Warframe Ability Mods: Coming Changes

[Omnimorph]

Exactly my thoughts

 

8 mod slots is enough modding capacity

Before you start crying test it out 1st

 

Btw just because you HAVE the 4 abilities doesnt mean you HAVE to use them...

Just dont press 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 its not that hard is it?

 

Yeah, I agree.  All those who are whining are basically not playing the game as the devs intended (i.e. using 4 abilities).  Which is fine, but you can't expect there to be no consequences for that when the game is still effectively in beta.  To my mind, DE are already being pretty generous in the way they're handling this.  They're not actually obliged to reimburse anything.

 

One could argue that the reason those people haven't been playing the game as intended is because some of the abilities on WFs are weak or too situational.  Re. weak, that may be a fair comment, but then again, that's precisely what we're supposed to be testing, and this change makes it easier for the devs to test.  Re. situational, well, now you can use those abilities in those situations.

[vulka3]

OK, so i got one question and maybe someone already asked that question but still i'd like to have an answer here.

So if you take 2 slots from me that I already have FORMA'd, I get 2x FORMA for that - ok this is cool. But this means that I have to use FORMA on my frames again and again and start from rank 0 and go all the way till ran 30 again.. 

So I guess my question is is it possible that insted of getting FORMA for losing this mod slot, can't we somehow get a special FORMA that wont make us rank all of our frames again ? (Basically just a free extra polarity)

Edited October 18, 2014 by vulka3

[-UW-Gwen]

Thanks for the head-ups. They haven't mentioned the time we have spent on to form a slot and the boosters!

OK, so i got one question and maybe someone already asked that question but still i'd like to have an answer here.

So if you take 2 slots from me that I already have FORMA'd, I get 2x FORMA for that - ok this is cool. But this means that I have to use FORMA on my frames again and again and start from rank 0 and go all the way till ran 30 again.. 

So I guess my question is is it possible that insted of getting FORMA for losing this mod slot, can't we somehow get a special FORMA that wont make us rank all of our frames again ? (Basically just a free extra polarity)

Great idea though!

[NotoMaru]

So with the abilities removed from mod slots, what happens if i have my abilities maxed and decide to forma a mod slot?

Obviously my frame will be back to rank 0 but does this affect the abilities too?

 

As for my understanding of the coming change the abilities won't be affected by formaing a mod slot, so we'll start after using the forma with a rank 0 frame + all abilities maxed and useable (since they where unlocked already).

 

Any confirmation about this?

Edited October 18, 2014 by NotoMaru

[413X]

Exactly my thoughts

 

8 mod slots is enough modding capacity

Before you start crying test it out 1st

 

Btw just because you HAVE the 4 abilities doesnt mean you HAVE to use them...

Just dont press 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 its not that hard is it?

 

Hmm.. on mousewheel that's:

 

A. scroll, scroll some more and oh that's the one I want! ( for those who used to switch between only 2 abilities).

 

or worse yet...

 

B. Scroll-click.. Crap! it changed to a different ability by accident! (for those who are used to it being locked to 1 single ability- yes it does this now. If you only have one ability on it will never ever switch to a different ability anymore, previously it WOULD scroll on to an unequipped ability).

 

For the mouse users it's just additional annoyances. Scrolling through additional abilities you have no intention of using when you used to hot switch between 2 specific abilities during a firefight, or accidentally triggering the wrong ability. Accidentally scroll-clicking doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen every now and then when i use a dual ability build. Ability to toggle the innate abilities off in arsenal would be good.

 

Edit: You know, on thinking about it further, the very fact that they bothered to fix the problem of mousewheel scrolling onto unequpped frame abilities seems to suggest that they weren't so very against leaving out abilities as you might have thought.

Edited October 18, 2014 by 413X

[NotoMaru]

About the abilities and the new ability panel:

 

It would be a great improvement if we could via ability-panel:

 

- switch abilities on/off for different loadouts

- set up the desired rank of an ability

- switch ability improvements (augments? the ones earned by proxy wars if i got that right)

 

Greets

[413X]

Yeah, I agree.  All those who are whining are basically not playing the game as the devs intended (i.e. using 4 abilities).  Which is fine, but you can't expect there to be no consequences for that when the game is still effectively in beta.  To my mind, DE are already being pretty generous in the way they're handling this.  They're not actually obliged to reimburse anything.

 

One could argue that the reason those people haven't been playing the game as intended is because some of the abilities on WFs are weak or too situational.  Re. weak, that may be a fair comment, but then again, that's precisely what we're supposed to be testing, and this change makes it easier for the devs to test.  Re. situational, well, now you can use those abilities in those situations.

 

While it's true that DE isn't legally obliged to reimburse anything for the time and effort put in by players, it would be taken as a gesture of goodwill and an acknowledgement that the company takes its relationships with players seriously. Even if they didn't do out of the goodness of their hearts, it would still be good business practice. Because if the company regularly makes changes the way DE does, but unlike them does not offer some kind of recompense, that's certainly going to send a very strong negative message.

 

Why buy affinity boosters? Why spend money on forma or potatoes? If the company comes and substantially alters the way your build functions without any acknowledgement, you're not going to be inclined to keep working hard on future builds, since the same thing could happen all over again. That company is essentially telling you that your effort and time are dirt to it.

 

Yes, it's effort and time spent in the past. No, the process was not enjoyable. The very nature of warframe releveling after forma makes the whole experience feel like a chore. You've experienced your waframe at its peak and now you're suddenly back to eggshell armor and fleabite health. So no, the experience itself was not the reward, getting the warframe tweaked to your preferences is the payoff. If they're going to mess with the payoff, I might have been better of spending that time learning French (or Chinese). At least the French aren't likely to decide to adopt Swahili as their national language and kill of their own tongue in some form of twisted cultural suicide, ruining my time investment.

[Samura1Kitten]

Can I make a suggestion? Can you just retain all of the polarities on all of the ability slots that have been formaed?

 

Why? Since we're basically losing 2 ability slots, while the other 2 are just being changed to no-polarity slots, it shouldn't upset the build if you just move any of the formaed ability slot polarity to the emtpy ones.

 

The rationale for formaing and changing the polarity of an ability slot is because we need that new polarity. We could do that to the empty ones, but then the ability slots would negate any mod points gained because placing another mod there would have mismatched polarities. So we re-polarize the ability slot instead so we don't have to worry about that anymore.

 

Most people have formaed 1-2 ability slots. That's the 1-2 you're changing to generic slots then reimbursing formas. Why not just keep them?

 

Even for those rarer players who formaed their 3rd or even 4th ability slot... I'm sure there would still be 1 or 2 remaining no-polarity slots that you can just transfer into. With the Auras essentially giving extra mod points I find it hard to believe people would need more than 4 formas on any warframe. If someone really did, whoever you are... I dunno, maybe "you're playing it wrong"?

 

Again, why am I requesting this? Because I don't want to take any more time and effort to rank my warframes (that's plural!) AGAIN potentially up to 3 more times!

 

Because for some of us, it's a pain having to rank our warframes again. Because bad connections can and will force us to play solo most of the time.

 

Unless of course you'd be willing to give out a 3-day affinity booster for EACH of my warframes... =D (No, a single 3-day booster ain't enough, coz I can't possibly play 72hrs non-stop)

[Deruser]

While it's true that DE isn't legally obliged to reimburse anything for the time and effort put in by players, it would be taken as a gesture of goodwill and an acknowledgement that the company takes its relationships with players seriously. Even if they didn't do out of the goodness of their hearts, it would still be good business practice. Because if the company regularly makes changes the way DE does, but unlike them does not offer some kind of recompense, that's certainly going to send a very strong negative message.

 

Why buy affinity boosters? Why spend money on forma or potatoes? If the company comes and substantially alters the way your build functions without any acknowledgement, you're not going to be inclined to keep working hard on future builds, since the same thing could happen all over again. That company is essentially telling you that your effort and time are dirt to it.

 

Yes, it's effort and time spent in the past. No, the process was not enjoyable. The very nature of warframe releveling after forma makes the whole experience feel like a chore. You've experienced your waframe at its peak and now you're suddenly back to eggshell armor and fleabite health. So no, the experience itself was not the reward, getting the warframe tweaked to your preferences is the payoff. If they're going to mess with the payoff, I might have been better of spending that time learning French (or Chinese). At least the French aren't likely to decide to adopt Swahili as their national language and kill of their own tongue in some form of twisted cultural suicide, ruining my time investment.

 

DE has already tried to compensate for your loss by giving you free forma. The time that you spent to level up your frames is of course, impossible to compensate. You can't really make them compensate for time. How are you supposed to compensate for something like that? It's like getting a refund for an item you purchased, and then trying to get compensation for the time you took walking to the store.

[V0LK]

Now if only you'd make ability damage scale with something... So, say, Slash Dash or Tesla would stay useful through a whole game, not just a few starting planets. And narrow down the ultimate spam...

[413X]

DE has already tried to compensate for your loss by giving you free forma. The time that you spent to level up your frames is of course, impossible to compensate. You can't really make them compensate for time. How are you supposed to compensate for something like that? It's like getting a refund for an item you purchased, and then trying to get compensation for the time you took walking to the store.

 

I was actually responding to the post about DE not owing us ANYTHING, which the quoted poster kindly italicised. Meaning not even the forma they said they would reimburse us for. And as I said, legally, there's certainly no requirement for them to do so. Do note I also take pains to say "UNLIKE them (DE)" in my post. (It's the last line of the 1st paragraph.

 

Still, while we're on the topic of lost time, there's been some talk of implementing a "polarity token" to polarise/repolarise a slot while bypassing the relevel requirements. That would certainly be one way of doing it.

 

Also, your analogy fails. This is more like buying sunflower seed from a gardening store, then spending time and effort (and fertiliser, to extend the analogy to affinity booster users) nurturing them only to have them bloom into primroses instead. Definitely not as advertised. Granted, the circumstances are still substantially different enough that DE isn't going to be dragged into court for false advertising claims, but its certainly a lot closer than "getting a refund for a returned knick-knack at the store." Besides, you're more likely to just ask the store for the correct seed for free and extra fertiliser and maybe a garden gnome or something as compensation. Small claims cases are more hassle than they are worth really.

 

You're right that there's not much time investment from buying a can opener and then returning it when it fails to work as advertised. It's a can opener, it has one function and is supposed to work out of the box. You're not going to spend time forging a miniature sheathe for the blade or knitting it a nice lace slipcover or anything of that sort to improve it. You use it and then you chuck it into the kitchen drawer till you need it again. So yeah, total time spent on acquiring that thing = going to the store. Time spent improving it = zilch, de nada (welp, maybe some basic cleaning for hygiene purposes).

[Naftal]

Removing the slots but not the extra mod points from auras we get, will make Warframes close to melee weapons in regards of not needing any forma. Why do you punish those who want to put time and effort to their gear to make them better?

 

If anything, we need MORE slots. Not less.

[PhantomCovenant008]

Question:  what if you've maxed an ability, but don't have the warframe yet?  I have about nine warframes sitting on the foundry, many of them with every ranking of a number of their abilities.  Will I have to level those abilities through play, or will they be somehow gifted to my warframe upon my acquisition of it?

 

Wanna know this too

[AntLion]

Hmm.. on mousewheel that's:

 

A. scroll, scroll some more and oh that's the one I want! ( for those who used to switch between only 2 abilities).

 

or worse yet...

 

B. Scroll-click.. Crap! it changed to a different ability by accident! (for those who are used to it being locked to 1 single ability- yes it does this now. If you only have one ability on it will never ever switch to a different ability anymore, previously it WOULD scroll on to an unequipped ability).

Do you use mouse scroll wheel for abilities? lol. Use hotkeys on keyboard as all normal people do.

 

PS: I use C, F, E, Q for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th abilities.

Edited October 18, 2014 by AntLion

[Liqier]

De plz take a look https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/325725-new-polarity-options-request/#entry3674969

[ZetraThorn]

In part i find this change to be Awesome!

 

But what about all the builds that are going to get ruined?

 

Is there a way to deactivate certain disliked abilities? In certain frames we only use one or two because the rest does not fit our play style or simply because we dislike them...is there a way to do that?

Why? Nobody forces you to use them. Just do not click  1,2,3,4 of that ability.

Boom problem solved.

[ZetraThorn]

I have a question. How would frame capacity work with this. Basically abilities would still eat power or not? 
If not that's awesome. Now all 60 (+aura) energy would go to mods.

Also this shenanigans with refunding forma on polirized slots. It is a bit cheese IMO. Basically you are forcing to polarize and rank-up the frame.
I'm fine with that but some peeps will not.

Overall I'm digging this change. Looking forward to experiment with builds.

[r0ckwolf]

BEST THING EVER!!!! + infinity to this change. 

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/325701-a-big-thank-you-3/

 

Aprociation Thread just for you DE!^^

[Azure.M]

I'm sure others have mentioned some or all of these, but here are my present concerns:

 

5. How will this affect obtaining and using abilities in Dark Sector Conflicts?

 

You know, I read the whole thread and I don't remember seeing anyone else ask that one. It is actually a good question. But nobody really cares about dark sectors at the moment I guess.

 

Do you use mouse scroll wheel for abilities? lol. Use hotkeys on keyboard as all normal people do.

 

PS: I use C, F, E, Q for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th abilities.

 

They're bound to the scroll wheel by default, you know. It's not some crazy control scheme he invented like CFEQ. When you only have 1 or 2 abilities it is a lot easier to use the scroll wheel than 1234 or whatever you've changed the individual keys to.

Edited October 18, 2014 by Azure.M

[R34LM]

I mostly like this change, except for one thing:

 

For me, personally, losing the 2 "uneeded" slots will either not affect me or not work to my benefit. Builds that consist of one ability and the rest of the slots being filled by other stuff will, essentially, have to lose a mod, because they are using a mod slot that will be removed.

 

So, if you have a full build with one ability on, you'll lose a mod. If you have a full build with two abilities on, you won't notice any difference (save the extra mod points). If you, by chance, had three or four, then yes you will get some benefit, but only by one to two extra slots.

 

If you don't see what I am talking about, just go to Warframe Builder, fill up the frame with mods including one ability on the left side. Now cut the left column with the ability in it.

 

That's my only gripe, but since we aren't using mod points for abilities now, we most likely don't need to forma as much, which is good and bad depending on taste.

 

Overall, I like the change, but I'm not going to get too excited because I'll have to do some adjusting.

[Devilman59]

All Warframes will have 9 total Mod Slots.

Less is more. Many players look at their Warframe Upgrade screen and see 4 Ability Slots that taunt them as potential ‘wasted space’. This coming change will have the following result: you no longer have to fill those precious Mod Slots with Warframe Ability Mods. Because we are removing Ability Mods, we will also be adjusting the total number of Warframe Slots.

 

All Warframes will now have a total of 9 slots: 1 for Auras and 8 for Mods. None of the Mod Slots will have the “Ability Polarity" because of the removal of Ability mods. The 4 previous Ability Polarity slots have been changed to 2 unassigned slots.

 

What about my existing Ability Mods?

All existing Ability Mods won’t be rendered useless - they will be converted into Fusion Cores. Stay tuned for more information on the specifics of this conversion.

 

What if I Forma’d/Polarized the 2 slots being removed?

Any Forma spent on Polarizing these 2 slots will be reimbursed.

 

What if I Forma’d/Polarized the 2 Ability slots that are staying?

If you Polarized these slots, the Polarization choice will stay. If you did not Polarize these slots, they will have a default unassigned Polarity.

 

Just give Us formas alot of people would of made builds that would require 3-5 formas but now we have to put more into them just because we have less slot to use for them

[Inversus]

Which slots will be removed? I would like to be able to make sure the polarities I want are staying ^.^

[OriKlein]

Greetings.
 

All Warframes will have 9 total Mod Slots.

All Warframes will now have a total of 9 slots: 1 for Auras and 8 for Mods.

 

I have several Warframes with polarizations set to only utilize a single ability; a specialized focus around their most useful or powerful ability.
Such as my Ash melee-Cheetah build: [sprint Boost] && [Marathon, Maglev, Rush, Quick Rest, Smoke Screen] && [steamline, Continuity, Sure Footed, Narrow Minded, Flow].
With only eight mod slots, I'd have to remove something from the build. This somewhat cripples my builds. At some of them quite fundamentally.
I presume I am not the only one (I'm certain a SQL query could produce the specific number of players to utilize such builds).

Furthermore, the FAQ lacks an answer as to what happens to our equipped and unequipped ability mod cards.

Thank you for addressing these concerns.


Best Regards,

[ArturiaFayth]

How will mods like intensify and stretch affect this new way of abilities usage?

[Ronyn]

Abilities also carry over conclave ratings... which means the future tactical alerts will be harder to pull of with a optimised build though.

 

Unless we can 'deactivate' some of the abilities / underclock them would be great.

Good point.

 

 

this change will also make frames less customizable than our companions on kubrows and sentinells with enogu hformas you cn have all maxed armor health and shield mods and still have plenty oo room for other stuff, warframes have more essential mods like intensify continuity flow and streamline a swell as redirectio an dvitality so reducign it fro m10 8 menans yo ugo from ahving 4 slots to choose what other stuff oy uwant to put on your frame to jsut 2

Actually the frames offer MORE customization if you want to use 3 or 4 abilities and equal in customization for those who use 2 abilities.

They are only loosing customization for those who slot either 1 or zero abilities.