De - Monsters, Mods, Endgame, Weapon Custimization!

[Oktalz]

Hi everyone!

 

TL:DR - Faction Changes / Champion Mobs , New Idea for a Mod, New Tier for Mods/DROPS (legendary), New Gameplay Mode (stealth), Deeper Custimization and more.

 

First off sorry about this huge post, it truly is long but if you can take your time to read this and leave your impressions and feedback then maybe we can make WF even better than it already is.

Secondly there might be a few things in this post that are similiar to things you have seen or it may look like a rip-off from something else. I´m sorry if my ideas come off as stealing but if it makes WF the better game in the long run it´s all worth it for all of us.

 

 

Let´s get to it shall we.

 

Know thy enemy - Champion Packs

 

In WF there are plenty of cool enemies to slay and get slain by, however there are some addition to be made. There is no denying it anymore, Warframe follows in the same footsteps as many ARPG´s before it despit being a TPS. We kill stuff to get loot and to level up that loot and in return get even more loot. So here is my proposal for some additions.

 

Grineer Champion Packs  - A group of gunners in amounts of 3 that show up randomly in your map. These guys are badass and they come in variations.

 

- Heavy Gunner Unit - they carry higher caliber on their machineguns which vary in type, from SMG´s to assult rifles to 1 guy with a stationary turret which he can place on the ground and shoot you from.

 

- Blaster Unit - these guys shoot bigger rockets, use grenade launcers, throw grenades and if left unchecked will even place mines on the battlefield.

 

- Seek and Destroy Unit - Welcome to the special ops of the Grineers, these are low in armour but high in agility and speed, they can cloak for a period of time and will ambush you using smoke grenades, flashbangs, sticky grenades and sniper rifles and the can cloak. They will uncloak before shooting you with their sniper rifle and a lazer beam will show you where they are sitting to not make finding these guys too cheap. 

 

So why should we add these champion packs? For challenge and for loot is my answere, champion packs will have higher armor, higher, hp, and higher damage than your average grunt of the same level. Champion packs will look distinct and besides this added defense and offense they will come with affixes to them to make them a royal pain in the arse for us all.

 

Champion Pack Affixes

 

- Static Field - The champions have an electric auro which causes Tenno shields to decay while in their proximity.

 

- Inspiring Presence -

The champions buff eachother for 3x their normal damage while they are all alive, 2x damage if two are alive and no buff when one is left standing.

 

- Revenge is cold -

Upon seeing his fallen comrades dead around him the final remaining champion in a pack becomes

enraged and gets a 5x boost to move speed, fire rate, damage and shields at the cost of having his HP pool cut in half. While enraged the champion will actively seek out all Tenno and destroy them.

 

- Strength in numbers -

This affix is unique and instead of 3 champions appearing you get 6 when this affix is active, the more the merrier.

 

- Suicidal Intent -

When this affix is active the champions become maniacs, when they reach 5% HP left they will selfdetonate instantly to cause a large area explosion each one triggers for each champion and the HP threshhold.

 

- Brawler -

This affix causes the champions to not be able to use their standard issue weapons they have, instead these guys are out to pick a fight the good old way. This also cause the Tenno who are not without honor to not use arms against these soldiers but will have to result to melee combat to take them down (aka when you hover too shoot at them your gun wont fire).

 

- Rivers of Gold -

This is a fun affix, upon death the champions explode into a non-lethal rain of credits in different values.

 

- Lambs to the slaughter -

This affix causes any damage we as players take from any of the champions to cause a stacking debuff that causes us to bleed for 5 damage x 2 over 6 seconds (each time), 2 hits = 10 damage x 2 over 6 seconds and so on for each new source of damage taken from the champion pack. This one is a killer.

 

 

These are just some affixes I have thaught of, and now to convince you why these guys are worth killing and how to implement them.

 

Champion Pack Rewards

 

Champion packs are badass and they should yield badass rewards. My idea is that they will always drop 2 items each. These items can be rare materials such as Neurodes, Neural Sensors, Fieldron, Mutagen. In case of mods they can drop any mod of any rarity in the game and lastly something I know alot of you have been waiting for. In rare cases they can drop Orokin Catalyst BP, Orokin Reactor BP, Forma BP or pure endgame void keys such as Tower 2 and Tower 2 (random mission).

 

Champion Pack Implementation

 

Champion packs can spawn on any map during any mission and they never stop following you, so if you ignore them and run past them they will hunt you down untill the end of the mission. They have a certain random lock on function to follow you around. This will in a sense promote more teamplay as in you don´t want to be that solo guy running around and then BAM you run into these bad boys and girls . 

 

In defense missions they would serve as an addition to a random wave, you might get 1 pack in 10 waves or you might get 5 waves with 1 pack in each wave, got to love RNG baby.

 

Champion Pack Nightmare Mode

In Nightmare mode everything is the same as in Normal mode with one very important difference, champion packs can have 2-3 affixes to them at one time which can complement eachother if Tenno are unlucky for even more challenging fights. With 3 affixes the drop chance for the loot table becomes better for higher rarity loot.

 

 

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MODS AND DROPS

 

-Execute Mod

 

Here is my idea for the first ever WF EPIC rated mod. This mod will have 5 steps in it´s level up process, there will be 1 version for each weapon type aswell as a Warframe specific mod.

 

On Warframes: This mod has 3 steps and it starts at 5% - 10% - 20% - 30%. On a Warframe this mod will make it so that any damage dealt to all enemies that fall down to a HP threshhold of 15% left the damage gets amplified by all Warframe abilities by the above percentage. This MOD will serve as nice break to swap in for those people who love to run long defense missions or survival mission when enemies become like bullet sponges. Note that the MOD will only amplify the damage for the person who has the MOD and not his teammates.

 

On Weapons Same deal as with the warframe only that the increments are 5% - 10% - 20% - 30% - 40% - 50%.

 

 

-Legendary Rating

 

Okay DE here it comes, the subject no F2P company wants to touch on, how you become truly F2P and Pay for Convenience. Introduce Weapon Slots, Warframe Slots, Catalysts, Reactors as Legendary grade drops with extremely low dropchance and when found make it a a visual thing for everyone in the party to see that a player has obtained a Legendary grade drop, and add a steam achivement for it.

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Infested Need Some Love

 

- Infested need some bloody love guys, and I have an idea with 2 new monsters to be added to their ranks.

 

Thorn Lash - Meet this cuddly little bugger who is  just about half the size of charger. He can run on walls and celings and he has a trail from which he shoots a volley of 5 thorns at a time, Thorns deal initial damage and cause slashing damage overtime.

 

Infested Parasite - Welcome to the world dear little runts, these small guys are the nasty little thing you will love to hate and at the same time you will love them for what they will make you do. These nasty things come in packs of 3 and they like to hide in barrels that we  Tenno love to search for loot. They will (yes this is soooo stolen) jump on your face and if they connect you have to either shoot it off your fallen teammate or remove it by pressing X next to them. If you fail to remove the parasite your teammate will arise with twisted mind, though still in control of his character the infected person has to deal damage to his teammates in order to stall his decaying HP from reaching ZERO upon which he will die and can not be revived without using a revive charge. If the infected get´s killed by his team he can then be revived the regular way.

 

Infested Ropers - In order to properly add more teamwork to Warframe I´d like to see these added to the infested pool of enemies. The ropers will be the first flying Infested that have a whiplike tail and their role will primarily be to disrupt the Tenno through flying above them and grabing them and lifting them into the air. To deal with these the team has to shoot them down. While carrying a Tenno the movement speed is greatly reduced so shooting them down wont be too much of a hassle.

 

IAcid Sprayer - These are the second flying unit that will spit acid at the Tenno causing a shield reducing dot primarily, if your shield is already gone you will take mild damage to your HP but primarily it will reduce your armor rating making you take more damage from all sources. Should the Acid spray miss it will create a pool on the ground that will apply the same effect but to a lesser degree since it´s not a direct hit. HP damage will be 1/4 and shield damage is cut in half.

 

 

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Deeper Weapon customization

 

Polarity Slots - Stealing this idea from the very versitile game called Path of Exile. Make Polaritys have different colors such as Red Offensive, Green Restoration, Blue Defensive, Purple Utility. The idea behind this is that the different colors will be a choice to couple with your polarity ie You forma your Soma for Seration, second forma you turn that forma slot into a RED forma slot with the seration polarity - adding a percentage (strength boost) if it is an offensive MOD placed in that polarity. This should allow for even better diversity and will make weapons and warframes be able to specialize even further.

 

Polarity Slots Color Synergies - The colors you choose can if adjecant to one another boost effects further, for instance 2 red slots next to eachother boost eachother further, 

 

Colored Polarity on Weapons seems useless!! - I can see how this can sound relevant since you most likely go for the biggest dps output you can get and ofcourse you will mod everything RED on your weapons. The idea here is to make an offensive mod placed in a different color slot gain a different effect much like the mods already have. For instance if you place a SERRATION mod in a BLUE slot the mod loses a bit of damage but gives your Magazine capacity added to it (REAL TIME CHANGE). This is how I figure it could work. Would love to see what DE could do with this.

 

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Lore and meaningfull progression, Scanning Additions

 

Codex Scanner improvement - Seeing how the codex works now I must say that I see room for improvements. I´d love to see a visor option added and let the scanning of enemies be used solely for that purpouse. 

 

- Tenno Mode - Scan the surroundings for messages left behind by Tenno operatives who have been there before us with lore tied into the "planetary system" you are fighting in. Subsequently adding more messages with coming EVENTS which we can scan for. These can messages will be saved to your codex which you can later read through, or listen to audio logs or even smaller video logs.

 

- Infrared Mode - Remove the scanners functionality to scan through walls, this mode will only be enabled if you choose to play a mission in stealth mode much like when you choose "Nightmare Mode" now. See "stealth mode" in the section below.

 

- Material / Research Scanner - Besides using the clan to craft weapons and gear, finding logs of Orokin Technology in hard to reach areas can reward you with Blueprints for crafting ancient weaponry or even mods.

 

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Another MODE to play in.

 

Stealth Mode - You can now choose any mission on any System to play in Stealth mode. Meaning that if you opt in to go online you AND your team have to finish the mission without sounding the alarm. Assassination Missions will have to change the boss AI allowing the Tenno to clear the room of adds before engaging the boss in a full scale fight.

 

Nightmare Stealth Mode - Unlike regular Stealth mode this mode will set Tenno HP to 1 and Shields to 0 allowing only the use of energy. In this mode you are to finish the mode with the option to set off the alarm and get out of dodge and hide waiting for the Alertness level of the enemy to drop down to zero again much like in Metal Gear Solid series. The mission will cause you to have to play in stealth as 1 shot WILL kill you. These missions will reward you greatly.

 

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AI, Level Design, Cohesion!!!

 

My issue is not the amount of fodder we have to kill and if they look belivable or not, sure nice animations help with the immersion of the game.

My ABSOLUTE issue is that we are running and gunning like mad men and there is lttle or zero room for any kind of tactic in Warframe.

If anything Warframe needs the level design and the enemy design to go hand in hand to create portions of maps where there is room for speed "such as escapeing an area that is about to expload" and then there should be bottleneck parts where you have to walk and fight your way through the fodder as a team.

 

We don´t need more enemies, we need to rework the ones here (infested being an exception and some variety to corpus too). We need to make Warframe more challenging, I fear that a significant nerf to the damaging powers of all warframes i warranted but I know alot of people would disagree and claim that the damage falls off at level 40+ which is completely accurate. The fact is though that level 40+ is only achieved in Survival and Endless defense and all the other modes are a complete joke, tbh I don´t feel that our goal should be to reach level 200 on endless defense only cause the first 60 levels are pretty much a breeze with the right combination of frames.

 

Our goal should be that every wave of enemies in endless defense and survival aswell as other modes should be as challenging as possible with scaling to our conclave rating and mods used. If we have proper scaling, better enemy types that "do more and think smarter and work as a team" we will also be forced to work as a team. Another thing that could help slow down tha pace is level design that encurages exploration to find hidden texts, treasure or even special random boss monsters (this is done in GW2 and Darksiders 2). Simply running corridors all the time doesn´t cut it, even on a big ship you can run into the cargohold and find the big bad cargo dude in his mechsuit whilst he defends his cargo and fight him to have an encounter within the encounter. These bosses are random spawns and not specific to any mission or system, but the they DO have a unique loot table with great loot if the player is lucky (be it blueprints for weapons that are not researchable or purchasable anywhere else in the game or mods that only they carry and reflect their special abilities).

 

Finally AI is a must, but if AI gets better and coupled with ideas like my own and other players we can see a different pace in the game, longer sessions for each mission and more challenge and fun in the long run.

 

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Just for fun

 

Seeing how DE is working on Melee 2,0 and that has me very exited it got me thinking. Skins have been well recieved and we all know how much we love looking at ourselves (or maybe that´s just me). So here is my idea. When we play we can find Blueprints for fighting styles. These take a slot just like the skins do in our inventory but in our loadout before we go out to kill the many baddies this universe has to offer we can choose what kind of animation set we want to have when we do our melee fighting. For instance, Tiger style, Monkey, Drunken, Thai Boxing, MMA and so on and so on. This would be purely for entertainment and I figured it could be fun.

 

 

 

 

 

If you read all of this first of all THANK YOU!!!! Second of all feel free to add to the my ideas and add affixes to championpacks or whetever you like. Let us make Warframe the badass game it should be!!

 

Regards Oktalz

Edited January 28, 2014 by Oktalz

[OptimumBow0]

New Enemies - Suggested before (Grineer Wraith and Corpus Vandal Squadrons that basically use the event-exclusive weaponry), and I love that idea, but I think your idea includes too many enemies - 3 Champion Packs x 8 affixes = effectively, 24 new and different enemies, possibly pseudo-Stalkers, to put up with.

 

"Deeper" weapon customization sounds like a very confusing way of increasing our weapons' damage outputs to higher levels than they already are. I've seen similar proposals, and people keep saying "Don't make this game easier than it already is", so I'm guessing we don't need more ways to get more damage. Yeah.

 

No problem with stealth mode mission. (Want it)

 

With lore, DE has said this will be the year that we get a lot of it.

 

"Legendary Drops" - No. GLHF trying to sell that concept to anyone; DE needs to make a living too, you know! If people hold out and wait, and get their slots and catalysts, then DE will be poor, and most likely go bankrupt. (But how does one find a Warframe/Weapon slot lying around?)

 

Then we can all say ,"Bye bye, Warframe.". It's still a true F2P game though (you don't need those slots), and people usually just do events, get the event weapon, and then sell it for an extra slot. Or you can get Platinum from trading and buy all the slots you could ever want, which technically means that even Platinum is free to obtain.

[Oktalz]

New Enemies - Suggested before (Grineer Wraith and Corpus Vandal Squadrons that basically use the event-exclusive weaponry), and I love that idea, but I think your idea includes too many enemies - 3 Champion Packs x 8 affixes = effectively, 24 new and different enemies, possibly pseudo-Stalkers, to put up with.

 

"Deeper" weapon customization sounds like a very confusing way of increasing our weapons' damage outputs to higher levels than they already are. I've seen similar proposals, and people keep saying "Don't make this game easier than it already is", so I'm guessing we don't need more ways to get more damage. Yeah.

 

No problem with stealth mode mission. (Want it)

 

With lore, DE has said this will be the year that we get a lot of it.

 

"Legendary Drops" - No. GLHF trying to sell that concept to anyone; DE needs to make a living too, you know! If people hold out and wait, and get their slots and catalysts, then DE will be poor, and most likely go bankrupt. (But how does one find a Warframe/Weapon slot lying around?)

 

Then we can all say ,"Bye bye, Warframe.". It's still a true F2P game though (you don't need those slots), and people usually just do events, get the event weapon, and then sell it for an extra slot. Or you can get Platinum from trading and buy all the slots you could ever want, which technically means that even Platinum is free to obtain.

Thanks for the reply.

The idea with champion packs would increase the difficulty and as such it´s not 24 "new enemies" the champ packs are the same or should I say fixed... the affixes change, it does not entirely change the way the enemy itself works but rather adds an additional dimension to that specific unit or the units around it.

 

As far as the game being easy I would say that the game is only easy if you don´t push yourself to do the ridiculus high waves. There are ways to benchmark your loadouts such as doing 2 man runs to endless defense and trying to get as far as you can these changes would just add some more flavor to it. I also think that if this or something like it would be added it would open up for generally making more challenging enemies with more complex tactics. I´m not aiming towards making the game a walk in the park, the idea is to give a player the tools to play the way they want to play. Hope my point comes across and I don´t just confuse this even more XD.

 

Happy you like the stealth mode ideas.

 

Yes indeed we will get lore this year which is why I´m spinning my take on how we can implement it as opposed to the standard way other games do it such as serve you a video with lore at the start of the month and then you complete X amount of tasks and get an ending cutscene for that episodic content.

 

Legendary drops would not bankrupt DE, the idea with them being legendary is that it would be extremely low drop rate which would mean that just as some people have spent 500 hours farming something and still don´t have it. That´s the beuty and curse of RNG depending on what end of the stick your are :D. The idea to have everything obtainable is a sound thing, however wether you will have to farm 2000 hours untill you get lucky once is another. Most people pay for convenience and that is the main reason DE make money to begin with.

 

Peace bro.

[Oktalz]

Bumping once only.... surprising that there is only 1 reply to this. 

[HurpadurpusRex]

theres so much content here I think I will just expand in order on piece at a time and savor it.

 

I love the manageable content size of the champions you recommend. Its a great foot in the door size, in a system that really leaves a lot of leash to play with. I think the thing I like most about your system is the literal size of the groups. I really want to see smaller groups for a strange reason. Increased AI Sanity check cycles. If the "director" (left for dead 2 enemy spawn AI title) waits for a lull then spawns a small group of these elite heavies we could see a entirely different breed of enemy combatant. With the increased AI time we could see these champions behaving a bit closer to Unreal tournament style bots. This would be amazing to tie in the weapons and style of Warframe and really loose the AI developer to produce a challenging dueling group AI. This is the first piece of this that really excites me without even going into the other details.

[notionphil]

Like the concept of adding elite mobs into the game, we will see this soon according to Sheldon. Hope they randomize in some way as per your suggestion. I'm not counting on it though :P

 

 

 

 

Polarity Slots Color Synergies - The colors you choose can if adjecant to one another boost effects further, for instance 2 red slots next to eachother boost eachother further, 

 

Colored Polarity on Weapons seems useless!! - I can see how this can sound relevant since you most likely go for the biggest dps output you can get and ofcourse you will mod everything RED on your weapons. The idea here is to make an offensive mod placed in a different color slot gain a different effect much like the mods already have. For instance if you place a SERRATION mod in a BLUE slot the mod loses a bit of damage but gives your Magazine capacity added to it (REAL TIME CHANGE). This is how I figure it could work. Would love to see what DE could do with this.

 

 

What I'm not a fan of are the polarities synergies adding even more +anything to things. We need different gameplay options, not more min/maxing. At least not without an interesting tradeoff.

 

EG: no shield regen, but steal 1% of hp as health. That is an interesting trade off (given some testing first).

[Oktalz]

Like the concept of adding elite mobs into the game, we will see this soon according to Sheldon. Hope they randomize in some way as per your suggestion. I'm not counting on it though :P

 

 

 

 

What I'm not a fan of are the polarities synergies adding even more +anything to things. We need different gameplay options, not more min/maxing. At least not without an interesting tradeoff.

 

EG: no shield regen, but steal 1% of hp as health. That is an interesting trade off (given some testing first).

 

Thanks for the feedback. I agree to what you say about the polarity slots, and the idea here is to allow build diversity further but not make stuff ridiculus. Tradeoffs can be made, my idea however was that it could be nice to deepen things further for those of us who love to theory craft.

The success of Path of Exile though a game in a different genre is due to the fact of the games depth and freedome in customization.

 

Peace.

[Oktalz]

theres so much content here I think I will just expand in order on piece at a time and savor it.

 

I love the manageable content size of the champions you recommend. Its a great foot in the door size, in a system that really leaves a lot of leash to play with. I think the thing I like most about your system is the literal size of the groups. I really want to see smaller groups for a strange reason. Increased AI Sanity check cycles. If the "director" (left for dead 2 enemy spawn AI title) waits for a lull then spawns a small group of these elite heavies we could see a entirely different breed of enemy combatant. With the increased AI time we could see these champions behaving a bit closer to Unreal tournament style bots. This would be amazing to tie in the weapons and style of Warframe and really loose the AI developer to produce a challenging dueling group AI. This is the first piece of this that really excites me without even going into the other details.

 

Thanks alot for the reply.

I´m happy that you find the ideas posted here enticing, I will try and come up with more and iterate further, hopefully with the help of our community.

The long term goal is to create an exciting endgame with stuff to find, do, create and enemies to fight that are interresting, challenging in a way that does not only involve increases to base hp and stats to make them absorb more bullets.

 

DE is working on the AI and I see the possibilities of affixes and specialized units coupled with AI improvements to create really fun battles.

My idea of Warframe was from the start to have fastpaced combat that makes you stay on your toes but that allows for exploration and urges you to look beyond the corridor and explore. Warframe has for far too long been a game that can be regarded as a speedrunning game, I belive this to be a negative.

 

There could be specific missions which would make use of speedy parkour and rushing, but the game as it stands today is centered around this in every mission outside of endless defense. 

 

It´s a crying shame that the art designers and people making Warframe beutiful get to do all that work only to have us as players RUSH past their hard work and not be able to truly appreciate what they have done. I hope that the units and ideas I have can help slow down the pace and allow us to play the game in a fun, challenging and teamoriented manner,  rather than having us see who can race first to the objective and then get to the end and claim our rewards.

 

Regards Oktalz.

Edited January 24, 2014 by Oktalz

[notionphil]

Thanks for the feedback. I agree to what you say about the polarity slots, and the idea here is to allow build diversity further but not make stuff ridiculus. Tradeoffs can be made, my idea however was that it could be nice to deepen things further for those of us who love to theory craft.

The success of Path of Exile though a game in a different genre is due to the fact of the games depth and freedome in customization.

 

Peace.

 

I am going to check that game out...

 

By the way - keep up the good concepts, and gracious acceptance of feedback on your ideas.

[Oktalz]

I am going to check that game out...

 

By the way - keep up the good concepts, and gracious acceptance of feedback on your ideas.

 

Check it out and see what other people find great about PoE. it is something that I think ALOT of gamedevelopers need to try and add more focus to. Nothing makes people want to do stuff more than the option to do it on their own terms, or at least with as much creative freedome as they can be given under certain conditions within a specific scope.

 

PoE is a game where you can either truly come up with your very own great build or one that is absolutely horrible, you have so creative freedome within the game that it it gives the illusion that you truly can do anything with your character.

 

I belive that PoE´s philosophy is inspiring and should become common practice for all games, it just requires a great deal of work from the developer but the result is true replayability and it drives the community to share their character creation.

 

Oktalz

[Oktalz]

Added thaughts on AI, Level Design, Cohesion!!!,