Warframe Ability Mods: Coming Changes

[Ronyn]

The first line isn't BS. Even if they are giving us some new options, they are limiting other options. I'm talking about those options they are limiting.

That's what the TOTAL options are classified by. Singling out just the loss part is like...

Going to the store, buying some food, then acting as if ALL that happened was you gave some cashier your money.

That isn't all that happened. You got food too. It has to factor in.

 

Your third point is subjective, it may or may not give more options depending on the player. 

That's contingent, not subjective. At any rate we agree on the general idea that it depends on the player.

That in mind, you cant just come at it from one side and stop there as if that is all that matters.

You just saying " we loose options" is just as one sided as the people who just say "we gain options".

It's not just one or the other.

 

Your second point is speculation, you don't even know if that will give us more options.

Their existence is not speculation.

Technically the basic fact of having even one augment per power, and the act that they require certain time/effort investments to earn through various means is an additional option in itself.

Now for speculation-

If there are multiple augment options for each ability those options only expand.

If the augments have  downside like extra energy cost or something then that will expand the need for planning.

 

Objectively speaking, we only know that we are losing options (your #1 point) and that you may or may not get more options with the ability mods.

 

Still a one sided viewpoint.

Here is a simple example of gain and loss.

 

In the current system do you have the option to have 10 mods and 0 abilities slotted?

Yes you do. This is an option you loose in the new system.

 

In the current system do you have the option to have 8 mods and all 4 abilities slotted?

No you don't. This is an option you gain in the new system.

 

The options have changed. 

 

EDIT for your edit:

EDIT: Actually, objectively speaking, the forced abilities are never more options. It is always less options, even if someone decided to not use those options right now.

No. That doesn't make sense. 

It's like you're defining options only by what we can either slot or not slot before the fight.

As if that is the only way something is an option. It is not.

See, in the middle of a mission, with a one power slotted you can only ever choose to use that one power.

With four powers given you can choose to use any combination of them or not at any given time.

So you do, in fact, gain certain additional options during the fight with 4 powers than if you only had one.

Edited October 19, 2014 by Ronyn

[HuzzelMuzzel]

There will be no downsides of not using a ability anymore, instead warframes will become more overpowerd.

I formated a lot of frames 2 times. I removed 2 ability slots so that i can make the other 2 abilitys even more powerfull. After the changes i will have all 4 abilitys at max rank and all my lovely ability based mods.

Then I will have to wait even more than 40 min. befor there will be a challenge.

No more need of deliberation, just more of "put on all your best mods".

[Hixlysss]

Where dah pictures at? Put up the pictures please~

[Aizeol]

Awwww.... I was still hoping for a "second set" of abilities per Warframe.  I remember back in one of the earliest Livestreams back around Update 7 or 8, that that was one of the reasons for having Abilities be mods in the first place.

Although I am pleased to see that Abilities Mods will not flood my drops when farming Infested, I am sad that there seems to be less customization in the mods now.

 

 

Question:  Is there a possibility to see mods that directly affect a Warframe ability?  For example: a mod that changes Iron Skin from a single person "negate damage" ability to a group armor buff.

[kalad2]

I look forward to this change, and feel I will personally naught but benefit from it overall, I am not a fan of 1 or 0 ability builds, and I hope in addition to always having powers, that they improve many abilities, even if that is down the road.  DE isn't perfect, but damn if there aren't many companies that try as hard as they do, and they have my support to go ahead with this full force.

[Ronyn]

Awwww.... I was still hoping for a "second set" of abilities per Warframe.  I remember back in one of the earliest Livestreams back around Update 7 or 8, that that was one of the reasons for having Abilities be mods in the first place.

I'm wondering about this as well. The power augments will be cool.

Though hopefully they will still give us the universal powers and/or alternate powers for the frames that we can trade powers in and out for.

[V45H]

well there goes my perfect melee no powers sword alone build

[Ronyn]

well there goes my perfect melee no powers sword alone build

What do you slot now and what d you think you'll give up?

[EdgeKasim]

the only problem i have with this change to the Warframe skills system is that it now pretty much removes any posibility of a second skill set alltogether.  not only that but the mention of mods that change some of your WF skills just means if you want the upgraded skills your going to be using the available slots you have for those anyway, and being down 2 skill slots means if you want all 4 skills modded then your going to be down 2 utility slots....

 

all in all its nice to see skills cleaned up from the drops, tho they never bothered me to begin with, but removing the posibilty or secondary skills which were once touched upon many streams ago is a shame, and then having skill mods from the syndicates just sort of add in another problem to think about.

[DJ_Vauban]

the only problem i have with this change to the Warframe skills system is that it now pretty much removes any posibility of a second skill set alltogether.  not only that but the mention of mods that change some of your WF skills just means if you want the upgraded skills your going to be using the available slots you have for those anyway, and being down 2 skill slots means if you want all 4 skills modded then your going to be down 2 utility slots....

 

all in all its nice to see skills cleaned up from the drops, tho they never bothered me to begin with, but removing the posibilty or secondary skills which were once touched upon many streams ago is a shame, and then having skill mods from the syndicates just sort of add in another problem to think about.

 

They could have just removed the ability mods from the drop table and that's about it but no, apparently they needed to pull this move on us.

 

More mods and less slots to stuff them into will probably cause even more problems than we already have.

Edited October 19, 2014 by DJ_Vauban

[DameDameNingen]

Seeing as there are so many mods that just don't fit even in the current number of slots (does anyone really use Diamond Skin?) I think there's definitely a case to be made for keeping the extra two slots and removing just the polarities..

 

This. Can't really say my heart bleeds for the one trick ponies, althought I can see why they're annoyed.

[Ronyn]

the only problem i have with this change to the Warframe skills system is that it now pretty much removes any posibility of a second skill set alltogether. -- removing the posibilty or secondary skills which were once touched upon many streams ago is a shame, and then having skill mods from the syndicates just sort of add in another problem to think about.

I have teh same concerns but the idea is not necessarily dead. The other powers might still be an option. They would just have to work on a different UI set up than the mod screen.

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

The other problem is that DE now needs to add a way to manage abilities since as Darzk noted several pages ago, some abilities perform specific roles better at lower ranks.  I'll be honest, this seems like an awful lot of work for something that does very little to improve the existing system.  Better to add neutral Tenno abilities and even 5- and 11-cost frame specific ones (yes, 5th and 6th abilities for each frame).  This would give us far more customization than the suggested system does and add value for = polarity slots.  Removing skills from the drop tables is a good thing, adding more skills would compliment this change as well and add content for the quest system or credit sink for the market (i.e. selling basic ability mods in the market).

 

EDIT:  The quest system should have new content every single update.  The fact that DE seems to be ignoring it is a real shame.  Unlocking 5th and 6th frame abilities would make excellent content for a quest system and it could require the use of the frame in question (giving value to owning more warframes).  I understand that this is DE's decision but with so many good ideas to improve the existing game it seems a shame they would rather create a different one.

 

EDIT_2:  To clarify I am suggesting... 1) the removal of ability mods as drops; 2) the addition of these ability mods to the market; 3) the addition of 5th and 6th frame-specific abilities, costing 5 and 11 mod points, available via the quest system (added over the next year or so); and 4) the addition of neutral Tenno abilities that can be used by every frame.  Nothing else will change (read: no fusion core conversions or forma refunds).

Edited October 19, 2014 by (PS4)Hiero_Glyph

[Sunfaiz]

Ok..

but what about the idea of universal abilities?

[Azamagon]

Smoke Screen stun build (reduce the lockout)

Silence (for smaller radius stagger)

Bullet Attractor (for smaller bubble with massive +range installed)

MPrime super speed build (smaller but faster than max rank)

Mind Control (shorter can swap targets easier)

Well of Life for nuking with EV

Bounce (single use)

 

Basically, try to do anything creative and you get slapped in the face by DE now. :(

 

 

 

As per 1 ability builds; the biggest problem is that we have mods effecting the same thing, etc OE+Stretch needed for Range. Corrupted mods should get a ~50% buff, and then make them conflict with the base mod for that stat.

 

Etc Vortex build, @ current; Vortex, 2x Range mods, 2x Efficiency mods, 3x Duration mods, leaving room for two ehp mods, usually Redirection and Vitality. After U15, we can only take ONE ehp mod, or we are forced to reduce the effectiveness of our prioritized ability.

Ahem

^ Most powers need rethinking. For the specific ones mentioned:

 

* Smoke Screen, Mind Control and many other durationbased abilities should honestly be recastable at any time. If too overpowered to stack (such as multiple active casts of Mind Control, Chaos etc) then just make it so that recasting it loses the previous cast first (just like Loki's Decoy). Some durationbased abilities should be able to be stackable though (like Hydroid's Tempest Barrage, why on earth does it have Power in Use-restrictions??).

* Silence shouldn't have been an aura stun in the first place, it just leaves people doing these weird builds we are seeing. Sonar should've gotten the aura treatment though, it makes sense on that ability (since no one-time CC is involved).

* Bullet Attractor needs various buffs regardless, so that going for a big range is a good thing in as many situations as possible. Refer to my linked thread.

* MPrime super speed ... I consider that build an exploit/bug due to faulty math (additive/subtractive, instead of multiplicative/divisonal).

* Well of Life needs a total revamp anyway, giving more health to a target is just a downright horrible mechanic. Energy Vampire sapping away a % of the target's current health is also something worth considering of a change, at least on BOSSES, at least when WoL still exists.

* Bounce having just a single use... I guess there is some benefit to that, but that is INSANELY niched so I'll just ignore that one.

Edited October 19, 2014 by Azamagon

[BabyKurama]

Will this also come for the Kubrow and Sentinels??? 

[Grimlar]

No idea yet how DE intend to implement the mod slot change of course, but one way it could be done with relatively little pain would be.

 

Are any ability slots modified to an unpolarised state, if so refund a forma. (Plus compensation for relevelling if DE decides to do so.)

 

Are there two unpolarised mod slots available? If so, remove them.

Or, if there is only one unpolarised mod slot, is there an unmodified ability slot as well, if so, remove them.

Or, if there are no unpolarised mod slots, are there 2 unmodified ability slots, if so, remove them.

If any of the above steps worked then convert the remaining unmodified ability slots to unpolarised slots, dont change the polarity of any skill slots that have been altered.

 

This should preserve any forma's used and any work relevelling a warframe afterwards as much as possible. Even for one/no ability builds, provided they havent also modified all the unpolarised mod slots as well.

 

If they have, then there isnt really any way to avoid a forma refund with the changes as outlined.

[Kovathos]

This seems like a good thing.

 

Now our frames will always have access to all their abilities, which could potentially turn up the fun factor in this game because now you always have abilities you would otherwise not bring as you would rather have another mod like vitality for example. Could spice up the game more.

 

This will hurt people who go with either 1 or no ability builds though

 

But Im sure DE will balance such things with time and probably people will find clever ways to use existing mods to get almost the same effect as before, or find new better ways.

Edited October 19, 2014 by Kovathos

[WarHeroman]

Looks like i am one of those idiots that's been playing for over 2000 hours and got bored or annoyed that there was so many mods or things were getting harder or my frames were being nerfed or weakened that i went and polarized 2 or 3 of my ability slots on every single frame in game and then used those slots for corrupted mods or health shield mods etc so i will be in fact worse off. Crying into my hands 

 

Also i am one of the old players that has every mod in game and multiples of them because we had to use a separate one for each frame and a kept different level of each mod so we could hot swap according to how many point i had to spend and i polarized every frame at least 5 times too so i went batturd crazy i guess to much time on my hands and nothing to do in between updates.

 

Me thinks a lot of hours spent leveling mods and frames because of polarizing is going to come bite me in the &#! as far as getting cores as a replacemnt for all my hard work dosen't mean a lot to me they just go into the i don't use bin along with the hundreds of bps i get as rewards along with the tones of cores i get as rewards from void missions dosen;t seem like a fair exchnage

[Syrtis]

 

Unlock and Upgrade Abilities through play.  

Warframe Abilities will now be unlocked as you rank up your Warframe. The ‘Rank’ of Warframe Abilities will now be determined by your use of any given ability. Simply put: Using Abilities earns XP/Affinity toward that Ability to rank it up!

 

Let’s use Banshee as an example:

A Banshee player begins a mission with an unranked Sonic Boom. Banshee casts Sonic Boom 10 times in that mission, ranking the Ability from unranked to Rank 1. The journey to Rank 2 will involve more use of this Ability,.

 

NOTE: If you had already maxed or ranked Ability Mods, you will not be affected by this. This applies for newly acquired Warframes post Update 15.

NOTE 2: The number of casts required is subject to change and only an example in this context.

 

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.

 

 

No no NO! What a fecking HORRIBLE idea!

 

For one thing, the OBVIOUS THING, is now we are goinng to get a lot more spam-happy noobs that will ruin the game. I can see it now, dumb Rhinos and Novas doing nothing but spam abilities.

 

Two, you're forcing us to use completely usless S#&$ just to level it when we'd otherwise use it once ot twice per map per map if that. eg Super Jump.

 

Three, unlocking abilities is crap. It kills functionality on lower level frames; eg Vortex for Vauben, Snow Globe for Frost, Hysteria for Valkyr. Also kills ability to level solo if you can't use your ulti. (First think I did getting Frost prime, equip ulti and aoed everything while solo until I could make SG strong enough for defenses.)

 

Four, you're taking away two mod slots. If people want all four skills when they're use them, if not they won't. It's a choice, a trade off. Personally I like to run with just Vorex on Vauben and use the extra space for more stretch. I know some only  use Iron Skin on Rhino or just SG on Frost.

 

Five, and follow me here, this is the big one, you are screwing up customization and certainly ruining a lot of builds! EG, swapping between a max MP and a rank 0 MP for speed, or between max SG or bastile to a rank 0 version for a smaller size.

 

It bears repeating: THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA. Stop ruining the game!

Edited October 20, 2014 by Syrtis

[Syrtis]

No idea yet how DE intend to implement the mod slot change of course, but one way it could be done with relatively little pain would be.

 

Are any ability slots modified to an unpolarised state, if so refund a forma. (Plus compensation for relevelling if DE decides to do so.)

 

Are there two unpolarised mod slots available? If so, remove them.

Or, if there is only one unpolarised mod slot, is there an unmodified ability slot as well, if so, remove them.

Or, if there are no unpolarised mod slots, are there 2 unmodified ability slots, if so, remove them.

If any of the above steps worked then convert the remaining unmodified ability slots to unpolarised slots, dont change the polarity of any skill slots that have been altered.

 

This should preserve any forma's used and any work relevelling a warframe afterwards as much as possible. Even for one/no ability builds, provided they havent also modified all the unpolarised mod slots as well.

 

If they have, then there isnt really any way to avoid a forma refund with the changes as outlined.

 

That's a good point. I'll be most pisses if I have to relevel toons because they decided to auto-refund a forma when I'd rather keep the polarity, swap it with a blank one if needs be. If they do through through with this horrid idea, it needs to be a CHOICE if you want the forma refunded or not.

[WarHeroman]

Its Going to Ruin the build on 27 of my frames all 27 have replaced 2-3 ability slots for other mods, Why have i replaced those ability slots i Don't Like them i Don't Use them I Don't want them.

 

Now your forcing me to disable those keys so i Don't accidentally use them. I have crippled fingers and misque a lot as it is i will be disabling those keys somehow even if i have to remove the keys form my Keyboard i have a spare keyboard here ill spray paint it and call it my i hate certain abilities Keyboard.

 

And Refunding a forma its not the forma i care about got heaps of them its all the time spent leveling Also the player that was in a team with 4 players and was using affinity booster was able to get from lvl 0-30 pretty quickly what about all the players that spent a lot of time on his her own or just themselves and a mate without affinity booster took up to 4 times as long to get to lvl 30 after polarizing his frame etc he is going to get the same reimbursement for his hard work even though he didn't have the advantage of affording boosters or the luxury of teammates to help him. Time is very precious thing..

 

My Point Don't Need Formas Refunded Got Enough if  i want or need some i get them and i don't need anymore Cores Again Got To many and nothing to do with them thanks to being cores rewarded spammed in voids

[RiftedSoul]

I just want to know what kind and level of fusion cores will they be turned into. Should I be combining them so they are higher level, or will it matter?

[WarHeroman]

The other main reasons i burnt my abilities slots was because they started nerfing player abilities strengths and decreasing weapon power dmg and increasing bot power dmg so the only course of action i had was to burn at least 2 of my abilities slots to use extra mods and the increasing number of mods becoming available in and because a lot of player did what i did i see this as a response to that it was the only choice i had left and the game was about choices this is the devs way of handicapping choice in player strengths. and making anyone who has a advantage to bring us back down a peg or 2 again. ie rebalancing

[Hueminator]

Would be nice if the Ability mod become a skill tree, meaning each ability rank you can choose to upgrade power, duration, or range to it.

 

All skill can be upgrade 3 times right?

 

So you can go power power power, power duration range, range range range, duration duration range, etc.

 

Can reset anytime by using some special item that crafted from the foundry (those nanospores) or straight up credits.

 

This way you can somewhat solve some problem where the lower version ability is more ideal to go a certain build.  

 

Ex:  Maximizing fast effect of Molecular Prime by using unranked version.

 

With this you can choose mix of range and duration and your build still be maximizing fast effect (and even better).

 

Edit:  This change would conflict with some ability like Iron Skin (no duration or range) or Slash n Dash (no Range).

Edited October 20, 2014 by Hueminator