Update Aspects Of The Game Design To Modern Standards

[auxy]

I feel like this can be chalked up to you having a different design approach than what DE is looking for. One of the beautiful things about a PvE game with no consequences AT ALL for losing is the opportunity for learning experiences. There's not even an emotional punishment. Instead you come away a better player.

 

I mean, the first time I ran out of ammo on both my guns I said "well, okay, guess I shouldn't use two ammo-draining guns unless I want to melee at least one third to half the enemies." The first time I didn't have a Fireblast on Ember against Infested I thought "well, guess in the future I should reserve 75 power; now that frames get passive power this isn't really a big deal." In a PvP game, these are opportunities for taunting or feel-bad moments, but in PvE? No way. It's like saying that mana is a bad system in (insert JRPG here) or that severely limiting ammo was a bad design choice in Resident Evil.

Ah ... well ... no, I'm sorry, haha, it's not really like saying that. Resident Evil has limited ammo to increase the tension and panic in the game, something which this game notably lacks -- it's just not present, so trying to increase it is a bit silly.

 

"JRPGs" are a huge genre encompassing many disparate games, and you do them a disservice by lumping them together. Your perfunctory attitude toward the genre does you no credit.

[Mak_Gohae]

Interesting point raised, Mak, and I agree with you, to an extent. I think Ammo boxes are good for those who tend to use a certain weapon type a lot. I myself rarely have ammo problems unless I specifically want to train it until it's out of ammo. But I think the point is that the ammo drop is not scaled properly, to the extent that high fire-rate weapons suffer a lot more than those with high damage but low fire-rate. Simply forcing players to buy the ammo boxes due to their choice in weapon is not quite far, in my opinion. (Also, finding tonnes and tonnes of useless ammo constipates my fragile neurons.)

 

While I agree that we shouldn't all make suggestions for change just to suit our play style, but I do believe that suggestions have to be made anyways, and the developers will decide: After all, most of the changes now -are- based on player suggestions. Changes are necessary. Which ones are the dilemma.

 

All weapons have advantages and disadvantages, at least they should, and that happens to be the tradeoff for the super quick rate of fire.

The drops in game were never supposed to be your main source of ammo, they were just a small cushion between fights whose benefit depended on the player and his ammo use. I can see now that money is extremely important people being a little more stingy with what they spend their money on but it's really NOT that much of a pain to pick one up once a while.

[auxy]

krisp--

Ah, I see that you also did not read the thread. Allow me to explain:

 

You say that I have made vague blanket statements, but I'm really just trying to avoid restating the extensive and well-supported arguments made earlier in the thread by myself and others. You should carefully read over the other posts in the thread to understand.

 

You also talk about the money that I have spent on the game, but as I have said previously in the thread, I have spent just the minimum amount to acquire this "Disciple" title, and nothing more. I have built several things for myself, and all but one of them were on impulse, because I had the blueprint and had the materials already.

 

Do you realize that most of the weapons do not hit enemies in an arc? Primarily it is the heavy weapons that do so. Even though it appears weapons like SKANA are swinging in broad arcs, they will only hit the target they are aimed at. FURAX is then, in essence, no different from that.

 

I am a markedly skilled player; I do not have difficulty with the combat in this game. However, having to aim my melee attacks is not "difficult", it's merely tedious. That is the entirety of the argument.

 

Again, if you are so against it, then disable it. I definitely believe any such option should have an option to disable it.

Edited April 18, 2013 by auxy

[Calayne]

True enough, Mak! Weapons are indeed a tool, and they have many uses, some of which are better at certain tasks than others. However, I think that does not address the issue of ammo drop quantity or types: Applying universal ammo drops simplifies the game. Not making it universal would simply mean there are many scattered ammo drops all over the place for every person playing in a map, and regardless of what everyone is playing, everyone will get the same type of drops. It would be understandable if ammo drops were shared commodity; Then a team of Tenno equipped with Rifle, Sniper and Shotgun would go further than one exclusively focused on rifles. However, as we know, such is not the case.

 

There is also the issue of damage-per-bullet for bullet hoses. I think it is true that each gun has their play style and advantage. However, high fire rate weapons are simply having a harder time than necessary due to an absolute ammo drop quantity: 20 for Lex, 20 for Afuris, 20 for Twin Viper! And the thing is, in those twenty bullets, Lex will out-gun them all in damage, accuracy and efficiency. Afuris in this sense has gotten hit by the proverbial S#&$-stick!

 

At least, that's my opinion. I do think that ammo boxes would and should be an option for people, should they want to focus exclusively on overusing a weapon type, unable to be supported by pure drops; But that doesn't mean the ammo drop mechanism now is optimal for everyone.

[Venarge]

5:The need for materials and searching the map for it is a reward in my eyes. besides the credits

 

6: Simply NO. The system was designed with the advatage over disadvatage in mind. What are you willing to sacrifice to make get this additional mod.

    Giving the powers seperated slots would simply destroy this system. So no thanks ^^

[auxy]

6: Simply NO. The system was designed with the advatage over disadvatage in mind. What are you willing to sacrifice to make get this additional mod.

    Giving the powers seperated slots would simply destroy this system. So no thanks ^^

I'm sorry, I don't understand. Can you restate this?

[Venarge]

I'm sorry, I don't understand. Can you restate this?

 Their intention was to create a system that forces you to make a choice. I want that shield mod. But I dont have any free mod slots. Is this mod really worth it to give away my other mods? What advantage do I gain if I give up mod X or Y and what disadvantage comes with this. If you now seperate the skills form the slots. You ge 4 more slots. And these slots will simply destroy this system...

[auxy]

 Their intention was to create a system that forces you to make a choice. I want that shield mod. But I dont have any free mod slots. Is this mod really worth it to give away my other mods? What advantage do I gain if I give up mod X or Y and what disadvantage comes with this. If you now seperate the skills form the slots. You ge 4 more slots. And these slots will simply destroy this system...

No, no, no! That was never my intention. I was not advocating that players gain four slots! Not at all! Haha! (´∀⊂ヽ

 

I merely meant that, in the user interface, the power slots should be set apart and specifically labeled with the bound inputs (e.g. four slots that say 1, 2, 3, 4 for the default binds, or if you bound your powers to UIOP then they should say U, I, O, P). That way, if I want Crush on number 2 (or letter I), I can stick it in the second slot, and that way, if more powers are added later, I can slot them and use them. That's all.

 

I should probably update the first post with some clarifications and some expounding based on the AMAZING feedback I've gotten in this thread. I'll do that tomorrow, I think; it's 0250 where I am and I am wiped out.

 

Thanks everyone for your fantastic feedback and let's all hope that we can get a response from DE soon. (ﾟ∀ﾟ)ｂ

[Calayne]

Whoa,

 

No, no, no! That was never my intention. I was not advocating that players gain four slots! Not at all! Haha! (´∀⊂ヽ

 

I merely meant that, in the user interface, the power slots should be set apart and specifically labeled with the bound inputs (e.g. four slots that say 1, 2, 3, 4 for the default binds, or if you bound your powers to UIOP then they should say U, I, O, P). That way, if I want Crush on number 2 (or letter I), I can stick it in the second slot, and that way, if more powers are added later, I can slot them and use them. That's all.

 

I should probably update the first post with some clarifications and some expounding based on the AMAZING feedback I've gotten in this thread. I'll do that tomorrow, I think; it's 0250 where I am and I am wiped out.

 

Thanks everyone for your fantastic feedback and let's all hope that we can get a response from DE soon. (ﾟ∀ﾟ)ｂ

 

Dude, I'd be totally smashed on the bed right now if I were you. Also, good idea to edit the front page. There's been too many posts for most newcomers to read through! Rest well!

Also, I wonder what a Warframe with 8 abilities would work like when the new patch comes out with more powers. That would be the height of awesome. Though, If it still runs on Energy at that time, I think it'd just make people replace their current powers rather than wanna add in new ones in addition to the old ones.

[Venarge]

No, no, no! That was never my intention. I was not advocating that players gain four slots! Not at all! Haha! (´∀⊂ヽ

 

I merely meant that, in the user interface, the power slots should be set apart and specifically labeled with the bound inputs (e.g. four slots that say 1, 2, 3, 4 for the default binds, or if you bound your powers to UIOP then they should say U, I, O, P). That way, if I want Crush on number 2 (or letter I), I can stick it in the second slot, and that way, if more powers are added later, I can slot them and use them. That's all.

 

I should probably update the first post with some clarifications and some expounding based on the AMAZING feedback I've gotten in this thread. I'll do that tomorrow, I think; it's 0250 where I am and I am wiped out.

 

Thanks everyone for your fantastic feedback and let's all hope that we can get a response from DE soon. (ﾟ∀ﾟ)ｂ

Ah ok. Now I got it xD Srry for the wrong interpretation ^^

[RXIS]

Well...

 

Most of the issues the OP suggests would make Warframe more a generic shooter and less what it is now, even limiting choices (eg. forcing you to use long guns more because pistols need to get nerfed because of unlimited ammo).

 

Personally, I have never run out of ammo, so I really do not understand what the fuss is about. If you choose Paris and Afuris for a boss mission, as has already been pointed out, it's your choices that are bad, not the game mechanics.

 

Frequency of ammo pickups...dunno about this one either, more enemies means more ammo drops, even when using a RNG...don't see your problem here.

 

A different energy mechanic has been tried and it didn't work...why not just concede that point instead of keeping to your own point of view? I mean, all this shows is you yourself are not open for suggestions and/or criticism when quite obviously being shown your suggestion doesn't work.

 

Exploration does reward...also mentioned before -> credits + monsters (=mods)

 

Specific slots for power mods? I think it's too early to say too much about this, seeing the current state the game is in. Maybe wait 2-3 more patches and see where the devs take it.

 

Unreliable melee attacks. This I can agree on somewhat, although I do think this is part of the beta. A lot of lagging still occurs when a lot of enemies are around and that doesn't help either. Still, as with the point above, I think it's too early to judge on this one, let's see where the devs take it first.

 

What strikes me is the amount of people who want this game made "easier" because they do not like the game mechanics. In my opinion, the game mechanics are awesome, forcing you to think instead of just shooting everything.

 

Most of the points mentioned above are more or less the points Mak_Gohae makes. I agree with him in all of his posts.

 

If any dev reads this, take the suggestions to heart, but also realise this is probably just a minority who wants the game made easier. Please don't, it's a bit too easy as it is...make it harder!

Edited April 18, 2013 by RXIS

[Inez]

1) random ammo pickups make it easy to run out

2) separate ammo pickups are pointless

3) frequency of ammo pickups largely unrelated to enemy count

4) energy mechanic needs revision or complete elision

5) no real rewards for exploration leading to rush gameplay

6) frames need specific slots for power mods

7) unreliable melee attacks and dodgy player physics

 

 

Your thread title should probably be "Make Your Game Just as Generic as Every Other Game"

 

1) Limited ammo balances the guns.  As a game designer I would think you would understand that. See CoD:BO2-->KAP 40s.  Some weapons are great for sniping, some for killing bosses.  Paris is clearly not for killing bosses.

2) You get to see more pretty boxes on the ground.  Everyone loves pretty boxes.

3) Huh?  Its totally related to enemy count.  I'm beginning to wonder how much you've played this game.

4) I disliked the energy mechanic initially, but the mobs and lockers and breakables regularly drop them, so I got over it. CD based gameplay is a tired and boring mechanic.  Devs use it because, quite frankly, everyone else does it and its easy to implement.  Everyone here played WoW.  And we all got over it.  

5) There's no need to explore, except for ammo for your hungry Furis and Paris.  I'm currently running Dual Viper and Snipetron.  Believe me, I open every locker.  The other thing is, the game's really not about exploration,  Its about sliding in and shotgunning someone in the face and then slicing his buddy in two.   Its an action game not an mmo.

6) Your argument here I honestly don't understand.  I'm not disagreeing with it, I truly don't comprehend what you're getting at.  DE has said before they wanna add more powers and have more selection, so I think with time they'll be dealing with this.

7) I disagree with this, because the movement and melee attacks work fine.  Melee attacks don't connect?  Once again, I don't understand one of your points.  The over all feel is 'floaty' because its a fast moving game.  Like Chinese wire action scenes.  I'm not saying the movement and jumping and parkour are perfect, but they're pretty good.  You mention that movement feels more solid in other games, but never actually mentioned a specific game.  I play a pretty unhealthy amount of games from AAA titles to obscure indie titles, rarely playing a single game for more than one day.  I'd love to know what games you think have better movement and melee than this.

 

A bunch of your arguments seem to boil down to: "This is not like mmos"  Like with the targeting concept.  Only mmo players love artificial targeting systems.  But even Tera has already moved past this and shown that mmos can be a lot more visceral.

 

What makes Warframe so good is that its not a carbon copy game like 99% of other games out there.  While not as amazingly original as Minecraft, rather than just copying a bunch of other games but using different artwork and a different backstory, it has its own unique take on certain things. 

 

If updating to modern standards means "make another WoW-CoD clone" I think I speak for everyone in the forums that we'll take the old standards.

 

 

I'm sure I came off as a ranting fan boy.  Maybe I am :D

Edited April 18, 2013 by Inez

[MJ12]

Well...

 

Most of the issues the OP suggests would make Warframe more a generic shooter and less what it is now, even limiting choices (eg. forcing you to use long guns more because pistols need to get nerfed because of unlimited ammo).

 

Personally, I have never run out of ammo, so I really do not understand what the fuss is about. If you choose Paris and Afuris for a boss mission, as has already been pointed out, it's your choices that are bad, not the game mechanics.

 

Frequency of ammo pickups...dunno about this one either, more enemies means more ammo drops, even when using a RNG...don't see your problem here.

 

A different energy mechanic has been tried and it didn't work...why not just concede that point instead of keeping to your own point of view? I mean, all this shows is you yourself are not open for suggestions and/or criticism when quite obviously being shown your suggestion doesn't work.

 

Exploration does reward...also mentioned before -> credits + monsters (=mods)

 

Specific slots for power mods? I think it's too early to say too much about this, seeing the current state the game is in. Maybe wait 2-3 more patches and see where the devs take it.

 

Unreliable melee attacks. This I can agree on somewhat, although I do think this is part of the beta. A lot of lagging still occurs when a lot of enemies are around and that doesn't help either. Still, as with the point above, I think it's too early to judge on this one, let's see where the devs take it first.

 

What strikes me is the amount of people who want this game made "easier" because they do not like the game mechanics. In my opinion, the game mechanics are awesome, forcing you to think instead of just shooting everything.

 

Most of the points mentioned above are more or less the points Mak_Gohae makes. I agree with him in all of his posts.

 

If any dev reads this, take the suggestions to heart, but also realise this is probably just a minority who wants the game made easier. Please don't, it's a bit too easy as it is...make it harder!

 

"A different energy mechanic has been tried and it didn't work"? I'm not so sure about that. What I read on the forums was that they didn't like the cooldown mechanic because it meant there was less resource management. The problem with this is that many of the powers become absolutely redundant with 'resource management', because there are many, many Warframes with one power which is better than the rest in 90+% of all situations. The current resource management model is a solution looking for a problem, and like all solutions it tends to have side effects.

 

Anyways, you seem to be confusing difficulty with convenience. Being inconvenient doesn't make something actually 'difficult', it just makes it inconvenient. Running out of ammunition and having to use ammo boxes doesn't make the game more difficult. It makes things more inconvenient. You are right that the two are similar (both make it more difficult to progress) but the thing is, challenge isn't always unfun. Inconvenience is always unfun. Conflating the two is bad, because ideally you want a game with minimal inconvenience, but you don't want a game with minimal challenge.

 

Anyways, is it really 'challenging' to run out of ammo? It just means you pop an ammo box, which is... inconvenient, as you said. You and Mak_Gohae keep arguing that it's such a great idea for random ammo drops to make ammo boxes useful, while auxy is saying, as far as I can tell, ammo boxes are a solution looking for a problem, and the problem that was created to make them seem useful is, well, a problem. Same with energy orbs vs cooldowns.

 

I understand a lot of people (including some people who make fairly good points) hate cooldowns because they don't actually do anything-they're static and uninteractive. However, this is why I suggest an interactive cooldown system with relatively long cooldowns that can be reduced via combat actions (a la Borderlands), where the use of powers is encouraged by aggressive play, which means that there is still resource management-you manage the risk of constantly engaging in combat without active abilities against the reward of more ability activations during a mission. The current system of random drops heavily encourages hoarding abilities until that time where you need them (which rarely comes)-this is bad design because abilities are the primary differentiation between Warframes, which means you want them being used as often as possible.

 

If nothing else make energy just regenerate reliably by kills (possibly only non-ultimate kills, but who knows) instead of the current 'random orb drops' model.

[RXIS]

Also, removing energy and replace with cooldowns? They tried this way early on and changed it to energy. Why? Because it slows down gameplay too much. Instead of players going on and continuing through the mission they go "How about we sit in this safe niche in the wall until all of our abilities recharge then go through and repeat this room by room." As it is now its "Crap, I need energy so I need to go out there and kill more things/smash more containers" Which drives gameplay instead of halting it.

 

^ I was basing my assumption on other people's knowledge. Seems they did actually implement and try.

 

Anyways, you seem to be confusing difficulty with convenience. Being inconvenient doesn't make something actually 'difficult', it just makes it inconvenient. Running out of ammunition and having to use ammo boxes doesn't make the game more difficult. It makes things more inconvenient. You are right that the two are similar (both make it more difficult to progress) but the thing is, challenge isn't always unfun. Inconvenience is always unfun. Conflating the two is bad, because ideally you want a game with minimal inconvenience, but you don't want a game with minimal challenge.

 

Anyways, is it really 'challenging' to run out of ammo? It just means you pop an ammo box, which is... inconvenient, as you said. You and Mak_Gohae keep arguing that it's such a great idea for random ammo drops to make ammo boxes useful, while auxy is saying, as far as I can tell, ammo boxes are a solution looking for a problem, and the problem that was created to make them seem useful is, well, a problem. Same with energy orbs vs cooldowns.

 

Well...no

 

Using a sniper rifle, rifle or shotgun should be different, because they do not have the same strength (Hek anyone?). This means that having a universal ammo box doesn't make sense, because it would unbalance the game, because part of the balance is in the ammo have differing rarities.

 

Now, I realise you might not have been getting at that.

 

However, if you do not have good ammo management, chose the wrong weapons or whatever, I feel you *should* be punished for that. The punishment is the inconvenience. If you play more careful or hit better, this means you do not have to deal with the inconvenience. When you look at it this way, it definately *is* a form of difficulty. If you want to shoot like a madmen, feel free to do so, but you'll be inconvienced at some point, play better (some might see this as a challenge, ie. difficulty) and you won't have to cope with it. Then you still have the joker, which is taking an ammo box...

 

I understand a lot of people (including some people who make fairly good points) hate cooldowns because they don't actually do anything-they're static and uninteractive. However, this is why I suggest an interactive cooldown system with relatively long cooldowns that can be reduced via combat actions (a la Borderlands), where the use of powers is encouraged by aggressive play, which means that there is still resource management-you manage the risk of constantly engaging in combat without active abilities against the reward of more ability activations during a mission. The current system of random drops heavily encourages hoarding abilities until that time where you need them (which rarely comes)-this is bad design because abilities are the primary differentiation between Warframes, which means you want them being used as often as possible.

 

If nothing else make energy just regenerate reliably by kills (possibly only non-ultimate kills, but who knows) instead of the current 'random orb drops' model.

 

This is a good idea. A combination of cooldown and somesort of incentive to keep killing would definately be interesting when done right!

Edited April 18, 2013 by RXIS

[Pappus]

I for one would be happy, if we wouldn't see ammunition that does not yield any use to us. As an example if I run around iwth a shotgun I don't want to see rifle ammunition. I only want to see, what is of real concern to me.

 

It makes picking up ammunition tiresome, as I have to check out every drop manually and even if that just means confirming the light or shape of the package.

 

I just did an alert mission and didn't have the chance to change my loadout so I had my HEK, to be leveled twin vipers and a decked out gram. It was my basic defence mission setup, however I had to retrieve data and it threw me into a very crappy position as my opposition was corpus and the twin viper is not a viable sidearm until you leveled it considerably and don't need full clips for every enemy.

 

Long story short, I lost two lives and had to rely on my hek. Luckily there is a mechanic to allow for switching to primary and then picking up the data again. If not I would not have been able to finish the mission most likely. Especially since enemies came in huge packs unfortunately and made meleeing them unreliable.

 

I for one would love to see me forced more often to switch weapons for any reason. Be it ammunition, overheat or whatever.

Edited April 18, 2013 by Pappus

[krisp]

 

krisp--

Ah, I see that you also did not read the thread. 

I did not read the thread because I did not have time to read the thread. Now that I'm back home, I read the thread. Let's see:

 

- you never addressed the issue with energy nor ever explained why it's bad, pointless or whatever words you used to describe it. Your major argument was that it "feels" wrong therefore should be changed. I also have "feelings" with regards to multiple facets of this game, but if you're such a game designer as you say you are, indulge my higher standards that come as a trade-off for your increased credibility and offer some more objective reasons instead of purely personal ones. After all, the thread title mentions modern standards, not YOUR standards.

 

- you semi-addressed the Flow example by saying you don't want to specialize in powers for your warframe, that it's somehow bad or unfair to have to sacrifice survivability for more spell power. Again, failed to explain why. Also ignored the fact that powers come with a warframe while weapons are universal and separate. Some people like the idea of balancing trade-offs via meaningful decisions that affect the way you play, which is exactly what warframe builds do. As a game designer, there's a term associated with the act of making meaningful decisions. You should be familiar with it. It's called depth.

 

- you argue that ammo boxes are a pay2win element which is a factually wrong use of the term

 

- you suggest a tremendously complicated change to the ammo system yet fail to explain why it's needed so much. Altering the ammo count for pistols would need all of them to be nerfed across the board (and they just finished buffing them) to make primaries worth a damn, and then you'd also have to make sweeping changes to melee mods to ensure that people want to use them instead of just running backwards shooting pistols.

But your primary argument for this is the one I take the most offense with: "If it's fun, it doesn't matter". Why yes it does matter mister so-called game designer.  Making decisions that impact your game's balance negatively and not caring about it because you think everyone will just go for what's fun even if it's crap is absolutely lazy and harms the game in the long run. People will always develop optimal strategies because it's something we're trained to do, and if the game's rules aren't tight enough then people will just feel like they're playing with subpar guns when the novelty wears off and they inevitably seek to modify their strategy to try out new things.

 

- you mention you didn't know orokin artifacts can be crafted and this just makes the game more grindy. Out of all of the free to play online games I've played, this one is probably the least grindy of them all. Grind is not a bad thing; MMOs use it to great effect. It's there because it has a purpose, especially in F2P type games, as a way to facilitate the balance between time and money investment. An F2P system with no grind whatsoever cannot have any time-saving microtransactions for real money, and if it does, no one will care.

 

- I haven't seen any of your posts that address the issue at higher levels. I've told you I never run out of ammo. When you get there, you probably won't either. My least ammo-efficient weapon (the afuris) kills Hyena in 2-3 clips.

 

- you keep implying that you run out of ammo for your primary and secondary *all the time*. This is a very hard complaint to swallow since it has never happened to me, my friends, or anyone I know who played this game in the last 2 months. Yes, we had ammo issues at the start, but mostly on boss runs. And we used ammo boxes. Eventually it seemed like they increased the ammo drops so we stopped complaining. Admittedly credits were much easier to come by back then which is why I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I still can't believe running out of ammo in a normal mission is a common problem for everyone. And there's also the things called ammo scavenger artifacts that you can collect.

Until then I'd suggest not using the afuris or twin vipers, or any weapon that has unreasonable ammo consumption.

 

- on the topic of universal ammo: if it dropped with the same frequency, it would be too plentiful. For the sake of diversity, I would rather there be 2 types of ammo, for your primary and secondary respectively.

 

- on making mods drop from crates: there's one thing to offer rewards to players that open crates, and another to pigeonhole people into thinking they're missing out if they don't open all the crates. As it stands, if I don't want to open crates, I don't open crates. If mods dropped from crates, I'd feel like I had to open them. Therefore I'm strongly against this suggestion, as opening crates can and will become a tedium especially if I feel forced to do it.

 

- on the lock-on feature: It's funny how you're suggesting an entire feature be built around the one problem you're having with one singular weapon which is designed as to be a more difficult to use aiming-based system. Aiming is not tedium. It has not, and will never be tedium. There's plenty of weapons that feature 360 degree attacks as a unique feature that adds to the weight of the decision of choosing them. Why take that depth away? Why implement a feature that makes the game less engaging in exchange for convenience?

Lock-on systems are for games with intricate melee combat, where dodging plays a central part of avoiding attacks or who just don't want to make complicated weapon hitboxes. Mostly console games in which it's hard yet required to circle-strafe and older MMOs that use target-based combat. Warframe doesn't have that problem.

 

In closing, I don't fully disagree with everything you said. Just most of it. There are a few problems I acknowledge but the solutions need not be so drastic. The power system can be tweaked, not removed. The ammo can be tweaked, not made unlimited. And so on.

Edited April 18, 2013 by krisp

[Calayne]

 

 

 

 

Using a sniper rifle, rifle or shotgun should be different, because they do not have the same strength (Hek anyone?). This means that having a universal ammo box doesn't make sense, because it would unbalance the game, because part of the balance is in the ammo have differing rarities.

 

Now, I realise you might not have been getting at that.

 

However, if you do not have good ammo management, chose the wrong weapons or whatever, I feel you *should* be punished for that. The punishment is the inconvenience. If you play more careful or hit better, this means you do not have to deal with the inconvenience. When you look at it this way, it definately *is* a form of difficulty. If you want to shoot like a madmen, feel free to do so, but you'll be inconvienced at some point, play better (some might see this as a challenge, ie. difficulty) and you won't have to cope with it. Then you still have the joker, which is taking an ammo box...

 

 

 

Actually, I'd like to address this issue: There are currently weapons which are not viable for single-player use, or use without carrying in ammo boxes, and this is primarily due to the drop rate of ammunition being either too rare for its type, or in absolute quantities too few to matter, as in Afuris or Furis.

 

I understand your statement that guns, in a way, are balanced by the chances of the ammo type dropping. Without this mechanic, indeed, sniper ammo appearing as often as pistols would almost nearly ensure you never run out of ammo, given that each hit is a kill.

 

Now, ammo drops are specific types with different drop rates and have fixed quantities, as I mentioned earlier. But I believe that what this does is merely make some guns absolutely unplayable without the use of ammo boxes occasionally, and I think it's unfair to punish someone for his favourite choice of weapon. There have been many instances of players using their side-arms or weapons which aren't maxed out to maximum efficiency, but still being insufficient to last because 20 bullets for a Lex mean completely different things to a Furis. At this time, one might say you're going to inevitably be "Punished" regardless of how careful you play or how well you shoot.

 

I completely agree, ammo shouldn't saturate the stage: However, I disagree that we cannot make the ammo drops universal. Scaling to weapon, I believe, could be a solution to that problem, so regardless of drop rate, the quantity could still be controlled, minus all the pretty boxes you can see but you cannot pick up. Unless the system allows a temporary change of primary weapon, I think all that extra ammo is just wasted pixels.

[Eurhetemec]

Whilst I don't agree with the OP about all his proposed solutions, and have some sympathy for some of the suggestions that the solutions are a tad generic, that's because he's not a game designer.

What I do agree with the OP about are the problems that Warframe currently faces.

 

The ammo mechanic does feel strange and old-fashioned. Now, I've played games since 1984 (I was 6, FYI), and I've played a lot of games, so I've encountered plenty of ammo mechanics. The one here just doesn't feel very good. A great deal of ammo simply goes to waste, which, whilst acceptable, seems weird, and worse, the ammo per-box amounts are fixed, but the weapons use wildly differing amounts of ammo in order to do similar amounts of damage. At the very least, given that you are only carrying a single specific weapon in any slot, the per-box amounts could be balanced around the weapons, and designed so that running out of ammo is a consequences of bad play, not simply choosing certain weapons (unless wildly unsuited to the enemy - but that's bad play again).

 

The Energy mechanic is similar. Whilst I have become quite used to it, and can work with it, I find it annoying and a little bass-ackwards. Simple boring cooldowns would be worse, I'd concur, so that's not the solution. However, some kind of energy regen (not the very slow artifact), perhaps as a mod, perhaps inherent to various frames could make things rather more interesting. Especially if you *also* had energy sphere drops. I get the idea that we don't want people hiding in the corner to regen energy, but we're already hiding in the corner to regen shields, so that's not a big issue. Powers would need to rebalanced a bit, but I think it would make things more interesting.

 

The lack of rewards for exploration are an issue. Currently this game rewards rushing strongly, and disincentivizes exploring or careful play. That's sad because the levels are awesome, and in general the game could be very interesting to explore. More alternatives could be offered here. I wouldn't suggest anything to discourage rushing, per se, just some more hidden treasures and extra routes and so on to encourage exploring.

 

Melee attacks really do seem to have a lot of issues, but maybe this is a "beta" thing. Still, needs looking at.

[Pixues]

So,

 

What is your opinion having to buy warframe slots and weapon slots?

[Quazer]

One thing I must say regarding the ammo thing :

Grineer and Corpus both have many types of enemies that use guns too, such as Moas, Humanoids, etc.

Those should drop the ammo for rifles,

while others like the Infested won't, because against Infested you primarily use melee, no?

[PrincessBabycakes]

I disagree with nearly every point brought up in the OP, though I view this largely as an opinion.

[Quazer]

By the way, What game has a good movement mechanism?

I really want to play a few of those.

Multiplayer if possible, because I don't really like Assassins Creed Singleplayer for example..

[Tsukinoki]

1) random ammo pickups make it easy to run out

2) separate ammo pickups are pointless

3) frequency of ammo pickups largely unrelated to enemy count

4) energy mechanic needs revision or complete elision

5) no real rewards for exploration leading to rush gameplay

6) frames need specific slots for power mods

7) unreliable melee attacks and dodgy player physics

Ok, I am going to take more time to go down the line and explain my thoughts on these and why they either:

A) would not work in this type of gameplay that the game tries to be

Or B) Require too many changes that would cause forum raging/QQing/break things.

1) They also add to the challenge of the game.  True a game should not be based soley around RNG for difficulty but you can handle ammo pickups by either killing enemies, smashing containers, or opening lockers.  The weapons that are fast to run out of ammo are balanced that way otherwise they would be too powerful.

2) The point for having seperate weapon pickups is that it makes certain ammo rarer, such as shotgun or sniper ammo, because they deal so much more damage than a rifle than if they had the same pickups then there would be even less of a reason to not use what are already the strongest weapons in the game.  The Hek is a prime example.  It can easily 1 or 2 shot most mooks in the game and if ammo for it were a lot more common then it would be even more over powered than it is.

Even if you make ammo omni ammo and hand-wave it away then it would have to drop either less often, or provide less ammo per pickup.  That wouldn't really work with your point above because if it dropped as commonly or restored just as much or more ammo the game would be easier than it already is.

3) This is largely untrue.  The more enemies you fight the higher chance ammo will drop simply because you are dropping more enemies.  And if you need ammo that badly you can smash open containers, or open lockers to get either credits or ammo drops from them.  Even when playing a defense mission though the ground quite often ends up littered in ammo pickups, even if its an ammo type that I am using in that mission.

4) They have tried a cooldown system and it didnt work to the pace of gameplay that they wanted so they changed to an energy system.  One benefit of this is that you CAN spam you ultimate, or a lower level ability, as long as you have the energy.  I play an Ash and use my shuriken to very quickly kill a group of 5 enemies standing next to each other a distance away.  I dont think it would be as much fun if I had to go "Use it wait 3 to 5 seconds, use it again..." and repeat.  Plus an energy system doesnt encourage sitting in corners as much as a cooldown system want and the devs dont want to encourage sitting in corners.

Balancing the cooldowns is another problem.  Some skills such as slash dash should have a much longer cooldown than others even if it is a "tier 1" ability.  Others would need much shorter.  Having more or less flat energy costs avoids people complaining that its unfair that this ability takes so long when its tier one compared to other tier one abilities and such.

Also if you get streamline or flow, or both, you will find yourself with more than enough power to spare.  And the thing with that is its a choice.  You get to choose: "Do I want more health or more energy" or stamina, or shields, or a faster shield recharge.  It makes you think and gives you a choice to make.  It avoids having warframes that are all the same because without energy management you would only have health, shields, armor, and stamina.  Boost those and at the same levels most people would be the same.  As it is it gives diversity and choices to the players as to what type of gameplay they want to work towards.

You get to choose if you want to be more power orientated or faster or tankier.  And that is a very good thing that the energy system actually helps.

5) I would say this is mixed.  If you want alloy plates/rubedo then you are going to explore more to smash open containers to get more, but I do agree there should be more rewards, even though at higher levels I get between 600 and 1000 credits from some lockers.

6) While it would be nice to have slots 1-4 and have them numbered/fixed I think that they are going to include that, or some option, when they introduce more general abilities.  Also DE_Steve has said himself that they are adding more powers but you can only equip up to 4.

7) You named the furiax.  That is SUPPOSED to be a melee weapon that is hard to aim, but its charge damage is increadibly high as is its knockback.  Its a balance.  If it was autoaimed that would give a very powerful weapon with no to few draw backs.  Also with some of the larger weapons, such as Gram, it would simply make them less reliable for fighting off groups of enemies as a soft-lock would potentially turn me towards the wrong enemy meaning that one of my targets is *just* outside of my swing arc.  Also its not that hard to properly aim the furiax once you get used to using it against enemies and can reliably hit if you practice with it.

[Tsukinoki]

Also One thing I forgot:
At the end you said the game was too much P2W and I would have to disagree.  Its Pay 2 avoid grinding.

The only things you cant get with credits are mod packs, boosters, and color packs.  Everything else can be gotten in game through either: Grinding, or luck of login rewards.

Alerts give you potato bps, as do login rewards.
Alerts give you all of the skin bps

Really all you do by paying into the game is avoiding the grind of having to farm for credits and mats, or running alert missions hoping for a potato.  F2P games are mostly about grinding through, and this game isnt that grindy overall.

Its Pay 4 Convience, not P2W.

[Calayne]

Whilst I don't agree with the OP about all his proposed solutions, and have some sympathy for some of the suggestions that the solutions are a tad generic, that's because he's not a game designer.

What I do agree with the OP about are the problems that Warframe currently faces.

 

The ammo mechanic does feel strange and old-fashioned. Now, I've played games since 1984 (I was 6, FYI), and I've played a lot of games, so I've encountered plenty of ammo mechanics. The one here just doesn't feel very good. A great deal of ammo simply goes to waste, which, whilst acceptable, seems weird, and worse, the ammo per-box amounts are fixed, but the weapons use wildly differing amounts of ammo in order to do similar amounts of damage. At the very least, given that you are only carrying a single specific weapon in any slot, the per-box amounts could be balanced around the weapons, and designed so that running out of ammo is a consequences of bad play, not simply choosing certain weapons (unless wildly unsuited to the enemy - but that's bad play again).

 

The Energy mechanic is similar. Whilst I have become quite used to it, and can work with it, I find it annoying and a little bass-ackwards. Simple boring cooldowns would be worse, I'd concur, so that's not the solution. However, some kind of energy regen (not the very slow artifact), perhaps as a mod, perhaps inherent to various frames could make things rather more interesting. Especially if you *also* had energy sphere drops. I get the idea that we don't want people hiding in the corner to regen energy, but we're already hiding in the corner to regen shields, so that's not a big issue. Powers would need to rebalanced a bit, but I think it would make things more interesting.

 

The lack of rewards for exploration are an issue. Currently this game rewards rushing strongly, and disincentivizes exploring or careful play. That's sad because the levels are awesome, and in general the game could be very interesting to explore. More alternatives could be offered here. I wouldn't suggest anything to discourage rushing, per se, just some more hidden treasures and extra routes and so on to encourage exploring.

 

Melee attacks really do seem to have a lot of issues, but maybe this is a "beta" thing. Still, needs looking at.

 

Actually, I've been looking through the forum recently: I ran into the topic of mini-bosses and so on, and I think this could potentially be an incentive to explore larger parts of the ship.

 

Since exploring itself is potentially a fatal waste of effort, perhaps something more objective is needed. Mini-bosses which drop certain rare items would be one, and maybe you can catch them wandering the halls, and won't be sicced after you like the typical Grineer hound-dogs. They could have a chance to drop certain blueprints, or rare materials.

 

As for the melee aspect, I think it's quite tied to the movement bit. I just played for a couple hours, and realised that the sprint-slide-slash is rather stunted in some cases, as well as the jumping. It's not responsive enough in those cases, and going through the infested mission, can be potentially life-ending. (GODAMNED INFESTED.)

 

However, I've agreed with the OP since the beginning regarding the ammo drop, and I'm glad to see someone like-minded. In summary of the above posts, I believe that ammo drops scaled to weapon clip size would do a world of good to players, and ammo drops could simply be divided among Primary and Secondary types.

 

As for movement mechanisms... Nightkill, have you ever tried Deception? Or Batman: Arkham City? They're pretty sweet! As for Multiplayer, I heard Brink is good, and there's Gotham Imposters, though I've never played either.

 

Hmm, now that it's brought up, though, perhaps the energy system could be modified to what you suggested. Though, I do agree with a most MJ12 made earlier regarding power usage. The energy system at the moment just feels too much like a "Oh my God, need to save this for later!" issue, and seriously limits flexibility when you've run out of orbs after an unlucky string of kills. Something that encourages more power use without "Damming up" power for a Mega-dump on the boss would be welcome. At the moment, I can only think of the cooldown system with various alterations. Perhaps a "Charge" for the energy system would come in handy. Like a mini-game, which if you succeed, you get an energy boost. Or maybe you just hold a button and it charges energy faster.