Warframes, Mods, Powers And Weaponry

[Mietz]

I think I found the whole problem of the mod system, at least when it comes to the hotly debated topic of powers (and the obligatory cooldown vs energy thread every second day).

 

The design philosophy is currently that Warframes and Weaponry are modded separately with a separate pool of points.

This means that your weaponry (Primary, Secondary, Melee) is always viable, no matter how you mod your Warframe and has no influence on your WF loadout (generally speaking for DPS).

 

A player is currently not required to specialize between his weapons and his Warframe (and powers).

 

This means that Powers, as is, can not be made more efficient or used more frequently due to balance reasons, lest we make Weaponry useless.

 

This leads to a homogenization of playstyle since no matter what Warframe you run and what Powers you have available, you have restrictions on these powers because the weapons must be viable for every frame.

 

Additionally, most Powers in the game are distinct/separate damage abilities and do not compliment or synergize with weaponry (except I think Ash smoke bomb who gives crit), at most they are utility CC powers.

 

The design must be rethought if WF wants damage focus on:

 

a. Weaponry

b. Powers

c. Both

 

With a. we need to remove most damage from powers and give more utility and synergy to powers, or let weaponry decide damage output. We would need powers that buff or compliment weapons, like magnifying elemental damage or providing crit, ROF, etc.

 

With b. we would need to find a way to make powers spammable as the primary damage output with weapons being a tool to soften up targets or emergency use when you are out of powers.

 

With c. we need to introduce a system where a player can chose which way he wants to play. There must be a shared Weapon and Power mod-point pool that allows a player to dump all his mods into his frame but neglect Weaponry (creating something like a caster class) or to forgo Powers entirely but have powerful weaponry. (Or anything in between for jacks of all trades)

 

Right now we are in a very peculiar spot where Weapons are clearly the main damage output of a frame but direct damage Powers exist and are expected to be used. Thats why we have problems with energy and cooldown discussions with many solutions being suggested that will ultimately solve nothing as long as Weaponry is the universally available damage output for every frame.

I can use Slash Dash just fine but why would I if the same effect can be achieved with a Gorgon/Braton without using up energy? What if Slash Dash used my Melee Weapon base damage?

 

We need a fix for this if we want better Warframe powers and better differentiation between frames.

[AndryB94]

I agree so much with you, I don't think I can add something to this.

I'd personally love to see point c. come to life - I'd love to have different "playstyles", such as caster, weapon-based, and perhaps even a mix.

[Mietz]

Like, no comments? Anything?

[Story4]

Or d. do it like mass effect does.

 

Soldiers have higher defense so they rely on abilities that enhance the weapon precision and caster classes focus on abilities that deal pure damage and rely on their weapon just as back-ups.

 

For example rhino has Iron Skin, which allows him to have a higher defense than the other, his ultimate which is a CC good for team-play, but doesn't deal damage, and Rhino charge and shockwave which are kinda useless. Ember deals just a pure damage from her spells that don't improve on anything other than mods, and even those are kinda buggy.

 

What to do? simple. Leave Rhino Iron skin, leave his ultimate, but remove the other abilities and make one ability that gives his weapon more damage and/or accuracy and another that makes enemies attack him and not other team-mates, kinda like decoy. This way Rhino fills his purpose, a warrior that relies on his weapon and CC abilities to help team-mates and deal damage.

 

On Ember do it the other way around. By this i mean scale all her abilities according to her weapon. The more powerful the weapon, the more powerful the abilities and she can always return to her weapon if she doesn't have any more energy or to kill 1 or 2 enemies that are left. But she won't rely on weapons to deal damage like Rhino.

 

This is just an example, not fleshed out, but i think it's a good idea to compliment your own Mietz.

[Mietz]

Or d. do it like mass effect does.

 

Soldiers have higher defense so they rely on abilities that enhance the weapon precision and caster classes focus on abilities that deal pure damage and rely on their weapon just as back-ups.

 

For example rhino has Iron Skin, which allows him to have a higher defense than the other, his ultimate which is a CC good for team-play, but doesn't deal damage, and Rhino charge and shockwave which are kinda useless. Ember deals just a pure damage from her spells that don't improve on anything other than mods, and even those are kinda buggy.

 

What to do? simple. Leave Rhino Iron skin, leave his ultimate, but remove the other abilities and make one ability that gives his weapon more damage and/or accuracy and another that makes enemies attack him and not other team-mates, kinda like decoy. This way Rhino fills his purpose, a warrior that relies on his weapon and CC abilities to help team-mates and deal damage.

 

On Ember do it the other way around. By this i mean scale all her abilities according to her weapon. The more powerful the weapon, the more powerful the abilities and she can always return to her weapon if she doesn't have any more energy or to kill 1 or 2 enemies that are left. But she won't rely on weapons to deal damage like Rhino.

 

This is just an example, not fleshed out, but i think it's a good idea to compliment your own Mietz.

 

The problem is still that both have equal access to equally powerful weapons and do equally powerful weapon attacks.

 

If embers powers would be more powerful than her weapons for DPS this is essentially a Power Focus design, so b. in my scenario.

[Story4]

The problem is still that both have equal access to equally powerful weapons and do equally powerful weapon attacks.

 

If embers powers would be more powerful than her weapons for DPS this is essentially a Power Focus design, so b. in my scenario.

 

Well yeah, Rhino is your a. and Ember is your b. in your scenario. Weapons would have to be nerfed a little so that caster warframes can deal damage using their abilities and not their weapons and warrior warframes can deal damage using their abilities that buff the weapons damage to the current value or whatever. I think actually it wasn't so much a d. as it was an alternative to c. 

Thinking about it your shared mod idea could work pretty well. Have 60 mod capacity shared and you decide if you want to use them for your weapon or your warframe.

My idea was more to fit better roles for warframes, tanks/casters/hybrid because if you put only damage mods on rhino for example in your idea you still won't do that much damage.

I made a +1 to your post anyway, it would be interesting to have a different scaling system :).

Edited May 1, 2013 by Story4

[Mietz]

Well yeah, Rhino is your a. and Ember is your b. in your scenario. Weapons would have to be nerfed a little so that caster warframes can deal damage using their abilities and not their weapons and warrior warframes can deal damage using their abilities that buff the weapons damage to the current value or whatever. I think actually it wasn't so much a d. as it was an alternative to c. 

Thinking about it your shared mod idea could work pretty well. Have 60 mod capacity shared and you decide if you want to use them for your weapon or your warframe.

My idea was more to fit better roles for warframes, tanks/casters/hybrid because if you put only damage on rhino for example you still won't do that much.

 

Then its more c. where we want a flexible weapon and power focus.

 

I think the pool system can be used with minimal changes to current modding and keeping the potato supercharge mechanics.

 

The changes that would need to be done:

 

- Orokin potatoes need to be split into the weapon/warframe groups (Primary Reactor, Secondary Reactor, Melee Reactor, Warframe Reactor)

- Increase levels for mods across the board

- Balance mods+cost according to total pool

- Add/Increase energy regeneration

- Reduce energy orb drop rate

- Significantly buff enemies

 

Weapons/Warframes could still get supercharged but their mod-pool would add only to that item.

 

Lets say there is a maxed warframe without potatoes with 3 maxed weapons. It has a total point pool of 120 (4*30).

You could, theoretically, mod your Warframe exclusively with 120 points while leaving zero mod points for weapons.

 

If you now add a Warframe Reactor to the warframe, your pool is extended by another 30 points, but these points are warframe exclusive. I.e. you could "respec" to put 120 points worth of mods into your Braton tomorrow, but the additional 30 points would only work for Warframe mods. Same thing applies the other way around with Primary, Secondary and Melee Reactors.

 

i.e. Reactors supercharge your specialization and are not universal.

 

That way you could have a highly specialized Sniper with 150 points into Primary but a weak warframe, secondary and melee. If he supercharged his other stuff, he can still put 30 points into them, making them sort of useful but not nearly as good as his primary specialization.

 

You could have all kinds of characters, pistolero gunslingers, melee monsters, caster warframes, snipers, heavy conal AOE machinegunners, stealth masters, etc.

 

Mostly its about having choice and consequence, some sort of trade-off for your specialization.

Right now if I play Mag or Excalibur has little to do how I approach combat, thats dictated by the weapons.

Edited May 1, 2013 by Mietz

[dEEkAy2k9]

maybe the warframes itself should have some stats. like base melee damage (as melee damage mostly comes from the musclework xD). let powers then again depend on that damage which is either buffed through various mods or adds up with your melee weapon and it's mods.

 

having a tough warframe would then give you more damage as right now, only thing a warframe influences (damagewise) is the number of mods you pump into it (like focus, continuity etc).

 

let people focus on either gun play, or melee or caster style (prefering powers over the other weapons, being less effective with weapons but regenerating energy, doing more damage etc.) OFC this would need a lot of rebalancing both the weapons and the energy/powers system.

[Story4]

@ Mietz, yes i understood all that, my idea was more to make abilities suit their roles more. But i think it could suit your idea as well, for example replacing the rhino charge with a taunt that increases it's range the more you increase it and replace his shockwave with an ability that adds a knock-back to his weapon. But this is more a discussion to make the warframes abilities better overall, not bound by one idea or another.

As i have already said, i understood your idea from the beginning and after further thought i think it would better suit warframe. The only problem that i see now is that if the mods will scale as they do currently, players will be more inclined to do a balanced class in order to not increase the cost of the upgrades which get more expensive the more levels the mod gets. 

One suggestion to make it better would be to make every level-up constant in credits, let's say 5000 or 10000 for every level. That way players will invest more in what they like because you will pay the same even if you are balanced, only warframe or only weapon.

For example, if you have 100.000 credits if you want to just level up a mod for your weapon with the current system you will perhaps pay 100.000 or more to max it up to 200%, but the damage increase will be in diminishing returns because the more you level it up the more you pay. So it would be better to spend the credits between waframe and weapon equally, increasing both their damage by 150%, making a total increase to the damage by 300%.

If an upgrade costs only 5.000 and is the same for every level, you can upgrade the weapon damage to 200% with 00.000 credits, spend it between 100% warframe and 100% weapon or upgrade your warframe to 200% damage. This way you can choose whichever patch you like and be just as efficient. 

[Mietz]

@ Mietz, yes i understood all that, my idea was more to make abilities suit their roles more. But i think it could suit your idea as well, for example replacing the rhino charge with a taunt that increases it's range the more you increase it and replace his shockwave with an ability that adds a knock-back to his weapon. But this is more a discussion to make the warframes abilities better overall, not bound by one idea or another.

As i have already said, i understood your idea from the beginning and after further thought i think it would better suit warframe. The only problem that i see now is that if the mods will scale as they do currently, players will be more inclined to do a balanced class in order to not increase the cost of the upgrades which get more expensive the more levels the mod gets. 

One suggestion to make it better would be to make every level-up constant in credits, let's say 5000 or 10000 for every level. That way players will invest more in what they like because you will pay the same even if you are balanced, only warframe or only weapon.

For example, if you have 100.000 credits if you want to just level up a mod for your weapon with the current system you will perhaps pay 100.000 or more to max it up to 200%, but the damage increase will be in diminishing returns because the more you level it up the more you pay. So it would be better to spend the credits between waframe and weapon equally, increasing both their damage by 150%, making a total increase to the damage by 300%.

If an upgrade costs only 5.000 and is the same for every level, you can upgrade the weapon damage to 200% with 00.000 credits, spend it between 100% warframe and 100% weapon or upgrade your warframe to 200% damage. This way you can choose whichever patch you like and be just as efficient. 

 

Well yes, with higher mod cost and mod power the curve needs to be adjusted and balanced and the balance for 8 mods but 120 points looked at carefully (like having all mods at max and essentially making the primary the only viable alternative for gameplay)

 

I think that there should be both a strong incentive to specialize but a disincentive to absolutely max something like crazy.

 

i.e. the 120 point build for Rifle should be crazy from a time/money perspective and indeed have diminishing returns, but only for the last few upgrades that would push the Rifle from "very very good at what it does" to "omg i never will touch any other weapon ever again".

 

Also weapons would need a slight rebalance in specialization as right now we have too many weapons that work too similar.

 

Like keeping the Braton as a good all-round weapon but having stuff like the Burstron scale better for single target damage, etc.

Edited May 1, 2013 by Mietz

[Story4]

Well yes, with higher mod cost and mod power the curve needs to be adjusted and balanced and the balance for 8 mods but 120 points looked at carefully (like having all mods at max and essentially making the primary the only viable alternative for gameplay)

 

I think that there should be both a strong incentive to specialize but a disincentive to absolutely max something like crazy.

 

i.e. the 120 point build for Rifle should be crazy from a time/money perspective and indeed have diminishing returns, but only for the last few upgrades that would push the Rifle from "very very good at what it does" to "omg i never will touch any other weapon ever again".

 

Also weapons would need a slight rebalance in specialization as right now we have too many weapons that work too similar.

 

Like keeping the Braton as a good all-round weapon but having stuff like the Burstron scale better for single target damage, etc.

 

Hmm yeah maybe each mod could have like a "prestige level". First 10 levels cost 5.000 each, but if you want level 11 you have to pay 50.000 and for level 12 100.000. If the pay is worth it that would be awesome.

 

I really don't know what they could do to weapons. I mean how many ways are there to fire a bullet? I really wish they implemented more diverse energy weapons, beam weapons, laser weapons, pulse weapons, rail-gun weapons etc.

[Mietz]

Hmm yeah maybe each mod could have like a "prestige level". First 10 levels cost 5.000 each, but if you want level 11 you have to pay 50.000 and for level 12 100.000. If the pay is worth it that would be awesome.

 

I really don't know what they could do to weapons. I mean how many ways are there to fire a bullet? I really wish they implemented more diverse energy weapons, beam weapons, laser weapons, pulse weapons, rail-gun weapons etc.

 

I've thought about the weapons a bit and I came to the conclusion that we have a problem with range diversity combined with direct damage and conal aoe.

 

For example, I think that shotguns, especially post damage falloff patch, take up a niche that is entirely irrelevant.

Currently Shotguns are all extreme close combat weapons due to dmg falloff, and this would be fine if the game didn't have a one-button immediate melee strike.

 

The range at which the shotgun is relevant is so close that a quick charge attack from melee is more effective.

 

Shotguns should fill the conal AOE "soft damage" niche with large spread, softening up enemies primarily. Especially something like the Boar should be about emptying a clip in full auto to kill/severely damage a large group of enemies but then go into a very long reload (as long as gorgon).

 

Guns like Gorgon, which are essentially machineguns, should also work more as a ranged support weapon, not a primary lawnmower, while the Grakata is more a single target burst damage weapon.

 

Right now the differences are very subtle, especially between primary and secondary.

I feel almost no difference between the Lato Vandal and a Latron, they feature almost exactly the same stats.

 

Unique weapons like the Paris and Boltor is exactly what is needed to have a differentiated style of play.

[Story4]

Yep i agree, the Paris, Boltor and Akbolto also feel pretty differentiated from the others.

 

About shotguns, if they won't make melee more powerful, i kinda disagree. I have a supercharged Hek and i can kill a shockwave MOA on Pluto in one shot, but i can't 1-shoot it with the plasma sword with melee charge damage maxed.

[Mietz]

Yep i agree, the Paris, Boltor and Akbolto also feel pretty differentiated from the others.

 

About shotguns, if they won't make melee more powerful, i kinda disagree. I have a supercharged Hek and i can kill a shockwave MOA on Pluto in one shot, but i can't 1-shoot it with the plasma sword with melee charge damage maxed.

 

Wes, thats the point, right now the thing is skewed.

 

What I meant is that for melee range, melee weapons should be used. The shotgun isn't a melee range weapon, but is forced to be used like one.

[Story4]

Wes, thats the point, right now the thing is skewed.

 

What I meant is that for melee range, melee weapons should be used. The shotgun isn't a melee range weapon, but is forced to be used like one.

 

Ah i see, then i agree. Normally shotguns have a much higher range: http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/DianaYang.shtml . Actually i think the Hek was spot on regarding the spread of a shotgun. Pretty accurate at 20 meters but over that the spread was about 1 meter. I think that some levels just need to be bigger, the only reason Hek had the advantage was because most environments were on a space ship which is cramped, perfect place for a shotgun.