April 25Th: Community Hot Topics!

[[DE]Drew]

Lets start this week’s Hot Topics with some PS4 info!

 

PS4 Update 13 

Practice your controller katas, Tenno! Melee 2.0 is approaching. 

 

We have a build heading to Sony for certification soon™. The certification process will probably take a little longer than usual because of the size of the update, and we’ve packed in a few hotfixes as well. The build we are sending is 13.0.7.1, that includes some recent Dark Sector changes. We are aiming for a Monday, April 28th, submission, and will inform you when this takes place. For those of you who were upset that you missed out on the Shamrock/Easter Colour Picker, we’ve got an exclusive PS4 Colour Picker on the way. 

 

PS4 Performance

We know that many of you are having performance issues. Improving performance is a top priority for our PS4 team. 

 

PS4 Migration Update

All the technical aspects are ready, but making sure we comply with all the legal requirements will take more time. Sony is doing its best to help us make this happen. 

 

Melee 2.0: Key Binding 

Why can’t we be more specific? Let me have a key bind option for ‘Melee when equipped’!

 

We are testing separate key binding options for 'Quick Melee' and 'Equipped Melee Attack'. If testing is successful, we should be able to deploy this relatively soon™, likely even today (Friday, April 25th)! 

 

Dark Sectors

Death & Taxes

 

Tensions are high across the solar system! Many Tenno have said they are pleased with the new Armistice period because it guarantees a chance to play in the Dark Sectors. 

 

The Dark Sectors are still new territory, so expect some cool changes to come in future updates. We’ve heard some complaints about battle pay abuse, and that issue will be addressed with some upcoming changes. The Dark Sectors will also have some interested new ways for players to compete against each other, but not necessarily in the ways you might expect. Players will have the ability to customize the Tenno Specters and send them to fight for their Alliance or Clan. 

 

Another issue has been the role of divvying credits amongst Alliances, which is being removed very soon. The original intent was to secure any clan that was suddenly ‘booted’ from Alliances to have a share of credits for any contributions, but players have confirmed it is not logical. 

 

For more information about Dark Sectors, check out the latest Devstream: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/221907-thanks-for-watching-devstream-27/

 

Sentinels 

Carrier is widely considered the most valuable sentinel because the Vacuum precept is awesome. We gave Helios some utility, but the feedback is ramping up on the logic of his scans being too wasteful to bother with. We are aware that other Sentinels are not ‘as useful’ from a preference standpoint, and we are looking into solutions. 

 

“Dilution Solutions”

A common complaint about new content is that it makes certain drops increasingly difficult to acquire. Thankfully, new content also gives us new ways and places to distribute loot. For example, some players have suggested that we make Ability Mods drop from the new Tenno Specters. That is a great idea that wasn’t available until U13. As new mods are released, we will be continuously looking at ways to improve drop tables and spread the wealth throughout the Solar System (or Void - as in adding more difficult missions T4 style!) 

 

Warframe Balancing

There are several schools of thought on what makes a Warframe balanced. For example, many players feel Oberon is underpowered, but others believe proper mods can redeem him. And then, there are players who state damage-based Warframes overall simply don’t cut it when it comes to high-level content. Quite the balancing act. The last Update from Dev speaks to potentially making adjustments to Trinity, Nova, Banshee, and Ash. These developments do tend to take some time, but as the last major balance change (Frost) came with insight prior to deploy, we plan on doing the same thing with larger changes. Stay tuned! 

[Papa_Nuk_Nuk]

Wohoo! Balancing to me is FIRST priority

Edited April 25, 2014 by Sadisticnerd

[baron1357]

Oh my RNGesus an Ash rework 

Leave nova alone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Keltik0ne]

I don't think people dislike Helios due to the rather awful scanning, more due to it's overall aura of Terribad

[ZachPrime]

You guyyyyyyys!

 

Always good to hear from you. Thanks for all your hard work!

[KoshLovesYou]

For example, some players have suggested that we make Ability Mods drop from the new Tenno Specters. That is a great idea that wasn’t available until U13. As new mods are released, we will be continuously looking at ways to improve drop tables and spread the wealth throughout the Solar System (or Void - as in adding more difficult missions T4 style!) 

 

Wasn't the thing with the Specters added in a later hotfix, actually?

 

As for spreading content: I think everyone was surprised when the Orokin research room was only rail focused, rather than also coming with a Prime-focused 'Orokin Forge' or some such, to help people convert unwanted prime drops into preferred equipment or the like. The introduction of void Argon as additional costs to doing so would make even more sense now.

[Varzy]

Nice to see Oberon is on the radar a bit. Mods can redeem his power output but not his lack of utility -- as Jack-of-all-trades go he's limited by Hallowed Ground having zero utility and Renewal's heal being so low even with mods.

[Regar]

“Dilution Solutions”

A common complaint about new content is that it makes certain drops increasingly difficult to acquire. Thankfully, new content also gives us new ways and places to distribute loot. For example, some players have suggested that we make Ability Mods drop from the new Tenno Specters. That is a great idea that wasn’t available until U13. As new mods are released, we will be continuously looking at ways to improve drop tables and spread the wealth throughout the Solar System (or Void - as in adding more difficult missions T4 style!) 

 

The best solution is to put the ability mod in the market, really

You are saying that spectres are going to be customizable, which means that will become more and more powerfull, which also means that the people who actually need the double mods (noobs) will actually never find a chance to get an hand on em... the same way the higher rank people will find themsleves to fight overpowered spectres for just a bunch of unuseful ability mods, please no... just take in consideration this point of view.

People who want double ability mods are the minority of players!

[NjaII]

I don't play Frost since his rework.

 

Please, don't make me do the same thing with my beloved Trinity.

 

----

 

About sentinels and Kubrows, I was thinking about a Fetch precept... If you know what I mean.

[Sasquatchias]

Question, but is there any discussion going on about the scaling of damage mods and plans to tweak them a bit?

[OldSnakeMGS4]

Melee 2.0: Key Binding 

Why can’t we be more specific? Let me have a key bind option for ‘Melee when equipped’!

 

We are testing separate key binding options for 'Quick Melee' and 'Equipped Melee Attack'. If testing is successful, we should be able to deploy this relatively soon™, likely even today (Friday, April 25th)! 

 

Thank God folks - you listened to us once again - thank you so much.

[KingTaro]

About the sentinels.

When they got mentioned for the first time during one of the early livestreams, I assumed that "Vacuum" would be the default behavior of the sentinels. I never quite understood why there had to be a separate Sentinel just for that skill. Maybe because I'm coming from games where the pet has always been your "Loor collector body".

 

Anyway, I'd suggest making Vacuum a general skill that can be used on each sentinel, and give Carrier a different skill.

 

His unique skill could be Sacrifice, for instance. Or maybe "Ammo Mutation". It would save a slot on your gun. I'm just throwing some random idea's now.

[dragonkingdx]

Sentinels 

Carrier is widely considered the most valuable sentinel because the Vacuum precept is awesome. We gave Helios some utility, but the feedback is ramping up on the logic of his scans being too wasteful to bother with. We are aware that other Sentinels are not ‘as useful’ from a preference standpoint, and we are looking into solutions. 

 

I think a good start for the sentinel issue would be to increase the variety of sentinel based mods. Both sentinel dependent ones and all purpose ones as the selection is very small atm. Even some for specific sentinal weapons. Examples could be adding aura's to them or adding buffs that can be applied to the warframe (small spike damage to anyone who gets within a small range, small HP/shield/energy steal aura, chance to not consume ammo, increase stagger chance, add elemental damage to WF skills)

 

As well as tweak the base stats of the sentinels since all besides the shade have the same maxed HP/Shield/Armor values. As to have some variety in the choices beyond skills

[KriLL3]

Just give us mod underclocking already, no need for ability mods to drop anywhere if you give us that.

 

I'm not happy with DE's approach to the RNG issue, you threat it as something small you can tweak away over time in various ways, but it's not small and it can't be solved by tweaking, it's a fundamental problem with how the game is designed, it means even if I know what I want and where to get it I can spend 10h+ not getting it, it's especially bad for veterans of the game who has everything already except that new thing introduced last patch, all the other rewards are useless to us and it's annoying having to spend that much time getting what you want.

 

RNG isn't fun, it's not rewarding, it's annoying, there has to be some other way to give players long term goals than to gate new content behind a dice roll.

Edited April 25, 2014 by KriLL3

[(PSN)GR13V4NC3]

Shade should be cloaked all the time except when firing its weapon. This would make it have a bit more utility in its stealth as it won't be seen by enemies when the frame is hiding behind a low object. The cooldown also needs to be reduced, substantially. Its weapon is also garbage on top of the fact that it is not a stealth weapon. What is the point of a stealth sentinel that can't attack stealthily? Maybe a bow/crossbow sentinel weapon?

 

Another cool idea would be the ability to give your sentinel one of the frame's weapons from the arsenal, primary or secondary.

 

Ash should be 1st priority in the balancing act. Realistically, Ash doesn't need balance but a more complete reworking. Other than SS all his other powers are useless and the damage multiplier from it should benefit all attacks. He also needs some cooler alt helms. Both current models are hideous and too dangly... ninjas don't like dangles cause they create drag and make noise.

 

Death Marks and other Marks should be visible on screen either next to the boosters or in the player stats somewhere.

Edited April 25, 2014 by (PS4)GR13V4NC3

[drunkpunk222]

More difficult content ftw!

[(PSN)DanteVincent]

Knock it off people, trinity and nova in the current state are boring, i would love to use them and feel useful rather than a hacker, bring it on.

 

Ash and banshee rework, sounds music to my ears, would've gone h*mo (why is this censored?) if you added Nekros and Oberon to that list, one can only dream, hopefuly DE hasn't forgotten about them, Nekros suffers from the same problem Frost used to and Oberon is just a bad joke, just typing this makes me sad, cause they have so much potential, please don't forget them!

 

Also, my body is ready for u13.

Edited April 25, 2014 by (PS4)DanteVincent

[Dogoframe]

“Dilution Solutions”

For example, some players have suggested that we make Ability Mods drop from the new Tenno Specters. That is a great idea that wasn’t available until U13.

 

While Tenno Specters werent in the game before U13, the market has always been there. The players who would need an unranked or under-ranked ability MOD for build purposes (which is according to DE the reason why they are in drop tables) could always buy it off the market. 

 

Another dodge to a serious issue, while DE claims to want to do something about it, the situation remains and now the next POSSIBLE solution is Tenno Specters.

 

I stick to my believe that no matter what is said, DE counts on those 40+ MODs to dilute the drop table and increase playing time by making some rare MODs MUCH harder to find than they rightfully should. Using the Livestream to show interest in the "new idea for ability MOD drops" is cynical.

[Wallace24]

I'll admit, being a god is pretty awesome, but blessing is probably overpowered past the point of balance. though the real issue stems from corrupted mods (fleeting expertise in particular). but I think reverting blessing and link (except the single target aspect. 3 or 4 linked targets is a good number) would make trinity balanced, but far less overpowered than she is in her present state

 

I still view ash as largely useless, and I assume the changes for banshee are centered around silence's uselessness as well. banshee needs something else unique. either that, or make is so stealth is important, such as in the upcoming revamped rescue missions, which means silence might actually find its way onto some builds

 

as for sentinels, without complete overhauls, the current gang of sentinels will remain inferior to carrier's convenience (some people like shade, and I can respect that, I'm just lazy and don't like to hide from my enemies). if helios' scanner only scanned unfinished codex entries, that would be good. but tbh, I think some people should run around with helios even before that. simply because they have barely any entries in their codexes (so many people I've noticed recently ask simple questions that are easily answered by the codex. of course the response when these questions come up in the forums is 'check out the wiki.' but really, DE has built in a great wealth of information in this Tennodex/Tennopedia)

[Archwizard]

Warframe Balancing

There are several schools of thought on what makes a Warframe balanced. For example, many players feel Oberon is underpowered, but others believe proper mods can redeem him. And then, there are players who state damage-based Warframes overall simply don’t cut it when it comes to high-level content. Quite the balancing act. The last Update from Dev speaks to potentially making adjustments to Trinity, Nova, Banshee, and Ash. These developments do tend to take some time, but as the last major balance change (Frost) came with insight prior to deploy, we plan on doing the same thing with larger changes. Stay tuned! 

 

The thing about Oberon though, the "proper mods" basically just revolve around him spamming Reckoning, and maybe Renewal. Meanwhile, all of his abilities rely on flat damage values, which makes them very lackluster in mid-to-higher level content, as his damaging skills can be shrugged off and his healing is overwhelmed. For bonus points, Renewal costs triple Well of Life, heals for half as much and has travel time, while Radiation/Impact is a very unusual combination fighting enemies (it's only good for fighting robots - ironic, since his namesake would probably have the most trouble with those).

Smite is widely considered completely useless, and Hallowed Ground is niche: good for setting up Defense maps with narrow hallways, and that's about it since enemies don't stand in it for very long.

Ultimately, he doesn't feel like a Druid or warding Paladin, just a weaker halfway point between Ember and Trinity. Doesn't help that his damage is so weak against Infested.

 

/endrant

 

For a lot of the damage-based frames, it's just a matter of giving them some kind of damage scaling (like Nova), or utility that's useful by any team configuration (Good examples: Speed, Snow Globe, Tornado, anything of Hydroid's. Bad example: Accelerant).

Edited April 25, 2014 by Archwizard

[KriLL3]

I'm not a fan of how the codex works currently, why should each tenno have to scan enemies themselves? why would the information be shared at least with their clan? If not all tenno.

 

It's also cumbersome and annoying to use, when you spot something you want to scan you need to switch to the scanner, get a long enough fix and then keep going, it's disruptive, and hard to do if they spotted you already and are trying to kill you, or if the rest of your squad isn't going to scan it themselves but instead shoot it dead.

 

A partial reward for scanning dead enemies would be nice, say half a scan point or less, it makes sense, you can glean a lot of information from a corpse, and the long scan time is annoying, and pretty hard to pull off especially on small or fast enemies.

 

The consumable nature of it doesn't make sense either, it's cheap so it's not a major hurdle buying more, but it's annoying having to do so, and it doesn't make sense, it looks like a pair of binoculars, are we carrying 100 of them and throw each away when used?

[Histori]

This game was fun back in days, now with all this cry babies nerf this that is not fun anymore.

Whaaaaat why did i supported this in the 1st place.

Kidos if you think something is OP just don't play it .

Edited April 25, 2014 by Histori

[(PSN)DanteVincent]

The thing about Oberon though, the "proper mods" basically just revolve around him spamming Reckoning, and maybe Renewal. Meanwhile, all of his abilities rely on flat damage values, which makes them very lackluster in higher-level content, as his damaging skills can be shrugged off and his healing is overwhelmed. For bonus points, Renewal costs triple Well of Life, heals for half as much and has travel time, while Radiation/Impact is a very unusual combination fighting enemies (it's only good for fighting robots - ironic, since his namesake would probably have the most trouble with those).

Smite is widely considered completely useless, and Hallowed Ground is niche: good for setting up Defense maps with narrow hallways, and that's about it since enemies don't stand in it for very long.

 

For a lot of the damage-based frames, it's just a matter of giving them some kind of damage scaling (like Nova), or utility that's useful by any team configuration (Good example: Speed. Bad example: Accelerant).

Thanks arch, yet another insightful post regarding balance among forgotten frames, still waiting for DE to read your thread on Nekros, hope they dont forget about these two, Nekros specially should ve been mentioned here, spamming desecrate shouldn t be a role.

[Histori]

Nekros specially should ve been mentioned here, spamming desecrate shouldn t be a role.

 

[Guest khk6]

T4 keys? so does that mean its going to be even harder getting the keys I want from survival? :(