Weapon, Warframe, And Companion Build Diversity Could Be Improved Through Mods That Alter Gameplay, Not Stats.

[Seox]

Hello all,

 

Just hit mastery 16 today and have used essentially ever weapon and warframe in the game. Put quickly and simply, the potential advantages of the mod system are wasted on the absence of mods that alter gameplay rather than stats.

 

DE Steve mentioned this briefly in a previous livestream, and I'm concerned that we haven't seen this to the degree that we ought to since then. Outside of the four abilities that warframes have, playstyles do not differ as much as they could under a more flexible system. For weapons and warframes, this could be easily fixed by mods like heavy impact that alter the way that weapons and frames play instead of simply modifying stats.

 

Currently, a player could take a lex and make it fire and reload very quickly to enhance its flexibility and comfort in close range. Alternatively, they could add zoom and focus on alpha. This is about as deep as the system ever gets. What we need are more mods like:

 

    Ricochet: Bullets bounce off of walls. Bonus points if only alt fire rounds bounce off walls under some tradeoff. While not so hot on the miter, imagine this on a karak/etc.

 

    Charge: Warframe sprints that run into enemies result in a shoulder tackle, knocking the enemy to the ground as long as the ground covered was long enough.

 

    Acid Trail: Warframe slides leave behind a trail of toxins that poison enemies who pass through them.

 

    Flying Colors: Sliding quickly beside enemies can cause them to follow you with their eyes in surprise - can be used to build a quick "distraction" based build/etc

 

Mods like these that add passive abilities to existing equipment will have amazing synergy and really expand what can be done to create creative and fun builds. I'm hopeful that even if DE does not take steps to move towards a system like this, necessity will bring it out as less ideas for stat based mods emerge.

 

While I'm sure that this is not the first time anyone has mentioned this idea, I feel that this is an amazing opportunity to really expand the depth of warframe builds and bring player customization to a new level and needs discussion.

 

TL;DR current weapon and warframe builds are too similar due to the "numbers" nature of mods. Mods could easily add to the capabilities and mechanics of warframes in the same way that Heavy Impact does, and they ought to do so in order to truly expand what can be done to create colorful and exciting builds.

 

Mods that currently exemplify this concept:

Heavy Impact

Equilibrium

Aviator

Reflection

Provoked (Dying on purpose = best build ever)

Edited August 2, 2014 by Seox

[DSpite]

I agree with the concept. I disagree with the examples you gave.

 

First off, the weapons themselves need to contain more gameplay options, and not have mods that let them do it, as this would give reasons to actually use those weapons, and not have players just pick the highest damage sword and mod that one, I mean, look at the Glaive as an example. The only reason it has some special mods and tricks tied to it is probably because the Glaive was the primary weapon in Dark Sector, and DE fleshed it out a bit more to start off.

 

Also, the main problem is at the moment, because of how the missions and mobs are structured, the only point of a weapon is either pure DPS or pure CC, so having weapons that cause effects, but leave the enemy standing with a decent change to start shooting at you again, is not optimal. If you're in a fight, 20 enemies that are at 1% health still hit just as hard as if they have 100% health, and it's better to have 5 of them dead then 10 of them poisoned and possibly dead in the next 5 seconds, when in 5 seconds of fire they will kill you anyway

[Currystador]

Removing Stat mods for one would be a great start...

[Seox]

I agree with the concept. I disagree with the examples you gave.

 

First off, the weapons themselves need to contain more gameplay options, and not have mods that let them do it, as this would give reasons to actually use those weapons, and not have players just pick the highest damage sword and mod that one, I mean, look at the Glaive as an example. The only reason it has some special mods and tricks tied to it is probably because the Glaive was the primary weapon in Dark Sector, and DE fleshed it out a bit more to start off.

 

Also, the main problem is at the moment, because of how the missions and mobs are structured, the only point of a weapon is either pure DPS or pure CC, so having weapons that cause effects, but leave the enemy standing with a decent change to start shooting at you again, is not optimal. If you're in a fight, 20 enemies that are at 1% health still hit just as hard as if they have 100% health, and it's better to have 5 of them dead then 10 of them poisoned and possibly dead in the next 5 seconds, when in 5 seconds of fire they will kill you anyway

 

You make a strong point about the things that players look for in weapons, and these are certainly things that the devs'd need to keep in mind moving forward. 

 

My specific examples were made up on the spot, so no promises :P As long as you understand what I'm getting at, I'm happy with that.

 

Removing Stat mods for one would be a great start...

 

This would make it easier to appreciate weapons for the "fun" factor, and there are also some potential implications that we might want to avoid in doing so. At any rate, this'd constitute a major overhaul of the game (Stats 2.0) and isn't likely to happen in the short term. Even if this does happen, the points raised in the OP would still be relevant.

[Soniti]

Agreed. In relation to gameplay changing mods, I also wish each frame could have an additional set of abilities to choose from so they can be more versatile. For most players you can tell with a 75% success rate what their build is based on frame, node, and mastery rank.

 

I guess one problem is that things like this would require significantly more testing than mods that adjust mechanics that already obviously work. Maybe we can look forward to it after ideas for new warframes run dry and that time can be invested in more interesting mods for all existing frames....... maybe?

Edited August 2, 2014 by Soniti

[Seox]

Agreed. In relation to gameplay changing mods, I also wish each frame could have an additional set of abilities to choose from so they can be more versatile. For most players you can tell with a 75% success rate what their build is based on frame, node, and mastery rank.

 

I guess one problem is that things like this would require significantly more testing than mods that adjust mechanics that already obviously work. Maybe we can look forward to it after ideas for new warframes run dry and that time can be invested in more interesting mods for all existing frames....... maybe?

 

All good points. I think that the predictability of players' builds is pretty telling.

 

You're also correct in that mechanics changes are going to require more testing, and I feel that the change would be worth it. A secondary set of abilities would definitely be a nice first step, as it would limit the number of mods like this that need to be made and would offer a lot of variety for existing frames.