Energy Overhaul - Introducing A New System

[timster7]

Grandpa calls the shots and we start slowing down our game play. Just encase we get a PvP implemented I would like to see whats more fun; no cool down means we just rely on the animation so that when the move is complete, we can reuse the ability again except the ultimate move. This faster regeneration on the ability would show, running around for blue orbs is a waste of time unless, it was to help shield regeneration which I thought it was for when I first started to play this game. 

[Ninjaman999]

I think you struck gold with this idea, you just don't know it yet.

 

Your Shields are now the energy pool. Enjoy.

 

You can either have shields, or spam your abilities.

Congratulations, we just solved the energy problem.

Sounds splendid :3

[CaucasianAsianX]

I like this idea a lot.  WIll make us space ninjas more ninja like instead of us being space mages.

 

I also approve of your balance ideas on reddit 

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/1fcrt4/balance_changes_to_make_warframe_challenging/

[Kiteless]

This is... so... beautiful.

 

The devs absolutely have to see this.

[Xymos]

This is amazing, this needs to be seen.

[sikraT]

Fascinating concept, and I think it's fleshed out far enought to be viable for consideration by the dev team. The major flaw that I noticed was in your Rhino example. There was so much focus on elimination of Iron Skin spam that the ability to cast different skills was overlooked. His stomp would put him completely out of power, for 3 seconds, and then it would take 5 seconds after that to cast his cheapest ability, Rhino Charge. While ability spam prevention is definitely something to look at, removing the option to instantaneously chain skills is a huge fun nerf. I believe this would reduce Rhino Charge to only an offensive role, as the power to use it defensively, or situationally as a utility, would always be delegated to a different ability.

 

Edit: Hit enter before I finished, didn't mean to end on such a negative note.

 

I don't mean to say that this issue makes the whole concept less than desirable, in fact I believe the opposite of that. This issue is something that, in your system, is very easily fixed via several balancing methods that I can see just from one quick read. Removal of Downtime from Stomp would help, or a higher base Power cap, or less cost of Stomp even. With simple number modifications, with out changing the effects of the abilities themselves, this system seems to allow for a ton of balancing potential while still solving the issues you set out to solve. Well done man.

Edited May 30, 2013 by sikraT

[SpaceStacker]

Very nice idea

[Thypari2013]

Thanks for the feedback :)

 

The concept is nearly 1 month old now :D Glad more people read it.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Thypari2013

[LazerusKI]

Interesting...but no, i dont like it.

It would need to much of rebalancing, tweaking, reworking...no.

your idea is not bad, but our current system is based on RNG.

it can be possible that 20 enemys wont drop a new orb.

i have seen infested rounds where they dropped only 4 orbs at all...until the end.

your system would not solve the "spam" problem, it would make it worse.

hide behind cover, wait until you are full, spam Uber, hide again.

or simply run around and avoid combat.

with our current system we cant do it. if there are no enemys...yeah, no energy, no Uber.

[XRacKS]

sounds more viable than the orb system!

+1

[Keetsune]

Even though you put a lot of work into that, I dislike the idea.

It seems convoluted and unnecessarily complex.

I'm not happy with the energy system either but the solution should be simpler.

Agreed.

[TheLastZanerian]

I like the idea, but it's a bit complicated... In all honesty, having simple energy regen at a rate of 5-10 per second after a 2-4 second delay would fix the energy problem.

 

That being said, the current system simply doesn't make sense... These super-powerful fighting machines based on Orokin technology require blue orbs dropped from enemies to function... It doesn't seem right. There's also the energy starvation problem, which makes the game feel like any old TPS for most of the mission.

[Phoenix86]

 

That's kind of how I feel atm.

 

^ this, btw +1 for the effort lol

[Azamagon]

I'd actually propose a system that combines cooldown and energy in a different way, such that each ability has its own cooldown, and only consumes energy while on cooldown. Combine this with a significant reduction in energy orb drops (or a switch to some other much slower way of recovering energy,) and it would encourage using multiple skills because if you don't use them more often than their cooldown they don't cost any energy, but you'd still have an energy reserve to utilize skills repeatedly if necessary. Even in your system, people can spam cheap attacks with low cooldowns, and as long as they stay above 50% of their max energy it recovers incredibly fast.

As nice as OPs suggestion is (Really, amazing effort put into it OP! Good job!), I would personally prefer this suggestion more. Seems way easier to implement, has far less impact on what mods/artifacts etc that needs to be changed, can do just as much benefit for caster Warframes as OPs suggestion does (Have low "cooldowns" on abilities meant to be spammable), is far easier to tweak and is easier to understand too (Not that the OPs suggestion is that hard to understand, but it is still far more complex). Ben's suggestion also doesn't make you rely too much on your abilities (Weapons would still find heavy useage)

Edited May 31, 2013 by Azamagon

[Meltina]

I do like the system but i would suggest simplifiying it. Remove the stacking delay from using the same ability it punishes you for using the abilities if they are optimal. The real balance to the abilities is they should be usable on their own merits. I should want to use my ultimiate because it is better than 4 1 abilities. The rhino problem was iron skin was the only skill used because the other skills were not a competitive option. If rhino stomp was worth using like let say your bonus damage to targets in it. Then the rhino would have incentive to use energy on stomp instead of iron skin. He should not be punished for using iron skin twice because there is no target that warranted the damage boost.

 

There should be a cap in the delay for classes like trinity. I can spam all my abilites pretty hard when in difficult content. T3 gives enough tanky stuff to regularly vampire and i spam blessing linking as nessary because of the glut of energy. Chain casting blessing could be very bad as i get about 30 mins of energy delay built up and if my vampires die too fast then im stuck with no abilities for the rest of the map. That or the party actualy uses trinity well. I had a run where we were in low level frames and weapons due to mprime farming ferrite. I formaed so i was low ranked too. I clicked an alert to check the reward and my mouse is bad in double clicks sometimes. Lets say we got a high level infested run with weakly modded weapons and frames. It was a fun run in voice chat i was constantly calling out vampire targets. I would vampire shoot once and let my friend spam shuriken to kill everything as it took a few clips to shoot them to death otherwise. I even had vampire targets kited around to keep as a mobile energy battery during tough fights. It was fun becase it was a challenge but do you really want to us go afk for 10 mins because i failed to get my energy back from a vampire.

 

Standardizing the delay into a few teirs would simplifiy the system. No delay teir has none. High delay teir has 5s or something like that. Standardize it for simplicity. If you standardized to a single delay and lowered the cost of the caster spam abilities you could make it parallel to shields. Shields regen a few seconds after they were last hit. Energy regens a few seconds after you last used your ability.

 

People should not be punished by a loss of flexiblity by using a contunity mod. Ember should not get a longer delay because they equipped a mod. Trinity already has this problem as they can actualy lower the regen rate of energy vamprie by more than 50% by how they mod. Mods should not have that kind of choice.

 

Also this has the same problem as cooldowns and energy regen before. People sat around waited for energy/cool down move to a room ultied to clear it then sat till the ult was ready. The rate would have to be insane to not stop the flow of the game. In your table the wait 10 seconds to move on for full energy was what people were doing before moving on and its why those systems failed in warframe before.

[Story4]

Guys, the system is easy to understand, you can make a tutorial video in 2 minutes explaining it for new-commers. If you use ability-consume xSP and wait xSD before regeneration kicks in. The more abilities you use the more it takes for regen to start so you spamming isn't good, unless your in a tight situation and really need it. Not hard, it just seems harder than energy system but it is intuitive.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Story4

[LazerusKI]

"Players spam damage abilities until they have no energy left. Then pick up Energy Orbs from killed enemies and repeat the process indefinitely, making damage abilities superior to utility abilities"

 

as i said before, with your system you would make it even worse.

I have seen rounds with infested where only 4 orbs have been dropped.

its RNG

 

with your system you can simply spam someone to death.

use Uber - hide - wait - use Uber - hide - wait...

with our current system we need luck if we can use abilitys or not.

our current system is mainly based on our weapons, our skills are just a bonus.

its a player-skill based fighting system. with your system you would turn it into "who can uber-hide the best"

Edited May 31, 2013 by LazerusKI

[SkullWB]

Need some tweaks, yes, but really, this is far better system than actual one :D +1

[Menoetius]

Support +1.

[Kynian]

I'll give +1 for the effort.

My take on this however is that it needs a few changes. I don't exactly know what and how it should be changed, but it should.

1 - Don't particularly like the name. Easily solvable. (I can't like the idea oh a more shadowy, stealthy frame having anything "solar" related to it. Solar makes me think of radiance, shiny things, the opposite of stealth. My Ash does not approve the name.)

2 - Reminds me way too much of some other resources existing in other games, such as energy in LoL. It's different indeed, but seems to work similarly enough. Maybe, different resources for different frames? (again, I think that was a great idea implemented in LoL)

Btw, I truly admire your effort, and this system is indeed an improvement of existing energy system.

That said, it could be even better.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Kynian

[Varelze]

+!

[Thypari2013]

This system is not "perfect" but maybe it gives DE a little thought-provoking impulse :>

[MJ12]

It's a good start although I'd make the regen rate dependent on whether or not you're in combat, dealing damage, or taking damage instead of fixed, to avoid people hiding behind boxes forever.

[KvotheTheArcane1]

+1, I like the idea of not being able to just spam ults to clear rooms without some big downside (not being able to cast them in the next room because of the downtime)

[DeadlyNerd]

good effort but I'll have to disagree on this overhaul.

 

1. You're making up solar downtimes and tweaking them to prove a point, not to balance out warframe abilities.(apart from the, oh so dreaded, iron skin) If downtimes were tweaked otherwise, your point might not be as valid.

2. This system can easily be exploited and the fluidity of the game decreased. For example, Saryn will just cast the ulti, clear the room, wait 18sec(if the SD is 3sec) and enter next room to cast it again. Make the downtime longer and whoever uses his ulti will be cut off from using anything else, breaking the fluidity.

3. Higher waves of defense missions are dependant on the current energy system for the players to keep killing enemies that would otherwise drain their ammo.

4. You mentioned no cooldowns and then introduced a downtime variable. That's a form of cooldown if I'm not mistaken.

5. As I stated in the 1st point, you'll still have to make a spreadsheet of balanced downtime durations per warframe ability. Otherwise, devs are better off just overhauling their own way.

6. Additionally from 2nd point, your system is too restrictive. Why do you think Diablo 2 is still played today? Because they didn't restrict the player by built in cooldowns and unchangeable generation of mana.