November 7Th: Community Hot Topics!

[Archwizard]

Honestly, I think Rhino's main problem right now is Iron Skin.

Rhino Charge's effectiveness varies with the user's builds and preferences; often the case will be that players will use a very low duration build on Rhino specifically to recast Stomp more frequently, which causes Charge to suffer. On the other hand, I know several players who have built Rhino for mobility, and consider Charge a wonderful supplement to his low base movement speed (and with Arcane Vanguard Rhino Prime... I don't want to think about it). One can complain about the damage aspects, but those remarks could be made about literally every damage-focused Warframe ability bar Shield Polarize.

Iron Skin, on the other hand, suffers from the fact that it only absorbs a flat amount of damage. Either it's supreme on lower level maps, or it burns off the instant it's cast on higher level missions. The fact that it's unaffected by Power Duration is great for people who want to play with unique build variations on his other skills, but the actual damage mitigation granted needs some scalability.

 

A suggestion -

Make Iron Skin is a toggled skill, with a low upkeep; if the skin breaks, the user receives % damage reduction until toggled off. In addition, Iron Skin passively increases threat generated by the player (not as high as Absorb), and increases the player's weight/gravity (opposite Zephyr's natural deficit).

 

Some of my buddies have also made complaints about the visual of it; I believe our last conversation on it had it compared to painted tin foil.

Edited November 8, 2014 by Archwizard

[Ebondevil]

Honestly I said Iron skin needs improvement, the main improvement for me, would be the ability to recast it while it's active, so if you're down to 1 left you can recast it without having to wait for it to be blown off.

[Arlayn]

1. let me think.... NO MORE BUTTONS FOR USELESS THINGS!!! or at least give us an option in some form of options menu to remove options we NEVER want to see.

 

2. Majority of shotguns simply are awful compared to most weapons. Plus I have never seen anyone take one to late game missions such as T4, Pluto, or Eris.

 

3. MORE SHOTGUNS!!! MORE BANG FOR MY BUCK!

 

4. Sounds like Gundam's laser rifle. I said yes to this, but I feel abit more should happen to energy weapons if this did happen such as a tad more damage being doable if the ammo is at 90% full, or higher, OR make it so it does base damage at 10%, and increase the damage amount little by little as it goes up from 10% to 20% and all the way up to the 100% round which would do the most damage since its fully charged.

 

5. Rhino charge could use some work. Not exactly what to be honest, but it could do something alittle more like maybe carry any enemy that is directly infront of rhino with rhino as he charges through. Maybe find a way to make it less like Excalibur's slash dash?

 

Also I feel Rhino Stomp needs to be a bit more noticeable in what is dead, and what isn't. Sometimes enemies amongst the group look alive, but are dead, and some that look dead are really alive. Maybe some kind of elemental effect on the bodies of those alive?

 

6. Ash, Excal, Limbo, Oberon, Nekros, and Volt! Why? Because they are superior units at going on the offensive. I Can't stand being on the defensive, but being able to take on multiple enemies at once is ideal! Excal can stun enemies, and clear away from a group with slash dash, and super jump. Ash can blind enemies with smoke bomb, teleport, and even do the legendary blade storm which has managed to extend its reach to late game even as a useful tool. Nekros has a way of multitasking killing, while saving. He can summon the undead to act as moving offensive shields as he revives fallen allies, and even have them as a distraction as he makes his move to attack enemies then do a little clean up with soul punch. Limbo can separate enemies for tactical surgical strikes. Its like a drone picking out targets, and then allow his allies, or simply doing it himself taking out enemies one at a time, or by the groups. Volt could easily be considered a God of War. Being able to use speed to move to multiple positions at once in a fight covering all angles in a small period of time, and then pushing it further by being able to bolster defenses in said locations protecting an allies weak point, or reviving them in the safety of his shields. When annoyed just left off a burst of electricity and clear the area, or stun a few enemies. Lastly Oberon. Able to heal allies, crush enemies, and even control enemies to make them attack each other. Truly a jack of all trades that takes up the best of everyone's worlds.

 

7. YES FOG!!! Problem with infested they just don't have a scary enough environment, but the fog made it extremely eerie. Like you didn't know what to expect. All you could see are the shadows. I was creeped out. Just throw in a few creepy sounds and I will be terrified. Maybe a few rumors, and creepy pastas while your at it?

[Squiintts]

I don't usually post on these, but . . .

 

I just want to say kudos to DE for the disparity between warframes in the poll.  I think it speaks volume to the amount of detail and commitment they put in to making every warframe unique, yet well balanced.

 

That said:

 

Topic 1:  Nicknaming Gear

  -  I think this is a good idea, but more then naming individual weapons, I would like to have the ability to "name" or add a brief description to the various configs I have for weapons and warframes.  Sometimes I forget what the hell I was thinking when I put something together and this would definitely help on older weapons/warframes that you may not have dusted off in a while.

 

Topic 2:  Shotguns compared to other weapons

  -  The biggest problem I have with shotguns is the lack of variety.  The Boar Prime can obviously be very effective but you will undoubtedly run into ammo issues in endless missions.  The reload on the Sobek drives my ADD into overdrive, I can't even use it.  The Phage is only truly useful to a warframe that has excellent survivability to handle being in the fray due to the range restriction.  I would really like to see a balanced shotgun, something that probably does not top the DPS charts, but is very user-friendly (i.e. decent clip size, moderate reload and a good fire rate that would still allow for some ammo efficiency)  <--- probably just dreaming there.

 

Topic 5:  Rhino Rework

  -  I think Rhino is in a good place.  I would like to see Rhino's Charge turned into a toggle-able ability that allows for a small amount of directional changing.  I think this would make the ability much more unique without being overpowered.  If you want to waste all your energy charging around half the map . . . go for it.  No more comparisons to Slash Dash, Tail Wind, Tidal Surge, etc.

 

Topic 7:  The Fog

  -  This was mostly a novelty for me.  A novelty that wore off by my second run of that Halloween alert.  I just find that it makes it ridiculously harder to see.  No thanks.

[mrecentric]

Shotguns need Falloff removed.

 

They are already penalized at range by Spread.

 

THIS. 1000 times this.

[Stalc]

Personally iron skin>rhino charge. Ever since that debuff the power just doesn't scale to any use at all I mean it is alright but it can't withstand anything anything in range of lvl 40. I can build the tankiest rhino and it will still be surpassed by stats by saryn and valkyr. (I still think even saryn needs a rework). But yea his rhino charge ability lacks damage but I would rather see him be centered for his ability that stands out the most rather than his other abilities that don't matter since other warframes already have good offensive powers. I just want rhino to be what he suppose to be, a tank not a nuker his rhino roar is in the right spot too.

[Mak_Gohae]

1. No, use that time to add some actual change like adding more config slots to weapons and warframes. You keep adding game modes that require specific configs which is cutting into the point of having all those mods.

 

2. I dont do math i just play the game. Shotguns destroy stuff at medium to short rage and i have no problem with them. I am now messing with the Sobek and it's awesome. I actually use the spread as an advantage with punch through mods. I dont really know how less or more DPS it has or whatever because i adjust. Every time i put on a weapon i play to what it is and compensate.

 

And, yes, why not have more shotguns.

 

3. No energy weapons should not recharge. This game is now Dynasty Warriors, there is no time to wait for a recharge in most occasions.

 

4. More hurr durr IS? Please. You know what? Take away IS to stop all these hurr durring. Make it into Iron Forstress where he deploys cover. A slab of iron appears in front and you can melee it to slide it forward. People are just going to continue, this is not going to stop. They want to walk forward while shooting without being bothered like the Terminator.

 

5. Bring back the fog, having a cool atmosphere is always fun.

[LukeAura]

Things with Rhino I would like to see. 
I don't find his charge to be all that bad actually. In comparison to his Stomp I would actually say they are pretty closed to Balanced. The problem becomes that CC and utility out values damage in late game. And while Charge is more damage effective, Rhino Stomp is more CC effective, ultimately trumping the less valuable mobility bonus of Charge, especially with air melee attacks now providing a more controlled and reliable form of traversal.
They're only balanced in a vacuum, as it were, the outside forces throw them off. Maybe it needs a little extra stun time, maybe it needs a rallying team boost to make Rhino more of a 'champion' class, maybe damage scaling needs to be fixed to make it work as it is, or its damage should completely trump Stomps to try and brute force the problem.  
Roar could boost power strength of abilities not just damage, creating interesting combinations like Super High Super Jumps, or Sturdier Bastilles, more shadows in a Nekros summon.  
And Iron Skin of course. It's one of those abilities that does not scale appropriately with enemies. It becomes too squishy at high levels. Maybe give it the Snowglobe treatments to keep it scaling?  


I am concerned about shotguns, but I think a serious test needs to be done on them. It's not something you can just take players words on any more.  
It also feels like they were made to be balanced around a general tile/effective shooting range that was much smaller because the galleons, Corpus ships, asteroids, and outposts had more narrow halls and less open spaces when it was made. With the earth and ice planet tilesets introduced and the introduction of bigger tiles in older tilesets since then, the maximum range, and average range have both increased. Shotgun fall off is supported by an outdated measurement, so it needs looking at whether or not that's considered fine, I really don't know because we also got a much smaller, more cramped tileset with the infested ships. Although those provide their own danger for shotguns due to their slow reload speeds.  

Edited November 8, 2014 by LukeAura

[letir]

Two words: enemy radar.

 

We need a way to make the infested something feared; a sacrifice of long range weapon capabilities is something I'd gladly give up for an infesting infestation.

You can't shoot in invisible enemies, then they hide in the fog. Can't snipe incoming Toxic Ancient, can't use Dread/Ogris/Opticor. Yeah, you can see red dots on map, but this is useless.

Edited November 8, 2014 by letir

[MichaelSD]

After the Excalibur rework, I do not want to see Rhino touched. It is not THAT broken and based on the past "improvements" nothing good will come out of it.

[letir]

Rhino

I did not expect to be covering Rhino this week, but as I browsed through the Warframe hot topics, I noticed that a lot of hot topics were discussing the big guy and his abilities. I was surprised because Rhino is a pretty popular Warframe, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for some suggestions and improvements. Would you make any changes to Rhino? Do you think any of his abilities need an update? Can you think of any ideas for Augment mods that would be fun for Rhino? The following Augment mod is currently available to beef up his “Rhino Charge”:

 

 

Charge just old generic power and now completly obsolete by coptering/air melee. Need rework.

Iron Skin need some high-lvl addition.

[[DE]Momaw]

Custom weapon names

Indifferent to this.  I don't feel like my weapons need a fancy individual name unless they have fancy individual performance. If you want to do a thing where we can turn a gun into a "legendary" or "paradigm" specimen (max one per account at any given time)  that has extra slots and gets a special name, then I'd be down for that.  >_>

 

 

Shotguns

Very very bad.  They are typified by mediocre damage, obscene falloff, and long reload times.  There's basically only a single shotgun that is "high level", and that is the Boar Prime, which earns this distinction more through its incredible status proc output than its short ranged burst damage. Shotguns are outclassed in every way by automatic weapons that do equivalent damage per engagement time but are not limited by range.

 

Shotguns in general need...

- Point Blank mod to 10 ranks.

- Reduced damage falloff. They already have bad accuracy that limits their effective range.

- Built in knockdown chance and/or punchthrough at very short ranges; better for heavy slow shotguns (Tigris, Hek), less impressive for more versatile shotguns (Sobek, Boar/prime)

 

If you're going to add more shotguns, currently we do not have

1.)   Pump action. Very high damage with a low rate of fire, with the ability to do partial reloads.

2.)  Semi automatic with fast reload. Something like a Saiga 12, holding 5-10 rounds in a detachable box.

 

 

Recharging energy weapons

I feel like, in general, Warframe is too fast and has too many targets for this to be useful. Sitting in a corner waiting for your battery to charge isn't really fitting of the pace. When I think about weapons that restore their own ammunition I think about the survival genre where consumable ammunition may be scarce, and you are concerned more about sustainability than firepower. Though I could see this working for secondary features of a gun that aren't essential to its basic function, for example adding a flashbang secondary firing mode to a shotgun, or adding a high-RPM overdrive mode to a machine gun. Something that has to charge up independently of the actual number of rounds in the weapon and adds a transient but restoring benefit.

 

Rhino

Not a frame I play a lot. Roar and Stomp seem fine. Iron Skin though...  Everybody seems to think Rhino is a tank, which leads to the dreaded "newbie Rhino squad syndrome" where everybody brings Rhino to a level of gameplay where he gets flattened because they don't know how to play him. Currently Iron Skin is too good at low levels, trivializing combat to the point that Rhino is effectively unkillable,  while simultaneously being pointless at high levels where enemies can do enough damage to literally remove iron skin as fast as you can cast it.  My suggestion was to make Iron Skin last for a specific duration and apply a hard cap on incoming damage (100 per second). Damage over this cap would simply be ignored. This means Rhino can serve as a tank at any level, while removing outright invulnerability at low levels.

 

Favorite frame

Nyx. She can take on anything, support the team, and look good while doing it.  If Frost were better I would love to love Frost, but as it is his ability set is just sad.

 

Infested fog

Adding it to everywhere would be too much especially if it was the thick-as-mud stuff we saw on Earth. Maybe use fog as a way to indicate areas of particularly heavy infestation where you should be extra careful...

 

 

[V0LK]

 

Infested Fog

 

 

Hell no! It can be cool to have it sometimes, but should it be used in all infested missions? NO!

[StinkyPygmy]

I'm sorry did someone say CUSTOM NAMES FOR GEAR!???

Yes. A thousand times yes.

Yes to everything here and in the event yes isn't a suitable answer to the question.... still yes.

A very emphatic yes.

[thekarubo]

Good god, do not give energy weapons recharge times.

[Zantorie]

1) i give my gun a name ? no thx for what?

 

2) more shut guns for what ? we have enough.

    what we are for Ninja without a nunchaku? thats why need any Tenno a nunchaku and not more shut guns :).

 

3) i like the idea infested fog but we should get then a new mod or aura that like a night sight is :)

[ValhaHazred]

I'm with the "goodbye damage falloff" crowd. I still don't see what was wrong with Hek being sort of sniper/cannon-y back in the day.

 

As for recharging energy weapons; I vote yes, but it depends on how fast the recharge is and how the reload mechanic works in relation.

 

    what we are for Ninja without a nunchaku? thats why need any Tenno a nunchaku and not more shut guns :).

 

They blatantly hinted on Reddit a while back that nunchuks are coming.

Edited November 8, 2014 by ValhaHazred

[Shimonoki_Ryuji]

1. It sounds kind of unnecessary to me. At least right now, when the game has so many bugs.

 

2. Shotguns are actually weaker, because they have:

    a) a lot smaller ammo pool

    b) spread

    c) damage falloff

 

To be honest, to beaf them up, they should have each pellet act as a bullet on its own (separate crit and status for each)

3. If those deliver some new interesting mechanics, then yes.

 

4. No, this is absolutely stupid, because it would drain you out of ammo in no time. And besides, regenerating ammo makes no sense whatsoever, cause it needs some source of making that ammo. It can't just appear in the magazine out of nowhere.

 

5. What needs a little work is:

    a) Charge - as it is now, it is only usable for faster moving. So it's good to have the distance of a single charge to be increased.

    b) Iron Skin - This one needs to take into account the power strength mods and armor. Cause what is iron skin? Yes, it's an additional layer of armor. And to be more viable in high lvl missions and to last longer it needs to be more powerful.

 

6. Males - Ash, Frost, Rhino. Females - Nyx, Nova, Valkyr, Zephyr.

7. The fog will be nice for special alerts and that's all. It will become annoying, when one can't see anything farther than one's nose. Because when i was doing that h'ween alert, i was relying completely on the map simply because i couldn't otherwise see where do i need to go.

Edited November 8, 2014 by Ryuji-kun

[RiouHotaru]

Anyone claiming that air melee means Rhino loses mobility has never used a high-power strength Rhino Charge, methinks.

 

As for shotguns, I think they're okay?  I think the Phage was a great experiment in making a shotgun that was unlike normal shotguns.  Boar prime is pretty good, but overall we need more of 'em.  I like how people think the Boar Prime is the end-all, be all.  Damage fall-off is a pain, but it's probably to balance the number of pellets one can put out.  I'd say reduce, but not remove fall-off.  There's no reason to try sniping with a shottie.

 

Regenerating Ammo pool?  Sure, I'd like that.  Like the Imperator.  It would make those energy weapons more useful overall.

 

Rhino changes?  Make Iron Skin recastable, rather than being forced to wait until it expires.  That's really all the change it needs.

Edited November 8, 2014 by RiouHotaru

[(PSN)Strifedecer]

Ash, Loki and Excalibur seem to be the most popular...5.54%, 8.25% and 6.89% respectively...

[Lactamid]

An not so serious idea on what the ammo pickups are:

The pickups are "batteries" or some device/code holder for warping in ammo for your weapons. These come from a secret weapon manufacturer that holds a monopoly role and profits from the ongoing war, and thus we all use the same warp-batteries.

 

Battery A - standard rifle.

Battery B - shotgun.

Battery C - sniper/launcher/arrows.

Battery D - Pistols.

 

ABCD is like boxes filled with what ever you need, not a specific ammo, just a differnt box that the "ammo" is inside :)

Would explain why there are no clips/magazines-pockets anywhere on the frame and some weapons seems to lack a place for the amount of bullets they use.

 

Not so serious, as mentioned.

[RoninJed]

Shotguns need more love and I voted for revision on all rhino abilities. Naming our weapons is fine but I don't really want DE to spend a lot of time and resources dealing with it. Most used frames for me are ash,rhino,loki,volt, and nekros...but I also like and forgot to mark excalibur. Nekros and Excaliburs abilities could use some revisions too. Oh and I like the fog just don't get carried away with it. Would be cool if (but not always) fog could roll in right before a stalker,g3,zanuka or syndicate attacks:)

Edited November 8, 2014 by RoninJed

[Clows-Hydee]

Funny how Excalibur and Loki are the most popular ones, still you rarely see them ingame, especially Excalibur aside from newbies.

 

 

Rhino Changes:

Roar and Stomp seem fine to me. Viable at all levels but not overpowered.

As someone said before, Ironskin needs both, a buff and a nerf.
At low to mid levels it's ridiculously op and at high levels it's useless.

My idea was to add a slowdown effect to it (all that heavy iron!). Rhinos charge and maybe melee wouldn't be affected by it but definitely sprint speed. To make up for it, reduce its energy cost to 25 or even less, let us turn it on and off and add a blinding effect to it when activating (Such shiny iron! But has to be weaker than Excalibur's Radial Blind for sure.)

Now seriously think about how that would affect gameplay. You would now actually have to think instead of mindlessly slapping it on at the beginn of the mission and then stop caring about it.

For example jumping into that crowd of Grineer Skoom: Copter or frontflip into them, turn it on in mid air, blind everyone and then go nuts with your Jat Kittag for that sweet stealth multiplier or spin in circles while mowing down everything with your Gorgon Wraith modded with Punch Through. Then turn it off and collect everything and run to the next room.

Or teammate downed at the other end of the room: Ironskin on, use Charge at full speed to knock down all the enemies between you and him and to get to him in time then safely revive him.

I feel like this would solve many problems at once. Charge would be more viable and synergize with Ironskin.
Ironskin would allow for some really interesting gameplay, it also would be useful at high levels for the blinding effect but wouldn't be a no-brainer especially at low- to midlevel missions to make big parts of the gameplay completely useless (knockdowns, laser doors, pulls, status, energy drains etc.)

Probably the most important benefit of this change: with iron skin not being activated all the time, everyone can finally appreciate your sweet color scheme. (Unless it's red and black, in that case please leave iron skin on all the time.)

 

[JackMcRain]

To me is indifferent about most of the topics you are tailking about there, but I can still say something about the custom names for weapons, favorite warframes and the foggy system for infested.

Custom Names for Weapons

Well, that's pretty much fine by me, it doesn't matter if I want to name my guns or not. You know, I'm not like a certain guy named as the Heavy Weapons Guy who gives names to his guns like Sasha or Natasha. But it doesn't sounds to be a bad idea either.

Infested Fog

I don't dislike the idea of making a very foggy environment, the problem is that it might cause you to hardly see anything if the fog is too intense, plus the fog system isn't a seperated option, it's only possible to enable it when enabling the Motion Blur or the Depth of field in the Options menu. I usually prefer to keep those off just to have the best perfomance in order to evade frame-rate drops in cases like when there're too many enemies close to me, you know, my pc isn't that powerfull as others. Either way, the Depth of field usually makes everything that I see quite blurry except for where the crosshair is aiming, that's isn't helpful if I spot an enemy that is not in front of my aiming, but as for the Motion Blur I like it, it gives a better feeling of speed, except when there're too many enemies that may cause frame-rate drops, either way sometimes I feel that the Motion blur only fits better in racing games rather than others (maybe because I'm used to see it in games like Trackmania, or so). Anyway, I don't dislike the foggy effect in certain levels, sometimes I just tend to think that the fog must be too intence in some cases like when the ship is full of ice everywhere (not to mention the frame-rate drop that the ice causes when I'm looking at it in certain large rooms with lots of details).

Favorite Warframes

As for the favorite Warframes I just have 4 at this moment: Excalibur, Mirage, Nova and Valkyr but I would really apreciate to have the ability to have all of them if I had enought Platium. Anyway, usually I like Nova due the fact of her being a very destructive girl, she can easily kill all enemies in seconds with Molecular Prime. Valkyr is a different story, she is really impressive with her Hysteria, acting almost in Wolvering style, in fact I like the fact of Valkyr having the Basted helmet that make her look like a cat or a fox. Mirage is the most recent that I got and she's awesome with pretty much all of her abilities. Excalibur was, of course, the first that I got when I started playing, it was a bit difficult to master him at first but he's great to play with.

Also it's not only by the abilities that makes me like the Warframes, depending of each one I usually paint them with colours that resemble characters from other things or just characters that I have in my mind. For example Nova and Valkyr are pink just to resemble a pink anthro cat (not Pink Panther) who make her appearance in a Japanese movie from the 80's made by Osamu Tezuka, the same creator of Astro Boy, if I recall correctly. The name in english, as far as I could see, is "Bagi, The Monster of Mighty Nature". In fact I was even thinking about participating in the Doppelganger contest showing my pink Valkyr next to a screenshot of Bagi, I just couldn't trust in some websites like FurAffinity once that they could remove the image if I would post it there (they just accept original artworks).

That's all. I can't say anything more about the other topics because of some reasons like that I don't have any shotgun in my arsenal at this moment. See you in game. ^_^

Edited November 8, 2014 by JackMcRain

[Krion112]

I don't get the point of naming weapons, given almost every weapon already has a name. I think the only exceptions are some melee weapons and the Flux Rifle. But, I guess it'd be alright to nickname them. I'm not against the idea, but it seems kind of pointless, but hey, if it can be implemented simply and be fun for the people who utilize it, I'm good for it.

 

I had this discussion before, shotguns are on the underpowered side of the spectrum, alongside LMG's and Snipers. The reason being is that they appear to be balanced for the damage (or in the case of LMG's, their magazine capacities) with a really long reload time. These are intervals in which I'm dealing no damage, and because Warframe is balanced around the concept of dealing high damage across a large number of enemies, this makes Snipers and Shotguns fall short. Launchers aren't hurt by these traits because they have such large impact radii, allowing you to kill multiple targets at once before even having to fire another shot.

Assault rifles are a balance of all traits, having their foot in the door of high damage, quick reload times, and fast rate of fires, which makes them so greatly more powerful than any of the other weapon types. It's why we see that the Lanka can achieve most powerful single shot damage, yet is completely overshadowed by Soma or Boltor Prime, all because of the rate at which these rifles can kill in comparison to the rate at which the Lanka can kill.

I feel shotguns could be improved by increasing damage, increasing spread (Including on the Hek), increasing multishot (Sobek only has 3, the smallest I've ever seen for a shotgun in a game), lowering reload speed, buffing the physical damage mods of shotguns, and decreasing or making a mod that can decrease the damage dropoff. Not extensively, but enough that they can start off effective at appropriate ranks, and then be modded carefully for the more difficult ranks later.

 

More shotguns would also be good. Right now, I want a shotgun for one of my arsenal load-outs with Volt, but none of the shotguns at present do what I'm looking for, so more primary shotguns would be awesome.

 

Energy weapons should not have an energy pool ammo system, it would only be a nuisance and a terrible nerf.

 

Finally, the Fog; I think it should be the random event thing that happens on the Earth tileset and not tied to the Infestation. When it occurs, it would reduce the line of sight for the Grineer usually stationed there, making it easy to stealth, but if one has line of sight on you, they all do. Just a thought. If the fog were attached to Infestation missions, make it colored appropriately to the color of technocyte, like reds for the Infested Corpus Ships and normals missions under Infested attack, and dark blues and greens for the Derelicts.