Reward Us For Good Choices, Don't Punish Us With Bad Baselines!

[Azamagon]

What do I mean by this?

 

I'm speaking of a certain mindset in game design that is important for making fun choices in a game, a mindset that DE unfortunately seems to be lacking with their designs:

Make it rewarding for us for by making choices into REAL and fun options, in particular with modding, rather than punishing us for not choosing what the DEVELOPERS want us to choose by making the baseline effects horrible and/or by adding bandaid solutions.

 

Another way to put it: Make stuff fun from the start, while modding adds MORE fun! Don't make stuff "fun" only AFTER adding mods. We want to feel rewarded for our choices, we don't want to be punished for NOT choosing something.

 

Let me give you some examples of what I mean:

 

1) Stamina

Goal - Make modding for Stamina a nice option (make it an alternative and/or complement to modding for passive survivability)

What should have been done - Make the mechanics that involve Stamina into a fun and rewarding experience. Do so by making, for example, blocking and dodging very good defensive options.

What DE did - Nerfed Stamina-regeneration into oblivion (Got reverted later though, thankfully!)

 

So, instead of making Stamina into an alternative/complement to health and shield modding, they wanted to make mobility into such a crippling experience that made the Stamina mods NECESSARY to have fun, rather than as interesting and ACTUAL choices.

 

2) Weapon swapping

Goal - Make weaponswitching more fluid, fun and rewarding (ties in with Damage/Resistances 2.0)

What should have been done - Make weaponswitching fast as a baseline, thus also rewarding for active gameplay

What DE did - Added Speed Holster aura

 

Instead of making weaponswitching fast (which rewards reflexes and active input), they add Speed Holster as a bandaid aura. Due to this, instead of swapping weapons to adapt to enemies and their surfaces (such as Pistol for shields, Rifle for the health beneath), we just keep shooting with the first weapon til they are dead instead.

Swapping weapons thus remains an unfun input.

 

3) Knockdowns

Goal - Make fighting enemies with Knockdowns counterable somehow.

What should have been done - Make us able to click a button (such as jump) to spend a chunk of stamina when knocked down to quickly recover (backflip recover or whatnot).

What DE did - Adds Handspring and similar mods as a way to "counter" Knockdown...

 

Another case of bandaid additions. Instead of making the core gameplay interesting, DE chose to do a lazy "fix" by adding a situational mod to "counter" these situations.

If countering knockdowns was related to user input, rather than mods, it could possibly also make gameplay rewarding skill (if it is timing-requiring) and further makes Stamina-modding a more interesting choice (if this recovery costs a lot of Stamina).

Modding for Stamina would be far more interesting, as it gives you more time and room for general skillful play, while Handspring is just a straight up "herp derp" counter to an overly specific situation. Modding for Stamina is also more of a choice, as you always have a decent amount of Stamina around, regardless if you mod for it or not. Modding Handspring (or similar mods) is less of a choice, because it just determines wether you will recover fast, or if you will not. It's really boring.

Having the Handspring mod wouldn't be THAT bad though, if we actually had the OPTION for utilitymods. Which leads me to the next point:

 

4) Resistance mods and Utility mods in general

Goal - Make resistance mods and other utility mods nice alternatives

What should have been done - Give us utility-dedicated slots (both for weapons and Warframes), so we don't have to sacrifice general power/efficiency for situational benefits.

What DE did - Adds broken light death traps to "promote" the Lightning resistance mods + Buffed up the resistance mods by quite a lot.

 

Situational mods should NEVER be a choice over general benefits. Because, that requires the situational ones to be INSANELY powerful, meaning, overpowered when they DO take effect, but still remain useless when they don't work.

It just can't be balanced.

Due to it not really being balanceable, we really ought to get dedicated slots for power and dedicated slots for utility. This guy has got the idea right in this thread.

But what we got instead is electrical traps to promote electric resistance mods. Due to the traps in some cases being unavoidable, it makes it feel more like a forced choice, rather than a situational option. The Grineer broken lights are completely anti-fun!

If the traps were avoidable somehow and if we had utility-dedicated slots AND if there were more enemies in general that had electrical attacks, then modding for electrical resistance would be a potentially interesting choice. But it requires ALL THOSE 3 THINGS to become an interesting option. So, we are quite far away from the point of making these kind of mods any fun at all...

This also ties in to the above Handspring-issue. If utilitychoices were actual choices (by not sacrificing general power), mods like Handspring would at least be more acceptable.

 

5) Melee

Goal - Make it fun and diverse!

What should have been done - Add new attacks and combos, remove the split up of regular vs charge when you mod. Modding is now instead for general power. GAMEPLAY and SKILL determines your situational effectiveness, such as how well you fight against single heavy targets contra groups of enemies, wether you hit or not with a slideattack etc. Meleeing effectiveness is up to your own user input!

What DE did / will do - Add new attacks and combos, but limit these new and fun options by splitting up regular vs charge even MORE, by having SUPERSPECIALIZED mods (like, Slide-booster-mod). Gameplay remains nondiverse. MODDING is what determines your effectiveness against single heavy targets contra groups of enemies.

 

It's just really sad to see this opportunity go to waste. I really want to make choices when I melee. But NOT in the modding screen! I want these choices to be done IN THE BATTLEFIELD!

 

 

----------------

There are more things then these, but I think they are important examples to display big issues of this game.

 

DE, could you maybe place consider changing your mindset in this regard? By rewarding us with good baselines and giving us the room for actual options and choices (more like this), instead of punishing us with bad baselines and thus pidgeonholing our modding choices, I TRULY think it would give a better basic gaming experience AND makes most, if not all, of your mod additions to the game a LOT more fun!

Edited March 15, 2014 by Azamagon

[nickelshark]

I defiantly see your point. All the useless mods we have are no more than just band aid fixes for shortcomings in actual game play. Of course all this would take along time to implement but at least those green stamina balls will be seen somewhere other than the dojo obstacle course.

[gnat6]

I fully agree and think that DE has a really bad case of not being able to see the forest through the trees.

[DitsyPixie]

Edited March 15, 2014 by DitsyPixie

[Sasquatchias]

[egregiousRac]

I defiantly see your point. All the useless mods we have are no more than just band aid fixes for shortcomings in actual game play. Of course all this would take along time to implement but at least those green stamina balls will be seen somewhere other than the dojo obstacle course.

 

3 and 4 are things that would take some implementation time, but 1 and 2 are just things that should have been improved via base stats, but instead became useless mods. 5 is needless mod complexity, which they are making worse.

[cnileoleman]

Not trying to steal OP's thunder. Expanding on the mention of the new Grineer trap additions:

 

1. How much current are they putting into their lights that electricity can arc several feet when they break? O.o

 

2. Will environmental effects apply to enemies at any point? I played an infested mission where streams of them ran down a hallway at me. After they were done and I went to walk down it I got zapped by a broken light. Volts will be disappointed to discover that the infested don't conduct electricity. (Frosts will be sad that Corpus shields aren't bothered by ice)

 

3. The Grineer sensor doors....do they ever turn off? I mostly play Ash and was invisible at the time, and the door still had its field up. Checking if it would de-activate when it detected Grineer troops further confused me when a butcher walked through it without the field de-activating. I can only assume that the same people responsible for keeping the lights working built these doors. I'm starting to wonder how the Grineer have an empire.

[Paradoxbomb]

I wholeheartedly agree. I get that programming and making changes to core mechanics isn't something that happens overnight and DE probably wants to give us some kind of relief to remedy fundamental issues, but it seems to be becoming a trend for them to just make these bandaid mods and never look back on the subject again.

 

We should be able to effectively dodge, block, and recover from knockdown with core mechanics instead of relying on mods that give us a chance to recover faster or block more efficiently. Weapon switch should be fast and fluent and encourage us to switch frequently a la Sanctum 2 style instead of, again, fixing the issue with a bandaid aura (this one particular bothers me since weapon switching is effected by lag, so it should be inherently fast to make up for that).

 

I don't want to judge Melee 2.0 too heavily though since it hasn't come out yet, although further dilution of mods and further separation of quick and charged melee don't sound very promising. I really hope at the very least blocking/knockdown resistance become viable mechanics WITHOUT the need for mods that increase resistance chances.

[LukeAura]

Absolutely! Bravo, Bravo! 

I do highly doubt it's a lack of skill or quality of work in DE, that causes problem after problem, but it is how they envision the game from the start, their thinking and attitude towards building it up.
They have all the skill and knowledge needed to make this game something great. But it is going to waste because their thinking is flawed, the way they envision ideas leaves them fundamentally bad, and no amount of polish will ever make them better because they start on a faulty premise to begin with. 

It's the same problem you find in nearly every facet of the game.

I'm not sure how many times I've railed against people over the passed few days modding to soften the blow from Grineer traps isn't 'fun', I want to be able to deal with them when I run the mission, not while I stare at the UI screen, but it's a lot. 
 

[arisaka]

I agree. The modding system is a great way for people to progress and become more powerful. However, it's way overboard in that barely anything feels good unless you mod it to ridiculous extents.

[Azamagon]

Thank you everyone for the support! :)

 

Now, the question is, what would be the best way for DE to understand this?

Regarding the modding system, to me it feels like they keep adding more floors to a tall building with a bad foundation, feeling it's gonna collapse really soon. We really need an overhaul of the modding system so we don't choose between power and utility. It just doesn't work.

 

The staminasystem seems to be getting SOME love in Melee 2.0 though. Let's hope blocking and dodging will be more useful by then! And hopefully a better baseline mechanic to deal with knockdowns too, while the current anti-knockdown-mods could remain for the lazy ones / as a complement to the better baseline system.

 

About Melee 2.0 though, I really hope they don't just focus on animations there. Yeah, it's probably gonna look really cool (Jat Kittag's chargeattacks looks really awesome right now!) but there are so many things to fix with melee:

1) We need more physical damage diversity between the melee weapons (too many pure Slashweapons)

2) Most, if not ALL, melee weapons need more multihitting capabilities

3) The melee modding needs to be streamlined into NOT having a split between chargeattacks and regular attacks

4) Dealing melee damage during stealth has a too high multiplier (4x) which makes it harder for melee weaponry to have higher basestats without overpowering attacks during stealth

Etc etc etc...

I REALLY hope they fix these things. But for some (very obvious) reason, I doubt it.

 

The slow weaponswapping could be SLIGHTLY more tolerable as it is right now if two things happened: 1) A rehaul to the modding system as mentioned, so we don't compete between general power and niched utilities and 2) That Speed Holster turned into a utility warframe mod, rather than an aura.

But I'd rather have the weaponswap be fast baseline and Speed Holster turned into a different kind of utility warframe mod (I saw someone suggesting that Speed Holster turned into "Magazine Feeder", a warframe utility mod which granted your sheathed ranged weapon a partial reload (up to 33% of the max magsize or so) when you kill with your other weapons, but not with powers. That would be a far more interesting mod!)

Edited March 17, 2014 by Azamagon

[Bibliothekar]

But I'd rather have the weaponswap be fast baseline and Speed Holster turned into a different kind of utility warframe mod (I saw someone suggesting that Speed Holster turned into "Magazine Feeder", a warframe utility mod which granted your sheathed ranged weapon a partial reload (up to 33% of the max magsize or so) when you kill with your other weapons, but not with powers. That would be a far more interesting mod!)

This sounds like a really interesting idea. Swapping weapons is just too slow at the moment and Speed Holster not really worth to equip, compared to auras like Energy Siphon or even Corrosive Projection.

 

One reason why I'm really glad that Melee point two adds our melee weapon to the swap cycle: At the moment, it happens to me again and again, that I smash E, while my warframe unhurriedly (?) holsters the melee weapon - and is beaten to a pulp by the enemies surrounding me. I really like to jump into the middle of a crowd and slice through all those Grineer or Corpus. But not, if I end up on the floor, because the game has its own will ...

[-SLX-J3tAc3]

Bump

[dragonboss]

I think what we are seeing here is that the mod system is flawed, and since it is currently the end all be all of all things warframe, everything is suffering because of it. Until serious changes are made, it will most likely stay the same. These changes usually only come about when the userbase starts to drop sharply, prompting the devs to do something new or a TON of people complain about it.

The mod system needs separate slots for warframe abilities and utilities, and alot of mods need to be default core gameplay.

[Zeful]

1) Stamina

Goal - Make modding for Stamina a nice option (make it an alternative and/or complement to modding for passive survivability)

What should have been done - Make the mechanics that involve Stamina into a fun and rewarding experience. Do so by making, for example, blocking and dodging very good defensive options.

What DE did - Nerfed Stamina-regeneration into oblivion (Got reverted later though, thankfully!)

 

So, instead of making Stamina into an alternative/complement to health and shield modding, they wanted to make mobility into such a crippling experience that made the Stamina mods NECESSARY to have fun, rather than as interesting and ACTUAL choices.

[...]

 

4) Resistance mods and Utility mods in general

Goal - Make resistance mods and other utility mods nice alternatives

What should have been done - Give us utility-dedicated slots (both for weapons and Warframes), so we don't have to sacrifice general power/efficiency for situational benefits.

What DE did - Adds broken light death traps to "promote" the Lightning resistance mods + Buffed up the resistance mods by quite a lot.

 

Situational mods should NEVER be a choice over general benefits. Because, that requires the situational ones to be INSANELY powerful, meaning, overpowered when they DO take effect, but still remain useless when they don't work.

It just can't be balanced.

Due to it not really being balanceable, we really ought to get dedicated slots for power and dedicated slots for utility. This guy has got the idea right in this thread.

But what we got instead is electrical traps to promote electric resistance mods. Due to the traps in some cases being unavoidable, it makes it feel more like a forced choice, rather than a situational option. The Grineer broken lights are completely anti-fun!

If the traps were avoidable somehow and if we had utility-dedicated slots AND if there were more enemies in general that had electrical attacks, then modding for electrical resistance would be a potentially interesting choice. But it requires ALL THOSE 3 THINGS to become an interesting option. So, we are quite far away from the point of making these kind of mods any fun at all...

This also ties in to the above Handspring-issue. If utilitychoices were actual choices (by not sacrificing general power), mods like Handspring would at least be more acceptable.

Wow, such hypocricy.

 

You can't say, "but choices" and then choose to define it in two different ways for the same argument. Well, and expected to be taken seriously in any kind of intelligent critique.

 

Stamina, in the best case you define in 1 is essentially the quintessential definition of utility in regards to gameplay. So lets look at what happens when we apply your arguments as they are presented: We get any number of "utility slots" to slot in stuff like laser resistance and by your own statements Stamina, alongside the full complement of damaging mods; what choices have we made here?

 

Answer: none.

 

So you want "choices" but you also want to do everything in your power so you don't have to make any?

 

I'm sorry, that's why "utility slots" are at best the inelegant whining of entitled brats who want to have their cake and eat it too, and at worst the bleating of fools who don't know any better and say crap to be popular. It's also why it's not going to happen (or rather why it shouldn't, assuming DE caves and adds them).

 

If things like Stamina and the resistance mods are to be actual choices, level and mission structure need to change. Level structure needs to change such that people that spec into stamina have an advantage in someway moving about the level. Shortcuts or sidepaths that require timing, observation and landing jumps that get you to your objective without being seen (essentially speccing into stamina is speccing stealth). This means you either get efficiency of movement across the level or efficiency of combat powers, and you can't just say "well this is better because math", because they are incomparables. Mission structure needs to change so that things like the fire/ice levels that can cause problems are known before gameplay actually begins, but after it's too late to back out, so that the players can decide whether or not to spec for them. A quick way of doing this would be to make Ruk's level always burning, or to make the cold iceball planets like Venus or Mars always have the frozen level type.

 

Now, that said you have a point with your criticisms. What DE did in both cases was bad, giving us tiny amounts of stamina and poor regen, adding the broken lights/arc traps that have no counter play. But your solutions aren't a magic bullet that will create "choice" because choices require that you can't prove one side is objectively better; your "what DE should have done" answers doesn't bother to address it. I mean just to point this out, our guns have way to many bullets in a lot of cases, meaning that you never run the risk of running out, thus the mods that give you more ammo are worthless. Those mods aren't choices anymore. And then you have the expanded magazine mods, which also aren't choices, because spending those mod points into bullet damage will mathematically be a better choice. Your utility slot suggestion doesn't fix this.

[Azamagon]

Wow, such hypocricy.

 

You can't say, "but choices" and then choose to define it in two different ways for the same argument. Well, and expected to be taken seriously in any kind of intelligent critique.

 

Stamina, in the best case you define in 1 is essentially the quintessential definition of utility in regards to gameplay. So lets look at what happens when we apply your arguments as they are presented: We get any number of "utility slots" to slot in stuff like laser resistance and by your own statements Stamina, alongside the full complement of damaging mods; what choices have we made here?

 

Answer: none.

 

So you want "choices" but you also want to do everything in your power so you don't have to make any?

 

I'm sorry, that's why "utility slots" are at best the inelegant whining of entitled brats who want to have their cake and eat it too, and at worst the bleating of fools who don't know any better and say crap to be popular. It's also why it's not going to happen (or rather why it shouldn't, assuming DE caves and adds them).

 

If things like Stamina and the resistance mods are to be actual choices, level and mission structure need to change. Level structure needs to change such that people that spec into stamina have an advantage in someway moving about the level. Shortcuts or sidepaths that require timing, observation and landing jumps that get you to your objective without being seen (essentially speccing into stamina is speccing stealth). This means you either get efficiency of movement across the level or efficiency of combat powers, and you can't just say "well this is better because math", because they are incomparables. Mission structure needs to change so that things like the fire/ice levels that can cause problems are known before gameplay actually begins, but after it's too late to back out, so that the players can decide whether or not to spec for them. A quick way of doing this would be to make Ruk's level always burning, or to make the cold iceball planets like Venus or Mars always have the frozen level type.

 

Now, that said you have a point with your criticisms. What DE did in both cases was bad, giving us tiny amounts of stamina and poor regen, adding the broken lights/arc traps that have no counter play. But your solutions aren't a magic bullet that will create "choice" because choices require that you can't prove one side is objectively better; your "what DE should have done" answers doesn't bother to address it. I mean just to point this out, our guns have way to many bullets in a lot of cases, meaning that you never run the risk of running out, thus the mods that give you more ammo are worthless. Those mods aren't choices anymore. And then you have the expanded magazine mods, which also aren't choices, because spending those mod points into bullet damage will mathematically be a better choice. Your utility slot suggestion doesn't fix this.

You are basing this on a massive misunderstanding.

 

I never said Stamina should go into the utilityslots. I even suggested Stamina to be a powerful DEFENSIVE resource (mainly for rolls, dodges, blocking etc), rather than for movement. Thus, I'd actually keep Stamina-mods in the combatslots (aka the non-utilityslots), along with health/shields/powers, as Stamina, if revamped correctly, would be a good alternative/complement to the health and shield modding. Stamina that way would be ACTIVE defense, while health/shields is PASSIVE defense.

 

And if you change maps like you suggested (Ruk's level on fire, ice planets always frozen), these utility mods will still only be gimmick mods.

And then there are certain ones that just seem to have no redemption whatsoever. Take Intruder for example. I just don't see when this EVER will be a good option considering we have Ciphers in this game. Even if, say, Intruder also gave X seconds of invisbility when hacking, we STILL wouldn't use it, since its competitors are so significantly much better. We need some slots to use these weaker utilitymods, regardless of what is done to levels and such.

 

I'm not saying that my suggestions are the best, but they are certainly better than what we currently have, that's for sure. And I dunno if you are understanding what I'm saying:

You are yourself saying damagemods always wins over utilitymods such as max ammo or magsize... and that's why utilityslots (and seperate utilitypoints) would help. It feels like you missed an important point here: You can't put utilitymods in combatslots or vice versa.

 

Let me explain:

Mod for various damage, such as multishot, pure damage, fire rate, physical damages, elemental damages, banes, first shot bonus (like Charged/Primed Chamber) etc, all in the combatslots. You can't put utilitymods in these combatslots.

Then you can mod for utility, like max ammo, magsize, silencers, reloadspeed etc, which all go into seperate utilityslots in which you cannot put the power-increasing combatmods. Now you can mod for power (in combatslots) AND utility (in utilityslots) at the same time, without them competing with one another. It would require a bit of rebalancing, sure, but it is a far better option than what we have now. It would also sate both crowds: People who like modding for power get to keep their stuff, while those who like to mod for utility ALSO get to have their way. Win/win!

 

The only other option to this which I can see, which would make utilitymods better and possible options to damagemods, is to harshly nerf damagemods into oblivion (so Serration only grants like 5% damage per rank or so) + reducing the enemy scaling. That's also an alternative. Or even possibly, that could be done ON TOP of adding the utilityslots. You can do either way, or both at once.

[CBAROG]

Wow, great thread. +1 to OP. Let's hope U15 will adress at least some of these issues. 

[AriaOfOurs]

I'm sorry, that's why "utility slots" are at best the inelegant whining of entitled brats who want to have their cake and eat it too, and at worst the bleating of fools who don't know any better and say crap to be popular. It's also why it's not going to happen (or rather why it shouldn't, assuming DE caves and adds them).

I stopped reading your post after this sentence. I've no reason to read anything you say after this because I'm only led to believe that you're going to continue with completely unnecessary insults.