Making Warframes Diverse

[Professor_Loophole]

Currently each warframe has its own set of stats and slightly altered ones if you buy a diffrent helm, but beyond that the frames themselves are all the same. What I think would give the game more diversity would be to add diffrent abilities for each frame.

Take the Rhino for example. Currently it has the following abilities:

1) Rhino Charge, a CC tank version of Sword Dash

2) Iron Skin, Invulnerability

3) Radial Blast, AOE damaging attack

4) Rhino Stomp, Large AOE knock up that hold enemies in air for several seconds.

All useful abilities, but maybe one is not helpful to your playstyle or the effect doesnt match the cost in your book.

This is where as a player you would have to hunt down, but, or maybe build a mod that replaces one of these abilites. Now you have two choices for each hot key that are made for diffrent playstyles. Instead of Radial Blast you now have Rhino Strike a personal buff that gives your melee attacks a powerful knockback.

[Nilani]

and thats why they changed the upgrade systems to be based on mods for skills and such so they can easily add new abilities to old frames. but right now thats not the biggest concern of the game.

[LunarWind]

I believe that DE is already thinking of having more than one set of ability 'cards' for each frame. Why else would abilities take the form of cards?

It's got to be so that they can release new ability sets for existing warframes instead of having to constantly pump-out new frames all the time.

Think about it, making a new frame means new concepts, new models, new animations, new rigging, new textures, new EVERYTHING.

New ability cards for an existing frame would mean new effects and new animations, but you would already be doing that for a new frame, and this way you save time and money by recycling existing assets.

Recycling is good, DE should build new ability sets for existing frames.

[Sev7n]

You can't compare Rhino and Excalibur warframe and then make the assumption that there isnt enough diversity in warframes. Yes those two are similar but have you played all the other frames in this game? They all have special abilities that are different from the rest. For rhino and excalibur just think of it as rhino being an upgrade of excalibur.

[Professor_Loophole]

I did not say it was an upgrade of the frame only that the rhino charge ability is a tank's version of the excaliburs sword charge. Both are a dash forward but they do diffrent things.

There are many reasons to change from a skill tree to cards, simplest being you avoid having to refund players their points every time you do anything to the skill tree. Is my idea in the works by the developers? Most likely yes, but it is important that a players voice what they want to see for the games future.

Moving the topic back to diversity. What are abilities you would like to see for some warframes? What are other ways they could add to the options of a frame to make it more diverse.

[Naqel]

IMO abilities should get their own separate mod slots and mod polarities.

Then each frame would just have different ability slots, and you could put any ability of a proper polarity into that slot.

[Professor_Loophole]

Do you mean a frame should have 8 mod slots and 4 ability slots?

[SolluxCaptorTA]

He's saying each frame needs more than four abilities, so it can be customized player to player.

Some ideas:

Excalibur-Avalon Strike, a wide front facing AoE attack, moderate damage and high knockback.

Frost-Ice Slide, a low damage dash attack that leaves a ten(?) second trail behind him that lightly damages and slows enemies that enter.

Loki-Theft, an attack that lets you steal ammo, weapons, and a low chance of mods or some other loot item from a foe. You get one full clip with the enemy's weapon, and they lose the use of it. Not available on bosses, obviously.

Mag-Magnetic Grips, an ability which lets Mag magnetize her boots and gauntlets to climb directly on walls and ceilings. Long duration, but very vulnerable to being knocked off.

Rhino-Grapple, Rhino grapples with a foe for a few seconds, preventing them from doing anything and dealing high damage. Useless against large foes, currently only Hyena and Jackal, or small foes, like rollers or Ospreys.

Trinity-Reflex, buffs all allies accuracy by turning on a partial Auto Aim for a short amount of time. Similar to Mag's Bullet Attraction, but affects all enemies, still allows for headshots, and requiring a good deal more accuracy to actually work as opposed to an enormous bubble.

Volt-Overdrive, Volt imbues himself with immense energy, increasing speed, jump height, giving temporary invulnerability and adding large amounts of shock damage to all attacks. A new Ult.

Universal-Cleanse, provides a short term buff that makes you immune to poison damage.

Universal-Lunge, gives a short range dash and a charge melee attack at the end of it. no charging required beforehand.

Universal-Heal, provides direct healing in exchange for energy. Possibly costs 50, heals 25 or maybe only 10.

[Professor_Loophole]

All good ideas but the universal heal. The description of trinity is that Warframes that can heal are very rare, so a universal frame undermines that

[Naqel]

He's saying each frame needs more than four abilities, so it can be customized player to player.

No, I mean that if I want to, I should be able to replace Excalibur's 'Super Jump' with Volt's 'Speed', and vice-versa, ect.

Of course such a system would have top be a bit more complex than say, lumping both Molt and Decoy, or Invisibility and Smoke Screen, in the same 'polarities', to make sense.

Edited April 6, 2013 by Naqel

[Professor_Loophole]

If you were able to use other frames abilities that would remove the purpose of other frames. each frame has a system part that is how it is able to use its abilities.

In this case the Volt system allows it to control electricity and uses it to super charge the legs of the suit for enhanced speed.

If there where multiple abilities for one ability slot for a frame there could be a speed boost that replaces the sword dash.