

Will you retain health/energy/etc upgrades, or just the ability levels?

[BR31]

"When we first introduced Forma years ago, Warframe was a much smaller game. We had fewer weapons, fewer Warframes, and way fewer Mods. "

Ngl. you got me in the first half.

Thanks for a little qol feature, but after i read the first sentence - i thought it would be about addressing the forma income-spending rate.

Other than lua method, 24 hours 1 craft , or once in 2 years PS - you don't have that many options other than buying it .
And an active player easily spends 10-20x weekly .
But probably the biggest problem for me -> no stance for exalted weapons+ not enough capacity with the max forma on non-kuva weapons.

[(NSW)Gamer-Steve]

Not quite related, but as far as QoL things go in the Arsenal, would it be a fair idea to suggest equalizing all Aura mod capacities to the amount of Steel Charge, so that one may not feel like they need Steel Charge just to have enough capacity for a given build (Or in some cases, actually needing that Aura mod)?

 

If that would be a bit much, then the next best thing I can think of is either allowing legendary ranks to add another point of mod capacity, or equalizing Auras to 8 instead of Steel Charge's 9 (As a compromise, but I don't see the harm in all Auras at +9 capacity). I just wanted to bring this up since there are a lot of QoL suggestions around, and it's been on my mind for a long time off & on.

 

Hopefully this won't be the last of the upcoming QoL changes, considering how many were suggested for the Devstream thread, Yareli and the Ghoulsaw. Not to mention Necramechs still don't have passives. I'm looking forward to the Devstream though :)

 

Edited September 24, 2021 by (NSW)Gamer-Steve
I meant to say how many were suggested on the Devstream thread, not Dev Workshop.

[Duality52]

Appreciate that, but a quality of life for reapplying Formas to the following would be more appreciated as well:

• Paracesis
• Kuva/Tenet Weapons
• Necramechs

While the Mastery from applying 5 Formas to the above isn't required anymore, those who wishes to pursue that path will only get to reapply a Forma once the weapon/equipment reaches its new max rank.

My suggestion: anytime any equipment that is capable of reaching over Rank 30, you could reapply a Forma once the equipment is at Rank 30 or above. Simply put, you don't need to relevel the equipment its new max level (i.e a 2 Forma Kuva Karak needs to be at Rank 34 to reapply a Forma).

This was in fact an old bug when the Paracesis first came out in October 2018, which helped made reappling Formas less of a hassle. It would be a nice quality of life to these equipments if you decide to implement more of these "over Rank 30" equipment in the future.

[SteveCutler]

Could you please let us stack polarities in the same slot? If we Forma a slot with a V polarity, and then Forma the same slot later with a D polarity, it should end up as V+D. Any V mod or D mod should be compatible in the slot. This change would be a massive enhancement to player convenience and build diversity, without losing you Forma sales as Forma would still be needed for each desired polarity. It might even increase your Forma sales as people would be able to use more builds.

Edited September 24, 2021 by SteveCutler