Feedback Overview

[Loswaith]

Firstly I'd like to say Im having allot of fun with Warframe is good to see another co-op shooter about in the world of so many PvP shooters.  Thanks DE for adding a good one to the pool :)

Some feedback/sugestions I have, I'm sure some others have made before me but there are simply to many posts to read every post placed before me, I am covering allot of areas so am making a general post instead of multiple ones as well..

UI:
1. The health and shields are one thing I often am not too upto date on where my character is at with them, having some indicators around the cross hairs could be a good way to go to keep players more aware of the levels they are at at an one time. (braces for shield and health each side of the cross hair for example akin to what you could have for Global Agenda or some other games).

2. The mission paths it would be great to be able to go to the solar system overview without leaving a squad.  This would make navigating to the mission that your squad is wanting to do much simpler than having to chase a path through various planets.
Along these lines the invite button could simply be changed to leave squad button instead (negating the need for the back button to leave the squad as well).  I personally never use that, neither do my friends, as we use the contacts list any time we want to invite/join people for a match (I'm uncertain if others actually do use it).

3. Having more detailed weapon or showing Warframe (base shield, health, armour and energy) stats would be very helpful to know exactly what you are modding and enabling you to figure out just how much each mod actually contributes compared to another.
Even simply if it's some information being added to current layout (detailed would be more useful obviously), something like;
Damage: damage (crit-multiplier)
Fire rate: rate (charge rate)
Accuracy: accuracy (crit chance)
Clip size: clip (reload speed)

4. Some kind of different mod sorting, while recent, name and type are useful, some filtering would be exceptional such as filtering to show a mod type (warframe, rifle, pistol, shotgun, melee, sentinal, fusion cores), and/or even a dynamic filtering based on a text input.  As it stands after about 10 pages of mods it becomes quite cumbersome to navigate them all.

5. Full screen mini-map overlay.  A transparent mini-map overlay option akin to the way Diablo II had, would be a nice option as it can assist in navigation while not getting in the way could also be nice to have.

Tools of the Trade:
6. Hotkeys or a single hotkey to use consumables, even just a single hotkey and a ready slot to choose which of your equiped slots will be used when the hot key is hit.  This would enable heals/ammo to be used on the fly without haivng to pause to navigate around it simply for a quick fix.  It is also likely to enhance the desire to use them as well.

7.  The ability to unlock parts of the colour pallets through blueprints.  Currently the only way to get them is via platinum.  Having blueprints either unlock individual colours, shades of a single colour, horozontal lines or verticle lines (like the default set for core colours), or even the entire pallet (though keeping entire pallets to platinum would still make buying the pallets an option) would enable these to be available to everyone.

8. Health and Shield mods, to me seem a bit on the high side (I've yet to actually max them out), it means that players can generally be fairly robust and feel somewhat overpowered (feel free to ignore this if thats the intent).  
While also at 40% increase per pip (440% increase at max) it can make the differences between the frames negated by simply having a mod with 1-2 pips and then your just the same as the higher stated frame without the mod (sure that difference again will show when the heavier rated ).

Having them at around 20% increase per pip (220% max) still means they can give an edge but players will want to be going for cover more, racing ahead abandoning the rest of the group actually becomes a less viable option as you simply just cant ignore smaller groups as much rather than any but quite large groups of enemies (as it currently stands), and thus need to rely on your group to assist you.  Prehaps using other options too such as fast shield regen or armour instead of just larger pools (or relying on just shields or health mods), would become more of an option.

 

Sure it may require some balance tweaking in the latter game (and for soloing) but could also add to increasing the challenge of the game as well.  While this makes for an option of simply not carrying those mods as well (as your warframe ammounts play more of a factor), as for some areas you simply need them to be reasonable at some points.
It also has the potential to open up options for a hardened shield mod that reduces damage shields take, without shields becoming an 'over the top' factor

9. Warframe power effects are typically way to bright (even with bloom off), sure its nice to have a bright flashy sigh that your power went off, it is quite jarring to the eyes, particularly due to that most of the maps are on the darker side in terms of lighting (especially infested maps) and some of the flares are jarring even on brighter maps and dont realy make allot of sence for the types of power.

The bright flare points on electrical melee weapons can be a bit jarring as well, but are infinatly more avoidable.
While having the bloom and flare effects make it visually quite nice, it is a toll on the eyes even setting visuals lower to avoid the brunt of it its not complete.

10. Warframe specific passives abilities with up to 5 pips, that enhance the style of  each Warframe, for example;
Ember reducing fire damage by 10% per pip
Volt reducing electrical damage by 10% per pip
Saryn reducing poison damage by 10% per pip
Frost reducing the reduction to shields for cold by 5% per pip
Mag reducing bullet damage by 2% per pip
Excalibur reducing melee damage by 2% per pip
Ash avoid being less liekly to be spotted by cameras/enemies 10% per pip
Loki increasing base speed (walking and sprint)
Nyx power regen of 1 point per pip per 5s
Rhino stagger, stun and knockdown resistance of 10% per pip
Trinity health regen of 1 point per pip per 5s
Banshee increases accuracy by 2.0 per pip

Enemies:
11.  Anchient disruptors removing a flat amount of power (say 200 power) instead of 100% of it as it currently is Warframes with more power actually suffer more effect than those with lesser power due to having it all removed (ie loosing say 300 power vs 150 power) and gain no benefit for having the larger pool (in this instance), it's also harder for those frames to use it up (to avoid the efffect) as fast so are actually more likely to loose chunks of it.
This is less of an issue with variant shields as you can fall back and happily regain the shields.

Other than this the enemies are fun and varied while keeping their factions feel.  Definatly looking forward to seeing what enemies the future holds.

Missions:
12.  It would be nice to see mini-campaigns, basically a series of missions towards a specific goal.  So say a formal goal of going through 3-5 missions that link togeather in stages.  For example a spy mission leading to a capture/resuce which leads to say an assination, raid or sabotage, which may or may not further lead to an exterminate or defence mission.  This would best be done across a few mission as opposed to all in one large map, so people can break off and join as needed.

 

13. It would be nice to see the difficulity rating (as seen in the intro-video to the mission) of a mission before you start it, as this can help you decide how advanced a frame and weapons you can bring along for it.  This may not be viable if missions have a variable difficulity.

14. (a minor nit pick on this one) For some assassinations missions where the goal is to destroy the mining vehicles or the like, it would make a bit more sence to have some explosives or the like to destroy these vehicles (haps with a suppy case to carry like sabotage), as opposed to simply shooting them with guns or meleeing them, even with high tech weapons the vehicles would be rather heavily armoured and unliekly to be effeced all that much,  presuming they are useable for the mining or resisting large weaponry from other vehicles.

 

I cant think of much more to add at this stage other than the game is very fun and enjoyable, plays well and has allot of potential, thanks for the oppertunity to play it and offer some feedback.

I'm looking forward to the option to reset as well (I'm one of those that likes restarting from scratch).

Thanks for taking the time to read through this wall of text too :)
 

Edited April 23, 2013 by Loswaith