Some Quality Of Life Changes The Game Could Benefit From

[TGDM]

Some of the suggestions in this post are going to be simpler than others and I'll try to keep in mind the development cycle DE is using to push out new content. I don't expect any of these changes to come to the game soon, but hopefully sometime before Q2 2015. Except the first one. Get that thing done soon and not soon™.

 

* Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X functionality and general text box highlighting. Mashing the backspace to delete things slows down communication in mission. And it's just a hassle in lobby areas.

 

* Remove screen shaking/tilt for the menu inside of missions. Try opening the menu while riding an elevator sometime. It's not great.

 

* Similarly to how Melee Combos were added to mission menus, add warframe abilities to the menu. It would be nice to see which abilities you unlock as you level/play.

 

* Forma usage should not reset all of your Warframe's abilities to rank 0. Complementing the above, Warframe abilities should not require level 30 to fully unlock if re-leveling after a Forma is installed. In the old system resetting to rank 0 was a definite power reset, but not to the extent it is now. Before U15 you could install a maxed Aura and your favorite/most useful ability at rank 0. I can understand and appreciate the initial r0->r30 power gains to make leveling more rewarding mid-mission instead of the old boring shield/health/energy gains, but this new system makes leveling feel like a chore. Like I am dead weight outside of my gun. Like my fun is being limited.

 

* Add a UI indicator to show who is hosting your current mission. While fixing the majority of hosting bugs is not easy, letting players see who is the host would be a good permanent edition and temporary solution. Some sort of marker or indicator in the menu and HUD would be fantastic.

 

* Allow us, when creating a mission, to choose if we want to create a new lobby instead of joining someone else's. I have a fantastic internet connection and I would love to share it with other players that do not. Even with my game join ping limited to 100ms I still end up in games with wildly laggy hosts.

 

* Annnd on the topic of laggy hosts... I have a suggestion that is by no means going to be easy to implement. Add a way for players, inside of missions, to migrate hosts. If your current host becomes apparently very laggy or for whatever reason the game is no longer playable due to connection issues, let us split to solo or initiate a vote to migrate (host would have to volunteer for vote to start).

 

* Remove/adjust the range limit on affinity generation in missions. Reminiscent of the old hallway hero days of early Warframe's Xini defense, Extractor missions result in whoever is defending the point losing out on loot and affinity while the rest of the team hunts down power cores or another point. Survival missions are also offenders in this regard. If the concern is you do not want to reward AFKers, then just tack on that bonus to mission completion reward. And on that note...

 

* We need a way to deal with players that have a negative impact on the game. A way to report them or to self-moderate them in our missions. A votekick system could probably be abused and I understand the hesitation to implement it. However, with one of the above suggestions for host migration, particularly to split to solo / invite only, this could solve itself.

 

* Some mission types would benefit greatly from limiting the tileset options. Particularly thinking about Excavation and maybe Survival. I don't think anyone likes the 2 minute run back and forth between scanner and extractors on opposite sides of very long tunnel systems.

 

* Reworked Defense mission rewards. Maybe it's just observation bias since U15, but I've been noticing some very lackluster rewards on endless defense on Pluto up to and past 30 waves. I know the days of reliably void key farming in eDefense are long gone but it'd be nice to see a guaranteed key every 3/4 waves

 

Lastly I just want to add that it would be nice to see some improvements to QA testing between updates. I'm not expecting perfection (or anything near it), but there are 2 particular conditions that seem to be omitted from all testing in all updates. Well technically 3.

 

(1) Joining a mission already in progress (generally resulting in UI bugs). The Extractor mission update in particular stood out for the lack of testing on this. (2) Hosting migration with mission status. And (3) UI bugs in general. U15 brought a fantastic change to endless missions and at the same time introduced a horrible bug where stacked rewards would disappear if the host disconnected or otherwise left.

 

*****

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Really hope some of these get serious consideration.

[gnat6]

One thing that's missing here in regards to hosting options is being able to opt out of hosting for those of us who know we can't host but sometimes end up hosting anyways.

[TGDM]

One thing that's missing here in regards to hosting options is being able to opt out of hosting for those of us who know we can't host but sometimes end up hosting anyways.

 

Oh, definitely. It was in mind when I was writing it but I didn't actually include it so thank you.