A Suggesting For Using Abilities - Alternate The Energy Costs Per Cast

[yOGZULA]

Abilities in warframe all look really cool and add a lot of flavor to each warframe and the gameplay in general. However, there are many abilities that each warframe will barely use. Whether that ability is too weak, too situational, too much energy for what it does, etc. I suggest a system that encourages using different abilities.

I will do my best to make an example of what I mean

Warframe has

ability A - 25 energy

ability B - 50 energy

ability C - 75 energy

ability D - 100 energy

What I suggest is that when using an ability it's energy cost should increase and the cost of every other ability should decrease. This would mean If I spam ability A constantly, it's going to end up costing too much energy to make it worth spamming. However, at the same time ability B, C and D all cost a low amount of energy. The gameplay this would encourage is something like this - Use ability A, ability B then costs 25 energy. Use ability B and then ability C is down to 25 energy. Use C and then D is down to 25 energy. That's the general idea, at least. Obviously the numbers could and probably should be changed for the sake of balance. Perhaps an ability has a minimum energy limit so that ability D couldn't fall below 50 energy. When I cast a discounted ability D at 50 energy, it would then reset to 100 energy. I would then need to cast my other abilities a few times so that ability D will become discounted to 50 energy again.

The goal of this system is to encourage variation in the usage of abilities. From my experience playing MAG i've noticed that it's almost never worth using anything but crush. It usually means i'm running around hardly ever using abilities until i encounter a large pack. I feel like this is true of many warframes. You have an ability that is the most efficient for the energy it costs so you will rarely use anything else. The system I suggested instead encourages you to use ALL of your abilities because variation is the most efficient way to spend your energy.

I may not have explained this in the most clear and concise way but I hope you get the idea.

[Telzen]

That would get way too confusing. All they need to do is just make each ability worth using.

[yOGZULA]

That would get way too confusing. All they need to do is just make each ability worth using.

it really isn't that confusing

use one ability and it increases in cost (with a max limit) and all other abilities decrease in cost

it just encourages variation

you say 'make each ability worth using' like it's that simple. with the current system there will -always- be an ability with the most energy efficiency

[Venarge]

Encourages variation? Would be completely useless if a trinity would have to use her heal more than once and simply cant because of that system.... No thanks....

Edited April 6, 2013 by Venarge

[Quasaron]

Each class ability should serve different purposes which then encourages usage, the cost should not define the applicability of each abilty. At the moment, some abilities like Loki's AOE disarm is rather abysmal (why disarm when other classes simply wipe out the same amount of enemies? its simply not worth 5 mod points) Thus, not all people even equip the 4 class abilities.

Your idea might be more appropriate if all 4 spells had similar effects. As it stands, the core problem is: if a class has 3 damaging ability, and 1 of them is cheap and does sufficient damage already, the other two are redundant not because of cost but because of functionality. It's somewhat a problem in design variation imo.

I personally would find it much more interesting if each warframe had passive abilities that would fit in with different combos, like slide melee as ash would render him invisible for that moment.

[HvcTerr]

I agree with Telzen: It's a confusing mechanic. It forces people to start squinting at tiny numbers and doing math in their head while shooting enemies.

A better idea is for them to watch the ability-usage statistics and tweak their costs/effects so that all get similar levels of use among those who have them equippable/available.

[Naqel]

Or they could just put abilities on a cooldown system.

Ya know, so that you can't spam, but also never feel like wasting energy because an ability has an effect that isn't worth it.