Change The Energy System With Cool Downs

[Lunar13]

I find a few problems with the energy system as it is now:

1. I find myself skipping certain skills as consider them a waste of energy such as shuriken (which I feel needs and overhaul but later on that), teleport, super jump, and various other skills with different frames. Why waste energy on that when I can save up to 100 and just run into a large group and kill everything with my "ultimate"(100 energy skills)?

2. With the somewhat random drop rate of energy orbs, sometimes you can go dry for a long time, while other times you get so many, you can keep spaming your ult moves which kills the balance. With frames like Ash and Saryn, if there is a high amount of blue orbs around (which sometimes happens), it lessons the skill level when you can just spam "kill everything button". Sure that doesn't work on bosses, but you get the point.

3. Spamable moves usually make you less want to use your other skills. Example: Loki's Decoy is far more effective to spam over and over in large team fights than to mix it up by wasting precious energy on other moves like switch teleport and radial disarm. Switch teleport and radial disarm do have its purposes as the "oh sh!t!" button when things are going bad, but if you have spent most of your energy on the best crowed control skill in the game (decoy), you wont have enough energy to do radial disarm.

4. I find myself constantly hunting for blue orbs and going off the beaten path to keep my energy pool max, or back tracking through rooms far left behind to see if the orbs that had dropped when I was full are still there after I have used my moves. Obviously I don't HAVE to do this to do well in the game, but the fact that the skills take up such a large percentage of total energy pool, its something that I find myself going "energy hunting" much like some go "treasure hunting".

Suggestions:

Either make the energy pool much larger, or make the cost of skills much less, and put a cool down on skills based on various concepts such as how powerful, is it a utility, ect. And if you want certain moves to be spamable, then perhaps have a greater use of energy each time it is used in succession (example: Each time slash dash is used within 5 seconds, it uses 25% more energy). And also give the energy pool a slow regen, slow enough that its not viable to hide in a corner and get 100% back without wasting a huge amount of time. Maybe add mods that up the regen. At the same time, make orbs either less frequent, or just give a smaller amount of energy.

In theory, this would:

1. Get people to use all the skills more often.

2. Give more balance to damage output ratio of certain warframes and less based on the random drop rate of orbs.

3. Require more thought and skill from players instead of being able to spam certain moves.

4. Make the game be more tactical about when to reserve certain moves and less about running around hunting for blue orbs in lockers and containers off the beaten path and focusing more on fighting.

When thinking of these changes, I think of League of Legends as a model on skill use, energy pool, and cool downs, as they put a lot of thought into these concepts for not only balance, but to make every skill feel that its important enough not to skip for spaming or only using 1 to 2 skills instead.

[tony1922]

very interesting idea's, there is actually an artifact u are able to find off of doing alert mission's that allow for the slow regen of your energy its called "Energy Siphon" if i'm not mistaken.

[Satori_Mind]

It's as simple as using streamine or flow mods. Then there's always the energy siphon artifact and Trinity's awesomely useful energy vampire. Super jump is also fun. Especially combined with wall running.

Also League of Legends spits in the face of game design. Bad game. Worse community. Horrible genre.

[Rydian]

As tony1922 said there's an energy regen artifact, and there's also the Flow mod, which is +25% max energy per level. Note it's percent, not flat, so since energy is now raised with your level it's more than 25 units each time after you start ranking up. Even putting that mod to rank 2 at warframe rank 1 so I have 150 max energy is very helpful, since an ult doesn't drain me totally, I still have two uses of the 25-power skill to use.

EDIT: Oh yeah, also Streamline like FRT said, reduces energy use of skills.

Edited April 6, 2013 by Rydian

[DXXXVIII]

Good ideas and yes, the ability system needs a rework... rly like ur ideas

Atm the streamline and flow mode are a must have if u even consider using abilitys.

Edited April 6, 2013 by DXXXVIII

[Lammeth]

Very good ideas and it also opens a door for a new kind of mod... Cooldown reduction.

For example, I wanted to build my Volt to be very skill dependent. I hardly use weapons, unless necessary (fighting enemies that are resistant to electricity). I wanted to build him as a mage-like warframe. This idea is great and if I wanted to keep my gameplay style, I'd have to sacrifice slots for a reduced cooldown, witch would increase diversity.

I liked it

[Decoyer]

There is no need any "cooldowns"..

it's a game trick:)

You don't have unlimited energy and it's not refill itself for a few seconds, so it's looks like in old games. No energy - no skill use.

Those damn "cooldowns" is almost in every MMO game, and it's really annoying

These game was created for.. OWNAGE!!! So own everyone who's don't looks like Tenno:)

Edited April 6, 2013 by Decoyer

[Feddy]

It's as simple as using streamine or flow mods. Then there's always the energy siphon artifact and Trinity's awesomely useful energy vampire. Super jump is also fun. Especially combined with wall running.

Also League of Legends spits in the face of game design. Bad game. Worse community. Horrible genre.

+1 And oh yea, i use ash aswell and i love my 4 abilities and use them as fit, The shuriken is awesome to take down bosses or other heavy units down fast when i cant afford to get in close with my Shotty, the teleport is perfect for when enemies are shooting on me from leveled ground or i just need to get in close before i get blasted to pieces, the smoke screen is a real good tool for when i take heavy damage and i dont feel like wasting 100 energy just to kill a few mobs, and then again the IWIN button which i only really use if there is ALOT of enemies crowded up.

All in all i have use of all 4 skills in different situations, you just lack creatvity mr OP....

[Eternum]

It's as simple as using streamine or flow mods. Then there's always the energy siphon artifact and Trinity's awesomely useful energy vampire. Super jump is also fun. Especially combined with wall running.

Also League of Legends spits in the face of game design. Bad game. Worse community. Horrible genre.

League of Legends sucks? u crazy or smtg bro?

[VieuxPappy]

I gotta agree with the OP, atm, playing with mag for exemple feels more like a "wait until you have 100 energy then press 4 to empty a room" frame than anything else. Yes her abilities can be useful but they are only in a set of situations. If players play intelligently, bosses are tanky long (can be annoying) but are easy to take down without much thinking/reflexes. So it's rare people are downed and they need to be pulled before getting revived,etc. Most of the time it will not really help that much to pull, shield polarize or magnetize... so 99% of my play time with mag (I maxed her to lvl 30) I used Crush and that's it.

I guess this is similar to other frames too, the excaliburs I see are mostly just spamming the dash-slash move, loki just decoy and invis, etc... So atm, there is no incitive to be using all 4 skills. Also, it would be nice if there was a way to make "combos" cuz atm, most abilities are used independantly and without real management/player skill. I know the game is new, im just popping this idea in here...

[PrismBlack]

I like the way the system works atm. Flow is a mod I like to keep on any new frame I try to level up it allows me to save 100 power for the big hits if I wish. Truly I don't see the problem with the system as it stands.

[Dako_Shark]

I noticed that most of the skills are rather useful in various situations. I play as Ember, and fireball is good for one on one, the ground pound thingy is good for blocking a path and having them take damage going through it, and the final one is good for lighting a mob of enemies on fire. Half the time I don't even use abilities much. Loki I do have to say has the best crowd control skill ever with Decoy, but once you run outta energy, you can't use it.

It's a better system to just have you collect energy and then once you run out, you're out. Cause you really think giving it cool downs and regen is going to do anything? People are still going to be spamming decoy just cause you can get your energy back as you run around, and they are not going to be like a 60 second cool down on the first tier skill (for Loki), that's just bad game design.

I guess a lot of the skills have uses at certain times, it doesn't mean that they're going to be used all the time and most of the frames have spammy moves anyways. As for the ultimates, I really haven't found Ember's ultimate worth using all that much. It's kinda more of a second thought for me to use it.