Why Do Abilities Have No Cooldown?

[ShardsSuperior]

And its also completely random. To eliminate risk you want to use mana only on best abilities.

 

I don't want to say that all abilities should have cooldown but that cooldown mechanic is actually beneficial to game in some cases. Rhino Stomp is actually the ability with cooldown. Imaging if it did not have it and you could perma stun enemies.

"use mana only on best abilities" O.O

I'm not sure what game you're playing, but it sure ain't Warframe.

What you think are broken energy mechanics, that is, Energy Vampire, Energy Siphon, no cooldowns, are what make this game different. It's not a strategy game like League (until you get to the highest levels of endless missions). Escapism over carefully thought.

 

Just for the record, Rhino Stomp's "cooldown" is just that you have to kill all the enemies affected before casting it again. This is okay because it encourages faster gameplay, killing those enemies as quickly as possible. If they are all killed by initial stomp, then yes, you can cast Stomp immediately after.

[CY13ERPUNK]

A long time ago, way back in the days of old, all abilities had cooldowns.

 

What happened was this: everyone used their abilities, then went and camped behind a box until the timers ran down. It sucked. They were removed for a reason. 

 

...snip...

 

while i usually agree with you, on this im going to have to respectfully disagree

 

back then warframe was a much different game and play experience than it is today, the old frames have gone thru numerous changes and new ones have joined the fold, that was also before the mod card system which has seen tenno gain tremendous min-max powers (sure we dont have 4k shields anymore, but we've got other tools now)

 

ie, just cuz some CB players ONLY wanted to spam overload with volt and didn't want to play the run-n-gun-n-slash cover shooter that warframe was, doesn't mean that the game should forever be defined by that one phase/period in time

 

my point is basically that we dont have to be talking about 90+ sec cooldowns here, maybe just like 10-30 secs? and if the CDs only applied on 'ULTS' then each frame would still have 3 abilities free to use regularly

 

additionally, this would open up more possible mod options and build varieties around getting back to minimal CD (sure it would be a 'nerf' in some ways, but the players are still largely overpowered across the board ingame), and lastly...

 

the blue balls energy system is really showing it's age, considering the ubiquitous-ness of energy siphon alone

 

if i had my way, id remove/rework the energy siphon and rejuv auras, and give all frames a smaller base regen for health and energy (up to a point, ie you would regen slowly, but not all the way to full, maybe only to 50% or so), then the auras could boost those base rates and/or allow the regen upto 100%

 

then different frames could tweak these base stats, thus some frames could regen more health or energy, whatev fits their 'style' etc

 

this could completely remove red/blue balls from the game (abilities like nekros desecrate, could just heal friendly tenno nearby corpses)

Edited November 12, 2014 by CY13ERPUNK

[Sakatchi]

How can you play valk and only run around and hysteria? You can ripline and be the goddamn spider woman, or roar and make everyone into blenders with better armor. even the dogs, and the defence objective. OR mash her 3 and yell at containers or reactors or lasers on the wall so hard they explode.

 

You already have built in cooldowns and thats your limited energy pool. unless you run around with a rage head long into stuff, which will get you killed in later levels lemme tell you, you cant really just run around yelling at stuff for no good reasion.

[Acos]

Also Energy siphon as a whole is almost negligible solo.

A single siphon only gains energy at 0.6 a second.

 

I am not going to stand for 41 seconds to gain 25 energy. I use energy restores instead.

In fact more and more people are removing energy siphon for "serious" games.

 

I head a thread about this, but I prefer to look at Energy Siphon as another form of Power Efficiency. For powers that have a duration it is reasonable to assume you aren't going to need to cast that power again until the duration has expired. Using Rhino Stomp as an example: It costs 100 energy to activate and lasts roughly 8 seconds. Streamline and Fleeting Expertise will get that down to 25e, and since Rhino Stomp is fixed at 8 seconds it does nothing to the duration. 

So for 8 seconds I do not, and in fact cannot, Cast Rhino Stomp again. With Energy Siphon I will recover 4.8 energy during that time, which effectively reduces the cost of the power to 20.2e, or to put it into terms that we can compare with other mods, reduces the cost of the power by about 19%. Compare that to Streamline's 30% or Fleeting Expertise 60-50%. That being said, it is *only* 19% when Streamline and Fleeting Expertise have already reduced the cost of the power by 75%; when Rhino Stomp costs 100 energy Energy Siphon only reduces the cost of the power by exactly 4.8%.

Then there are powers which can last significantly longer than 8 seconds. Hysteria, as an example, can last 44.7 seconds at 25 energy per cast with just Narrow Minded, Streamline, and Fleeting Expertise. Over those 44.7 seconds Energy Siphon will recover 26.82 energy, effectively making the power "free", with some extra energy at the end of it for giggles. 

The big point of Energy Siphon, to me, is that it allows me to further reduce the cost of powers which I have already heavily reduced the cost of. Since 75% energy efficiency is the cap, energy recovery is the next step for getting powers as close to "free" as possible. You'll also be recovering energy between fights or generally any time you aren't casting powers, which is something else to consider.

That being said, Team Energy Restore is also still a thing, and you certainly aren't wrong about their effectiveness. It takes a negligible amount of time and resources to craft and now that it is much easier to place I imagine the prevalence of Energy Siphon as the "go-to" aura will start to die down. You might make an argument that you could, theoretically, run out of Team Energy Restore in a mission but at that point I imagine things have gotten so far out of control that Energy Siphon alone wasn't likely going to have saved you either. 

By the way, it might also be interesting to remove energy orbs entirely and give Tenno a standardized amount of energy recovery based on the frame. This effectively achieves the same kinds of things cooldowns would do by controlling how much energy we can utilize at a consistent rate, but still allows us to 'burst' powers as we see fit or specialize our builds around a few key powers.

*EDIT: I should also like to point out, and it should be obvious if you read any of that text above this, that some powers DO have a cooldown, just not in the traditional sense. Rhino Stomp cannot be activated again while it is active. I either need to kill everything being affected by it or wait until the things being affected by it stop being affected by it. If I encounter new enemies while I already have Rhino Stomp going I do not have an effective way of dealing with them. Chaos on Nyx is the same way, and in fact several people who play Nyx encourage Fleeting Expertise to not only reduce the cost of her casts, but to reduce the duration of Chaos so that it can be re-applied as more enemies enter the fight. 

So there *are* cooldowns already in the game, just not for every available power. 

Edited November 12, 2014 by Acos

[Davoodoo]

I believe there was cool downs before but it really didn't work out. People would use a nuke ability to murder everything in a room, wait for the cool down to end, then walk into the next room to nuke everything again. It made the game play painfully slow. Hysteria is just overpowered and needs another rework (Hysteria 3.0?).

 

A long time ago, way back in the days of old, all abilities had cooldowns.

 

What happened was this: everyone used their abilities, then went and camped behind a box until the timers ran down. It sucked. They were removed for a reason. 

 

Also, if all you're doing is using Hysteria you're missing out on how useful Warcry and Ripline are. 

Yeah that was in days when grind was pretty reasonable, in this day and age it would be highly inefficient approach, not to mention that we had no endless back then.

 

Making cooldowns would actually address one of balance problems, namely enemies being permamently disabled having no way to harm player.

 

Also energy before mods2.0 actually meant something, there was no way to be efficiency capped and even few efficiency % you could get from mods had heavy cost. At present energy seems like a more flawed system than cooldowns.

Edited November 12, 2014 by Davoodoo

[Noble_Cactus]

^This. I didn't play when abilities had CDs, but like many things in this game, not having CDs feels like a remnant from an older time.

Many parts of the game would need to be redesigned to make cooldowns feasible.

Which is something I'd support. Maybe abilities not having CDs fits with the current game, but the current game requires little thought. The most that's asked of a player in terms of abilities is that they autopilot. I personally think this is boring.

Skills don't need long CDs, but just enough to make a player manage their Stomps and Miasmas. Being forced to create a rotation could even make players use their non-nukes more to fill the gaps in their offense/defense, which is an issue that most players seem to recognize with the game.

WF players tend to enjoy setting themselves apart from traditional MMORPGs. But maybe the game is more like them than they'd care to admit.

Edited November 12, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[(PSN)WiiConquered]

Ability cooldowns do one of two things, generally.

 

1) In PvP matches, they help balance out the spamming of abilities, leaving ultimates as a skill based bullet to the core of the enemy team, or (in cheaper games) an unfriendly nuke to wipe out an entire area and anything in it.

 

2) In PvE games, they force the conservation of abilities because cooldowns can be deadly.

 

But can't energy costs do the same thing? Energy costs can bring about the same effect, but limiting your ability castable pool. Energy costs can be worked to be dynamic, such as the gaining of orbs to place this into action=more action, or more spam of ability use = more spam of ability use.

 

Half (or more) of the problem is Fleeting Expertise, because it completely invalidates that energy conversion. That mod needs reworking. In fact, I'd rework all the corrupted ability mods.

 

Although with Hysteria, the OP should think about using Ripline and Warcry more. Hysteria could use some fixing though, as 45 second invulnerability+health stealing is too easy and not that fun.

Edited November 12, 2014 by (PS4)WiiConquered

[taiiat]

because having Resource Cost and Cooldowns is a recipie for failure. MOBA's get away with it because the games are programmed by amateurs and have controls so unreliable and sluggish that you'll never notice it hampering your gameplay.

 

 

the real problem is that Energy has been completely trivialized. Energy Siphon makes a big difference, but just inofitself, it's alright. it's a slow trickle, and that drastically increases Energy availability, but the rate is low so you'd still need to manage your Energy.

 

what's really the problem, are the high amount of Energy Orbs AND Efficiency Mods. our Abilities are almost free, and there's also buckets of Energy available.

both of these together has trivialized the system and made Energy a superfluous system, because it doesn't limit us for anything.

we have tons of Energy available, and that as the only limiting system, with it trivialized, means there's absolutely no reason to manage our Energy, because you'll always have tons more.

 

so the way to address this would need to be to reduce the overwhelming availability of that Resource. so that this Resource can actually require Players to strategize their Abilities. still enough to use them, because this is a fast paced game, but not so much that you can mostly AFK spamming Abilities.

 

Also, if all you're doing is using Hysteria you're missing out on how useful Warcry and Ripline are. 

and Paralysis! now that it's always Equipped, i can appreciate having it. decent Stun, but opening Enemies for very high Damage Finishers ;)

[matrixEXO]

Issue is still with the OP skills rather than the player's mentality itself. If you can wait 5s for a superior clear skill to pop back, you will. It's natural for humans to take the easiest and dirtiest path so long as they aren't actively being degraded or penalised for it. If each and every skill has their own unique aspect (no more AoE superiority madness, special delays with unique effects, less damage, etc) then you would see less spammability and more situational uses. But don't take my word for it, it's just my conjecture to how it would be.

[(XBOX)ShapelessHorr0r]

Because enemy respawns don't have a timer.

[-InV-igo95862]

• Excalibur’s Radial Javelin and Mag’s Shield Polarize will now check for line of sight when targeting enemies.

 

 

Well, basically what I talked about. You either have weak and spammable abilities or strong and impactful with cooldowns.

 

What would you choose? Radial Javelin that does not hit enemies without line of sight or Radial Javelin that has a 10 seconds cooldown?

[ShardsSuperior]

Well, basically what I talked about. You either have weak and spammable abilities or strong and impactful with cooldowns.

 

What would you choose? Radial Javelin that does not hit enemies without line of sight or Radial Javelin that has a 10 seconds cooldown?

It certainly is less exploitable now.

 

Your question isn't fair. If devs gave a cooldown of 10 seconds to any ability in any game, that's basically a sign that that skill was meant to be spammed, especially after CD reduction items are taken into account.

 

The abilities are designed with the lack of cooldowns in mind. This means the staff have balanced them to be able to be used over and over again with energy as the limiting factor, not time.

 

While I may not enjoy these changes, they don't kill the flow of the game. If the game were balanced around cooldowns instead of energy, it would be a vastly different game. See Firefall (It also has quite a few other differences, but the combat system is basically a TPS with lots of run and gun... and 4 abilities)

Edited November 13, 2014 by ShardsSuperior