Bug/gameplay feedback for now.

[derelict]

So far, this is what I've found to be nonfunctional/in need of balancing.

1 Shield regen delay is too long to start with. I'm aware mods are available to counteract that, but to regen 250 shields takes around 45 seconds of standing around doing nothing. For a game with no story to speak of and what I'd call a frenetic pace, this is quite a damning flaw.

2 The Lex/Latro: Recoil needs to be adjusted on the Latro. The Lex is fine, given its a sidearm, but the Latro's firing speed is comprimised by the recoil, thus rendering it effectively useless. Probably wouldn't hurt to raise its damage...maybe around 10% to bring it in line with the Braton MK1, which I assume is the benchmark gun. Right now, the Latro is difficult to use in a group with 4 other players with much easier handling guns squirting away at enemies that frequently dart between cover.

3 Lato pistol: Stated accuracy is 100%. It is a blatant lie. Recoil is fine, but if its 100% then make the first shot go where you actually aim.

4 Braton/BratonMkI: Stated accuracy is 25% It is a blatant lie. The gun's initial shots are almost always dead on, even at fairly extreme ranges. Given the firing delay is so short, these guns are a better option than the Latro for quickly dispatching enemies at range.

5 Various connection/lag issues: Enemies not displaying proper death animations after being killed, teleporting around after being shot (oddly, the shot still connects) crippling framerate (1-5 fps) on joining a "bad" (laggy) host that persists for minutes, sometimes.

6 There's a map segment with the extraction room and stairway up to it centered on the split to the extraction pods. It is possible to fall UNDER these stairs, and it's very difficult to get back out again.

7 Destroying Reinforced Glass then using an elevator sometimes causes the sound to go muffled and stay that way for the rest of the mission, even after using a console to drop the barriers once the elevator stops. Similarly, the elevator activation seems to prevent you from losing shields/health in the vacuum.

8 The Bursto has far too much recoil and far too little damage per shot to be effective. Either of these could be changed to make it a suitable gun. Else, the delay between bursts before you can fire again puts it under par of the Braton MK1, which I'm assuming is supposed to be less effective.

9 Actually, recoil in general seems to be excessive in all guns except the Bratons. Aren't these supposed to be highly trained warriors? They shoot like they have spaghetti noodles for arms, or have never fired a weapon in their lives. Weapon power could be argued, at least until you consider it takes SEVERAL shots from most guns to down a basic enemy.

10 Stamina depletes in an amusing way. You can either do a 100 meter dash, or swing a sword 4 times to basically empty your stamina bar. Personally I'd think the swinging would use a lot less stamina. Actually, why is meleeing using the stamina bar at all? Does it have an effect on the power of the swing? I haven't been able to tell, other than you can't do a full charge swing if you don't have the stamina, but then it refills so fast that it's very hard to run out for the charge.

11 Skills are made for an enemy set that doesn't seem to exist. At least as a Volt, I find my shock to be utterly useless except on bosses, which are rarely encountered. I'd prefer it to be a swarm button: it already has an 'arc' mechanic to it, just make it do equal damage to every arc, or better still, divide up its damage equally within an area, so the more enemies are present, the less it does to each individual enemy. Overload, by comparison, is insanely powerful, to the point where it has the same problem, I can't generally find a situation where it is honestly useful. Normally when there's that many enemies on the map (not bum rushing infected, they all die to one sword swing), they're usually too far spread out to hit them all.

12 Corpus walkers, the orange ones - their shockwave behaves very strangely. If you touch the ring long after the inital explosion effect is gone, you still trip over and lay on the ground a moment. Not sure if this is intended, but it is very strange.

13 Grineer seem to be the only 'difficult' faction. Corpus are a joke and Infected...well, I go into infected missions on Pluto, which is currently 15 levels higher than my suit is...to level my melee up. They're jokes.

14 Enemy AI needs a bit of a tweak to let enemies with shotguns close in much more rapidly, like the buzzsaw rushers. The bullet speed of Corpus crewmen/walkers could use an increase, it is very easy to dodge at the moment. A hard limit on the flying Corpus things' bombs needs implemented so the map isnt littered with them. Alternatively, put a gun on them so they can do something besides seed the map with weak explosives.

15 There is no character sheet for your Warframe. It would be nice to see the cumulative effect of your chosen skills/mods somewhere. Theorycrafters will want this too.

16 There is no data sheet for your weapons. Same as above. Both of these could be added in on the upgrade screens, for an example. This isn't technically a problem, I'm just assuming it hasn't been gotten to yet. Though to be fair, this is a beta, no? Shouldn't the game be more or less complete by now? Guess it's the nature of how funding works for these sorts of things nowadays.

17 Graphics/effects/texturing: This is all personal preference, so feel free to ignore it, but...my character looks like he's made of plastic. Not everything in the game has to have shiny surfaces. I'd feel bad for the guy that's gotta keep it all polished, what with Tenno running around everywhere and coating everything with the innards of the folks that used to live there.

18 I've gotten several mods now that display the same rank as other mods on my frame, yet have THREE TIMES the bonus whatever happens to be compared. Say, I have a R17 armor mod, at 23%, I also have an R17 armor mod thats 45%, and the coloring indicates that it's the same rarity as the other one. I'm unsure if this is a bug or part of a random number generator, or the mod is actually a rare version minus the colored text.

19 Alert system could use an audible ring of some sort or "Alert: Mercury", something like that to indicate that an alert event is up.

20 Pay to win issues: Others have gone vehemently in-depth of this problem so I'll just touch on it. Pay to win is how to get your franchise to fail as quickly as possible. Make all the game content accessible to free players, just at increased time/effort invested. NOT korean MMO levels of time investment, either.

21 Alert system: When an alert is on a mission, you must click the alert icon or use the text in the upper left rather'n just clicking the planet. The text has a dialogue box with an accept/decline to indicate mission type and rewards. This doesn't appear if you click the icon or the planet, just the alert text in the top right. This dialogue box should be for any alert access, rather'n just via text.

22 Skills/energy system: Energy should slowly regenerate. To compensate, make skills less powerful in comparison. Most of your time is fighting hordes of smaller enemies, and anyway, the bosses should take skill, not skills, if you catch my meaning. We should need to make use of dodge and placement to bring them down, or some sort of location based mechanic. At the least, we should have a need to find cover, rather'n just soaking all their damage then hiding behind a wall for the next player to do the same. The boss shield regen is completely absurd too, and leads to situations where they're impossible to kill if you blew all your ammo on small fry on the way up.

23 Ammo needs to be more prevalent, and all ammo drops need to be split amongst the team rather than all going to whoever picks it up. Or, make ammo pick-ups work like mod pick-ups. It's fairly easy to run dry of ammo along the way. Though, that does lead to an interesting mechanic for the 'suitcase' missions, where one player hauls the data until they're out of pistol ammo, then drops them for the next to do so while they refill/use the primary weapon.

24 Brought up by a friend, blueprints need to be reusable, or there needs to be a way to get rid of them. I'm thinking a player-driven market for goods players don't need. I'm assuming by the screen, that the number of blueprints you can carry is limited, and due to the random number generation present, it'd be possible to get multiples of things that would be useless to have after you had one (warframe blueprints/parts, for example). It'd be nice then, if you got something you didnt need, to be able to make some money off of it.

25 It would be advantageous to connect your platinum system to the in-game economy via an exchange of some sort. This will give you, as the developer, strong insight on how much the average player thinks whatever you're selling via the platinum market is worth.

26 Microtransaction model: A player can buy a game for 59.95 and attain the full content of the game without further payment. Your microtrans model, and really everyone's, should account for this. If you put $60.00 into a game, you should be able to access much of the available content. Not just one suit and some goodies. DEFINITELY not some random chance box, or really any amount of them. By their nature, they must remain casino gambles, you do not want to encourage this sort of gambling in your game. In an actual casino, you put money in, and have the chance of getting more out. In a game, you put money in, and get nothing permanent out. Adjust your pricing model accordingly.

27 The shield ospreys, or whatever you call them, when they're giving shields to nearby enemies, the glow they put off is insane. You can't even see the enemy, and thats WITH bloom off. Needs to be toned down.

28 Cinematics for every mission are the same. They get quite old, and there is no need for a confirmation box to skip them. Just a button press to skip please. Nothing at all gets shared in terms of mission status or anything, so they're pointless delays in a game thats as apparently fast paced as this.

29 Bosses regenerate shields far, FAR too fast. Its causing people to have to eat up about half their ammo supply bringing them back down every time the boss gets knocked over or people have to reload. This is a huge problem when dealing with a boss with, say, a shotgun, since going in close to make a kill is a really stupid idea as well.

28 Cinematics for every mission are the same. They get quite old, and there is no need for a confirmation box to skip them. Just a button press to skip please. Nothing at all gets shared in terms of mission status or anything, so they're pointless delays in a game thats as apparently fast paced as this.

29 Bosses regenerate shields far, FAR too fast. Its causing people to have to eat up about half their ammo supply bringing them back down every time the boss gets knocked over or people have to reload. This is a huge problem when dealing with a boss with, say, a shotgun, since going in close to make a kill is a really stupid idea as well.

30 While crouching and zoomed in, the in game camera is blocked by the character's elbow and arm. This also happens when backed near a wall, like in the elevator for example.

31 Also noted by a friend: Melee weapons gain XP quite slowly because they are never "drawn" and as such dont accrue xp from other player kills while in groups. This means you must solo a map and do nothing but melee kills to gain decent xp on the weapon. It'd be nice if they gained half of your primary weapon's xp gain from levels, or some other method that'd lend itself to an occasional use weapon.

There may be more, this is just off the top of my head. Keep in mind, fellow beta testers, your duty is to break the game =) report anything you see that's unusual or feels unbalanced! I will be adding more to this as I find them.

Edited January 15, 2013 by derelict

[Heyyou2]

I agree with many things you listed, especially about shield ospreys and ammo.

[UkyoSonoda]

Well as for the regenerating energy thing. There is an artifact card that does this. I haven't found it yet but been in games with people that have and it is absolutely awesome on a Volt frame. :)

[CY13ERPUNK]

ok wow, man that's a long list, but nice job putting it all down, hope the devs see it fer shur

so anyways, thought I'd throw my two cents in here

1 - IMHO i think warframe shield regen delay is fine, this adds needed tension to the game, any faster and it would be too fast/too easy, since there ARE mods to affect this, let's leave the baseline alone

2 - just started using the latron myself, and while it's tedious to constantly aim instead of spray and pray like with my braton, i find the latron to be incredibly ammo efficient, as far as the recoil and dmg are concerned, either raise the dmg slighty, like 40-50 OR reduce the recoil and raise the firing rate, but this rifle needs to be different enough from the others to have a nitch, its in between the sniper/burston/braton/gorgon

3 - the "stats" on most things in the game are not very accurate, i think this should be addressed (this helps to differentiate the various items/gear ingame)

4 - see #3

5 - ah the perils of playing multiplayer online =P, but hopefully these kind of connection/server issues will be addressed throughout the beta (you're always going to have ppl who drop games however)

6 - totally valid point and could easily be addressed by a change in the level design

7 - interesting bug/glitch, haven't experienced it myself, but hope it gets addressed

8 - i agree completely about the burston, it is far underwhelming compared to the braton, IMHO the braton needs to be LESS accurate and the burston MORE accurate (even then the burston's DPS is horrible with the fire rate delay), as is currently the braton performs better (more dps, more acc, easier to control burst/aim/recoil, etc)

9 - agreed that there should be some sort of unified system to dictate dmg/recoil/rate/acc, that way these inconsistancies stop happening (Dark Sector was also kind of like this unfortunately)

10 - personally i like the stamina system as is, sure you can't sprint forever, but that's a good thing, and yes melee is a stamina using activity, try it out for real and see just how much, anyways, there are sprint speed mods, but no mods to increase stamina or stamina regen rate, those could be added tho

11 - agreed that many skills need adjustments right now (personally i find that the excalibur's super jump is worthlessly small, it needs to be at least twice as high, and the radial blind doesn't last nearly long enough to deal with any crowd worth using it on)

12 - i believe that is intentional, the orange bubble field is some kinda shockwave field that persists for a short time

13 - personally i find the infected to be a bit too easy, but both the corpus and grinneer can swarm and overwhelm me (grinneer teleporters and heavies, and then corpus can just swarm you with walkers/bombers/shields/etc), of course every OTHER faction gets grenades of some kind except the Tenno =P

14 - i personally like the corpus bombers, they are an a unique enemy that you don't see anything else like them, giving them guns would ruin that, and limiting their bombs would just weaken them, otherwise sure the AI could always be better, but aside from the quirks involving factions fighting each other I find the AI is pretty damn good/aggressive

15 - again, yes, agreed, the game needs more informative and accurate stats on frames and gear

16 - see #15

17 - this is the FUTURE, the Tenno don't have to "shine" themselves, they just stay that way =], and they probably like it too, I know I wouldn't mind a bio-tech armor/power suit, even if it was shiny

18 - ive been guessin this is just typical RNG stuff, but agreed that it is ALL OVER THE PLACE, and not consistant at all

19 - a good suggestion

20 - the game is PVE, so the whole "pay to win" thing is irrelevant, but also, these guys have to earn a living somehow, seriously, we're playing this game FOR FREE, if PVP gets introduced at some point, then just keep things baseline/equal/SMITE and pay for cosmetics and don't allow people to pay for more power, simple as that

21 - good point, i make sure to click on the alert tag in my upper left everytime

22 - they've already got mods/artifacts that do regen energy, but i think the system needs more tweaks for sure, and agreed on the boss shield issue, it's basically "get a gorgon and you're good, otherwise, too bad"

23 - i find that keeping ammo scarce makes for better gameplay, it's dynamic and requires teamwork, also if there was always plenty of ammo, then why have a 2ndary weapon and melee to fall back on?

24 - complete agreed, i would prefer to be able to trade/sell unwanted gear/mods/blueprints/ingredients

25 - slippery slope here, i could see allowing players to sell plat for ingame currency at a price of their own choosing, but otherwise this is not a good idea for a microtransaction game economy model

26 - i think DE has this under control

27 - i personally think this adds to their challenge, if not for the difficulty of downing the shield drones, the corpus would be too easy

28 - they take up the time otherwise spent that a loading bar would take, and i personally think they add a nice atmosphere to the game (I could even see them upgrading them in the future)

29 - 1000000% completely agreed

30 - making the warframe model semi-translucent when in that close to the camera would fix this issue

anyways, thanks again for the comments, hope DE see's this thread

[derelict]

Ah, thanks for noticing. Think then what I'll do is consolidate the list to a single post. Assuming the forum uses BBcode may use the spoiler boxes to sort things into categories later, but got work for now.

As for #1, still saying that the regen speed should either be percentage based, now that shields have been toned down, or have an increasing regen speed. Its pretty easy to get away from any enemies in the area, but then you have to sit for a minute or so. I will admit, this only seems to be a problem on solo play, adding unnecessary dead spots to the flow of the game.

After working further with the Latro, I've noticed it does seem to pan out fine after around level 15 or so. It lacks the killing speed in every circumstance of the Braton, but you can basically double tap any normal enemy in the head for fast kills, range notwithstanding. The recoil could still use to be toned down a bit. I've also noticed on 'heavy' enemies, headshots seem to do *FAR* more damage than normal. Say, with the Latro/Lex a normal headshot is 33/89, on these heavies its usually 79+/170+, which once their shields are down makes them a bit of a joke. Not sure if this was intended or not.

Edited January 14, 2013 by derelict

[Dreed]

maybe some day they add more new addons for weapons.. like components.. better scope, silancer, laser etc. for mele too.. double blade - hitting more mobs (reduced dmg), longer handgrip for better chanrge dmg.. Suit parts etc ;] all for drop and craft ofc.

Here we have some many very good points.. we will se what Devs will do with this game.

[derelict]

Added a few more, so bumping it up to the top. Hopefully a dev catches a whiff of it sometime.