Echoes of Duviri - Community QOL Improvements & Changes

[[DE]Taylor]

Tenno,

As we approach the release of the next major update, “Echoes of Duviri,” it’s time to share details on some updates you can expect. This Dev Workshop will not focus on the new playable content you can expect but on some of the balance improvements and Quality of Life changes we’ve made in response to player requests and feedback.

On July 27, players can expect adjustments to the following systems:

• Enhanced Damage Numbers
• Overguard for Warframes
• Cold, Impact, and Puncture Status Changes
• New Incarnon Acquisition

ENHANCED DAMAGE NUMBERS

Warframe is a numbers game, whether you’re Modding your Warframe or your Weapons to do as much damage as possible. With that in mind, we have introduced a new Enhanced Damage Number setting to properly communicate the impact of your attacks and increase the overall legibility of damage numbers in-game. 

This new setting can be found in the Interface: HUD Category of your Settings Menu under “Show Damage Numbers.” You can cycle between the new Enhanced and the familiar Legacy systems or turn off damage numbers altogether!

 

For our visual learning Tenno, please enjoy a look at the Enhanced Damage Numbers in action with Lead Game Designer Pablo!

Overall Damage Number Changes:
Whether you are using Legacy or Enhanced Damage Numbers, these new settings will be available with Echoes of Duviri:

Damage Numbers Scale
Custom scaling of your damage number text size from 50 to 300!

This means Damage numbers will no longer scale with HUD scale setting as they used to. So you can customize the HUD and the number size separately. 

Compact Damage Numbers
This Toggle will shorten large numbers for legibility (i.e., 100,357 would be shortened to 100k) 

Commas in Damage Numbers on Consoles
This was initially released on PC and required extra work to get on consoles, but you can expect it now with Echoes of Duviri!

Enhanced Damage Numbers Setting
With this new setting toggled on, players can expect to see the following:

Refreshed Damage Number Appearance
A punchier presentation of damage numbers, with an updated font treatment to improve legibility. For reference of what this looks like in action, refer to Pablo’s video above. 

Prioritized Critical Hits
Player damage output varies wildly from damage over time (DOT) from Status Effects to powerful Critical Hits. Previously all types of Damage were treated the same in the Damage Number cycle: Critical Hit Damage Numbers often disappeared quickly if many small DOT procs were happening concurrently. From a gameplay side, this had no impact on the damage done to your enemies, but it meant the true impact of your Critical Hits was only sometimes communicated to you as clearly as we would like.

Now, your Critical Hits will be prioritized over smaller damage numbers. Those smaller numbers will still appear but disappear sooner if higher-priority damage is done. Additionally, this prioritization system applies to Critical Hit Tiers as well, meaning Super Critical Hit Damage Numbers will linger longer than regular Critical Hits.

Custom Ability Damage Treatment
Since your Abilities traditionally cannot Crit, these attacks tend to have less oomph. Now Ability Damage has its own Damage Color so that it will stand out amongst the rest!

Like all other Damage Numbers, you can customize Ability Damage colors in the “Customize Hud Colors” menu (found in the Interface category of your Accessibility Settings).
 

Melee Damage Numbers:
With Legacy settings, Damage Numbers appear at the point of contact, often off-screen or otherwise obstructed by Melee attacks. 

With Enhanced settings, Melee Damage numbers will now travel with you to improve visibility and will travel with the attack movement as well. Again, this is best illustrated in Pablo’s video for those who want to see this in action!

PLAYER OVERGUARD IMPROVEMENTS
With Duviri came the first instance of Warframes using Overguard, and The Seven Crimes of Kullervo solidified this mechanic as a part of various Warframes’ kits. 

Now that players have access to Overguard consistently, we have made some adjustments to improve the quality of life in this new health state: 

Consistent Proc Immunity
Due to the variety of sources of Overguard, there were occasionally inconsistencies in how it behaved regarding Proc Immunity. With Echoes of Duviri, all sources of Player Overguard will offer Full Proc Immunity while active. 

Overguard Depletion Protection
Similar to Shields, Player Overguard will now offer a brief moment of invulnerability (currently 0.5s) once depleted. This window will prevent players with Overguard from being one-shot, as damage to Overguard will no longer carry over into your Health or Shield pool once depleted. 

Upon launch, we will closely monitor feedback on this mechanic change to see if further adjustments are needed.

NOTE: This Overguard Depletion Protection applies only to Player Overguard, not Overguard seen on enemies. 

Hit Impact Visuals 
Similar to taking damage to your Health or your Shields, Overguard now has its own unique appearance when attacked. Damage will no longer cause blood splatters while Overguard is active, and we have added a unique metallic hit effect that better communicates having a layered shell protecting you.

Additionally, players will no longer flinch while taking damage with Overguard active. 
(NOTE: This has no gameplay function other than looking cool)

 

STATUS CHANGES
With the variety of Status Effects in Warframe, certain types may be seen as less favorable than others. Cold, Puncture, and Impact tend to have a lesser impact on the battlefield, so we felt it was time to revisit the value they added to player kits:

Puncture Changes:
Weakened Status Effect Buffs:

• Increased the debuff to enemy attacks from 30% to 40% on the first stack.
• Reduced the maximum amount of stacks from 10 to 5.
• Increased the per-stack debuff from 5% to 10%. 
• Increased the total debuff at Max Stacks from 75% to 80%. 

Weakened Status Effect Additions:

• Increases Critical Chance threshold on enemy by 5% per Stack, to a maximum of 25% at 5 Stacks. This is additive after Mods, not before. Does not apply to Abilities or AOE damage. 

Impact Changes:
Stagger Status Effect Changes: 

• Reduced the maximum amount of stacks from 10 to 5.
• Increased the Mercy Threshold from 4% to 8% per stack. 

Functionally, this allows for players to trigger early Mercy kills with less stacks required!

Cold Changes:
Freeze Status Effect Changes:

• Increased the maximum amount of stacks from 8 to 9.
• Increased the additional per-stack Slow from 3.5% to 5%. 
• Increased the maximum Slow effect from 75% to 90%. 
  • While we previously mentioned buffing Cold Slow Effect to 85% in our Citrine’s Last Wish update, we mistakenly only increased it to 75% instead. 

Freeze Status Effect Additions:

• Increased the Critical Damage taken by an enemy by 10% on initial Status Effect. Subsequent Stacks increase this debuff by 5%, up to a maximum of 50%. This is additive after Mods, not before.

 

NEW INCARNON ACQUISITION 
With Echoes of Duviri, we are adding another batch of Incarnons to the Circuit ecosystem: Gorgon, Boar, Angstrum, Gammacor, and Anku!

Regarding the current Steel Path Circuit Reward Path rotation, we wanted to give players the fastest access to these new Incarnons post-launch. As a result, we are altering the current Steel Path Circuit reward rotation to ensure they show up next rotation (July 30th). 

Here is the updated Offering Rotation Schedule for the Steel Path Circuit:

Week 1: Braton, Lato, Skana, Paris, Kunai (this week’s offerings)
*Week 2: (NEW) Boar, Gammacor, Angstrum, Gorgon, and Anku 
Week 3: Bo, Latron, Furis, Furax, Strun 
Week 4: Lex, Magistar, Boltor, Bronco, Ceramic Dagger 
Week 5: Torid, Dual Toxocyst, Dual Ichor, Miter, Atomos
Week 6: Ack & Brunt, Soma, Vasto, Nami Solo, Burston 
Week 7: Zylok, Sibear, Dread, Despair, Hate

New Incarnon Geneses Acquisition Method: Incarnon Market at Cavalero 
In addition to acquiring these new Incarnon Geneses via the Steel Path Circuit Rewards, the respective Adapters will be available for purchase at Calavero with Platinum in the new “Incarnon Market.” Once the Incarnon Market is live on July 30th, it will remain accessible with the offerings regardless of what week's rotation we’re on.  

As previously discussed on Devstream 172, this experiment intends to offer players the option to acquire the new items instantly, should they desire, instead of waiting for the week's rotation to return -- while ensuring that the free acquisition path is not prohibitive for players. Only these *5 new Adapters will be available for Platinum via this experiment and will become available following the Weekly Reset on July 30th. 

Purchasing these Adapters will earn you both the Adapter and the required Resources to Install them. 

===

That’s all for now, Tenno! See you July 27th for the Echoes of Duviri and Wisp Prime launch! 

Edited July 24, 2023 by [DE]Taylor
small formatting tweak

[BIGF0O7]

This is just a nerf to impact damage. Literally no one uses impact for finishers as literally no one relys on finishers—single target kills—to accomplish anything outside of niche meme builds that get dumpstered by meta builds that clear entire rooms with one button.

[Rebore]

pog

[Aturixios]

Whoooaa, some really cool changes coming!
Damage numbers are great and all, but that Overguard gating will make Kullervo/Rhino actually worth playing now

[God_is_a_Cat_Girl]

Damage number legibility improvements are nice, but from what I see there's no improvements in being able to see numbers but also being able to see where we are aiming. Nowadays we deal so many different instances of damage so fast that the numbers cover the entire Crosshair area, and when we have mods/arcanes/abilities that also require headshots, the experience becomes very frustrating. None of the new additions help keep the numbers legible but also prevent them from disrupting gameplay (removing or making them less legible isn't a solution), and seemingly we will continue to have non solutions to that issue which really shouldn't be an issue on a shooter.

[Prydwen]

On 2023-07-24 at 7:09 PM, (NSW)BIGFO0T said:

This is just a nerf to impact damage. Literally no one uses impact for finishers as literally no one relys on finishers—single target kills—to accomplish anything outside of niche meme builds that get dumpstered by meta builds that clear entire rooms with one button.

How is this a nerf to impact dmg

[(XBOX)LostSpark13]

9 minutes ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Tenno,

As we approach the release of the next major update, “Echoes of Duviri,” it’s time to share details on some updates you can expect. This Dev Workshop will not focus on the new playable content you can expect but on some of the balance improvements and Quality of Life changes we’ve made in response to player requests and feedback.

On July 27, players can expect adjustments to the following systems:

• Enhanced Damage Numbers
• Overguard for Warframes
• Cold, Impact, and Puncture Status Changes
• New Incarnon Acquisition

ENHANCED DAMAGE NUMBERS

Warframe is a numbers game, whether you’re Modding your Warframe or your Weapons to do as much damage as possible. With that in mind, we have introduced a new Enhanced Damage Number setting to properly communicate the impact of your attacks and increase the overall legibility of damage numbers in-game. 

This new setting can be found in the Interface: HUD Category of your Settings Menu under “Show Damage Numbers.” You can cycle between the new Enhanced and the familiar Legacy systems or turn off damage numbers altogether!

 

For our visual learning Tenno, please enjoy a look at the Enhanced Damage Numbers in action with Lead Game Designer Pablo!

Overall Damage Number Changes:
Whether you are using Legacy or Enhanced Damage Numbers, these new settings will be available with Echoes of Duviri:

Damage Numbers Scale
Custom scaling of your damage number text size from 50 to 300!

This means Damage numbers will no longer scale with HUD scale setting as they used to. So you can customize the HUD and the number size separately. 

Compact Damage Numbers
This Toggle will shorten large numbers for legibility (i.e., 100,357 would be shortened to 100k) 

Commas in Damage Numbers on Consoles
This was initially released on PC and required extra work to get on consoles, but you can expect it now with Echoes of Duviri!

Enhanced Damage Numbers Setting
With this new setting toggled on, players can expect to see the following:

Refreshed Damage Number Appearance
A punchier presentation of damage numbers, with an updated font treatment to improve legibility. For reference of what this looks like in action, refer to Pablo’s video above. 

Prioritized Critical Hits
Player damage output varies wildly from damage over time (DOT) from Status Effects to powerful Critical Hits. Previously all types of Damage were treated the same in the Damage Number cycle: Critical Hit Damage Numbers often disappeared quickly if many small DOT procs were happening concurrently. From a gameplay side, this had no impact on the damage done to your enemies, but it meant the true impact of your Critical Hits was only sometimes communicated to you as clearly as we would like.

Now, your Critical Hits will be prioritized over smaller damage numbers. Those smaller numbers will still appear but disappear sooner if higher-priority damage is done. Additionally, this prioritization system applies to Critical Hit Tiers as well, meaning Super Critical Hit Damage Numbers will linger longer than regular Critical Hits.

Custom Ability Damage Treatment
Since your Abilities traditionally cannot Crit, these attacks tend to have less oomph. Now Ability Damage has its own Damage Color so that it will stand out amongst the rest!

Like all other Damage Numbers, you can customize Ability Damage colors in the “Customize Hud Colors” menu (found in the Interface category of your Accessibility Settings).
 

Melee Damage Numbers:
With Legacy settings, Damage Numbers appear at the point of contact, often off-screen or otherwise obstructed by Melee attacks. 

With Enhanced settings, Melee Damage numbers will now travel with you to improve visibility and will travel with the attack movement as well. Again, this is best illustrated in Pablo’s video for those who want to see this in action!

Hi Taylor, thank you for sharing the news!

I have a question, will the new damage projection also impact the text that pop when we kill all the jail guardians in rescue missions?

It seems to function the same as damage and isn't easy to see at the moment.

Cheers!

[Aturixios]

On 2023-07-24 at 7:09 PM, (NSW)BIGFO0T said:

This is just a nerf to impact damage. Literally no one uses impact for finishers as literally no one relys on finishers—single target kills—to accomplish anything outside of niche meme builds that get dumpstered by meta builds that clear entire rooms with one button.

Is this really your only take away from this post? Nothing about Impact damage was mentioned, only the status cap changing for things to be quicker.

[Ambrosia_Rev]

Ez p2w, now I don't have to spend 3-4 hrs doing horrible circuit and 20 mins getting pathos clamps.

Phew

Edited July 24, 2023 by Ambrosia_Rev

[Numerounius]

8 minutes ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Increased the maximum Slow effect from 75% to 90%. 

This change actually makes it worse in cases vs invulnerable enemies since it prolongs the stun duration even more and time it takes for the enemy to become vulnerable again. Enemy examples includes Lieutenant Lech Kril and General Sargas Ruk.

Is it possible to look at this interaction? I suggest disabling CC during invulnerable phases to prevent this interaction from happening with the cold status effect or with certain Warframe abilities.

 

I've pointed this out during the whole magus lockdown and thrax enemy units interaction with the attempts to fix the soft-lock that was being done.

[(PSN)Jmazing7]

I'm either gonna be really happy or really dissapointed when I check for commas after this update.

[Casardis]

These are some amazing accessiblity changes! With how customizable the numbers are, it can be great for build testing too, so you can see the exact number filling the screen. On the other hand, smaller and compact options allow for much smoother visual clarity in gameplay, much needed to enjoy the wonderful effects in WF without the numbers cluttering.

That said, on the subject of clarity and accessibility visual options for clarity, can you consider a slider for SCREEN SHAKE in the future? A number of effects and presentation rely on screen shake, but it's sometimes overdone on others. Similar to Bloom years ago, it would benefit a lot to have a slider instead of a toggle.

 

[Alphas]

Can we please get separate colors for Tier 4 and Tier 5 crits since those are much easier to achieve now?

[Upright1]

Cold status buffs?? Frost cannot stop winning, lord almighty!

[LittleLeoniePrime]

4 minutes ago, XHADgaming said:

I suggest disabling CC during invulnerable phases

be careful what you wish for... this would make it impossible to speed the fight up too

[Geway2]

Can we have something like a training dummy that can change health/shield/armor types/armor value/faction so we can test out builds better? And faster access to the Simulacrum would be nice, loading into a relay first is annoying.

[Hydroculator]

And you're going to fix extractor notifications in the companion app?

[Kename_Fin]

On 2023-07-24 at 7:09 PM, (NSW)BIGFO0T said:

This is just a nerf to impact damage. Literally no one uses impact for finishers as literally no one relys on finishers—single target kills—to accomplish anything outside of niche meme builds that get dumpstered by meta builds that clear entire rooms with one button.

WFBRS (Warframe Brainrot Syndrome)

[IDystopiaI]

The impact changes make Impact worse, making the detrimental part of the status more pronounced while trying to make mercy kills more common. Now enemies are going to be flailing around more making headshots harder to land, and will still die before someone gets a chance go up to the enemy to use a mercy kill. This also ignores the fact that you're expecting players to jump into Eximus units, most of which will stagger you and hit significantly harder than the rest of the enemies just to do a mercy kill on a single enemy. There's also the problem that by the time Overguard is destroyed, there's enough DOTs and other status procs present to kill the enemy most of the time, and that mercy kills are only usable on some enemies. Impact makes your weapon worse in all other cases.

Hopefully a better test showing how Impact Procs get progressively worse as more procs are added:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKFEAjdiWDo

• At 5 procs, the enemy starts raising its arms in front of its head and the torso starts swaying and some randomized lateral movement is added.
• At 10 procs, it looks like a backpedal animation is added, replacing the animation of the enemy taking a slight step back to steady itself.

Previous videos which don't do a good job showing progressive stages:

Spoiler

Differences between Impact Proc animations below and at cap:

Below 10 Impact Procs - some flailing but not too extreme, more of a minor annoyance.

Shooting enemy that has hit Impact Proc Cap - fairly extreme flailing and will be more common if the cap is reduced to 5.

*Removing the Heavy Stagger when at the Impact Proc Cap I thought the Wiki had specific wording for a 'Heavy Stagger/Flinch' at 10 procs but that does not seem to be the case. Reducing the intensity of staggers would help with mitigating this, or replacing the stagger with something else entirely. As it is I don't think anyone actually uses impact intentionally for the brief stun it provides, and changing the effect to something desirable would go a long way to having players consider adopting weapons like this. (Please no more band-aid mods like Hemorrhage/Internal Bleeding, make the actual status effect useful instead hiding the "fix" behind mods).

Adding an offset for weapon damage numbers would be helpful in cleaning up clutter around the reticle.

Edited July 25, 2023 by IDystopiaI
Typos and links, and some clarifications

[Maxwell]

Can we change the color for crit beyond tier 3 please?

Also I'm glad puncture and cold get updated but I feel it need more work for those to be actually viable

[RobRalneR]

On 2023-07-24 at 7:09 PM, (NSW)BIGFO0T said:

This is just a nerf to impact damage. Literally no one uses impact for finishers as literally no one relys on finishers—single target kills—to accomplish anything outside of niche meme builds that get dumpstered by meta builds that clear entire rooms with one button.

I don't get your logic.

I use Parazon finishers all the time for guaranteed health orbs and sometimes energy orbs. Add in Equilibrium mod for warframes and I get 55 energy. As for Impact stacks, they reduced the amount stacks required for max but doubled the threshold gain, so it's a buff in my eyes.

And, by the way, I use Epitaph as my primer for guns, melee and proccing Impact status for Parazon finishers.

[Casardis]

On 2023-07-24 at 7:09 PM, (NSW)BIGFO0T said:

This is just a nerf to impact damage. Literally no one uses impact for finishers as literally no one relys on finishers—single target kills—to accomplish anything outside of niche meme builds that get dumpstered by meta builds that clear entire rooms with one button.

Uh, that's a buff, not a nerf.

4 x 10 is the same as 8 x 5 (both = 40), except requiring 5 Impact procs is factually faster to max the threshold than 10.

Also, niche or not, it can still be used, especially with weapons that have forced impact procs. Additionally, Kullervo can achieve quite some funny results with Mercy Finishers, which I use all the time in SP solo Survival.

 

[VladYvhv]

20 minutes ago, Ambrosia_Rev said:

Ez p2w, now I don't have to spend 20 mins getting pathos clamps.

Phew

Or spending 21 weeks waiting around for all 5 to be avaible.

[MinecraftGangsta]

💀 i was waiting for latron

[VladYvhv]

4 minutes ago, Casardis said:

Uh, that's a buff, not a nerf.

4 x 10 is the same as 8 x 5 (both = 40), except requiring 5 Impact procs is factually faster to max the threshold than 10.

I think people complaining about it being a nerf are the ones using impact procs for the "convert impact procs to slash procs" mods. In that sense, it's a nerf.