Is Ability System In Warframe Flawed ?

[Frostmire]

Because i think it is , for instant :

 

*** " Why would i want to use this mediocre damaging first ability while i can just spam my super duper ultimate to deal tons of damage ."

 

Who cares about energy cost while there are Power efficency , energy max and Energy Sipon lying around ? With 75% PE , i can just press the "nuke button" and collect an energy orb from a random corpse "h

 

This happens on mostly nuke frames like Nova , Ember , Saryn for example , even frames like Nyx . Sure their first ( or other abilities ) can be useful in some specific situation , but they are pretty cliche to use . Meanwhile , you can just press a button to get jobs done most of the time , because you can .

 

=> there is pretty much no major drawback on using super strong abilities . Most top frames used in Survival/Defense are one or two trick ponies , just spam their "to-win skill" and they're good ( S/D are not the only modes in the game indeed , but other game modes can be done with most , if not everything )

 

*** " There are many frames that do the same thing "

In the end , it's the one that has the strongest " press this to win " ability that rule 'em all ( Nova overshadows other nuke frames and Trinity's Link and Blessing are just too good that folk like Oberon can't compete )

 

 

 

 

I think it is nearly impossible to balance a ability system that favors power creep too much like this . " Frame tiers " may change over time but there will be always some frames that overshadow others .

 

 

So , do you have any opinion to share , my friends ?

[Genoscythe]

There are some possibilities to balance it:

 

-Remove radial damage skills from the game, rework ultimates, there is zero skill involved at the moment. I think cone skills or explosion on impact things like vortex would be better, radial skills are 4 to win, like you said, and in the end theyre all the same.

 

-Make 1st abilities cooldown and not require energy, less spam, but also unlimited use

 

The ability system is pretty much the worst you can have at the moment, and there must be change, otherwise this game will get more and more unbalanced.

Edited March 3, 2014 by Genoscythe

[(PSN)Eneokun]

Nova disapproves.

[Valiant]

As people have been suggesting recently, I think, we need some division in the warframe mod slots. Like areas dedicated for ability enhancements, some for 'utility', some for resistances or whatever. It would mean all mods would be have to be classed as something too (would still have some cards in utility with V or - classes) but it would definitely make builds more varied, I think. 

Edited March 3, 2014 by Naith

[CY13ERPUNK]

lets face it

DE chose the 4 abilities per frame and they have made them easily comparable to the standard MOBA-fare of 4 abilities per char with a 1/2/3/ULT

of course Warframe is NOT a MOBA, but the powers each frame have make the similarities hard to ignore, additionally WF being a 3PS and largely PVE game, means that there was no need for cooldowns to "balance" the ULT's, and early on this just helped the action stay fast and furious, so it was no big deal, mods like power efficiency were INCREDIBLY RARE

then U6 happened and we got the mod cards, we had even LESS power efficiency (max 30% and maybe some more energy if combo'd with FLOW)

but with the addition of the corrupted mods from the derelict dragon key vaults, now 75% power efficiency has brought the "spamming" of ULT's and other high cost abilities to the forefront

IMHO it is just shining a light on poor planning and underlying game design

DE needs to decide what kind of game they want Warframe to be, either ULT's need CD's or they all need to be individually tweaked and adjusted AWAY from the 'massive radial dmg nuke, press 4 2 win'

IMHO this can be addressed by enforcing range caps, target caps, duration caps, etc, etc

the reason that ULT's like Mag's crush and Rhino's radial blast (now stomp) were so awesome back in the day was becuz they had no max tgt caps, thus with enough range they could clear whole rooms and even adjacent tiles easily, Excal's Radial Javelin cannot do either of these things, becuz RadJav has a tgt cap AND doesn't pierce terrain

things like Nova's MPRIME need tgt caps

frames like Ash feel underwhelming becuz they can ONLY slaughter a cpl dozen enemies at once, while many other frames can kill virtually hundreds of enemies at the same time if they are all in the right place

tgt caps and other individual adjustments (case by case basis) will help bring all frames in line and then DE can adjust NPC's accordingly

neways

my 2 creds

[Wallace24]

you make a good point, sometimes I'll start using blessing 5 minutes into a mission because, well why not? though sometimes it's because I'm paired with low-ranked teammates, so it's just in case they get into a tight spot in the next 23 seconds

 

I'm usually more hesitant to use ults, and ember's 1 skill is actually really strong and fun to use, and building on that, I think you picked some bad examples of frames' 1 skills. not nova, her 1 is useless compared to m prime. but fireball is great, venom is very different from miasma, and mind control, well, to me it's just like chaos, essentially, so that one's fine. but stuff like frost and volt would be better examples, since their 1 skills are garbage, and their ults (and ice wave) are the same exact thing

 

the real issue is the power creep from the corrupted mods, I think. fleeting expertise in combination with continuity and constitution is crazy good, then you add streamline to hit that 75%, and you basically have no downside, just 25 cost ults. really it's fleeting expertise that's broken, it just so happens that there is only one "ability attribute" with two normal mods to increase it: duration. ok, constitution is technically a nightmare mod, but it doesn't have a downside like corrupted mods, so I consider it normal in that sense. for the other attributes, you only have one: stretch, intensify (focus), and streamline. and they don't give you much, certainly not enough to make up for the negatives of a corrupted mod on their own. but continuity+constitution can (they give a combined 58% duration increase, max fleeting only decreases it by 60%)

[(PSN)cv3411]

I would like to see in the future more synergy and utility of abilities with each other and with other frame abilities. I'm not against the "to-win" skill as you say,but if becomes a point where everyone decides that it beats out every other frames ability then there is apparently things that need some rethinking or enhancements in certain aspects, but not just simple nerfing all the time.

Right now you will see the same frames used in high leveled play,mainly nova,rhino,Vauban and occasionally a few others. Make those less used frames viable to play at higher levels especially if they're going to be bringing endgame even higher level enemies. More synergy and utility between abilities and your teammates abilities will bring those hardly used frames to more missions.

All abilities should have their uses and be effective in some way at any level gameplay and not make people feel like they have to always mash that one move over this move to succeed.I think personally Variety,viability, and more interesting team co op will go hand in hand if they can focus on more team synergy of abilities/utility.

[Axterix13]

Personally, I'm inclined to go with "ults should be immune to efficiency", over the likes of target caps and such.  Alternately, they should take efficiency, but still drain all energy, doing extra damage based on energy consumed, so that using them = energy gone.  Ultimates should be ultimate, not spammy.  Although this would still leave a couple of powers that are essentially ultimates but not in an ultimate spot (like Mag's Polarize against Corpus).  On the other hand, if they are just another power, then they should be more limited.  Cones instead of radial.  Requiring LoS.  Limited number of targets.  More DoT than boom.  Less damage on something like Reckoning, but a 5-10s duration debuff that gives the health orb drop chance.  You know, more like Radial Javelin or World on Fire.

 

Mostly though, efficiency breaks them badly.  It being a straight reduction makes it overpowered.  If 100% efficiency worked like it used to, only cutting the cost in half, that would help.  Instead, we have 75% reducing it to a quarter of the cost.  And the cost of doing so isn't much because many powers don't mind -duration.  Some even like it.  Fleeting Expertise is broken beyond belief.  Why they chose -duration for that mod, rather than say -range, I don't know.

 

I think the scaling of power costs is a bit bad too.  Energy costs are mostly linear.  25/50/75/100.  If it went more like 10/20/40/100, it would make tier 1 powers a lot more tempting to use, because you can use it 10x for one ultimate.  But you'd still need to do something about efficiency/ultimate power.

 

Anyway, there's multiple flaws in the system.