Weapons: A Look Back And A Look Forwards

[YuriTesla]

Now the title may confuse you, but let me set this straight. This is feedback on the weapons. This is NOT some random smoe on the internet griping about damage 2.0 and saying we should all leave and give up and making the lot of you want to club said smoe over the head with a chair made from mason bricks. I'll be covering a few things in this post, And i hope you stick around for the read.

 

Already going TLDR? dont really care i'm not going to dumb this down any more than it already is.

 

 

 

Vanilla and variants of vanilla

What do i mean by this? Let me explain a bit.

 

Currently in game we have several variants of weapons. and i'm not just talking assault rifles that are burst or full auto or semi auto and the like. but true variants of the weapon. like braton prime, braton, MK1 braton and braton vandal. to be honest they all feel the same in a sense. now sure there are subtle differences in each, but the general feel is the same. You're using a braton, doesn't matter what flavor of the week is it;s a braton. and that's to be expected. you want weapons of a family to feel similar.

 

"The primes are the original ultimate version of the item" this is a pseudo quote from  one of our live streams. going into that quote and dissecting it a bit, there is no reason why a vanilla version of a gun should compare in any way to a prime version of the gun. the prime should outclass it in every way shape and form. sure a vandal or a wraith may come close, but by this thinking it shouldn't compare. I'm not exactly of that total mindset. A prime, a Vandal a Wraith should be special, they should be important, and the difference in them should be as clear as day.

 

One reason for this is Difficulty of acquisition, you know, the time it takes you to acquire a weapon the old fashioned way, building it in the foundry. Lets use the braton as our example as it's a decent poster child. Yes kiddies i'll be getting to the galive in a bit sit down and sip on your sippy cups while i get down to business.

 

For the vinilla braton you need the cash. 25000(assuming you went and sold it because you thought it was useless and wanted a new one for tenno points).. ok, that's good to know. what about the mk1? that's 15000 credits. so the vinilla braton you get at the start of the game should be a bit better than the MK1. which is understandable. it's like the M16A1 and the A2. But lets say you want the vandal? well too bad so sad, that's a one time only thing. so you have one shot to get your hands on it, then it's gone for good. so how should that compare in scale? that's a tad difficult realy. it should reflect the effort required to acquire it. now if it has you running a hundred missions that should be reflected in the weapon itself in comparason to the braton and MK1, both of which you can get fairly easy. Lets look at the MK1 here. to put the weapon in perspective, true perspective of ease of acquisition, You can get it by logging in, and running a mission. that's it. 7 day 10k reward and running one mission. Ease of acquisition? a child who's never played the game and hears an icecream truck outside would have a hard time failing at that. so yes, the MK1 is ADD proof easy.  (that's not a insult to people with ADD, I have ADD for pete sake)

Now we look at the braton... just the braton. ease of acquisition assuming you sold it? run maybe 3 missions. congratulations you have it. braton vandal assuming the "event" is run 100 missions to get this reward. This weapon should be amazing in what it can do. We see this now in the BRAK. that weapon is the reason we now have a saying for BRAK ATTACK and is the reason many of us "Got Rucked" during the last event. so assuming the vandal was acquired with a 100 mission event, it should be on that level of awesome so to speak, it's challenging to acquire. now i hear you back there. the ones who are going "wait... he braught up a quote from a live stream, ya dont do that less you're going to poke it later to make a point" and yes, here's that point.

 

"The primes are the original ultimate version of the item"

And then we have the Braton Prime. The quintessential ultimate version of the gun. the alpha dog and the nuke at the end of your ICBM. nothing gets bigger or better than this puppy in the family tree. Level of difficulty? potentially hundreds or even thousands of missions all dedicated to the searching and acquisition of parts against ever rising difficulty of enemy opposition which can be for the rarest parts needed to craft the gun, neigh unfathomable at the time. This weapon's acquisition is a feat in itself and SHOULD be an achievement. Congratulations, you built Braton Prime. If you've done this and i see you at a convention, let me know i want to shake your hand!  That sir, That Ma'am, That Nameless person who's watched too much rocky horror picture show, Is the penicle of difficulty to acquire. And it should reflect this in everything that the gun is. not just the spiffy body and flashy gold trim, but literally going down to what the gun is and how it functions at it's core. It should be the very penicle of it's existence and there should be no real reason to use a MK1 or a braton vanilla. Vandal maybe because well ini truth that's a once and a lifetime gun. No second chances with that puppy.

 

What do we have though? Well we have Vanilla, We have poor man's Vanilla that's sat in the freezer too long, we have French vanilla, and we have Vanilla with Pecan oil and maybe a sprinkle or two. I'm sorry but i'ts still just vanilla. (dont take this as an insult to the ice cream flavor itself... Vanilla can be rather respectable.)

 

Short of subtle differences there is no reason to use one gun over the other. and given the difficulty of acquiring some of them, This is an outright sin. and im not talking about the kind of sin you actually enjoy but know you shouldn't if you're actually "good natured" and all that jazz.

 

It's like you take your braton up to a corpus merchant and go "Put some bling on this baby" and what you get is just a few superficial changes that are rather meaningless. "ohhh a polarity shift and gold trim.... this is the best it's getting!" is what it turns out to be.  when you've got a good gun you can feel it in your bones. but when you've got a braton and a braton prime, it's like the guy down at the apple store is trying to sell you this spiffy looking Iphone that's candy cane red when you've got a perfectly good one of the same make and model when yours is already just the way you want it, songs settings and all.

 

I'd love to get into the Prime varriants of the warframes but i'll save that for another thread. The weapons feedback thread is not the place for it.

 

But that's what we have now. Great example is Glaive and Glaive prime. Wanna know the difference? You paid that corpus merchant 50000000 credits, 13 tenno still in cryosleep, and 13 seasons of playframe magazine withe the special swimsuit editions thrown in of ember and trinity to put some bling on it and make it spiffy. wanna know what he did? he removed the polarities, the V and the - are now  gone. you didn't need those right? and he put a bunch of faux gold trim on it with silly putty and super glue. he didn't increase the damage or the crit rate or anything. He made the weapon worse.....

 

 

So, Glaive and glaive prime.... There's my thoughts and findings in a nutshell. Difficulty of acquisition? storming the gates at Normandy if the Germans had battle mechs and you had a rubber band gun. reward for it all? A punishment?

 

why cant the prime throw three glaives at once? each set to 45 degrees? or why cant it have a homing feature so it doesn't just go every which way after you smack something. let it smack something but then make it home in on the closest enemy, smack them, then continue for how many bounces are left. or give it a 50% chance on triggering effects. something noticeable and apparent! make it the very penicle of existence and glaivehood that it should be and that it's meant to be. please... please in the sacred and venerated name of hayden tenno remove this faux glaive prime that we were conned into acquiring by a sleazy corpus salesman and give us the glaive prime that reflects in it's entirety the difficulty of acquiring it.

 

 

and this isnt just for glaive and braton. same goes for latron and the rest, it's just a variant of a flavor, nothing noticeable. it's nothing as robust or noticeable as going from say mint ice cream to mint chocolate chip ice cream where the difference seems profound and blatantly obvious!

and that's just it, the message i'm trying to get across here. The very feedback at the core of all of this. The family of weapons should feel blatantly obvious and apparent.

 

 

 

Now we get onto another thing.... what thing?

 

Corpus, Griner, Infested, Tenno

what do i mean by these things? well overall themes of weapons for starters. i'm not talking something so simple as an assault rifle that shoots bullets or a pistol that's  a 3 round burst. i'm talking something on a broader scope than that, something that gets down to the very being of the weapon in question, how to tell them apart and why you should use one over the other.

 

Corpus weapons feel very accurate, very carefully constructed for a specific purpose. ironically they're mostly "laser" weapons... plasma really but that's semantics. Corpus are about putting your rounds down range, and on your target. it's about dealing with a problem at hand in a very cost effective way.

 

Griner weapons are big, bulky, loud, and most of all angry. they have a freaking machete for crying out loud! you donot get much angrier than a meat cleaver. you can see people make a nice pleasant face while using a big hammer, you never see that nice pleasant face on someone who's hacking at something with a machete. And that sums up griner weapons. they are angry and they want you to know it! The brak pistol is all about just "Rucking someone's day" and the Gorgon and grakata are all about screaming and laughing like the joker from batman as you just lay on the trigger and forget the concept of letting up. I swear they made the deathmachine rifle for death cube.  It's about beating the ever loving (Word i cant use on the forms) out of someone. It's about "Rucking someone's day". because nothing says i hate you and your friends like a flame thrower and a rocket launcher.

 

Infested weapons are all about bringing a bit of pain, letting the enemy feel  a sting and then dealing with the consequences of getting in range of your attack. it's about making them suffer painfully until they die a horrid death of unimaginable agony and unspeakable an amount of suffering. The Torrid isnt horrid, dont let the roomer mill stray you wrong on that. And the astrid has long since been revered as one of the best, if not THE best weapon in the game, that should speak volumes for the kind of suffering infested weapons inflict. it's all about that over time  thing... or as they say in some MMOs... More DOTs more DOTs more DOTs. Even their melee weapons brought the pain over time!... least they did before 2.0... sure that will be fixed in a month or so after a lot of the bugs are worked out.

 

Tenno weapons are deadly surprises hidden in the frame and form of the past, dragged kicking and screaming bloody murder to the future. How can i say this? Kunai anyone? How about a little love for the crit happy soma? Oh and be sure to have a nice day with the Vectis, your enemies certanly wont. least they wont be getting a "head" in life if you know what i mean. Tigris needs a bit of work... but still. These weapons bring the pain like obvious man kicks in a door.

 

 

what do we have now though? sure they all look different but they all function pretty much the same. assault rifles. all pretty much have the same crit chance, same proc chance. short of personal taste (and the MK1 braton) there's no blatant reason to use one weapon or another. sure there's slash impact and what not to consider now and those are in flux a bit. It just seems the weapons themselves have been robbed of what made them feel like their themes. all the assault rifles feel pretty much the same with a few minor differences. they all have pretty much the same general crit chance. they all have the same proc chance. and even among the prime or vandal or wraith version of the guns.... the difference is menial. and lets face it, some weapons have it a bit worse than others. Astrid is probably wondering where it's wallet is, why it's not wearing pants, and how much it drank last night for starters. Glaive prime is bawling in the corner... or let me rephrase that. Glaive prime's owner is bawling in the corner sucking his/her thumb while regular glaive drives by in a porche listening to Mozart.

 

i'm sure things will get better in time. this was a major change and of course they're expecting fallout ala trinoble for all of this, but we cant help clean up the mess if we dont provide good and valid feedback.

So  then. what are your guy's and gal's thoughts on this? other than i'm possibly the worst speller you've seen in possibly 3 or 4 days now on the internet.

Edited November 23, 2013 by YuriTesla

[Runlock]

I think you hit the nail on the head. The difference between the Prime weapons don't justify the time it takes to earn them.

it is easy for me to choose what weapons to use now, (outside of prime/vanilla families,) since each weapon is better suited to dealing a specific damage type.

[Warstout]

The issue with Primes, by there very concept, is that they are intended to be a direct upgrade to existing content.

 

Making direct upgrades is bad game design. Period. You don't want to alienate players work by creating new guns that do EXACTLY what the old guns do, but much better. 

 

Primes are quite good, and generally an improvement on their base weapons in about every instance; I don't think making them INCREDIBLE upgrades will actually be good for the game.

[Dyneomite]

The issue with Primes, by there very concept, is that they are intended to be a direct upgrade to existing content.

 

Making direct upgrades is bad game design. Period. You don't want to alienate players work by creating new guns that do EXACTLY what the old guns do, but much better. 

 

Primes are quite good, and generally an improvement on their base weapons in about every instance; I don't think making them INCREDIBLE upgrades will actually be good for the game.

what is leveling up.

i get what you're saying, but as you advance you gain access to better gear. that said by not making gear that is a everlasting pain to obtain better than the gear its upgrading you're punishing the players who obtain it by making the upgrade mediocre. the braton prime is the best example of this i believe because unless something has changed with U11 (which very well may be) it is the most difficult prime to get. the reward for the work to get this gear shouldnt be gold bits. this game is a psudo rpg with how gear is, thats why some weapons are rank restricted.