Retune *all* The Frames! (11/19: Wildfire)

[TheGrimCorsair]

this pinhole way of thinking drags the game down.

 

Warframes have 4 Abilities. as long as the first one or two are useful without Mods, it literally doesn't matter what Ability is on what button.

'ult' is a term that should not belong in Warframe. this implies that as the number button is higher, an Ability MUST be universally superior to the ones before it.

 

that is mindbogglingly destructive for the game. Warframes should have 4 Abilities that are distinctly useful, have some synergistic relations with each other, but don't just supercede each other in order to fit some League of Legends Character Model when, last i checked, this isn't a MOBA.

 

similarly, Energy Costs should not be automatically 25/50/75/100. Energy Costs should be logical in context of the Ability that's in that slot.

 

 

 

there is no good reason why Warframes could, should, or Dr.seussaplould follow some strict model that's made for a completely different type of game.

it artificially limits the capabilities of every Warframe and also contorts their Abilities into every button being more mapwipe AoE Blast than the last one in order to actually fill that complete supersession Character Model.

 

Edit:

this isn't really directed towards you specifically, but to everyone - for the love of everything, if you actually care about Warframe, don't treat Warframe Abilities like a MOBA. treat them like Warframe.

Except that's pretty clearly not how DE sees the game at all.

[taiiat]

Except that's pretty clearly not how DE sees the game at all.

some Warframes stick to that castrating model, others do not.

[--Q--uaint]

this isn't really directed towards you specifically, but to everyone - for the love of everything, if you actually care about Warframe, don't treat Warframe Abilities like a MOBA. treat them like Warframe.

I'd love to, but DE (for the most part) refuses. Another strike against this philosophy is the way 'frames unlock abilities. There is a clear progression, and the final ability waits until level 30 to actually get to maximum power.

This is especially relevant with new players, as their entire experience with the game has been much like progressing through the early game of a MOBA: you start with one basic power, then unlock more, then improve on the ones you already have. At some point in your leveling, you gain access to your ultimate ability... and it's a game-changer even without being max rank.

Excal has a sword made out of pwn. 'nuff said

Mag can actually kind-of nuke against all factions, in addition to having a fully radial CC that lasts a little longer than Pull does.

Volt can actually kind-of nuke, and it gives him a comparatively efficient way to CC a big group of enemies... which it will boast greater damage against, due to Electric's chaining effects.

 

I would have given your idea here a lot more credence before the ability mod removal, when Excal had Super Jump.

 

It's clear that DE intends 'frames to use all of their powers, but it's also clear that all powers are not equal.

 

 

Abilities that don't follow the standard cost structure:

Switch Teleport: Fits Loki, but not good enough to cost 50 energy, and definitely not good enough for a first power.

Smoke Screen: has to be different from Invisibility somehow....

Paralysis: has its own special shield surcharge, off of which it scales. Also, it's meant to be spammed, given its short range and duration.

Rift Walk: not good enough for a first power, not worth even 25 energy.

 

Note that the above are exceptions, with good reasons for each case. I can't think of any others that aren't channeled; even channeled abilities, though, tend to have an "intended duration," at which the activation+drain will have taken the "correct" level of energy for that ability level.

 

 

Maybe something with Dopplegangers, instead. Dopples do damage, and if Ash receives fatal damage while they're up, a Doppleganger is consumed and Ash is restored to full health and shields (bonus points if the dopple 'poofs' into an environmental object a la substitution technique). But then it's basically a reflavored Atlas ult that has a survivability component attached. The AI would have to be extremely aggressive to be worth it.

Hmmmm....

Bladestorm becomes a channeled skill with a low base drain. Ash gains CC immunity, and anything that damages him gets a finisher-stun. Anything Ash melees gets finisher-stunned. Any time Ash kills an enemy with a melee finisher, the enemy is replaced by a doppelganger, up to a cap moddable by Power Strength. Each doppelganger would increase the drain of Bladestorm, and die upon its deactivation  The doppelgangers have Ash's current melee weapon (or the one used at the beginning of the captured-by-Zanuka mission) and Teleport on a cooldown like Flameblades/Commanders have.

Doppelgangers have Powerfist-style AI: they charge, they rip, they tear, and they die... and they have no concept of "cover." Doppelgangers would get the same stun-when-damaged and stun-on-melee hit, but would not create more Doppelgangers.

 

Actually, I don't like how that eventually came out, but I figure I'll post it to feed the pot of ideas.

[Elydir]

- Supercharge literally doesn't even substitute a weapon.

 

What if it did tho? You could have it swap all of Volts attacks for shock blasts that scale with weapon damage and increase with appliances destroyed. Overload could still replace his 1 while its active.

[Archwizard]

Alright, the forums are back up. Went to add a few ideas I'd been holding in for about half a week and... this fricking system broke the formatting on the main post, putting Strikethroughs which I cannot remove on everything past Nekros.

Plus I'll need to work on the formatting now that I can see all of the different iterations of spacing I've used...

This could take a while, since I don't have a lot of free time right now. Bear with me.

[Phrash]

I'm reposting a comment I made on reddit (hope you don't mind). It feels like it might belong on this thread:

I'm a big fan of abilities synergizing with each other (abilities augmenting other abilities).

For Volt I would vote for the following:

• Have his 3 amplify his 1 damage. I don't understand why it currently doesn't.
• Consider making his 3 scale with power strength (?) or move with him.
• Have his 4 summon thunderbolts that deal extra(!) damage to enemies affected by an electricity proc.

For the Mag it's a little tricky and, in my opinion, would need a full rework. The following are just ideas that came to mind that I think would be interesting.

• 1: Pull -- completely rework. Ragdolling in Warframe is unreliable and I don't like the ability (sorry if you guys do). I also never want enemies closer to me when I play the Mag. I have two ideas:
  • #1) Cast on enemy (or ally maybe? could be augment mod) and pulls nearby enemies closer to main target. Also places a debuff on main target which can be exploded with shield polarize (finally SP could damage grineer/infested).
  • #2) Roots/snares/slows by magnetizing their boots to the ground. Could also add a debuff which would be detonated by shield polarize.
• Shield polarize -- this ability either does nothing or too much. Fun idea instead: still drains portion of enemy shields and replenishes allies. Instead of exploding all enemies, Mag gathers all of the drained shield energy and hurls it forward in a magnetic bomb that explodes. I'd make the magnetic bomb travel in an arc and probably have 2 casts (first cast absorbs shields, second throws bomb).
• Bullet attractor -- What a buggy ability. I like the idea of using this ability defensively but nothing ever lives long enough to be a "human shield" and you have to max the hell of of range (overextended) to even attempt it. Make it castable on a point in space maybe? Enemy bullets get deleted or ricochet towards themselves. Ally bullets get damage amp and get homing? That or make bullets daisy chain (like amprex/atomos) but might be OP.
• Crush -- Should do extra damage when they have no shields and NOT DO MAGNETIC DAMAGE. I don't care if she's called Mag. Why would we ever want to do magnetic damage when we can strip shields? Some sort of scaling would be nice but if it happens then please make all warframe abilities scale with enemy level lol.
• Passive -- As other people have mentioned proto shields would be nice, or some sort of "armored" shields.

[--Q--uaint]

For Mag, since the topic has been broached...

Copying changes that I wholeheartedly agree with:

On 3/21/2014 at 6:53 PM, Archwizard said:

Suggested changes:
- Pull once again attempts to drag enemies to the caster's feet, rather than ragdoll-flinging them; can be used through walls. Ospreys struck will be pulled to the ground, and incapable of flight for a period affected by Power Duration.
- Bullet Attractor's explosion removed, cost reduced to 35-50 energy, and can be canceled at no additional cost by recasting the effect. The point of attraction can be aimed at a specific point on the target on-cast, similar to Buzlok. All shots into or within the sphere automatically redirect to the target, with Punch Through against any obstructions between. If the target dies while active, a Combo occurs, reducing the cost during the remaining Duration of the effect.

 

19 hours ago, Phrash said:

Passive -- As other people have mentioned proto shields would be nice, or some sort of "armored" shields.

It's easy to see that I've left out everything regarding Shield Polarize and Crush.

Shield Polarize: Shield Polarize has a duration of 7/8/9/10 seconds. 30/45/60/75% of in-range allies max shields are restored, overflowing into overshields. Enemies in range are inflicted with a stagger and a slow (base of 20%?). Furthermore, enemy shields no longer protect them, but instead deal 50/75/100/125% of their remaining capacity as damage to the affected enemy the next time he receives damage.

The augment now makes affected enemies grant shields to whatever next damages them based on how much damage they take from their own shields.

Crush: Crush now scales like Miasma, with tics scaling from duration and damage per tic being independent of number of tics. Crush now deals finisher damage, with the caveat that it deals 25% damage against shielded targets. The final tic (the one where Mag flings her rocks away) flings enemies away, and deals 10/20/30/40% of the enemy's missing health as bonus finisher damage.

[blaes]

the change i would suggest for mag - bullet attractor is when the target dies, to make it stay active until natural expiration time instead of detonating it. at that point, due to lack of a proper target, all incoming projectiles spin out of control, hitting everything in the area.

no change to bullet attractor behavior before the target dies.

 

for equinox, i would get rid of the damage fall-off on maim in addition to what you suggest.

[--Q--uaint]

Oh, I just remembered a thing I thought up a while back: Instead of abilities dealing % damage to enemies, they should deal "base" damage to enemies. Effectively, the damage dealt would scale exactly as much as the enemy's EHP.

This means the attack would (barring standard damage) always take a certain number of hits to kill a given enemy type (regardless of level), but that number is different for each enemy type.

[Archwizard]

On 2/23/2016 at 4:19 PM, Phrash said:

1: Pull -- completely rework. Ragdolling in Warframe is unreliable and I don't like the ability (sorry if you guys do). I also never want enemies closer to me when I play the Mag.

Originally it didn't ragdoll at all, but just dragged people to Mag's feet, knocked down. As much as you may dislike it, the ability to group up enemies over large distances is considered invaluable, so I hope it doesn't go away.

22 hours ago, ChronoEclipse said:

Oh, I just remembered a thing I thought up a while back: Instead of abilities dealing % damage to enemies, they should deal "base" damage to enemies. Effectively, the damage dealt would scale exactly as much as the enemy's EHP.

This means the attack would (barring standard damage) always take a certain number of hits to kill a given enemy type (regardless of level), but that number is different for each enemy type.

... I'm not sure what you mean by this, honestly. Enemy EHP is affected by health, armor and shielding, and as I noted in the OP, the catch-all %-damage scaling for damaging abilities would only be affected by health. So... either your change would be virtually no different from what's in the OP, or would actually be even stronger.

[Aquasurge]

8 minutes ago, Archwizard said:

Originally it didn't ragdoll at all, but just dragged people to Mag's feet, knocked down. As much as you may dislike it, the ability to group up enemies over large distances is considered invaluable, so I hope it doesn't go away.

... I'm not sure what you mean by this, honestly. Enemy EHP is affected by health, armor and shielding, and as I noted in the OP, the catch-all %-damage scaling for damaging abilities would only be affected by health. So... either your change would be virtually no different from what's in the OP, or would actually be even stronger.

this is just one problem with volt......

[--Q--uaint]

3 hours ago, Archwizard said:

… I'm not sure what you mean by this, honestly. Enemy EHP is affected by health, armor, and shielding, and as I noted in the OP, the catch-all %-damage scaling for damaging abilities would only be affected by health. So… either your change would be virtually no different from what’s in the OP, or would actually be even stronger.

A better descriptor would be that it’s a %-of-health damage scaling, that has a different % for each individual enemy.

I did mean that the scaling should take into account armor and shields, but perhaps you find that distasteful. For the purposes of the calculations I'm doing here, it actually doesn’t matter whether shields are taken into account or not (and armor isn’t even in the picture).

In-game, it will matter. Due to stuff I detail down below, I would definitely prefer that shields (and thus armor, for some semblance of fairness) are taken into account.

 

Let’s take an example or two to examine how it should work.

Let’s say a base Crewman has 50/50 health/shields, and a base Tech has 150/50 health/shields. Our power in question does 50 damage plus 10 “base” damage. (Dealing with simple numbers and ignoring all resistances/weaknesses, of course.)

One cast on a base Crewman will leave him at 40/0. One cast on a base Tech will leave him at 140/0.

Obviously, the Crewman will die next hit, but the Tech will take 3 more casts.

Now, let’s say the Crewman and Tech have leveled to the point where their health and shields have risen by 9x, giving 500/500 Crewman and 1500/500 Tech.

Spoiler

 

     Crewman              Tech

1:   500/350           1500/350

2:   500/200           1500/200

3:   500/50             1500/50

3:   400/0               1400/0

3:   250/0               1250/0

3:   100/0               1100/0

3:   dead                  950/0

 

As you can see, the damage from the power became 150.

Crewman: <normal damage> + (<“base” damage>/<base max HP>)*<current max HP> = 50 + (10/50)*500 reduces to 50 + 10*10 = <normal damage> + <“base” damage>*<enemy’s HP scalefactor>

Tech: <normal damage> + (<“base” damage>/<base max HP>)*<current max HP> = 50 + (10/150)*1500 reduces to 50 + 10*10 = <normal damage> + <“base” damage>*<enemy’s HP scalefactor>

Now, let’s say the Crewman and Tech have leveled to the point where their health and shields have risen by 99x, giving 5000/5000 Crewman and 15000/5000 Tech.

The “base” damage will then grow to 1000, with a total damage of 1050.

Spoiler

 

     Crewman              Tech

1:   5000/3950           15000/3950

2:   5000/2900           15000/2900

3:   5000/1850           15000/1850

4:   5000/  800           15000/  800

5:   4750/0                 14750/0

6:   3700/0                 13700/0

7:   2650/0                 12650/0

8:   1600/0                 11600/0

7:     600/0                 10600/0

8:    dead                     9550/0

 

Now, let’s see what would happen if an ability did 50 damage and 10% of max health as damage?

Spoiler

 

     Crewman              Tech

1:   5000/4450           15000/3450

2:   5000/3900           15000/1900

3:   5000/3350           15000/  350

4:   5000/2800           13850/0

5:   5000/2250           12300/0

6:   5000/1700           10750/0

7:   5000/1150             9200/0

8:   5000/  600             7650/0

9:   5000/    50             6100/0

10: 4500/0                   4550/0

11: 3950/0                   3000/0

12: 3400/0                   1450/0

12: 2850/0                   dead

 

In the actual game, HP and Shields both scale exponentially - this means the difference between the Tech’s shields and health would be even greater than is depicted here.

I think it is not your intent to provide the players with the ability to kill tougher enemies faster than weaker enemies. I could be wrong.

 

[(PSN)Gaelic-_-Flame]

On 24.02.2016 at 0:47 PM, ChronoEclipse said:

Oh, I just remembered a thing I thought up a while back: Instead of abilities dealing % damage to enemies, they should deal "base" damage to enemies. Effectively, the damage dealt would scale exactly as much as the enemy's EHP.

This means the attack would (barring standard damage) always take a certain number of hits to kill a given enemy type (regardless of level), but that number is different for each enemy type.

Not sure this would be a good idea, since it would make abilities pretty useless on any level of content except the super high one. Abilities would become absolutely useless for new players, they already take a lot of energy when you don't have efficiency mods and you can cast like one ability in a while. If it also doesn't kill anybody, even on earliest planets, then damage abilities would become absolutely useless. This change would only be useful for enemy levels when your weapons take like 10 seconds to kill an enemy, and let's admit it, not many players even reach those levels that often.

Personally I think we need to go the Ash-way with abiilities. Since Ash is the only one (besides Mag, but that's a different story) who scales great into high levels with damage abilities. Making all abilities deal finisher type damage seems like the best scaling option for abilities, since they will still fall off a bit, but only by the amount of health enemies get with high levels (not health + armor + shields) We could even introduce new damage types exclusive for abilities, like Elemental Finishers, which deal elemental damage (affected by enemy resistances and weakness) but ignore shields and armor.

[--Q--uaint]

On 2/25/2016 at 6:22 AM, (PS4)Gaelic-_-Flame said:

Not sure this would be a good idea, since it would make abilities pretty useless on any level of content except the super high one. Abilities would become absolutely useless for new players, they already take a lot of energy when you don’t have efficiency mods and you can cast like one ability in a while. If it also doesn’t kill anybody, even on earliest planets, then damage abilities would become absolutely useless. This change would only be useful for enemy levels when your weapons take like 10 seconds to kill an enemy, and let’s admit it, not many players even reach those levels that often.

I didn’t say that the only damage done would be “base” damage. In my last post, you can see that I included standard damage in the “ability” I was working with.

The idea is that the normal damage would be enough to carry you pretty easily to ~level 15–20 or so, and the “base” damage would definitely scale with Power Strength. I think it’s completely reasonable for Radial Javelin to kill any trash mob it hits, particularly if you have high power strength. I don’t like the idea of it one-shotting heavies, especially at high levels.

Edited February 27, 2016 by ChronoEclipse
"ohe-shotting"

[taiiat]

before going off the deep end with giving all Ability Damage sources an effective 50x Damage Bonus - Armor Scaling is way out of balance with Health and Shields.
and you're not supposed to Kill that Level "wow that's a pretty big number" Enemy in any quick manner at all, infact not really supposed to Kill it period.

the endless cycle of bandaid balancing hasn't worked yet, it's not worth trying again. adjust this one part, now two other parts don't fit in right... just do it all at once. Enemy Scaling, Abilities, Weapons, all at once.
then everything is balanced within the same contextual space and it has a chance of actually working instead of us coming back to this table in two months like every other time.

[--Q--uaint]

3 hours ago, taiiat said:

before going off the deep end with giving all Ability Damage sources an effective 50x Damage Bonus - Armor Scaling is way out of balance with Health and Shields.
and you're not supposed to Kill that Level “wow that’s a pretty big number” Enemy in any quick manner at all, infact not really supposed to Kill it period.

the endless cycle of bandaid balancing hasn’t worked yet, it’s not worth trying again. adjust this one part, now two other parts don’t fit in right… just do it all at once. Enemy Scaling, Abilities, Weapons, all at once.
then everything is balanced within the same contextual spaaaaaace and it has a chance of actually working instead of us coming back to this table in two months like every other time.

I agree with your philosophy… but multiple armor-removal abilities exist, and the damage buffs available make pretty much any level of un-armored health die pretty quickly.

[RealPandemonium]

21 hours ago, ChronoEclipse said:

I agree with your philosophy… but multiple armor-removal abilities exist, and the damage buffs available make pretty much any level of un-armored health die pretty quickly.

Armor removal (or doing such astronomical damage that 5% or less of it is still sufficient) shouldn't be mandatory, but it is.  It's plain to see why this is a problem.  

[--Q--uaint]

42 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

Armor removal (or doing such astronomical damage that 5% or less of it is still sufficient) shouldn’t be mandatory, but it is.  It’s plain to see why this is a problem.  

On 2/26/2016 at 10:14 PM, taiiat said:

you're not supposed to Kill that Level “wow that’s a pretty big number” Enemy in any quick manner at all, infact not really supposed to Kill it period.

 

I believe the devs have stated that 40min into survival is their goal for what high tier players should be doing, and proud of.

The funny thing is, they keep giving us mechanics that let us kill lots of arbitrary-level enemies with relative quickness.

[taiiat]

30 minutes ago, ChronoEclipse said:

I believe the devs have stated that 40min into survival is their goal for what high tier players should be doing, and proud of.

The funny thing is, they keep giving us mechanics that let us kill lots of arbitrary-level enemies with relative quickness.

except Armor already starts becoming a problem at ~Lv30. with not so maxed out Mods, even ~Lv25.
the same Player would Kill Enemies that focus on Health or Shields/Health with ease for atleast another 20 or 30 Levels.

ways to work around Armor Scaling doesn't change that it's well known (by everyone else apparently) that it's far, far out of line with the rest of the game.

[--Q--uaint]

8 hours ago, taiiat said:

ways to work around Armor Scaling doesn’t change that it’s well known (by everyone else apparently) that it’s far, far out of line with the rest of the game.

I wasn’t saying I disagreed. I was saying there are ways to beat it, and they keep giving us more.

[taiiat]

26 minutes ago, ChronoEclipse said:

I wasn’t saying I disagreed. I was saying there are ways to beat it, and they keep giving us more.

but that implies you think ways to circumvent it is a solution.
which they are not. being able to sometimes fly over an ocean doesn't mean it isn't there anymore.

[RealPandemonium]

11 hours ago, ChronoEclipse said:

 

I believe the devs have stated that 40min into survival is their goal for what high tier players should be doing, and proud of.

The funny thing is, they keep giving us mechanics that let us kill lots of arbitrary-level enemies with relative quickness.

DE really #&*% the bed when it came to managing player expectations.  They've created an anti-nerf, powercreep-craving monster in their community.  Because they stand to lose popular support (and thus business) from positive changes, they are in an unenviable situation when it comes to improving the quality of their core game.  I think this stems largely from the major disconnect between savvy players and DE themselves, who are too busy to understand what their game is like from the player's perspective.  If DE was better informed, then they could have avoided most of their PR disasters.  However, unfortunately, there is no real channel for good feedback presently.  It's either piss into the forums, or spam DE staffs' PM boxes or twitters.  We need something better.  

Edited February 27, 2016 by RealPandemonium

[Archwizard]

2 hours ago, RealPandemonium said:

DE really #&*% the bed when it came to managing player expectations.  They've created an anti-nerf, powercreep-craving monster in their community.  

I think part of the problem there is that, as the developers have said that they want all frames to be viable at end-level content out of the package (while we lack a definitive "end level" due to the obscene potential for enemy scaling), the value of 'balance' is somewhat subjective to which point on each output curve you're looking at. It gives players carte blanche to say "X can't kill enemies at Level 100", because as far as they're concerned, that's their "end level"; that their subject material needs to exist in a vacuum to give them any credibility is simply ignored due to a lack of debate experience.
Further confusing things is the fact that no two frames perform the same task in the same manner, and in fact several frames are considered the exclusive sources of some effects (like Energy Vampire or Speed). Trying to say "I think soandso's utility is too weak" is often hard to argue when there are no other precedents beyond the one frame, or when the cost efficiency of two powers is a factor.
Finally, I think there's an issue of time-efficiency on DE's end. While yes, players do get obnoxiously powercreep-hungry after seeing a number of their demands met (the sardonic "Better nerf Trinity" mentality isn't helping considering Blessing has spoiled players on healing effects forever), it's understandable that buffs are the big asks in this community when we're seeing revamps to older frames come out only after two new frames have been released and once again shifted the status quo (in this one-man contest of one-upmanship on Scott's part), while nerfs tend to go out every two or three hotfixes.

2 hours ago, RealPandemonium said:

However, unfortunately, there is no real channel for good feedback presently.  It's either piss into the forums, or spam DE staffs' PM boxes or twitters.  We need something better.  

You're forgetting Reddit, although if you're not posting a gif of a Grineer's head spinning off its body or an image of you Forma'ing Skana 100 times, good luck getting any attention that way.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Archwizard

[taiiat]

and while things are attempted to be 'balanced' around Lv100 - currently that's attempted to be done by multiplying Damage of everything by 5.
which... doesn't.... help.
most of those Weapons were already very capable, if you used some Effort and Skill your Weapons would perform well at those points as it was.

but, that's apparently not allowed in this game, so just multiply Damage by 5 to make sure that if you just randomly point and click in the direction of the Enemies that you win.

[--Q--uaint]

EDIT: Ohey, Total Eclipse should totally affect Companions. That'd even give it a use in solo play. _{Totally not suggesting this because I want to see my Carrier become even more of a world-destroying monster.}

 

Thoughts for Volt, because I clearly don’t know when to stop:

Normalize the effectiveness levels between Overload with appliances and Overload without. I suppose this isn’t necessary, but it'd be awfully nice.

Hold-cast for Electric Shield sticks it to you. The time for the animation to place the shield is roughly the same as Ivara’s Quiver draw, so that seems like a good baseline for how long a “hold” needs to be. To avoid excessive self-buffing, I think it’s reasonable that Volt drop the currently-held shield if he hold-casts another one.

Give him a “charge” mechanic. Volt gains “charges” by delivering electric procs, killing enemies with abilities, and hitting with melee.

Volt loses 1% of his accumulated charges every second, with them adding to his current energy at some exchange rate.

While Volt has charges, his effective power strength is [modded value + charges]%. (It might also be reasonable to split the benefit 50/50 between duration and power.)

This gives Volt an effectively free source of energy for just fighting, which scales to the amount of stuff he’s doing. His abilities being relatively lackluster is mostly resolved by his improved energy economy and ability to boost his power strength to as-yet-unknown heights.

 

This also gives the benefit of not messing up any of Volt’s existing mechanics, while allowing him to take a more active “black mage” and “alternative to gunplay” sword-mage style of combat.

Edited February 28, 2016 by ChronoEclipse