Update 14: What It Should Have Done

[BorkiBorki]

NOTE: The first part of each part of this post is dedicated to complaining, whining, and unmitigated *@##$ing. For suggestions just go to the bottom of said segment.

 

Well, I've played it a few weeks now and my verdict is in: Update 14 is a well-intended misfire . Below for reasons.

 

PVP:

I’m not saying the game is worse because of PvP but they should have addressed key interface issues. In my extensive experience with multiplayer FPSs I’ve learned a bit about how good multiplayer/PvP interfaces work, namely that the less thought involved the better off one is.Right now you have to locate dark sectors, figure out if there is a conflict going on, join a queue to play on one side (a meaningless distinction to most) and pray there are actually enemies for you to kill. In CoD and Halo you invited your friends into your lobby, choose which game mode you wanted to play, and you were on your way. A similar lobby that matches players with other players in random conflicts is what PvP needs, with the invested players still allowed to fight for a particular side. Alternatively, there should just be 4v4 conclave fights with the option to get sent to dark sectors for rewards. Even fixing said interface issues it doesn’t change the fact that PvP in Warframe’s current state frankly has no reason to exist. All this balancing and attention paid to balancing PvP is entirely undue  (it doesn’t seemed to have helped, truth be told) when DE ought to balance the core gameplay, which is the PvP’s real problem.

 

THE BALANCE ISSUES

What an update doesn't do is just as damning as what it tries to do (and subsequently mucks up) and in this case, it’s the game balance. Why, for example, do caster frames die in about 5 shots from goons in T4? Why are half of the warframes hardly usable, and why do the useful warframes still have 2 or 3 abilities that you have no reason to use in most conditions? Why are 2/3rds of melee weapons still mastery fodder? Why is throwing glaives while equipping them still require at least one mandatory melee swing? Why is being a starter frame mean said frames are the worse?  Why do you start us with mk1 weapons at all? What did ember prime do to deserve being the most useless prime in the game, and arguably not even better than the default? Why do warframe abilities still drop from enemies when 90% of the time they are useless (same with kubrow abilities)? This is all coming from someone who would like warframe to be more difficult, but this is just pointless and artificial difficulty that adds no fun and at best leads to even more farming and grind, as well as restricting how we play. The balance issues should be addressed in ongoing daily hotfixes/reworks that take into consideration player feedback, perhaps through the use of daily/weekly polls. It would take a long time, and more than likely be frustrating for everyone, but with proper execution and patience on both sides a better game would result.

List of warframes needing massive attention or even a rework:

Ember (+Prime)

Banshee

Volt

Excalibur

Mag

Oberon

Saryn

Though all need some re-balancing, these are the worst offenders. For most of the caster frames, a buff to armor will do, though an all encompassing armor buff save for Valkyr may be appropriate. Make damaging abilities ignore armor, and do damage based on a modifier varying on ability and a percentage of an enemy's health plus a flat damage modifier (Ex: Ember’s fireball does 2.5 x .4 enemy health + 250, can mod each part of equation). Movement abilities like wormhole should automatically teleport you, or in say, bounce’s case allow your next jmp to be incredibly high. Elements right are skewed in electricity’s favor, as the three most popular combinations, radiation,corrosive, and magnetic all use it, and you rarely see gas, blast, or fire to their relative uselessness. Making certain frames (Ex: Nova does more damage with radioactive weapons) do more damage with certain elements* and having elements doing only either buffed or regular damage to enemies would resolve this. Furthermore, all weapons should have damage progression. Higher levels mean more damage, accuracy, etc. Make a few more enemy types other than the relatively bare palette that exists now, throw in mini-bosses, make them difficult, and bam, interesting gameplay that gives players a sense of progression.

 

*you could even expand this idea to weapon classes/categories, i.e. Valkyr does more damage with hammers, Nyx does more damage with secondaries, Zephyr does more damage with bows, and even have other stat buffs with a weapon of choice, such as reduced recoil. You could even narrow it down to a specific weapon, such as the AkZani being the weapon of choice for mirage, thus giving her a buff with it.   

 

Kubrows

Plenty of people have already gutted the breeding system for the useless, cloudy, unusable,  wasteful, frustrating, annoying system it is, so I don't really feel the need to rip on that particular part, but I feel not enough attention has been payed to the how the economics of the kubrow imprint system works, namely in that it is basically a cash sink. Since only two imprints can be made of each kubrow, the price for rare kubrows (as well as common ones) are inflated to ridiculous proportions leading to colors and patterns being worth 200p (which, contrary to many people's belief is not the buyer nor the seller's fault, merely a result of how the system is designed), and since they are so finite in comparison to infinite stances/prime parts trading is pretty much impossible. Also, not being able to rid oneself of unwanted kubrows is an evident step back from DE's otherwise fair and reasonable micro-transaction policy. Yes, you can only buy inventory slots with platinum, but you can also sell inventory items, meaning that one could get through the game using every weapon, warframe, and sentinel without spending one, single, solitary cent for anything. For kubrows, it’s theoretically possible to buy 900 slots (nevermind that you only start with one) and still not have access to all four kubrow types. To guarantee the use of only 4 stasis slots (the bare minimum, because you can't be rid of the beasts) one has to turn to imprints, meaning that no matter what to guarantee access to all the kubrow types you have to fork over actual cash to access content, a trend that was refreshingly absent in Warframe until now. Imprint caps should clearly be upped to 4 or 5 and it should be possible to clone a kubrow using just one imprint, perhaps with some penalty incurred on a cloned kubrow, perhaps lower stats and a lower imprint cap. Other notes: kubrows in general, but especially Huras kubrows should not be glorified sentinels, give their abilities some extra “woomph” in exchange for the effort put into them and the maintenance required for them, though DE should buff sentinel damage simultaneously to make sure they are still viable.

 

Misc, for about other things I think U14 should have done but didn't

Ship names and colors, and names for sentinels.

More tilesets, and variation from planet to moon (with missions on the surface of each), I'm a space ninja, not a dingy space-ish corridor ninja, godammit. I should be wowed by the environments in a space based game, not bored by them.

When are we getting a napalm’s gun? You made the ignis available and flame based weapons are, like, really cool.

Rebalance/nerf event mods, make them available to everyone.

Make the clan emblem visible on pre-built banners in the observatory/oracle/temple of honor, especially if you're going to make us fork over 150 plat on top of the 30 for emblems

 

For those who will inevitably say "lol jus shut up and plai gaem" I'll not cease playing Warframe. Warframe at its core is a game that resists being made bad, and I still do appreciate the work DE invests in shipping their updates on time (-ish), and if I didn't think they would at least consider some of my arguments if this thread becomes popular then I would not have spent time writing it.

Edited July 30, 2014 by BorkiBorki

[Astrotrap]

Napalm gun + Max Serration = Unavoidable self-destruction.

[taiiat]

this really needs some line breaks.

[Archangelzz]

Why the hell do people keep thinking Excalibur needs a revamp sigh.