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*updated* A Clear Explanation Of Why Forma Is Bad For Wf, With Bonus Issues To Discuss.


Halisi
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 Welp here's another of those long feedback thread everyone loves to read. I've been an avid Warframe fan/player since update 5.3 "Blazing Embers", I've watched WF grow and flourish since. I've had my share of doubts while  following our ups and downs. But when I take a moment to see the hard work and passion DE puts into this game it all disappears. Through the fog I have a clear view of what I want to say, and what is important. Warframe is finally at a point where I feel comfortable making this thread. With this I hope to give the readers a fresh view of Warframe. No tl:dr this time, if you really care about Warframe be a man and scale the wall of text before you.

 

 So the first question that's been brought up in this post is "why now", that's simple U14. With it over the horizon it's promises something groundbreaking for WF, New player accessibility! Promoting new beginnings. But more importantly this update starts WF on the road to becoming a final product in the sense of becoming a whole game. With that in mind I'll present my thoughts on how to continue along this road.

 

 I'll start with the biggest issues and work my way down, first up I'm going to talk about Lv1-30 gameplay vs endgame. Very early DE made one point clear, the lv cap is 30 and there are no plans to raise it. While I was sceptical about this fact I eventually realized that this was a great idea. One thing that keeps getting mentioned in these type of threads is scaling. Once your go high enough in survival or defense it becomes ridiculous and impossible to manage efficiently. The truth of the matter is that Warframe isn't ready for Lv120 enemies. I got a fresh view on this topic a few months ago when I played Lightning Returns. There were no levels but the gameplay was always fun and rewards were always meaningful. One reason for this is that they kept the numbers manageably small. Attack values stayed the range of ~100-1000 on normal difficulty, with noticeable progression in between. Within the given range 900-1200 were maximizational stat values that could be achieved, 700-800 were perfectly acceptable attack values that did little to hinder you fighting power. While you could just make your attack as high as possible your damage output had enough leeway that you could choose to focus on other stats/mechanics and still be viable. So the point being Lv30 is completely reasonable, this point will have more meaning later in this post.

 

 Building upon my previous point I'd like to say that I understand your weapon tier statement. More specifically when DE_Scott explained that they want to have different tiered weapons for each weapon type. Such as the automatic rifles Braton(low tier) & Soma(high tier). There's nothing wrong with this, the only reason this is rejected by the players is because of the artificial endgame.While I do wish some weapons had different stats because of their intended role, new weapons are only called useless because they can't kill Lv40+ enemies. Our view towards a weapons worth is directly tied to our artificial endgame of fighting the highest level enemies we can.

 

 The first thing to think about when it come to fixing this is to realize something, and I'm going to be blunt. Forma was introduced too early and I really feel that is should be removed temporarily. Read the rest of this post before commenting on that! Forma essentially allows us to break the level cap of thirty. This isn't a problem in itself, but what it does is allow people to equip max rank damage mods exacerbating the real problem. People fight tougher and tougher enemies, making the power differences between weapons glaringly obvious and making DE waste manpower trying to balance Lv120 enemies. Any veteran can tell you how balanced Warframe weapons were before the advent of forma. True a lot of weapons couldn't fit all the maxed rank mods, but it forced you to be creative and make sacrifices. Your could use 3 max rank mods to greatly raise some stats, of use a bunch of lower rank ones to make a more balanced stat increase. 

 

 Now to bring all of these points together into one concept. While DE works on the quest system forma functionality should be disabled on weapons so they can focus on Lv1-30 content. This way they can work on tuning each quest and adding interesting gameplay to each quest/mission node. Mission types still need more variety but all existing ones are fun to play what I'm mentioning is making each node a unique story/mission flow, remember when other faction randomly invaded the tileset during a mission? It's mechanics like these that make missions interesting, another good example of this is the new rescue missions wardens. With this in mind eventually you can start making real endgame missions for Lv/Rk30 players, mission that are hard not because of stats but because of clever mechanics. For example: A raid that involves assaulting a grineer encampment on phobos, enemies are strategically placed and coded for defense and make you think about how to best break through. aggressive offense units and defensive support units like healers, buffers, and tacticians. Things like that are a good way to go. After that then someday you can reintroduce forma for endgame missions from ~Lv31-50, where the really powerful weapons can shine again. By then there will be more weapons that will viable for these levels. Then you can say why bring a braton to a soma fight.

 

 Now if you've gotten through all of that then you can certainly read a bit more of what I have to say. The last things I want to touch upon are lack of mod diversity, and clunky movement. The main offender here is the dodge mechanic. It's useful for dodging an incoming ancient or swiftly avoiding that shield grineer charging at you but it's near useless up close. The animation takes too long so trying to use it up close result in you getting hit anyway. Now you make be saying why not block, if you're that close you should probably be using melee. The problem with this is circumstance. You can only block/parry while in the melee stance, if you have your gun out you have you rely on dodging. You won't always be able to switch to melee in time, or sometimes at all. That's when rolling should come through for you.

 

 Finally I'll mention mod diversity, it's just not there. We can increase our damage, fire rate, reload, magazine size, etc. But these are standard for this kind of game. The really interesting mods are things like thunderbolt, ammo mutation, multi-shot, and heavy impact. These kinds of mods allow you to really modify how your weapons/warframes work. These are the kind of mods we need added in order to reduce complaints about the mod system. Instead of adding stats, add effects and mechanics, there was a time when you guys promised to make a mod that added a homing property to the glaive, where's that? There's also the issue that these kinds of mods are mostly rare, there should be more common/uncommon effect mods. A mod that directly increases accuracy would be a good common mod, and a slug mod that works while zooming in with a shogun increasing its effective range and reducing the bullet spread would work welled as a tiered mod uncommon increasing slightly, and rare increasing moderately. While I do feel that the mod system hasn't reached its full potential yet, it can't with forma in the picture. People will just keep complaining that we need more damage mods.

 

 I love your game DE, I just want to give people a different perspective on what needs to be done. I've spent a long time thinking about this and hope these suggestions help you improve this game. Everyone knows how big it will be! :)

 

 I started writing this out while I was tired so I completely missed the fact that this post is mainly about forma in one way or another so I'm going to make that clear in the title. Also I'd would like to discuss whether this should apply to warframes as well. 

 

" This thread is not a discussion about whether or not any of this can actually happen. I just want to get my thoughts out there. I will ignore any posts that; state that forma will not be removed, whine that they don't want it removed, do not contribute to this thread."

 

Edited by Halisi
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That was a good read.

 

Anyway I agree that Forma are a bit game-breaking. Warframe is revolutionary, as far as I know at least, in the concept that a reset will give a certain piece of equipment a change in its stats. The game is not optimized for it.

 

Halo as an example I can say as a person who has played 1 and 2 for years (darn Xbox exclusives!) that most weapons have different abilities and powers, serving their function. After even a small amount of time you can reliably tell your friends about it because you will understand its inner workings by heart. This is recognition of a weapon, a weapon that cannot be altered.

 

The same goes for Call of Duty. As generic as most of its weapons are you know what they do and what they are capable of. Their stats don't change for better or worse and if they do it is hardly noticeable. Though I say this as someone who played the good Call of Duty games and not the ones with the miniature nuclear weapons.

 

Lastly we have Battlefield 3. Aesthetically most guns are unique to each player, at least it is for me when I try to revive that dead medic with his own kit. Hardly noticeable (stat-wise) are the attachments for weapons but they are a slight game changer but the point is they are balanced towards the entirety of the game.

 

So in conclusion the game took a wrong step when they introduced Forma but also mods as a whole. Because some weapons and Warframes will always be favored over others if they allow the envelope to be pushed. This does however not stem creativity since I recall a match where a Volt used a Brakk behind 10 Barriers to power it up to quasar-level destructive power. 

 

You cannot possibly hope to balance a game perfectly but in Warframe the glaring problem lies in the thousands of variations which make it ridiculously hard to balance. Formas and mods dilute that equation but we are too far into it now to change it.

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It's kinda depressing that I'm the only second one responding to the actual post here so far. Are people really becoming that illiterate? 

 

Anyways, down to business. 

 

While I'm not going to argue over the probability/improbability of a temporary halt on Forma, I'm going to point out that such a drastic measure is largely unnecessary. The problem with Forma is that it gives players access to more power from mods than they should by any means have a right to. The best solution, therefore, is to reduce the overall power of said mods. (And increase the overall power of the weapons themselves.) Looking at other fairly balanced games with reasonable PVE and acceptable PVP, you almost never see scaling values exceeding 15%. Hell, 5% is a pretty hefty boost elsewhere. Forma won't be so game breaking if it doesn't give players access to ridiculous amounts of power. I would also like to see mods move away from power boosts (Serration, Split Chamber, etc.) and towards mechanic tweaks (Metal Auger, Stabilizer, etc.) Then players with fully-forma'ed Somas can access all the tricked out convenience abilities, which will be a lot less imbalanced than what we have now. 

 

On pretty much everything else, you have my general agreement.

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@Valfunde, I know, this is for post U14, taking advantage of their now light(relatively speaking) workloads.

 

@Shifted, I made it clear in my wall of text don't bother commenting unless you read the entire thing, this isn't about whether or not they will do it. We need to discuss this to help them make this game a great as it can be. It's literally right after the sentence you just read...

 

@Prany, I understand that but I won't do a tl:dr, if people really can't be bothered to read the whole thing then I don't want them to.

 

@OriVerda, Thank you supporting my the subject.

 

@DiabolusUrsus, Thank you for posting something meaningful, I like the point that you brought up.

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@Shifted, I made it clear in my wall of text don't bother commenting unless you read the entire thing, this isn't about whether or not they will do it. We need to discuss this to help them make this game a great as it can be. It's literally right after the sentence you just read...

I read the entire thing.

To be honest once you remove the "disable forma" part out of your post (since forma won't be disabled/removed), all that remains is bunch of words about... mission diversity, improving movement and adding different mods, all of which have been suggested multiple times before, all of which can be done WITHOUT removing forma and all of which will most likely happen regardless.

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I read the entire thing.

To be honest once you remove the "disable forma" part out of your post (since forma won't be disabled/removed), all that remains is bunch of words about... mission diversity, improving movement and adding different mods, all of which have been suggested multiple times before, all of which can be done WITHOUT removing forma and all of which will most likely happen regardless.

Thank for posting something constructive this time. From the way you worded you post I assumed you hadn't, or are you saying you just did? While true that what I've said may already have been brought up, but the more we talk about it the more likely it is to happen. But the whole point of disabling forma is to make the gameplay more interesting at this point and shift focus to development of the game starting with U14's strong emphasis on new player experience. Didn't you like the guns better before forma? Besides who's to say it won't, DE has the power.

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-snip-

I didn't forma anything yet and I've been with warframe since CB. Only recently got a gun (marelok) that actually convinced me to think "hmm, I actually can't fit everything I want in this, forma would be nice".

If you don't want to, don't forma your guns. Don't force everyone else into your mindset though. Some people like it easy. Plus, all your ideas don't require removal of forma, they can be done regardless.

 

Either way, I don't see DE removing it. Ever.

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I didn't forma anything yet and I've been with warframe since CB. Only recently got a gun (marelok) that actually convinced me to think "hmm, I actually can't fit everything I want in this, forma would be nice".

If you don't want to, don't forma your guns. Don't force everyone else into your mindset though. Some people like it easy. Plus, all your ideas don't require removal of forma, they can be done regardless.

 

Either way, I don't see DE removing it. Ever.

 

 You're completely missing the point though, with forma in the picture there is no difficulty in warframe. It's just find the most powerful guns and slap every single max rank mod on it so you can steamroll everything. Your statement about your marelock only proves my point. It's already a powerful gun, before forma people would have used mods to increase the magazine, reload, and fire rate, getting one or two max rank mods on there if they were lucky. That forced people to be creative; use a few max rank damage mods or use lower rank damage mods and some utility mods to make it more well rounded. We couldn't fit everything on there but it was better that way. But yes my suggestion does require the removal of forma functionality from weapons/warframes temporarily. Your post only says that your heavily against it, just indirectly. You don't need to say that they won't remove it so many times, especially when I made it clear in my post not to.

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But yes my suggestion does require the removal of forma functionality from weapons/warframes temporarily. Your post only says that your heavily against it, just indirectly. You don't need to say that they won't remove it so many times, especially when I made it clear in my post not to.

Then your idea will only remain a forgotten forum post. I'm only stating a fact. Don't get your hopes up ^_^

 

Also, you completely missed the part where I said that some people like it easy.

Edited by Shifted
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I agree that Forma was a horrible idea in its current implementation and I said so way back when it was introduced.

 

With Forma, there are no Mod Capacity Limits. You can fit 8 of any mod combination in the game provided you Forma'd your weapon properly. With No Mod Capacity Limits, your weapons become absurdly overpowered and they have to do things like remove the 65535 cap on Enemy Health just so enemies live longer than a split second.

 

But, when they do that, they make these enemies nearly impossible for a player without 4+ Forma on their weapons to kill, so you are basically requiring 4+ Forma on high-powered weapons to even do the content in the first place which is only slapping this huge impenetrable wall in front of everybody who doesn't worship Void constantly (and/or the people who don't feel like paying 80p+ per weapon to get it forma'd up).

 

And of course, you end up removing mod diversity when you make enemies that powerful. Serration+Multishot+Elements or GTFO (along with Crit if you're using a Soma).

 

Damage Mods are overpowered, but it is the Forma that allows such overpowered combinations to exist. Before, Capacity Points used to mean something. Now they are only a wall to block newbies from being able to have fun in public matches.

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I agree that Forma was a horrible idea in its current implementation and I said so way back when it was introduced.

 

With Forma, there are no Mod Capacity Limits. You can fit 8 of any mod combination in the game provided you Forma'd your weapon properly. With No Mod Capacity Limits, your weapons become absurdly overpowered and they have to do things like remove the 65535 cap on Enemy Health just so enemies live longer than a split second.

 

But, when they do that, they make these enemies nearly impossible for a player without 4+ Forma on their weapons to kill, so you are basically requiring 4+ Forma on high-powered weapons to even do the content in the first place which is only slapping this huge impenetrable wall in front of everybody who doesn't worship Void constantly (and/or the people who don't feel like paying 80p+ per weapon to get it forma'd up).

 

And of course, you end up removing mod diversity when you make enemies that powerful. Serration+Multishot+Elements or GTFO (along with Crit if you're using a Soma).

 

Damage Mods are overpowered, but it is the Forma that allows such overpowered combinations to exist. Before, Capacity Points used to mean something. Now they are only a wall to block newbies from being able to have fun in public matches.

 

This is the entire point I'm that I'm trying to get across when it comes to forma. Frankly I don't care anymore that you don't think they will do it Shifted, that won't make it any less likely to happen. You're not seeing the bigger issue here, high level survival/defense are no fun right now because all we are doing is one shotting enemies until we can't anymore then leave.

 

 With forma disabled people can stop complaining about new weapons being weak, and DE can focus on making fun missions instead of wasting time on crap like T4 Void missions. No offense intended DE but this is a prime example of wasted effort cause by an unlimited level cap. T4 exterminate is exactly the same as the T3 version just with higher level enemies, the only thing that makes it interesting is the mandatory visit from Vor and his Janus key. That was a nice addition though his mechanics work well together, and his commentary during the fight is interesting to listen to.

 

 I mean does anyone take the time to play the new survival missions, or interception? People probably don't even play the Infested hive missions that were added to eris. DE is doing a great job adding enjoyable mission type to the different planets, and their boss reworks were done well too.

 

 Disabling forma functionality on weapons/warframes would allow people to get their heads out of T4 defense/survival and try some of the really interesting things DE has added to the game since people started complaining about having nothing fun to do. 

Edited by Halisi
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I thought I'd wholeheartedly disagree, but I actually agree with you on some level. You could totally do with losing the holier than thou attitude, though.

 

Holier than thou, what does that mean? I wasn't aware that I was giving off any bad vibes. The bold text is there to discourage off-topic discussion, derailment, and offensive posts. I did get heated with shifted though. Did I miss something?

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At least there is a reason to forma now.

Content scaling to your gear is acceptable

 

mCL9tjm.jpg

 

 Yeah but I really didn't think they would do something like this, the whole point of this thread was that forma is bad for our health right now because there is nothing that we need that kind of power for other than def/surv. The disabling was really only a suggestion to give DE time to develop content without the influence of forma. So players can appreciate the other content that DE works so hard on. But I digress while the new Lephantis scaling is nice there's only one of this type of boss in the game and this is really the only situation where scaling actually helps the situation, everywhere else it only further harms the game. Well actually there is Corrupted Vor but that's beside the point. While content scaling is something interesting to discuss here this doesn't convince me that Warframe is ready for forma.  

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I've done numerous name changes to the thread to help make it clear what the topic of discussion was. I've also cleaned up the op updating words and describing my thoughts better. Most notably increasing the length of the two extra topics (mod diversity / dodge roll usability).

Edited by Halisi
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 I agree your point and view,but 

 

and i think DE must know the problem,but why they try hard to change the balance but not remove Froma

because if remove the forma system(what ever the leveling and mod already get perfect balance)

specially Forma is one of warframe's basic&main contect .The game play will drastically shorten( its big problem for a online game,and PRODUCT )

and i thought many people is love to training thier favorite with alot of forma to enjoy its over power too,it will make alot of player gone

 

 As i hear some player say     

"no Mod,no Power,no,Rank,no Melee,is the best WARFRAME" .

i am not saying you. So many people post say their opinion but just only wanna WF be a pure shooting,and rejection other contect and player (like GUNshoot VS MELEE)but they all forgot WARFRAME is a game mix with Action,gun shoot,RPG .it cant loose one of them ,Both of it,so its WARFRAME(what ever you hate it love it or not)

i my opinion Forma is WARFRAME's RPG part.

This game a lot of things need change and rework,But i dont think REMOVE is good idea,

 

 

it must be have other way can do.

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