Does The Energy System Need A Rework?

[lautalocos]

right now, powers are this unbalanced cluster of things.

they are either extremely weak or extremely powerfull.

 

this happens because either in the early game players can almost never use powers because of the lack of energy siphon/power efficiency/power max, or in late game everyone is spamming their most powerfull abilities non-stop, just killing enemies, getting energy orbs, and killing the next wave of enemies with powers again.

 

 

before we speak of balancing any ability, the wholes system that takes care of the powers has to be remade from zero.

the idea would be to make powers always usefull, either making it spammabale but necessary for the warframe to survive, or strong but only being used once in a while.

 

i don{t know exactly how it should be reworked, but im sure it must be changed.

 

edit: list of ideas given by players:

energy drops shouldnt be RNG, energy should be gained by kills. killing with powers doesn´t give energy (leonvision)

everyone should have regenerating energy equal to an unranked energy siphon (replacement)

 

i would like to add something in top of leonvision idea, because people noticed that it may lead to people complaining of kill stealing. if you kill someone, you get energy, and allies get a bit less. also, maybe if one allie helped you kill the enemy he gets a bit more energy than he would normally get

 

 

still, this doesnt fix the problem that the difference of cost between skill 1 and 4 is very small.

 

kill 1 enemy/get one energy orb gives you enough for a very weak ability. kill 4 enemies/get 4 energy orbs and you destroy the room.

 

maybe not all ultimates should cost 100 and not all 1 abilities should cost 25.

 

each skill should have an energy cost equal to their usefullnes

does anyone disagree with this?

Edited January 24, 2014 by lautalocos

[leonvision]

for a start, energy shouldnt be drops(RNG), it should be based on kills. there's also the idea energy only comes from kill by equipments(guns and melee), so there's no more using a nuke ult and getting all your energy back from the kills, in other words, less ult spamming.

Edited January 23, 2014 by leonvision

[Liacu]

Although I've kind of preferred a cooldown system with charges, I don't think a rework is really necessary. Early game powers usually end up one shotting groups of enemies so it should be fine with the current drop rate of energy orbs. (If it isn't, increase energy drop rate or maybe nerf Energy Siphon and add innate energy regen) Late game damage spells start becoming incredibly useless because they do not scale high enough compared to weapons. Then we have the middle of the two extremes where powers one-shot everything and our frames have the mods to constantly spam these abilities, devolving the game into "Press 4 to win".

So the problem isn't with the energy system but with the amount of power strength we have and the fact the ultimates are poorly designed. The devs should consider implementing power strength that only affects non-percentile abilities and changing our 4th powers to be something powerful but can only be used occasionally as that is what an ultimate is supposed to be.

Edited January 23, 2014 by Liacu

[Replacement]

I don't like rng, but I also don't like basing it on kills. Builds that favor crowd control or status over damage would suffer, and the gulf between player gear would become much more noticeable as the somas and pentas "hog" all the energy.

The game currently only feels good in survival and defense.

I soloed an Exterminate alert recently, and decided not to use energy siphon. Counting containers (and I broke/opened every one I came across), I killed over 60 guys before seeing my first energy orb.

Can you see how this completely eliminates whatever playstyle you were expecting to build for?

Band-aid fix: regardless of drops, breaking stuff always gives the entire party a small amount of energy.

Even easier fix: just give everyone unranked energy siphon effect already. Seriously.

[KynaTiona]

The problem with giving everyone Energy Siphon or having powers work on cooldowns is that it favors waiting.  If the mission is too difficult, you can simply have everyone spam their best powers, then wait for them to recharge and move to the next room.  Slow and boring, but horribly effective.  I believe the devs intend Warframe to be as fast as most people play it, so I can't imagine any sort of regenerating Energy / cooldown will become the norm.  Perhaps have power cooldowns that recover based on weapon hits, but that could be awkward to learn and honestly a bit silly.

 

That said, having energy orbs drop from kills is also a bit silly, what with the aforementioned ultimate spamming Leonvision mentioned.  Even the current system would probably be fine if power kills never resulted in energy orbs.  With that said, this mechanic is totally different without Flow.  It doesn't really matter how many orbs you get on average if using your ultimate dropped you to 50 energy and there's no orbs lying around.

[Brasten]

for a start, energy shouldnt be drops(RNG), it should be based on kills.

Objection!

This leads to kill stealing or accusations of kill stealing for energy. Energy for Kills is a BAD idea.

The fix is a slow energy regeneration on top of random Orb drops. Yes that can turn into a waiting game, but even when people bring a full party of Energy Syphons I have almost never seen that happen in a Group game. Everyone who likes using powers uses Energy Syphon for a reason.

The other fix is to reduce the overall cost of Gear. 1k credits per Energy restore gear is in many ways too costly. Gear is something most people ignore save those of us at the "End Game" and have more credits than heads filled with Greedy Corpus Milk. A reduction in the cost to match what is acquired during typical missions would go a LONG way to seeing Gear used.

The other Fix to Gear would be the return of Instant, not drop, Gear. It's all well and fine to drop an Team Energy restore but when everyone is already 2 Tiles down and NOT given a clue or marker as to its location it feels like you've blown 1k credits for nothing.

[Tsukinoki]

@Brasten

My biggest issue with the gear as it stands is that with the normal one it takes 30 seconds to restore 100 energy, or with the medium it takes 20 to restore 200 energy. They need to really speed up how it gives energy because for the most part its only really efficient to use them on defense/mobile defense where you aren't moving around for longer periods of time.

And I have seen parties of players go "Don't go into the next room. We don't have our ults yet!" when they are using energy syphon and then complain because I move into the next room and use my guns. Its not often true, but its not something I want to see happen regularly. And sadly a CD system, or regen system, does encourage that behavior. Abilities were originally based off of a CD system...it was a slow slog of waiting at every door to get your abilities to nuke the next room and then repeat at that rooms door.

@leonvision

I think it would be a horrible idea to base energy on kills/damage. Why?

Think of how much hatred a Nova would get.

Not only is she killing everything, but she is at the same time preventing anyone from else in the party from gaining any energy.

Think of the players that use the Ogris or Penta, and then try to scrounge up enough energy to do anything when they keep blowing up all of the enemies before you have a chance.

This game does not need the toxicity of KSing added in.

Edited January 23, 2014 by Tsukinoki

[Zagrax]

I like the idea of just adding an unranked energy siphon effect to everyone and just nerf down the energy siphon aura's max equal to the unranked value so that we don't get more energy regen than we do now, so essentially, nothing will change other than it may let people use some of the other auras more often.

[Brasten]

And I have seen parties of players go "Don't go into the next room. We don't have our ults yet!" when they are using energy syphon and then complain because I move into the next room and use my guns. Its not often true, but its not something I want to see happen regularly. And sadly a CD system, or regen system, does encourage that behavior. Abilities were originally based off of a CD system...it was a slow slog of waiting at every door to get your abilities to nuke the next room and then repeat at that rooms door.

I haven't seen this behavior since Closed Beta days, in the very early level play. Back when power damage was still in some ways better than weapon damage.

Even with 75% cost reductions that can now be done in the game I haven't encountered this while doing what I mostly do, running in pick-up groups. With the way the game is currently balanced there are only a handful for Ultimate powers that I can think of that would be of benefit to "wait" for. This kind of behavior also doesn't survive well thanks to the way the spawn system works. You can nuke a room, but you're only getting maybe 10 kills and have to deal with fresh spawns coming it.

The only game mode where this kind of "wait for it to recharge" play works is on Extermination missions where you won't get pressured by fresh spawns.

Edited January 23, 2014 by Brasten

[leonvision]

Objection!

This leads to kill stealing or accusations of kill stealing for energy. Energy for Kills is a BAD idea.

 

false, i actually discussed this in another thread from a while ago, and we came to the idea energy should be rewarded to everyone in the vicinity of the kill (or vicinity of the killer). solving the issue with kill stealing.

[Axterix13]

for a start, energy shouldnt be drops(RNG), it should be based on kills. there's also the idea energy only comes from kill by equipments(guns and melee), so there's no more using a nuke ult and getting all your energy back from the kills, in other words, less ult spamming.

Worth noting that the basic effect you're going for (power use doesn't fuel power use) can be achieved with a lesser change: just make it so power-killed enemies don't drop energy orbs.  Less work for the devs, while still allowing players to better govern their power use (in cases like the energy drain nightmare mode thing) or post-infected drain.

 

This has one downside though: It means one party member using his power deprives other party members of potential energy.

 

Also, while it does help solve the "problem" of damage dealing powers being spammed, it does nothing about non-damaging powers that can still trivialize things.  Nyx's chaos, for example, doesn't kill anything, but makes it darn simple to kill the mobs one by one (and they even help by hurting/killing each other).  Plenty of powers like that.  Frost's Snow Globe, the electric fence/force field wall thing some other frame does, Trinity's group invul, and so on.

Edited January 24, 2014 by Axterix13

[Axterix13]

everyone should have regenerating energy equal to an unranked energy siphon (replacement)

It should vary from frame to frame, really.  A frame with 225 energy should regenerate 50% more energy than one with 150, as the reason why it has the larger cap is that it is supposed to be a more power based frame.

[ThePresident777]

I love spamming abilities.  I love pressing 4 to win.  It's one of the things that attracted me to Warframe and keeps me here.  If I didn't want to spam abilities I would have never played Warframe.  I would be playing the other 99% of the games out there.  So, I'm in the right place, playing the game as it was advertised and demoed and created.  I'm not doing the equivalent of trying to collect sea shells on the top of an erupting volcano then complaining that the volcano doesn't let me collect sea shells.  I'm here for the volcanic eruption, not the sea shells.  Sea shell collecting was never advertised or demoed or implemented for Warframe.

Edited January 24, 2014 by ThePresident777

[AuroraSonicBoom]

I hate ability spam, but I'm also not a fan of forced cooldowns as that makes players calculate their builds around a fixed amount of time. An initiative system coupled with a low natural regen of 0.5 would prevent most spam and with the right rules could encourage varied play. Making kills with rifles and pistols give less initiative than kills with melee weapons. Making sliding, wall or other non-q spamming kills give more initiative than normal attacks. Giving diminishing initiative returns for the same kind kills performed repeatedly. Punishing grindy gameplay by heavily encouraging non-repetitiveness, I like it.

[lautalocos]

I love spamming abilities.  I love pressing 4 to win.  It's one of the things that attracted me to Warframe and keeps me here.  If I didn't want to spam abilities I would have never played Warframe.  I would be playing the other 99% of the games out there.  So, I'm in the right place, playing the game as it was advertised and demoed and created.  I'm not doing the equivalent of trying to collect sea shells on the top of an erupting volcano then complaining that the volcano doesn't let me collect sea shells.  I'm here for the volcanic eruption, not the sea shells.  Sea shell collecting was never advertised or demoed or implemented for Warframe.

if you like that, it{s fine. but other people want something different. they want to have a challenge. if i didnt want a challenge, or compeling gameplay, i would be playing candy crush saga

[shut]

As much as I love making sure that everything is nice and void of any weapon that isn't a glow-in-the-dark cattle prod, I agree that the ability spamming needs to stop.

 

I'm very, very much against a cooldown system, though. Keeping track of cooldowns has always rubbed me the wrong way in all of the games I've played, except for simpler ones like Maplestory (where no extra thought or skill is needed, so cooldown management on classes like Kanna is comparatively challenging). In games that require skill such as Vindictus and (to an extent, at the moment) Warframe, cooldowns don't really belong.

 

Vindictus used to have a similar problem with its "SP Skill" system, which could be activated by charging up a SP bar by dealing or receiving damage. The SP gain was increased by incredible amounts when players were in their "transformation" state, to the point of people maxing out their SP bars in ten or so seconds, unleashing hell, and repeating for 2 minutes straight until Transformation expired (as opposed to non-Transformation, where a skilled player could fill the bar within maybe a minute and a half against a boss). The devs responded by slapping on a cooldown to every single SP skill, to the point that players who would normally use an SP skill to save their asses would mash the button and then die before realizing that their precious invulnerability frames still had thirty seconds left on the timer. I've died countless times because of this.

 

Perhaps giving each Ability its own meter that needs to be charged up somehow before usage would do. But not a cooldown. I hate cooldowns with a passion.

In skill-based games, we've got a lot of things to focus on. Arbitrary cooldowns should not be one of them.

[leonvision]

Worth noting that the basic effect you're going for (power use doesn't fuel power use) can be achieved with a lesser change: just make it so power-killed enemies don't drop energy orbs.  Less work for the devs, while still allowing players to better govern their power use (in cases like the energy drain nightmare mode thing) or post-infected drain.

 

This has one downside though: It means one party member using his power deprives other party members of potential energy.

 

Also, while it does help solve the "problem" of damage dealing powers being spammed, it does nothing about non-damaging powers that can still trivialize things.  Nyx's chaos, for example, doesn't kill anything, but makes it darn simple to kill the mobs one by one (and they even help by hurting/killing each other).  Plenty of powers like that.  Frost's Snow Globe, the electric fence/force field wall thing some other frame does, Trinity's group invul, and so on.

 

problem with drops is it's still behind a layer of RNG. energy is essentially based on kills right now already, but behind that layer of RNG. say for instance, on average every 5 enemy, one will drop a energy orb(25energy), why not just grant 5 energy per kill and completely remove the RNG aspect. not to mention if it's grant on kills instead of pickups, we can focus more on killing, instead of running around picking up drops in the middle of battle, personally, i dont think it's bad for the tempo of the game.

 

and i never said it was a perfect solution to abilities being spammed. the main issue, i think, is damaging abilities right now has the ability to gain the energy back with the kill done by said ability alone. whereas utility abilities still requires you to kill enough enemies to get energy back before the time ends(unless you have energy siphon). but atleast it closes the gap between the "spammability" of damaging abilities and utility abilities.

 

edit: and ill re-iterate, i think the MAIN issue with energy right now is the RNG aspect, why is it even involved.

Edited January 24, 2014 by leonvision

[shut]

i think the MAIN issue with energy right now is the RNG aspect, why is it even involved.

Agreed.

What's worse than experienced players blasting everything away nonstop is having inexperienced players not able to do diddly squat because of nothing dropping for them. When I joined the game, I made it a habit to save my Abilities for absolute emergencies only, since I'd run out too fast and the majority of the time I'd never regain the energy before a real emergency came up.

Even with 70% power efficiency on my Loki, this still sometimes happens in extensive solo runs, and I die because of it. And considering how hard it is to spend energy quickly when you're only using a medium-cost duration-based skill, this is kinda saying something.

 

Whether a player is able to use their own tools should not be determined by a roll of the dice.

Edited January 24, 2014 by SortaRandom

[Naftal]

Instead of changing the energy system, I'd limit abilities otherwise and have actually made a thread about it: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/166314-add-limitations-to-ability-usage-and-remove-abilities-from-mods/

[leonvision]

Instead of changing the energy system, I'd limit abilities otherwise and have actually made a thread about it: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/166314-add-limitations-to-ability-usage-and-remove-abilities-from-mods/

 

you mentioned cooldowns in your thread, im pretty sure DE has commented that the game back in alpha or pre-alpha had a cooldown system instead of a energy system, and basically noone liked it.

 

edit: though the 2nd suggestion has some merit to it. the 3rd suggestion (abilities level with frame rank) wouldnt work, since some abilities are better left unranked, it's good to allow players the choice.

Edited January 24, 2014 by leonvision

[shut]

Instead of changing the energy system, I'd limit abilities otherwise and have actually made a thread about it: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/166314-add-limitations-to-ability-usage-and-remove-abilities-from-mods/

Eurgh, cooldowns. Don't like, for reasons stated above.

 

I'd much rather have it so that you charge up energy by dealing damage or doing "things" (completing objectives, reviving teammates, getting skillful/stealthy kills, taking damage) instead of a cooldown system. It's just... arbitrary, and distracts the player from actual gameplay without really adding anything to it at all.

With charge-by-doing-other-things, the player would at least know that they have to focus on working towards the goal if they want to use a special move again, which would bring the attention back to gameplay. Whereas cooldown timers are too distracting for this sort of game.

[Axterix13]

problem with drops is it's still behind a layer of RNG. energy is essentially based on kills right now already, but behind that layer of RNG. say for instance, on average every 5 enemy, one will drop a energy orb(25energy), why not just grant 5 energy per kill and completely remove the RNG aspect. not to mention if it's grant on kills instead of pickups, we can focus more on killing, instead of running around picking up drops in the middle of battle, personally, i dont think it's bad for the tempo of the game.

 

and i never said it was a perfect solution to abilities being spammed. the main issue, i think, is damaging abilities right now has the ability to gain the energy back with the kill done by said ability alone. whereas utility abilities still requires you to kill enough enemies to get energy back before the time ends(unless you have energy siphon). but atleast it closes the gap between the "spammability" of damaging abilities and utility abilities.

 

edit: and ill re-iterate, i think the MAIN issue with energy right now is the RNG aspect, why is it even involved.

Personally, I don't find drops to be much of an issue  In groups, there's usually plenty of energy, plus enough players that someone should have juice.  And yes, picking stuff up does suck, but that's less of a problem with the nice big blue orbs than it is with other things, like ammo, especially when a group is pushing forward rapidly.  Solo, the problem isn't really energy drops, but rather that the game does not scale at all based on group size.  If the game didn't throw as many mobs at you at once when you were solo, you wouldn't see your energy pushed as hard.

 

I do agree the damage abilities are a bigger issue as far of plenty of energy goes.  Everything just falling over dead due to the actions of one player leaves the others with little to do, especially if you lack a "stuff falls over dead" ability yourself.  Certain guns also cause that issue, actually, but that's partially because the game pretty much encourages better geared types to run low level content.

 

But basically, the point of this post is that it is currently too easy to spam damage dealing abilities, due to how easy it is to get energy.  Making it easier to get the energy by removing the oh so hard walk over to the blue orbs... that wouldn't really work toward that goal ;)

[Kipp-vas-Xerinae]

Personally i would like to have a cooldown system (reasonable ofc).

 

As an example.

1st power - 1s or 1.5s cooldown time.

2nd power - 1.5s or 2s ct.

3rd power - 2s or 2.5s ct.

4th power - 2.5s ct or 3s ct.
 

And energy siphon at max rank would give a X% cooldown reduction.

 

As far I like spamming my abilities i would also love to think more about when and what should i do...

[leonvision]

[snip]

 

ok, but ill put it simply why I think it's an issue, there are 2 parts to the issues with energy coming from drops:

 

1)RNG, you could kill 4 enemies, and have enough energy to cast 1 ult, or you could spend 2min killing everything and still dont have enough. ruins tempo.

2) you have to spend time picking up energy instead of actually shooting. pretty self-explanatory, instead of shooting and killing, you need to spend time running around to get energy, again, ruins tempo.

 

edit: i guess ill mention this, i think the current system is FINE, but it's could be BETTER, and my suggestions are what i think would make it better.

Edited January 24, 2014 by leonvision

[ThePresident777]

if you like that, it{s fine. but other people want something different. they want to have a challenge. if i didnt want a challenge, or compeling gameplay, i would be playing candy crush saga

 

You're not telling me something that I don't already know.  What I don't know is why people can't suggest a solution to their problem that does not amount to a big FU to people who like the way things are?  I think that if someone wants a radically different game that they would go play one but that if they insisted on playing Warframe and wanted to radically alter it that they would ask for a new game mode or missions that they like instead of ruining the game for everybody else who is already happy with it.  There is a reason why we have PvP and Nightmare Mode as separate from the regular game.