Warframe system ideas (title formerly "please rebuild the entire game")

[rhoenix]

EDIT (made 5/6/23): Through discussion here, the conclusion reached was that a full-on rework wasn't realistic, for a number of reasons.  So, I created feedback threads for specific things I thought can be improved with the game, which you can read in the links below.  I would welcome your thoughts on them:

I welcome your thoughts!  (end edit)

 

Original Post:

I say this with love, as a player who has enjoyed Warframe for nigh on a decade now.

Warframe has continued as a living project by constantly moving forward, constantly adding new things to try.  All the pieces added are individually very well done, but only loosely connected.  Moreover, it strongly appears that players have no real higher-end (e.g. "endgame" content, apart from Steel Path.

Each and every piece, on its own, makes sense and is well-crafted.  In context with the others however, they resemble a badly-fitted bunch of puzzle pieces.  You have all the basic lore of what happened when and where (and if you don't, then it should be easy enough to write out), and you have the excellent gameplay that has kept Warframe going for many years.

Duviri on its own is very good, but its incongruity with the rest of the game makes the other incongruous pieces stand out that much more starkly.

For whatever you might think of Final Fantasy 14, the developers redesigned the game from the ground up, turning it into an outstanding experience that to this day garners a substantial playerbase - a playerbase which notably and markedly increased after their remake was done. 

To be clear, this is NOT to say I am asking the developers to remake Warframe to be an MMO in the style of FF14, but to approach the game from a similar mindset - to take the same experience and gameplay of Warframe, but rebuild the systems behind the gameplay from the ground up, with all the knowledge and skill available in the present.

You most certainly have the talent, the lore to work with, the added features other games just don't have (such as Archwing and Railjack), and the gameplay that rivals that of Destiny 2 directly - and in quite a few cases, much better.  For one thing, after playing Warframe for a bit, Destiny 2 feels very... slow.

The game can be remade with these pieces, using the excellent programming, artistic, musical, and sound talents you have on staff to turn these many different pieces into a vast, interwoven ocean of content.  The planetary mission map, the mods system, Focus system, Drifter Intrinsics, Railjack mods and parts, and Archwing mods and parts all have potential to be great, but in their current forms feel only loosely connected to one another and to gameplay.

The Orowyrm proves you can do multi-stage, cinematic boss-fights, and do them well. The Orb mothers on Venus can be expanded, other Sentient Eidolon weapon remnants left over from the New War could be walking around.  Multi-stage Raids (which, let's be fair - they'd be essentially higher-level multi-stage Bounty missions), even four-player ones, can make for more challenging content at all levels of play.  These are but examples - but veteran players should have content for them too, with corresponding rewards for completing them.

Warframe is now a living, adapting game unlike any other, and has the potential to be a living, breathing vast game universe better than any other.  If you take the time to take the pieces you have for the game, and rework them with the talent and skill you have on staff today, I feel very confident in saying that not only will the playerbase be very interested, but many players who tried it and left will be encouraged to come back.  This would reinvigorate many people to spread this by word of mouth and online, ensuring that ripples cast into the ocean rapidly become waves.

I thank you for reading.  Please take my words here for whatever they're worth to you, and I wish you a good day.

EDIT:  Fixed title for clarity, at the suggestion of several.

EDIT2, on 5/4:  Examples of changes requested are as follows:

- Make modding simpler and much more intuitive, while preserving player choice. (this resolves the major reason people ditch the game after getting to their orbiter, and seeing their Arsenal).

- Make the planetary maps more dynamic, with fewer active nodes at a time, and each one feeding into either an invasion mechanic, a quest mechanic, or an optional unlock mechanic.  Each node on a planetary map should not only provide the gameplay we all know and love, but should be impactful to events on the planet or in the system in some way.

- Make the various extra capabilities of the Tenno (e.g. Archwing, Railjack, Necromech, etc.) have impact on mission decision, beyond just choosing from a specific set of special missions.  My suggestion for this was to allow for different deployment options for existing missions, depending on the vehicles available, but there are a number of ways to approach this.

- Make weapons less overwhelming in number, while preserving player taste and choice beyond just cosmetics.  This can easily be done by setting up various weapons as having "patterns" for example, such as the Strun having the Wraith or Prime pattern available, each with different variations on stats.  Similar in idea to the Arcane Helmets, but for gun stats.  This setup can even replace the need for damage mods entirely, if players are also allowed to swap out gun parts like barrel and stock.

- Give more challenging content per planet, and overall.  Dungeons, Raids, giant monster fights - the options for doing this are endless, but should be available to players as optional content at all levels of storyline and play.

- Have more impact for various factions, which ties into planetary maps above.  This includes elevating the Invasion mechanic to actually creating quests and alerts, allowing friendly factions (Solaris, Cetus, etc.) to generate their own alerts; essentially to show that the various enemy and friendly factions are doing things on their own all the time - the Tenno get to be the Ace card on a given conflict if they choose.

- Focus 3.0.  The rework was overall a good improvement over Focus 1.0, and the reworked trees were a vast improvement over the original.  However, currently the system feels very out of place with everything else.  Lore-wise, it references schools with the same names as types of mods we have, but there's no other connection or explanation.  Now with the Drifter included, this feels even more out of place.  My request here is to either have School choice influence mods in some way (e.g. allowing you to shift a mod's polarity from Naramon to Vazarin, getting a minor stat change in the process), having the active School influence passive stats of your active Warframe in a more direct fashion, or otherwise have School choice have impact beyond just active School.

Edited May 6, 2023 by rhoenix
Added links to feedback threads

[Felsagger]

"Thank you, sincerely, for this comedy today"

Oh brother....what goes around comes around. 

I honestly don't think that a FInal Fantasy style remake of Warframe should never happen, ever. If you want to throw me out of the game, please by all means do this. 

Edited May 1, 2023 by Felsagger

[rhoenix]

4 minutes ago, Felsagger said:

"Thank you, sincerely, for this comedy today"

Oh brother....what goes around comes around. 

 

I honestly don't think that a Final Fantasy style remake of warframe should never happen, ever. If you want to throw me out of the game, please by all means do this. 

No, not to remake Warframe to be in the style of FF14 - sorry if that wasn't clear.  The implication is to take the same approach the devs of FF14 did to redesigning Warframe from the ground up.

EDIT: there, added a clarifying paragraph.

Edited May 1, 2023 by rhoenix

[Felsagger]

2 minutes ago, rhoenix said:

No, not to remake Warframe to be in the style of FF14 - sorry if that wasn't clear.  The implication is to take the same approach the devs of FF14 did to redesigning Warframe from the ground up.

Do you really want ten more years of this in a redesign? 

 

*starts counting rasings*

[rhoenix]

2 minutes ago, Felsagger said:

Do you really want ten more years of this in a redesign? 

 

*starts counting rasings*

Given that I posted the topic in question, I'm fairly sure. 

I stand by what I said - all the pieces present behind the gameplay can be redesigned to bring the game from pretty good to excellent.

Edited May 2, 2023 by rhoenix

[Felsagger]

It's ok if you like this game this much. Carry on playing it but....

 Just try other games....man...

 

[rhoenix]

Just now, Felsagger said:

It's ok if you like this game this much. Carry on playing it but....

 Just try other games....man...

 

I'm beginning to see how you have such a high post count.  You're welcome to actually contribute to this thread any time you like.

[Felsagger]

Does that bother you this much? 

You are the one who wants to reinvent the wheel on ideas that are already done by the dozen. Final Fantasy is a franchise that went through a lot of iterations. If you want a JRPG go ahead pick any of the titles that suits your need. There are like 16 of them if I don't remember well. 

A wish list will frustrate you. Many communities went through this road with 343i, Bungie and even Respawn with Apex Legends. Just don't throw yourself into wishlisting. Nothing will happen the way you want. You simply pick the game that resembles the nearest wishlist you have in your mind and play that. 

 

[rhoenix]

Just now, Felsagger said:

Does that bother you this much? 

You are the one who wants to reinvent the wheel on ideas that are already done by the dozen. Final Fantasy is a franchise that went through a lot of iterations. If you want a JRPG go ahead pick any of the titles that suits your need. There are like 16 of them if I don't remember well. 

A wish list will frustrate you. Many communities went through this road with 343i, Bungie and even Respawn with Apex Legends. Just don't throw yourself into wishlisting. Nothing will happen the way you want. You simply pick the game that resembles the nearest wishlist you have in your mind and play that. 

 

...Are you still under the hilarious impression I'm asking the devs to actually turn Warframe into an MMO?

[trst]

But what justifies a ground-up remake of the game over their existing approach of slowly reworking older content? There's nothing that indicates that DE can't expand upon existing systems and connect them to each other more than they already do other than the effort, time, and money investments required to do so.

[vanaukas]

8 minutes ago, rhoenix said:

...Are you still under the hilarious impression I'm asking the devs to actually turn Warframe into an MMO?

Dude, this user just enjoy screwing other player's threads and then when you call him out will start deflecting everything. Don't feed it, even if you argue in good faith it'll turn the thread into a miserable place.

About your suggestion, I don't think it's possible to have a remake of such magnitude, but I could be wrong. I think they lack the $$$ to stop working on the game entirely and devote themselves to remake it from the ground up, On top of that, I don't think people wil stick around with no new content, which will make things worse. Think about it, FFXIV it's subscription based on first place, which makes a steady income even if they aren't releasing new content.

Edited May 2, 2023 by vanaukas

[cute_moth.npc]

I don't want to be entirely pessimistic, but different companies with very different people working behind the scenes and Warframe actually literally does not have the talent or resources on hand to do what XIV:ARR did. They have talent of their own, but in completely different areas.

FFXIV has a dedicated core team that basically works non stop on nothing but raid and dungeon design, and class balance. That is not to denigrate what D.E. makes sometimes with some wildly imbalanced but fun things and collections of spaghetti ideas that people actually fall in love with but the two companies have their design assets set up very differently and they work on updating content in a very different manner.

I played XIV for a few years and followed some really interesting talks they occasionally had, including ones with their raid designers. 

When Shadowbringers came out and I was playing Astrologian, they actually messed up kind of hard and AST was (wait for it..).. Like 15% behind the other healers. That was kind of unheard of lol, people considered it a disgusting imbalance. Savage fights might be 10-15 minutes long but winning or losing comes down to the last second before enrage, so this kind of balance is actually pretty hard to pull off.

It was fixed by the end of the first raid tier (AST was buffed within about a week of launching and then tweaked continually for the next few months until it was corrected).

They rebalance and renew Every. Single. Class. Every 2 years. They craft an entirely new set of raids, dungeons and trials every 2 years to go with that. Naturally, this is probably where some of your subscription money is going..

Warframe has a dedicated art and graphics department that has worked hard to bring new locations, we've been getting overhauls, new art assets and new graphics features continually while XIV is actually getting it's first graphics buff sometime this year or next year so like.. They could definitely make an amazing world with a new engine, but..

Without having a core design team that has a handle on concepts like curation and balance, you'd basically just end up with more of the same: challenge that can't exist because of massive imbalances in the gameplay loop and raids that suck because the numbers are way too off to make an actual fight so it's down to gimmicky mechanics.

10 years later, we are still reliving the same loop of a continual cycle of wild imbalance because.. Who even is actually on the balance team? Is it it just Pablo now, maybe some interns? They just don't have the time to re-do pets even is all that I really know ^^;

The other thing is that um..

If you followed the design philosophy that XIV uses to create those tight and balanced raids and applied them to a game like Warframe (without turning it into an MMO and it's still Warframe)

You'd still be saying goodbye to things like Warframes that have 100x the health of others, aimbots, the ability to suck like half of the map into a vortex, dropping a pizza whenever you want with no limits, unchecked and untamed wild power from new weapons and things like that. It would absolutely not be able to coexist with a balanced play environment and when a ton of your playerbase is really into that, basically, I'm not sure it would like actually make Warframe players even happy?

Edited May 2, 2023 by cute_moth.npc

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

A remake of the entire game is a bit ambitious at this stage. Warframe is still decently popular, so from a developer's perspective, there's no good reason yet in such a dramatic shift from what has worked for 10 years. Perhaps in a few years when Warframe is basically dead, the world can be revived with a remake, but it'd otherwise be better to steadily rework existing content in order to polish the game overall. 

[rhoenix]

Just now, trst said:

But what justifies a ground-up remake of the game over their existing approach of slowly reworking older content? There's nothing that indicates that DE can't expand upon existing systems and connect them to each other more than they already do other than the effort, time, and money investments required to do so.

That is true, and the gradual approach can work, if that's how they're choosing to do so.  I additionally grant that a ground-up rework is a pretty drastic ask.

However, many of the older systems would be harder to rework piece by piece.  Moreover, I've found that as a writer, oftentimes if I get stuck in a story, rewriting it again can oftentimes help me see where and how certain things didn't flow well, and ensure they flowed properly afterward.  For these reasons, I think the more drastic approach (a ground-up rework) would be overall a better and more healthy option for the game.

[rhoenix]

4 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

About your suggestion, I don't think it's possible to have a remake of such magnitude, but I could be wrong. I think they lack the $$$ to stop working on the game entirely and devote themselves to remake it from the ground up, On top of that, I don't think people wil stick around with no new content, which will make things worse. Think about it, FFXIV it's subscription based on first place, which makes a steady income even if they aren't releasing new content.

True - but the F2P model on which Warframe relies for money would see a direct spike in profits from more players returning, and being more willing to pay for extra customization.  It wouldn't be a direct comparison to the subscription model used by FF14, that's true - but it would still be comparable.

As for additional content, I know that DE relies upon having new content to advertise, but a bit of new content (fleshing out and reworking one of the existing places, for example) would work nicely as a draw for newer players, as well as spiking interest in existing players for the rework.  Besides - once they sit down and go over the components of the game and how they connect content together, I daresay it wouldn't take several years to complete.  Moreover, having a more coherent and solid foundation would make future updates that much easier.

[Felsagger]

18 minutes ago, rhoenix said:

...Are you still under the hilarious impression I'm asking the devs to actually turn Warframe into an MMO?

A remake of that size, after ten years? Do you think DE will repurpose all the assets like that after all the lore that was built with this game? It doesn't matter if I troll you or not. What you are asking here is out of scope in any league. 

[Hypernaut1]

Maybe just wait for Soulframe?

[taiiat]

1 hour ago, rhoenix said:

To be clear, this is NOT to say I am asking the developers to remake Warframe to be an MMO in the style of FF14, but to approach the game from a similar mindset - to take the same experience and gameplay of Warframe, but rebuild the systems behind the gameplay from the ground up, with all the knowledge and skill available in the present.

okay, you wrote a Wall of Text, but you did explain what you actually mean for one or two Sentences out of all of it, thankfully.

[rhoenix]

1 minute ago, taiiat said:

okay, you wrote a Wall of Text, but you did explain what you actually mean for one or two Sentences out of all of it, thankfully.

Yes, I did realize it was a bit ambiguous after re-reading.  I was happy to clarify.

[Felsagger]

10 minutes ago, Hypernaut1 said:

Maybe just wait for Soulframe?

You got that one right. 

That's exactly what Soulframe is doing. 

[taiiat]

5 minutes ago, rhoenix said:

Yes, I did realize it was a bit ambiguous after re-reading.  I was happy to clarify.

right.

anyways, so you mean a game 1.5 or some such
and uh, that's asking for a lot. FF14 i think was a pretty unique case because they had a Product that was spiraling into the Sewer and so it was either game 1.5 or axe the entire Project to cut losses (and so, probably Fire a bunch of People, as is the norm when any expected growth/Revenue doesn't happen with Companies).
a sort of ultimatum situation. but Warframe isn't in that sort of position, so i'm not going to expect "remake 90% of the game".

[rhoenix]

22 minutes ago, cute_moth.npc said:

I don't want to be entirely pessimistic, but different companies with very different people working behind the scenes and Warframe actually literally does not have the talent or resources on hand to do what XIV:ARR did. They have talent of their own, but in completely different areas.

FFXIV has a dedicated core team that basically works non stop on nothing but raid and dungeon design, and class balance. That is not to denigrate what D.E. makes sometimes with some wildly imbalanced but fun things and collections of spaghetti ideas that people actually fall in love with?

I played XIV for a few years and followed some really interesting talks they occasionally had, including ones with their raid designers. 

When Shadowbringers came out and I was playing Astrologian, they actually messed up kind of hard and AST was (wait for it..).. Like 15% behind the other healers. That was kind of unheard of lol, people considered it a disgusting imbalance. Savage fights might be 10-15 minutes long but winning or losing comes down to the last second before enrage, so this kind of balance is actually pretty hard to pull off.

It was fixed by the end of the first raid tier (AST was buffed within about a week of launching and then tweaked continually for the next few months until it was corrected).

They rebalance and renew Every. Single. Class. Every 2 years. They craft an entirely new set of raids, dungeons and trials every 2 years to go with that. Naturally, this is probably where some of your subscription money is going..

Warframe has a dedicated art and graphics department that has worked continually to bring new locations, we've been getting overhauls, new art assets and new graphics features continually while XIV is actually getting it's first graphics buff sometime this year or next year so like.. They could definitely make an amazing world with a new engine, but.. Without having a core design team that has a handle on concepts like curation and balance, you'd basically just end up with more of the same: challenge that can't exist because of massive imbalances in the gameplay loop and raids that suck because the numbers are way too off to make an actual fight so it's down to gimmicky mechanics.

The other thing is that um..

If you followed the design philosophy that XIV uses to create those tight and balanced raids and applied them to a game like Warframe (without turning it into an MMO and it's still Waframe)

You'd still be saying goodbye to things like Warframes that have 100x the health of others, aimbots, the ability to suck like half of the map into a vortex, dropping a pizza whenever you want with no limits, unchecked and untamed wild power from new weapons and things like that. It would absolutely not be able to coexist with a balanced play environment and when a ton of your playerbase is really into that, basically, I'm not sure it would like actually make Warframe players even happy?

First, thank you for writing all of that out.  You raise some excellent points, and I'm happy to answer them, mostly in order.

To your first point, that of math issues with damage, enemy health, and power scaling.  I fully grant that if the same approach is taken, it could lead to the same result.  However, I would retort by saying that a ground-up rework would offer the unique chance to re-approach all of those things from a fresh perspective. 

Player damage scaling and enemy scaling has long since been an issue with the game, one that requires reworking of mechanics on a basic math level to get working.  A ground-up rework would offer the chance of rebalancing the game with those things in mind from the beginning, with elbow room left for future expansion that still fits the pattern in a way that a simple update could not.

To your second point, that of imbalanced Warframes - you are right that Warframes' abilities and weapons would have to be re-examined in that light, and I fully grant that - however, I strongly think that there is a pretty wide middle ground between the extremes of making every frame so balanced as to be same-y, and leaving them in the state they are in now. 

It could even be something as simple as an internal rule of "every warframe has a primary and a secondary defense, out of armor/health/evasion/shields to be built for using mods", or the like.

And finally, to your point about DE and the people they have available.  I think having a small team that manages Alerts, Invasions, and Events separate from the main Warframe dev team could be of benefit here, actually.  It doesn't have to be anywhere near as grandiose as a rework every two years or the like, but a small team that manages the schedule for random events happening would take a bit of pressure off the main devs for managing it, and have them be more regular as a result.

[cute_moth.npc]

8 minutes ago, taiiat said:

right.

anyways, so you mean a game 1.5 or some such
and uh, that's asking for a lot. FF14 i think was a pretty unique case because they had a Product that was spiraling into the Sewer and so it was either game 1.5 or axe the entire Project to cut losses (and so, probably Fire a bunch of People, as is the norm when any expected growth/Revenue doesn't happen with Companies).
a sort of ultimatum situation. but Warframe isn't in that sort of position, so i'm not going to expect "remake 90% of the game".

They did!

XIV : A Realm Reborn wasn't really a remake, it actually was an entirely new game. Aside from giving nods to the original story and having some continuance in the story that the entirely new base game provided, it really was a new game and not just a refresh on the orignal.

They also actually did fire / replace the entire development team as well.

Edited May 2, 2023 by cute_moth.npc

[rhoenix]

3 minutes ago, taiiat said:

right.

anyways, so you mean a game 1.5 or some such
and uh, that's asking for a lot. FF14 i think was a pretty unique case because they had a Product that was spiraling into the Sewer and so it was either game 1.5 or axe the entire Project to cut losses (and so, probably Fire a bunch of People, as is the norm when any expected growth/Revenue doesn't happen with Companies).
a sort of ultimatum situation. but Warframe isn't in that sort of position, so i'm not going to expect "remake 90% of the game".

Fair, and both you and others have already raised the counterargument that a ground-up rework is a bit of a drastic ask.  I do fully grant that it is a bit drastic.

But, I do think that not only do they have the staff and talent required to do it, it would re-awaken interest in the game again pretty strongly overall, more so I think than if they wait until player numbers drop until nearly floor-level to do so.

[rhoenix]

3 minutes ago, cute_moth.npc said:

They did!

XIV : A Realm Reborn wasn't actually a remake, it actually was an entirely new game. Aside from giving nods to the original story and having some continuance in the story that the entirely new base game provided, it had nothing to do with the original at all.

They also actually did fire / replace the entire development team as well.

...For the record here, I'm not trying to suggest with this topic that some people at DE get fired.  Just want to make sure that's clear. :)