My Personal Opinion On Skill System

[Vidia]

Hi everyone,

First of all, I'd like to say that I absolutely adore this game. The concept is just awesome, and I've literally been waiting years for a game like this to come out. I love the style, how it incorporates so many game styles from different genres such as the gun/sword action combat style from gunz and some skills and equipment systems from traditional mmorpgs. There is nothing I'd like more than to see this game succeed. Therefore, I do think that in order to create a better harmony between these various aspects, there does need to be several tweaks.

I'd like to talk about just one thing I've been wondering about, among several - the skill system.

The skills are a great and unique addition to this game, giving players a sense of individuality from frame to frame. However, the skill system, in my personal opinion, might discourage players from utilizing the entire variety of skills each frame offers, though the game is focused on the skill specialization each warframe can offer players. These are the reasons why:

1) Energy is too limited and restricting. Because energy doesn't regenerate, it forces players to decide which skills they want to use, and use them sparingly. This creates a sort of favoritism for certain skills if they are more useful than another. In order to gain back energy, one has to find and pick up energy orbs, which also only refil the energy bar enough for maybe one more skill use.

2)The mod system restricts skill variety. Using mod capacity in order to equip certain skills discourages players from using skills because it forces players to choose between getting a skill, or equipping other mods than can give them additional stats and make them stronger. If, for example, I wanted to be tanky, have damage, crit, and other things, I would have to give up on having skills. Likewise, if I wanted to use skills, I'd have to lose out on those stat-based mods. Additionally, the fusion system creates a favoritism for certain skills, further discouraging the utilization of the entire skillset of every frame.

The above points I feel, can be better addressed to allow players to utilize the entire skillset of each frame without punishing players for wanting to utilize all skills. This is not to say that players should be allowed to use skills indefinetely, but there should be a better balance for allowing players to use skills at a whim without having to feel like they've made a wrong decision if they used a skill, and consequently can be very frustrating for many players.

Solution:

There are a couple of things that can be done to remedy the above things:

1) Energy orbs can be automatically picked up, and dropped by each kill. Therefore, players do not have to go out of their way to locate one on the ground, and rely on sheer luck to gain energy back. Each energy drop can be reduced, from 25 energy each to maybe 10-50, depending on the strength of the enemy, but drop every time, so that it can reward players for effectively utilizing their skills to defeat enemies.

2) As an alternative to option 1, the large-capacity, non-regenerating energy system can be replaced by a smaller-capacity, but quickly regenerating one (similar to how shields work). This way, players are still not able to spam skills endlessly, but are not punished on the long-run for utilizing a certain skill. This also allows players to use movement skills to get around and be recharged the next time enemies appear. Focusing too much on managing energy as a limited resource can take away from the many other aspects of the game, including the many other resources a player must manage such as health, shields, ammunition, stamina and experience. There are simply far too many resource-based items that drop on the ground, especially considering how Warframe utilizes all the resources from 2 very different genres.

3) Another alternative to option 1 and 2: Cooldown system in addition to or instead of energy. A cooldown system will limit the spamming of skills, but does not directly punish a player for doing so. If a cooldown system was added, it might be necessary to greatly expand the energy capacity. This limits no-cooldown spamming of skills, but allows players to be more liberal with utilizing the entire skill set, as opposed to one or two skills. Also, raising the capacity of energy will discourage a playstyle that uses only skills throughout each level, and encourage more melee/gun-oriented aggressive playstyles as well.

4) Skill mods should not take away from using other mods. Skill mods can be gained by level and should not occupy mod capacity. The addition of specific skill-improving mods can replace the necessity to utilize fusion for the existing skill mods -- this can improve variety of upgrade for each skill. For example, there can be a mods for decreasing cooldowns of a skill, others for increasing the power for a skill, and others yet for extending the duration of buffs/shields/etc. This change will allow players to still be able to use other skills in game while being able to focus on improving one or two of his/her favorite skills as well as improving stats. I feel that this change will is the most necessary since seperate mod capacity categories are already available for both melee weapons and ranged weapons. Likewise, skills and warframe mods should be seperate.

I feel that the any of the above changes can be applied to create a better skill system that allows players to freely utilize their skills without being punished for doing so. Again, these are just my opinions on some ways to make Warframe a player-friendly game. Constructive feedback is welcome.

-Vidia

Edited March 25, 2013 by Vidia

[shoudra]

when grouped energy siphon handles most of the whole energy management things as it stacks with other users using it.

The mod system hopefully gets tweaked so we don't have to use four cards for our mod slots. At the very least I know others have petitioned it. Right now on my supercharged frames I have a bit of energy to spare which I'll probably dump into redirection whenever the gremlins on the server will let me have it.