[Suggestions] A Letter To Warframe Devs

[TheMugbearer]

Greetings, Warframe staff!

We are gamer couple that really like your game and wish it to be successful in future. However, we also know that this game is incomplete, there is a lot of space for improvement. That's why we decided to share with you some suggestions that - we sure - will improve Warframe and will make it more successful. Also we are gathering info about most annoying bugs for you to fix.

Here's our suggestions:

- Some help for newbies. We think that in current state the game is not very beginner-friendly. There is no mission tutorials, and no one does explain how deciphering system works. Also no tips about affinity and lootables. If it's possible to add several education videos or even a mission in which Lotus would explain not only interface and combat basics, that will be big help to any newbies.

- Map design. The starship map is no doubt well done, but first time we get there, we've lost. There is so many little details that overburden the screen. This map is hard to navigate by inexperienced players. And enemies are often blend with surrounding.

- Enemy highliting. It would be really helpful if during Extermination mission the remnants of enemy forces (10 or less) would be highlighted like allies and modules.

- Stealth gameplay. Stealth approach must be much more rewarding. Now it feels like useless, but nice addition to a gameplay. There are the things that in our opinion will increase it's urgency:

* Awareness. We suggest you to make a simple awareness system with an indicator that will grow when player kills somebody while undetected and will slowly decrease if none of enemies have found him. Detection must occur only when enemies have reassured that someone have infiltrated their territory (i.e. when Awareness indicator will be filled). The player must have an ability to hide in some place to wait until Awareness indicator is empty. After that though enemies will be warned and Awareness will grow faster.

* Alternate paths. It would be great if Corpus will have vent shafts guarded by security drones and/or cameras. And when they detect player, they will insta-lockdown the whole block and shut the bulkheads inside the shafts forcing Tenno to get out and decipher the console.

* Stealth killing. We feel that Tenno should have the ability to remove stealth killed corpses the way they abduct Corpus Crewmen on the Capture missions.

* Light and darkness. It would be nice to have destroyable light sources that will affect enemy awareness making you less detectable in the darkness.

* Console usability. Consoles are a great way to confuse and slow down your enemies. We already have two ideas about this: first one is a simple lockdown. If everybody else are able to do this, why we can't? Second idea is all about jamming the systems so enemies can't raise the alarm.

- Hazardous environments. We really like that sometimes player is forced to work in hostile conditions but we have a few thoughts about it.

* More types. First of all, why there is only cryogenics core malfunction and self-destructing ship? We thought that it will be great to have electricity-based environment hazard and, for example, poison-based (toxic air that will slowly lower the health?) This will get some interesting possibilities like minor objectives (Activate vents to remove toxine from air?)

* Buffs and debuffs. Warframe benefits and debuffs regarding current hazard? Why, for example, Frost have lowered shields when cryocore is malfunctioned? It seems unfair.

- Economical system. Also we have found disturbing that we need huge amounts of credits or real money (i.e. platinum) to acquire something we want. The amount of credits we must spend on some items is really discouraging, and what more important, is forcing us to spend platinum which can be counted as exortion. Here's our thoughts about it.

* Platinum ore. We think that it would be really interesting to add platinum ore that could be looted from containers. Then it could be processed for credits (about 60.000) into a Platinum. And in order to not to abuse this system, you can add a 24 hour delay.

* End recipe cost reduction. The Warframe recipes are really credit consuming. This is not good. Why don't you lower the cost of a full Warframe crafting process?

- Corpus-based technologies. Looking at great amount of Grineer-based weaponry, I personally feel sorry about Corpus tech, because in some degree their lasers could be very nice addition to current Tenno arsenal.

* Orokin-adapted Ospreys. These would be great as Sentinels with some similar, but not identical abilities.

- Warframe ideas.

* Grenade Warframe. We think that Tenno strongly needs a Warframe that utilize grenades and different traps. For example, it's first ability could be Seeker-like rolling grenade.

* Alternate Warframe abilities. Card-like module system is a great new feature which includes huge customize-ability. We thought that since every Warframe ability is now part of this card system, it would be awesome to have alternate abilities for all Warframes, at least two per each suit. As an example, we came with idea of Volt ability that plant a few ball lightning-like spheres that will stun enemies that pass by and/or damage shields and also extends Overload's range by catching and spreading electrical discharges.

- Interface.

* Big screen problems. Is there any way to make minimap scaleable? On the big screen it is really hard to read. Also health and shield indicators' placement is not very convenient, it is hard to track your current stats.

* If you could make some hotkeys for inventory that'd be great. Sometimes there is too much is happening to have a time to open the popup and click the right slot. For example it could be a key combos like q+1.

* Tooltips/Subtitles. Please make a short tooltips for every Lotus message like "HEAVY UNIT INBOUND" or "ICE HAZARD: SHIELDS ARE HALVED".

We hope that you will like these ideas and use them to improve your game.

And now time for bugs that we've found.

- Lato Vandal bug. When trying to reload, sometimes Lato Vandal is trying to repeat that action. This happens because normally weapon will re-load once empty by clicking fire button, but that particular pistol begins to reload over and over while player is spamming the same button.

- Ally revival bug. Sometimes at assassinate missions I couldn't revive my teammates.

- Very annoying bug: on Rescue mission there is a chance that hostage cannot follow player(s) because of difficult place requiring some acrobatics (even Corpus crewmen are able to climb ledges, so why hostages can't? And Grineer Marines are even able to use zip-lines!) which leads to inability to finish the mission by bringing the NPC to extraction zone. It is especially annoying when the enemies are Infested.

Sincerely yours,

CaptainGreyEdwards and Demitsorou

[Tsukinoki]

I agree with most of what you said, but the last part about not being able to finish the mission without the NPC at the extraction zone:

Currently if the npc gets stuck you can just run for the extraction zone, and if you can get there before a random spawn kills the hostage you will still win the mission.

For the "lower credit cost" They are trying to include ways to make credits usable and spendable. In CBT it was easy to amass millions of credits because they weren't used, and honestly its not hard to farm up some credits: Grind a defense mission and sell the mods afterwards and I've made 10K+ from some missions because of warframe ability cards for warframes I dont have/are max leveld already and each one sells for 1K.

If frost didnt have lowered shields in a cold map, or ember was not affected by the fires in the "Ship is self destructing" map then when those missions appear it would not increase the difficulty of the map for them like it should. Also people would start complaining if one member of their group is able to completely ignore the environmental hazards for a map which can give them a big boost in survivability, and they are made much easier to kill just because they didn't choose that warframe.

With the enemy highlighting, if you watch your minimap you will see that a waypoint is set on or very near to an enemy if it is the last one in a room making it fairly easy to find and kill them.

As for the map design of the ships, I find that they are fairly spartan. The grineer stand out like sore thumbs against the blues and grays of the environment, while the corpus do blend in a bit but are fairly easy to spot. Also the maps in the ship are fairly straight forward, the biggest thing is realizing that the waypoint to the objective might be pointing to a door up on a catwalk and not the floor you are on, but that is usually quick to realize.

The devs have talked about adding stealth gameplay as time goes on, but their current focus is making the PVE elements better and adding more options.

As for that revival bug: That can happen on any mission because sometimes the place to stand to revive someone can be very tricky to get into just the right position at a very specific distance away from who you are reviving.

[Deucalian]

I'll go through these:

1. I can understand this one, but it eventually gets to a point of hand-holding. The first time I ever did a system bypass, I read what I was supposed to do and the rest is ancient history. I can understand a tutorial for a few things, but this is not among them.

2) The maps seem fine from what I've seen ._. Even as a beginner I had no troubles navigating my way through everything that was presented.

3) Enemy highlighting sounds like a good idea...til one of your allies gets downed and you run straight into a Heavy Gunner thinking it was your ally -.-;

4) The Stealth system is something that is constantly being addressed. One of the problems it faces is that the Devs can't make things too easy for us. Same reason we couldn't do assassinations or ground attacks before now.

5) Two points being addresses here.

a) People cry enough just about shields. Much more so concerning Toxics. Mix toxic in as an enviromental hazard and await the rage.

b) Things like that would be OP, and also be an unfair advantage seeing as how some Warframes don't correspond to an element. i.e If you make Frost immune to cryogenics explosions then you have to make Saryn immune to all forms of Toxic (including Ancients). Also need to make Ember immune to any fire damage and Volt immune to any shock damage. Then you've got ~7 other Warframes that are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs and derping errywhere.

6) I will come right out and say that I dislike this idea. People forget this is a F2P game. With the exception of slots, colors, and some skins you are not forced to buy anything via platinum. Crafting also isn't that big of an issue imho seeing as how once you actually know what you're doing you'll have more credits than you can throw away >.<

7) Something that is constantly being implemented are new weapons and Warframes. Give the devs some time. Despite popular belief it actually takes quite some time for them to make things like these -.-

8) Again, Warframes are constantly being updated. DE has already said that it is their hope to begin adding more skills into our disposal. This is still Beta. Give them some time to do the nice things that they want D;

9) Again, multiple points.

a) Don't see an issue here. The map is very navigable imho. Scaling the map would just add to the "clutter" you alluded to earlier.

b) Again, not an issue imho. The screen even flashes red when you're in danger. So it should be a general rule of thumb "When my screen starts flashing red, I need to move."

c) Turn the other volumes now. I find it nice to do this anyway since some people like to use mics.

10. Please submit screenshots and support tickets for all bugs that cannot be solved following the Order of Operations. This makes DE's job much easier in identifying the issue and aids in them issuing a prompt response.