the energy system and its future.

[SDGDen]

in the most recent DevShorts, DEsteve and DErebecca briefly mentioned the energy system in warframe.

transcription:

steve (about soulframe): right now we're arguing hotly about cooldowns versus energy systems
rebecca: interesting... warframe seems to have neither. all casting all the time (unless you're lavos)
steve: wellll energy economy issues aside, i would say it has an energy system.
rebecca (sarcastically): hmmm i see. 

 

rebecca and steve bring up an interesting issue here, which is that: warframe's energy system may as well not exist for most of the game. after the war within it's basically just a build-check on whether or not you are using any of the dozens of techniques to completely ignore the energy system. 

you could legitimately remove energy entirely and most players would not notice a difference in their playstyle. in fact the amount of ways we have to regenerate absurd amounts of energy is so high now that i've been seeing sub-100% efficiency as almost a standard on builds. and it makes sense. why bother with efficiency when you can regenerate 10 energy per second with very minimal setup (in fact, with the grimoire now we can regenerate 30 energy per second on any frame without needing ANY specific mods on your frame. just zenurik focus, the grimoire with the energy regain invocation and nourish subsumed onto your warframe)

 

so you'd assume "this needs fixing", but *why*, for that, lets look at the purpose of an energy system (or cooldowns) from a game design standpoint.

both energy systems and cooldown systems are primarily meant to put a cost to casting an ability, said cost prevents the player from spamming the ability, instead requiring smart and tactical use.

the upside of an energy system in warframe's case (looking at the origins of the system) is that because energy is gained through orbs dropped by enemies, you can cast your abilities more if you're experiencing more intense action and killing more enemies. 

the downside to an energy system is that players are incentivised to "save up" for their best ability. why cast shock if that means you lose 25% of your progress towards casting discharge?

the upside of a cooldown system is that each ability is independent, you can cast discharge and while it's on cooldown you can still cast shock a couple times without affecting your progress towards casting discharge again. 

the downside of a cooldown system is that it's a fair bit more locked-down and static since you're working with a timer instead of a "material" cost.

 

 

at the moment, warframe's energy system fails at limiting casting (as rebecca said "all casting all the time") and because of that the upside of an energy system is also not relevant, meaning that the energy system as it is now is only a detriment to gameplay experience since the only thing still there is the downside.

and while we could go into a long discussion on how to nerf energy gain back to the level where it'd work, at this point it's easier to do the following rework:

change warframe over to a cooldown system. 

yes, that's right. removing energy in favour of a cooldown system. this *will* be a major nerf to abilities in general, but it will also be a buff in disguise for all abilities that currently arent used because "why would i use this ability when i need my energy to cast this other ability". it will shift the caster meta from focusing on one or two abilities to getting *all* of your abilities to be useful. 

 

how would this work?:

first of all, obviously cooldowns need to be added to all abilities, with the exception being abilities that require some other resource to cast (like nidus' 3 and 4 as well as hildryn's abilities).

how long a cooldown should be depends on the ability and the intended playstyle, for example ember's inferno shouldn't have the same cooldown as rhino's stomp since it's meant to be spammed a fair bit more. but as a base, i made 3 presets for frames based on how much they're supposed to cast:

high-cast: 5/10/15/20 seconds
mid-cast: 8/16/24/32 seconds
low-cast: 10/20/30/40 seconds

unlike with lavos, efficiency will play a role in this cooldown, efficiency will be uncapped and will effectively act as a "speed multiplier", 150% efficiency means that your cooldown finishes 50% faster (so a 10 second cooldown would become a 6.6 second cooldown), 200% efficiency means double speed (so 10 second cooldown becomes a 5 second cooldown), 300% would be triple speed (10 seconds to 3.3 seconds).

for duration abilities, the cooldown will start at the same time as the duration, this means that with optimization, you *could* still have constant availability on buffs, but it requires significantly more building into (getting your efficiency, duration and cooldown reductions high enough to end up with a higher duration than cooldown). this is to prevent buff abilities that can be "refreshed" from suddenly sucking major nuts (like chroma's 3, imagine having to build vex armor back up every 40 seconds) 

for drain abilities, those get turned into duration abilities with one key feature: they have a way to make their timer go back up. the maximum and starting duration of the ability is based on your duration stat and how many seconds you regain per (for example) energy orb depends on efficiency. this also opens the door for abilities that gain time through other means, for example valkyr's 4 could regain time on kills rather than via energy orbs. 

speaking of energy orbs: those still "effectively" work as they used to, reducing all your cooldowns by 25%. 

then for mods, arcanes and abilities:

energy max mods now do the following: on casting an ability, your next cast (within 5 seconds) gets X seconds flat cooldown reduction. for example, 5 seconds. this means that as a high-cast frame, you could cast your 1, then your 4 and your 4 would end up with only a 15 second cooldown instead of a 20 second one. this incentivises chaining abilities in bursts in the same way that having a high energy max would do. it also works well with the name of the energy max mod for warframes: "flow". 

mods and perks that give energy regeneration (such as energy siphon and energy nexus) now just give flat cooldown reduction, for example, 1 second (stacking) for energy siphon. if you're running a high-cast frame, your cooldowns are now 4/9/14/19 assuming you didn't use any efficiency. if you have 200% efficiency they'd go from 2.5/5/7.5/10 to 1.5/4/6.5/9

nourish's energy multiplier will still work as-is, multiplying how much these effects and orbs reduce cooldown (so if you have nourish at 2x multiplier and pick up an orb your cooldowns reduce by 50%)

arcane energize now has a 5/7/10/15/20% chance of instantly resetting 1/1/2/3/4 abilities when you pick up an orb, with a 15 second cooldown on energize itself.

rage and hunter adrenaline now reduce all cooldowns by 0.5s and 0.75s per-hit, but can only trigger once per second. 

quick thinking and gladiator finesse: when you take a lethal hit, one of your abilities (chosen at random) will go on-cooldown. this effect does not make use of abilities that do not have a cooldown (like nidus' 3 and 4)

preparation now gives you 3 free casts

free casts simply dont trigger the cooldown (for example preparation and arcane steadfast will do this), if you use your free cast on an ability that uses a different resource (like nidus stacks, shields or health) it simply doesnt use that resource instead.

equilibrium is untouched, it simply makes health orbs work the same as energy orbs. 

bloodletting: now requires at least 200hp, consumes 200hp and resets all cooldowns

kinetic plating: works like rage

thurible: grants cooldown reduction up to 25% depending on strength, 4x multiplier on headshots, cannot reduce it's own cooldown and no longer needs a charge mechanic.

cathode grace: flat cooldown reduction like energy siphon and energy nexus

voracious metastasis: 30 second cooldown, reduces your allies' cooldowns by 30 seconds and heals you by 300HP (health affected by STR, cooldown reduction on allies is equal to the cooldown of the ability)

limbo rift: passive cooldown reduction while inside the rift, limbo gets 1 second of cooldown reduction on all of his abilities every time an enemy is killed in the rift

octavia inspiration: grants 1 second flat cooldown reduction for 30 seconds

rally point: grants flat cooldown reduction like energy nexus and energy siphon

energy vampire: reduces cooldowns by 5 seconds (affected by strength) with each pulse

desecrate: works like drain abilities but instead of a timer it has a counter for how many more enemies you can desecrate. augment remains untouched.

 

 

this would still allow most of the power fantasy we have now, but would require significantly more building into that fantasy. it also encourages people to use all of their abilities rather than just the most powerful one. it would also solve the non-existence of the current energy system. 

if you made it this far, thank you for reading! i'm well aware i will now be immediately cancelled by the anti-nerf mob, as per usual, but im hoping some of yall actually have something to add to the discussion other than "no, nerf bad buff good."

also calling it now, someone will end up reading the first part and immediately reply "no because they tried this with lavos and he sucks" (even though he doesnt and I in no way am saying to use the exact cooldown system lavos has) 

 

[Chewarette]

"All casting all the time" is obviously an exaggeration that doesn't apply to everyone. I don't think it's worth focusing on such a weird comment.

There are many situations where energy makes sense, and "casting all the time" is impossible on several builds / warframes. You're saying we have unlimited energy with Zenurik, Grimoire with rare mod slotted and Nourish. Cool story, if you grinded for the full Focus tree, got the Grimoire, got the Mod, forma'd the thing to make it fit without screwing its damage, and subsumed an ability to fit Nourish, then I would say you deserve to have something for it.

That's as saying Energy should not exist because a 855-energy Saryn with 175% efficiency, 5 tau-shards for max energy or orb efficiency, Energize, Grimoire and a Trinity or Harrow in affinity range can spam Miasma without any struggle... Well yeah, of course, with that amount of dedication I definitely hope this guy can spam.

Energy has no problem. Even with all the tools at our disposal, there are still cases where you have to be careful with energy to not miss out.

All in all, Energy is miles ahead cooldown-based thing. Cooldowns suck hard

[Skoomaseller]

while your ideas are nice, I don't think we should 100% shift to a cd system.

It's too radical a change and I don't think people will appreciate the sudden change in how the system works currently.

Instead I propose cooldown mechanics to be introduced to some newer frames first. Lavos is done, yeah, but what I mean is the hypothetical new frame should be given what you propose here, on one or two of its abilities, alongside two other abilities that utilize energy as per normal. This is to test the waters, see how the community feels.

Lavos I feel is held back by how clunky it is to use his element imbuing mechanic, so I think having more frames that use cooldowns can perhaps shift community perception of this concept a bit.

It's an interesting take, shifting warframe's main resource to energy, and one I can understand somewhat, because I feel having cooldowns is a better balancing "agent" or lever for abilities that are truly ridiculous, so they cannot be freely spammed.

Something like League of Legends, where stronger abilities (usually Ultimate abilities) usually have higher cooldowns (Shen R, Karthus R, etc etc).

With cooldowns, I feel DE can introduce even more ludicrous abilities than we already have currently, which I think will be pretty nice... I think.

Edited January 10 by Skoomaseller

[0_The_F00l]

Interesting but I do not think that will happen as it requires too many fundamental changes.

I have another setup in mind which in all honesty will also not happen but doesn't hurt to discuss.

Firstly all frames will have two energy pools , one will be a recharging battery and another will be a material based addition like we have now.

The battery based one will recharge based on your actions like Parkour , running , killing with headshots/melee basically just playing the game more actively. Call it a kinetic battery if you will. The kinetic battery will have enough max energy to let you cast your ultimate once when fully charged at default efficiency. I am thinking 3% per second and 5% for every active thing you do.

The resource one will be just like we have now and be filled up the same way it already is.

This way , you will never truly be helpless but you will not be spamming nonstop either.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

1 hour ago, SDGDen said:

change warframe over to a cooldown system. 

ain't no way it's gonna happen, not just because it's too radical a change for most, but also because it goes against the fast-paced nature of the game: from what we've seen of Soulframe, it's a lot slower, much more akin to Drifter combat in Duviri. even if an energy system is added to soulframe, it will still be more tactical and less spammy than warframe.

I'd argue DE made a rod for their own backs when it comes to warframe's energy system, constantly adding things like Zenurik, Arcane Energize, the abiulity to make 100 energy pizzas, like what did they think was gonna happen? lol. with Soulframe they have a chance to start from scratch and think more carefully about how to implement it. for us Tenno though, it's way too late: energy addiction has taken hold and it cannot be broken without setting the playerbase on fire.

there are other alternatives to cooldown vs energy though: Hildryn uses shields as energy, Nidus uses stacks for his 3 and 4, and I'd argue that Inaros should use health as energy if/when he gets reworked, to justify his massive health pool. IMO DE should experiment more with ideas like this if they're so worried about the energy economy (they don't seem to be though).

[Tsukinoki]

The only thing I see from the system you're proposing is ESO's spam prevention mechanic.  E.g. some frames are going to be hit hard by this and others won't even know that the system was put in place.

Further some abilities and play styles get shafted unnecessarily.

For example take Mesa.
You use her ult and kill the enemies around you and now you're just stuck and either left to sit in the ability and wait for enemies to come to you, OR you could disable your ability, immediately enter a 20+ second CD where you can't use her ult again, and move to where you can hit enemies but can no longer use your ult.
A system like this basically says "If you don't equip the waltz augment then don't even think of using her ult."
After all it doesn't matter if you spend 5 seconds or 30 seconds in her ult you have the same CD either way.

Any frame with an exalted weapon would face the same issue of "Once you turn it on you're stuck with it because turning it off would be a complete waste and you would be stuck on CD for a very long time unable to activate it again."

Further your point here:

3 hours ago, SDGDen said:

for drain abilities, those get turned into duration abilities with one key feature: they have a way to make their timer go back up. the maximum and starting duration of the ability is based on your duration stat and how many seconds you regain per (for example) energy orb depends on efficiency. this also opens the door for abilities that gain time through other means, for example valkyr's 4 could regain time on kills rather than via energy orbs. 

Just means that some frames that people already complain about sitting in their exalted weapon (Excalibur and Mesa for example) now have zero reason to ever leave their ultimate.

A Mesa with Waltz in a survival mission?  Literally zero reason to ever de-activate her ability as she'll keep it going literally forever by kills....

A valkyr using Hysteria?  Well now you have a permanently invulnerable frame with literally zero downtime or any reason to turn off hysteria because now it's fueled by kills and will literally never end. (And I hope you mean only kills with the claws would add time....which doesn't fix the problem by any means but hey at least they couldn't use a kuva bramma to extend its duration at that point)

At least in the current version of the game there would actually be downtime and a reason for that downtime where you have to de-activate your ability at some point.

 

 

Beyond that you have the issue of ruining some frames for newer players while leaving them untouched essentially for vets.
For example take Loki (a bit outdated but a good example).

Even if his invisibilty got a 40 second CD I could still run Loki with infinite uptime without the need for orbs or anything else supporting me.
Newer players though?  I really hope they enjoy ducking into closets and sitting and twiddling their thumbs while waiting for the CD to eventually end.
And even if you go "Oh that should have a low CD so he can use it regularly", that just makes it easier to build but vets would have 100% uptime while newer players would still have to duck into closets all the time to wait out the remaining CD.

So you have a frame where the CDs actually matter and slow down your casting....until you hit a tipping point and there is literally zero downtime in their abilities.

 

 

3 hours ago, SDGDen said:

it will shift the caster meta from focusing on one or two abilities to getting *all* of your abilities to be useful. 

And I don't really think just going over to a CD will fix this.

Because even with this system is ballistic battery ever going to be used?  It is completely utterly useless and even if it cost 0 energy no one would use it.
And the same could be said for a number of other abilities in the game.

After all, if energy is limitless and doesn't stop you from casting then why would anyone care if an ability cost energy if it actually did something useful?
This just points to the problem of casters only using one or two abilities not being because the abilities take energy, but because the other abilities literally have no use cases.

You're barking up the wrong tree if you think that a CD system would suddenly have a frame use all 4 of its abilities.  It wouldn't matter if they could spam some of those abilities every 3 seconds.  If the ability just isn't worth using then it just isn't worth using and requires a different type of balance pass all together to actually make it useful.

Because can you honestly say that even with a change like this Chroma would suddenly start using his breath ability?

 

 

TL;DR?
A CD system would introduce new problems and wouldn't really fix the issues that are brought up.
Newer players would feel the squeeze of not being able to use their abilities as much (just like in the current energy system)
Older players would have enough ways around it that they would essentially have non-stop spamming and infinite uptime on their abilities (just like in the current energy system).

So what really would change with this?  Outside of the potential for all sorts of new issues and bugs?

Edited January 10 by Tsukinoki

[quxier]

2 hours ago, SDGDen said:

 

rebecca and steve bring up an interesting issue here, which is that: warframe's energy system may as well not exist for most of the game. after the war within it's basically just a build-check on whether or not you are using any of the dozens of techniques to completely ignore the energy system. 

you could legitimately remove energy entirely and most players would not notice a difference in their playstyle. in fact the amount of ways we have to regenerate absurd amounts of energy is so high now that i've been seeing sub-100% efficiency as almost a standard on builds. and it makes sense. why bother with efficiency when you can regenerate 10 energy per second with very minimal setup (in fact, with the grimoire now we can regenerate 30 energy per second on any frame without needing ANY specific mods on your frame. just zenurik focus, the grimoire with the energy regain invocation and nourish subsumed onto your warframe)

Lot's of things can probably be like this. I'm running Carrier prime with "looting system". I don't remember ammo exist unless I'm using some "special weapons" or incarnon's perk that supposed to do combo gain on ammo gain (lol). CC? Just kill them all.

You don't have specific mod but you have to use X, Y... and/or Z. My issue with energy were I have to not use certain things to simply just get energy.

- Companion - energy generator

- Zenurik - school

- Nourish/other - Helminth ability

Lots of things are/were like this. So you need e.g. hp, energy and ammo. That might use 3 items. That left me with not so many options. And I love doing different things. You can use lots of those systems but you are left with boring gameplay.

2 hours ago, SDGDen said:

 

yes, that's right. removing energy in favour of a cooldown system. this *will* be a major nerf to abilities in general, but it will also be a buff in disguise for all abilities that currently arent used because "why would i use this ability when i need my energy to cast this other ability". it will shift the caster meta from focusing on one or two abilities to getting *all* of your abilities to be useful. 

Why would I use ability N multiple times to cater to my gameplay when I can use another ability that just AFK me?

Let me tell little story about Xaku. I've used it for Disarming. Proc 1st so they won't attack me that much, roll (with old, shorter rolls of Amalgam mods) and disarm them with 2nd. Now imagine I cannot spam 2nd. What I can do (and what I'm doing because of nerfs & game "difficulity")? Grab as much guns as I can (~16) and keep them all the time with 4th active. That would make me use abilities even less. There are probably similar frames like with "Xaku's issues".

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

You're thinking too much off a small convo....

Depending on your build and playstyle, will determine what kind of energy system you use. 

I had to adjust my energy economy because I primer and melee and never use energy. 

I realized I don't even need flow or primed flow for some of my builds.

Now, if I make a different build that is centered around spamming, I can also do that.

 

 

 

[Raarsi]

Even as an almost-moderate player of Lavos, I'd definitely say no to a cd system for all abilities simply because unlike Lavos, most frame kits simply are designed for that and attempting to force them into such a system wouldn't be a balance measure as much as a forced punishment on players.

The only thing I could think of that would be close enough of a compromise would be if frames started missions at 0 energy and then gained a set amount of energy every second.  This would still allow dynamic gameplay enabled by an energy system while applying any "balance adjustments" (in massive air quotes) for nuke frames like nerfing or removing the Preparation mod.  Then again, this is also a terrible idea and I don't recommend it either.

[Darth_Predator]

I remember the time before time when abilities had cooldowns. And I'd say you probably shouldn't want bring those times back. Cause that suuuuuuuuucked so much I barely used any.

[(PSN)Unstar]

With respect, I think you're taking a one-off joke from our goofy Creative Director too seriously.

You can have nearly unlimited energy, but you have to build for it.  And those build choices come with sacrifices, because to get that you're giving up something else.  That's a good system that engages players.

[ominumi]

I don't know why this is an issue at all. People already hate Infested because of Ancient Disruptors. Let's just give EVERY Eximus the same ability. BOOM! DE doesn't have to change the energy econemy.

[Tiltskillet]

 

5 hours ago, SDGDen said:

steve: wellll energy economy issues aside, i would say it has an energy system.
rebecca (sarcastically): hmmm i see. 

Yeah, that was funny.  Especially given that they just released Energy Nexus, and keep adding frames that rely on spamming.

7 minutes ago, ominumi said:

I don't know why this is an issue at all. People already hate Infested because of Ancient Disruptors. Let's just give EVERY Eximus the same ability. BOOM! DE doesn't have to change the energy econemy.

Bring back the old Energy Leechs!  That'll fix the energy system real good! :P

(Neither one of us is serious, but nevertheless I'll point out that giving all Eximus a Disruptor aura would mainly result in people moving over to the frames that are immune to it.  Well, that or quitting, lol.)

Edited January 10 by Tiltskillet

[ominumi]

1 hour ago, Tiltskillet said:

 

Yeah, that was funny.  Especially given that they just released Energy Nexus, and keep adding frames that rely on spamming.

Bring back the old Energy Leechs!  That'll fix the energy system real good! :P

(Neither one of us is serious, but nevertheless I'll point out that giving all Eximus a Disruptor aura would mainly result in people moving over to the frames that are immune to it.  Well, that or quitting, lol.)

DE has come up ways to make warframe abilities mute. Most of the time, it's met with disdain. The amount of players depend on their warframe ability to actually complete a mission is daulting really. The New War and Circuit really showcase the issue. Though I'm not sure whose at fault here. The players who abuse the tools given? Or the developers that made to tool in the first place?

[Tiltskillet]

4 minutes ago, ominumi said:

Though I'm not sure whose at fault here. The players who abuse the tools given? Or the developers that made to tool in the first place?

Well both.  Although I'd say Developers have more individual responsibility and basically all the collective responsibility for the state of the game.  But players  individually should  take some responsibility for what they do with that game IMO.

I can criticize DE for thinking Mesmer Skin or injectable Nourish in its current state are good ideas, but also recognize that I don't have to use them.   And shouldn't if they're making the game less fun for me.

[stormy505]

Energy only becomes not an issue in the late game. Which I kinda think is fine? Like, the time commitment for maxing an arcane, maxing a focus school, getting deep into the helminth system is a lot. So the rewards for doing so should be pretty good. 

It's also not that big of a deal since not that many frames abuse the energy system to the extremes.

Like It's a spectrum between scale between pure caster frames like Nidus, Ember, Garuda, and Octavia to the other end of pure weapon platforms like Chroma, Inaros, Rhino, and Nekros.
There's  a couple cases of frames pushing the energy economy to the limits to constantly cast stuff like with Ember and Khora, but most don't go THAT far with it. And they also still give up stuff to do so. You give up secondary damage if you use the book. You give up very strong focus schools when you use zen. Arcane slot if you use energize. Ability if you use helminth. And none of these things are particularly easy to acquire.

[trst]

Saying energy might as well not exist is very disingenuous as reaching that point does require progression and investing some parts of your build into energy management.

Energy should not exist for a player who's running Energize with Dispensary via Helminth, someone running Amber Shards for Orb Effectiveness plus DethCube's Energy Generator, running a health tank setup with Hunter Adrenalin, Efficiency mods plus Energy Nexus, etc etc. As all of these setups have made various sacrifices in their builds to reach the point of not worrying about energy.

And even if switching to a cooldown based system with all these effects moved towards that there ought be the same situation with that as we have now where down time might as well not exist. As again you'd be making multiple parts of your build invested into that one purpose and having the option to build how you want is a very important cornerstone of Warframe.

 

Personally I'd say that if there's an issue here it's with certain abilities having infinite uptime and certain spam abilities being problematic. Things Revenant being able to have infinite invulnerability or Thermal Sunder builds in general being too strong should get looked at. But targeting problematic aspects like these can be done without changing entire systems across the game.

[Merkranire]

10 hours ago, SDGDen said:

the downside to an energy system is that players are incentivised to "save up" for their best ability. why cast shock if that means you lose 25% of your progress towards casting discharge?

I don’t think this is a downside; it’s being considerate with when and what you cast. Sometimes you can’t wait for Discharge if you’re relying on orb drops and need to make a decision in the moment, and Shock turns out to be the best choice because of what it does and what it costs

I’m not a fan of the “Just give us always-recharging energy” idea because I like having to think, and would be annoyed if the game was by default catering to ability spammers

Edited January 10 by Merkranire

[Merkranire]

3 hours ago, ominumi said:

DE has come up ways to make warframe abilities mute. Most of the time, it's met with disdain. The amount of players depend on their warframe ability to actually complete a mission is daulting really. The New War and Circuit really showcase the issue. Though I'm not sure whose at fault here. The players who abuse the tools given? Or the developers that made to tool in the first place?

I’m glad that the options exist, am grateful that I’m not forced into them (aside from what the community tries to push onto me), am happy that the game can be fun to use them as well as fun to not use them, am annoyed when players turn it into a problem, and am annoyed when the same players who can’t do anything without energy get hold of a newbie and foist upon them the idea that the newbie needs endless energy

Edited January 10 by Merkranire