First Impressions and Ideas

[Saylec]

To be quite honest; more-so fully honest, I haven't been playing for very long. I'd say like a day... Maybe a day and a half, I'm just throwing this topic up after having finished grinding for Ash's pieces and starting the foundry process for that specific Warframe.

I'd first like to start off with my compliments to the game-- Mainly because it's always rude to simply start a conversation, or perhaps a topic, by spewing out everything that sucks about it. It's best to be courtesy, and this game has proven to me that beta or not it does deserve the courtesy given from that if anything at all.

The way the game has been done so far, is quite amazing. It balances a good amount of grinding, as to make sure people work for what they want instead of being handed everything like candy, but it doesn't do it in such a way that one would die of boredom like the old Vanilla-WoW 40-man Naxx days where your life sucked period and you had to deal with it. I'd say the 3-day wait time for a frame to be built is a bit of a drag, I can live with a day, even a day and a half or so, but the three days makes me feel like I'm researching Level 3 Battlecruiser on EVE all over again and I need to go hibernate in a cave to wait for it to finish.

I'm especially impressed with the combat, it flows extremely well with the engine and the current art design and such for it. I noticed no-clipping here and there, which is a minor thing but I will say that can occasionally kill the enrapturement the game certainly holds with such a fluid movement and combat system. It's quite refreshing that it doesn't go too far into the gore where you're ripping people's hearts out and eating them but it definitely doesn't refrain from shedding blood and sending a few torsos into the air now and then when someone slinks up a bit too close. The physics engine for the game is also quite solid and I haven't seen any big glitches with that (except that if you're playing alone, in an elevator and you press ESC to pause for a moment, and alt-tab out and tab back in and hit escape again you'll actually be launched into the air. Falling does not damage but it's a bit of an odd thing to have in a game).

Gun-play in the game isn't the best, it's not bad but it could use some tweaking to make it more enjoyable like melee where I get to dash and slide a swathe of crimson carnage through enemies with both a balanced AI and occasionally the less-then intelligible one that makes them run past me. The AI itself might be worthy of a bit of tweaking, I've had some moments where I can stand in a hallway and stare at three guys and they'll walk right past me even though I am in the center of the hallway staring them down old-mexican stand-off style.

Other then a few glitches and oddities here and there the game is pretty damn solid for a beta, it's good and I believe it's one of those under-the-radar games that deserves a bit more attention because to be quite honest I'd never have noticed it whatsoever had I not had a friend nag at me for half a day telling me to get a key and install it. To be honest; at first I blew it off, I've known a large spree of Free-to-Plays that really just haven't delivered a good game but have the copyright to such an amazing gold mine of ideas and things they could push into that game to make it more original and intense than a singular human mind could conceive. Alls-well here, though.

For the less then palpable things to say, I'ma be honest, there is some horrifying balancing here for early and late-game WARFRAMES and damage ratios. Early game I can take a grenade to the face and die, but after hitting level twenty or so, I pretty much just take infested-Runners and Grineer grenades to the face, I only feel any real threat when I fight against the Corpus and they just unload hundreds upon hundreds of plasma bolts and lasers on me like I'm the fricken' Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The bosses aren't really too much to talk about, too. After you fully learn their patterns and such, it's rather easy to slip in and out of their moves and demolish them, I believe a bit of work needs to be put into them to really make them formidable opponents (fairly of course) for correctly-leveled teams of four and that one-ballzy &#! badass who thinks he's gonna own the world (and some people are damn good at doing-so).

It's been a more then often thing as well to notice that the AI doesn't capitalize enough on situations to make the game truly challenging and strategic. The game definitely is intense, and it should stay the same, but I feel that a certain amount of tactical and strategical thinking required is good for a game like this to make sure it's players are always on their toes. For example-- I can engage two or three Heavy's at the same time, and I can sit at the corner of a wall with my Gorgon out and simply strafe back and forth between the wall and the corner allowing me to slowly wittle them down and then as Excalibure once their shields are down or if they're especially beefy and down to half health I can hit '1' and Annihilate them all in a fell-swoop. I believe if the AI has three heavies, or hell if it outnumbers you with twenty guys, it should be progressively more aggressive instead of simply standing there and exchanging shots and taking far more damage then I. The idea is so that a player can't abuse this corner-strategy and wittle down hard situations, and has to use Hit-and-Run tactics are build their characters and playstyle in a specific way to allow them to combat more intelligent AI that knows when to play defensive and when to go balls-to-the-wall and push on a player(s).

The level design is usually rather beautiful, and I like that. There are barrels and reinforced glass here and there that allow you to use your enviroment to a certain extent to combat either hordes of Technocyte Plague infected troops, or to combat those few 'tactical' groups of Grineer that come constantly in thick chunks however... That is the limit. You can't truly use your enviroment to your combat like I believe such a skilled Master of Gun and Blade should be able to, you are the Tenno. Not some push-over action hero, you're a Straight-A Certified Badass. Things like destructible platforms that you and enemies use would be neat, allowing you to break the supports and cause enemies to fall to their death in rubble, or that you yourself can be on and allow yourself to break at specific points to cause the rubble to heavily damage if not out-right kill your foes. Even something like a door that you can close at a specific time to cut enemies in halves or crush them into a bloody pulp (it'd be damn nice for some of those Grineer heavies when they're coming a bit too damn fast). Theres no need to put a huge rush on the idea, but it'd be both intensifying and strategical, as well as enjoyable because you'd be able to go into a area that is wrecked or sparkling-clean and see it afterwards when the battle is over and you've transformed it from clean to wrecked or wrecked to absolutely decimated. It'd also allow for more specific types of missions, like missions that ask that you do as little enviromental damage as possible.

Another thing is Gunplay! The mechanics and the trigger pulling are pretty slick and easy; nothing to complex, which to be honest kind of makes it kinda meh. Hell I can sit in a corner like stated earlier and do nothing but hold the trigger and reload every now and then. I believe switching from bullet-counting to a full on clip-system would be a bit more enjoyable, you wouldn't be able to hold the trigger like a total derp anymore. Of course it should still show you how many bullets are in one clip in the statistics of the weapon, but it should also show the carrying capacity of maximum clips at'a time. A cover-system for the Tenno players might be a good addition as well, perhaps something like Killzone 3, an easy to get in and easy to get out of system though for this specific game the Gears of War series might be a more productive choice of example as they both are in third-person. I only say this because it feels slightly awkward fighting enemies who have full on animations for cover, with me facing the wall and just side-stepping back and forth. Blind-fire and the ability to exploit positions of cover would be fairly nice, it'd add another layer of mechanics to gunplay and make it less of a drag, it'd also give you the ability to program the AI to use grenades more frequently to flush out gun-preference players through those explosive little spheres of pain.

That's all I really got to gripe about and suggest small fixes or expansions to.

The only real solid ideas I have are the followin':

Clashing! It would be a intense thing to be able to engage enemy heavies and bosses in specific 'clashes' per each WARFRAME and weapon equipped. Melee, that is. What I mean by clashing if you haven't guessed it, is engaging the boss in a person-controlled melee fight with occasional close-ups and zoom-outs and such on. For an example, we'll go with Rhino which is described as the heaviest of the WARFRAMEs. We'll even say he's using the Furax Gauntlets, because those just sound like something someone who wants to smash things to bits and pieces would use. You engage a... Let's go with a Grineer Napalm Launcher to keep it simple. From what I remember off the top of my head they're slightly larger then most Grineer, and they have large yellow-napalm launchers (Derp!). When you begin the engagement Rhino would head-butt them at the highest point he could reach with his body, and then go in for a gut-buster with his right fist. You would then have a series of things to click on your keyboard in a specific order as they appear (or in a pre-determined button order that you're shown while initiating the clash and expected to memorize quickly to press in order) which would determine whether you succeed or not. Success would mean that Rhino successfully plunges his fist, hell his whole arm, right through the Grineer while using his other to smash his Napalm launcher into bits before throwing the corpse to the ground. Should he fail the Grineer brings his knee up in time to collide with Rhino's chest, Rhino failing to dodge it would receive it to the chest and then the Grineer would force him to the ground and attempt to choke him out. Then another series of buttons (easier this time as it's now an escape, or perhaps if the developers wish to make this even more of a gamble harder sequences of buttons). Lets say he wins, then it's obvious that Rhino is then strangulated to death (and if you can't kill a Tenno by asphyxiation then it'd be something more like snapping his neck or using brute-force to simply tear his head from his shoulders), and if Rhino succeeds he is quick enough to press both of his feet up against the Grineer's chest and launch him off of him with the muscle in his lower body and only lose half of his shields or life (the life/shield loss is all percentage based and something I'd rather leave to the Developers for balancing). The 'Clashes' would change animation-wise depending on two things: Weapon of Choice, and then the specific WARFRAME being used. Cos' I'm positive Ash or Trinity aren't going to head-butt someone like Rhino might. The difficulty of the button sequence could scale by zone-level. Going from it being two or three buttons in a zone like 7-15 to seven or eight buttons in a level zone like 20-25.

My second suggestion is a further developed customization of the specific WARFRAME you are using. I would say that it is possible for Digital to use this as their main-money maker for this game; allowing you to cosmetically change various aspects of your favorite WARFRAME for a few bucks here and there, or this can be something that is made like weapons and WARFRAMEs (why the hell do I keep capitalizing this?) themselves that give bonuses to statistics and effectivity in combat to create an even more in-depth level of playstyle creating. I believe all WARFRAME's should keep their base look, and it should always show to some degree to represent what WARFRAME they are without having to look at their abilities but it'd be real neat-o to customize them with shoulder-pads, enlarged horns, and such on. It might even allow for them to be able to fit in other neat ideas for abilities and have more then four for each character to switch around depending on what your current look and statistics for your WARFRAME are.

Other then that, it is getting late here, thanks for reading my rubbish and you all have a nice one.

(P.S. Does this game make anyone else want to watch Hellsing Ultimate? It makes me want to watch Hellsing Ultimate... Hrrn)