January 16Th: Community Hot Topics!

[SilentCircle]

About the damage mods.

 

I think they should be removed completely and weapons should gain 10% extra damage on every level-up.

 

If it would work like this, then the only thing a new player would have to do is:

1) Build a descent weapon and run a couple of mission to level it to 30

2) Now you got a top tier/endgame weapon and clear all the content in the game easily

 

Seration ensures that you get progressively more powerful as you level it up

and that you can take that progress with you to another weapon.

 

I think that's a much more interesting mechanic than the traditional level ups in every other game.

[Drazhar14]

If they increase sprint speed to compensate for the removal of coptering, I am okay with that. There needs to be some way to move around the map quickly. I'd rather not be forced to use specific melee weapons for the sake of getting around fast.

 

Health/energy orbs/ammo - would be nice if they restored a % of total amount instead of a fixed low amount, so that way it is more worthwhile to equip vitality, redirection, flow, ammo drum, etc. Maybe make them restore 10% each? Also, a new model for the red and blue spheres? Maybe give them a transparent effect with mist around them, so it's like you are absorbing your enemies life essence. 

 

Serration, hornet strike, point blank, pressure point - remove them and have weapon damage increase as you level your weapon. Make it 5% per level (for primaries, secondaries, and melee) for a total of +150% base damage at level 30. This will keep primaries around the same power, but slightly nerf secondaries (since they are currently stronger than primaries) and buff melee. Plus, the extra mod slot from no longer having that "essential" mod would be awesome.

 

Grabbing - more gameplay options are always welcome. Using an enemy as a shield sounds awesome!  

 

Warframe powers - depends on which frame and my build. With a corrupted build to specialize some powers, I find myself not using the ones negatively affected. Some warframes I use all of the powers, like with Mesa. Many of the older frames, I just use two (maybe three) powers. Revisiting old powers and giving additional mechanics so each one has a certain situation it works well in would be a good idea. On that topic, I feel some of the augment mods that have been introduced should have been part of the default power. 

[Seanjuju]

Please add Legendary-10 Mods to the hot topics.

[DiabolusUrsus]

It's really disappointing to see people clinging to the current systems simply because they're used to them, or have some sort of emotional investment in having acquired something. Or perhaps they're too busy trying to sell maxed copies of particular mods for 300+ platinum to suckers who are desperate enough to be gouged.

Coptering, wall-flinging, etc. need to be revised. They get in the way of better parkour mechanics, and they devalue the use of other movement mechanics. That doesn't mean they have to be done away with entirely, however. Bring other methods of movement up to par, and implement the aforementioned methods of movement as either toggleable amusement features like the vaulting animation, or as specific mod cards.

Damage mods need a complete rework. You've either got them and you're doing fine, or you don't and you're not. Damage mods serve as progression, not customization, and having progression gated by RNG is terrible design. This doesn't go to say that damage mods are inherently bad, or that they need to be "removed." Destroying player investments is completely unnecessary. Serration and its like should be integrated into each and every weapon, so that they grow stronger between ranks zero and thirty. The actual magnitude of damage bonuses provided can be discussed another time. The mod cards that are left behind should have their overall damage increase lowered, and trade-offs added. Damage builds should be attractive choices, but I don't think they should be the indisputible best choices. I think it's time for Warframe's mods to offer us actual customization. I also think that if ten-rank mods are going to continue to be a thing, they should max out effectiveness at rank five. Six through ten should reduce mod cost instead.

Energy, health, and ammo pickups need to be reworked. Energy and health need a low passive regeneration. Ammo pickups need to dynamically adjust to the needs of the weapon you are using. It's just as ridiculous to get 20 ammo for the Supra as it is to get 20 ammo for the Opticor. I'm pretty tired of my survival hinging on RNG-based slash procs unless I happen to be playing a Warframe that has a healing power or Rejuvenation slotted. We also need more active methods of survival. Player success should depend more on the actions they take than which gear they decide to bring with them.

Edited January 16, 2015 by DiabolusUrsus

[Kracken]

Please add Legendary-10 Mods to the hot topics.

as for them - my theory is that they are counterparts of mods hat have only 5 ranks. so as long as we dont know with one we could get - everything is possible.

[Zarlockk]

As many times mentioned, Our build are impossible without Multishot and Serration like mods. They are MUST HAVE on any weapon because they are extremely helpfull, and they increase elemental dmg of a weapon by increasing base damage. I would like to see those mods removed and instead have new system which increases damage as you rank up(multishot can go away as long as their effect is taken into account for rank 30 weapon, 2x for rifles and 3x for secondary boost on top of standart serration hornet strike improvements.) Great thing about modding in Warframe is Viraety of mods, But mods that are ust have remove that shine from the game. There are 3 solution:

1)Add more slots (prolly will not work cause people will stack more elemental mods)

2)Change modding slots so that you must have no more than 4 elemental mods, 2 utility mods(fire rate, reload mutation and so on) and 2 slots for crits and status based mods. Numbers are just examples.

3)Remove must have mod and make them take effect as you rank up weapon but rank 30 weapon should have stat of Serration+Split chamber for base damage.

I would love to see 2+3 to be honest.

Warframe Ability usage wise it comes down to warframe. On some warframes I use all abilities on some i use only couple. Examples of All abilities would be Limbo, Excalibur, Nova, Volt and Ash. Rest have 1 or 2 bad/not usefull abilites such as Nyx's 2, Saryn's 1+3, Trinity's 1 and so on.

[Quizel]

What is your opinion on pure damage mods (for example, Serration)?

 

I've always felt like these standard high cost mods track ones progression. Once it's max'ed, you essentially reached maximum level. This is a good thing in rpg like genre. The bad part is that it's not a very interesting mod choice. Because space is limited, modding should have some decision making involved and user preference. For these reasons, these types of mods should be removed but a new system or mod (systems or mods) should be implemented which rewards progression within the game-specifically for weapon performance. 

 

 

Some other mods that track progression are redirection and Vitality but they are defensive. What I meant to say is that offensive mods like Serration give a much greater sense of progression than mods like Vitality. If it gets removed something has to fill that void of making my gun feel stronger as I progress.

 

(insert long winded debate about the game doesn't need such a thing to be fun but I think it's better if it did)

[(PSN)Pharen]

I fully misread this question: Do you think pickups (orbs and ammo) need a revision?

 

I thought it was to do with visuals :/

 

I don't think coptering/wallflinging/sliding needs to change, it's fine where it is, sprint is what needs improvement to counter the necessity of these abilities.

 

As for removing pure damage mods, as long as it is accounted for and not just straight removed and forgotten for.

Edited January 16, 2015 by (PS4)Pharen

[TriggerHappyWhiteGuy]

Infinite Mob Level Scaling is the Problem!

 

Rework endless missions before deciding to removing damage mods. The only reason people feel like they need more damage is because of these endless missions. If you make the level cap at 40(current the highest level you can fight in non endless missions) then we might not even need all damage mods and would have room for utility mods.

 

Example: if we do 3k damage and they have 2k hp why should we add more damage on that gun? It would be pointless and wasting mod slots.

 

Leveling mods will greatly increase you strength overall giving you a sense of progression(do not remove).

Edited January 16, 2015 by TriggerHappyWhiteGuy

[RedVoidDragon]

1: That move you do when you run up a wall and instead of climbing on top you do some kind of crazy leap somewhere you didn't want to go for whatever reason can DIAF. Coptering and melee movement is rather iconic for WF at this point and needs to stay in some form.

3: It's a bit unintuitive that weapons don't innately get more powerful as you rank them up, but at the same time having a mechanic like serration where, lets call them... "more invested", players weapons are more powerful than those less invested is nice too, gives people something to work towards. You could do something like splitting the damage, serration gives 10% per level for a max of 110% and each time you rank up a weapon it gets 2% stronger for 60% more damage at R30, additively gives you 170% more weapon damage with both without having to do much balancing changes as the overall boost is on the order of ~3%, even less for weapons that use heavy cal.

5: Depends entirely on the frame, though I have been told my play style is rather ability heavy, some frames I use all of them, some I only use one. I tend to use abilities more if they have some sort of synergy with similar mods, but for a lot of frames you have to pick what powers you really want to use ahead of time and load up the corrupted mods based on that. Some frames have vastly different loadouts, like Rhino has a "Stompy" build with power and range, super tanky/damage build with max power and duration for IS and Roar, and a super speedy build with Rush and max duration for crazy long charges. Not gonna be stomping much with max NM on for the last two builds, nor will I be Roaring much for the first build with max TF and FE on.

[Sannidor]

I like the idea on sliding with Maglev having bonus ability to knock down enemies if done at good speed. Coptering animations should be revised/changed with introduction of air attacks to not be clones of slide attacks. It's not too late to improve them, so please do. We really need better parkour and no auto grabbing ledges ffs.

 

Ammo pickup exceeding maximum capacity could stack over the nominal value, but only for one pickup and not over 15%. If we have 290/300 ammo and we pick 20 box we could keep the extra 10. 

 

I feel like I want Serration gone ONLY for the sake of freeing mod space. Every option can be bad for players as you can turn any solution into nerf anyway.

 

Also, not sure if asked, but no grappler frame please before fixing very old and annoying melee glitches like falling through map after parrying counter.

[UndeadGhostWarrior]

 replaced by a rank - to - damage system, this way, the best players are the most skilled, not the best farmers.

 

This

 

The higher your rank , the more damage u do. bringing meaning back to high mastery levels

Edited January 16, 2015 by UndeadGhostWarrior

[PhoenixElite]

Sliding, Coptering, and Wall flinging Stamina

I am all for getting coptering removed, wall flinging changed, and sliding reworked. For me to be okay with that though, I would need stamina removed, we're space ninjas (as well as cowgirls, squid pirate people, birds, magicians, etc.). Stamina has always felt out of place IMO, especially when melee weapons use stamina, and thus, leave us with no way of getting out of the crowd of enemies. The only reason people copter and wall fling is because we like to move fast, AND it is more 'stamina efficient' as in it's generally better to copter/wall fling rather than sprint. I find my-self using the aerial attacks for more often than coptering, simply because it is more reliable on getting you where you want to be (i.e, not over-shooting and going half-way across the map), and looks nicer. Sliding is only used when you want to maintain momentum while also regenerating stamina, as well as the rare occurrences when you have to slide under an object.

Summary: Remove stamina, remove coptering, wall flinging should send you no where near as far as it currently does, sprint speed should be substantially faster.

 

Pickups

For the most part, pickups in warframe feel somewhat out of place. Health orbs are far too rare (unless you have a trinity with the augment, or nekros' desecrate), energy orbs could be changed or removed (along with energy siphon), but only if there's a more reliable way of restoring energy, that any warframe can use/have. Ammo drops are kind of random, you either have way too much ammo laying around, or never enough.

 

Damage levels, powercreep, and required mods

Do we really need a mod like serration? I mean, it is a mandatory mod, so why does the game even give us the option of not equipping it? We have all these mods, and yet, sadly, most of them are just straight up horrible, there's a better mod to use, etc. The regular status chance mods are absolutely horrendous, the pistol version being by far, the worst offender (5% of BASE status chance). Most other mods are just a lot less priority, I will put on an extra elemental mod over a max ammo, clip size, reload speed, etc. mod any day.

Summary: Damage 3.0

 

Grab and throw mechanics

I could see this being useful, using a heavy enemy as a bullet shield while you wait for shields to regen, and it could also be highly amusing.

 

Abilities and "Energy 2.0"

I only use 1/2 of a warframe's abilities about 95% of the time. Ember fireball/accelerant, Rhino iron skin/roar, Mesa peacemaker/shattershield/shooting gallery, Trinity energy vampire/blessing/link, Loki invisibility/radial disarm, Excalibur radial disarm/javelin, etc. IMO, abilities and energy both need a 2.0. One problem this game has is it's min/maxing builds; get 1 or 2 of a frame's best/most useful abilities, use all the mods that make it better, and ignore the other abilities completely. Energy needs a reliable way of being obtained, that can be used by all warframes, whether it be a built-in energy siphon, a "Hold button to regen", cooldown based abilities, or something different entirely (Trinity would need a rework, or a vastly superior global energy regen ability).

Edited January 16, 2015 by PhoenixElite

[Wurdyburd]

An overwhelming, resounding "It depends" to all options.

>>Sliding, Coptering, and Wall Flinging:
Movement is slow. Parkour sucks. Sliding/Coptering/Wallflinging is fast.

Therefore, I use the mechanics not because they are fun, but because they are efficient. Were a mechanic to come out that was more fun, say, Parkour 2.0, but not more efficient, I would use a mix of the two.

If it was both more fun AND more efficient [possibly by nerfing the mechanics we use currently] then for sure, yes, I would use something different.

As it is though, we use what's useful, because being not-useful is being not-fun in many aspects of this game.

 

>>Do pickups need a revision:

Option E: it depends. If you were to introduce something BETTER, then yes, I would vote for that, but without knowing what's being proposed, it's safe to say that the current system works fine enough.

 

>>Serration:

Honesty, the use of Serration and pure-damage mods is a joke, as it currently stands. You MUST have one to progress in the game, because DPS is king. If you can't deal enough damage, there's no real way of progressing, short of stunning everything, being invisible, or stealthing, and none of those are advanced/powerful enough to deal with a lot of content past mid-point.

That said, Serration is a good measuring stick for players ranking up. Do I need to deal more damage? Invest more resources into your Serration. I also don't know what it could be replaced with, but I will say this: making damage scale through a method out of the player's hands may not be fair, but it'll do WONDERS for balance in this game. DE constantly buffing/nerfing stuff will always be met with outcry because there's simply too broad a spectrum in difficulty, and the vast majority of that is attributed to pure-damage mods.

With a new method of advancement, balance can finally be looked at seriously, and overall player satisfaction will improve in leaps and bounds, even if the initial change is painful.

 

>>Grabbing enemies:
Wildly depends. If it means more terrible Warframe-style animation-locking, in which we are helpless to defend ourselves for the duration of the animation, dealing damage against a single unit while more gang up around us, then nooo thank you.

AoE is powerful in this game because there are so many enemies around us, so often. Getting wrapped up in a single enemy without being able to deal with others is basically suicide.

 

>>Do you use all your warframe powers:

Exhibit A: Nekros

Exhibit B: Ember

In layman's terms: ha, not even.

[KingTaro]

Sliding, Coptering, and Wall Flinging:

Adder9’s thread recommends that acceleration be removed from sliding so that slide attacks and other maneuvers can be controlled more easily. 

 

 

Adder9 doesn't seem to know that you can actually choose whether you want an acceleration in your slide or not.

One of the latest updates to the slide attack perfected that move. Not only can you choose whether you want an acceleration, you can actually decide how much acceleration you want in your slide attack.

 

Here is how you perform a slide without an acceleration:

1. Make sure you're NOT using the toggle crouch.

2. When performing the slide, instantly release the crouch button after pressing the melee key.

There, you slided without an acceleration.

 

And to perform a slide with acceleration:

1. When performing a slide, do NOT release the crouch button after pressing the melee key.

 

There is more. The longer you hold down the crouch, the more acceleration you can get.

Want a small acceleration? Hold it down just for a split of a second.

Want the max acceleration? Hold the crouch throughout the slide attack.

 

So yes, slide attack is very controllable nowadays.

The main issue I have with parcouring nowadays is this: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/355552-jump/?hl=%2Bjump+%2Bcollision

[Silverton]

On average, do you use all of your Warframe’s abilities?

I am one of the ones who voted other. The reason is some frames I use all 4 powers (Nova, Frost, Loki), other frames 2 or 3 (Rhino, Excalibur, Ember, etc), but then I only use one ability on some frames (Limbo, Mesa, Nekros). The frames I use all the abilities for are all useful ones. The frames I use only 2 or 3 moves from is because they have useless abilities. Excalibur has two meh moves his 1 and his jump. Rhino has two useless abilities for my play style, which is his roar and charge and Ember her accelerate is just meh. The frames I only use one ability on is because all but one ability is useless to me. Mesa is my defense lady I cast her one and just go to town no need for the others. Nekros is just a loot producer, his ultimate is kind of meh and not as epic as it sounds, hit 1 now revives with augment, and terror is just terrible. Now Limbo is just a 4  spammer for me, I built in low duration and only use his ultimate.

[Sir_Alex_Traffo]

Removing serration would be fine with a rework of the mods system and damage taken from enemies.

Removing just that without changing anything else would be terribly unbalanced.

[Pandoran_Stallion]

DE senpai noticed me :o this made my day!

[Holeypaladin]

Damage mods need to be balanced out more.  Hornet strike should either cap at 165%, or Serration should cap at 220%.  And pressure point needs to have ten ranks instead of five.

[Ayarai]

If the current mod system stays the way it is at the moment, I don't really see how removing mods like Serration (and for example, moving the damage increase to weapon levels or similar) would solve anything. More than likely, the playerbase would just come up with another set of mods to maximize the weapon performance and we would be in the same situation again - just with different set of mandatory mods.

[V0LK]

Look - Serration and Multishot adds about 250% damage and everybody MUST have it. On every weapon in every loadout. No choice really.

 

So just remove it and gradually add that 250% as weapon levels up. Of Course, that two vacant mod spaces will be immediately taken by elemental mods, because MUH DAMAGE, but that's another story. Still - a step in a good direction.

[Silverton]

Ok so let us say you remove damage mods from the game. What do we put in them mod slots now? Fast hands, ammo drum, or zoom. Just because two slots are used for damage doesn't mean it is a bad thing. You take away serration and I'll put in elemental if you take away elemental I am just stuck with useless mods. I don't want bane of grineer or the infested mod on my gun for it would mean I have to only fight them or remember to switch loadouts. So we remove the more popular mods and replace them with say more damage to the head, well I can do 60 damage to the body or 1000 to the head, this game has poor registering of head shots anyway so sometimes this would be useless.

 

I don't use the common mods on my good guns, because for the most part they are useless. 30% faster reload woooo so instead of it taking 4 seconds to reload a gun it takes 2 something woooooo. That 1 second off is real nice thou for high level stuff that the damage and elemental combo comes in handy for. Woooo more bullets in clip, better have more ammo capacity, better have more whatever, and eventually the loadouts look the same again. I'd much rather see something like paragons for weapons at that point.

[Synvul]

I think pure damage mods do need work done to them. I think part of the problem is that they do take away from building different ways. So many mods that are never used because DPS is what most people want. The higher and more broken the better. I wish there was a cure for power creep but I never heard of one. I think pure damage mods need some kinda of drawback to them such as they are lower status chance which would be showing they are going for the damage output over trying to proc something.

[Phaenur]

I have no problem with slide-flipping, coptering, and all of those other similar things in theory.  In practice, I'd mostly like to see them made a bit more controlled (and thus controllable) so that chaining one move into another - even a completely different sort of parkour, like coptering over to a wall and then catapulting into a climbing wallrun - would be both plausible and legitimately useful.  As for sprinting, I think it's time for the stamina drain to go, including on Archwing boosting.  Being unable to attack is penalty enough for the usually mediocre speed increase, in my opinion - stamina would be much better served as a resource bar for melee and special maneuvers than a fundamental mechanic like sprinting.

 

 

Speaking of resource bars...I'm not really sure where I stand on health and energy orbs.  It's been so long since I've had much cause to use a build without Rejuvenation, Energy Siphon, or Equilibrium that I've really forgotten how the game feels without them, and my only real gripe with health orbs is that they're a) rare and b) the only way outside of two mods (Rejuv and Equilibrium) to regain health despite there being several ways to lose health from a more-or-less unavoidable source (the much-maligned bleed proc from hitscan automatic Grineer weapons, and more forgivingly Infested toxic clouds and Corpus and melee bleeds).

 

For ammo, though...hoo boy.  Really, I think an ammo overhaul would be the absolute best first step in balancing weapons, and this applies to the ammo pickups even more than the pools.  Slow-firing weapons can afford to have less ammo per drop, autopistols and beam weapons and especially the one-point-per-pellet Kohm want to have more.  The four ammo categories can probably be maintained to make sure there's at least some scarcity, while lowering a lot of maximums and increasing a few would mix up whether a Mutation mod or an Ammo Capacity one is "optimal" for each weapon.

 

 

Weapon mods are a really tough question, which is a big part of why nothing's changed for them since the introduction of Heavy Caliber.  Personally, I'd love an old...was it a Notionphil thread?  I think it was, at any rate.  There's still a basic Serration mod, perhaps with its damage value reduced, but there are numerous other similar mods that provide a greater absolute bonus or perhaps some ancillary effects only when certain conditions are met.  Stuff like +90% damage (classic), +30% damage +200% headshot damage, +25% damage +65% crit chance within 15m range, +45% damage +.4m punchthrough, or +15% damage +25% damage per 10m range.  DE could get really creative with these and where they're found (ideally [to me] they'd be mission rewards throughout the system map) without seriously reducing our power level in the short term.  If they want to yank our weapon damage - which I think a number of people would support - they need to crunch down hard on enemy durability and/or damage scaling at the same time, preferably after they've touched on ammo pools again.

 

 

Grab-and-throw mechanics would be amusing, I guess, but to be honest I don't see the appeal.  Forced ragdoll is a pretty rare and interesting weapon effect and I'm kind of inclined to keep it that way for the sake of creative loadouts, while if we're in that close anyway we're probably killing things with our melee weapons - which are what're in all the trailers anyway, no?

 

 

And that leaves power scaling.  Personally I tend to use a nice variety, but then again I play Volt, Vaubon, Oberon, and Zephyr, and only with my friends instead of impatient minmaxing pub teams.  If there are powers that're seen as "better than," rather than nerfing the main ones or buffing the unpopular ones I'd suggest retuning the unpopular ones to synergize nicely with the goal of the main.  Keeping enemies outside of Snow Globe for Frost, for instance (I love the augment that gives Ice Wave a freezing trail, that's perfect), or generating an opening to fire off Overload as Volt (pretty easy - Speed's speed, Shock's stun, and ElecShield's cover give a nice range of options) - that's the sort of thing I think powers ought to build to.

 

I suppose if I had to nerf ults and other VIPowers I'd be more inclined to add a longer cast animation over greater cost.  The delay on Riftwalk is a great example of this, I'd say; it takes an ideal Get Out of Jail Free card and forces the player to seek cover or time things carefully in order to actually use it.  Having Loki's stealth flicker when he casts might be another balancing factor that could be worked in, while either a long pre-cast or mid-cast delay on top-shelf damage powers (see: Excalibur's Javelin poses, the activation delay on Vaubon's grenades, Banshee's and Volt's animations for their ults) would make their use more of a calculated risk than a guarantee of victory.

[DeusInsania]

With the way some missions scale/how increased the levels get toward end game planets (and void tiers too), mods like serration are a must.