Animation locks on ability use and resource

[Paland]

I've spent some hours playing Loki and so far the game seems really promissing and engaging. My 2 main beefs right now would be with ability animation locks and the ability resource system.

Animation lock

Problem: I frequently use Decoy and Stealth on Loki, i find them fun and useful in many situations. The issue here is that my character have to stand still and activate the abilities. In an otherwise fast-phased game i think it really breaks the flow of combat when you are locked in place because you use an ability. I get that it has to be balanced, and that it's sort of the penalty for using a "super-power", but it adds alot of frustration and takes away from the great action the combat system otherwise has. I can't answer for other Warframe abilities since these are the ones i've used the most. I don't even know if every ability has this animation lock in place.

Solution: If there must be a "penalty" for balancing reason, i'd suggest simply slowing down the run speed instead of coming to a complete halt. Otherwise remove the lock all together. I vote for removing it (in this case on stealth and decoy for Loki).

Resource/Power

Problem: I'm not sure, but i haven't found any other way than enemy drops to regain power. In my book this generally discourages use of abilities. Yes, it adds a decision-making-element where you have to evaluate if now is the time to use an ability, but i often tend to end up saving my power for when S#&$ hits the fan. I see so much more potential in the abilities available then only being "situational".

Solution: Changing the resource system to something more consistent and not based on RNG could open up for much more fun and deep gameplay. The abilities are fun to use, they add great value to combat, i don't like feeling discouraged to use them. I want to be encouraged to use them. A simple solution is to either add cooldowns to the abilities or use a automatic regen on power. Using automatic regen would keep much of the decision-making-fun. Since powers generally seem to increase in power-cost the higher you go, you would still have to evaluate if you want to use a low-cost ability now, or save some more for a higher-cost ability. This would also open up for stats/mods to increase power regen rate. You are already limited to ammo (yes i'm aware of the ammo-drop issue, but that's another topic) which makes sense and works out good, but using the same kind of RNG limit on abilities just isn't a good idea i think. Limiting abilities in this way make the game seem way more generic (like any other shooters out there). Opening them up a bit more to encourage using them more would give the game a unique twist and make it stand out more.

I'm still a bit of a newbie here so please inform me if i've missed something. But these 2 things are, in my opinion, holding the game back. Otherwise i think it has great potential and i enjoy it immensely. I might pick up a founders pack soon.

Edited January 9, 2013 by timtrack

[MegatechBody]

Just right off the bat want to add in I completely agree that abilities should not force the character to stand still to play the animation. That totally ruins the flow of the great fast paced gameplay of Warframe. Devs took a lot of time to make an awesome fast paced combat system and we wouldn't want to trash all that fluid goodness with some clunky animations! We aren't in 2004 anymore, stand still cast animations are so last decade.

Also good idea on the ability RNG except I want to tweak it a little bit and by that I mean when you press your ability button it picks one to use at random so you're never quite sure which one you'll activate next!

Edited January 9, 2013 by MegatechBody