A Conversation About Warframe Ability Cooldowns

[Digitalon]

I know that this topic has come up many times before, but I honestly wonder why it isn't more of a frequent topic among players on the forums.

 

The idea of ability cooldowns is a really interesting thought to me, specifically concerning warframe ultimate abilities(aka 4th ability), it makes sense that a game like Warframe would benefit immensely from the use of cooldowns. My idea is setting a standard for limiting use of all warframe ultimates, probably around 3-4 minutes between uses. In my opinion, it doesn't make sense that warframes can use such powerful abilities so often. I know that we are suppose to be these massively powerful warrior deities, but wouldn't things like creating black holes and stomping the ground so hard it makes time stop, cause some kind of physical drain that isn't simply remedied by little blue orbs?

 

Just think about it from a purely game play direction, if players actually had to make a very real and valid strategic choice about when to use their most powerful abilities, wouldn't that by itself help make game play more interesting? Wouldn't it help combat with the rampant power creep we are experiencing recently? No more spamming Rhino stomps and Anti Matter Drops, it would give players an actual reason to use their comparatively less powerful abilities and lend to game play style diversity. Taking Rhino for example, with cooldowns he would have to think carefully about when to use Rhino Stomp, due to having a long cooldown if he uses it carelessly he might not have it available to use when a big enemy surge starts overtaking the pod he is defending.

 

Expanding on the idea to the "lesser" abilities(abilities 1-3), making the number 1 abilities free to use without energy and giving them low cooldowns(3-5 seconds) would be way to prompt players to use these abilities more freqently, and since these basic abilities are generally very thematic to the warframe in question it would also help make each warframe feel more unique from each other. For example, with the current system you don't typically see Excalibur use slash dash very often accept for some additional mobility. With my idea, Excalibur would be free to use slash dash more frequently, using it to get into and out of melee combat and move around fights quickly adding to the already established close quarters brawler theme of Excalibur.

 

I'm really interested to know what you players(and devs if you read this) think of the idea. The more I think about it the more it feels like this sort of change would bring a real breath of fresh air to the combat of Warframe. Feel free to share any ideas you guys might have, I love good conversation :D

Edited June 15, 2014 by Digitalon

[DudeManThingDude]

Hell no! 

[Renathy]

Hell yes.

[DudeManThingDude]

Hell yes.

Then my 20 energy radial disarm spam build wont work then whats point of loki? NOTHING! Plus it would have wasted hundred of rare 5 cores i have used and hours and days to make that build.

[Digitalon]

Hell no! 

Do you care to expand on that thought? It doesn't really lend itself to conversation in its current form.

[DudeManThingDude]

Do you care to expand on that thought? It doesn't really lend itself to conversation in its current form.

Read my post right above you... 

EDIT:just wow

Edited June 15, 2014 by WolfalphaD

[VKhaun]

No.

 

Arbitrary time limits that don't scale to different game conditions.

Lazy boring generic game design.

Just leads to people asking for CDReduction mods.

Many effects are redundant with resource management.

 

Power in Use is better and I really don't think that's just an opinion because if everything is dead, then it doesn't need a cooldown because that would just slow the game down, it may as well let the player cast it again early. Power in Use accomplishes the same important things like preventing spam on actual enemies, and yet it still gives the player control in many ways. Kill all the enemies. Adjust power strength to affect number of targets in some cases. Adjust range to change number of targets via positioning. Tune duration vs power cost etc. It's a conversation instead of a snooze button.

 

The only time you need a cooldown are with EPIC EPIC buttons that are rarely used. Right now a lot of our Press 4 and Win buttons look that way, but only because the game has no structure and people are using max rank frames + forma + potato in low and mid level areas. At level-appropriate strength they're not so bad unless you have the right element for the target.

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT--

I do not agree with WolfAlphaD. I don't like Radial Disarm as a spam skill with 100% effectiveness. I would not use Power In Use for that either, though. I would probably make Radial Disarm work like explosion damage does. Give it an inner ring with 100% chance to disarm, and then make the outter rings lower and lower chances not affected by power strength. Or maybe have it work on the closest X targets and then only have a very low chance to hit additional targets, affected by power strength. That way you could choose between spam for few targets or casting it less often (power cost increase from blind rage) but with a higher chance to affect additional targets.

Edited June 15, 2014 by VKhaun

[Renathy]

Do you care to expand on that thought? It doesn't really lend itself to conversation in its current form.

 

He wants to spam abilities endlessly. If he cannot do so, then all Warframes and upgraded mods are completely useless.

[Mrevasivepants]

Giving cooldown to abilities would make power efficiency rather useless IMO.

[(PSN)Bobtm0]

Personally, I absolutely loathe the idea of cooldowns being implemented into a fast paced game such as this one.  I do however know there's a bit of a glaring issue with power spam/usability in general.  The issue is trying to work out a sort of balance in there.

 

Low rank/new players clearly don't go around throwing abilities left and right, because energy as it stands is the limiter to our casting and thusly there just isn't enough energy to allow constant casting.  Streamline makes things a bit more "open" in that regard but then once Fleeting Expertise comes in all hek breaks loose.

 

People just enjoy using powers a lot, however those same powers allow us to trivialize almost any potential threat.  Because of the way Warframe is currently balanced (everyone is a glass cannon) it's hard to just straight remove power spamability since that's part of the main way in which we survive outside of the standard procedure of eradicating all life.  No frame can actively take damage to any moderate degree without near immediate death with their core stats aside from Valkyr.  The only three things that keep us alive are movement, CC, and instantly erasing all life that isn't allied.

 

For cooldowns to be properly implemented in a game like this... well we'd need a hard rebalancing of the entire game to not have it just be pathetic/bad.

[Digitalon]

Read my post right above you... 

EDIT:just wow

Sorry, I must have posted right after you posted your reply.

 

Just to clarify, you would prefer to keep your gimmicky Loki build, rather than try to help improve the overall health of game play?

[(PSN)Pengu_Imperialus]

Sorry, I must have posted right after you posted your reply.

 

Just to clarify, you would prefer to keep your gimmicky Loki build, rather than try to help improve the overall health of game play?

You know the answer to that question...

[yles9056]

Cooldown is something worth considering.

 

But we'll probably need more mod slots for new cooldown reduction mods.

[Digitalon]

Personally, I absolutely loathe the idea of cooldowns being implemented into a fast paced game such as this one.  I do however know there's a bit of a glaring issue with power spam/usability in general.  The issue is trying to work out a sort of balance in there.

 

Low rank/new players clearly don't go around throwing abilities left and right, because energy as it stands is the limiter to our casting and thusly there just isn't enough energy to allow constant casting.  Streamline makes things a bit more "open" in that regard but then once Fleeting Expertise comes in all hek breaks loose.

 

People just enjoy using powers a lot, however those same powers allow us to trivialize almost any potential threat.  Because of the way Warframe is currently balanced (everyone is a glass cannon) it's hard to just straight remove power spamability since that's part of the main way in which we survive outside of the standard procedure of eradicating all life.  No frame can actively take damage to any moderate degree without near immediate death with their core stats aside from Valkyr.  The only three things that keep us alive are movement, CC, and instantly erasing all life that isn't allied.

 

For cooldowns to be properly implemented in a game like this... well we'd need a hard rebalancing of the entire game to not have it just be pathetic/bad.

You have a lot of good points, but you must also understand that for the game to survive, this problem will need to be handled sooner than later. I know that people don't like change EVER, but this game is still in beta and this kind of core game change/rebalance will probably happen eventually, with or without input from us. So we as the community should help develop ideas on how we want this handled.

Edited June 15, 2014 by Digitalon

[SevenLetterKWord]

"3-4 minutes," he says. Three to four minutes, my &#!! What kind of nonsense is that?

I can finish a mission in "3-4 minutes".

[(PSN)JoeyTwoShoes]

3-4 minutes!? Hell no!

[Grentex]

I thought we were through with the concept of Cool downs. They already tried it back in closed beta and trust me, it did not work what so ever. They then replaced it with the current energy use system.

[Sixty5]

I'm gonna say no here.

 

Firstly abilities are regulated by cost, sure you can stack up power efficiency and stuff, but the cost is still there.

 

Secondly the pacing of the game does not allow for long cooldowns as you suggest. Long cooldowns work in other games like LoL because the time between the points you want to use them is longer, teamfights happen every few minutes endgame in LoL, whereas in warframe, at high levels as soon as you clear an area you are getting swarmed once again. And as others have rightfully said, you can finish a mission in that time.

[TheGuy08]

You are suggesting 3-4 minute long cool downs in a shooter....?

 

 

This isn't a @(*()$ MMORPG

[traybong111]

I'm seeing so much Borderlands2-esque stuff around here it's almost comforting.

[Digitalon]

I'm gonna say no here.

 

Firstly abilities are regulated by cost, sure you can stack up power efficiency and stuff, but the cost is still there.

 

Secondly the pacing of the game does not allow for long cooldowns as you suggest. Long cooldowns work in other games like LoL because the time between the points you want to use them is longer, teamfights happen every few minutes endgame in LoL, whereas in warframe, at high levels as soon as you clear an area you are getting swarmed once again. And as others have rightfully said, you can finish a mission in that time.

I understand that the pacing of the game is very important, but most if not all of the ultimate abilities in the game completely trivialize enemy difficulty. If you can clear an entire room with one ability, what exactly is the problem of only being able to use it occasionally?  3 minutes isn't that long, generally people can take longer than that clearing a single wave of defense, at that rate you can use an ultimate every single wave if you so choose. If you are speed running missions at maximum speed with a Loki under invisibility then yes, you can clear it before an ultimate cooldown resets; However that is hardly the way this game was really meant to be played, most people don't play at those speeds.

 

In the interest of conversation, how would you all react to a shorter proposed cooldown on ults? Something around a minute maybe? At that rate it would slow down the rate of ult spam, but you would still be able to use it quite frequently.

[LukeAura]

In a game like Warframe were mission last anywhere from 5 minutes to 1 hour, And enemy densities go from sporadic to average to heavy to insane you can't make reliably scaled cooldowns.
And the problem was not started by a lack of cooldowns, why not fix the actual issues instead of bandaiding it? Cause you know the 90 other bandaids have worked so well for warframe.
Lack of well thought out situation design and scaling, Lower abilities don't have niches over Ults, Way too much Efficiency lowers the opportunity cost of Ults a lot more than other skills. Let me elaborate in sequence.
One of the advantages you have to using lower skills is more damage per energy point, but this ends up being applied to less targets, You don't need 1000 damage on a single target ala Soul Punch until every enemy becomes a threat and quickly killing one isn't dealing with your problem. Or applied over a much larger time period, 2 Slash Dashes = 1 Rad. Javelin in damage but it takes much longer to do 2 dashes. This also means they tend to compete with guns because of the more frontal nature of their shapes as well.
There is a very small niche of levels where this extra damage efficiency is useful over ults. And because enemies tend to spawn from all directions the less AoEy lower abilities are far worse off. Cooldowns will not make these abilities any better when compared to their real competition, guns either. 

The other problem is that Ults tend to be superior -in every way- CC, Damage, area of effect, duration, number of targets over other skills of that frames skill set. Ice Wave right now deals less damage per energy, covers a smaller area of effect, and has worse vertical tracking compared to Avalanche. What it does have is slightly better distance(5 meters is nothing) and a CC effect that is only arguably better, not definitively. Essentially nothing. What reason is there to use Ice Wave when you have Avalanche? When you can't afford it. Which is what leads to the last problem. Cooldowns would only add another caviate to when to use Ice Wave, but would not necessarily make Ice Wave any better the skill to use over Avalanche. You would feel forced in to using it instead of feeling like it was the right/smart thing to use in a scenario. 

Opportunity Cost, what you are giving up in order to use an Ult. Once you make an Ult cost 1 energy orb it doesn't matter how little the other skills cost anymore. It has become infinitely repeatable because of the high chance you will make that energy back on every press of the button even with relatively few enemy numbers. When it costed 4 there was a chance you wouldn't have the energy to use another ability if you blew it on too few a number of enemies too often, this is different from the cooldown limitation in that it leans towards a dynamic system. When you really need that ult is when you are most likely to make back a safe amount of energy from it. Cooldowns don't care about proper usage of skills, a player that only uses his ult when he needs it may still run in to a situation where he needs it twice in a row on two tiles and can't have it. Because of the unpredictable nature of enemy spawns this is incredibly bad and should kill any argument for cooldowns regardless of anything else. 

Warframe needs a dynamic system of energy, maybe even one unique to each frame. The current energy system isn't all that bad, it's a little basic, but everything around it is what is causing it to fail. Cooldowns will create more problems than they will solve.  

[WingsOfGryphin]

 

[WingsOfGryphin]

The most stupid part about Cooldowns is that you can't use your abilities when you need them the most. And the second most stupidest part is that you can't use them more than once in a certain period of time. 

Example: Frost globe. Did your globe just got destroyed? Well TOO BAD, here's a cooldown even tho you have enough energy. Frost Globe essentially become useless, because you need to use it spontaneously, not periodically... but it's actually like that for every Warframe ability.  

Edited June 15, 2014 by WingsOfGryphin

[Sasquatchias]