Suggestions On Difficulty, Mods, And Gameplay + Includes A List Of Cool Mods!

[Ferriwind]

Before we continue, I’d like to say that I love and respect the DE team. They have put so much into Warframe since I’ve the pleasure to participate in this beta a few months ago. These suggestions are purely that; suggestions from little ol’ me, a happy but concerned beta tester. Thank you, DE, for all your efforts.

This post includes the following Suggestions:

-DIFFICULTY

-MOD SYSTEM TWEAKS(I've also posted mod ideas if this is what you like to read about)

-GAMEPLAY MECHANICS

-STORY(short)

DIFFICULTY

-Warframe Scaling and Enemy Scaling

I think MJ12’s suggestion here is a good starting point for balancing warframe scaling. It suggests giving warframes level-up boosts to the point that warframes will be able to do ANY mission at that warframe’s level. Of course, with skillful play, warframes should also be able to adequately manage their way through missions with slightly higher level ratings. Also, this applies to weapons being able to get level-up boosts.

https://forums.warfr...ly-should-work/

Enemy scaling is apparent to me as a problem. Right now warframes are dependent on getting very high value shield, health, and dps modifying mods (such as +damage, +firerate, +multishot ) in order to make themselves viable. Although enemy scaling is not too bad in the new maps (levels 20-30 ish), the enemies’ health and damage are atrociously high compared to warframe survivability. When I first saw the posts about missions being too hard after update 7, I did not really put much thought into it. I did notice my health draining quickly, but manage to finish missions by playing smart. As I saw more and more of these posts and climbed higher waves in defense missions and did higher level missions such as Xini, I’ve concluded that there is a problem with enemy scaling compared with warframe scaling.

Now, that is not to say that missions such as Xini are unplayable. Due to the nature of the scaling of mods(artifact cards), these missions are very doable. However, I believe that this creates a dilemma for smart gameplay(rather than just making yourself have high dps and survivability) and replayability. It creates a gigantic rift between both players and missions that is unneeded and unwanted.

My suggestion is that warframe scaling must be reworked by adding a level up scaling and removing insanely high scaling cards like damage, health, and shields. The cards were designed to have potential, but it has too much potential resulting in difficult balance and very standard, uncreative warframe builds. Enemy scaling must be better scaled for the combatant warframes in health and damage. It is not that health should be lowered in general. It could be that health in very high levels should be lowered to a more reasonable degree.

Something that also hampers the ninja/action gameplay of warframe and balance are health drops. Health drops offer to justify the difficulty of enemies, but removing health drops and adding a passive health gain mechanic would better work in favor of both gameplay(action pacing) and balance. Enemies can be made a bit easier while keeping the difficulty of the mission overall since you can't scavenge for health in containers. This is something I’d like to see in particular.

I also believe that a passive energy gain for warframe should be accepted and implemented. Since I’ve gotten the artifact I’ve pretty much played every single mission with Energy Siphon (when the game did not bug on me and auto switched my cards for a random reason) and there was never a situation where I would camp for energy regen ever. Combined with energy drops, this system would create a very power friendly environment. ;)

MOD SYSTEM TWEAKS

In the possible advent that warframes and weapons get level-up boosts, mods that simply increase values such as health, shields, and dps should be removed completely or nerfed to be just useful and not game breaking. I would favor the latter because there is already beautiful artwork in those cards and players who desire such simply bonuses would be able to keep such options. I think all those cards should get a cap of +10-20% at the max rank while cards such as multishot can be adjusted to be based on firerate depending on the weapons. For example, the lower the firerate, the better the multishot allowing it to work more equally well for sniper type weapons and rifles.

Also, I created a short post about mods to change weapon behaviors through crafting with existing mods. I'll just add the idea here. I figured a unique mod can be created by fusing a desired mod with a tradeoff mod. This mod would not really change the dps of the weapon, but only the behavior. For example. I want a gorgon that sprays multiple shots at a lower firerate. It'll act like a shotgun but not really.. So I'll craft a unique mod by choosing multishot as the desired effect and firerate as the tradeoff effect. The resulting mod could be +500% multishot but -80% firerate. This will let you choose your favorite weapon and add customization to it's behavior without losing balance. Mods like this are purely a customization to gameplay and would rely on a weapon level up boost to stay viable.

The card system should be more creative with the type of mods, and this needs to be game breaking with respect to playstyle anyway. I’m sure that DE has wonderful plans for card additions, but I’ll give my suggestions nonetheless.

List of cards/mods suggestions:

-Wall Hack- See enemies though walls. Effective distance scales with ranks.

-Wall Puncture- Punctures walls and only walls.

-Enemy Puncture- Punctures enemies and only enemies.

-Camouflage- Decreases enemy awareness when doing certain actions. Adds a purely visual aura that you can toggle on/off.

-Tenacity(agro mod for aggressive play)- Increases passive energy gain but also gain enemy agro and removes stealthy play. Energy gain scales with ranks. Adds a purely visual aura that you can toggle on/off.

-Compassion- Increases the effect of healing items and powers (health and shields) such as gear and active powers at the cost of greatly reduced shield regeneration. Does not include health drops, does include team heals. Adds a purely visual aura you can toggle on/off. Does not stack with other aura mods.

-Unstoppable- Increases damage of jump kicks. While sprinting, you gain a chance to knockdown on charge attacks and slide attacks. Also, while sprinting you cannot be staggered or knocked down. You can still be stunned. All normal frames get reduced movement speed comparable to heavy warframe movement speed. Heavy frames fulfill certain conditions and do not get reduced movement speed. Chances to knockdown increase with ranks. Adds a purely visual aura that you can toggle on/off. Does not stack with other aura mods.

-Enlightened- Upon ability use, chance to take a percentage of energy cost from shields and return a percentage of energy costs to energy bar. Chance (30/35/40/45/50%) each rank, shield drain (95/90/85/80/75% of energy cost) per rank, energy return (30/35/40/45/50% of energy cost) per rank. Adds a purely visual aura to your warframe that you can toggle on/off. Does not stack with other aura mods.

- Radar- lets you detect loot and enemies over a great distance. (suggestion that I read from MJ12). An improvement over the more or less useless Loot Radar and Enemy Sense.

-Double Jump- Allows you to double jump. Second jump height increases with ranks. You can double jump after a Super Jump.

-Momentum Mastery- Allows you to slide, jump, and dash farther. I’ll get to the dashing part eventually. Hehe. Effective distance increases with ranks.

-Rattle- Temporarily gives your melee poison effect after a parry or gives next attacks chance to poison. Duration increases with ranks or number of attacks and chance increases with ranks. Does not stack with other parry mods.

-Cold Steel- Chance to freeze enemies around you on a successful parry. Chance increases with ranks. Does not stack with other parry mods.

-Volatile- On a successful parry, causes a small explosion that deals fire damage to nearby enemies. Radius or damage or both increases with ranks. Does not stack with other parry mods.

-Static- Each successful parry increases buildup of electricity in your melee weapon. On the next jump attack, nearby enemies are struck with electricity. Amount of possible buildup and damage scales with ranks. Does not stack with other parry mods.

-Malevolent Blade- On a successful parry, chance to suck in nearby enemies to a position in front of you. Also increases attack speed for 3 secs. Chance increase with ranks. Does not stack with other parry mods.

-Angel Blade- On a successful parry, chance to emit a blinding light. Blinds enemies and heals you for a small percentage of your health. Chances increase with ranks. Does not stack with other parry mods.

-Ghoster- Successfully pulling off a stealth attack or killing an unaware enemy gives you invisibility and increased movement for a short time. Attacking aware enemies from behind will stun them. Movement speed scales with ranks.

-Eagle Eye- Gives a better scope when aiming. Increased critical chance and critical damage while scoped. Crit chance and damage increases with ranks.

-Vulture Sight- Gives a better scope when aiming. Killing an enemy while scoped returns you a few energy and health points. Slight increase in energy and health gained per rank.

-Aegis- Chance to create a small shield for 5 secs upon a jump attack. Acts similarly to Volt Shield. Chance increase with ranks.

-Shadow- When you kill an enemy with your melee, chance to teleport behind the nearest next enemy. Chance increases with ranks.

As you can see, there is a lot of creativity in mods and I tried coming up with as many viable cards as I could. As I thought of them, I kept in mind that I wanted a mod that could change gameplay without just adding a lot of dps.

GAMEPLAY MECHANICS

I think this game needs a dash. You should be able to dash once while in the air by double tapping a movement key. This would be the best ninja move ever. Please for the love of action and ninjas…

Faster switch between weapons. I like using Paris in Grineer maps but when I come across a Heavy Grineer, my Paris just doesn’t cut it. I switch to my Akbolto, but the animation length makes me lose my pacing.

I also think that a melee stance should be implemented. (Switching to melee weapon) It seems anti-intuitive to keep switching to my gun as I move from one creep to another.

More combos for melee lovers. Add combos for crouching and maybe dashing. Combos after slide slash and jump attack. Ability to use pistol with single wield daggers. I’ve notice single wield daggers have receive negative comments in the best/worst weapon forum post. That would be cool. You could balance it by reducing pistol firerate while using the dagger. If you implement a melee stance, you could add options for alternative attacks using the right mouse button.

STORY

I forgot about this. The story definitively needs some fleshing out. There also needs to be more friendly characters. Every in-game character is either Lotus, Stalker, or a creepy boss. This also takes a lot of work and resources, I know. ^.^

Thanks you for reading this essay. <:D

DE, I know you are at PAX and hard at work. Love you guys.

Everyone else, srry for the wall of text, pls comment and tell me what you think. Love you guys too.

edit: changed the title from wall of text to get views T.T

edit: forgot about an aura mod for mages x.x

Edited March 25, 2013 by Stygi

[Madotsuki]

Don't think i quite understood what you wanted to say about enemy/warframe scaling, but on the subject of mod ideas. While most you suggested are creative, a lot of them are really quite impractical. In order:

Wall Hack is completely unneccessary due to having enemy radar to see them on your minimap.

Camouflage sounds really vague, don't know what you mean.

Wall/Enemy Puncture would be way U.P. on their own, this is why we just have one puncture mod that punctures everything.

Tenacity also sounds really vague, and i don't agree with passive energy gain anyway.

Compassion is interesting. I like the idea of a mod that increases the potency of health and perhaps energy orbs, or healing items. However, would anyone really waste a mod slot to equip it? Most people don't even use items, and having a health orb heal more than 50 hp actually sounds kinda O.P. Considering even with a maxed out health mod, most frames only have 400 health anyway, having a single health orb, which are usually plentiful in Corpus maps, heal 100 hp, even on full upgraded mod, sounds O.P. to me, yet having less than that just sounds useless.

Radar, if implemented, would outright replace enemy and loot radar. Considering loot radar is mostly useless and enemy radar is all most people care about (i think), having them both combined into one mod sounds good to me.

Why would anyone use Double Jump. This isn't a platformer, and the maps don't really support double jumping anyway. Momentum Mastery is the same thing. They're too unimportant for anyone to really care about.

Every single parry mod: Also coparitively useless. Most enemies use guns anyway. The Grineer have 3 melee units, all of whom die really fast. Corpus only have 1. There are too many Infested to parry, and they usually die from 1-2 slashes from a Cronus anyway. Plus, having it as a "chance" to activate instead of an absolute ability with cooldown makes it even less useful due to being completely unreliable.

Ghoster: You really can't get a lot of unaware kills. Unless you're Loki i guess. Excluding Infested, as long as one single unit hits the alarm, all mobs are on perma-alert status. Again, useless.

Eagle Eye and Vulture Sight: Sounds a little OP, and people scope all the time anyway, so that's practically replacing crit chance and dam mods. Healing for every single kill you make is also a huge no-no. Imagine someone with a Gorgon in an Infested map.

Unstoppable: Sounds vague and quite useless. Jump attacks already knock down everyone in the AoE, slide attacks and charged attacks already cause stumble.

Aegis: Again, having just a chance of activating it makes it completely unreliable. Being able to make a shield would make Volt's shield ability obselete too. At most it should be a certain activation on jump attack, with a long cooldown which is shorted by leveling the mod.

Shadow: Again with the goddamn chance thing. Plus, having it randomly teleport you to the next enemy is disorienting as you can't predict it, will probably end up with you being noticed by other nearby mobs, and takes the fun out of stealthing.

Really I'm gonna use your post as an experiment to see if people even respond to wall of texts often. If they do then i have my own wall of text to post when the devs return from Pax :/ a REALLY huge wall of text. When does Pax end btw?

[Ferriwind]

It seems impractical because my mod suggestions are based on customization and different approaches to gameplay. The warframe/enemy scaling pretty much says a warframe level 30 with level 30 weapons would be able to have balanced gameplay in a mission with lvl 30 enemies. Thus any mods would simply change the style of play.

For example Unstoppable would be a great way to get immunity to stagger and knockback while sprinting. It also alllows you to perform cc by using moves like slide attacks and charge attacks. It works best on tanks as they don't get negative effects but normal frames can also use it at the cost of movement speed reduction while having their naturally lower survivability.

Mods like shadow gives melee oriented players a degree of "cool" while at the same time a utility of teleporting quickly to the next enemy. Of course the chance that the mods take effect would not be very low. It would scale for example 30% at rank 1, 45% at rank 2, and 60% at rank 3.

The parry mods also offer some utility and coolness factor while encouraging the parry mechanic that is apparently bugged.

Wall Hack lets you experience a more unique gameplay by letting you see the enemies through walls as you would see your allies through walls.

These mods are impractical in the current update as health and shield mods are OP and are necessary if you don't have OP damage mods equipped. But the point is to offer more variety of customization to keep players interested. Though, my suggestions are far from perfect or easy to implement.

Also PAX EAST is over the weekend, March 22-24.

Edited March 24, 2013 by Stygi

[Ferriwind]

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[Ferriwind]

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[kaizoku222]

I actually like the idea of parry mods, parry is mostly useless right now and these would give you the ability to parry any melee, I'd like that to include shockwave attacks as well. That would give you some party utility if you could predict the use of knockdowns/shockwaves and prevent them for everyone else. For the rest of the mods, they're good ideas mostly, but what I'm more concerned about is how they drop, and how worthless they are right now. Higher level areas need to drop better things, this is a basic law of making a game, one that DE has gotten completely wrong. There's no reason to go to pluto if mercury can drop what you want, and that needs to be changed. My idea was to have higher level places drop mods that are already leveled, up to level 5. This would ease the grind and make those maxed 10 level mods less absurd and costly to get.

We definitely need some passive scaling as well, I agree that a level 30 frame should be able to solo level 30 areas without great equipment, and that really good equip should allow you to solo 5 levels above that, and good equip + being really skillful should allow you to solo 10 levels above your level. This would mean that high level defense maps and other really high (level 45+) content would be nearly impossible to solo by any means, and at least a partner would be needed. This would keep endgame content locked away from everyone but the super well geared and skilled unless you brought a party, which is how it should be.

Stealth also still needs lots of work, and stealth/stealth mods/stealth functions need to be better, going invis should open up "unaware" attacks again, and your pet should invis any time you invis. I also think that the hydra's invis should be a fixed invis for about 5 seconds, and not one that is broken upon attacking. This would allow for stealth specs that are focused on indirect combat, and the more squishy frames that have forms of stealth or aggro grabbing (loki, ash, saryn, nyx) wouldn't have to fight directly.

The game has a lot of potential, but DE took a step away from that potential with this patch.