Dear De, The Problem With Aoe Ultimates, And Abilities In General

[Xana_Skullsunder]

-snip-

 

Dear DE, some of your forum members need to be slapped and made to sit in the corner. It's anti-discussion imbeciles like you that prevent any actual progress.

[adoomgod]

What your advocating here is a huge change to the people who are use to how it is now, innovation is ok, but...

DE won't change anything unless there's a good portion of the community who agrees with your logic

This topic has became an argument already, not a feedback forum

There will always be more than 2 sides, no matter what your talking about 

Honestly now we are tossing our opinions, there's no right or wrong answer to this

 

I am not arrogant enough to assume everything I've listed so far is right or should be used. Tossing around ideas is what I'm advocating. I don't want a right or wrong situation, I want opinions so I'd like to hear less "you're wrong" and more "this could work if, this doesn't work it, this is why i don't think this is good" etc.

 

My feed back is right now a lot of abilities, especially AOE damage ults, don't scale well into the late game, and I've provided a ton of ideas, be them good or bad, that can be used separately or together to change things. This isn't innovation, I'm pretty sure everything I've listed has been done in other RPGs and a lot had success. 

 

Finally people want to bother me about logic? I think it's extremely unfair to flat out say my ideas  will never work in ANY SHAPE OR FORM OR VARIATION when it's just from your own nerf-scared imagination that they don't work. The majority can be wrong, and often times does not even know what's best for itself. Sometimes the minority is right, sometimes it's wrong. DE has to make decisions for themselves at the end of the day, not just based on the emotions of the majority but what they actually think will be FUN for the majority.

 

Most of these ideas have not been play tested within warframe, so I think it's very silly to claim it won't be fun. I am not advocating just slapping on the limiters to skills as they are. I'm suggesting that a lot of skills could be reworked to make them MORE POWERFUL or MORE UTILE both in EARLY AND LATE GAME and that SOME of these limiters might become useful or NECESSARY to make sure the newly BUFFED skills don't break the game.

 

I would love to see frames that can rely SOLELY upon it's skills, some that focus on gun play, sword play etc. (not that we don't already have some) and some that are a mix of 2 or more of the above. Caster/melee frame, Caster/Gun frame, All around frame, support frame, Gun/melee frame. 

 

Etc. This is diversity and I think skills are a good place to create it.

[adoomgod]

I never said that you wanted to put them on everything. Sidenote: Because I gave negative feedback, you extrapolated and assumed I meant something that I did not.

 

Now let me explain: The reason I am against such things aside from what I posted is CONSISTENCY. Without consistency, the game will start to unravel. Why is this capped when nothing else is? Potato.

 

Good imagination: Unconventional ideas that fit within the currently established mechanics. Example (the 4th power in there isn't a great example, everything else is): https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/172800-new-warframe-idea-corrupted-frame/#entry2027048 

 

Bad imagination: Adding conflicting ideas that make the game less consistent, and clash with each other. % energy drain won't work because flow would then be good for 3 powers and terrible for one, making builds LESS diverse by making powers unwanted.

I apologize if I over extrapolated. I disagree though. You'd have frames that have no % energy skills, all % energy skills, and some % energy skills. Now imagine: On the no % energy skills you'd use flow. On the all % energy skills you wouldn't and would have a slot for something else, and on the some % energy skills you can pick between focusing on building your mods for the skills that aren't % energy, the ones that are, or trying to find a BALANCE between them. So yeah, build diversity. Maybe 1/4 is bad. Then use 2/4. But I think 1/4 could work too. And flow would not wreck these skills, energy orbs aren't that hard to get, you could hold use a flow that isn't fully maxxed, etc. This creates a diversity because we'd have builds that use partially maxxed mods. And heck maybe there could be a mod that mods % energy drain. I really think it's unfair to say there's no way it would work when it hasn't been tested. % energy drain is probably not the big problem you think it to be. Properly balanced it'd cost a fair amount compared to the strength/usefulness of the skill. It'd be niche.

[modded]

I apologize if I over extrapolated. I disagree though. You'd have frames that have no % energy skills, all % energy skills, and some % energy skills. Now imagine: On the no % energy skills you'd use flow. On the all % energy skills you wouldn't and would have a slot for something else, and on the some % energy skills you can pick between focusing on building your mods for the skills that aren't % energy, the ones that are, or trying to find a BALANCE between them. So yeah, build diversity. Maybe 1/4 is bad. Then use 2/4. But I think 1/4 could work too. And flow would not wreck these skills, energy orbs aren't that hard to get, you could hold use a flow that isn't fully maxxed, etc. This creates a diversity because we'd have builds that use partially maxxed mods. And heck maybe there could be a mod that mods % energy drain. I really think it's unfair to say there's no way it would work when it hasn't been tested. % energy drain is probably not the big problem you think it to be. Properly balanced it'd cost a fair amount compared to the strength/usefulness of the skill. It'd be niche.

I'll end with this:

 

Could your ideas work? Yes.

 

However, due to the amount of work it would take, the rage it would induce, and the fact that you would now have not 2 different style, but 2 different SYSTEMS for managing mod effects, it most likely will not be implemented.

 

Of the the skills of good forum warriors is that they introduce solutions, and very rarely radical solutions. And they also don't bring up things that have been widely debated and many times shot down (cooldowns, ahem).

[ThePresident777]

I think it is utterly hilarious fun to launch my warframe into the air, fly into the middle of a huge massive gigantic mob, and as I descend in that drama queen pose that Nova does, Mprime the enemy and as I hit the ground and stumble, a team mate has set off the explosion and the colossal mob goes POOF!  Seconds later, the mob is back.  It's just too funny and I can't get that in any other game.  The day that goes away, I can't think of a reason to play Warframe.  If you can't do that, then what can you do?  The same thing you do in any other game?  OK, then, at that point in time, I'll go look at other games.
 

I ran my version of a noob excal build through Telesto, Saturn, and I had to play him in a stop and pop manner.  My warframe was made of glass.  But, I found it boring without the cannon.  I extracted just fine, but, I was bored with that play style.  I used Slash Dash twice, for fun.  But, I hate that there isn't enough energy to have fun.  I wanted to use my abilities more often, but, the energy supply was not reliable unless I killed hordes, which you can't do by yourself with noob loadouts.  I don't have a problem with stop and pop per se.  I just hate not having the freedom to use abilities for the sheer utter hilarity of it.  I like glass cannons with a fast ROF and steady energy supply.  I like to rain catastrophe down on colossal hordes.  And I like the Hordes to come back for more real quick.

[SkyIRaine]

There's no point to insult me or others, and I didn't just say it wouldn't work, I provided my reasoning of WHY it would not work

I think in the previous posts I said I LIKE YOUR IDEA, but it doesn't play out right for some of them, and I did not say ALL FRAMES, now you don't read

Yes I agree, range re balance and Mixed % Dmg with Ult is good, but not cool down or % Energy costs

Doesn't matter even if the majority is wrong, there's no wrong or right, but the small minority still need some supporters, Strength in Numbers~

Like I said this can go on all day

[adoomgod]

I'll end with this:

 

Could your ideas work? Yes.

 

However, due to the amount of work it would take, the rage it would induce, and the fact that you would now have not 2 different style, but 2 different SYSTEMS for managing mod effects, it most likely will not be implemented.

 

Of the the skills of good forum warriors is that they introduce solutions, and very rarely radical solutions. And they also don't bring up things that have been widely debated and many times shot down (cooldowns, ahem).

I know cooldowns were torn down but to think that they have absolutely no place in the game seems a bit too limiting. They should be given a better shot, if they aren't extreme and are moddable it could be interesting. % cooldown reduction and flat cooldown reduction mods could be added. More mods to hunt >.>, I don't think they should be wide spread but I think if skills are to be made destructively viable in the late game there could be a place for them.

 

There's no point to insult me or others, and I didn't just say it wouldn't work, I provided my reasoning of WHY it would not work

I think in the previous posts I said I LIKE YOUR IDEA, but it doesn't play out right for some of them, and I did not say ALL FRAMES, now you don't read

Yes I agree, range re balance and Mixed % Dmg with Ult is good, but not cool down or % Energy costs

Doesn't matter even if the majority is wrong, there's no wrong or right, but the small minority still need some supporters, Strength in Numbers~

Like I said this can go on all day

I apologize. I was overly aggravated by the dismissive and logic-less dismissals and became overly defensive and that is my bad. I agree that some may not work but I think until they are tried it's hard to be sure. I know people seem to hate cool downs / % energy costs but if they are modded and balanced properly I think it could be an interesting feature for alternative builds.

 

I'm not trying to convert anyone so much as provide ideas for DE. It was my hope that forum members would try first to improve listed ideas as opposed to just saying "no, never" (not that you said this).

Edited February 13, 2014 by adoomgod

[Cyrionn]

Yet another thread on those subjects, pretty much always the same thing... Remove P4W and buff this, nerf that, scale here, new helmet there and an osso-bucco for the 12.

Well, as I started to say something let's give my opinion. :3

 

First about the infamous P4W.

The only way I see this as a pain for others is if you go to a lowbie planet such as all tier one and pretty much all tier 2, take a random mission that is not a scaling/endless one and kill every mob by your allmighty 4 button. That's being a tard for taking away the fun of the first experiences of the newcommers in the game. It's been said often, with a mastery rank cap (so a MR8 for exemple won't join a MR0 to 3 or 4) or with a reputation system it can be punished.

 

Now that said, when you know how the game works and got the basics so you start higher content, I don't see why it's a pain that some can P4W. It's not like you just have to put your ultimate mod in your build. It oftens requires a bunch of rare mods that are expensive to rank up, some things you will grind hardcore for. It also means you are using a specific build, often leaving you dangerously defenseless. Then I don't get why you don't deserve your reward, being the ultimate sweeper that is.

Like MrPresident said, it's a fun and pretty unique trait of the game. Remove that and you remove a good bunch of players aswell. And it's not experience or loot isn't shared, and on the long run finishing your mission faster means doing more missions or going further in less amout of time when playing defenses.

When speaking of P4W I love how Nova and MPrime always comes on the table when actually her real and totally crazy strength lies in AMD, on the long run MPrime is just a debuff...

 

 

Then about changing abilities so every frame would be relevant it's a complex problem for which you have to consider three crucial points, at least that's what I think with my current knowledge of the game mechanics.

 

The first one is that the game balance is actually not intended to be relevant passed a certain lvl of ennemies. There it is DE's choice to decide if they want to keep it like this and keep these crazy high tier runs only accessible to the scaling tier of frames.

 

The second one is that there are frames with abilities that scales and some that don't. Once again due to the fact that what we call endgame is in fact just ennemies scaling passed the point of game balance, some frames are considered useless because they lack scaling.

Please note there that a hard CC is an ability that scales by itself without the need of a value (Stomp, Chaos, Bastille,...).

 

Then the last point is our arsenal. The weapons we hold are dealing way more damage than most of our abilites. A 5 formas penta (for exemple) can get you to this unbalanced point before you even noticed it. Therefore if we want to use our weapons to their limit we are forced to get to this point.

 

 

It is the overlapping of those three points that leads to think that the game is broken, and that we have to fix this or nerf that. I'm not saying we can find a one and only solution by taking those points in consideration, there isn't.

 

DE have few possibilities there.

They can choose to put a cap to ennemies max level and then start balancing from this point, which would make everything easier and clearer.

They can also decide that there should be no cap, and to make every frame relevant try to use some scaling values in every frames kit, depending on max hp or ennemy level, with adding the good variables to the good place they could even keep a high-tier-of-non-sense where ennemies would have scaled way more than the abilities to keep some sort of ceiling.

Or they could just use that big nerf hammer on all primaries and secondaries so our weapons won't one-shot any single mob until lvl 50, so even with so hardcore P4W and "OP frames" you wouldn't be able to get really far. That would be a double nerf if you consider that on very high tier the abilities dealing the most damages are the one scaling on weapon damage (like AMD, Absorb or Sonar).

They could even keep everything as it is and use the new stuff incoming to balance those scaling problems (for more info there watch devstream#22).

Or, who knows, they could reset servers, leave us with Loki (with gender option) only and then it's done, game balanced !

 

All that said, I won't say any of those solutions or the solutions I can't imagine yet is better than the other. It's DE's appreciation only because they are the only ones who know where they want to lead their game and what can technically be done or not.

 

But what I'm pretty sure about is that by considering the aspects of the question seperately you can't manage to get the overall balance done or at least something approaching it.

A good exemple for this is Valkyr and Hysteria.

They tried to buff it up by making it take in consideration base damage and critical stats from your weapon, could have been a nice idea at least that's what players were asking for (I wasn't and I'm even totally agaisnt it, other debate...) but it ended in a fail because weapons are not balanced for this giving only three relevant options and also because the animation stayed the same old sh*t it was before.

 

Now you can get back to think of cooldowns, energy costs or whatever. Sorry for the "a-bit-off-topic" novel there, but if someone read it until the end I hope he gets what I tried to mean.

Edited February 13, 2014 by Cyrionn

[Mazikeen]

I do not feel the issue lies in the powers by themselves. Each ultimate, even as powerful as it could be, if used only when needed, as an "oh S#&$ button", is fine. The problem only appears when the powers are spammed.

 

To me, the root cause is the stacking of power efficiency mods + energy siphon, and that's the only part that should be addressed.

 

When ultimates cost 25 energy, when you get more energy than you can use, yes, the powers are just spammed and can ruin the fun, leaving one spammer playing and 3 people watching him.

 

But nerfing the powers would be fixing the symptoms while letting the decease continue to grow. Just a bad idea.

Edited February 13, 2014 by Mazikeen

[adoomgod]

I do not feel the issue lies in the powers by themselves. Each ultimate, even as powerful as it could be, if used only when needed, as an "oh S#&$ button", is fine. The problem only appears when the powers are spammed.

 

To me, the root cause is the stacking of power efficiency mods + energy siphon, and that's the only part that should be addressed.

 

When ultimates cost 25 energy, when you get more energy than you can use, yes, the powers are just spammed and can ruin the fun, leaving one spammer playing and 3 people watching him.

 

But nerfing the powers would be fixing the symptoms while letting the decease continue to grow. Just a bad idea.

It's like you didn't read any of the ways I said they could be buffed or made more useful.

[Mazikeen]

It's like you didn't read any of the ways I said they could be buffed or made more useful.

I read, but I disagree with most of your post.

To me, abilities are fine the way they are (even if some might need some tweaks), while the current energy state is not.

But it's not like we have any obligation to agree.

[ThePresident777]

I disagree with both of you.  I want to spam.  I want to rain catastrophe down on hordes.  It's what drew me to Warframe.  It's what I've been doing in Warframe and want to continue to do in Warframe. I don't appreciate attempts to take that away from me.  It's not fair to people that they see a game for what it is, enjoy it for what it is, then, have it taken away from them.  If you guys hate Warframe so much, why should I lose it so you can have here what you could have in another game?

 

If, what you want were in the game as a choice, as selectable conditions, such as missions or game modes, I would not have a problem with that at all. 

 

But, to take away what I enjoy, not acceptable and not fair.  And any company that would do such a thing, that would be so unreliable, is not worth doing business with.

Edited February 14, 2014 by ThePresident777

[Xana_Skullsunder]

I disagree with both of you.  I want to spam.  I want to rain catastrophe down on hordes.  It's what drew me to Warframe.  It's what I've been doing in Warframe and want to continue to do in Warframe. I don't appreciate attempts to take that away from me.  It's not fair to people that they see a game for what it is, enjoy it for what it is, then, have it taken away from them.  If you guys hate Warframe so much, why should I lose it so you can have here what you could have in another game?

 

If, what you want were in the game as a choice, as selectable conditions, such as missions or game modes, I would not have a problem with that at all. 

 

But, to take away what I enjoy, not acceptable and not fair.  And any company that would do such a thing, that would be so unreliable, is not worth doing business with.

 

Fine, but at the same time, spam bores me. I see no point in lugging my painstakingly crafted guns into a mission just to watch a Nova/Oberon/etc. press 4 and clear the room before I even see what's in it. I doubt I'm the only one.

 

So you know what? Go. Play your nuke spam game. I'm going home, and taking my money with me.

[Cyrionn]

Fine, but at the same time, spam bores me. I see no point in lugging my painstakingly crafted guns into a mission just to watch a Nova/Oberon/etc. press 4 and clear the room before I even see what's in it. I doubt I'm the only one.

 

So you know what? Go. Play your nuke spam game. I'm going home, and taking my money with me.

The thing is, as Mr President said, the game is actually about spamming, intended or not, so you guys want to get something out of the core gameplay to fit your style.

 

Lemme get another example, I hate games like Sims or any other real-life simulation because I don't find it entertaining, I need something fictional and fantastic with hardcore action.

Should I ask to implement gun fights with zombies in the next Sims that it can fit my playstyle ?

Another one, I love Devil May Cry series, but I hate those platforms and puzzle stages as for me they just cut down the pace of the game, should I ask for them to be removed ?

 

Not saying that your point doesn't make sense, it does at least for lowbies. But once again, I said it earlier, you're doing solar map missions to say this, and not survival / defenses. Why don't you just go Private, get a clan mate or go Recuiting tab and do this accordingly to your pace. There is nothing in the world that actually forces you to have someone you don't know in your game and that kills your fun.

 

Let's try some tolerance a bit and not crying for something to be changed / implemented just because it is something that bothers you and your gameplay.

 

Edit : It can seem focused on you XanaSkullpulper, but this is to apply to anyone that would feel concerned, and many should.

  Edited February 14, 2014 by Cyrionn

[ThePresident777]

Fine, but at the same time, spam bores me. I see no point in lugging my painstakingly crafted guns into a mission just to watch a Nova/Oberon/etc. press 4 and clear the room before I even see what's in it. I doubt I'm the only one.

 

So you know what? Go. Play your nuke spam game. I'm going home, and taking my money with me.

 

Warframe has Nightmare Modes.  Plus, you just quoted me saying "If, what you want were in the game as a choice, as selectable conditions, such as missions or game modes, I would not have a problem with that at all." 

 

But, your response is to remain utterly selfish and refuse to play.  You will gladly spend time in the forums advocating for radical change that ruins the game.  But, you would rather quit the game altogether than share it with other radically different play styles than what you prefer.  Fine, take your ball and your money and go.  If you refuse to negotiate and share then it's a waste of time to have any consideration for you.

[azmyth1]

This is one of the most thoughtful posts I have read on the forums in awhile, and while I don't agree with all of it, it's still interesting.  Every frame having a huge AOE kill everything ultimate is boring and repetitive.  Maybe 3 frames should have one, at most.  Ultimates should be varied.  Cooldowns are a good idea for ultimates.  Some abilities should be spamable, but ultimates should not.

 

Warframe has become a game of follow around a Nova using M. Prime in literally every room she walks into.  It's fun for one player, but what about the other 3 for whom it becomes a game of follow the trail of pink glitter?  CC and debuff ultimates ensure that other players have something to do other than just follow the caster.

 

Ranges do get quite ridiculous.  A 10 m base radius for "kill everything" ults would be a good start.  If you want to keep the 25m radius of rhino stomp, maybe it's time to extend the stun but drop the damage part entirely.  M. Prime only deserves the range it has if you drop either the debuff and slow, or keep them and get rid of the explosion damage.

[(PSN)SudsySmile]

Well after reading your original posts and replies, I'd say no to you and your ideas. Ever heard of speak softly and carry a big stick? This is more in the range of the empty can rattles the most.

[(PSN)SudsySmile]

And for those tired of it, set your settings to private or solo, issue solved.