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Warframe Ability Mods: Coming Changes


[DE]Rebecca
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How about  you guys! bound all abilities as you wanted to, and keep all 10 mod slots!(since all you do is buffing every enemy in this game ;)  
In this case everyone will be pleased!and we could really call it a buff that way!

*Some people don't understand that there aren't any extra mod slots from this change!for example or I use 2 skills +  8 extra supporting mods or i use 2 skills that are bounded  + 8 mods,same thing to me.
(and don't say that the other 2 abilities are counted as mods - THEY AREN'T since you can't replace them with other mods)

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@Naftal

 

Trinity, Mirage and Loki would all have a nice mix of survivability and utility with additional slots.  Now does this make them OP?  Probably not but being able to fit in some of the extras would make shorting survivability mods for utility ones, or vice versa, a non-issue.

Edited by (PS4)Hiero_Glyph
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I am still not buying the "power increase" with 10 slots vs 8 slots.

 

Can someone provide a good example of a serious 8 slot build that would get significantly more powerful with two more mods?

Even with just 8 slots, some builds will get a power boost from the change.

Look at the Trinity build on Calysto's video. It has 3 abilities, so with the change it will have a free slot. Energy Vampire in that build restores 144 energy. Now with the free slot, put in an Intensify, which the build didn't have due to the "lack of slots", now it restores 215 energy, that's a significant boost, you can even lower it to 203 energy so you can spend less energy per skill. Now add 2 more slots, on that same build. You can get for example, more 58% power duration.

 

On other frames you can do silly things like defence mod + rage + quick thinking, because now you have the slots to just have everything. How isn't that a great boost? For me it is, and it would make "weak" enemies look even weaker, and "powerful" enemies wouldn't really get that weaker, because at some point, they will still melt you, and your weapons aren't doing more damage, but the boost on some frames would enable things like constant ability spam, since a single trinity would eliminate the energy problem for those near her.

IMHO, it would make anything that isn't a really strong enemy look rather pathetic if we got 2 extra slots, and when everything that isn't a retardly powerful enemy is pathetic, the game is just boring (which the game already suffers of when you reach a certain "level").

 

 

Though seeing what Rebecca posted on her twitter a few minutes gave me the idea for a different type of slots. Keep 1 or 2 slots, but they can only be, exclusively used by ability augmentation mods. Mostly because unless they make a new place for them, they will hardly have a place with just 8 usable slots for that. Having the slots locked to the abilities only would actually promote variety, if there's a good variety of augment mods.

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DE is promoting this new system as a gain of 4 abilities(always present, no trade off) plus 2 extra mod slots compared to the current system.  Are we to believe that having 4 abilities plus 2 more mod slots is a loss?  Then how can it be a gain?  If it's a gain and it's balanced then we are saying that more is balanced, not less.  Furthermore, it says that the game was previously unbalanced by having less.  That would be an unusual claim in these forums where less is always the argument for balance.  Some peopel say that the game is already to easy, the Tenno OP.  They should be saying that 2 more slots, let alone 4 is too much.  They should be saying that more than 6 slots removes the trade off of corrupted mods.  Trade off is balance, right?

Balance according to who exactly? Who is setting the parameters? By balance do you mean our current level of power? 

Realistically, what is really "balanced", "Overpowered" or "underpowered" is defined by DE's intended power level and core combat model for their game. Both of which are going to altered by a change to the mod system. The current state of things is clearly not quite to DE's liking.

Hence the changes.

 

 

About the unused mods, or useless mods, with 10 slots people will use them while they are farming the better mods, making them not useless.  It takes a lot of time to get the better mods.  And, this point comes around to the balance issue.  If the mods are useless then having the room for them, i.e. 10 slots, isn't going to throw the game out of balance.

 

It's a bit contradictory to say forget about the useless mods because they are useless and yet consider it a positive outcome to have all 4 abilities present on every Warframe.  Many abilities are considered useless and this change does not change that at all.

What people happen to use before they get the best mods is not the issue.

The concern about mod slots is ultimately a question of the Power ceiling:what the top power potential of a frame is.

 

I am still not buying the "power increase" with 10 slots vs 8 slots.

 

Can someone provide a good example of a serious 8 slot build that would get significantly more powerful with two more mods?

How exactly would a person answer that question to your satisfaction?

I mean even if those two mod slots seem unlikely to alter power now....What will the new power augment mods do to the power level of the frames? 

And when you say "power", do you consider things like the utility of additional awareness of enemy locations as something that contributes to power? Or just things like direct damage and direct resilience?

Edited by Ronyn
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This system is not a good idea for new players either because it disincentivizes forma which disincentivizes boosters.  More slots, incentivizes more forma more which incentivizes more boosters.

 

And, we're not really getting more slots because not all powers are worth slotting as it is so people are trading off the powers they don't care for the power they do and modding for that.  They are not now modding for 4 abilities and after this they will mot modd for 4 abilities, except possibly in lower level missions.  But, if you're going to confine yourself to lower level missions, you're not going to do ODD.  No ODD, no corrupted mods.  Without T2, T3, and T4 they're not going to get any orokin tech.

 

The whole systems starts to fall apart if people are not incentivized to or impeded from power up.

You make some pretty big claims about what gives players incentive to use forma and boosters.

Truth is we don't really know whether it will have a huge impact or no relevant impact on player incentive overall.

I wonder what the metrics are for how many players have actually forma'd away their ability slots.

Is it a big percentage of the player base or a small one? 

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This system is not a good idea for new players either because it disincentivizes forma which disincentivizes boosters.  More slots, incentivizes more forma more which incentivizes more boosters.

 

 

Or it could incentive variety. The time that I spend forma and re-leveling a single warframe will now be enough to do the same thing on 2 or even 3 warframes, and the formas and boosters are still being used. And not to mention that there's still tons of things to use formas on (or level).

Clantech mostly needs at least 1 forma (isn't there a weapon that needs 2?), even in the shop BP you will find a weapon (can only remember 1, not sure if there's more) that requires a forma. Weapons still require the same amount of forma (main weapons can need a lot of them), same goes for Sentinels (and their weapons), Kubrows, archwings will almost certainly need them too, archwing weapons as well.

Not to mention all those things need reactors and catalysts, which are a whole lot more rare than forma, which probably are more prone to be bought with plat if people want to use them (if you use less forma on a warframe, you might as well build another warframe that will need a reactor as well for full potential).

 

There's a lot of variants that might as well make it so they doesn't really lose actual (total) income from people needing less forma and less grinding on each, individual warframe.

 

If anything, people won't need to spend hours and hours using forma and grinding levels, and can just actually play the game.

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One significant Update:

 

Dev has confirmed the following to be the latest information on how to Rank up individual Abilities:

 

Abilities will now increase in rank as you rank up your Warframe. It is no longer based on per-ability usage, but occurs passively as your Warframe increases in rank. 

 

Before and now obsolete:

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,.

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So just to put this is full applyance:

 

10 bowls, 4 apples

 

if we molecularly alter two of the apples so they turn into oranges then no matter what bowls they are in, the bowls with the apples will still get removed first, correct?

 

This makes me so happy, really really really didn't want to have to possibly relevel all my 20 warframes up to 2 times each.

 

 

Yes, this is correct to my knowledge. As it is a huge part of the Update, I will receive absolute and final confirmation ASAP!

Confirming last night's question, yes, you are correct Knot.

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One significant Update:

 

Dev has confirmed the following to be the latest information on how to Rank up individual Abilities:

 

Abilities will now increase in rank as you rank up your Warframe. It is no longer based on per-ability usage, but occurs passively as your Warframe increases in rank. 

 

Before and now obsolete:

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,.

Best change ever!

Edited by matrixEXO
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One significant Update:

 

Dev has confirmed the following to be the latest information on how to Rank up individual Abilities:

 

Abilities will now increase in rank as you rank up your Warframe. It is no longer based on per-ability usage, but occurs passively as your Warframe increases in rank. 

 

Before and now obsolete:

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,.

Yay! This makes me less concerned about the update. Any info on the passive leveling? As in what rank are all your abilities maxed?

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How exactly would a person answer that question to your satisfaction?

I mean even if those two mod slots seem unlikely to alter power now....What will the new power augment mods do to the power level of the frames? 

And when you say "power", do you consider things like the utility of additional awareness of enemy locations as something that contributes to power? Or just things like direct damage and direct resilience?

By giving an explanation and a build that gives power boost of any kind that is so significant that these two extra slots would be too much.

 

We'll have to see all the new augment mods and how they work before speculating one way or another. I'll be very disappointed if I'll see that the augment mods won't justify the removal of the slots.

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By giving an explanation and a build that gives power boost of any kind that is so significant that these two extra slots would be too much.

 

We'll have to see all the new augment mods and how they work before speculating one way or another. I'll be very disappointed if I'll see that the augment mods won't justify the removal of the slots.

You still have to define what you consider "power".

See some of the mods you might classify as "quality of life" another person will consider an increase in power.

The new augments, by themselves, may not justify the removal of mod slots.

Though the access to the powers (once reworked to useful) may result in a general increase in power or at least in-match versatility.

Which may be along the lines of the combat model DE is after whether that fits into your personal taste or not.

In other words-the idea of this change needing any justification is debatable.

But hopefully the end result is something you enjoy. You're obviously dedicated to this game so I hope you'll have no cause to leave.

Now for early theory crafting purposes-we know that embers fireball will have an augment that let's it grant fire damage to allies.

What that will do to a team members damage output is worth considering.

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 o Man this really really hurts new players alot!!!! no longer can they pick to aug. one ability up , they just have to make due with r-1 powers which are weak and limply 

 

to the new players good luck ; your going to need it 

 

...Except for the fact that now you don't have to use your precious points on an Ability Mod, instead having all of them installed by default. So you can now augment ANY AND ALL of a 'Frames abilities up, but do it even better early-on, without having to pay for the Ability Equip Cost.

 

The only thing this is gonna affect is later-game builds that Tenno Neophytes won't be able to get at for a while. And most of the "late-game" builds won't be too badly affected anyway in most cases. I mean, sure, I won't have my ultra-optimised 4-5 forma Desecrate Nekros who never runs out of energy and is speedy, but I can just unequip Rush and the build is intact.

 

Overall, I feel that this is going to be a positive change, particularly for 'Frames with more than 2 "Go-To" abilities, like Zephyr, Ash to a lesser extent, Volt, Trinity to an extent, Mag... and the 'Frames that have "only 1" go-to ability will still come out mostly unscathed, where you'll only have to discard one mod from it's current loadout - and again, that's really only for die-hard min-max builds.

Edited by Fraggoth
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Or maybe new players will learn how to use certain abilities rather than just use the first and the ultimate. Though honestly, it won't hurt them that much, it might actually help them.

Before they had to spend points to equip the abilities, which would reduce the points towards survivability mods. It also divided their fusion materials between abilities and other mods.

Now the drawback is that they will unlock them as they level up, but it also means that they can focus on other mods, which might as well increase their survivability sooner rather than crutch on 4th ability and still die because they have no shields/HP.

Without a reactor (unless you start with one now), you barely have the capacity to equip ranked abilities with defence mods (except when fully leveled or with the right polarities, and only Excal has D polarity), moretheless on lower levels.

 

Hopefully there's more new players using' Volt's shield, and Mag's shield polarize, which I rarely ever seem them using, and they are really useful, even on earlier stages. Volt's shield is always useful, Shield Polarize is mostly useful on Venus.

 

 

I was looking at my volt and damn, being able to use all abilities and even add 1 more mod on him will feel great. Before I had to take out Shock, it's kinda weak but it's still useful, just not as useful as the others (IMO or for what I wanted him to do), so I took it out to get another mod, now I will have it and will be able to improve the build further.

My Mag Prime will also get 1 more slot, but bullet attractor won't be that great with her shield polarize build. I kept 3 mods because they all use the same mods (since only bullet attractor uses duration), and Crush not because of the damage, which is low, but for teamplay utility, I can stop the enemies in a radius for a couple of seconds giving my team mates some time, to either shoot them or run/recover.

Ash also only had 2 abilities, and I used shuriken because of the utility, though now I have access to the other 2, but I care mostly about teleport, which can be really useful in certain cases, and I could only use it after my latest revision and I had to switch bleed out according to the mission type (Bladestorm+teleport is super useful on Interception).

 

Though the sad thing is that even with the change, you still be maining groups of abilties, since you can't really focus on all because of how different they are, except Volt, which can use all abilities without any being terrible (if you avoid corrupted mod for duration, your duration will still be good and you won't lose the range for the 1st and 4th ability, even with stock duration the shield is still good), just not as good as X ability would be on one trick pony.

Volt might turn out to be super new player friendly, as he can be good with just 1 corrupted more (for max efficiency).

Edited by Sorrow0110
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Dark Sector Conflict??? 

How will mods come online there? Can we choose which come online 1st, if at all?

We can assume they're all online by default in PvP, but as Rebecca said, adjusted in rank based on your Warframe level.

 

If you think about it, this is actually a good way to balance Dark Sector conflicts, considering how your Warframe's level increases over time.

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