Warframe Abilities: Are We Too Dependent On Them?

[mrhat.lf]

All I know is that frames like Rhino, Loki and Ash have to rely on their 2nd ability in order to survive. More tanky frames like Oberon and Frost don't rely too much on abilities.

[Tsukinoki]

@Divair
We had CDs in the past.
Suck hard and slowed down missions to a crawl.

Further, what about abilities that *need* to be spammed to be any good?
Such as Vaubans Tesla?
Or Volts Shock?
Or Slash Dash?
Or Vortex?
Or Hallowed Ground?
Or Smite?
Or RIpline?

The list could really go on.
But far too many abilities *require* spam to be useful.
Putting a CD on them would suck out a lot of potential to actually make them useful.

And what about any duration or toggle abilities?
When does the CD start?
And how do you balance between someone that uses say 3 seconds of peacemaker against someone who uses 30?
Or what about absorb in the same scenario?

In short:
The abilities of this game are not suited to CDs at all.
The fast paced action of this game is not suited to CDs.
And DE has tried CDs in the past and it was horrible.  I don't want to revist that stage of early CBT again...

[Zareek]

@Divair

We had CDs in the past.

Suck hard and slowed down missions to a crawl.

Further, what about abilities that *need* to be spammed to be any good?

Such as Vaubans Tesla?

Or Volts Shock?

Or Slash Dash?

Or Vortex?

Or Hallowed Ground?

Or Smite?

Or RIpline?

The list could really go on.

But far too many abilities *require* spam to be useful.

Putting a CD on them would suck out a lot of potential to actually make them useful.

And what about any duration or toggle abilities?

When does the CD start?

And how do you balance between someone that uses say 3 seconds of peacemaker against someone who uses 30?

Or what about absorb in the same scenario?

In short:

The abilities of this game are not suited to CDs at all.

The fast paced action of this game is not suited to CDs.

And DE has tried CDs in the past and it was horrible.  I don't want to revist that stage of early CBT again...

I didn't know that abilities has had cooldowns before. Does make good sense that it was removed based on what you said though.

[Xaturas]

Well most of the time I just run and gun things with my boltor without using energy at all.Though some frames abilities are freaking op.

[ROXXXY]

I asked myself this question earlier today, when I had the fortunate experience to group up with another Ash during a mobile defense. I asked if he planned on using the augment mod for the Hek he was running around with, and he said:

"I don't use weapons, Ash is very powerful". A fair statement. I see many people spam their 4th abilities, especially Ash. not my kind of gameplay though, it seems rather boring to me.

 

Anyways. We have a lot of mods to modify our ability usage. Some prefer powerful, some prefer high duration, and some prefer efficiency. Personally, I like efficiency on my Ash. My stealth lasts 3-4 seconds, but I have all my abilities ready to use whenever I need it. it also means that, on rare occasions that I'm able to use 1 bladestorm after another, like during a tight situation.

 

So, my question is: Do you think we are too dependent on our Warframe abilities, when we can totally neglect our weaponry?

 

My own opinion is that I honestly don't know. We are not FORCED to use them. A great example is the contrast between my playstyle, and the bladestorm spamming player's that I mentioned above. We can choose to use our abilities, and we can choose not to. I guess an alternative would be more powerful/useful abilities, but more expensive and/or with timer?

 

I would like to know what the rest of you think

Then Nova and all the squishy frames would suck.

[Sixty5]

Its a personal choice in playstyle

Personally I like to use every tool available to me, though I personally prefer gunplay.

It's why I favour frames like Banshee, Mirage and now Mesa for their ability to combine power use and gunplay.

Spamming 4 will only get you so far in this game.

[Mak_Gohae]

The game turned into Dynasty Warriors.

There are too many enemies to not use your abilities.

If you are not going to use your abilities people would just be running with the Penta or some other aoe weapons to deal with the huge pileups that happen.

[Thaumatos]

The game turned into Dynasty Warriors.

There are too many enemies to not use your abilities.

If you are not going to use your abilities people would just be running with the Penta or some other aoe weapons to deal with the huge pileups that happen.

I just use my Galatine.  Seems to work fine until there's a level 60-something toxic effect that immediately one-shots me.

[Qynchou]

I do the opposite.

 

I run rhino purely for the way he looks, rhino is a S#&$ frame, my favourite one but the most useless one aswell.

[SilentCircle]

Abilites are what makes this game fun and stand out.

 

It should be the players choice if they prefer to fight with guns or warframe powers. I don't get this thinking that guns are somehow the norm and abilities should be limited to panic buttons.

[Luster-Purge]

Abilites are what makes this game fun and stand out.

 

It should be the players choice if they prefer to fight with guns or warframe powers. I don't get this thinking that guns are somehow the norm and abilities should be limited to panic buttons.

Agreed. If the handheld weapons really were the bread and butter of this game with Tenno powers secondary, well, wouldn't that basically be Dark Sector all over again?

 

I think that kind of mentality might stem from how Warframe abilities originally took up four mod slots and you could simply remove a power you never used in favor of another mod to beef up some stats, such that you could strip a frame of all powers in favor of making it impervious to grease sticking on it or something. Now that the option to do that has been stripped away and half the availiable mod slots removed in the process, a Warframe's powers are a necessity to factor into use at any time, if only because not using them when they're freely available makes no sense.

 

Additionally, the more "mobility" minded powers would suffer horribly from a cooldown. I never would have gotten as much oxium from those Gate Crash raids if it hadn't been for Valkyr's batman grapple rip line, and Rhino Charge is the epitome of an irrisistible force (Rhino) meeting head-on into an immovable object (unlucky sods blocking Rhino's way) because he WILL break through. The extra damage dealt is just icing on top of clearing paths.

[PookieNumnums]

not all frames can rely on abilities. nova no weapons.. banshee.. loki.. trinity. abilities make the game. there is nothing wrong with using abilities.. but quick dps ult spam like saryn and oberon and rhino can be annoying at times tho can adversely be quite helpful. each frame has its place in game and as weve seen with recent events and tacalerts that the devs are trying to create more of a home for some of our  current frames that can better allow utilization of their abilities.

[PookieNumnums]

also lets take into account difficulty. the average level of difficulty experienced by players isnt very high. however if we jump deeper into a surv or def mish, where accuracy damage output and awareness are increased greatly powers become much more valuable and the likelyhood of needing to multicast goes up. 

 

in otherwords, you trippin homie.

[Tymerc]

The escape mission from when you're captured by the Zanuka Hunter really goes to show how weak Tenno are without their powers and weapons, so i'd say yes.

[SquirmyBurrito]

But imagine you having those abilities in real life. Would you actually hold them all the time in same situations, where 1 misstep could cost your life? I doubt it to be honest. And of course having a situation when you can't use your abilities would cripple your battle potential alot.

 

In the game I have weapons, these weapons deal far more damage than most abilities are capable of dealing on their own. So if in real life I had these abilities and also had my weapons, I'd stick to using the weapons and would save the abilities for situations where I HAD to use them to save my life. Primarily because very few of the abilities offer me any kind of use outside of their affect on enemies/how I engage enemies. No, not really. When I played that recent alert where the capture target drained my energy, I didn't even notice until my teammates pointed it out. That was because I didn't need my abilities. 99% of the time in this game I can get by without even having to think about my abilities.

 

Give a player a forma'd Boltor Prime, whatever secondary they want, and a good coptering/air directional melee'ing melee weapon and they won't need their abilities for most of this game. The portion of this game where abilities become necessary is high-end endless content and the only abilities that become needed are defensive, supportive, and utility abilities. All those damage and mobility abilities are completely unnecessary.

 

And now that DE has made speed and mobility maneuvers have an actual impact on enemy accuracy abilities have become far less of a necessity.

 

TL;DR- You don't need abilities when the game has weapons like the Boltor Prime.

[Teadude]

Ash? Powerful?

Oh please

[Toppien]

Yeah I would agree with you. I feel like we really need cooldowns for abilities.

 

no,  let people play the way they want

[ranks21]

this is hilarious to read the whole topic and conversation. just a few weeks ago weren't you all for the abilities to be incorporated in the frames for the players to use (that's point one).

 

  Then comes words like "synergy" and "co-op" = Viver and syndicate points  (point two)

 

 Now it's the players are using/relying on their powers too much... (point three)

[crafturtoemc]

Errr, Its not bad I think...cause yeah some ability are really fun to use than the weapon so why not?

[TripCharge]

I think ultimates are too spammable even though they are... well, "ultimate abilities". The other abilities are fine as an alternate play style to gun play but ultimates need to be a bit more occasional.

[Nitresco]

I think ultimates are too spammable even though they are... well, "ultimate abilities". The other abilities are fine as an alternate play style to gun play but ultimates need to be a bit more occasional.

If they're made less spammable, they must also be made more powerful. As it is right now, many damage abilities fall off incredibly fast as the levels rise higher.

[Mistyclown]

if cooldown will be implemented I probably log in once a year-_- tsk cooldown

[Blatantfool]

 It should be equally viable to rely heavily on abilities or guns. Either or both. IMO it ought to be all about player choice how and how often you use the tools they arm you with.

 

 To me it isn't too different a choice from how and when a player would decide to use things like coptering or the other parkour mechanics. You see it all the time, some players use them a whole lot. Some hardly ever. It is one of many tools and different players will use them to different extents.

 

 

 I think that there is a bit of a problem regarding the necessity for Warframe skills to be utility heavy. 'problem' is too strong a word without jumping through hoops explaining why it's not quite right though.

 

 Enemy scaling is aggressive. Very aggressive. You don't have to play a ton of Warframe to know damage oriented skills and most mid to low tier guns will just stop being viable entirely after you pass certain level barriers during the few endless gametypes or anything else of even the mildest challenge available. This is part of why utility became so absolutely necessary in the process of judging a Frame's worth. Skills have to offer some usefulness past damage since damage alone will inevitably be useless due to ever increasing health and resistances.

[SolarDwagon]

To expand on a point stated earlier, Warframe without powers would simply be a terrible TPS.

Warframe as most experience is probably too power-reliant, but endless content and some abilities in particular (Ripline) would be very unfavorable without the 75% efficiency status quo at the heart of any problems with "spamming". Perhaps a rebalance of energy costs and efficiency mods would solve this, but it would need to be a global overhaul to avoid hurting newer players without the mods that the "spamming" players have-these new players experience powers "as intended".

[HolidayPi3]

I personally limit my ability usage because I feel like my aim will become bad if I become too reliant on abilities. Even then, I like to use frames like Banshee that have synergy with MOAR DAKKA